The Avalon Chanter (28 page)

The younger man’s eyes occasionally
moved from Alasdair’s face to Jean’s, as though pleading,
Please tell me he’s joking.
All Jean
could do was smile wanly and unbutton her cardigan in the
warmth.

At last Darling stuffed the last portion of a
scone into his mouth, washed it down with a swig from his cup, and
said thickly, “I’ll bring Niamh in to the interview room, shall I?
And P.C. Crawford wants questioning as well. Not at the same
time.”

She was no longer “Miss McCarthy,” Jean
noted. Another look around ascertained Niamh wasn’t in the room,
either, even though the three generations of Lauder women were. The
king was gone, but the queens lived on.

Alasdair told Darling, “Carry on.”

“
Yes, sir.” Collecting his reflective
jacket from the coat corner, Darling went off with his phone raised
in front of his face, no doubt trying to get hold of Crawford. Who
could have walked right by without Darling seeing him, Jean thought
with a smile. Nothing said oblivious like someone consulting his
auxiliary brain.

“
Oh, and . . .” Alasdair followed
Darling from the room.

In the doorway they brushed by the two
reporters, who were having a serious discussion with Clyde. “. . .
gluten-free bakery products?” vinyl-jacket was asking, in a
helium-fueled screech that made Tara’s voice seem soft and
sweet.

“
Gluten? What’s that when it’s at
home?” Clyde returned.

Bad-haircut peered around the room and
announced, “There’s no proper drinks here.” He and his
compadre
retreated into the
hall.

Jean followed. “Hello again. I guess you had
your fill of Farnaby scones on Friday?”

Bad-haircut stared.

“
We were chatting at the ferry slip
late yesterday afternoon,” Jean reminded him. “You told me about
Dr. Lauder’s change in plans and her lecture in the church with tea
and scones.”

“
Oh! Yes, yes, the ferry slip on the
mainland.” His sagging jowls tightened in an attempt at a smile. He
started to extend his hand, then withdrew it and used it to scratch
his arm instead. “Bill Parkinson,
Daily
Dish
. Had to fight a moggie for my bacon sandwich
outside the pub. Nothing causes an allergy like a cat.”

Ah, this was Lance’s reporter fellow at
the pub, back for another round on Farnaby. He worked for the
tabloid whose website had already tried and condemned Maggie. “Jean
Fairbairn,
Great
Scot
,
” she said, hoping her smile
concealed the fact that she was just as happy not shaking hands.
What if poor Hildy had broken out in hives at coming into contact
with
him
?

Vinyl-jacket noted the man’s
affiliation and back-story with a supercilious smirk. “This is your
second journey here in two days, is it? Oh, bad luck.” She leaned
conspiratorially toward Jean, engulfing her with a rich perfume
that hinted more of sewer gas than flowers. “Rosalie Banks.
News of the North
. Fog makes for
strange bedfellows, I’m afraid. I had no intention of staying here
this long. I’ve booked a chap with a boat, effective the moment
this filthy weather clears. That blond lad with the silly little
drum, wasted out here, could have himself a job at a club in the
city—or working extortion rackets, considering what he’s charging
for the boat.”

Parkinson’s gaze was that of a dead fish.
Jean felt her polite smile grow stiff.

“
Soon as I get back to Manchester I’m
having a word in the guv’nor’s ear—I told him it was no good
chasing after a moldy old body—when we saw the helicopter from the
ferry I hoped there was something more doing on Farnaby than . . .”
Rosalie’s downward gesture both took in the scene and dismissed
it.

“
Lucky for you D.I. Grinsell was
attacked, then,” Jean murmured, trying not to visualize his stark,
pale face smeared with blood. “Makes your trip
worthwhile.”

“
That’s as may be,” said Rosalie. “I’m
away to the pub—the others are already there—if I’d gone along I’d
be on my second whisky by now, but no, I thought something for the
Arts page. Dead loss, though. I hope
you
were happy with Turnip-ville amateur night,
Bill.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and clicked off
down the hall in her high-heeled boots, Barbie playing
Nazi.

