The Avalon Chanter (14 page)

“
Sure, but . . .”

“
Pen might could have overheard us
talking about the missing chanter.”

“
That made you sit up and take notice.
Why shouldn’t it have the same effect on her, especially since, as
you said yourself, she knew Tom?”

“
If she and James and the other man
were simply discussing the matter, why be doing it so late at
night?”

“
James didn’t get home until late. He
had to clean up the pub and do the accounts and whatever.” Alasdair
turned his best—or worst—cool, level, and skeptical gaze on her.
She shook her head. “I know, I know, everybody’s a suspect, no
matter how likeable. I get the message.”

He raised his hands.
I come in peace
.
Back off, already
.

“
Sorry,” Jean told him, just as Pen
herself bustled out of the dining room. “Good morning. Please, come
through.”

The table was lavishly equipped, from cream
pitchers to toast racks to dishes of jelly and marmalade. Before
Jean had time to comment to Alasdair how poor Pen looked pale and
deflated, the woman herself had returned with plates of steaming
eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes and baked beans.

James followed, a teapot in one hand and a
coffee pot in the other. “Good morning to you,” he said through his
moustache, which seemed to have wilted since last night.

Hugh walked in the door and sank with a groan
into a chair. “So this is morning, eh?”

James poured him a cup of tea. “Thanks for
playing so late last night. Didn’t think I’d ever get folk to pack
up and leave so I could close. Too much to be talking about.”

“
Thanks for keeping me properly
lubricated with the brown ale,” Hugh returned. “And that detective,
Grinsell. He was knocking back the whisky, kept glowering at me as
though I was off-key.”

“
Seems to be his usual expression,”
said James.

So, Jean thought, music did not have charms
to soothe the savage beast. Or was that breast? She’d have to look
it up.

Alasdair passed the toast and the subject.
“We’ve always reckoned you’d rather be playing than sleeping,
Hugh.”

“
Oh aye,” Hugh returned. “I’d rather be
teaching as well. No rest for the weary, with the concert the
night.”

Pen produced another plate of food, then
covered the teapot with a cozy cleverly knitted in the shape of a
cat. “Did you make that?” Jean asked.

“
That I did.”

“
Did you knit the shawl Elaine was
wearing last night? That’s a beautiful dusky purple color, sort of
a heather in the twilight shade.”

“
Yes, I worked that up as well. The
yarn’s spun from local sheep’s fleece and colored with vegetable
dyes, brilliant to work with.” Pen’s wistful smile bloomed and
faded. “Is everything all right for you?”

Jean, Alasdair, and Hugh all managed
affirmative mumbles around mouths of food, and waited until James
and Pen vanished—him to the kitchen, her down the back hall—before
leaning into the center of the table like conspirators in a secret
conclave. “What were the townsfolk talking about in the pub?” asked
Alasdair. “The discovery of the body and Grinsell’s rudeness, aye,
but what else?”

“
A Canadian chap named Thomas Seaton or
Tom was mentioned more than once. Seems he cut quite the dashing
figure in the early days of Gallowglass, then up and vanished after
rowing with Wat. Is he the dead fellow?”

Revived by several healthy swigs of coffee,
Jean detailed the state of the cold case.

“
Any idea why Tom—Thomas Seaton—and Wat
were arguing?” Alasdair used his knife to mash egg, sausage, and
beans onto the back of his fork, a technique Jean had yet to
perfect. She still ate like an American, her fork in her right
hand.

“
Some were saying Wat was jealous of
the lad because Elaine was fond of him. Others were saying Wat was
jealous of his musical skills—Wat never could work out how to play
the pipes, though he was a brilliant fiddler and guitarist, the
best going.” Hugh’s cheeks were rosier now that he’d had two cups
of tea. “The chanter’s gone missing, has it? I’ll have myself a wee
keek round the school. Could be it’s hidden in plain
sight.”

“
Grand idea,” Alasdair told him. “It’s
in too bad a shape to blend in, though it could be tucked away in a
corner, right enough.”

