The Burning Glass (19 page)

Considering her mood, Jean expected the food
to taste like ashes. Or at least like it sounded, an unholy
combination of ethnic foibles. But no. It was good. It was
delicious, even. Minty had chosen well—the salad and vegetables
cleared her palate between bites of richness.

Propping himself on his forearm, Keith put
his head down and ate, apparently having lived in Scotland long
enough to overcome squeamishness about the national dish. Unless
his body shape indicated that he simply never got a decent
meal.

Minty nibbled. Rebecca tasted and nodded.
Ciara made appreciative foodie rumbles, interspersed with
soliloquies about hiring therapists for massages, hypnotherapy,
color readings, and the like—why, she was already getting
applications—understandable, as Ferniebank had long been associated
with natural healing energy.

Jean hoped so. After centuries of feuds,
raids, blackmail, kidnappings, arson, protection rackets, and
outright terrorism, healing was necessary. Healing all around.

From the kitchen came Zoe’s voice. “. . .
putting it about that she and Shan had ‘a bit of a
miscommunication.’ The neck! Ciara phoned to say Shan could have
the morning out, didn’t she? I knew that woman was bad news when
Grandad’s Nero died the day she moved here. Poisoned, he said.”

“That dog was near as old as you,” Polly
returned, “and like to die any moment. You know your grandad,
nothing ever just happens, there’s always folk plotting against
him. Going on about Wallace killing Mum. The idea.”

“It’s Ferniebank, isn’t it? Val’s saying that
Isabel left a curse, and I believe her.” Zoe’s voice rose. A
frantic hiss was either a teakettle or Polly warning her daughter
that the walls had ears.

Interesting
, Jean thought, with
another look at Ciara that this time was more of a glare. Did she
tell Shannon to take the morning off because she knew she’d have
Angus with her? But then, they were hardly jovial companions. And
the mention of poison . . . Filing those nuggets, too, in her
“something’s rotten in the state of Ferniebank” in-basket, Jean
pitched Val Trotter’s curse in on top.

Ciara’s voice rose and lightened as she
careered among her enthusiasms, not muzak to Jean’s ear, but
experimental music, clunking one minute, soaring the next. She
spoke about the archaeology of standing buildings and conservation
versus restoration. She considered aspects of cultural resource
management. She expressed concern about environmental impact
studies at Ferniebank—the hospice drains, for one thing, might
still be teeming with every bacterium known to man, including
little numbers like the Black Death.

“You’re very quiet, Jean,” said Minty.

“A journalist has to listen,” Jean returned
with a bland smile.

“Tell us about your work,” Rebecca asked
Keith.

He mumbled about how the wiring in the castle
had probably been done by Edison himself, and how the plumbing
wasn’t much better than the original latrines, then warming to his
subject, said, “You know what’s cool? There’s a garderobe in one of
those mural chambers off the Laigh Hall, and it’s still got a slate
lid. Man, can you imagine plopping yourself down there on a cold
night, a stone seat and a draft whistling up your butt from
beneath. Constipation would have been a real problem, but then, the
hospital was right there, and medicine back then meant bleeding you
or giving you a purgative. That garden wasn’t just to look pretty,
they had herbal remedies and tonics and stuff to put hair on the
seigneur’s chest so he could help himself to the peasant
brides.”

Minty’s brows went ever so slightly lopsided,
and with an audible gulp, Keith slumped back down. “Zoe,”
instructed the lady of the house. “Dessert.”

Zoe cleared away the dishes, then doled out
not haggis with chocolate sauce, thank goodness, but a simple
mousse garnished with berries, everyone’s reward for good behavior
during the culinary infomercial. Jean passed on coffee. The meal
had filled some of the void in her stomach, reassuring her that she
was not going to lose structural integrity. No need to upset the
delicate equilibrium with caffeine.

Piling her napkin on the table, Ciara said,
“Thank you, Minty. That was delicious. I’m sure our clients will
relish every bite. Now I’m obliged to get on to Hawick and some
po-faced detective inspector named Delaney. It being my fate. That
sort of man keeps recurring in my life.” She looked at Jean.

Jean deployed her bland smile once again, her
teeth clamped together, even as she thought
Delaney
. That
was the detective who had dismissed Alasdair’s concerns about
Wallace’s death. Good. If he was coming down from Edinburgh, the
theft of the inscription had raised Ferniebank above his event
horizon.

