08 - The Highland Fling Murders (4 page)

I wondered if he saw my trembling legs and heaving chest.

“No, Jess, stay away,” Jed Richardson said.

“Let them go,” I said. “I’ll see to it that you have a chance to vent your anger and concerns. Don’t be foolish. If you don’t let them go, you’ll—”

I froze as he stepped back, and Jed and Alicia stood. A moment later, a door opened and my friends stepped through it. They started toward me, but I told them to get behind the shield.

I didn’t know what to do next. The demented man looked as though he expected me to come through the door and join him in his cramped hideout. I wasn’t about to do that, of course. But I was afraid that once I started back to safety, he might .shoot.

There was no choice.

I slowly, deliberately turned and took a step in the direction of George, Mort, and the protective shield. I listened for the ominous metallic sound of a hammer being cocked—or .worse--of a gun going off.

I took another step. And another. I wanted desperately to run to safety, but kept my fears in check To bolt might prompt him to involuntarily fire.

I saw the grave expressions on Mort, George, Jed, and Alicia’s faces, eyes wide, lips compressed into thin, anxious lines.

When I reached the shield, George grabbed my arm and yanked me behind it. As he did, the sound of a weapon firing cut through the foggy morning, its bullet striking the shield and ricocheting to the ground.

I lost it at that point. My legs, now jelly, failed to support me, and I sank to my knees, wrapping my arms around myself and leaning forward, trembling, muttering words that meant nothing. A cacophony of sounds erupted around me as police units rushed the abductor and subdued him. He didn’t fire another shot.

The press now converged as George led Mort, the Richardsons, and me to the street. A wedge of uniformed London officers kept the reporters and cameras at bay until we reached the rest of my Cabot Cove traveling companions. They all verbally assaulted me at once.

George came to my rescue: “Jess has been through a traumatic experience. I suggest we get her back to the hotel and let her rest.”

Jed and Alicia went to police headquarters to give a statement. Mort and the others took cabs back to the Athenaeum. George drove me in his unmarked car.

“I just remembered I have interviews to get to,” I said as he turned on to Piccadilly.

“Cancel them, Jess. You don’t realize what you’ve been through. It will hit you later, like a truck.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll be all right.” I checked my watch. “I have just enough time to shower and change before my first interview.”

“Won’t change your mind?”

“No. Thank you, George.”

He laughed. “For what?
You
saved the day for your friends.”

“For being here. For being—you.”

He stopped in front of the hotel. “Not a very nice way to begin your visit, Jess.”

“Oh, just a little excitement. I have to get inside, George. You say you’re going up to Wick a day or two ahead of us. Will I see you again in London before that?”

“Absolutely. Jess, I have to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you do what you did this morning? Approach that madman.”

I opened the door, stepped out of the car, and closed the door behind me. I leaned in through the open window and said, “George, I have absolutely no idea why I did it. If I’d thought about it, I never would have. And now that I
am
thinking about it, I’m scared to death. I’ll be in touch.”

I blew him a kiss and ran into the lobby.

George had been right. The impact of my morning at the Tower of London hit me at eleven o’clock, right in the middle of an interview with the BBC. I managed to hide the pain and fatigue I felt, but once I walked from the studio and out onto the street, accompanied by Archie Semple’s director of publicity, I felt so faint I had to lean against a building

“Feeling sick, Mrs. Fletcher?” the publicist asked.

“Yes. It’s been a—an interesting morning.” I stood straight, took a few deep breaths, and smiled. “What’s next?”

The rest of the London portion of the trip went smoothly, complicated only by press interest in my experience in helping free Jed and Alicia Richardson. Some government officials wanted to fete me at a banquet, but I managed to slip out of those commitments, falling back on the fact that I’d be returning to London after our sojourn in Scotland. “Perhaps then,” I said.

The most nettlesome aspect of the media interest was created by London’s fabled tabloids. They’d decided that because Scotland Yard Chief Inspector George Sutherland and I would be spending time together at his family home in Wick, there must be something risqué to report. That I would be there with eleven chaperones from Cabot Cove didn’t seem to matter. I tried to be gracious in deflecting their inquiries, but my annoyance came through too often.

