The Avalon Chanter (40 page)

“
Begging your pardon, sir.” Crawford
looked down at his own hands stained with crimson darkening to
rust.

“
Ah.” Nodding, Alasdair
desisted.

Webber considered Hector in his kilt. He
looked Alasdair up and down, from epaulettes to kilt to tall
stockings. “Mr. Cameron. Are you and your lads always wearing your
glad rags whilst on duty?”

Alasdair’s glance downward was annotated by
an upward lift to his brows and a tilt of his head toward Jean. “I
cannot speak for Mr. Cruz, but I only started in the last year or
so. I have a bad influence now. Women are like that, you ken.”

“
Well then,” said Darling over Niamh’s
head. “It’s done and dusted.”

Jean followed the direction of Maggie’s gaze,
from the lighted porch past the darkened cemetery to the shadowed
walls of the priory, and said, “Not yet. Not quite yet.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

Jean stood at the bedroom window watching the
mist curl from the sea into the brilliant blue of the noon sky,
each wispy whorl a spirit summoned upward by the grace of God.

The debriefing in the incident room had
lasted nearly until a dawn as hazy and bleary as Jean’s brain had
been. Even when she’d gone back to the Angle’s Rest she’d lain
awake, replaying each scene of the last—had it been little more
than thirty-six?—hours, until Alasdair finally came trudging
in.

He’d fallen instantly into a sound sleep.
She’d tossed and turned until the chanting of the ghostly nuns in
the priory consoled her exfoliated nerves and she slept at
last.

Now she felt more like a bit of flotsam cast
up on the shore of reality than a graceful spirit, but even that
was an improvement. Nothing like Pen’s warm, fragrant, and
delicious breakfast and Hugh’s unwavering if wan face across the
table to help the healing process. The restoration of the status
quo. For her and Alasdair, anyway.

Below her, the concrete jaws of the harbor
seemed oddly empty without the large police boat floating inside
them. Even Crawford’s speedboat was gone, along with Crawford
himself, who’d left his Farnaby family for his family in Bamburgh.
There were no policemen at all on the island now—well, except for
the once-again retired one, who was unplugging his phone from its
charger across the room.

There were no dead bodies on the
island, either. Athelstan, Grinsell, Donal—their mortal shells were
scientific displays in Berwick. So was the flashlight. And the
chanter, a
memento mori
, a
souvenir of death if ever there was one.

“
I don’t see how anyone can ever play
that chanter again,” Jean said aloud.

“
Best you be asking Michael that,”
replied Alasdair. “I’m no musician.”

“
I don’t mean whether it can be
restored. I mean it has to have too many bad vibes—listen to me.
Bad vibes.”

Alasdair favored her with a dry chuckle.

“
You may not be a musician, but you
have your talents,” Jean added, shooting a meaningful glance across
the crumpled if chaste expanse of the bed, but he was peering at
his phone.

She turned back to the window, thinking that
music threw a bridge across the gulf between this world and the
next, whereas the gulf between the world of Farnaby and that of the
mainland was covered by the ferry that was coming around the
headland. Jean detected Lance’s blond head next to the wheelhouse.
Good. He’d gotten in and out of the hospital quickly. Nothing like
a thick skull—well, Alasdair had said that of Grinsell, too. But
Donal had only hit Lance once.

“
Good morning, Sergeant,” said
Alasdair. “You’ve left a message . . . Ah, the forensic accountant
checking over Wat’s finances? Is that so? Well now.”

Jean went into the bathroom to brush her
teeth, emerging as Alasdair ended the call. “You don’t mean,” she
asked, “there really is something about the Lauders’ money issues
that contributed to Athelstan’s death? Once we figured out what
happened to him, that it was Elaine, not Wat . . .”

“
We were thinking the financial
enquiries a dead end, aye. But Darling had already put it to the
accountant. Who’s turned up the fact that Elaine’s family in
Yorkshire, the Peverils, were—still are, come to that—landed
gentry. The sort with money, not the sort living on pedigree and
tourism. Chances are she and Athelstan first met when he and his
team were working on the property.”