Jean coughed, swapping the odor of the
perfume for that of baked goods, damp wool sweaters, and a whiff of
sour sweat she suspected came from Parkinson.

“
I met up with her on the ferry,” he
explained. “I advised attending the concert. Farnaby’s famous for
its music, isn’t it?”

“
Yes. The Lauders have lived here a
long time. Do you know Elaine? Or maybe I should ask, did you know
her when she was Elaine?”

Through the doorway, Parkinson considered the
still tall if emaciated figure cruising down the table of edibles.
Maggie stopped her as she tried to insert one of Pen’s pies into
the pocket of her sweater. Hugh stepped up, tucked Elaine’s arm
beneath his own, and, exuding affability, launched into what was no
doubt a story about Ye Olden Days. “Alan a Dale!” Elaine exclaimed,
remembering his nickname, and stood watching him speak as though
expecting a prize to fall from his lips.

Elaine the scholar, Jean thought. Elaine the
mother. Elaine the elderly. She caught Maggie’s eye as she adjusted
Elaine’s collar and sent her what she hoped was a sympathetic but
not pitying smile. Instead of acknowledging Jean’s smile, though,
Maggie’s face puckered into the part frown, part stare of someone
not quite able to put her finger on a memory.

Something close to disgust squirmed across
Parkinson’s sagging features and died away, replaced with a studied
expressionlessness.

Well, well, well.
Jean asked, “Or do you know Maggie? When we met at the ferry
slip you called her ‘Loony Lauder.’ ”

“
They’re both loony, aren’t they? I
don’t have the pleasure—ha!—of knowing either of them, thank you
just the same. I covered Maggie’s trial back in the nineties, she
all prim and proper in the dock, and her mum playing the
intellectual, too good for the likes of us reporters.”

Funny about that.
Jean voiced not her thought, but another question. “You know
the policeman who was attacked here, then.”

“
I know of him. Had the guts to stand
up and tell the truth, that the trial was rubbish from start to
finish.”

“
Is that why you came out here to
Farnaby yesterday, to see how Maggie was getting along after all
these years? Or was her archaeological discovery really all that
fascinating to your editor?”

Parkinson’s washed-out eyes, hard as twin
marbles, focused on Jean’s. “None of your business, is it,
luv?”

“
No,” she conceded. “It isn’t.”
Alasdair strolled back up the hallway and to her side. Instead of
introducing him to Parkinson—no need to sic them on each other—she
took his arm and steered him back into the room, toward the corner
where Rebecca and Michael were chatting with Hector. From the
corner of her eye she saw Parkinson follow Ms.
News of the North
down the corridor and out the
front door.

“
Who’s that chap?” Alasdair asked. “A
reporter?”

“
Yep.
The Daily
Dish
. Actually covered Maggie’s trial way back when.
He’d get along really well with Grinsell. A shame they missed
meeting each other.”

“
Ah,” said Alasdair.

Jean took off her cardigan and draped it over
her arm, wondering why, despite the cold climate, British rooms
tended toward stuffy. And she answered herself, the Brits saw the
enclosing warmth as comfort, whereas she’d been born and raised in
a hot climate where a breeze was not a draft to be avoided but a
nirvana to be gained.

Hugh strolled toward Jean and Alasdair, his
face polished by music and perhaps a wee dram behind the
scenes.

“
Great concert,” Jean told
him.

“
Thank you kindly,” he replied. “I’d
have phoned you earlier, but folk coming in were telling me about
the inspector being attacked and all. Dreadful, just
dreadful.”

“
That it is.” Alasdair’s voice-of-doom
said it all.

“
I was after telling you that I’ve had
a look round the school and the only chanters I’ve found are new
ones. Or newer than the one that’s gone missing from the grave. But
in this instance I was thinking no news was bad news, so I never
rang after all.”

“
Thanks for looking anyway,” Jean told
him, and waved him back to the food.

With a smile at Linda, still sacked out in
her stroller, Hector headed for a refill. Michael traded his cup to
Rebecca for her phone, which he slanted toward Jean. “The
inscription in the chapel.”

Wrenching her mind around to the new topic,
Jean said, “Oh! Yes, Rebecca made some photos right before we
left.”

