The Avalon Chanter (36 page)

“
I’d love to.”

Jean and Rebecca exchanged a significant look
beneath Pen’s chin while she chose an album from the stack and
seated herself. “The other books have photos of Lisa and the
grandchildren. You can never have too many photos of the
grandchildren, can you now?”

“
Not according to my parents and
in-laws, no,” said Rebecca.

“
These are the photos from Camelot.
From Wat and Elaine’s early years.” Pen opened the album to faded
snapshots of sunshine and blue skies, the priory and the village,
all backdrops to faces, figures, and musical
instruments.

Jean recognized Wat in a stocky youth holding
a fiddle, his deep-set eyes peering suspiciously out from beneath a
sweep of brown hair. There was Elaine, not tall and elegant like a
model but like an athlete, her intelligent smile almost mocking the
camera. She even caught a glimpse of young Hugh, his beard black
and his long dark locks already giving way to a receding hairline.
“You can always tell the late sixties and early seventies. All the
barbers seem to have gone on strike.”

“
And we’ve all added a bit of, well,
gravity since then.” Pen pointed to a picture of herself and James,
their flared-bottom pants and snug shirts making their already
willowy bodies seem positively emaciated. She turned a page or two.
“There’s Thomas Seaton.”

Who’s pretty much a moot
point now.
S
till Jean took a careful
look. Yes, he’d been a handsome young man, his dark hair tousled
fetchingly above a sculpted face and movie-star grin. The drones of
his pipes lay against his broad shoulder, and he held the chanter
almost suggestively in front of his narrow hips. They made them
attractive in Cape Breton.

“
It’s Tom playing the pipe solo on the
‘Ravens of Avalon’ album. He could stir you to the marrow of your
bones. All we lasses were in love with him.”

“
Maggie thought he might be her
biological father,” said Jean. “You said that was wishful thinking
because she never got along with Wat. She told Grinsell, though,
that if she was born a full-term baby she couldn’t be Wat’s
daughter, and since her mother was going on about having a lover .
. .” Jean paused delicately.

“
Maggie came early. She was a tiny mite
of a baby,” Pen replied. “The body in the grave’s not her father,
in any event, since the dates are all wrong.”

“
Is someone else her
father?”

“
No, I’m not seeing that at all. By the
time Maggie was conceived, the early days—the court of Camelot, the
romance—had wasted away into practicality. Wat and Elaine had given
up renovating the tower and were planning a purpose-built
school.”

“
Someone dying,” said Rebecca, “someone
being murdered, will sober you up straightaway.”

“
Aye, that it will, though we had no
idea, mind you, that was what happened.” Pen eyed the photo, lost
in another time, then turned another page. The tall, lanky man with
the beak of a nose and a jaw like a battle axe had to be Athelstan
Crawford, even though the look in his eye—part mischief, part
arrogance—didn’t remind her at all of Edwin, his son.

He stood with his arm around Elaine. Her
blond head leaned against his shoulder while her hands were clasped
primly in front of her T-shirt, sending contradictory messages. Her
smile seemed smug and secretive. Or, Jean asked herself, was she
reading too much into a simple snapshot?

Behind the pair, several people lay on
blankets spread across green turf. Around them like the spoils of a
Viking raid rested a couple of guitars, the remnants of a picnic
complete with an array of bottles, and the stubs of cigarettes
whose composition was unknowable at this remove. Merlin’s Tower
rose in the background, lacking only banners floating in the wind
to have played a mythical Camelot.

“
Athelstan,” Jean stated.

“
Aye.” Pen’s frown deepened. “He was
artistic, being an architect and all, but no musician. Had a tin
ear, if I’m remembering aright. Not the usual sort to be sitting at
the round table with Wat. Steady, not unpredictable.”

The sort that Elaine might find refreshing.
“P.C. Crawford told us that he heard his mother say his father
fancied Elaine more than was good for either of them, because Wat
was the jealous sort and contentious as well. Did Elaine fancy him
back? Is her talking about a lover dementia at all, or a memory
surfacing from below a layer of regret?”

Jean expected Pen to sit up and
protest,
You’re not the cop, why are you
interrogating me?