“
Really? She might have known Athelstan
before she knew Wat? And she had money of her own? There’s a motive
not for murder but for Wat’s possessiveness. Not that some guys
need any more motive than testosterone.”

“
Plenty of folk teeming with estrogen
can imagine themselves threatened.” Alasdair threw Jean her coat.
“Let’s be off. We’ve got one more chance at a grand opening before
going back to town.”

“
In spite of it all, Maggie’s still
hoping.”

Hildy sat in the window, her nose against the
glass, ears pricked forward. As one, Alasdair and Jean diverted to
her side and followed her gaze. Cats, too, had the ability to cross
dimensions.

Four corporeal women strolled past the
cemetery toward the priory. Elaine in her canvas hat, Maggie and
Tara carrying the battery packs for the photographer’s lights,
Niamh bringing up the rear in the manner of a sheep dog. From this
distance Jean couldn’t see any of their expressions, but in the
body language of the youngest three she discerned the solid steps
of determination rather than the droop of weariness.

Who, she wondered, had scrubbed the blood off
the front porch, the door, the wall, the lovely scalloped trim? Any
of the women of Gow House? Or had Pen been out there in the misty
morning, setting the world to rights in her guise as domestic
goddess and guardian of the hearth?

No way was she going to point out to Alasdair
that she’d been right about Maggie and Niamh all along. But she
couldn’t help saying, “If you’d let me talk to Pen I’d have found
out who Crawford was.”

“
Aye, and then Grinsell or Darling
would have had to go taking him off the case. He would not have
been there saving Tara’s life.”

“
You’re going to sound like a believer
in destiny if you’re not careful.”

“
Destiny. Fate. The old Celtic
wyrd
, I’m thinking, leading on to our
own
weird
.”

“
That’s actually Anglo-Saxon. Maybe
Norse. Whatever—it works for me.”

“
Right,” he said. Somewhere little
Linda giggled happily, a sound that drew Jean’s face into a smile.
Even Alasdair’s expression decompressed. They’d come, they’d seen,
they’d hardly conquered. But they’d dealt.

Side by side they stepped down the staircase
and emerged from the stone walls of the house into the tender light
of an early spring day. Together they paused on the doorstep—a
mighty symbol that, a doorstep—admiring the sunlight, the green
hills, the blue sea, the spiraling birds. Back in Texas, Jean
thought, April tended to be the first month of summer. Here, summer
was a couple of months away, depending. Down Under, April was
autumn. It was all in the location as well as the perception.

They walked through the tunnel of Cuddy’s
Close, which still held the chill of the night before, and on up to
the priory. Jean glanced toward the Victorian church but saw no one
there. So this wasn’t the Sunday of the monthly service. Ah well.
Today she felt considerably more spiritual out in nature.

No pun intended, she thought, when she and
Alasdair skirted the faint paranormal resonance of the priory
church.

The sound of earthbound church bells
resonated faintly on the wind—St. Mary’s on Lindisfarne calling her
worshipers, no doubt—as they entered the chantry chapel. Tara was
saying, “. . . not my worst decision ever. I didn’t mean it, Mags.
I’m glad I came.”

“
I’m glad as well,” Maggie replied. “I
don’t blame you for wondering what family you’ve connected up with,
though. Ah. Jean. Alasdair. Here we are again, eh?”

“
Here we are again,” stated
Alasdair.

Maggie and Tara spaced the lights around the
blue tarp still covering the tomb, since the roof cast a shadow
even in today’s bright sunlight. Jean wasn’t sure which of the two
women looked worse, eyes swollen, cheeks hollow, faces creased like
unmade beds. She decided she’d give that dubious honor to
Maggie—Tara at least had youth on her side.

Elaine peered down into one of the trenches,
frowning slightly, as though trying to place a familiar face. Niamh
hovered nearby, her phone to her ear, her back turned, so that Jean
heard only the name “Rufus.”

Who? Oh! Sergeant Rufus Darling. How
nice!

Jean joined the others at the altar end of
the chapel as Alasdair approached Maggie not about the mating
potential of Darling but about the information he’d gleaned from
the forensic accountant. “. . . any idea of your mother’s financial
situation? Was it a source of conflict between her and your
father?”

