The Murder Hole (2 page)

Rebecca considered a chapter heading. “He had
a house at Loch Ness, didn’t he?”

“Oh aye,” Michael said. “I was raised in
Inverness, mind. Folk thereabouts are right affectionate toward
Nessie, with her turning a few bob for the community and all. Never
saw so much as an air bubble myself, but there are those who swear
something’s there. Crowley, now, they’re squeamish about Crowley.
His estate at Boleskine has an eerie air even today.”

“Any ghosts?” asked Rebecca with refreshing
matter-of-factness.

“Never hung about long enough to notice. And
I canna speak for Pitclachie, either. Still, my granny was dead
certain Ambrose murdered his wife in some sort of occult
ceremony.”

“The verdict at his trial was Not Proven. The
prosecutors had no body and no real evidence, police procedure
being a lot more casual in nineteen-thirty-three than it is now.”
As I know only too well
, Jean added to herself, anything but
chipper. She took the book from Rebecca’s hand and fanned its
pages, casting a wisp of cool breeze on her face. “Not that
evidence is Ambrose’s strong point—he says here that Crowley was
really able to work magic. Exhibit A being Nessie, which he called
from another reality.”

Rebecca grinned. “That theory is as good as
the one that says Nessie is the escaped pet of aliens who dropped
by the loch in their UFO for a picnic.”

“And just as likely,” said Michael. “Strange
how no one said a verifiable word about Nessie until Ambrose
Mackintosh reported that first spate of sightings in
nineteen-thirty-three. Not even Crowley, who’d have taken credit if
there’d been credit to take.”

“It’s the strange that’s going to make this
story—these stories—ones that will sell magazines. That’s the idea,
at least.” Jean set the book down on the desk beside the photo and
the Nessie toy. “Speaking of pets. Not to mention aliens . . .”

Her cat, Dougie, lay along the windowsill,
his paws extended like a miniature gray sphinx, his ears rotated
toward her. When she walked over and picked him up, he lay as limp
in her arms as a fur stole, his half-open amber eyes saying:
The
shrine isn’t open just now, formal services are at
mealtime.

“You’re going to visit Riccio for a few
days,” Jean informed him. She carried Dougie into the bedroom and
thrust him into the pet carrier hidden behind the bed so swiftly he
didn’t have time to transform into a feline caltrop and jam himself
in the opening. Only when the gate clicked behind him did he
realize what was up, and Jean felt his baleful gaze through the air
holes.

She dumped his creature comforts into the
empty Waterstone’s bag, added Dempsey’s toy Nessie, and handed the
bag to Michael. “Thanks for taking the little guy in. Usually Hugh
next door looks after him, but he and his band are finishing their
tour at the Festival this weekend. It’s actually been quiet around
here—I love folk-rock, but not through the wall at two a.m.”

Michael, himself a piper, grinned. “Eh,
what’s that you say?”

Rebecca laughed. “If you don’t mind carrying
Dougie, Jean, we’ll walk up to the High Street and hail a taxi
there. I need to keep moving.”

“Sure.” Hoisting the cat carrier, Jean
followed the others outside and shut the door.

“Mind your step, hen.” Michael’s hand hovered
solicitously at Rebecca’s elbow as she started picking her way
across the cobblestone courtyard of Ramsay Garden.

From here, the tall brightly painted
buildings with their whimsical cupolas and balconies seemed merely
an idiosyncratic collection of apartments. It was only from Princes
Street that you could see the full picture, the fanciful structures
wedged in between the medieval threat of the Castle and the
Victorian sanctimony of the University School of Divinity. But
then, the street plan of Edinburgh was only one exercise in
perspective.

Rebecca’s rosy complexion ripened to crimson
and her steps faltered. Michael put his arm around her, propelling
her up the steep slope of Ramsay Lane. Jean dragged along behind.
Dougie was gaining weight at every step—on purpose, she was
sure.

They emerged onto the High Street and stood
panting next to the door of the Camera Obscura. The shadow cast by
the tall medieval buildings only partly relieved the hot, acrid air
trapped in the tunnel of the street. To the right the Castle loomed
beyond thickets of pipes and braces. Already the bleachers for the
yearly Festival were under construction. Statues of various
historical worthies looked as though they were playing hide and
seek in the scaffolding.