“
As for Wat and Elaine and this Tom,
I’m not at all surprised the way it all happened.”

“
There’s a classic triangle for you,”
said Jean. “Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot.”

Pen walked back by the door carrying a load
of sheets. That’s odd, Jean thought, Pen said yesterday Michael and
Rebecca’s room was all ready.

“
I first met Wat Lauder when I was
busking on the streets of Glasgow, hadn’t two pennies to rub
together. He heard me playing outside a club late one night, found
work for me, even offered me the next vacant slot that came up in
Gallowglass.”

“
He appreciated good music.”

“
And he believed in teaching the young
ones, which I was by way of being, once upon a time.” Hugh’s face
went lopsided in a wry smile, probably wondering where the gray
hair had come from.
That clock keeps right
on ticking . . .
“In the event, I soon had my own band
to look after and never did more than fill in with Gallowglass. But
I’ve known Wat and Elaine since the days they had the young
musicians in their home here on Farnaby, before they put Wat’s
royalties into building the school.”

Alasdair ever-so-gently directed the witness.
“You’re not surprised at the romantic triangle?”

“
Wat was a grand musician, but a tyrant
at home, especially in his cups—and he was more often than not in
his cups. Told Elaine his music came first, that she was biding
with him only so long as she did her duty by him—and that meant
setting aside any thought of having herself a career. He was her
career, he’d say. Not that unusual an opinion in the seventies,
mind you, but times they were a-changing.”

“
And thank goodness for that,” Jean
said.

“
He was gentler with Maggie, thought
she was by way of being the grandest lass ever spawned—leastways,
he did do long as she was Dad’s wee girl. Once she was into her
teens, though, it all fell apart. She and Wat spent years at sixes
and sevens, barely speaking. Ironic, that, if he’s not her father
at all.”

“
Where were you hearing that?” Alasdair
asked.

Hugh frowned. “Folk were making a meal of it
in the pub, but I’m not so sure who first said it.”

“
Crawford told Grinsell what Maggie
said at the grave. If it’s true, it might be common knowledge here
on Farnaby, at least among people old enough to have known Tom.”
With a conciliatory smile at Alasdair, Jean paralleled her fork and
her knife on the plate. “Ironic that Elaine would fall for another
musician, not, say, an accountant. Although I suppose the pool of
available men was pretty restricted here on Farnaby. So Wat was an
overbearing bully, huh? What a way for Maggie to grow up. No wonder
she never married.”

“
There’s more to it than that.”
Alasdair considered the bottom of his teacup, but apparently could
read nothing there.

“
Yeah, she was looking for love in all
the low places, or whatever the song is.”

“
Wat,” Alasdair said to Hugh. “You were
saying he was jealous, and had a row with Tom. Was he by way of
being a violent man? Could he have killed Tom if he found he was
Elaine’s lover?”

“
He had a temper, aye, and was not
above throwing things about, but whilst he’d bellow and threaten, I
never saw him skelping anyone. Elaine, now, she eventually started
giving as good as she got, called his bluff a time or two by
demanding trial separations and time away at Cambridge for revising
and researching and the like. She had her career after
all.”

“
She was no damsel in distress,
then.”

“
No, never mind Wat treating her as
one, even encouraging her admirers. They’d be sitting round the
kitchen table in the evenings, playing at Arthur and Guinevere with
the young folk as the knights paying her court. Wat was after
showing her off as a prized possession, offering her for looking
but not for touching.”

“
Very medieval,” Jean said. “Courtly
love, chivalry, hypocrisy, the whole thing.”

“
She gave us nicknames—I was Alan a
Dale, wandering minstrel. And aye, that’s properly from Robin Hood,
not Arthur, but it was all a bit of fun, not scholarly work.” Hugh
buttered another piece of toast. “We’d have lovely sessions, with
Elaine on the piano and the rest of us sawing away. Or we’d all go
picnicking at Merlin’s Tower, on the headland just there, calling
it ‘Castle Faralot.’ ”

“
Fara—” Alasdair started to ask, then
answered his own question. “Ah. Farnaby. Camelot.”

