The Murder Hole (44 page)

“Did she send the threatening letters, too?”
Alasdair asked.

After a long pause, Roger answered, “I told
you. She got carried away. She was always getting carried away.
That was just her personality. She was very clever, you know,
arranged for the boat hire company in Inverness to send the letters
thinking they were just self-addressed receipts. I didn’t know
about it, I didn’t know a damn thing about what she was up to, not
until . . .” His hands closed protectively around the bone they
were holding, a vertebra that looked somewhat like a chalky
caltrop. His head bowed over it so that the bill of his cap hid his
face from Alasdair. But Jean could see Roger’s expression, very
still, very calm, as though he was thinking that by playing dead he
could fool the predator into going away.

He didn’t know Alasdair. “Until the boat
exploded?”

“Yeah. Until the boat exploded. Then she told
me everything.”

“Everything? Meaning what?”

“Like I said, she was really clever, picked
up a lot of electronics know-how from hanging around me. The bug,
the timing mechanism on the petrol bombs, she really did a good
job.”

“Why did she do it?” Alasdair asked.

Again Roger looked from face to face, and
then from the top of the Stone to the grove of trees. The faint
breeze spilling desultorily down the hillside seemed cool, as
though it were an exhalation from the pine glade, a sigh of
recognition from the cold depths of time.

“There was an accident with a submersible,”
he said at last. “It was a rotten shame. All my fault, I’ll take
full responsibility—I wasn’t supervising the mechanical people well
enough—not my thing, the mechanics, more into electronics, you
know, although my degree’s in business.”

But he was into the mechanics enough to pick
Brad’s brain, thought Jean. Alasdair said, “You were that concerned
about the mechanical systems to question Miss Fairbairn’s former
husband about them. And then to stalk Miss Fairbairn herself.”

“I saw her—your—name on Tracy’s promotion
list,” Roger said, with an ungainly little bow in Jean’s direction.
“Your editor set up an interview with you about two minutes after
we announced the expedition. I said to Tracy, I wonder what the
deal is, if Jean wants to do some sort of exposé about the sub. I
mean, you showed me up at the conference that time.”

Thanks, Miranda
, Jean thought
caustically. So in Roger’s book there was publicity, and then there
was publicity.

“Tracy said, oh, I’ll take care of it. I
thought she’d send you another press release or something, you
know, spin. I didn’t know she’d included a bugged toy in your press
kit. Geez. What you must have thought when you found that.”

Since she’d been asked, Jean said, “Among
other less repeatable things, I thought that you didn’t know I was
divorced.”

“Well, no, not until Tracy said you were
talking about Brad in the past tense. She was really good about
picking up on things like that.”

That explained Tracy’s look at Roger when
she’d met Jean on the boat.
I told you so
.

Alasdair said, very quietly, “You were
thinking Miss Fairbairn was a threat to you.”

“I didn’t. I mean, freedom of the press and
all that. If Jean wanted to pick holes in my theories, fine. It was
Tracy who was worried. Jonathan was poking around in places he
didn’t need to be poking, and she thought he was doing some sort of
industrial espionage—me, I figured he was just impressed by my
stuff, you know? But then Tracy saw Jean give Jonathan a note
before she came on board . . .”

“That was a business card.” Jean turned
another page in her notebook.

Roger waved—easy come, easy go. “Sure it was.
I told you, the woman was paranoid. She tells that idiot from
Bristol, Martin—he was eating out of her hand, like he was going to
get anything out of her—she tells him to keep an eye on you, Jean.
I’m sorry about that, really. He sees you talking to the other
Americans, and then he hears them talking about some secret deal
they’ve got going with Jonathan. Except they called him Jon, and he
thought they were saying Jean, and . . .”

Jean dropped her face into her hand. She’d
moan
why me?
except why her was irrelevant, now.

“Hey, that American couple, they’re connected
to the guy who drowned in the submersible, right? I’m really sorry
about that, I wish I could do something for them, but my hands are
tied—things happen, space shuttles fall apart, it’s the march of
science and everything and well, it’s a mess.”

“It’s a right mess,” Alasdair agreed.
“Especially since Jonathan was killed.”