Chairs scraped. Voices muttered. Jean managed
to stand up. Minty, her arms spread in a “we are the world” sweep,
said, “Jean, Ciara, how good that the two of you can be so
civilized.”

Jean shared a quick glance with Ciara. They
had, she estimated, a second thing in common—irritation with
Minty’s noblesse oblige. But Ciara needed Minty more than Jean did,
which made her sneaking around with Minty’s husband even more
puzzling.

Jean needed fresh air. She needed to move
around. She needed Alasdair, on so many different levels. Right now
she wasn’t going to ask herself what he needed, over and beyond to
salvage his self-respect—and perhaps his reputation—by solving at
least one of the accumulating Ferniebank mysteries.

The group straggled toward the door,
murmuring compliments and thanks. Zoe appeared bearing Ciara’s pink
pelt. Keith said to Jean, “We’ll do the interview tomorrow
afternoon, okay?”

“Oh aye,” Ciara added. “Two p.m. at the
Granite Cross—most everyone’s there of a Sunday afternoon. Will
your husband be playing again, Rebecca?”

“That can be arranged,” Rebecca returned.

“Super,” said Ciara.

“I’ll write up what I’ve learned today and we
can take it from there.” Jean retrieved her bag and the folder and
made a break for the door. “Thank you, Minty, wonderful
food—Rebecca, I’ll drive you back to town—Ciara, Keith.” She was on
the path, across the lawn, and in the car before she stopped to
breathe.

Rebecca climbed in beside her. “So then, what
did you learn today?”

“Ciara’s not a total airhead. She’s got a
good grasp of what it’s going to take to restore Ferniebank. As for
playing ‘what if,’ well, I do that, too, although as Alasdair was
saying, there’s a difference between stories and lies. Who was it
who said you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own
facts?” Jean exited the school driveway and turned toward town just
as Keith’s car exited the house driveway and turned the other way.
Jean veered, he veered, and each car steadied as it went.

Jean watched the other car dwindle in the
rearview mirror, then concentrated on the road. Within moments she
was pulling up in front of the Reiver’s Rest, a white-painted
modern house that looked more efficiently comfortable than
stylish.

“Speaking of Alasdair,” said Rebecca, so
casually Jean knew the jig was up, “would you like to do just that?
Come in for tea and sympathy. You know, girl-talk. We’ll send
Michael to his room, although his opinion would be worthwhile.”

“What happened when his old girlfriend turned
up at Rudesburn?” Jean countered.

“Ah. Well. She was murdered.”

Jean winced. “Ow. I knew y’all had been
involved in a couple of murder cases—it’s like the plague, it’s
going around—but . . . I’m sorry I asked.”

“It all brought us closer together.
Eventually.”

Eventually
. “Do you think being
involved in murder cases has made you, well, a lot quicker to
suspect crimes?”

“You mean are we wondering about losing both
Helen and Wallace in the same way, in the same place, at almost the
same time? Yeah, we’ve speculated about that, but coincidences
happen, and there’s no evidence anything’s wrong. Or is there?”

Jean reminded herself that Alasdair the
gambler, the scientist, liked to keep his cards face down and his
formulas private. “I need to get back to Ferniebank and tell
Alasdair about Angus and Ciara. Plus I overheard Zoe say that Ciara
told Shannon to take the morning off, and that Derek’s mother has
been telling people Isabel left a curse on the place.”

“The thot plickens, then.” Rebecca clambered
out of the car. “Keep us posted on the inscription and everything.
The ‘everything’ being at your discretion, of course.”

“Thanks,” Jean returned, with the first
genuine smile that had broken her face since sometime that morning.
And it was now, she noted as she drove away, almost three p.m.,
four and a half hours until closing time. Until she had any hope—or
fear—of getting Alasdair’s undivided attention.

The road to Ferniebank unfurled ahead. “ ‘O
see ye not yon narrow road,’ ” she declaimed to the windshield, “
‘so thick beset with thorns and briers? That is the path of
righteousness, though after it but few enquires.’ Should be
enquire, singular, but that doesn’t rhyme.”

