The Blue Hackle (4 page)

Although if new Dunasheen had any ghosts,
neither Alasdair’s nor Jean’s sixth senses had picked up on them in
the few hours since their arrival. It was her five ordinary senses
that at last detected footsteps in the hall. She wouldn’t have to
run down to the manager’s cottage after all.

Jean popped out of the drawing room to see
Fergie ambling toward her, round face and round glasses gleaming
with good will. With his lavender sweater and slippers and bulky
physique, he looked ready to host a children’s television program,
welcoming them to a neighborhood where he played the part of a
purple dinosaur. “Ah, it’s yourself, is it, Jean? No worries, we’re
making the tea, though you’re good for a dram as well, I should
think.”

“Tina MacLeod’s down by the castle, she was
screaming, Greg must have fallen, Alasdair’s already called 999 and
he’s gone back down there.”

Fergie gaped at her, pale blue eyes bulging,
mouth working. “The old castle? But he went round the back—”

“One of the Aussies may be hurt!”

His lips snapping shut on a four-letter word,
Fergie gesticulated frustration to heaven and the gods of the
historic homes business—rising damp, mounting bills, and now this.
And then with a grimace of contrition, for, after all, the welfare
of the guests came first, he said, “I’ll organize the menfolk, if
her, him needs carrying—though if there’s a broken limb involved,
we shouldn’t—blankets, tea—if you could ask Diana to find the
first-aid kit . . .” Mumbling beneath his breath, pirouetting so
swiftly his long gray ponytail swung in an arc behind him, Fergie
loped back the way he’d come.

“Where’s Diana?” Jean called after him, but
he didn’t hear.

If she remembered their arrival tour, and
there was no guarantee she did, then he was heading for the new and
pricey commercial kitchen and his command center at the garden end
of the house.

Jean started after him, only to stop dead in
the center of the antechamber, foyer, lobby—she couldn’t remember
what Fergie called the room that was the formal entrance hall.
She’d sounded the alarm. Now she needed to get back down to the
castle.

In the distance, a door opened. A gust of
canned laughter blew down the hall and was then choked off as the
door shut again. Aha, the Finlays were in the kitchen watching a TV
show or listening to the radio or doing something that, along with
the thick stone walls, had muffled Alasdair’s shouts. That’s why
Fergie himself had finally answered the bell. As for Diana, who
knew?

I’m coming, Alasdair!
She made a
U-turn. Flashlight. Boots.

The massive wooden front door at the far side
of the room vibrated beneath a rain of blows. A muffled voice
shouted, “Hey! Anyone home? Answer the door, already!”

All right! The cavalry had arrived!

Looking right and left—Fergie had disappeared
and no one else was in sight, not even a dog—Jean skidded across
these considerably cleaner tiles, raised the latch, and opened the
door.

Three people, tall, not-so-tall, and
shorter-than-Jean, stood in the tiny porch. As one, they pushed
past her into the house and stood huddled together while she shut
the door.

“I pushed the freaking doorbell five times,”
said the man with the razor-cut black hair, closely trimmed goatee,
and mountaineer’s parka.

“I told you, Scott,” said the brunette in the
stylish narrow glasses and belted trench coat, “these places are
big, it takes a while for the servants to answer the door.”

The girl wore a red-and-gold-striped knitted
muffler looped around her neck and shoulders. Above it, dark eyes
in a pale, pinched face grew larger and larger, taking in the guns
and swords arranged on the walls, the vaulted ceiling with its
colorful clan shield bosses, the massive turnpike stair spiraling
upward into shadow.

“The luggage is in the car,” Scott told Jean.
“Is there valet parking here?”

The woman looked down from her superior
height. “You need to get someone to help you. We don’t travel
light.”

Regaining traction, Jean’s brain recognized
the accent of her own country people. More or less—she guessed
northeast corridor. The appended “already” from the other side of
the door should have tipped her off. “Um, yeah, I’ll call Fergus
MacDonald, the owner.”

Realization swept the man’s face. “She’s not
a servant, Heather.”

Heather’s face knotted in suspicion. “Who is
she, then?”

Jean bit back a tart,
Someone who can hear
you just fine
, and said only, “I’m Jean Fairbairn, I’m a guest
here, but we’ve got kind of a situation so I answered the door. The
doorbell doesn’t work, by the way. We found that out this aft—”

“A situation?” Scott demanded.