Archie Semple was delighted with the media attention.

“The book is selling out in every bookstore, Jessica,” he told me. “We’ve gone back to press for another thirty thousand. Best-seller list this coming Sunday in the
Times, Guardian,
and
Independent.
The
London Review
of Books is calling it your crossover book, Jessica, mainstream literature. The
London Observer
loves it. Absolutely l-o-v-e-s it! Tabloids are playing up your heroism big, full-page photos in the
Star
and Sun. Couldn’t go better if we’d planned- it.”

I was pleased for Archie and his publishing house, of course. But as the week wore on, all I could think of was getting out of London and going to Scotland, where, I assumed, the pressure would be off and relaxation would be the order of the day. I pictured windswept cliffs and sparkling water, charming pubs and streams teeming with fat salmon. Ken Sassi had brought with him enough fly-fishing equipment for the two of us, and we promised each other a day on a stream, our artificial flies bobbing in dear, dean water, birds singing in the trees, and if we were lucky, the excitement of a sharp tug on the line and the sight of a salmon arching from the water, diving under again and playing out the line until I skillfully brought him to me where I would offer my verbal apologies, gently slip the barbless hook from his mouth, move him beneath the water a few times to force air through his gills, and send him off, hopefully having helped him gain a little more wisdom about telling the difference between real bugs and the hand-tied variety.

I love fly-fishing, and do it as often as time allows back home. It’s the most liberating personal experience I know. The world disappears, all tension dissipates; there is only you and the water and the fish. I couldn’t wait to sample the streams of Scotland, the most renowned in the world. And with Ken Sassi acting as my guide, as he’d done many times in Maine, I just knew I’d catch some fisk which didn’t always happen back home. But then again, catching fish is not the most important thing for a fly fisherman, or woman. It’s the process of fishing that counts. That’s the goal, not the catching of anything except fresh breezes on your face and the feel of cold water through your waders.

 

 

The rest of the Cabot Cove party had a wonderful time in London that week, playing tourist, seeing the city’s fabled sights, and soaking in its civilized splendor.

Sally Bulloch hosted a departure lunch for us in the restaurant named for her. A sleek bus waited outside to take us to Heathrow Airport for a flight to Inverness, near the home of the mythical Loch Ness Monster, where we would board a touring bus reserved exclusively for us for the rest of the trip north, to Wick, Scotland, “land of the barbarians” according to Archie Semple.

 

 

I’d mentioned Archie’s comment to George Sutherland the day before he left for Wick to make sure things were ready for us. He replied, with a laugh, “Familiar with Finley Peter Dunne’s
Mr. Dooley Remembers, Jess?”

“Vaguely.”

“ ‘The well-bred Englishman is about as agreeable a fellow as you can find anywhere—especially, as I have noted, if he is an Irishman or a Scotchman.’ ”

I laughed, too, but said, “I thought the proper term was ‘Scotsman.’ ”

“Dunne had his weaknesses. It is Scotsman.”

“I just thought of a line from George Bernard Shaw,” I said.

“Which is?”

“ ‘Englishman—a creature who thinks he is being virtuous when he is only being uncomfortable.’ ”

“I’d forgotten that one. Well, this barbarian must be off. See you in Wick in a few days. Safe trip. And no more heroics, dear lady.”

“You needn’t worry about that, George.” We pressed our cheeks to one another, and hugged, and I watched him get into a Scotland Yard car that would take him to the airport. I gave a final wave and headed for yet another interview.

 

 

“See you in a week or so,” Sally Bulloch said as we got into the bus in front of the Athenaeum. She’d become like a friend of many years to everyone.

“Save our rooms,” Jed Richardson said.

“Thanks for your hospitality, Sally,” said Jim Shevlin.

“Bloody fine city you have here,” Mort Metzger shouted, slapping his wide-brimmed Stetson on his thigh.

We were off on our Highland fling.