Gently, Rebecca pushed their advantage. “You
said you’d not like to see Lance and Hector battling for Tara’s
hand, that you’d seen that sort of argy-bargy before. Can you
expand on that?”

Pen’s thoughtfulness deepened to outright
rumination. Jean reached for another scone and nibbled at it.
Giving up on getting any snacks, Hildy jumped down and made her way
to the fireplace, where she settled on the hearth rug in front of
the glowing bars of the electric fire.

“
Oh my, my, my.” At last Pen’s pin
curls bounced in an affirmative nod and her focus returned. “After
all these years, to see how it all must have happened . . . Well,
you see, Elaine flirted with all of the chaps. She liked the
attention, and Wat liked showing her off, even as he also drew a
strict line where the flirting had to stop.”

“
He liked being in control,” said
Rebecca.

“
He did that, aye. They fought over
Thomas. They fought over Athelstan as well, though here’s me,
thinking they were fighting over plans for renovating the Tower,
not Athelstan himself, him being married and all. She’d come
running here, leaving the house to Wat’s stamping and shouting.
They all enjoyed a bottle of best, or second best, come to that,
but Wat, he’d often take a bit too much. The artistic temperament,
I expect.”

An easy excuse, Jean thought, but she said
nothing. Pushing her empty plate aside, she leaned in. So did
Rebecca.

A door slammed open, admitting a cold draft.
All three women jumped, Jean completely out of her chair. “Hugh?”
called Pen, swiveling toward the hall door.

Maggie stepped into the doorway, her
multicolored hair flying, her cheeks red, her eyes glittering as
brightly as the butcher knife she held in her hands. “Jean. I hoped
you were here. I hoped you were giving poor Pen the third degree. I
can’t stand it. I’ve got to know.”

Chapter Thirty-five

Pen found her voice first. “Elaine?
Tara?”

“
Mum’s asleep. Tara’s got herself a
cricket bat and is walking round the house like a lioness. She’s my
girl, isn’t she?” Maggie’s grin flared and died. “Lance is standing
sentry on the front porch. He’s even got an old shotgun, looks like
one should be in a museum.”

Pen, standing
in loco maternis
,
asked, “Maggie,
dear, are you quite certain you’re wanting that knife?”

Maggie held it before her—Jean expected her
to declaim Lady Macbeth’s famous speech—then set it down on the
sideboard.

“
Um, Pen,” asked Rebecca, “isn’t your
back door locked?”

“
I’ve got a key.” Maggie lifted a metal
ring dangling several keys, from small lock-box to big metal
skeleton, along with a glow-in-the-dark Statue of Liberty. “This is
Mum’s key to the bookshop, if you want it for evidence. I left the
lot of them on the hall table yesterday morning and just found them
in her room.”

“
We never lock our doors here,” Pen
added. “Not usually, leastways.”

Maggie focused on Jean, so intently Jean had
to keep herself from making a warding gesture. “So you were
chatting with Donal at the school? I thought he looked familiar,
but I’d never have guessed it was him. Sad to see him like that.
That fine-looking face, and charm to die for, and well, you know
why the Irish pipes have a bellows instead of a mouthpiece to blow
up the bag? So the piper can hand you his line of blarney as he
plays.”

As one, Jean, Rebecca, and Pen turned up the
corners of their lips, but taken together all three of them didn’t
make one decent smile.

“
Did I say charm to die for?” Maggie’s
eyes appealed to the ceiling. “Donal’s a murderer. He and Oliver
wrestled for the gun and Donal got it, free and clear. He had it in
his hands. Then he turned it on Oliver. I’ll never forget the look
in his eyes as he pulled the trigger.”

“
You protected him, even so,” Jean said
softly.

“
Yes. He already had a wife and
daughter and here I was up the spout and—oh, it was a bloody mess.
In more ways than one. I’ve been thinking about it. My biggest
mistake in not grassing him up was giving Grinsell the chance to
interfere.” As it had at the side of the tomb, her chuckle edged
toward hysteria.

This time it was Pen who rose from her chair,
took Maggie firmly by the shoulders, and sat her down at the table.
“You’ve probably had nothing to eat all evening. Have a scone.”

