The Avalon Chanter (17 page)

Up close, the mossy walls and empty
arrow-slits of Merlin’s Tower seemed romantic rather than
forbidding, the stuff of poetry and make-believe, if with a Gothic
edge. It would make a great site for a picnic, especially if the
picnickers packed more mood elevators than just musical
instruments.

Pen said Elaine had poked around the area a
bit, supplementing her literary work with some amateur archaeology.
It looked as though Maggie, a professional archaeologist, had
followed her mother’s trail here, too. An exploratory trench cut
the ground up to the foundations of the wall, its side caved in
like those of the trenches in the priory cloister.

Two black birds croaked from the broken
tower. Corbies, the hooded crows of many a Borders ballad. The
black bird pacing menacingly across the pasture was a raven, also a
bird of myth and legend, a messenger between this world and the
next. A carrion-eater.

Jean had second thoughts about that
picnic.

Breathing hard, the quartet pushed one by one
through the gate and gathered outside the break in the wall that
had once been the entrance to the fort. The narrow courtyard
between the wall and the keep was clumped with prickly plants,
tumbled stones, and lichen-crusted roof slates. Another trench
angled across it not far from the black rectangle of the tower
door, half exposed by a blotch of hazy sunlight, half concealed by
diluted shadow.

A breath of chill wind dispelled the
courtyard’s miasma of damp and dung. A bit of sparkly cellophane
wafted across the grass. Darling swooped down on it. “What the
heck?” Hector asked.

“
He was here,” said
Alasdair.

Darling stabbed at his phone. Faintly, like
an eerie wail in the corners of the courtyard, a ring tone
sounded.

The color drained from Darling’s face. He
squared his shoulders. He stepped across the threshold and paced to
the slumping sides of the trench. He looked down.

The wind died. A sheep baaed. A crow
cawed.

Darling’s voice was barely audible. “He’s
here now.”

Chapter Sixteen

Jean took two quick steps. She glimpsed the
stark white face smeared with red and brown, the hands lying limp,
pale starfish. Her heart lurched, then free-fell deep into her
abdomen. A wave of sausage-tinged acid splashed into her
throat.

Pushing past her, Hector slid rather
than climbed down into the black gash of the trench. He bent over,
exposing the yellow back of his sweatshirt. It was printed with the
words:
New Mexico, Land of
Enchantment.

Jean choked down not only acid but also
an insane urge to laugh. Alasdair pulled her back, his hands firm
on her arms—
steady on
. His
face would have made an iceberg seem warm. “Have a care,” he said
to Hector. “Those plants alongside the ditch, they’re stinging
nettles.”

Darling dropped onto rather than sat down on
a large stone and peered numbly at his phone.

“
Crawford?” hinted Alasdair. “Your team
from the boat?”

“
Ah.” Darling thumbed the screen and
started muttering directions.

After a brief inspection of—not the body, the
man, George Grinsell—Hector said, “He’s got a pulse. Not much of
one, though. He’s shocky. He must have fallen into the hole in the
dark and hit his head. Looks like a bad concussion.”

With a squeeze of Jean’s forearm, Alasdair
released her and picked his way to the trench. “Hit his head on
what? There are no more than a few cobblestones in the mud at the
bottom.”

“
No, sir.” Darling’s mutter increased
in volume. “We’ve got folk helping out, yes sir.”

Alasdair sent a searching gaze around the
courtyard. “He came up here of his own free will. Leastways, he was
still eating his biscuits.”

“
So someone hit him,” stated Hector.
“Bummer. And that’s one heck of a rash on the side of his
face.”

The nettles beside the trench were
broken—someone had stepped on them. Maybe fallen on them. Their
wiry stalks and bristly leaves made them look like hostile basil.
Any other time, Jean would have thought the plant suited the man.
Now she remembered every derogatory remark she’d made about him.
Maybe he’d deserved those. Had he deserved this? Who had the right
to decide?

Into her mind came the wise words of
Tolkien’s Gandalf, a literary descendant of Merlin. Some who lived
deserved death, and some who were dead deserved life, and mortals
should not be so eager to pass judgment.