“Tracy was very upset about that, you know,
very upset. That’s when she came to me. Should have done that ages
ago, but then, that’s twenty-twenty hindsight. I bet it was the
Ducketts who tried to run us down Saturday night, Jean. They
thought you were Tracy, and they were out for revenge—you can’t
blame them, can you? They got Trace later on that same evening.
I’ll never forgive myself for having a good time at the ceilidh
while she was—in danger.” Roger stared off across the glen, every
line and crease in his face turning downwards like economic trends
during a depression.

Alasdair gave Roger a few moments with that
thought, even though his steely eyes didn’t leave the top of the
grungy Omnium cap that shaded Roger’s face. Alasdair’s face was
looking a bit pink, even though he was turned away from the sun.
Jean felt her own skin, pale as his, starting to sizzle in the
steamy sunlight. Another breath of air spilled down the hillside
and teased the roots of her hair.

Roger was doing it again, she thought,
playing his audience like a stand-up comedian. That was his
personality. She shouldn’t read anything into it.

“What’s your position with Omnium now?” asked
Alasdair.

“I’m afraid we’re on the outs. We’re
having—what do the Hollywood types say, creative differences?”

“Usually when Hollywood’s saying that,
they’re meaning a disagreement over money.”

“Well, there’s that.” Roger leaned toward
Alasdair confidingly, a twitch of his beard including Jean in the
cozy little group. “That’s why I’m so excited over the Nessie
bones. And now the Stone, too! What a coup for Omnium and their
equipment!”

“You were telling me yesterday it was luck
that had you using Omnium’s equipment just here.”

“Hey, you’ve heard the expression, the harder
I work the luckier I get?”

Alasdair didn’t react.

“Well, it’s been a lot of hard work, but it
was luck to start with. Tracy was shopping at a boutique in Paris
and found an old book, a privately-printed autobiography of Ambrose
Mackintosh. We already knew Iris from her environmental work—what a
gal, huh?—so Tracy bought the book.”

“This was the shop owned by Charles and
Sophie Bouchard?”

“Oh yeah, he’s an old acquaintance, shouldn’t
be forgot, or however the song goes. She was his clerk and now
they’re married, just like a romance novel. Charles bought some
stuff that had belonged to Aleister Crowley—now there’s a nut case
for you. Can you imagine people used to be afraid of him?”

“Was there a Pictish silver chain in that
same collection?” asked Jean, flexing her writing hand.

Roger glanced around at her, his bushy
eyebrows twitching upward. “Yeah, there was, Charles got a small
fortune for it. You’re good, Jean you’re really good!”

Baloney, she wrote again, and added the note
that probably both the book and the chain had been given to Crowley
by Ambrose. Alasdair was still looking at Roger, unblinking. “And
the book?”

“Once I got through all the verbiage, it was
a real eye-opener, all that stuff about Crowley and Ambrose taking
in his old mistress Edith Fraser, and there was her brother finding
the Stone and everything. And yes, I already knew there was a
gripping beast on the broken half, and about old Gordon chiseling
it in half, saving his family from the boogeyman.”

This being something Roger hadn’t bothered to
tell Brendan, Jean thought, the better to amaze him in case the
Stone turned up. But then, the Stone had become a secondary, maybe
even tertiary, quest.

“And even better,” Roger went on, “Ambrose
described the passage grave and—okay, can’t keep any secrets here,
can I? He said he found the bones of the monster there.”

Ah
, thought Jean.
All right
.
Alasdair went so far as to nod.

“He didn’t give its location,” Roger
continued, “but I was able to triangulate by using the pine grove,
the tower of the house, and the tower of the Castle down by the
loch.”

“But Iris didn’t want you go excavating
here,” Alasdair pointed out.

“Well, no. She was smart enough to be an
early investor in Omnium, but after the sub accident she pulled
out.” Again he gestured dismissively. “Stubborn old woman. Just
doesn’t have any imagination, can’t rise above her own petty . .
.”

Into his pause Alasdair dropped the word,
“Principles?”

Roger shot him a suspicious look. He had to
know what was coming. Jean stirred, the rock she was sitting on
becoming very hard. Funny though, how cool it had also become, as
though the sun had only warmed the first millimeter, and the chill
of a thousand fog-shrouded winters still lingered in its
depths.