Heather placed her hand protectively on the
child’s wool-encased shoulder.

“Someone’s had a fall down at the old castle.
I need to—”

“I’m sorry to hear that. How about we just
let ourselves in, okay?” Scott threw the door open and headed back
outside. His hiking boots, so new they squeaked, were already
muddy—black smudges traced his path in and out.

I’ve already let you in.
But that
didn’t matter. Taking two steps backwards, sweat trickling down her
back beneath her shirt, Jean said, “Great. Fergus or his daughter
Diana will be along any min—”

“We booked a suite,” said Heather. “A
king-size for us, a single for Dakota here.”

The child spoke up. “Please tell me the
bathroom’s not down the hall. One of my girlfriends stayed in a B
and B and said the bathroom was down the hall and you had to share
with strangers.”

“It’s all en suite. That is, the bathroom and
toilet’s attached to the bedroom.”

Two pairs of eyes stared at her.

“Here, a bathroom can be just that, a room
with a bath, it doesn’t automatically come with a toilet.”

Through the doorway Jean saw Scott pulling
bag after bag from the trunk of an SUV. Beyond him, headlights
jounced over the ribbon of tarmac that passed for a driveway. Was
that the constable from Kinlochroy? It seemed like twenty hours
since Alasdair called, but it was probably only twenty minutes.

Yes, the reflective stripe on the side of a
small, square all-terrain vehicle caught the lights of the house as
it drove by. Would the local arm of the law reach as far as the old
castle? The designation “all-terrain” was more hope than fact when
it came to this rough ground.

“Nice meeting you,” Jean said, “I’ve got
to—oh!”

A woman swanned down the helix of the
staircase, her feet in their chaste low-heeled pumps skimming the
stone treads, her body swaying like a willow wand in black pants
and white Aran sweater, her blonde hair flowing in satin waves away
from the red roses blooming in her cheeks. An angel descending
Jacob’s ladder would look like a chimpanzee in comparison. “Did I
hear . . . Oh, hello there! You’re the Krum family, I expect. I’m
Diana MacDonald.
Ceud mille failte!
”

“Say what?” Heather’s lipstick had worn off,
leaving only the darker red of the liner tracing her lips, so that
her grimace was that of a cartoon character.

“A thousand million welcomes,” said Dakota.
“That’s Gaelic. They speak Gaelic here.”

“Aren’t you a clever lass!” Diana’s smile
cast sunshine throughout the room. “Thank you, Jean, for playing
hostess. I apologize for the broken doorbell.”

“No problem,” Jean said, backpedaling even
more rapidly. She hated to miss Diana in action, but she hated even
more to leave Alasdair alone in the dark with a—situation.

“Is that Mr. Krum?” Diana asked.

Scott tramped in, juggling a matched set of
leather-trimmed bags and suitcases. “Oh, hi.”

“Leave the luggage,” said Diana, “We’ll
organize it. Your accommodations are in the William Wallace suite,
a double bedroom and a foldaway bed in the sitting room. Drinks are
at half-past-six in the library, and dinner at half-past-seven.
This way, please.”

“I could use a drink after those roads. Jeez,
our driveway’s wider than the one marked as two-lane.” Scott dumped
the luggage and Heather guided Dakota to the stairs.

“Would you care for tea and biscuits just
now?” Diana asked, already several steps up.

“Biscuits?” repeated Heather.

“She means cookies,” Dakota said.

“Tea,” said Scott. “Yeah, whatever.”

Free at last, Jean skated back down the hall.
Would Miss Dakota point out that William Wallace had probably never
set foot on Skye? No matter, his name was marketable, and if Diana
understood anything, it was her market. How odd, then, that she’d
missed the Krums’ arrival, especially when she’d been expecting
them.

Diana’s delicate Scottish complexion was
always rose-pink, but now it was positively crimson. She must have
been embarrassed at missing her cue or in a rush or both. Maybe
she’d been in her office, tied hand and foot with tape the color of
her cheeks, the kind spooled out in vast quantities by both
heritage watchdogs with their lists of permissible changes and
heritage advocates with their lists of grants-in-aid—well no, Diana
ran the house, Fergie wrestled with red tape.

The sound of multiple footsteps on stone
treads and Diana’s soothing voice faded into the upper reaches of
the house. “The weather’s been dreadful but we’re expecting it to
clear tomorrow, just in time for our New Year’s Eve
celebration.”