“
Chief Inspector Cameron.” Darling held
out his phone. “It’s Chief Inspector Webber in
Berwick-upon-Tweed.”

“
Eh?” asked Alasdair.

“
You’re the ranking officer here, sir.
In a way.”

His features disappearing beneath yet another
arctic layer, Alasdair took the phone. “Cameron here. Retired,
actually. Northern Constabulary, Inverness. Protect and Survive,
aye, that’s me.” He stepped out of the courtyard and inspected the
horizon. The clouds were oozing higher, their upper edges
feathering into the hazy bowl of sky. “Aye, there’s time for a
medical team, if you’re moving right-smartish.”

Hector stood up. “Yeah. Fast would be good.”
Mud blotted several of the sun-rays on the front of his sweatshirt
like storm clouds blotting the sun—not, Jean thought, following
Alasdair’s gaze, that the issue was a gathering storm but gathering
murk. Low visibility. Blundering about in a fog.

What else was new?

“
Well now,” said Alasdair into the
phone. “Sergeant Darling’s here, he’s quite capable.”

That was diplomatic. Poor Darling was so
pale, Jean wondered if he was shocky, too. His expression was that
of a child who’d asked Santa Claus for a turtle and ended up with a
T. Rex.

Shouts sounded from down the hill. Crawford
scrambled up the path carrying a couple of blankets. The other
policemen and several villagers clustered at his heels. Niamh, her
hair pulled back in an “open for business” bun, clutched a bag
marked by a red cross.

“
I knocked up Niamh here,” Crawford
announced. “You’re needing a medic.”

Hector’s black eyebrows shot up—the first
half of Crawford’s sentence was a phrase guaranteed to take an
American aback. But all he said was, “I’m a medic. I need
supplies.”

“
Here.” Without hesitation, Niamh gave
Hector the medical kit and clambered into the trench. Crawford
passed down the blankets.

Alasdair handed Darling his phone. “Webber’s
sending a helicopter. He’s saying the boat needs launching as soon
as may be. He’s asking you to bide here, working with me, sorting
the situation, till the weather clears and he can be sending
another D.I.”

“
Yes, sir.” Darling pulled himself
first to his feet, then to attention. He squeezed out the words, “A
perimeter. We’re wanting a perimeter.”

Crawford assumed parade-rest in the
entranceway.

“
Look at this,” said Hector.

Alasdair looked, face grim. Darling looked,
face ashen. “Ah,” Alasdair said, and to one of the crime-scene
guys, “Bag that. The rest of you, check over the scene inside the
wall here.”

A fitful breeze lifted Jean’s hair and fanned
her cheeks. This time the acid that bubbled into her throat was
flavored with grilled tomato.

Alasdair looked around at the array of faces.
He said, his voice crisp, “Grinsell was thumped on the head with
what looks to be an item with a sharp, curving edge.”

“
How can you tell?” asked a man about
James’s age.

“
There’s a bit of metal broken off in
the wound,” Alasdair answered. “Who owns the sheep?”

Another man, an even more grizzled edition of
Clyde, raised a hand. “ ’Tis my nephew’s hobby flock. You’d like
them moved away, would you now?”

“
Aye, if it’s not too much
trouble.”

“
Ah, no trouble, man. They’re
sheep.”

“
Thank you. The rest of you, have a
good look round the grassy area. Any villain worth the name will
likely have thrown the weapon over the cliff, but . . .”

“
A torch,” croaked Darling. He stopped,
cleared his throat, tried again. “The light seen by Mr. Cruz, here,
last night. Had to be a torch. If the inspector came up here at
dawn and the chap with the torch was still here—if he hit the
inspector with his torch, he’d keep it, wouldn’t he? Needing the
light and all.”

“
Well done. That’s what that metal bit
is, the rim surrounding the lens of the torch.” Alasdair moderated
his instructions. “If we’re not finding the weapon, then could be
there’ll be something else. Footprints, a scrap of cloth, a bit of
paper.”

“
The light I saw?” asked Hector from
the trench. “Aw, geez—I came here to play my pipes, not get
involved in an assault and battery or whatever you people call
it.”