Rebecca pushed the serving platter and the
butter and jam dishes toward her while Pen brought another cup from
the sideboard. Jean doubted the wisdom of pouring caffeine into
Maggie. Even though she once again smelled of whisky, if so faintly
she might as well have dabbed it behind her ears as drunk it, she
had that wired look of someone who’d already had three espressos.
But, noting that Pen poured almost more cream than coffee into the
cup, Jean kept her own counsel and sat back down.

“
And now Donal’s killed Grinsell. I’d
say good riddance, but no, that’s not right.” Maggie pinched off a
corner of the scone but left it on the plate. “Donal fixed the
blame for Oliver’s death on me—I played him false, didn’t I, going
with Oliver? Now he’s fixed the blame for his prison term on
Grinsell. That’s like him. The brooding seemed romantic, once. Now
I see that he’s always looking to blame someone else.”

“
What of Niamh?” Pen asked. “Is she
helping him, do you think?”

“
I don’t see why. She never knew him,
spoke of him as nothing more than the sperm donor. If he turned up,
though . . .” Maggie laughed again, this time ruefully, under her
breath. “Ever since Mum started talking about having a lover, I’ve
wondered if I had a sperm donor. Tom Seaton, she kept a photo of
him in her dresser drawer. But it’s not him in the grave, is it?
And the man in the grave’s not my father.”

“
Alasdair’s thinking the body is
Athelstan Crawford,” Jean told her.

“
Edwin’s dad? Really? Another of Mum’s
knights. Queen Guinevere and not-so-courtly love.”

Pen said, “Edwin’s saying he and Lisa once
found a note from Elaine thanking Athelstan for giving her a book
of poetry.”

“
He told me about that,” said Jean.
“The dates match up. The physical characteristics of the body match
up. In time they can get a DNA sample and settle the
matter.”

“
Giving the man in the grave a name’s
more important than finding me another dad. I have one. I had one.
He’s gone now. Too late.” Maggie tore off another bit of
scone.

Pen smoothed the tablecloth. “Edwin’s mum was
telling Lisa how, as a lad, he’d read the stories of Arthur and ask
if his dad was coming back some day as well. He liked Malory—is it
Malory? How men say in parts of England that King Arthur isn’t
dead, but by the will of God has gone into another place?”

“
That’s Malory, yes. More or
less.”

“
But Athelstan wasn’t sent into another
place by the will of God, was he?”

Jean felt as though she tiptoed across a
waterbed, every word making her lean in a slightly different
direction, with the possibility of pitching forward in a pratfall
an ever-present danger. “The thing is, Athelstan disappeared on a
wildfowling trip. A fog came up and separated him from his
companions. They washed up on Farnaby, but his boat was found far
out to sea. How did he end up in the tomb?”

“
The currents,” murmured Pen. “If they
swept the other boats in to Farnaby, why not Athelstan’s as well?
You’ve seen what a sea fret is like. The boats could have landed on
the same beach and the men would be none the wiser.”

“
Athelstan could have come ashore and
seen his chance to meet up with Mum in secret,” Maggie said. “Maybe
they had an assignation. A rendezvous. Fancy words for a
dishonorable bit of business.”

“
If one,” Rebecca murmured in turn,
“with a very long pedigree.”

“
Adultery. Takes one—me—to know one,
eh?” Maggie managed to get a morsel of scone into her mouth and
chew.

Jean asked Pen, “Up until tonight you thought
it was Tom in the grave, didn’t you?”

“
Aye, that I did.”

“
Did Wat kill Athelstan over Elaine, do
you think? Or did Tom kill him, ditto, and Wat had nothing to do
with it? We’ve thought all along it was a crime of passion, but
there seems to have been enough passion to go around.”

“
Yes,” said Pen. “It was a crime of
passion, so far as I know.”

Maggie turned her glittering eye on Pen.
“You’ve been protecting Mum all these years. Well done, Pen. But
it’s time to tell what you know.”

“
But I don’t
know
, I’ve only just put together hints. The one
thing—I’m sorry, Maggie dear, but the one thing I do know is this:
Elaine confessed to me that once, only once, she was unfaithful to
Wat.”