Highland Laddie Gone (16 page)

She had been unable to find Andy Carson to ask him about Dr. Campbell’s proposed committee meeting, but another member of the group, Hughie MacDuffie, was all too evident. Elizabeth hesitated. Was she really desperate enough to commit herself to a conversation with MacDuffie? Conversation was hardly the word for it, though: a few utterances of “Oh, really?” were the most that Hughie would permit in the way of participation in his monologue. He taught ancient history at a military academy, and was given to telling jokes with the punch line in Latin.

I might as well get it over with, thought Elizabeth, gritting her teeth. “Hello, Dr. MacDuffie, how nice to see you!” she said aloud.

Hughie MacDuffie’s victim, who had been subjected to a lecture on Tacitus’s opinion of the Scots, took advantage of the momentary distraction and fled. The professor looked over his black-rimmed glasses at Elizabeth, either trying to place her or mentally flipping through his list of conversational harangues.

“MacPherson, isn’t it?” he said, eyeing her sash.

“Yes, sir. Maid of the Cat this year.” I may as well volunteer it, she thought; we’re not going to get anywhere until I do. “My parents are Douglas and Margaret MacPherson, and my older brother Bill is a law student.”

“Any kin to David MacPherson of the Upperville Hunt Club?”

“No. My mother is one of the North Georgia Chandlers. Timber.”

“Ah! Splendid weather we’re having for the festival, isn’t it?”

Elizabeth sighed. It was a science, after all, communicating with this bunch. Seals and porpoises couldn’t be any trickier. She spent another few minutes making the correct noises before launching her chosen topic of conversation.

“Isn’t it shocking about poor Dr. Campbell?”

“Abiit ad plures,
” said Hughie solemnly.

“I’m sure he’ll be greatly missed. Such a busy man! You were on the committee with him, weren’t you?”

“I like to think that, like the second Triumvirate …”

Elizabeth ignored the gambit. If I let him get started on Rome, we’ll be here for days, she thought. “Had you talked to Dr. Campbell lately?” she asked.

Hughie MacDuffie cocked his head, trying to recall the faces of his conversational victims. “Colin Campbell … yes … because I remember saying to him:
tantum religio potuit.…”
“What was he talking about?”

“Campbell? He wanted to get the committee together this morning. He didn’t though. Never turned up.”

“He was dead,” Elizabeth reminded him. “Now, did he say what the meeting was about?”

“Fraud. I remember, because I said—”

“Fraud? You’re sure it wasn’t embezzlement.”

“No, my dear. The two things can be very different. For example, when the fire department of Rome was run by—”

“Did he say who the fraud concerned?”

“Oh, someone here at the games, I believe. Something about … what did he tell me? … I’m afraid I wasn’t
listening as attentively as I might—Colin was such an old bore. Of course, had I known that he would be killed, I would certainly have paid attention. I think a dentist was asking him about tartan patterns. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? Unless it’s like the Oracle of Delphi. Have you heard the story about the fellow who went to the Oracle.… Let’s see, it was …”

There was no formal registration for the Highland games. People paid their admission at the gate without signing anything. New members could, if they wished, put themselves on a mailing list at one of the clan tents, but even then occupation was not listed on the form. Anyway, with more than fifty clan tents, it would take days to track down the information, with very little chance of finding the right one. How do you find a dentist in a haystack, Elizabeth wondered. The only solution that occurred to her was more drastic than she cared to undertake. Clearly, it was a job for Geoffrey.

She found him in the Keith tent, sharing a bottle of Dewars and the plot of
Brigadoon
with two of the clan officers.

“And then he goes back to New York, right? So …”

“Geoffrey!”

“Hello, Elizabeth. How odd to find you Scot-free. As I was saying—”

“Geoffrey, I have a part for you in a small drama.”

Geoffrey, noting her serious expression, set down his plastic cup with a sigh of regret. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends …”

When she had steered him out of earshot of the Keith
contingent, she said, “I suppose you want to know what this is all about.”

“I’ll tell you what it had better
not
be about,” said Geoffrey menacingly. “If you have had some kind of altercation with your Highland laddie and are expecting me to play Friar Laurence in any way whatsoever …”

“It isn’t that. I have to find a dentist.”

