Читать книгу The Blue Hackle - Lillian Stewart Carl - Страница 10

Chapter Eight

Jean finally felt warm again. Nothing like a good meal cooked and then served by Nancy Finlay to reset the internal thermostat.

She folded her napkin and smoothed it down next to her dessert plate, empty except for a strawberry stem. Maybe it was a sign of desensitization, but murder or no grisly murder, child or no put-upon child, she’d consumed the delicious soup, fish, meat and veg, trifle and fruit, with good appetite and moderate sips of a less than sophisticated but good-natured Burgundy.

So had Alasdair, no doubt needing fuel after his outdoor vigil. Now he, too, lingered at the table, toying not with his napkin but his watch. Surely it was eight-thirty by now. Waiting for Gilnockie was like waiting for Godot.

Diana’s elegantly lettered cards had placed Fergie at the head of the table—if you defined “head” as the seat closest to the door—and Diana at the foot, with Jean next to Scott, Alasdair next to Heather, and Dakota between, close enough to her mother that Heather could indicate the proper fork and insist on the child eating at least one Brussels sprout.

Each patch of dining territory was generous enough to make Jean acutely aware two places were missing, one for Tina, one for Greg. But even their chairs had been whisked away, out of sight.

Alasdair had greeted the Krums with his usual grave courtesy, answered some of Scott’s questions about security issues, and held up his end of mostly Fergie’s conversation about history, language, myth, and culture. In the spirit of soldiering on, Jean had contributed anecdotes along the lines of the past being another country, one that you probably wouldn’t want to visit. But mostly she watched her thoughts playing billiards, clacking from who, to where, to when, to why. Even Fergie’s genial expression occasionally grew vacant and his face turned to the windows, blank sheets of black ice facing the coastline and the man lying cold if not neglected below the even blanker windows of the old castle.

Now Diana rose from her chair, initiating a general movement upward. “We have a library of films available in the drawing room, and satellite television as well. I’ll be serving coffee or cocoa.”

“Is the single-malt still on tap?” asked Scott.

“Yes, it is,” Diana said.

Heather said, “Scotch isn’t on tap. Beer, that’s on tap.”

“It’s just an expression,” Scott retorted, adding in an audible mutter, “Jeez.”

As Diana eased the Krums toward the hall door, the door of the butler’s pantry and back passage to the kitchen swung open. Inside stood a youngish man with a wiry frame who had to be Lionel Pritchard, Dunasheen’s manager. His small head, eyes like buttons, sleek brown hair edging a receding hairline, and sleek brown moustache edging an almost lipless mouth reminded Jean—unjustly, she informed herself—of a snake.

His beckoning finger drew Fergie from the table to the doorway, where he said in a rasp of a whisper Jean could barely overhear, “The phone’s going again and again, reporters asking questions.”

Shaking his head, Fergie replied in a hoarse whisper of his own, “Tell them we don’t know anything and refer them to the police.”

In the front of the room, Scott asked Diana, “Does the satellite feed include football? Not your soccer, American football. It’s that time of year, the college bowls, the pro play-offs…”

“Only you,” said Heather, “would come all the way to Scotland to watch football. Let it go, already.”

“This way,” Diana said, her gesture that of a traffic cop—move along, move along.

In the back of the room, Pritchard hissed, “I’m sure the police are saying what they can. But the reporters are making a meal of it, talking about ‘the stately home murder.’ I expect Dunasheen will be on Page One of The Sunburn tomorrow morning. Although there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Just as long as they spell ‘Dunasheen’ correctly, eh?”

What? Jean thought. Was he clueless or did he just have a crass sense of humor?

Fergie neither corrected Pritchard nor laughed. He wilted, covering his face with his hand. Alasdair took a step toward him, then, apparently thinking twice about offering hollow platitudes he might have to recant, sat back down in his chair.

Pritchard oozed back into the pantry and Fergie stumbled behind, leaving the door swinging.

Dakota made her way to the hall door, inspecting every photo and print she passed on the way. Jean smiled, remembering the words of one of her own cousins: “I bet you read cereal boxes, too.”

Why yes, she did.

She had to talk to the child about ghosts in general and what she’d seen tonight in particular, without going behind her parents’ backs. Although if Gilnockie decided Dakota needed to help the police with their inquiries, all bets were off.

With a last look at the portrait hanging at the head of the table, and a last glance over her shoulder at Jean—did she sense a kindred spirit, or was she just wondering why the older woman kept smiling at her—Dakota followed the others into the hallway, and that door shut, too.

Alone at last, but this was no time for billing and cooing. Just one thing…

Jean had been looking at the portrait all evening. It depicted a blond woman wearing a moss-green dress with a satin shawl collar, a locket at her exposed throat. Her features were clumsily drawn, but with such affection that her smile beamed from the painted canvas like the glowing fire in the Calanais fantasy. “Is that Fergie’s portrait of his wife—what was her name?”

Alasdair looked up at it. “Oh aye. That’s Emma MacDonald. Mind you, I only met up with her two, maybe three times, having nearly lost touch with Fergie during those years.”

“I see the resemblance to Diana,” Jean said, without employing any adjectives such as “cool” or “smooth.” “He hung the portrait at the head of the table so she could still be the lady of the house. Although I don’t suppose she was ever the lady of this house.”

“No, he inherited Dunasheen—and the title, come to that—three years ago, and she’s been gone four, I’m thinking. Breast cancer. Pity, that.”

“Oh yes, it is.” Jean sat back down and leaned her elbows on the table, a casual, even sloppy, pose she’d hesitated to assume in front of Diana. “Fergie was talking about his Green Lady, as in a household chatelaine returning after death to continue her domestic duties. But Dunasheen isn’t haunted by his wife.”

“Got it in one. Dunasheen’s haunted, Fergie’s not.” Alasdair inclined his head toward the portrait. “I’m thinking that’s why he’s so keen on seeing ghosts.”

“On believing in the supernatural. He wants to know that Emma’s not really gone.” The room fell silent, the dense wooden doors and stone walls muffling any sounds. Still, Jean lowered her voice. “I’m pretty sure I heard Seonaid MacDonald, the Green Lady, in the drawing room, right after you went after Tina. A kind of murmuring wail, just like in the stories.”

Alasdair nodded. “So she’s real, then, it’s that Fergie cannot sense her. Nothing peculiar about that, not to us, leastways.”

“But what is peculiar is that Dakota, the little girl, was insisting she saw a ghost when they drove up the driveway, which would have been about the same time.”

“Maybe she’s got the allergy, poor lass.”

“Or maybe she saw a person. There was a man in black standing in the parking area about six. Pritchard yelled at him to go away.”

“Thomson was going on about a hermit living nearby. Sounds to be the local character. Maybe it was him.”