“
This one here’s the best. Though I’m
not seeing any horsemen.” A sweep of Michael’s thumb brought up
what looked like a moonscape, craters, rills, and all.

Jean took the phone and peered at it. Rebecca
had angled her tiny flash so that it illuminated the inscription
from the side. The raking light defined each bump and crack as
sharply as they were ever going to be without computer
enhancement—Tara had said something about Maggie trying to
computer-enhance the inscription. “What do you think?”

Michael’s forefinger indicated the top
of the stone. “I’m thinking this bit here is
hic jacet
.”

“ ‘
Here lies’. That’s no surprise. But
the name of whoever is lying there is illegible. How about
Elaine’s
uxor draconis
, ‘wife
of the dragon’? Can you see that, too?”

Jean handed the phone to Alasdair, who turned
it this way and that, squinting. “Was Guinevere not the
daughter-in-law of the dragon?” he asked, and gave Rebecca her
phone. “Pendragon was Arthur’s father, aye?”

“
Aye,” said Michael. “And you could be
making a case for the Viking raiders as dragons, since they carved
dragons on their ships, but they’re not known for inscriptions in
Latin. This bit here is
uxor
,
I reckon, but I’m seeing it as ‘
uxor
domini
.’ ”

“
Wife of the lord,” Jean translated.
“Meaning the lord of the manor?”

“
Usually. But here it might could be
meaning . . .”

“
. . . the bride of Christ,” Jean and
Rebecca said in one voice. Rebecca added, “Snap!”

“
It’s a convent,” Jean said. “Nuns are
considered to be brides of Christ, not a metaphor you want to
follow too far. As yet no one’s found anything that keeps the grave
from being Mother Hilda’s. Maggie even admits it’s probably
hers.”

Linda stirred and whimpered and Michael
squatted down to check on her—ever mindful to drape his kilt
modestly as he did so. “She’s digging again the morn, aye? The
area’s been populated almost two millennia. There’s bound to be
bits and pieces lost in the soil.”

Maggie had made a heavy investment in the
identity of the burial, not only wanting to vindicate Elaine’s
work, but also to justify herself and her mother to Wat. Or his
shade, which, thank goodness, didn’t seem to be hanging around. As
investments went, she might be looking at a spell in debtor’s
prison. Or not. Jean placed her hopes on that teensy glint in the
muck at the bottom of the grave. “Maybe she’ll turn up a medieval
brooch or something else cool. And photogenic.”

“
Anything is possible,” said Rebecca,
without adding,
Little is
probable
.

Alasdair made a quick turn and headed back to
the door. Ah—Sergeant Darling had returned with Crawford, who got a
free pass from Clyde as he entered the room. That was fast. Not
that Crawford was either trying to escape the island or hide on it.
For one thing, he’d reinstalled his reflective jacket, which made
him a sitting duck.

As soon as the fog cleared, Jean thought—not
as soon as the sun came out, because it was pushing eight p.m. and
the sun had long headed west—but as soon as you could see your
neighbor’s hand in front of your face, a lot of people would be
staging escapes.

Well, no, the tide should have gone out
again, invisibly, meaning the ferry was docked for the night, and
even a small boat wouldn’t be able to reach the mainland past the
mud flats next to Lindisfarne.

That’s right. As Alasdair had pointed out on
the ferry yesterday, small boats could make it to ports in the
north or the south, and probably even to the east side of
Lindisfarne, independent of the tides. Jean visualized Lance and
Rosalie leading a flotilla across to Bamburgh. She was tempted to
rush back to the Angle’s Rest, pack her suitcase, and join in the
exodus.

But no. This was Alasdair’s case now, and
she’d dug herself in by his side.

Chapter Twenty-six

Alasdair guided his fellow law-enforcers over
to Maggie. Jean gestured and shrugged, and with understanding grins
the Campbell-Reids waved her on, so that she arrived at Alasdair’s
side as he asked, “Have you seen Niamh?”

“
Niamh?” repeated Elaine. “The girl
with the—squeeze music thing—in the pub in—that city, the big one?
Ask Wat—it’s time he added a woman to Gallowglass.”