The distant hillsides were brushed with a
faint tint of pinkish-purple heather. Autumn was just over the
horizon. Even now, the occasional ray of sun was still warm, but a
coolness in the breeze and an opacity to the lengthening shadows
hinted of chill, dark days to come, hopefully not soon.

There was the farm, with Roddy now leaning on
the fence contemplating a herdlet of fat cows on the hill above.
The two black and white lumps at his feet were the dogs Hector and
Jackie, minus the patriarch Nero. Maybe the deaths of the elderly
had come in threes. All of them since Ciara made her deal and moved
to Glebe House, although a more unlikely angel of death Jean
couldn’t imagine.

There was the gateway in the ancient wall,
and the glowering castle parapets. Jean guided the car into the
courtyard much more sedately than she had guided it out, and was
surprised to find the parking area almost full, with people
standing around holding leaflets and candy bars. She squeezed her
car in next to Alasdair’s.

She’d barely slammed the door when he stepped
out of the shop. They looked at each other, separated by five or
six yards of gravel and several fathoms of outer space. His
expression was pared to the minimum, stern but no longer icy. Jean
hoped her own expression was a better containment field than it had
been earlier. “Business is good today,” she ventured.

“We’re picking up Rosslyn’s overflow,”
Alasdair replied, “just as Ciara intends.”

From inside the shop came a strain of harp
music. The hair twitched on Jean’s neck. Then she realized she was
hearing a CD, setting the scene for the visitors, and her nape
slumped back down.

“I’ve covered up the spyhole,” he went on.
“I’ve reported the, ah, loss of the inscription.”

“I saw Logan heading this way.” Jean didn’t
think either of them had blinked so far. That much she would
concede—she closed her burning eyes and opened them. “The tall
tweedy guy who was with Ciara this morning. It was Angus. There are
photos of him at Glebe House.”

“Eh?” Alasdair’s forehead pleated into its
police-inspector frown. “He came peching back up the path and hid
himself in the van just as Logan arrived. What game is Ciara after
playing now?”

“Right now she and Keith are off to Hawick to
talk to D.I. Delaney about the inscription. He’s come down from
Edinburgh. Maybe he’ll listen to you this time.”

“Chance would be a fine thing,” Alasdair said
sarcastically. “Logan, now, he’s gone haring off after Derek,
looking to interview him about the inscription.”

“I doubt if Derek would have chiseled it out
so carefully and picked up all the pieces.”

“He might have done if he had a buyer
waiting.”

“I can’t see a sixteen-year-old kid working
the international antiquities trade. And a grave inscription isn’t
going to get buyers as excited as, say, the Mona Lisa.”

The harp music stopped, to be followed by a
soulful tenor singing about buttoning up, and being cheery, and
taking a dram before going. Alasdair was just plugging in the CDs
that were already there, wasn’t he? She’d have to give him the ones
she had in the car, Hugh Munro, Runrig, Wolfstone, Gallowglass,
Seven Nations. Sentiment wore thin pretty fast. Didn’t Ciara say
something to that effect, about Gerald Rutherford’s tales of
Ferniebank?

A bubble of garlic burst in her throat. Music
and food could be ends in themselves, but they were also
sublimation for embraces. Not necessarily sexual embraces. Just the
pressing of flesh to flesh, to close out the chill . . . She was
still looking at Alasdair. He was still looking at her. Apology
seemed to be a possibility, which was more than she would have
thought three hours ago, but who was going to bend his or her stiff
neck by going first?

A family came out of the castle, parents
herding children toward the shop and its booklets and souvenirs,
not to mention its snacks. “We’ll have us a blether,” Alasdair
said, just as Jean said the same thing, “We’ll talk,” and turned
toward the flat.

The avian day shift, several crows, began
squabbling among the appropriately named crow-stepped gables. The
haggis and its sauces and pastries shifted in Jean’s stomach like
an insomniac irritably punching his pillow. If she had to eat crow
later on, fine, she could choke it down, but Alasdair was darn well
going to have to share the meal.

Inside the flat, she discovered Dougie dozing
on the windowsill, paws and tail tucked so tightly beneath his body
he resembled a tea cozy. She changed into jeans and a sweatshirt,
smoothed the covers on the bed—not that they were at all untidy—and
returned to the living room humming about taking drams and long
remembering this night.