Competition Can Be Murder (3 page)

The sky had lightened considerably now that I owned two umbrellas, and by the time I got back to the cottage there were patches of blue showing. I puttered around, organizing our few belongings and rearranging a couple of pieces of furniture in the living room until it was more to my liking. I spent the afternoon exploring the tiny garden that surrounded our little home and getting some exercise walking through the forest.

After a quick shower, I donned a pair of slacks and cashmere sweater, hoping the outfit would be casual enough for afternoon tea and dressy enough for my first visit to a real castle. I envisioned the lady of the manor wearing a Chanel suit and pearls, tasteful black pumps and little button earrings.

I arrived promptly at four, guiding my rented Vector down a storybook lane flanked by rows of trees whose trunks were close to four feet in diameter and whose branches had become so entwined with time that the overhead canopy was nearly solid. I emerged into an open area and spotted two other vehicles—a brand new Land Rover and a fifty-year-old Bentley—sitting to the side of a circular drive. I pulled to the side, staying a respectful distance from the Land Rover.

The castle itself towered five stories above me, a tasteful gray stone edifice with turrets pasted to its sides in seemingly random fashion. Wings extended from either side of the central structure, and archways led to unseen courtyards and other mysterious places. Turning my attention the other direction, I noticed that I had, in fact, crossed an old moat, which was now a grassy swale with precision-manicured lawns extending at least fifteen or twenty acres before thick forest took over. An English-style box hedge formed a maze to my left and led the eye upward to a rock garden with plantings of brilliant flowers. A rose garden, easily fifty feet in length, grew along the side of the castle itself, with bushes that reached the lower edges of the first floor windows. I was just noticing how small all the windows were, narrow slits in some cases, when a commotion behind me caught my attention.

“Ruffie! Ruffie, get over here!” a woman’s voice shouted.

Bounding toward me came a small furball, some kind of terrier, with white hair that dragged the ground and a high-pitched bark that sounded like a midget with the croup. Behind Ruffie, a blond woman trotted with a dangling leash in her hand. She wore a baggy pair of tweed slacks with a large mud stain on one knee and a brown sweater whose cowl collar lay askew over one shoulder. One sleeve was pushed up nearly to her elbow while the other flopped down around her wrist. She tugged at it while vainly trying to catch up with the dog.

“She won’t bite,” the woman called. “She’s just a bit exuberant.”

I knelt down, keeping my knees off the wet lawn and extended a hand to Ruffie. As soon as I reached out, she came to a halt, planting her tiny feet and staring suspiciously at my hand. The nose wriggled, but at least the barking had stopped.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman said, breathless from her dash across the lawn. “I’d just reached down to attach her leash when your car pulled up. Once she saw you there was no stopping her.”

“It’s okay. I love dogs.” I didn’t mention that yipping little ones weren’t usually my favorites. We’d see how Ruffie decided to treat me before making that judgment. For the moment the dog was keeping her distance, so I stood up.

“You must be Charlie,” the woman said. “I’m Sarah Dunbar.”

She tugged her flapping sleeve up and righted the cowl collar with one gracious flip before extending her hand to me.

“I’m dreadfully sorry to greet you this way, Charlie. I’d meant to be done with the gardening and walking the dog, and planned to have put on something a bit more decent before you got here.”

“Would another time be . . .” I began.

The picture of the pink Chanel suit blipped out of my mind instantly. This woman was completely down-to-earth with her mud-smeared knee and the blond hair tossed out of place. I guessed her age to be somewhere in her sixties, although her slightly thickened torso and a few spots on her hands were the only things that gave it away. Her complexion was smooth, with the texture of a baby peach and none of the sun damage so common in our part of the world.

“Oh, not a bit. Let’s just go on in.” She ushered me toward a massive wooden door. I noticed the family crest carved in stone above the lintel, a shield shape with some kind of animal entwined with something else. My quick glance didn’t reveal much.

