The Avalon Chanter (8 page)

The signboard fixed to the front of The
Queen’s Arms sported a generic crown, not a portrait of either of
the Elizabeths or even Mary, Queen of Scots. Considering the nearby
priory, the eponymous queen could be Mary, Queen of Heaven. Or the
queen of a chess set. Right now Jean didn’t care. The door of the
pub stood open, allowing a bright streak of light to fall
invitingly across the pavement, and windows shone behind baskets
filled with wind-buffeted flowers. Voices and the clink of
glassware echoed from inside.

Within minutes she and Alasdair had
introduced themselves to James Fleming behind the bar, obtained
alcoholic beverages, ordered meals, and found a bench in a corner
as quiet as a pub was likely to provide.

Jean sipped cautiously at her Lindisfarne
mead, sweet but potent honey wine, and decided that if bees drank
this, she was signing up for the hive. Taking a good swallow, she
assessed her surroundings.

If she hadn’t already known James was Pen’s
husband, she would have thought he was her chubby, cheery, and
mustachioed male twin. In fact, the pub seemed to be the male
principle to the B&B’s female, perfumed with potatoes instead
of potpourri, equipped with all the traditional comforts but on the
shabby rather than the sparkling side.

The clientele seemed similarly easygoing,
probably because they hadn’t yet heard the news from the
priory—although a couple of heads were bent together in sotto voce
speculation about something. Maybe they were discussing football
scores or the spring bird count.

Jean recognized two faces. Lance fidgeted on
a stool not far from the beer taps, gazing balefully at Tara, who
occupied a tiny table across the room. She already had one empty
pint glass in front of her and was starting in on another, to the
accompaniment of what looked like a shepherd’s pie. She must have
fled here instead of eating her tea at home, assuming she called
Gow House home.

Jean turned her eye to her husband, who drank
deeply of his dark ale. She could trace its path from his throat to
his stomach and through his nervous system not by a slackening in
his expression—he never slacked—but by a mellowing. His features,
like his body, were economical, compact, reserved. Even his hair
was cut short and plain, resembling amber waves of grain touched by
frost. Only his eyes revealed what nuclear fires burned behind the
lead shielding of his manner. Or, rather, she knew what his eyes
revealed because she’d learned the hard way how to read them and
their freezes and thaws.

She would never have believed that a year
after her divorce she’d remarry, going from twenty years in
purgatory to this state of grace. Alasdair would never have
believed that years after the bitter disillusion of his first
marriage, he would now find himself with another wife who—well,
Jean wasn’t perpendicular to reality, she simply had her own slant
on it.

Maggie had never married after the tragedy of
her youth. Was she lonely? Was she self-sufficient?

What about Crawford? Was there a Mrs.
Crawford over in Bamburgh, covering a dinner plate and tucking it
away? Were there smaller Crawfords needing help with their
homework?

Jean thought of Crawford sitting in the
darkened cloister—the word that was the root of “claustrophobia.” A
cloistered nun or monk might feel closed-in, never mind soaring
hymns and transcendental ceremonies. A monk or nun on Farnaby, or
Lindisfarne, or distant Iona, might feel particularly enclosed,
looking out at a wide horizon but having no way of crossing it. And
yet a remote island was at the same time part of the world and not
part of the world, a portal between planes of being.

How did Maggie feel? She hadn’t chosen
Farnaby. Was she trapped by love and duty, watching her horizons
creep closer and closer and her ambitions molder away? What about
Tara, breaking out of Gow House as fast as she could tonight?

Alasdair turned his blue eyes, now warm as a
summer sky, toward her. “Tuppence for your thoughts, lass.”

“
Isn’t the expression, ‘a penny for
your thoughts’?”

“
Yours are aye worth
double.”

“
I’ll remind you of that the next time
they leap from A to G and you want me to map out B, C, D, E, and
F.”

He toasted her with his glass.

Raising hers in turn, first toward him and
then to her lips, Jean filled him in on what Rebecca had
said—automatic writing, different sorts of sixth senses, lingering
sensory waves from the past or parallel universes or something.
What if Elaine had been communing in some fashion with the spirit
Jean and Alasdair themselves sensed in the priory?