Maggie starting pulling out the stakes
holding down the blue tarp. No one spoke until she and Tara had
rolled it back and revealed that the rectangular cavity was as
empty today as it had been yesterday.

Then she said, “Money was a conflict, yes.
Mum had her own, and she never let Dad forget it. Pen says she’s
the one wanted Merlin’s Tower renovated into a music school. Dad
wouldn’t let her pay for it, insisted on borrowing the money. Then,
when—well, we know now why she dropped her plans for that—when that
fell through, Dad returned the borrowed money and worked himself
almost to death to earn enough for the new building. He wouldn’t
let Mum contribute anything, he was that resentful. He had his
school, she had hers—Cambridge and her literary work.”

“
Jean found a set of accounting books
in Athelstan’s office, ones marked with Elaine’s name. She looked
after her own money, separate from Wat’s?”

“
Yes, although whether that was meant
to help matters with him or exacerbate them, I’ve got no idea.” She
looked over at Elaine, who now stood gazing up at the beams of the
ceiling, her face, caught in a shimmer from the window, looking
like that of a saint from an illuminated manuscript. “Usually the
longer ago it happened, the more likely it is that Mum remembers
it. But Athelstan’s death is too confusing for her. It’s there, but
it’s not there as it actually happened—you saw that last night,
Jean.”

“
Yes,” was all Jean said, even as she
thought,
I saw too damn much last
night.

Niamh thrust her phone into her pocket and
approached the dais. Of the three, she seemed the best for wear,
even though lines now bracketed her pink lips that hadn’t been
there earlier and the cornflower blue of her eyes seemed a shade
less vivid. “How are you doing?” Jean asked.

“
It’s like an illness. Time’s wanted
for a full recovery.”

“
Oh aye,” Alasdair said. “I reckon
Berwick’s got counselors . . .”

“
I’ve got one, thank you just the
same.” And the faintest blush rose into Niamh’s cheeks. Jean could
have counseled Niamh about falling for a policeman, but
didn’t.

With perfect if oblivious timing, Michael and
Rebecca entered the chapel and redirected the conversation. “If
there’s anything in your grave after all, Maggie,” he said, “we’d
best be seeing it soon. We’ve got homes and jobs in the city and
the ferry’s closing down late this afternoon.”

“
And it may take us that long to
liberate Linda from Pen,” Rebecca added.

“
All right then. If my lovely assistant
can sit by . . .” Tara took her place with the tray of implements
and the camera. “Ready, steady, go.” Maggie stretched out on her
stomach, looking like a penitent prostrate before the—well, the
altar was no longer there, was it? With a trowel she reached into
the grave.

That stone must be cold, hard, and damp
against her chest and stomach, Jean thought. But she knew better
than most how needs must take second stage when the devil of
curiosity drives.

Everyone except for Elaine inched forward.
She strolled over to the broken pieces of the inscription and sat
down in front of it.

Jean couldn’t now remember exactly where
she’d caught that quick gleam—more or less in the middle of the
dark oozing rectangle, where Maggie had inserted her probe.

Maggie’s trowel scraped lightly, soundlessly,
at the mud, moving a few dark flecks at a time. A minute passed.
Then two. And light flared like a struck match.

A chorus of startled exclamations echoed back
from the bare stone walls. Tara, too, stretched out on the
flagstone, using the camera from the tool tray to take photo after
photo.

Maggie’s hand made tiny, delicate movements,
no more than kissing the mud, and in the flashes of light the
bottom of the grave blazed brighter and brighter.

Jean almost overbalanced trying to see, until
Alasdair’s strong hand grasped her upper arm. But he, too, strained
forward, along with Michael, Rebecca, and Niamh. “Have a care,”
Maggie snapped, and each pair of feet stopped where it was and
shuffled back half a pace or so.

Maggie reached for a small sponge-tipped
paintbrush and mopped. “What do you see?” Jean asked, expecting her
to reply, as Howard Carter did upon opening Tut’s tomb, “Wonderful
things.”

“
Roman solidi. Gold coins. There’s
more. Curved gold rims and red inlays . . . Oh, my God. I don’t
believe this.” Her voice trembled, with relief, Jean estimated, and
with more than a little gratitude.