Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery (33 page)

Father Ewan snapped his phone shut, stowed it in a pocket, and came back to us with a broad smile. “False alarm, lad. The bloomin’ things are empty. Ian is out, but Barbara said the coffins are for that play the Americans are putting on tomorrow night.” He nodded my way.

Guilt by association made me say quickly, “1 don’t know anything about coffins, and we aren’t putting on the play. It’s just being put on while we’re here. Our tour guide wrote it.”

“Och, that must be the way of it, then.” Roddy nodded with enlightenment. “The lass said to take them to the chapel, and that dunce Ian didn’t ask what she meant by that.” He squinted down at me through another cloud of smoke, “Folks not from here look at the sign that says St. Margaret’s Chapel and think it’s called ‘the chapel’—never knowin’ our lot’s got the chapel and St. Margaret’s is just St. Margaret’s—not the chapel a-tall. Used to be Church of England, but nowadays it’s just a meeting hall.”

“I’m Presbyterian.” I felt a continuing need to distance myself as far as possible from those “folks not from here” he was ridiculing.

“Och, then ye’ll be goin’ to the kirk, down by the manse woods.” He pointed to the right, obviously glad to get all that cleared up for my benefit. Then he added to the priest, “Shall I shift them to one side, just, until Ian can fetch them? I’ve still got that flair to mop.”

Roddy might not be good at working, but he was a master at complaint.

The priest hesitated, looking back up the brae toward Heather Glen. 1 suspected he was debating the possibility of returning for his gooseberries. Instead, he turned on his heel and said in the tone of one successfully resisting temptation, “That’s the way, lad. I’ll just give you a hand.”

At the bottom of the hill, we turned left onto the walk that led to the small Roman Catholic Church. I don’t know when I’ve seen a prettier approach to a place of worship. The chapel itself was built of granite, like everything else in the village, but someone had rounded the outer edges of the stones just enough to replace severity with gentleness. A simple tower rose in the center and ended in a stone cross. A small rose window was set above arched front doors. Tall dark yews stood in an arc on the soft emerald lawn, arms reaching out to draw us down the walk, while welcoming masses of daffodils nodded on each side of the steps. “Quite nice those, aren’t they?” Roddy nodded toward the daffodils as he reached for the giant ring that opened the dark wooden door. “Mum planted them a few years back, in memory of m’ dad.”

Father Ewan motioned for me to precede him up the stone steps. “Come along in. It won’t take us but a minute to stack the boxes for Ian so Roddy can get on with his work.”

I followed them into the narthex and shivered in the accumulated chill of three hundred winters. Even the floor was stone—what I could see of it. A third of it was covered by a long table holding pamphlets and various offering boxes. The remaining floor space was almost filled by two wooden boxes, one long and one short. In Georgia, people tend to be buried in great bronze or gray metal caskets, lined with velvet. I had never seen a plain wooden coffin before, but the shape was unmistakable.

The narthex was chilly and dim, lit only by sunlight filtering into the sanctuary through dark stained glass windows. I inhaled that smell of holiness which empty places of worship seem to have in common and tiptoed around the boxes toward the sanctuary while Roddy and the priest shoved one box over close to the right-hand table. Behind me, I heard them cross the narthex for the other, then heard Roddy exclaim, “Hold on! There’s something in this one!”

“There can’t be,” Father Ewan protested. “Barbara said . . . ”

“The lid’s not nailed down,” Roddy muttered. Hinges creaked. Then Roddy exclaimed, “Who the devil is that?”

“I dinna ken,” the priest replied soberly, “but whoever it is is very dead.”

Father Ewan raised his voice and called to me—as if he hoped I hadn’t heard what they’d been saying, “You’d best go on back up to Heather Glen. I’ll show you around another time.”

He was obviously wanting to spare me the sight of whoever was in that coffin, but I had to pass it to get to the front door and Roddy was too slow in lowering the lid.

I saw enough.

What was it Joe Riddley had said just before I left Hopemore?

Wanting him to come along, I’d reminded him, ‘You promised to go everywhere with me.”

He’d replied, “I didn’t
promise
I’d go everywhere with you, Little Bit. That was a threat, and it only applies around here. I figure you can’t get into too much trouble in a country where you don’t know a soul. Presumably you won’t feel obligated to endanger your life trying to solve the problems of everybody in Scotland, and you aren’t likely to be stumbling over dead bodies on a bus tour.”

And now, here I stood in a chilly church in the heart of the eastern Highlands, with a member of our tour group lying dead at my feet.