Jean didn’t need to point out another irony,
that the one person who knew the complete, unexpurgated story of
Thomas Seaton—and maybe the truth about the forty-year-old
murder—was now under a physiological evil spell. She was trapped as
irrevocably in her own mind as Merlin had been trapped by his young
lover and fellow enchanter in a cave or rock or tree, depending on
which legend you liked best. The historical Merlin or Myrddin, the
last druid, was another story.

The door creaked and they all jumped, not
that they were guilty of doing anything that everyone else on the
island wasn’t doing. Hildy pushed through, her pink nose checking
out the lingering odors of the meal.

Hugh held a crumb of bacon out to her and she
nipped it from his fingertip. “Is she not a fine wee moggie?”

“
You’re a pushover for cats, aren’t
you, Hugh?” Jean piled her napkin beside her plate and scooted her
chair back.

“
Oh no,” Hugh replied with a twinkle.
“Take ’em or leave ’em, that’s my motto.”

“
Right.” Alasdair stood up and looked
out into the garden, now innocent of last night’s dramatic—well,
perhaps not a rescue. More of a diversion. “Grinsell’s no doubt
planning on interviewing Pen. Soon. The body’s needing examining in
Berwick, and the weather . . .”

Jean peered around his shoulder to see a
thin, watery sunlight casting thin, watery shadows. “What about the
weather?”

“
We’re in for a proper sea fret.” James
walked into the room and plunked a tray onto the table.

“
A haar,” explained
Alasdair.

Hugh added, “Thick fog,” and dodged James,
who was clashing plates and cups onto the tray.

“
Are Clyde and Lance going to be able
to get the ferry across to the mainland and back?” Jean
asked.

“
Hard to say.” Clattering like Clyde’s
old pickup, James whisked his burden across the hall and into the
kitchen.

“
I don’t know whether I’m less enthused
about Michael and Rebecca not making it here today or more enthused
about a new wave of reporters not making it.”

“
I’d not like to be staging the concert
without Michael’s pipes,” Hugh said. “I’ve been singing his praises
to Hector and the piping students. We’ll see, eh?”

“
In the meantime,” said Alasdair,
“let’s be hoping Grinsell’s well on his way to Berwick before the
island’s shut down.”

And we’re marooned
here
,
Jean concluded. At least they
wouldn’t be marooned with a murderer. He—or she—was forty years
gone.

Chapter Fourteen

In the bedroom, Jean eyed the photo of
Merlin’s Tower—Faralot, okay—as she switched on her phone. A text
message from Rebecca appeared on the screen, sent not ten minutes
earlier.
We’ve crossed the border and are
on track to catch the first ferry. Can’t wait to hear the
latest.

“
Yeah,” Jean said aloud, “I can’t,
either.”

Alasdair considered the view out the back
window. “Were the nuns chanting last night as well, or was I
dreaming that?”

“
Yes, they were. I was actually
grateful for my paranormal allergy.”

“
Right before I awoke I was dreaming
about driving that one-track road out to Ardnamurchan Lighthouse
when the car slipped into a rut and I sat there birling the
wheels.”

“
Funny, I dreamed something similar,
the Gallowglass van going up an icy street. Spinning their wheels
would have been better than slipping off the road and crashing into
a gully.”

“
I cannot quite see past Pen’s garden
shed, but there looks to be a car in the priory car park. Maybe the
same one that was birling its tires there last night, maybe
another.”

Jean started toward the window, then did a
smart aboutface when the phone in her hand warbled with “Hail to
the Chief.” Speaking of the latest . . . “Good morning,
Miranda.”

“
Good morning to you, Jean. How are you
getting on? Have you identified the mysterious body?” Miranda’s
smoky tones were annotated by the chime of fine bone china. She no
doubt sat in her tastefully appointed boudoir sipping
custom-blended tea and nibbling on croissants that had been flown
over from France in velvet-lined boxes.

“
Well, maybe. So far the police haven’t
even gotten it to Berwick, though. As for how I personally am
getting on, I’m asking questions. What else is new?”