The Avalon Chanter (10 page)

Grinsell continued to stand, no doubt so he’d
be taller and therefore dominant. At five foot three, Jean knew all
about occupying as much space as possible in order to be taken
seriously, but there was a difference between dignity and
hostility.

“
Well then.” Fishing in his pocket,
Grinsell pulled out a cellophane packet enclosing what Alasdair
would have called digestive biscuits and Jean would have called a
cross between a cracker and a cookie. He tore it open, bit, chewed,
and smiled, brown paste matting his long, yellow teeth. “Here we
are.”

Darling produced a notebook and pen and took
a chair to one side. Crawford assumed his parade rest position by
the door.

Jean sat back and thought of Alasdair.

Grinsell prompted, “Miss Lauder.”

“
Dr. Lauder,” she informed
him.

“
Lah-de-dah, aren’t we posh, then? You
found a body, didn’t you, dearie?”

Despite the flash in her eyes, Maggie’s voice
came from her lips so dull and quiet Darling leaned closer. She
told the tale, including the features Jean and Alasdair had figured
out for themselves: The preliminary look into the tomb before the
press conference. The surprise discovery. The impromptu lecture in
the church to deflect the scrutiny of the reporters. The call to
Crawford as the tide slipped away.

Grinsell finished his cookies and threw the
wrapper down. He turned to Jean. “You’re a reporter.”

“
More of a journalist.
Great Scot
does history and travel
articles, not current events.” She waited for him to make some
remark about how she’d been participating in current events since
her move to Scotland, but either he wasn’t up on recent Scottish
murder investigations or preferred another angle of
attack.

“
American, are you?”

“
Yes.”

He sucked on his teeth. His eyes grew even
harder. “Cameron couldn’t find himself a wife in the UK? Or would
no one have him?”

He didn’t want an answer to that. Jean didn’t
offer one. She dropped her gaze to the hands clasped in her lap and
willed her shoulders, tucked defensively up around her ears, to
relax. He’d think the lowered eyes meant surrender. Let him.
Bullies took a defensive response as encouragement.

With a condescending smirk, Grinsell focused
on Maggie. “You’ve got good reason to be careful of reporters,
haven’t you now?”

“
If you’re referring to the old murder
trial, yes.”

“
What else would I be referring to?
Don’t mess me about!”

Maggie bridled. “I’ve done nothing wrong,
Inspector. I opened a medieval or earlier tomb on my own property
is all. I have the proper permits to do so. I’ve got nothing to do
with the recent body. It’s been there for a good many years,
perhaps since before I was born.”

Easy
, Jean
beamed at her.
Don’t put words in his
mouth
.

“
How do you know that?” murmured
Darling from the side of the arena.

“
I’m an archaeologist. It’s my business
to know that.”

“
All right then, since you’re such a
clever wee girl,” Grinsell said, “who is the body in the
tomb?”

For a nanosecond Jean thought he was asking
who Maggie theorized had been originally buried there, the intended
object of the grand reveal. But no, that wasn’t Grinsell’s
business.

Maggie closed her eyes, perhaps imagining
herself somewhere else. Somewhen else. “I don’t know.”

“
For the love of God. Crawley, er
Crawford! She identified the body as who?”

The constable said from the door, “Her
father, sir.”

“
Your father.” Grinsell leaned across
the table, as close as he could get to Maggie’s face without
actually lying on the plastic surface. “Here’s me thinking your
father was a man named Walter Lauder, musician. That’s never him in
the tomb.”

“
No.” Maggie looked up. She sat up. She
tilted forward, matching Grinsell stare for stare. “My mother,
Elaine Lauder, is suffering from dementia. She’s been going on
about having a lover, one she calls Lancelot the Fair. We’ve
thought it was the illness speaking. And yet—and yet, there’s
evidence pointing to her having had a lover, once, years ago. A
piper, a member of my father’s band, who one day went and
disappeared.”