 

 

Spirits remained high on the way to the airport, and during the wait for our flight to be announced. The only exception was Alicia Richardson.

Since her terrifying ordeal at the Tower of London, she’d become quiet and restrained, unable or unwilling to participate in the group’s merrymaking and laughter. I asked her about it as we sipped tea in the airport lounge.

“I don’t know, Jess,” she said. “Sure, it was scary and upsetting. But it’s been a week since then, and I still—”

“You still what, Alicia?”

“I still feel his eyes on me. Did you see his eyes, Jess?”

“I don’t remember them.”

“They were like burning coals. They were orange.”

“Orange?”

“Yes. Maybe not literally, but they had that tint. Mad eyes. Crazy eyes. Do you know what he told Jed and me?”

“That he would kill you if he didn’t have his forum.”

“After that. He said he would put a curse on us so that we would rot in Hell. A curse!”

My laugh was small and forced. “There’s no such thing as a curse, Alicia.” I lightly touched her arm. “At least none that work.”

She shuddered and slumped in the chair.

“Alicia. Forget about any threat of a curse from a seriously demented man. The trip is such fun, and we’ll all have a marvelous time in Wick. Don’t let this madman’s idle, stupid threat of a curse ruin your vacation.”

“I’ll try not to, Jess. It’s just that I keep seeing eyes like his everywhere I look. The bus driver. His eyes are orange, too.”

“Alicia, I really think that—”

The boarding announcement for our flight to Inverness came through the loudspeaker. I smiled and squeezed her arm. “Come on,” I said. “We’re flying away from madmen with orange eyes. No one in Scotland has orange eyes. Trust me.”

The flight was uneventful, landing in Inverness right on schedule. I would have enjoyed spending some time in the city, but our bus was waiting, a handsome vehicle staffed by an attendant who served coffee, cocktails, and soft drinks along with a variety of sandwiches. The driver was a portly gentleman with a ready smile and a brogue that sounded like a foreign language.

We headed north, crossing a bridge that spanned the waters of Beauly Firth, continued across Black Isle until reaching another bridge above Cromarty Firth, took various roads until getting on to the A9 Highway that ran along the eastern coast of Scotland, passing through towns called Golspie and Brora, Helmsdale and Blackness, until eventually coming to the outer limits of Wick.

“Here we are,” I said, my heart beating a little faster at the contemplation of having reached our destination. Of course, there was additional glee for me. After years of invitations from George Sutherland to visit the castle in which he’d been brought up, I would finally be there.

Dusk had started to fall as we proceeded in the direction of Sutherland Castle, hugging the most spectacular coastline I’d ever seen—and Maine’s coast is among the most beautiful in the world.

But this was different. The cliffs soared high above the swirling sea, rugged, sheer drops of hundreds of feet. A stiff wind whipped the trees into a frenzied dance, and flocks of birds erupted into the air from their nesting grounds in the rocks—great northern divers, redshanks, snipes, and skylarks.

Our driver went slowly along the very edge of the bluffs, creating a sensation that we might topple over at any moment. Then, as a fast-moving black cloud passed what was left of the orange sun, allowing its copper rays to burst forth, Sutherland Castle was in my view, standing starkly alone on the highest cliff, the angry sky its imposing scrim. An involuntary gasp came from everyone on the bus. It was a sight none of us would forget for the rest of our lives.

Dominating the stone structure was a tower house rising three or four stories, with a pair of corbeled two-story angle turrets. Additions to the tower house jutted out in all directions, some two stories high, some only one story. Windows appeared to have been included haphazardly, although the narrow slits in the tower house had symmetry to them.

As the bus came closer to the castle, some of the exterior perimeter grounds came into view—chestnut trees, rowans and hollies, lilacs and rhododendrons.

We entered between two huge stone lions and beneath a masonry arch, and were inside the compound : a broad, grassy area with a gravel drive. I peered through the window and saw George standing on stone steps that led up to a pair of massive wooden front doors, each six feet wide. I blinked and looked again. He was wearing a kilt, and waist-length black formal jacket over a white shirt.