The Scot and I (18 page)

Alex smiled. “That’s what I like about you,” he said. “No questions about my guilt or innocence. You’ve always taken my word on faith alone.”

Miller laughed softly. “I may not know your brother, but I can’t believe that he was part of a conspiracy to kill the queen or that he murdered Dickens. No, and I can’t see you aiding and abetting him if he did.”

“Foster had witnesses to prove that I’m in it up to my neck.”

“Stable hands,” retorted Miller, “and all they can say is that you and your brother commandeered a couple of horses not long after all hell broke loose in the ballroom. Of course you didn’t come back right away. Even so, Foster jumped the gun. He should have waited until he had all the facts.” He squinted up at Alex. “Why didn’t you come back right away?”

“Long story, and we haven’t got time to go into it right now. To get back to your point. I want your help.”

“That goes without saying, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“First off, I need a letter opener, but not any letter opener. You’ll have to break into the evidence box to get it.”

There was a long silence. “You said ‘first off.’ What else do you want?”

“A couple of uniforms of the queen’s guard, and a letter with the official heading to give us a safe pass.”

“You have nerve, I’ll say that for you!”

“Will you do it?”

Miller laughed. “Why not? I’m bored out of my mind, twiddling my thumbs with nothing to do. Now start over. Tell me what this is about.”

 

 

The moment he touched the letter opener, he felt the familiar sensation. But it was Miller’s impression that came to mind: Miller, as gleeful as a schoolboy up to mischief as he unlocked the evidence box. Alex couldn’t help smiling. Miller had always been ready for mischief, even at university. He thought he understood. Miller was the last person to touch the letter opener.

He shooed him away and focused on the person he wanted: Dickens’s murderer. The world receded, and a picture formed in his mind, indistinct, but gradually coming into focus. He saw Dickens at the door, and the flash of the blade as Ramsey rammed it into Dickens’s back. He knew it was Ramsey because he was in the killer’s mind.

Heart racing. Breathing labored. Panic. Where was Murray? What would the professor say? What would the professor—?

“What’s come over ye, lad?”

The vision disintegrated, and Alex blinked rapidly. Dugald’s expression was an odd mixture of perplexity and alarm. They were in a leafy glade, on their way home, and he hadn’t been able to resist palming the blade that had killed Dickens.

“Who is the professor?” Alex asked.

Dugald’s expression instantly became guarded. “The professor? Professor who?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

“Well, ye’re asking the wrong person. What would a deerstalker know about professors?” On the same breath, he went on, “Why are ye loitering when we should be making tracks for home?”

Dugald didn’t wait to see if Alex was following him but strode into the queen’s forest as though he knew every inch of it, which he probably did. Alex glanced back. They’d left everything as though they were experienced woods-men: three trees down and neatly stacked along with their branches for carting away. The head groundsman might scratch his head, wondering who had ordered the job, but he wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

He soon caught up to Dugald. “You’re not helping Mahri by keeping secrets from me. You must know that I want to help her. You know who the professor is, don’t you?”

Dugald didn’t stop walking. “I willna betray the lass, and that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

Alex recognized a brick wall when he walked into it.

 

 

Later that evening found John Murray in the Black Sheep, an alehouse that was a mile or two west of Ballater. Since the night before, he’d stopped off at every change house in the district in his hunt for information on the professor’s daughter, and he was beginning to develop a hearty dislike for the local ale that he felt obliged to drink, but a man without a drink in his hand in an alehouse would have stood out like a hawk among pigeons, and Murray wanted to blend in.

When asked, he explained his presence by saying that he’d come into the area hoping to find work with the railway and was forced to stay on because of the flood. He didn’t mention the girl, because he knew that if he found Dugald or the Hepburns, he was sure to find her, too. Besides, the last thing the professor wanted was to draw attention to her. If and when she was found, she would be dealt with in private.

He’d given a lot of thought to the girl’s connection to the Hepburns. Like the professor, he was convinced that she was the woman who had helped them escape. How did she know them? She was a turncoat. Only one of the Hepburns was involved in security at the castle, the elder brother. Was that how she’d come to know him? Was he her contact at Balmoral? It seemed more than likely.

For the moment, he’d given up trying to pin down the deerstalker. No one knew where he lived, supposing he had a permanent home to go to, nor could they remember when they’d last seen him. In the summer months, he occasionally took odd jobs, but when the hunting season began, he was much in demand as a deerstalker and made more than enough money to tide him over to the next season.

He was nursing a tankard of ale at the bar counter, reflecting that the crowd was more subdued than usual, the result, he supposed, of the funeral that had taken place earlier in the day. It seemed that most of the customers had attended the service for Dickens and were still lamenting not only the death of a man they respected but also the brutal way his life had been cut short.

“It’s a sad business,” Murray observed to the man standing beside him. He’d discovered that noncommittal remarks served him better than direct questions when he was trying to gather information from unsuspecting subjects.

“Sad, did you say?” said the man beside him. “It is tragic. Dickens was due to retire before Christmas. We’ve never seen anything like this in Deeside. Mark my words, the English are behind it.”

The man on the other side of Murray made a rude sound. He looked remarkably like the first man: red-faced and beefy. They might have been brothers.

The first man took offense. “So what’s your theory, Tam o’ Shanter?”

“Tam Shackleton is the name as you know very well! It’s obvious what happened, isn’t it? Dickens was stabbed in the back. He was a careful man. He’d never let an English-man get close to him unless he were a friend.”