Oh
. Jean
remembered meeting a handsome young piper last year, one who’d
spoken of Gallowglass. Some melodies echoed down the years, the
refrains to the same old songs. Lancelot. The handsome young knight
who tempted Queen Guinevere away from King Arthur. The young knight
who fathered Galahad on a woman named Elaine.

“
Lancelot? There’s a bloke in the
village named Lancelot, isn’t there, Crawford?”

“
Lance Eccleston,” replied the
constable. “He’s in his twenties. Not the same man.”

“
Don’t take the name literally,
Inspector. My mother’s a scholar and no doubt meant the name
symbolically . . .”

“
Never you mind what I’m taking, other
than you as an uncooperative witness. So your mum’s gone doolally,
has she? A convenient excuse for avoiding questions. Wants bracing
up, most likely.”

Whoa
,
thought Jean.

Maggie snarled, “I assure you . . .”

“
This lover of your mum’s—runs in the
family, eh?—this piper. He had a name, hadn’t he?”

“
It’s all conjecture . . .”

“
A name.” Grinsell’s fists fell onto
the table like Norman maces onto the heads of uncooperative Saxon
serfs.

If Maggie’s gaze had been any sharper, it
would have pierced Grinsell’s hide from front to back and stuck
quivering in the wall behind. “I’ve heard, I’ve been told, that his
name was Thomas Seaton. He was a piper from Cape Breton, Canada. He
played the Great Highland pipes and the Northumbrian small pipes as
well. My father, Wat, he wanted to make him a member of
Gallowglass.”

“
Get to the point.”

“
I am getting to the point. One day Tom
was gone. Everyone thought he’d taken the ferry for the mainland.
No one heard from him ever again.”

“
Well then.” Straightening, Grinsell
reached for another packet of biscuits.

Jean couldn’t resist asking, “All this
happened before you were born, right? Who told you about it?”

“
I told you to keep your gob shut,”
Grinsell snapped.

Jean sank back in her chair, thinking of
happy things like chocolate cake and kittens.

Maggie answered Jean’s question. “Pen
Fleming, mostly. She was sixteen or so when Mum and, and Wat came
here. She helped Mum round the house and looked after me, even
after she married. They were great friends. Still are, as much as,
well, as much as possible.”

“
Another Fleming?” asked
Darling.

“
James does the pub,” Crawford
explained. “His wife, Penelope, she does the B and B.”

His mouth full, Grinsell asked, “Have you any
real evidence that this Tom Seaton is your father, other than the
chin-wagging of local women?”

“
The dates,” replied Maggie. “Mum
always said I arrived prematurely, and I was quite small, yes. If I
was a full-term baby, however, then I was conceived whilst my
parents were undergoing a trial separation. Dad was touring Down
Under, Mum was researching here on Farnaby. Mind you, I only—I only
started looking into this recently, after Mum started going on
about the lover.”

“
Mum’s quite the goer, eh?” Again he
revealed his crumb-caked teeth, not in a smile but in a leer. “Tell
me why, then, you’re thinking the chap in the grave is this, this
piper. Tom. Tom the piper’s son, eh?”

“
Because of the chanter in the grave
next the body.”

“
What?”

“
A chanter. The part of the bagpipes
that makes the music. Rather like a recorder or
clarinet.”

He crushed the cellophane and threw it onto
the floor, where it shifted uneasily in a cold draft. “A chanter, a
white elephant, no matter. I told you not to mess me about.”

“
I’m not . . .”

“
There’s no chanter in the grave. No
flutes, no clarinets, no bleeding bagpipes. You stupid cow, what
sort of fool are you thinking I am?”

Jean’s brain skidded.
Now what?

Her face dashed of any expression, Maggie
stared up at Grinsell’s smirk. The room was so quiet the scratch of
Darling’s pen and a crunch of tires from outside sounded as loud as
a crescendo on Hector’s Great Highland pipes.

“
We saw the chanter, too,” said a
woman’s voice. Oh, Jean realized. It was hers.

Grinsell turned on her. “Who’s
we
, dearie?”