“
In my experience,” said Alasdair, “the
dead are not shy about appearing. Communicating? No.”

“
I’ve only encountered one that even
seemed to be aware of my presence.” Jean let that memory fade into
the vivid here-and-now. “What I’m wondering is why that reporter
from wherever he was from—not from one of the sober papers or
magazines, I bet, not with that haircut—anyway, why did he
call Maggie ‘Loony Lauder’?”

“
Heard someone here on Farnaby saying
it, most likely Lance Eccleston on the ferry.”

“
Yeah, that works.”

“
Loony Lauder? I’m agreeing with you
that either Maggie or Elaine, or the both of them, are the pivot
points here, but . . .”

His caution dangled unfinished as James
Fleming set plates of fish and chips and mushy peas on the table,
the rising steam redolent with mouth-watering scents. “Would you
prefer tomato sauce, Ms. Fairbairn?” he asked, plunking down a
bottle of malt vinegar.

“
Oh no, thank you—the American ketchup
habit is one I’ve managed to moderate.”

James grinned beneath his whisk-broom of a
moustache. “Ah, good. There’s some places offer tomato sauce to
kill the taste of poor-quality ingredients. Not here. That there
haddock is fresh off the boat and the potatoes from the ground.
Enjoy!”

Jean didn’t have to be told twice. She
applied a sprinkling of vinegar and dug in, leaving Alasdair to
throw a “cheers” at James’s retreating back. The crunchy batter,
the sweet, flaky fish, the mealy potatoes with their sharp malt
dressing, the slightly peppery mushy peas had barely dulled the
edge of her appetite when another familiar face appeared in the
doorway.

Hugh Munro carried his guitar case and his
fiddle case, proving Jean’s often-made point that he’d rather play
music than eat. His rosy, bearded face beneath its halo of silver
hair, that of a cherub surprised by middle age, turned toward Jean
and Alasdair. “You’re here, then.”

“
Aye, that we are,” Alasdair told
him.

“
How’s wee Dougie getting on back in
Edinburgh? The cattery’s all right for him, is it then?”

If he’d been spending the weekend in his flat
next door, Hugh would have offered to look after Dougie.

“
He’s likely dining with his own sushi
chef, considering the cost of his upkeep.” Alasdair had long ago
accepted that Dougie and Jean came as a package. The little cat was
her feline significant other, not that Alasdair didn’t have his
feline moments. Declining further commentary on the economics of
pet care, he said, “Have a seat, Hugh.”

“
For the moment, thanks. Almost time
for the Friday night session.” Hugh pulled around a chair from
another table and sat down.

“
Are you playing with some of the
students tonight?”

“
Not just now. I’ve worn them down the
day. No, there’s an Irish lass stopping here, name of Neeve
McCarthy, has a voice like an angel.”

Jean’s crunch on a particularly succulent bit
of batter muffled the name. “Did you say Nieve? Spanish for
‘snow’?”

Alasdair’s lips, glistening with grease,
spread into a smile. “I’m thinking it’s N-i-a-m-h, pronounced
‘Neeve,’ one reason I did not do well with the Gaelic as a child.
It’s never spelled as it’s said.”

“
Niamh McCarthy, a good Scots-Irish
name,” Hugh repeated, and added cryptically, “We have the Spanish
influence here as well. Ah, here’s the lass now.” Gathering up his
instruments, he rose again and headed for an empty corner of the
room.

“
Good,” Alasdair said. “Not only music,
but we’re not obliged to be telling him what’s happened just yet .
. . Oh. Well now.”

The nurse from Gow House walked in the door,
now clothed in civilian garb, a sweater, jeans, and boots. Released
from its bindings, her hair cascaded over her shoulders and down
her back, a reddish-gold—“ginger” in the UK—silk curtain framing an
oval face carved as delicately as a cameo. Every eye in the place
turned toward her, Jean noted, except Lance’s, which kept a bead on
Tara, even as a blank-faced Tara settled back to enjoy the
show.

Jean spared a thought for Maggie, shouldering
the care of her mother as well as, now, the care of a cold
case.

Hugh fingered an introduction. Niamh began to
sing “Foggy Dew.”