We stepped into a narrow vestibule that opened immediately into a larger hall. Sarah draped the dog leash over a wooden peg on the wall where coats and hats had been deposited. She knelt and caught Ruffie by the collar.

“Molly!” she called out. “Molly, can you bring a towel for Ruffie?”

A plump girl in a housedress and apron appeared with a small towel and she set to wiping the dog’s tiny paws and blotting the dampness from the fur that had trailed in the grass.

“Pesky bit,” Sarah commented, fluffing her own hair in front of a hall mirror. “I don’t know why we don’t just shave her down so we aren’t constantly minding that thick fur.”

I stood aside, unsure what to say to that.

“You can set your bag here, if you don’t want to carry it.” Sarah indicated an empty peg, and I deposited my shoulder bag there. “Now let’s see about that tea.”

She bustled through the hall, past a set of double doors, and into a huge, modern kitchen, cautioning me to “mind the step” as the uneven floor dipped downward.

“There we go now,” she said, after filling a kettle with water and setting it over the gas flame on the stove. She took a deep breath and surveyed the spacious kitchen. “Heavens, Charlie, take a seat—just there—while I find something to go along with this.”

I perched myself on a stool at the long counter that edged one side of a center island made of butcher block.

“This kitchen is probably the biggest one I’ve ever seen,” I told her.

“Humph—can be a damn nuisance, when you’re hiking from one end to the other just cooking for two,” she snorted. “But it’s nice when we entertain and I guess it came in handy in the old days.”

“So, are there only two of you here now?”

“Usually just Robert and me for dinner anymore. The children—well, they’re in their forties—hardly children. They’ve gone to the bigger cities. One in London, one in Edinburgh. Grandchildren scattered all over. The nearest one’s Richie, going to school just outside Inverness. He’s still on summer holiday and he pops in. He and two chums are here now. You’ll probably see them all, hanging about, while you’re here.”

“But doesn’t it take a huge staff to keep a place this size?”

Sarah bustled around the big kitchen, pulling a cake under a glass dome from a pantry, a box of chocolate cookies from a cupboard. She cut several narrow slices of the cake and arranged them, along with some of the cookies, on a crystal plate.

“Oh, goodness, yes. We’re lucky that the farm still supports us all. So many of our friends have resorted to opening their homes to tourists just to cover their taxes. It’s a burden, that’s sure.”

The water boiled just then and I watched Sarah expertly pour from kettle to teapot, steep the leaves, warm the cups and set everything on a silver tray.

“Let’s do have a civilized tea in the drawing room,” she said, lifting the large tray. “Get that smaller tray with the cake, would you?”

I picked up the second tray and followed as she butted a swinging door open at the far side of the room. It opened into a narrow hall, which led directly to a lovely room furnished in celery green and persimmon. Soft, upholstered chairs flanked a fireplace that had been freshly stoked so that a warm glow lit the room. We set the trays on a huge ottoman that stood between the chairs and Sarah poured tea while I eyed the cake.

“There now, that’s better,” she said after sinking into one of the deep chairs and taking her first sip of tea.

“This land has been in your family forever, I’d imagine.” I pressed my fork into the raspberry filling between the delicate layers of white cake.

“Since the eleventh century,” Sarah answered. “Scotland has such a rich history, you could study for years and not get it all. I’m foggy on many of the details myself and I’ve had this fed to me from the cradle.” She chuckled at the memory of early school years. “I guess my interests always lie with the gardens and the animals. Didn’t care much which clan killed which, or which king held power at what time.”

She set her cup back on the tray. “Have you any Scottish kin, Charlie?”

“I’m not sure,” I confessed. “I guess I haven’t taken the time to study much of our family history either.”

She patted my knee. “Well, I can’t hold that against you,” she said. “But if you’re interested, I have a book. What’s your family name?”

“Well, Parker on my father’s side. My mother’s maiden name was Davidson.”

“Ah, Davidson!” Her face lit up. “Now that one’s an old Scottish name. Want to take a look?”