Niamh muttered something about the
nettle-rash, drawing his attention back to the patient.

The volunteer sheep wrangler strolled forward
waving his arms and making clucking noises. The sheep, already
shifting their weight skittishly, started to move. A woman wearing
a bright scarf around her head, a la the Queen on her days off,
walked a hundred yards or so along the surrounding fence and heaved
open a gate into the next field.

And then, Jean thought, there’s me. A bump on
a log.

Her arms crossed protectively, she trudged
across the turf—no, no clues, just tiny embedded flowers and small
black sheep-pellets—to a respectable distance from the cliff edge.
She might be dubious about enclosed spaces and the dark, but height
held no fears for her. She liked looking out over the world and
breathing the free air.

She tried taking several breaths of that
fresh, free air, but her chest wouldn’t expand. The roil in her
stomach eased, though.

Cautiously, Jean
listened
. But she sensed nothing paranormal.
People had lived here, and probably died here, and yet the site
remained indifferent, never mind the corbies and the ravens and
Grinsell’s blood leaking out onto the ancient cobblestones beneath
the mud.

She didn’t know how long she stood, spaced
out—or perhaps spaced in, slowing the cyclic hum of her own mind.
At last she blinked, and this time managed a deep breath.

Far below, the ferry left the harbor and
angled toward the mainland, its wake creasing the water. Clyde and
Lance obviously wanted to get in at least one trip before the fog
closed in. Supplies for the shops and the pub. The Campbell-Reids.
Reporters.

Reporters.
Oh,
crap
. An attack on a police officer would generate a
lot more headlines than a forty-year-old corpse, even if that
corpse had been found in the wrong grave.

Someone walked up beside her. Alasdair,
leaving Darling and Crawford to direct the searchers. “So you’ve
been drafted to be detective-in-residence?” she asked, without
adding anything about turtles and T. Rexes. It wasn’t as though
he’d wanted take over the case.

“
Aye. There’s no standing on ceremony
just now.” He faced into the breeze, the sea breeze Darling had
warned them about, and closed his eyes, listening less for ghosts
than for inspiration, she estimated, and with no better results.
When he opened them again, they reflected the gray-tinted blue of
sea and sky.

“
Is Grinsell going to be all
right?”

“
He was thumped more than once. I’m
guessing his assailant kept hitting him till he was properly laid
out, then rolled him into the trench.”

He hadn’t answered the question. Not in so
many words. “Rolled him into the trench thinking he was dead? Or
intending for him to die?”

“
Seems like wasted effort otherwise.
Hardly worth the risk.”

“
I don’t guess it’s a
robbery.”

“
Not a bit of it—he’s still got his
wallet, his watch, and his phone.”

“
Maybe someone only wanted to injure
him, so he’d go away and leave”—she almost said “Maggie”—“leave
everyone alone.”

“
It’s possible, aye. But who’s so
foolish as to think any sort of attack on a policeman would be
easing the pressure on Farnaby?”

“
Good question. Who. As in, who did
it?”

“
And how was Grinsell lured up here,
come to that? Good thing he’s got a thick skull. In the literal
sense, mind you.”

“
I mind, yes. I feel bad about all the
ugly things I said about him.”

“
I’m the one speaking of his head on a
pike. I’m the one criticizing his handling of the case, even going
behind his back.”

“
When I said what goes around, comes
around, I didn’t mean—well, the
why
someone bashed the heck out of him is pretty obvious, isn’t
it? You said yourself, he set everyone in the village against
him.”

“
To the extent of provoking someone to
murder him?”

Jean could only shake her head. “At least
you’ve got a finite pool of suspects here. It’s a locked-island
mystery.”

“
Is it then?” Alasdair’s thin smile
skewed with sardonic humor. “The place is not sealed off by a force
field.”

“
Bloodstains,” someone called inside
the wall. Someone else ordered, “Bag this.”

Jean and Alasdair rotated to see Darling in
the entranceway turning from side to side like a conductor in front
of an orchestra, trying to direct activity both inside and out. “Is
he going to be able to handle it, with or without your help?” she
asked.