The Blue Hackle (29 page)

“Please,” said Alasdair, and with his
courtliest manners seated both women before sitting himself.

He’d chosen a cheese scone and a piece of
millionaire’s shortbread. As though butter and sugar-rich
shortbread alone wasn’t enough, some fertile Scottish mind—or
tongue—had come up with the idea of embellishing hearty slabs of it
with layers of caramel and chocolate. “Feeling your sweet tooth?”
Jean murmured, and poured tea steaming into a pair of cups.

He doctored his with milk. “You’re the one
saying the climate justifies sugar and fat.”

“The climate’s good for Mum’s curries as
well,” said Brenda. “But you’re here asking about the puir murdered
man, eh? He e-mailed me about the story of Tormod MacLeod and
Seonaid MacDonald, Thomson that was.”

“Your family’s related to Seonaid?” Jean
asked.

“Ah, everyone’s related to everyone
here.”

And worldwide, just not quite so intimately.
Around a toothsome morsel of scone Jean went on, “You told him the
story, then, of Tormod being transported?”

“Tormod emigrated, no doubt of that, but
likely he left of his own will after the scandal, the murder and
all. Seems to be the story’s changed round a bit in the
telling.”

“Most do, being stories.” Alasdair bit into a
piece of shortbread without needing to add,
And Greg knew it
before ever coming here
.

His mouth being immobilized with caramel,
Jean asked the next question. “Was Greg interested in anything
beyond Tormod’s story?”

“After that first message, he never spoke of
it again, mostly asking the history of the house and the estate,
how Fergie and Diana are getting on, that sort of thing. Making up
his mind whether to visit, I’m thinking.”

The parallel furrows along the tops of
Alasdair’s brows indicated he was thinking, too, and not
necessarily about one of Fergie’s sketches for sale at the book
counter, of Diana as Titania, queen of Faerie. Clearing his mouth
with a swig of tea, he asked, “Did Greg and his wife stop in here
yesterday?”

“No, like as not they went straight on to the
castle.”

“And how are Fergie and Diana getting on,
then?”

“Well now.” Brenda leaned across the table,
dropping her voice. “It’s been said at the pub they’re near skint,
looking to sell more than a few valuables afore the bank and Inland
Revenue come howling like a wolf pack at the door. Look at the
laird who was after selling off the Cuillins themselves so as to
repair the castle’s roof, and the one near Inverness selling his
castle for a golf course and luxury time-shares. How the mighty
have fallen, you could be saying, but I’ll not. The lairds are
ordinary folk like us anymore. Even the royals with their divorces,
though they’re not half wealthy, still.”

“Tradition and economics make uneasy
bedfellows.” Jean thought of the application forms on Fergie’s
desk. A lot of other historic properties competed for available
funding and corporate grants.

Alasdair muttered something about either
historic Scotland or hysteric Scotland.

“Top off your cups?” Brenda hoisted the metal
pot and poured tea, black as cola but twice as fragrant.

Jean ate a bite of the shortbread and floated
away on the sugar rush.

“Have you seen any other strangers in town
the last day or so?” asked Alasdair. “Other than the
reporters.”

“The reporters have been thick as midges,
aye, but yesterday there was only the American family, the parents
like film stars, ever so smart, and the child with the big eyes
like a creature in a Disney film. Was I hearing the father right,
he called her Dakota?”

“Aye, that’s her name,” said Alasdair.

“Fancy that.” Shaking her head, Brenda went
on, “Mind you, I’m here in the shop all day. Sanjay, now . . .”

“He’s on it,” Jean reassured her. Mulling
over the art of naming children, she drained her tea and with her
forefinger blotted up the last pastry crumbs.

Brenda pushed back from the table. “You’re
wanting a keek at the heritage display, are you? We’ve got nothing
of Tormod’s, but there’s a miniature of Norman the Red as a child.”
She walked them to the long, glass-topped case.

On a blue fabric background lay a small copy
of the Wilkie portrait of Seonaid. Beside it lay a miniature of a
child about Dakota’s age, his face propped like an egg on an
intricately folded neckcloth and dark jacket. The tiny oval
revealed nothing more than a set of human features, no clues to
personality or passions. “What happened to Norman?” Jean asked.