I set my cup down and she led the way through two more connecting rooms to a library. Shelves filled two sides of the room, floor to ceiling, and most of the books were bound in leather and appeared very old. Sarah opened one of the glass doors on the front of a section and pulled out two books, one a small paperback modern book titled
Scots Kith & Kin
, and a thick, leather-bound edition of another.

“This little one’s available at all the tourist shops. Just gives an overview, but it’s a handy little thing,” she said, handing it to me. “Now, this thing—this one’ll tell you all about your clan. If it doesn’t give you a hernia first.”

I offered to take the big book from her, but she’d already hugged it securely to her chest.

“Let’s take these back in the drawing room,” she suggested. “We don’t run the central heat in the summer months, and no one’s set the fire in here. Feels chilly to me.”

The shadowy room did, indeed, contain a chill so we carried our books back to the warmth of the other room where Molly was in the process of stirring the fire.

“Shall I clear the tea things, Mrs. Dunbar?” she asked.

“Oh, leave them a few more minutes, Molly. We may pour another.”

The girl actually dropped a slight curtsy as she left the room. Sarah poured us each another cup of tea and spread open the large clan book. After a minute or two of paging through it, she came to the spot she wanted.

“Here we go, Clan Davidson,” she said, turning the book to face me.

I felt a sense of pride and an odd sense of connectedness, learning that my mother’s family name went back to the twelfth century and earlier. Me, whose only sense of family came from my one brother who is my business partner back home, and another brother I rarely see. I felt a wide grin coming on, and I looked up to see Sarah watching me.

“Sorry,” I said, “this is just the first time I’ve known any of this existed.”

She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Borrow the book if you’d like,” she said. “You’ll have fun reading up, I imagine.”

“You must think I’m being silly,” I told her as I closed the large book and pulled it toward me. “You’ve known your own family history forever.”

“Well, there’ve been Dunbars in this house since the 1500s. And my family, the Murrays, allied themselves with the Dunbars and other clans as far back as the 1100s. So, yes, I guess you could say we go a way back.”

“I’ll get the book back to you in a day or two,” I promised. I could see that this new fascination with family history might begin to occupy me on my days off from flying.

A deep thud that sounded like it came from several rooms away, interrupted my thoughts.

“Sounds like Robert is home,” Sarah said. “Come, I’d like you to meet him.”

I set the clan book on a round library table and followed her back through the halls to the entry. A rotund man of about seventy, with white hair that dipped in a wave over his forehead and intense blue eyes, focused on taking off his hooded parka. He patted each of the side pockets, then flung the jacket onto one of the wall pegs. He seemed to be muttering something under his breath.

“Robert!” Sarah called out, stopping him in mid swing.

“Damn it all,” he bellowed. “Two more lambs are missing!”

“Robert, we have a guest,” she said quietly.

He glanced up and noticed me for the first time. “Oh, sorry.” His florid face went another shade brighter.

“This is Charlie Parker, the lady who’s renting the Red Fern Cottage. Remember, she and her husband are flying for that helicopter service.”

Robert dusted off a hand and offered it to me. “Sorry, miss, I didn’t mean to go off like that with company around.”

“It’s okay. Really.” I noticed his grip was firm and he had a winning smile, once he turned it on.

“Wash up, dear, and come have your tea. We’re in the drawing room.” Sarah bustled her husband toward a small powder room off the central hall, while she and I headed back toward the cozy fire. “I’d best just give this a little re-warm,” she said after feeling the side of the teapot. “Be right back.”

I browsed the room now that I was alone. The soft green wallpaper was silk and it perfectly matched the fabric on the chairs that showed just a genteel bit of wear. Bright persimmon pillows picked up the same shade in an Oriental carpet. Family photos covered one table top, modern pictures of the Dunbars and their offspring, some posed and some casual. A windowsill displayed a grouping of porcelain figurines, one of which I recognized as Chinese and very old. The others were traditional English figures and I assumed they were also antiques.