“
Alasdair, me, Tara. P.C. Crawford was
standing right there.” She jerked around to gaze accusingly at
Crawford, noting Darling’s raised brows on the way. Someone had
been looking over her shoulder as they peered into the grave—it
might have been Tara, not Crawford—but Tara had been hanging back
the whole time.

Crawford gazed into the middle distance.

Grinsell’s hiss pulled Jean back around. “You
don’t follow orders too well, do you Mssss Fairbairn. If I was your
husband . . .”

I’d either take poison or put some in
your crackers
, Jean thought.

“
Girls,” Grinsell concluded. “They
always hang together.”

Better than hanging
separately
. Not that they still hanged murderers in
the UK. They might still have been doing so when Rob the
Ranter—whether he had been Tom Seaton or someone else—had died and
been hidden away. She’d have to look it up.

“
Professor Lauder’s saying she saw a
chanter,” Crawford’s calm voice allowed, “but me, I’m not so sure
what I was seeing. It was dark, there was only the one torch, and
the light was jinking about.”

Maggie found her voice. “You’re saying it’s
not there now? Edwin, P.C. Crawford, he was watching the
place—someone must have taken it.”

“
Pull the other one.” A moist brown
blot worked its way into the corner of Grinsell’s mouth. “Rufus,
Darling”—His whine emphasized the comma—“have Crawford bring in
this Elaine, and Tara as well. Tara Hogg, is it? Bacon on the hoof,
eh? Must be a right looker. Let’s see if she fries up as nicely as
her mum and her granny.”

“
What?”

“
You never married. There’s a word for
women like you, isn’t there? More than one for you in particular.
Starting with ‘murderess.’ ”

Maggie rose out of her chair, fists clenched,
face twisted with rage.

“
Your mum, you, your daughter—three
generations of goers, eh? Fancy that. Lucky chaps, here on Farnaby.
No visiting knocking-shops in the city, then, with all the local
talent.”

“
You’ll show my daughter respect, you
nasty piece of work, or I’ll . . .”

“
You’ll what, dearie? What makes you
think you’ve got any say in the matter?”

Cursing, Maggie lunged. Jean grabbed her left
arm as Darling leapt forward and seized her right. “You’re just
giving him ammunition,” Jean hissed, and Darling muttered, “Steady
on. No good making things worse.”

“
Are you asking to be charged with
perverting the course of justice?” Grinsell demanded. He might as
well have said,
Make my day.

“
Justice? What do you and your ilk know
of justice?” Maggie wrenched herself away.

The door creaked slowly open. Clyde Eccleston
stood in the aperture, his cap pulled low, his collar pulled high,
so that his face seemed to be only stubble and a bright pair of
eyes. Had he been listening in? If so, he displayed not one iota of
embarrassment. “The car’s down the street a piece. Here’s the key.
Ignition. No need to be locking it up, not here on Farnaby.”

Darling stepped across to take the key.
“Thank you.”

Clyde stood at ease in the doorway. One beat,
two . . . Grinsell snapped, “Off you go, Grandad. Keep from
underfoot, eh?”

With a snort of resentment, Clyde vanished
back out the door.

Maggie spun around and started across the
room. “I’m going now, Inspector. You don’t have to warn me about
leaving town. I hope your pea brain has noticed this isn’t a town,
it’s an island. Like Alcatraz.”

“
You know the drill, don’t you now,
dearie? None better. Second time’s the charm.”

“
Get out of my way, Edwin.”

Receiving a nod from Grinsell, Crawford got
out of her way. “I’ll drive you home and collect Tara. I know
Elaine’s poorly . . .”

“
Naff off.” Maggie shot out into the
night.

Jean saw her chance. She achieved a personal
best making it through the door, moving so fast her momentum
carried her across the sidewalk and over the curb into the street.
The abrupt step down and ensuing stumble rattled her from stem to
stern, not that she had much left to rattle.

For a minute she simply stood there and
breathed deep, cleansing breaths of the cold air.

Chapter Ten

When she looked around, Maggie stood several
paces up the street, tapping the glowing screen of her phone.
Warning Tara about the ill-tempered detective, the way Tara had
warned her earlier about the intrusive journalists?