Beneath the Abbey Wall (32 page)

In the weak November sun the river was a rich dark whisky
color, the outline of the Black Isle clear on the other side of the rivermouth.

“The new girl on the front desk told me where to find you.” Jimmy didn't bother with pleasantries.

“And here's me thinking you had your crystal ball with you.”

Jimmy laughed. “I leave that to ma mother.”

“Neil Stewart.” McAllister came straight out with it.

“Aye. Neil Stewart,” Jimmy repeated slowly, carefully, the two names separated into syllables. “Well . . . ” He lit a cigarette, rolled down his window a little. McAllister did the same. “I've been thinking on Neil Stewart, and I'm no' finished thinking yet.”

Their voices sounded oddly intimate in the small space, their outgoing breaths of cigarette smoke mingling as they talked.

“He was adopted. The timing . . . ” McAllister began.

“Is about right.” Jimmy sighed. “And my mother is no' herself.”

That means Jimmy is upset,
McAllister thought.
Dangerous.

“My ma had not much to say to him, but she knows who he is, I think.”

“If he is . . . would she say so?”

“Now that's the question. Maybe. I don't know. She's a great one for letting things be. To know he's safe, educated, that might be enough.” He threw his cigarette out the window. “Besides, who would choose to be a tinker?” He laughed.

McAllister got the point.

Who indeed would choose to be one of the sometimes despised, mostly uneducated, wandering tribe of Scotland,
he thought.
You'd have to be born to it to want it.
The Traveling people he knew were a fierce proud people, but they were outsiders. No, he had never heard of anyone choosing that life.

“Sergeant Major Archibald Smart was born on Colonel Mackenzie's estate. His father was a gamekeeper,” McAllister said.

Staring out of the windscreen, seeing nothing, Jimmy was trying to calculate how this related to anything, and failing. “So?”

“He must have known Joyce Mackenzie when they were children, even though his family left the estate when he was quite young. And your family—they were staying in an estate cottage, he must have known of you.”

“A falling-apart croft house,” Jimmy corrected him. “And a gamekeeper and his son, they'd have had nothing to do wi' tinkers, the opposite more like.”

“I wonder if he ever heard about the children?” There was no need to say which children.

“It's a very small community. Then again, who cares what happened to tinkers' bairns?” He shrugged. But he was not fooling McAllister. The bitterness in his taut body oozed from every pore. “So you're not taken in by Neil Stewart's charm? Not like Rob McLean and Joanne Ross?” Jimmy needed to forget about the stolen boys.

“Mr. Beauchamp Carlyle thinks well of him. He is helping Neil with his research.” As he said this, McAllister knew that, no matter what others thought of Neil, his opinion would always be shadowed by the memory of Joanne glancing up at Neil through that strand of hair that had a life of its own, her eyes brightening to that blue-green he so loved.

“What you need is his date of birth.” What Jimmy meant was
we
need his date of birth: he needed it as much as anyone; he needed to know.

“He must have filled in something for the
Gazette
records.”

“If he gave his real date of birth. Ask Joanne. It's the kind of thing women always want to know.” Jimmy stared at a seagull sitting on the railing contemplating his car. “Vermin,” he called out the window at it. The seagull gave him a “same to you” look
before floating off to find some pedestrian to poo on. Jimmy put the keys in the ignition. “Can I give you a lift?”

“I need to think, so I'll walk,” McAllister said. “All I want is to clear Don McLeod. Neil Stewart doesn't concern me,” he said before he got out of the car.

“Aye.” Jimmy nodded, not fooled.

He did not drive off until McAllister was halfway towards the red stone arches of the suspension bridge. And both men were thinking the same.
Neil Stewart, who the hell are you?

*  *  *  

“Ah, just the man,” Beech called out as McAllister arrived at the top of the stairs. “We need to talk about the accounts.”

“Yes, we do.” McAllister continued to his office, not bothering to check the progress of the edition with Neil or Joanne or Rob.

When they were seated, McAllister recounted the incident at the hairdresser's.