No. Her voice wasn’t that of an angel.
Nothing was celestial about that vibrato like a serrated edge. The
chills that trickled down Jean’s spine weren’t unlike those warning
of the paranormal.

A song about the Irish Easter Uprising might
not be the most diplomatic of choices here in England. But still,
every other voice in the pub fell silent. Not one glass clinked.
Niamh seemed to be an ancient priestess, chanting an anthem of war,
and grief, and lost love . . .

Clyde Eccleston strode through the door,
shouting, “A police boat’s come in to the harbor. Chap in charge is
saying we’ve got us a murder up the priory.”

“
Well done, Grinsell,” said Alasdair.
“A right fast turnout.”

Tara pushed back from her table so quickly it
crashed to the floor.

Chapter Eight

Hugh’s fingers fell across the guitar
strings, stilling them. His eyes flashed over the tops of his
glasses. Niamh stopped in mid-phrase, a wave of scarlet flooded her
cheeks, and she darted a sharp glance first at Tara, then at
Lance.

“
Sorry, James.” Tara scrabbled on the
floor collecting shards of glass. Fortunately, Jean saw, only one
of her pint glasses had broken.

“
You’ve cut yourself.” Lance stepped
forward, reaching for her hand.

“
I’m okay, it’s nothing,” Tara snapped.
Lurching to her feet, she tucked her hand behind her
back.

Niamh seized it and pressed a napkin to it.
“The cut’s not so deep. A plaster’ll do the trick, soon as the
bleeding’s stopped.”

“
Thanks,” Tara said over her shoulder,
but Niamh’s eyes were fixed on Lance.

Lance made an abrupt about-face and joined
the general rush out the door.

“
There’s an interesting romantic
triangle,” Jean murmured as she and Alasdair extricated themselves
from behind their table.

He considered James advancing toward the two
young women, a first-aid kit in hand. “Eh?”

“
Never mind,” Jean told him with a
smile.

Hugh caught up with them at the door.
“Anything you’re wanting to be telling me?”

Jean wanted to return,
It’s not our fault.
But Hugh knew
that.

Alasdair said, “Maggie Lauder’s discovered a
body in the priory. Not the one she was meaning to discover.”

“
This one’s twentieth-century,” Jean
added, and blinked at the sudden darkness outside.

It was rush hour in Cuddy’s Close. Perhaps
fifteen people jostled between the walls of the pub and the
B&B’s garden, then up a set of steps to the priory, now
illuminated by swooping flashlight beams like strobe lights at a
rock concert. Here came Pen along the close, her own flashlight in
hand, her bunny slippers replaced by lime-green fluorescent running
shoes. She asked of the air, “What’s happening?”

James came up behind Jean and Alasdair.
“Clyde’s saying there’s been a murder at the priory.”

“
Is that why Edwin Crawford’s been
moping about the place? Lad could have had himself a cuppa and
minded the scene from our window.” Pen surged forward.

“
Kudos to the lad for minding the scene
on the scene,” muttered Alasdair.

“
So it wasn’t Pen I saw walking up to
him,” Jean replied, and was swept up in the stampede.

She lost Hugh but hung onto Alasdair. They
found themselves in the blacktop parking area and dived for cover
next to the Land Rover, still parked where Tara had left it.

Living bodies lined the strip of
blue-and-white police tape now strung from column base to column
base across the front of the priory. Alasdair swept a critical gaze
past the perimeter, to where voices echoed, lights waggled, and
shadows shot up the walls and across the grounds. He’d have had the
scene organized quick-smart, if he’d had to wade in with a cattle
prod.

A slight figure blocked the chapel doorway,
his spread legs indicating he expected the coveralled figures of
the crime-scene team to pass deferentially beneath them.
“Grinsell?” she asked.

“
Oh, aye. Same attitude, more’s the
pity. Ah. There go the arms as well.”

Grinsell braced his arms on his hips. Every
time someone tried to enter or leave the chapel, he grudgingly
pivoted aside, like a rusty turnstile. There was Crawford—no, Jean
corrected herself, the male shape a head taller than Grinsell wore
a suit beneath his reflective coat, not a uniform. Whoever he was,
Grinsell favored him with an even slower pivot and a dismissive
gesture as well.