The Avalon Chanter (32 page)

Crawford opened his mouth, then shut it
again.

“
Aye, I’m recognizing that this is
better a job for the daylight. I’d be obliged if you’d make a start
here in the village, just the same.”

Touching his finger to his cap, Crawford
trudged away toward the pub, it being reasonable to assume Lance
was there. Everyone was there. Jean even saw a black-and-white
sheep dog come trotting along the sidewalk and sit down outside,
tail wagging.

Alasdair turned back to the breakwater,
brows knit. Darling followed his gaze. “Setting aside Niamh’s
location for the moment, setting aside our suspicions of her, come
to that . . .” Jean caught a gleam from the corner of his
eye—
see me, I’m being
impartial
. “What if the murderer’s an outsider who
came to Farnaby via a small boat from Lindisfarne or the mainland?
Last night was a misty one, good for concealment. Save for Cruz
seeing the light.”

“
I wish we’d see the light,” Jean
murmured, and, louder, “Someone coming in from outside would have
to be pretty motivated to row or paddle or swim or whatever over
here after dark.”

“
Exactly.” That’s why Alasdair had been
eyeing the boat leaving earlier, telling himself the sea ran both
ways and the list of suspects was much larger than he was
comfortable with. “An inventory of the island’s boats should be
turning up any extras as well as any missing.”

Jean felt somewhat mollified that he at least
considered someone besides Niamh as the killer.

“
Darling,” said Alasdair, “get onto the
authorities on Lindisfarne—well, I’m thinking Crawford might well
be the authorities there as well as here—any road, find yourself
someone there and ask them to have a look round, see if any small
watercraft have gone missing. And whilst doing that, phone Berwick
and tell them we might have an ID for the body. Athelstan
Crawford.”

“
Yes, sir.” Darling walked over to the
circle of golden light beneath the street lamp and waved his
fingertips over his phone like a magician doing
hocus-pocus.

And then there were two. Jean stepped up
beside Alasdair, assuming the helpmeet’s rather than the
subordinate’s position. “Go ahead, say it.”

“
All right, then. You’re defending
Niamh the way you were defending Maggie, even though with her
you’ve got nothing other than gender in common.”

“
I don’t have to have anything in
common with someone in order to be—empathetic is the word, I guess.
‘Empathic’ sounds like something out of
Star Trek
.”

“
If Niamh did not kill Grinsell—and the
attacker meant to kill, I’ve got no doubt—then who did do
it?”

“
You haven’t let Maggie off the hook
yet.”

“
No, I’ve not.”

“
What about Crawford? He stayed the
night here even though Darling told him to go home.”

“
Aye, he did that.”

“
But if you—if we—can’t see any motive
for Lance, we can’t see any for Crawford, either. He’s not
implicated in the Grinsell case. He’s not implicated in the
seventy-one case, he’s only concerned with it.”

“
Even so, I should be recommending
Webber relieve him of duty, but it’s too late now. Besides, he’s
the only constable I’ve got.”

“
Besides, we—you—no one’s . . .” Dang
it, she hated tiptoeing around with pronouns. “. . . settled once
and for all that it’s Athelstan’s body. I mean, that’s the simplest
explanation even though the details are still fuzzy. It’s not
presumption of innocence, it’s presumption of identity.”

“
Right,” Alasdair said.

Inside the pub, a set of bagpipes squawked,
droned, and then burst out with a cover of “Bad Moon Rising.” That
was Hector rather than Michael, who’d been on a quest for
intoxicating beverages rather than intoxicating music. She wondered
if Hector knew “In a Gadda da Vida,” too. Funny how few rock ’n
roll bands ever envisioned adding bagpipes to their line-ups, and
yet bagpipes rocked and rolled with the best.

The windows of the pub seemed to be expanding
and contracting to the beat of the music. The door opened, spilling
an aroma of sausages and fried potatoes as well as several more
people out onto the street. Light glittered from their drinking
glasses. The dog whined and slunk away, his tail between his legs.
Beneath the lamppost, Darling sketched a couple of dance steps,
then, with a glance at Alasdair, froze into an authoritative
stance.