“One mystery solved, but there are about fourteen other discrepancies in the accounting to solve,” Beech said as he put a tick against a name on a list he had compiled over the weekend.

“Joanne is supposed to be supervising the administration side of things,” McAllister pointed out. “Hasn't she noticed what's going on?”

“I think you are asking too much of Mrs. Ross. She is doing a sterling job holding the paper together.”

“Sorry, you're right.” McAllister was suitably chastened.

“If you don't mind, I'll work with Mrs. Buchanan on this until we appoint a new business manager.” Beech tapped the papers.

“What about Betsy?”

“She is an excellent saleswoman, but a competent manager is essential.”

McAllister heard that a decision had been made. Whether Betsy stayed or was demoted, all McAllister could think of was the tears that would flow. “I'll leave it to you, if you don't mind.”

Beech nodded agreement.

“What do you know about Neil Stewart?”

The way McAllister asked, trying to keep his voice casual, alerted Beech. Yesterday, his sister had asked the same question. “Not a lot. I like him. He is intelligent, interesting. When we have talked, I recognized that he is not altogether the competent man-of-the-world he makes out to be. Like many colonials, he has a slight inferiority complex when it comes to Great Britain.”

“That's all?”

“He is ambitious, determined to have a glittering career.”

That surely rules out a divorced mother of two as his wife
. McAllister was ashamed the moment he thought this.

Beech was watching the editor, a man he liked and respected. “Is there a relevance to the interest in Neil Stewart?”

They both knew the reference was to Don McLeod.

“I can't see one.” McAllister rubbed at his new haircut. “Perhaps your sister . . . ?”

“We spoke of this yesterday. Rosemary does not want the tragedy of Joyce's death to be compounded by another calamity.” He did not add that it had taken a long and charged conversation to persuade his sister that it might no longer be possible to protect Joyce's past.

“A man's life is at risk,” he had said. His sister had listened to his argument, but he knew she made her own decisions. So he was waiting.

*  *  *  

Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle left the
Gazette
midafternoon. On the walk home, he was thinking about the previous afternoon. A long dreary Sunday afternoon, the sky, the river, the hibernating
plants, trees and shrubs, all seemed glazed in grey, adding to the melancholy of an anniversary they were about to commemorate—Armistice Day.

Beech was spending more and more time in town, away from the simple and solid eighteenth-century, impervious-to-all-weathers house in Cromarty, a ferry ride and an hour's drive away. He missed it. His library containing rare historical documents and pibroch music scores made it more than a house; it was his retreat, his place for thinking, his place for writing his memoirs, which he had begun thirty years previous. And the walks along the cliffs and the seabirds and stars, he missed those too.

He needed to be in town to help the
Highland Gazette
. And to assist McAllister. He accepted that. He watched his sister in her grief. Joyce Mackenzie was one of the few people she was close to. He watched her wrestle with her conscience.

“Perhaps I should talk to Mr. McLeod?” she had said.

This morning, Rosemary Beauchamp Carlyle had an appointment with Angus McLean. Was his sister about to break a solemn promise, he wondered, and if so, would it help free Don McLeod?

That night after dinner, Rosemary came to join him in the study. She began, “The police raised no objection to me visiting with Mr. McLeod.”

“In spite of his occasional curmudgeonly behavior, Mr. McLeod is well liked.” He knew this was hard for her and wanted to lighten the conversation.

“What Mr. McLeod told me, he asked I not repeat.”

“Would it help free him?”

“To share his and Joyce's private life is his decision to make. And he refused me permission to speak. I have agreed not to divulge what I know.”

“And if you were asked under oath?”

She looked away. He saw her rub one hand over the other, noticed how translucent they were, the skeleton almost visible. He felt a chill on the back of his neck and knew it was not from the numerous drafts in the century-and-a-half-old house; what he would do if his elder sister died before him he could not contemplate.

“I believe I did achieve something. I told Mr. McLeod his wife should be honored in death. A memorial service and a headstone are her due. I promised that if he were not freed, we would arrange that. But I told him he should be there. To honor her. He agreed.”