Geoffrey raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t it be easier to ask Cameron his age? You could sneak a look at his passport.”

“Shut up. This has nothing to do with Cameron. I’ve been looking into the business about Dr. Campbell, and it turns out that he wanted to call a committee meeting this morning because of some fraud connected with the games. One of the committee members says that he found out about the fraud from a dentist.”

“Why
are you playing sleuth, dear cousin? Shouldn’t you be at the library checking out books on seals and porpoises?”

Elizabeth blushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, the sheriff has arrested Dr. Hutcheson, and he didn’t do it, so I’m going to try to uncover some new evidence.”

“How do you know he didn’t do it?”

“Marge is convinced of it. She’s such a saint. You wouldn’t catch me being that worried about a man who had left me for someone else.”

“No, my dear. Beneath your little pixie face lies the soul of Clytemnestra.” Seeing her look of bewilderment, he explained, “Wife of Agamemnon. When her husband
came home from the Trojan War with a pretty little captive, she took a knife to both of them.”

Elizabeth thought about Heather, but her better nature refused even to consider the fantasy. “I don’t need another classics lesson,” she snapped, remembering Hughie MacDuffie. “I’m doing my good deed by trying to clear Walter Hutcheson—if he
is
innocent. And my only lead so far is the dentist who talked to Colin Campbell about fraud.”

“You want me to help you find a dentist?”

“Exactly.”

“How, pray?”

Elizabeth told him, steadfastly ignoring his look of increasing reluctance.

Several minutes later, the games announcer was drawn away from the microphone by his assistant. “An emergency, Grace?”

“Yes. Look at this poor boy.”

Geoffrey, who had invoked his look of suffering from
The Spanish Tragedy,
cringed beside her, holding a handkerchief to his cheek. “Impacted what’sit,” he murmured, swaying a bit.

The announcer’s eyes strayed back to the playing field. If he lost his place now, it might take the rest of the afternoon to get things straight again. “Oh, really?” he murmured, edging away.

“Dentist!” wailed Geoffrey.

The assistant announcer gave his arm a motherly pat. “There, there, you poor thing. Ray, couldn’t you just make a quick request for a dentist to report to the control booth?”

Ray hesitated. “Couldn’t somebody drive him to town?”

“Weekend …” whimpered Geoffrey.

Ray scowled. It was going to be easier to make the announcement than to argue with a tottering invalid. “Right,” he said. “Go and sit down over there, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Geoffrey crept over to a folding chair near the announcer’s table to await further developments. After a minute or two Elizabeth slid into the empty chair beside him. “Good work!” she whispered. “You must have been very convincing!”

“Yes. I hope you’re equally persuasive when the tooth fairies arrive, so that they don’t remove my jaw in an excess of Samaritanism.”

“I just hope I can figure out which one I need to question.”

“I think you ought to stick to less complicated good deeds in the future,” Geoffrey remarked.

Elizabeth nodded. It wasn’t entirely an act of charity, though. If she could clear Walter Hutcheson of the murder charge, then Heather would still be a safely married woman, and then whatever there was between her and Cameron wouldn’t matter. Would it?

Ten minutes later, only one person responded to the broadcast appeal—a diffident young man in a blazing yellow and orange tartan. “I don’t carry any tools with me,” he explained. “But I thought I’d just come along and offer advice, if you needed any.”

“Thank you very much for coming,” said Elizabeth politely. “Actually, I needed to ask you a few questions about the murder.”

He gasped. “I’ve already spoken to the sheriff.” Noticing Geoffrey for the first time, he began to back away. “It was a trap, wasn’t it?” he hissed. “I didn’t mean to tell them, sir …”

Geoffrey lowered his handkerchief and glared at the cowering dentist. “You would do well to give this young lady all your cooperation,” he said sternly. “She is an operative.”

“Who is this?” muttered Elizabeth.

“I’m Jerry Buchanan, ma’am. And I just wanted another tartan!”

Tartan! Elizabeth nodded grimly. “And you discussed this with Colin Campbell, didn’t you?”

“Well … yes. I know he wasn’t one of us, but I knew that he was an expert on Scottish tartans and things, and I didn’t think it would do any harm to ask.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, I asked him who assigned tartans to the different clans, and how you got in touch with them, and he wanted to know why I was asking.” Jerry glanced about nervously. “At first I refused to tell him, but then when I asked if an earl had the power to change his clan’s tartan, he started to browbeat me, and I guess I let some information slip about the S.R.A.”