What the lady of the house hadn’t been
expecting was an accident at the old castle. But Fergie could tell
her about that. Jean slid to a stop in the cloak room, where she
managed to pull on her wellies and button her coat, wrap her wool
scarf around her head, and thrust her hands into her gloves,
somehow all at the same time.

A flashlight clutched to her chest, she shut
the door and raced across the courtyard.
Alasdair, I’m
coming!
The lights reflecting from the damp-sheened
cobblestones created an optical illusion and she stumbled, then
righted herself. The crash of the ironwork gate behind her
reverberated into the distance. The very silent distance.

Jean’s light-adapted eyes found the night
doubly dark. At the far side of the gravel perimeter, the interior
light of a small square car looked like a klieg light illuminating
a human shape in a peaked police cap. She homed in on the—well, not
the cavalry. Its scout.

“Hi. I’m Jean Fairbairn. I’ll show you down
to the old castle.”

“P.C. Thomson here,” the constable replied,
not at all startled by her appearance. But then, the slam of the
gate would have waked the inhabitants of the graves at the old
church. Settling his fluorescent yellow jacket over his chest, he
turned toward her. As far as she could tell in the gloom, he was
about fifteen, and a foot taller than she was. If police work
didn’t pan out, he could get a job selling toothpaste—his smile
shone with a light of its own. “No worries,” he went on, “I’m a
local lad, I’ve visited the old castle many a time. What’s
happened?”

“A guest, Greg MacLeod, walked down to the
old castle at sunset. He wanted to go to the ruined church. We—my
fiancé, Alasdair Cameron, and me—we told him how to get there by
going along the beach. Then we met his wife. She was looking for
him. She went down to the castle and we heard her scream. Alasdair
went right back down there. That was twenty, maybe even thirty
minutes ago.” Jean danced backwards across the gravel, toward the
path.

Thomson seized a bag from his car, slammed
the door, fired up his flashlight, and headed out. “The ruins are
dangerous, right enough. Kinlochroy Council and Lord Dunasheen have
been going at it for years now, who’s responsible for shoring up
the place, planting danger signs, and the like. The old laird, he
let the place go rather than spend on its upkeep, squeezing his
pounds so tight you could hear the Queen’s picture squealing.”

Good lad. He could walk, talk, and even make
jokes simultaneously. Whether she could was another matter—she had
to adopt a part jog, part forward stumble to keep up with him.
“Entropy tends to outrun good intentions. And clumsy tourists,
though I don’t know that either Greg or Tina was clumsy. Alasdair’s
with them now.”

A clang behind them was the gate. The
walrus-like shape trotting toward them was Fergie’s, laden with a
folded blanket and a carrier bag. “Jean! Wait up! Is that Sanjay
with you?”

“Sanjay?” Jean repeated, sure she’d misheard
some Gaelic expression.

“My granny’s folk are from India,” the
constable explained.

“Cool,” said Jean, remembering Hugh’s song
about the Scots as rovers, as swords for hire and missionaries, as
transported criminals like Greg’s ancestor Tormod.

Thomson turned to Fergie. “Sorry to be called
out on business, Fergus.”

With the Highlander’s fine disregard for
titles, “Fergus” instead of “Fergie” counted as respectful address.
Jean said, “I never did get the first-aid kit from Diana. I
couldn’t find, er, an American family arrived and she’s dealing
with them.”

Fergie nodded. If he knew Diana had been
AWOL, however temporarily, he didn’t show it. “Rab Finlay’s on his
way as well, but Lionel, the manager, it’s his day out.”

“I’ve got my kit.” Even Thomson had to
shorten his steps on the twisting and bumpy path. At his heels,
Jean followed not only his flashlight but his reflecting coat, and
Fergie trudged along behind her, his breath rasping louder and
louder.

Mist was gathering, shimmering strands
drifting across the circles of light from their flashlights like
homeless phantoms. Beyond the rocks, pools, and scrubby bits of
heather, Jean made out nothing more than a muted shimmer on the
underside of the clouds, the reflected glows of Dunasheen and
Kinlochroy. A similar shimmer played across the water of first the
loch and then, as they approached the castle, the sea. She felt as
though she was trailing along with her little lantern, looking for
an honest man . . . well, she was. She was looking for
Alasdair.