Scaffolds of death and dismemberment had once
stood on the castle esplanade. If Aleister Crowley or Ambrose
Mackintosh had lived several hundred years ago, they’d have met
those scaffolds up close and personally. But now sudden death was
shocking, not just one more encounter on your way to dinner. Thank
goodness, Jean thought, for changing human perspective.

Michael gestured. A taxi that had just
dropped off a couple at the posh Witchery Restaurant made a U-turn
and pulled up to the curb. Jean opened the rear door and stowed the
pet carrier inside. “Dougie, remember you’re Riccio’s guest and
behave accordingly.” Behind the grating, Dougie’s bright eyes
closed, resigned to his fate.

“Thanks for dinner.” Rebecca managed a
sideways hug. “Have a good trip, okay? Don’t worry, nothing’s going
to sneak up on you.”

“Nope, I’ll be glancing over my shoulder so
often I’ll see it coming.” Jean returned the hug. “You know me. I’m
evidence that worry works—ninety-five per cent of what I worry
about never happens.”

With an encouraging wink at Jean, Michael
piloted Rebecca into the interior of the taxi and clambered in
after her, leaving Jean to admire not only his denim-clad
posterior, but also how he could protect his wife without
patronizing her. “Give us a shout if you find the rest of the
Pitclachie Stone or anything else Ambrose left lying about in his
shrubbery. Or if Dempsey turns up Nessie, though I’m not holding my
breath for that.”

“Oh he’ll turn up something. He always does.”
Jean stood waving as the taxi moved off.

In the distance a siren wailed. A tourist bus
lumbered off down the High Street, known more evocatively as the
Royal Mile, strewing myth like pixie dust among the shops, pubs,
and offices of real life. But then, myth—personal, national, and
everywhere in between—was real life.

And right now real life demanded that Jean go
home and pack. She might not be entirely resigned to her fate, but
at least she could meet it wearing clean underwear. She made a firm
about-face and found herself confronting the window of the Tartan
Weaving Mill.

On it was taped a poster:
Midsummer
Monster Madness, sponsored by Starr Beverages PLC and the NEW!
Cameron Arms Hotel. Drumnadrochit, Loch Ness, June 21-23
.
Beneath the words a green cartoon dragon wearing a Glengarry bonnet
held a pint of beer in one hand—not flipper, hand—and a set of
bagpipes in the other. The conceit was innocuous to the point of
banality, the cold depths of the loch notwithstanding.

With a wry shrug, Jean headed back to Ramsay
Garden. She was just skirting a shiny red sports car that was now
parked next to and repeating the color of her potted geraniums when
she realized her front door was standing open. What with Dougie,
she hadn’t locked it. But she could have sworn she’d shut it.

Oh boy
. And then there was the myth
that your own doorstep was free of danger. Clenching her fists at
her sides, she climbed the steps and paused on the threshold.
“Hello?”

From inside came Miranda Capaldi’s melodious
voice. “It’s only me.”

“Oh, hi!” Feeling vaguely indignant—she’d
earned her paranoia the hard way, darn it—Jean shut the door. She
should have recognized the car. It belonged to Miranda’s—well,
Duncan wasn’t a boyfriend, with the soda-shop implications of that
word. And “lover” was a bit bald for such a civilized
relationship.

“Sorry!” Like a cuckoo clock, Miranda glanced
out of the kitchen doorway and then vanished back inside. “I came
round with the papers for your hire car and chapped at the door
like a proper guest, and then I thought I’d just try the knob, and
I was inside before I quite knew what I was about. I’ve just missed
your friends from the Museum, have I?”

“Afraid so.” Jean found her friend and
business partner spooning leftover Szechuan tofu and rice onto a
clean plate.

“May I?” Miranda asked. “Your meal smells
delicious. And fortune cookies as well! Super!” Her manicured
fingertips played a solo on the microwave, the tiny diamonds on her
tennis bracelet winking. Today her crest of hair was chestnut red.
Fashionable high-water pants and a pastel cotton sweater
accentuated a figure that was almost as slender at forty as it had
been at twenty, when she and Jean were college roommates. The
brilliant silk scarf draped around her shoulders probably revealed
the designer’s name to anyone sophisticated enough to recognize the
symbols, or logos, as they were now called. The symbols on the
Pitclachie Stone must have carried similar meaning.