“All the local folk reckoned he’d murdered
his wife,” replied Brenda, “but there was no one accusing him, with
him being the laird. He sent his son away to school, shut himself
up in Dunasheen Castle, and spent his remaining years alone, the
place going to rack and ruin about his ears. When he died it’s said
there was no one to follow his coffin to his grave. Not like when
puir Seonaid was buried, when folk came from miles away. A sad
story, from start to finish.”

“I’m not sure it’s finished yet,” Jean
said.

Alasdair inspected the other contents of the
case. A series of prints and photos leading from Norman to a young
Fergie, his face less round but just as mild. Other photos of boats
long sunk, buildings long crumbled, fishermen, farmers, and
shepherds long dead. Postcards home from the world wars. A massive
iron key that probably locked a dungeon. A very nice sketch of old
Dunasheen, the signature “Fer McD” looking like a wilted thistle in
one corner. The obligatory item once belonging to Flora
MacDonald—in this case, a scrap of fabric from her petticoat.

What the Kinlochroy Heritage Museum didn’t
have, Jean noted, was the obligatory lock of hair from Bonnie
Prince Charlie. If you collected all the hair in Scottish museums
purported to be his, there’d be enough to stuff a mattress, like
combining all the bits of the True Cross scattered around the world
would build a structure the size of St. Giles Cathedral in
Edinburgh.

She eyed a small, soot-stained bit of stone
from the old church above the sea, and a nicely carved baby
gargoyle from the new chapel. “Tormod’s work?”

“Who’s to say?” Brenda leaned over the glass,
using a corner of her cardigan to polish away a sticky
fingerprint.

Tormod’s work
. And who’s to say
whether Tormod had ever tried his hand at a mock Roman inscription,
for the glory of God and the chapel, for the laird’s collection of
relics and souvenirs, or for his own descendants, late in life?

With a quirk of his eyebrow, Spock-style,
Alasdair’s gaze darted toward the gargoyle and back to Jean’s.
Beneath his breath and over Brenda’s head, he said, “Convenient,
that Greg would have stone bits to sell, with a stonemason in his
ancestry. Though the dirt’s dated it.”

Brenda straightened. “Eh?”

“Some research we’re working on,” Jean told
her in complete honesty.

Speaking of souvenirs, above the case hung a
series of products—mouse pads, key chains, T-shirts—embossed with
the MacDonald and MacLeod clan crests, the seaborne galley of the
former coexisting in happy commercial proximity with the bull of
the latter. Jean grinned at the legend
Leod, Preod, MacLeod
arranged in an arc above the crest and motto:
Hold Fast
. And
those little chicken tracks were meant to be the clan plant badge,
which was . . .

Juniper.

Yes, Jean thought, she’d just heard
“juniper.” A good thing she believed in synchronicity more than
coincidence, where events were grouped not by cause but by
meaning.

Jean turned on Brenda. “Fergie says you’ve
got the photos of the bones found in the garden near Dunasheen
chapel. And the associated artifacts.”

“Oh aye, so we do.” Brenda stepped over to a
nearby filing cabinet and dug around in a drawer.

“Ah, that,” said Alasdair. “After yet another
wild goose, are you?”

“Quack,” Jean replied. “Or honk, or whatever
geese say. Although this time I’m hoping to find one already
cooked.”

“Here you are.” Brenda produced an antiquated
portfolio and a scruffy cardboard box that had once held candy, and
handed them to Jean. “This puir soul was loved by someone. Putting
a name to him would be a good deed.”

The front door opened and Sanjay Thomson made
his entrance, every bit of insignia on his uniform shining. The two
ladies and the hikers fell abruptly silent, their faces turning
toward the emblem of authority. His smile brighter than any
insignia, he called, “Auntie Brenda? Oh, hullo there, Mr. Cameron,
Miss Fairbairn,” and everyone went back to eating and drinking.

Brenda confided, “He stops by about four
o’clock, most days. A young lad’s needing his provender. I’ll leave
you with the evidence.” Returning Sanjay’s smile, she conducted him
to the food counter. The teenage server colored prettily and
switched her body language from upright professional to girlish
flirt.

Suppressing something between a chuckle and a
groan, Alasdair plucked the box from Jean’s hand. “Let’s have a
look at the remains.”