Elizabeth, who was mystified, was about to ask what the S.R.A. was, but Geoffrey interrupted her, “The organization was news to him, of course?”

“He was furious about it. Wanted to know who was behind it.”

“And you told him …?”

“I didn’t mention you!” Jerry protested. “Honest! Well, I’d forgotten your name, actually.”

“So you told him about Lachlan,” said Geoffrey smoothly.

“I may have mentioned him.”

Geoffrey stood up with the dignity of an irate prince. “We will take no action against you,” he said grandly. “But your earldom is canceled.”

Jerry Buchanan nodded miserably. “Just don’t kill me.”

“Out of my sight!” thundered Geoffrey. He kept up the pose of outrage until the yellow and orange tartan had disappeared into the crowd on the sidelines.

“What the devil is going on?” Elizabeth demanded. “And why do
you
know anything about it?” she added as an afterthought.

“Oh, that. I told you that it was handy to know Shakespeare. Apparently, I stumbled on to the password of a terrorist organization.”

“Terrorists? You mean
they
killed Dr. Campbell?”

“No. They don’t kill anybody, dear. They just think they do.” He explained to Elizabeth about Lachlan Forsyth’s scheme for profiting from the misplaced patriotism of the more radical Scottish-Americans. “He told me all about it after I crashed the conspirators’ party. He really didn’t feel too bad about taking their money. The way he figured it, he was keeping them from doing real harm with their money, and he provided them with a little excitement. It was very theatrical, really.”

“You have the morals of a fungus!” Elizabeth informed him. “I suppose you wouldn’t have dreamed of reporting this to the sheriff?”

“I didn’t feel that it was relevant. Lachlan is a con man, not a killer.”

“Ha! Does Cameron know about this?”

“I told him a little while ago. That worm of a dentist may have forgotten my name when he was talking to Colin Campbell, but he dropped it in front of the sheriff quick enough. They hauled me in for questioning this morning as a high-ranking official in the S.R.A.”

“What about Cameron?”

“Well, that may have been my fault. In an excess of youthful spirits last night …”

“Drambuie!”

“Precisely. As I say, in an excess of good spirits, I told the conspirators that Dr. Dawson was a British secret agent.”

“Oh, my God. Geoffrey, somebody is going around
killing
people at this festival! How do you know you didn’t put Cameron in danger?”

“Your concern for the prince of pancake syrup is most touching, but there is something in your indifference toward my well-being that I don’t quite like.”

“You could be wrong, you know. Lachlan Forsyth may have killed Dr. Campbell in an attempt to cover up his illegal activities. Is he a U.S. citizen, do you think? If convicted of a crime, he could have been deported.”

“Back to Scotland—the air fares to which you were lamenting at the National Trust booth earlier? Oh, worst of fates!”

“Hush. Be serious for a minute. He may not have wanted to go back to Scotland. Maybe he’s wanted for being a con man there.”

“Really clever people do not kill their enemies. They outwit them. My faith in Lachlan is unshakable. You, on the other hand …”

“I’m going to talk to Lachlan Forsyth. Now that we
know what the fraud was.… Say, how did Colin Campbell know that the organization
was
a fraud?”

“Common sense!”

“Not entirely. Knowing what an old bully Campbell was, I’ll bet you anything he had it out with Lachlan last night.”

“Perhaps.”

“I’ll talk to him first. Then I’ll check for witnesses to that quarrel.”

“Go to, then. Have you no further need of a Watson? I thought I might go and observe the country dancing. For purposes of choreography.”

“Fine. If you see Cameron, tell him I’ll find him later.”

“Perhaps you’d like to compose a singing telegram?”

Elizabeth, at a loss for a clever rejoinder, made a face at him and hurried away.

The pageantry of the festival hardly registered with Elizabeth now. Her mind was too busy with shades of gray. Did Lachlan Forsyth kill Dr. Campbell in order to protect his con operation? Did one of the conspirators do it out of misplaced patriotism? Or, in the heat of a quarrel, did Walter Hutcheson do it after all? What’s Heather to him or he to Heather?