If you only knew,
thought Murray. That’s all it took, one careless mistake, and it was game over, and it could happen to the best of them. When Dickens turned his back on Ramsey, he hadn’t understood that he was dealing with a fanatic. A fanatic wouldn’t think about consequences. He’d come at you anyway.

The first man said, “That Hepburn fellow is more English than Scot, isn’t he? He was Dickens’s friend. Leastways, he pretended to be. They came in here from time to time. I never could like him.”

“Me neither,” said the other. “He just wasn’t sociable, not like the other fellow who occasionally came in with them.”

“You mean the one who smoked like a chimney? The queen’s secretary?”

“Aye. Mungo Miller he calls himself, but I still say he is more English than Scot. You have only to hear him speak.”

Holy Jesus!
These yokels sounded as mad as the professor and his equally demented disciples. No wonder Scotland was a hotbed of hotheads. He wasn’t complaining, not when his services were in demand.

There was a spell of silence as both gentlemen slurped down a healthy swig of ale.
Maiden’s water,
Murray thought, but he managed to swallow another mouthful, just to appear sociable. But he wasn’t a sociable animal. Emotion played no part in how he lived his life. It wasn’t a choice. He was born cold-blooded. He never hated or disliked his targets. He never took sides. Whoever paid him was his master, for a little while.

The temperature of the conversation had cooled, and Shackleton said in a confiding tone, “It wouldn’t surprise me if yon queen’s secretary was hiding the Hepburn brothers out in the woods.”

“What makes you say that, Tam?”

Shackleton’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Who else would hide Hepburn? Miller is the only friend he has.”

“I think he’s long gone.”

The temperature was rising again. “Oh, you do, do you? Then tell me this. Why does the queen’s secretary creep out of the castle at all hours of the day and night? Mmm? My Jack works at the castle, and he has seen it with his own eyes. Rain or shine, there goes Mr. Queen’s Secretary, skulking among the bushes.”

The other man gave a scoffing laugh. “He goes out to smoke! I thought everybody knew it! And you’re exaggerating. He doesn’t skulk among the bushes. There’s a little stone shelter hard by the castle wall. That’s where he goes. And he’s not the only one either.”

He emptied his tankard and slapped it down on the counter. Shackleton did the same. They glared at one another. Murray was acutely aware that he was on to something. He didn’t want the conversation to end or develop into a quarrel, but he didn’t want to appear too eager or too inquisitive. Curious strangers were often regarded with suspicion in small villages.

“Here,” he said, “let me buy you both a drink.”

Shackleton regarded Murray with a trace of calculation in his expression. “That is very kind of you, sir,” he said. “I’ll have a whiskey.”

The other man nodded affably. “I’ll have the same.”

Whiskey cost a lot more than a tankard of ale.
Trust these Highlanders to nail an unsuspecting Lowlander,
thought Murray. He dug in his pocket, found some change, and slapped it on the counter.

“Landlord, I’ll have a whiskey,” he said, “and the same for my friends here.”

Thirteen

They were late home for supper, but there was no supper waiting for them, no aroma of freshly baked salmon from the catch Dugald had made the day before.

Juliet met them at the back door. Her complexion was like parchment. “She has gone,” she said. “Mahri has gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?” Alex pushed into the house and made straight for the kitchen as though he expected to find Mahri there. It was spanking clean with everything tidied away. Nothing was on the table to show that anyone had made a start on getting supper ready.

The others crowded in behind him. Dugald said, “She wouldna leave without me.” He didn’t sound as though he believed his own words.

“Tell me what happened,” Alex said, looking at Juliet.

“We don’t know. Mother and I came home from the funeral to find the house just as you see it.”

“Gavin?”

“Mother is with him now. We think Mahri gave him something to make him sleep. When we ask him questions, he rambles, but none of it makes sense.”

A wave of emotion tightened Alex’s throat. That she would have left his brother alone at a time like this! He wouldn’t have believed it of her. Her conscience wouldn’t have allowed her to desert someone who needed her. That was what he’d thought when he’d set out with Dugald that morning. He’d trusted her, and she’d let him down.

All that aside, she was taking appalling risks, a young woman alone, roaming the hills.

Juliet seemed as upset as he felt. “I blame myself,” she said. “I told Mahri that Mother and I would be back in an hour, but it was closer to two hours before we arrived home.”

Alex nodded. He was still thinking of a young woman on her own.

He abruptly turned and made for the stairs. In Mahri’s room, he started opening drawers. Most of them were empty. There were only two dresses in the wardrobe, the brown taffeta she’d worn the night they arrived and the gray dress she wore during the day.

“Thomas Gordon,” he said savagely. She had reverted to her role as a boy.

From there, he went to Gavin’s room. Mrs. Cardno was at the bedside, bathing Gavin’s brow with a cloth wrung out in cold water.

“He’s burning up,” she said, “and his mind is wavering.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Gavin retorted.

Alex smiled. “He seems lucid enough to me.”

“Mind over matter,” Gavin muttered. “She’s a witch, Mahri told me.”

When it looked as though his brother was falling asleep, Alex squeezed his shoulder. “Gavin, what did she give you?”

No response.

Alex straightened and looked down at his brother. When he’d left that morning, Gavin had been pale and hollow-eyed, but not like this. The sudden turn in his condition left him shaken. He was the elder of the two. He’d always looked out for Gavin.

That wasn’t precisely true. After Ariel, he’d withdrawn into himself. Numbers and codes demanded less attention than people. They could be trusted. He’d become emotionally detached, a lone wolf. What a fool he’d been to think he could maintain the shell he’d built around himself.