“I agree too.”

She smiled when he said this. “I hope all turns out well.” But the hesitation in her voice made Beech doubt she believed it would. “Good night, Mortimer.”

“Good night, my dear.”

Beech knew that what Rosemary had told him might just work: Don McLeod now had a mission; Don was like a terrier; he would never let go once he had his teeth into a bone.

Beech went around the house, checking windows, putting out lights, locking his study but not the doors—he had never adopted the habit, because burglaries were almost unknown in the town.

Although there was no real reason to be more cheerful about the upcoming court case, he went to bed feeling hopeful. His sister had spoken to Don McLeod and was not completely despondent after the visit, and his sister was a wise woman.

*  *  *  

It was late afternoon the next day before McAllister had a chance to talk to Joanne.

“I like the haircut,” she said when he came into the reporters' room.

“It still stinks of shampoo,” he said, rubbing his hand over his head, desperate to be rid of the Boots the Chemist cosmetic counter smell. “Why you have to have your hair washed to get a haircut is beyond me.”

Joanne smiled. “That's the best part.”

“Do you know Neil's date of birth?” He was at a loss as to how to broach the subject, so he just asked.

“Why?” She looked at him and he saw her whole body tense like a dog on guard over a litter of new pups.

“For the records.” But the way he mumbled and couldn't look back as she watched him made him regret asking. And she knew it.

“Ask him yourself, he's downstairs.” The brevity of her remark, the way she turned away from him back to the typewriter, snapped him into Mr. McAllister, editor in chief of the
Highland Gazette
.

“Maybe you could clear up another mystery. The hairdresser said Mrs. Buchanan runs ads instead of paying for a hairdo. Do you have the time to look into that?” He couldn't help it. The accusation—meant for Betsy, not Joanne, but not coming out as intended—was clear.

“I'm not your spy.” She was suddenly furious with him, herself, Betsy, Neil, everything. And she didn't know why. “If that's all, Mr. McAllister, it's five o'clock. I must get home to my children.”

He watched her grab her coat, heard her run down the stairs. He was sitting smoking, staring at the ceiling, when Neil came in.

“Where's Joanne?” he asked.

“Lost,” McAllister said. He walked out, leaving Neil staring after him.

“Looks like I'm writing the editorial again this week,” Neil muttered and sat down to type.

*  *  *  

Two days later Joanne was alone in the reporters' room, slowly turning the pages of the new edition of the
Gazette
. She could sense there was something not quite satisfactory, but couldn't pinpoint exactly what.

Neil had stayed the night again. No matter how many times she told herself it was wrong, immoral, a betrayal of all her promises to herself, she couldn't say no. She became aware that she was slumped over the table. She sat back, shoulders straightened. She closed her eyes tight shut.
Pull yourself together
. The phrase reminded her of the sports mistress at her boarding school, shouting at her when she cried, her knee bruised and bleeding from falling over on a frost-hardened hockey pitch with snow blanketing the hills a mere half a mile away, and the memory made her feel better.

“Joanne, do you have a moment?” Betsy had come up the stairs without Joanne noticing.

“It's about . . . what we talked about.”

Betsy looks nearly as tired as me,
Joanne realized. “Let's go out,” she suggested.

They went to the coffee bar next to the post office. They were unlikely to run into the housewives of the town, the volume of the jukebox would see to that, and it was too early for Rob to be around.

“I've been speaking to Hector.” Betsy was sounding anxious. “He's not keen.”

“I know.” Joanne was stirring the froth off her coffee. “Look, Betsy, can't you just tell Bill? I'm sure he'll stick by you.”

“Are you?”

“He wants a son.”

“My mother does this thing with a piece of silver and string
to tell if it's a boy or girl . . . ” Betsy's eyes misted up. “But I can't ask her. Maybe you could do it?”

Joanne said nothing.

Betsy decided on another tactic. “It's in your interests too, Joanne. Bill knows nothing about you and Neil, but what if he finds out?”