Alasdair chuckled beneath his breath, then
sobered as he assessed the patrons of the pub. The light in his
eyes was as much friction from the fine grinding of his internal
thought, Jean estimated, as external reflection. “James Fleming
might could make an inventory of the folk on the island.”

“
Pen certainly could, but I bet she’s
resting. And considering her options. Airing your own dirty linen’s
bad enough. Airing that of a good friend is worse.”

“
Wat and Elaine, you’re
meaning?”

“
Yep.”

Hector segued into a more traditional
hornpipe. Jean forced her own feet to stay flat on the rough
cement. Still, she couldn’t keep her hips from swaying in the waves
of music. “What you mean is that you’d like to know who belongs
here, who’s visiting, who may have sneaked in, and where every last
soul was this morning when Grinsell went down.”

“
A tall order, I’m afraid. Even on a
wee island.”

“
It might be easier to mobilize the
people we can trust—Michael, Hugh, Hector, Darling—and ransack the
place until we find Niamh. But then . . .” Jean abruptly stopped
swaying. “. . . we’re assuming Niamh’s somewhere keeping her head
down voluntarily. Because, for whatever reason, she doesn’t want to
talk to us. To you. To the cops. But you know, Alasdair, it’s not
all about us.”

“
Eh?”

“
What if she’s hiding because she
thinks she’s in danger from the murderer. Maybe she saw something
or someone before the fog came in. Or even while it was
in.”

“
Then why’s she not coming to us?
Because she’s protecting someone? She’s been in a grand position to
catch Maggie at . . .”

“
I’m not trying to throw suspicion back
on Maggie!” Jean made a frustrated gesture.

Alasdair chilled a few degrees. “What if
Niamh and Maggie have been working together? Have you been thinking
of that?”

“
Sure. No. I don’t know. I mean, yeah,
but Niamh’s been in a great position the last day or so to see
Hugh, too, and the other musicians in the concert. And the
people
at
the
concert.”

“
She was having herself a good stare at
Maggie whilst she was singing.”

Yes. Yes she was.

Dammit,
Jean
thought, she didn’t want Maggie to be guilty this time around. She
wanted her to have learned from history and not be doomed to repeat
it.

Chapter Thirt
y

Jean thought back not to the concert
but to all the conversations afterward.
Ah,
yes.
“I thought Niamh stared at Maggie, too, but don’t
you remember, when Hugh said something about it she, Maggie, said
no, Niamh looked past her. Maybe at Lance. He was on that side of
the room.”

“
Aye, but . . .” The crease between
Alasdair’s eyebrows deepened so far Jean could have parachuted into
it. “He was in the back row, on the far end. He had to get himself
up to the stage for his bit with the bodhran without climbing over
anyone.”

“
Then who was—oh!”

If he’d been a cat, his whiskers would have
perked up. “What’s ‘oh’?”

“
Those two reporters were sitting right
behind Maggie. Rosalie-something from
News
of the North
, bored out of her skull, and Bill
Parkinson from
The Daily Dish
.
Who seemed really interested. No surprise—Niamh’s a very pretty
girl, no matter he’s twice her age.”

“
The woman wearing the shrink-wrapped
jacket? And the chap you were chatting with in the
hall?”

“
Yeah. They came out together on the
ferry today. He was out here yesterday, too—he’s the guy on the
ferry slip who told me Maggie had changed her plans about opening
the grave.”

Alasdair stretched out the crease by
elevating an eyebrow. “The chap covering her trial, you were
saying?”

“
That’s him. He thought it was rubbish,
same as Grinsell.” Jean tried to visualize the scene: Niamh’s
saw-toothed and yet melodious voice, Parkinson leaning forward as
though meeting her eye—she had to have been looking either at him
or the couple behind him, who, so far as Jean’s visualization was
accurate, were islanders. “The people behind Rosalie—Banks, Rosalie
Banks—and Parkinson wouldn’t have had anything to do with Maggie’s
trial. But he . . . You know, Maggie saw me talking to him and she
frowned as if he looked familiar but she couldn’t quite place
him.”