Judging by the sheen on his brow, Alasdair
was warming up physically, but his manner was as cold-tempered as
always. “You blackmailed her with information you got from
Ambrose’s autobiography. And you tracked down and gulled Gordon
Fraser into helping you find the tomb. It was his description that
helped you triangulate the location.”

“Just applying a little leverage for the
greater good. Imagination, right?” Roger held out the bone. “I
mean, here’s Nessie! What a deal! And thanks to Ambrose’s book, I
solved the old mystery about Eileen Mackintosh too. Here she is!
You think Iris would be grateful I found her mother’s body.”

“I doubt she’s grateful to you for fitting
her up for the letters and the boat explosion as well.”

Nice use of the ambiguities of the word
“doubt,” Jean thought.

Roger tsked beneath his breath. “Tracy framed
her, not me. Either Tracy thought she should be punished for
refusing to help, or was just hoping to get her out of the way.
Tracy went overboard, got carried away, trying to protect me, you
know.”

Alasdair had heard that verse before. “I
don’t suppose your book tells where Ambrose found his hoard of
Pictish treasure.”

“Nah. The last chapter’s torn out.”

Alasdair half-winked in Jean’s direction.
Gotcha
. She wrinkled her nose at him.

“Not a frigging word,” Roger went on. “The
area could be riddled with tombs and hoards and monsters, and if he
said anything about it at all, it’s in that last few pages. I tell
you, Inspector Cameron, what’s a man to do?” Roger grinned and
shrugged.

Jean expected Alasdair to reply,
A man
could stop playing silly beggars with the police
, and yet, was
Roger playing them for fools? What Alasdair asked was, “You’re
working with the Bouchards then, hoping to recover more
treasure?”

“Sure. No harm in that. I need them back up
here, too, when you’re done—with them.” He was about to say
“harassing” or the equivalent, but thought better of it. Again he
looked from face to face, exuding helpfulness. “The book’s at the
hotel, you can have it if you need it for evidence or something. I
found what I came here for. I’ll be back on the fast track before
you know it!”

“Are you saying ‘I’ because your wife’s dead,
or because you were always after following that track on your own?
Sounds to have been a bit of a rift between you, with her planting
bugs and bombs and the like, and never telling you.”

Roger looked pained, as though Alasdair had
just hit him below the belt. “Every marriage has its ups and downs.
You know what I mean, I bet you’re a married man, Inspector
Cameron.”

Jean would have winced, but she wanted to
keep her eyes open for the expression on Alasdair’s face.

It was something between a sniff and snarl.
“No, Dr. Dempsey, I’m not a married man.”

“Hello!” shouted a voice from below. Jean
looked around to see Peter Kettering trudging up the hill, his suit
jacket slung over his shoulder, his vest gaping open, fashionable
sunglasses looking like a bandit’s mask across his face.

Alasdair stood up and brushed off his
trousers, then gave Jean a hand up. His expression was set, but she
could swear she caught a sigh of decompression. Maybe he was glad
Kettering had broken up the cheery little gathering before Alasdair
told Roger just what he could do with his bones, the ones that made
everything worthwhile.

Roger scrambled to his feet. “Hey, Peter,
look, I found the rest of the Pitclachie Stone! There’s still time
to get photos of it into the press release.”

“Well then, better and better!” Kettering
stumbled to a halt, out of breath, face polished cherry-red. He
glanced at Roger’s osteological booty, stared, then knelt down and
probed the skull with a forefinger. “The photographs came out quite
well, but I wanted to see for myself—these look to be . . .”

“Authentic?” Roger asked with a chortle of
glee. “They’ll stand up to any test you want to throw at them,
Peter. What a day for science!”

“I wasn’t meaning to suggest,” Peter hemmed
and hawed, although he clearly was meaning to suggest, and was
taking the precaution of checking out the situation himself. “Very
impressive. Amazing story.”

Jean met Alasdair’s jaundiced eye. All the
instrumentation in the world, but there’s a difference in actually
seeing for yourself. The problem was, even seeing for yourself
proved nothing.