She opened the portfolio to reveal several
sepia-toned photos on thick paper, closeups of a skull and long
shots of an entire skeleton, pieced together in more or less
anatomical fashion on a canvas cloth.

“Narrow pelvis, heavy brow ridges, strong
jaw,” said Alasdair. “That’s a man.”

“A lot of wear on the teeth,” Jean said. “And
some of them are missing, though they could still be in the ground.
Look, the growth fissures in the skull are shut tight. He wasn’t
young.”

Alasdair arranged the contents of the box on
the glass top of the display case. “Four good-quality brass
buttons. A buckle. Two pennies with a young Queen Victoria, never
so dour as the old one. Someone’s cleaned these up. Not much to be
done with this, though.” He held a strip of dirty, moldy cloth
between thumb and forefinger.

“All that’s left of the man’s waistcoat?”
hazarded Jean. She poked at a dark mound of material that might
just as well be a dead mole. “Is that the bonnet Fergie mentioned?
How could they tell?”

“Likely it was spread out, then. Now it’s too
far gone. But this, and this as well . . .” Delicately he stirred
what looked like several thin toothpicks, the needles from a
defunct Christmas tree, and tiny spheres like wrinkled olive pits.
“Sprigs of juniper, oh aye. These are the berries. And I’m thinking
this here might just be a hackle.”

“If this was a military tam o’shanter, not a
civilian one, shouldn’t there be a badge?”

“An enterprising gardener might nick himself
a silver badge tarnished from a few years in the ground, knowing it
would clean up nicely. Or melt down, come to that.”

They looked at each other, two minds, one
thought. Jean put the thought into words. “Could this be Tormod
himself? The sea lanes between here and Down Under run both ways.
Most men do wear hats of some sort, in this climate, and an old
military tam o’shanter would work just fine—we saw Colin wearing
his this morning. Juniper’s the clan badge of the MacLeods. A bit
of nostalgia for the returning emigrant, tucking juniper into his
bonnet? You’d expect Australian coins, but then, if Tormod came
back he’d have picked up some local currency.”

“Australia was a British colony, and not one
that went haring off on its own, like you lot. I’m not so sure it
had its own currency ’til this century.”

“I bet he came back, years later, as an old
man, after his Australian wife died and their children grew up.
Maybe he stayed with family that was still here in Kinlochroy, and
asked them to bury him where he and Seonaid had been happy, at the
chapel. Maybe he just lay down and died there. Whatever, we saw
Seonaid walking toward his grave.”

“There’s high romance for you,” Alasdair
said. “A Hollywood-style ending, their ghosts going into the west
hand in hand.”

“There’s a reason Hollywood endings are so
popular. Although, like I told Brenda, I’m not sure this story has
ended.”

“We’ll never be proving any of it, not with
no more evidence than these things and a ghost.”

“I know. It’s just an educated, maybe
enlightened, guess.”

“Coincidence.” Alasdair looked up at the
speaker embedded in the ceiling above their heads.

Jean realized that the disembodied voice was
reciting “A Canadian Boat Song,” the lament of the emigrant
Scottish Highlander in many more countries than Canada. The words
might be wistful but they carried a sting, about mountains and seas
dividing, and yet the blood being strong and the heart Highland,
and how in dreams we can behold the Hebrides.

With her own bittersweet smile, Jean slipped
the photos back into the portfolio. Maybe death was a dream. Maybe
life was. Maybe it all flowed on together, no now, no then. That
would explain synchronicity, ESP, and ghosts in one fell swoop.

Here came Brenda back again, having done her
bit for law enforcement and family as well. Jean looked past her to
see Thomson, his hat tucked beneath his arm, raising a steaming cup
toward his lips. He tossed it down what must have been an
asbestos-lined throat—an inheritance from both sides of his
ancestry, no doubt—and inhaled a rich, raisin-studded cake called a
black bun, all the time chatting affably with the winsome lass
across the counter.

“What do you make of that lot?” Brenda
indicated the remnants atop the glass.

“Well now,” said Alasdair, and gave Brenda
their analysis of the photos and the boxed relics, if omitting the
clue of the cheerful ghost.

She listened in increasing amazement and
gratification, leaning forward at each sentence, until she had to
take a quick step to keep from falling over. “Tormod himself, is it
then?”

“Perhaps,” Alasdair cautioned. “We’ve done no
more than make a guess.”