Alasdair’s slightly warmer blue gaze fixed on
her face. “This is all as may be, but why was Niamh staring at him?
She had nothing doing with Maggie’s trial. She was an infant
then.”

Like Crawford was when his father died, Jean
thought, and focused. One thing at a time.

“
Was Parkinson away on Clyde’s boat
just now?” Alasdair asked.

“
I didn’t see him, but I couldn’t see
everyone. There’s a chance he’s still here. He said he was going to
the pub. Maybe he got to drinking and missed the boat.”

“
It’s worth having a look.” Alasdair
took off across the street without bothering to check for traffic,
but then, the only cars in sight were parked and dark. “Darling!
Come along!”

Darling said something into his phone, thrust
it into his pocket, and came along. “Tara says Niamh’s still not
returned to Gow House,” he announced. “Maggie’s there, though, with
her mum, who’s right agitated for some reason.”

Poor soul
, Jean
concluded, repeating Pen’s words.

Inside the pub, the bagpipes stopped with a
flourish and cheers and applause rattled the windows. The door
opened and Michael stepped out, balancing two glasses of gleaming
amber liquid on a round tray, maybe even the same tray Alasdair had
used last night. “Making my way to the bar took quite a while,” he
said.

“
Were you by any chance getting a good
look at the other folk inside?” asked Alasdair.

“
The place cleared out a bit when
Hector blew up his pipes, but I cannot say—”

Jean interrupted. “You remember the pudgy guy
with the odd-looking hair I was talking to in the door of the food
room? During the concert he sat right behind Maggie, Tara, and
Elaine, next to a woman in a red vinyl jacket.”

“
Oh aye. Him. One of the reporters, was
he?”

“
Aye. Name’s Bill Parkinson. Have you
seen him in the pub?” asked Alasdair.

“
No, not unless he’s set himself up in
the gents.”

Alasdair turned to Darling. “Contact the
constable in Seahouses. I’m thinking there’s one in Seahouses.”

“
There is, yes.” Darling reached into
his pocket.

“
Have him meet Clyde’s boat and detain
Rosalie Banks, the woman in the vinyl jacket, and Bill Parkinson.
They’ll cry harassment, I have no doubt, but it’ll be harder on us
than on them.”

“
They’re traveling together?” Darling
asked.

“
By accident,” said Jean. “Bill said
they met on the ferry earlier today.”

“
Did he now?” Michael stepped aside for
a couple of grizzled islanders, putting his body between them and
his tray. “I never laid eyes on the man before the concert. He was
not on the ferry. Rebecca and I were walking Linda to and fro,
hoping she’d not feel seasick, and we excused ourselves to everyone
on board twice over. I mind vinyl-jacket-and-boots woman, right
enough, but not Parkinson.”

Alasdair drew himself up. Jean could almost
see his hair standing on end like antennae. “He lied, did he? Why?
What does it matter how he arrived here?”

“
Eh?” Darling asked faintly.

“
Why was Niamh staring at him?”
Alasdair went on. “He’s hardly got a handsome face. She must have
recognized him from somewhere. They’ve both lived in Newcastle,
have they?”

From the pub came the sound of Hugh’s fiddle
playing “Dark Island,” a song with a melody that resembled “Foggy
Dew,” if you plugged one ear and screwed up your face a bit. Jean
turned to Michael. “You’ve sung ‘Foggy Dew,’ haven’t you? It’s
about young Irish soldiers fighting for the British in faraway
places during World War I, when they should have stayed home and
fought against the British for their freedom.”

“
Aye, that’s the gist of the song,”
Michael said.

Niamh had been staring intensely at Parkinson
while she sang . . . Jean waved her hands, trying to grasp the
thoughts before they scuttled away and hid. Again Michael protected
his tray.

She visualized Parkinson’s colorless hair,
pale skin, sagging jowls. Grinsell’s ghost had had colorless hair,
bleached by some alchemy of death and memory from the living
red.

Red hair. Niamh and Tara had red hair,
inherited from their father since Maggie’s hair was brown.