Self-consciously Jean brushed crumbs off her
size medium T-shirt with its decorative dribble of soy sauce—her
chopsticks, like the plans of mice and men, had gone oft agley.
She’d long ago given up on fashion just as she’d given up on
calculus, and was fond of saying she couldn’t tell the difference
between Armani and Old Navy. Which, Miranda was fond of retorting,
was snobbery of its own. That Jean had just recently started
coloring the strands of gray infiltrating her mop of brown hair she
attributed to Miranda’s influence, not self-consciousness, no, not
at all.

“You’re away first thing the morn, then,”
Miranda stated. “No need to go writing up the Festival, though
you’ll be asking Iris her opinion of it. She’ll say it’s all for
the tourists, I expect.”

“I’m not much more than a glorified tourist
myself.”

“Ah, no, like Dorothy in the Emerald City,
you’ve seen behind the screen.”

“That’s my job, writing about what’s behind
the screen.”

The microwave beeped. Miranda extracted her
plate and set it on the cabinet. Rejecting chopsticks in favor of a
knife and fork, she assessed a small bite. “Mmmm. Nice burn. You’ve
got a dab hand with a chili pepper, Jean.”

“I was weaned on a jalapeno.” Jean started
filing the plates and glasses in the dishwasher. “Michael and
Rebecca told me a bit about Ambrose Macintosh. But what can I
expect from Iris?”

“She’s a bit of an eccentric, but not so much
as her father, not by a long chalk. Mind you, I don’t know her
well. We cross paths at meetings of Scotland the Green, when
they’re sharing out the grants for deer fences, re-forestation,
mountain path repair, and such.”

“She’s a board member, isn’t she?”

“Oh aye. And you’re not invited to sit on the
board unless you’ve donated a packet to the cause, as I’m knowing
all too well. The B&B must be quite the success. Could be Iris
inherited from her mum, the American heiress, or is selling off her
father’s collections. I’ll ask about, shall I?”

What financial and social blips on the
contemporary Scottish radar Miranda didn’t know weren’t worth
knowing. “Please don’t. I’ll be prying into her personal affairs
quite enough as it is.” Jean shooed a fly away from the pots and
pans piled in the sink, turned on the hot water, and added a squirt
of Fairy Liquid. Steam billowed. Soap bubbles went floating upward,
each one a tiny prism.

Rebecca had volunteered Michael to help clean
the kitchen, but cleaning was Jean’s guilty pleasure. She could
achieve the same sort of Zen contemplative state washing, drying,
mopping, and sweeping as she could knitting, with the bonus that
she then had a tidy environment. Her ex-husband Brad used to say
her zeal for tidiness was a control issue. She hadn’t argued with
that. She hadn’t argued with much at all. That was one reason for
the divorce. Love hadn’t turned to hate, but to apathy.

Jean realized Miranda had gone ominously
silent. “What?” she asked.

“You’re having a problem asking Iris about
Ambrose, then.”

“Sort of,” Jean admitted. “Whether Ambrose
was mistaken about seeing Nessie or whether he was committing a
fraud is the question, and not one Iris may want to answer—assuming
she knows the answer—especially now that the story has taken on a
life of its own. Although, to give Ambrose the benefit of the
doubt, weird things do happen.”

“Weird things happen to you,” Miranda stated,
knowing that nothing weird would dare sully her own well-organized
life, and mashed the last of the rice onto the back of her
fork.

“I used to think weird things happened only
to me. Brad had me convinced of it, at least.”

“He was wrong.”

“No, he was playing it safe.” Jean rinsed off
Miranda’s empty plate and placed it in the dishwasher.

“If everyone played safely we’d have no
stories to write, would we now? Look at Iris’s mother’s
disappearance and all. There’s a grand mystery for you to solve.
Me, I’m thinking post-partum depression and suicide by loch, but
then, Ambrose was tried for murder.” Miranda leaned over and
stirred the fortune cookies in their bowl. She looked like an
oracle searching for an omen rather than simply making sure she
chose one whose cellophane wrapper hadn’t come open.

“Miranda, when you spoke with Iris, what did
you tell her I was going to ask?”

“I didn’t speak with Iris. I spoke with
Kirsty-something, who booked the room and said she’d set up an
interview.”

“Aha! Iris will assume I’ll be asking about
her work, not ambushing her about her parents’ personal lives.”

Miranda chose a cookie and looked around. “If
you’re afraid of asking tough questions, then you’re in the wrong
profession.”