Lucifer's Crown Read online

  Mick frowned. He was away to university in Glasgow, where else would he be going on a Monday morning? And he knew he’d given Calum the number of his mobile. “Where have you gone, Dad? You didna ring last night. I stopped in at the office to see if you’d left a message with Amy.”

  Calum’s voice was thin and taut and his words stumbled. “I didna have time to ring—I came away from Glastonbury in the wee hours, used up my petrol and stopped outside Carlisle … The hounds of hell are after me, Mick.”

  “Eh? What?”

  “There’s something you’re needing to know. I never told you before, I didna believe it myself, but it’s true, it’s true … My telling you will have them after you as well. God, damned if I do, damned if I dinna.”

  “What?” Mick’s heart drummed in his chest like the drops of water drummed onto the asphalt of the car park outside the window.

  His father’s ragged exhalation sounded like fabric ripping. “Listen to me. The Bruce’s relic, it was at Arbroath not so long since. Sinclair came to my father and me and we helped him shift it.”

  “Alex Sinclair, your chum from university?”

  “His father. I met Alex later. I’d say that was a right coincidence, but nothing’s a coincidence, is it? Nothing at all.”

  Alex had died donkey’s years ago, hadn’t he? Mick remembered his father lifting his glass in a salute to the dead. Was Calum drunk? Whilst his father had a taste for the whiskey, Mick had never known him to take too much. But then, he hadn’t seen overmuch of Calum of late. He had the university, the band, and the lasses.

  Calum wasn’t drunk. He was exhausted. He was ill. He was terrified. “Dad?” said Mick, his own voice shaking. “I—I’ll hire a car, I’ll…”

  “It was our duty then. It’s our duty now. Oh God, Mick, I should have told you this long since, but I didna believe it. No time now. Time’s run out, it’s come to an end. Protect it, Mick keep it from them. From him.”

  “Protect what? From who?” In the back of his mind Mick heard the voice of his literature lecturer correcting, “from whom.”

  “From himself. Am Fear Dubh. Take the A68 and the A7—the high road, eh?” Calum’s voice cracked into a dry giggle. “Take the high rood—road—to Fairtichill, and then the wee road west…”

  “Dad, you’re not sensible.”

  “Then up you go, toward Schiehallion, the fairy mountain with its triple peak. My grandfather Malise used to tell about that road, and then he’d say each man has to bide his own weird. Meet his own fate.”

  Something wasn’t right with his father’s geography, but then, all of this was dead wrong.

  “You’ll take the high road,” Calum crooned. “I’ll take the low road past Ercildoune and into the gates of hell. They’re coming. They’re outside the door. Mick, I…” His voice stretched thinner and thinner and then broke.

  “Dad? Dad!”

  The echoing emptiness of the open line made Mick’s head feel hollow. He stared at the receiver. His hand was numb. Pins and needles danced along his arm. Cold sweat ran down his back. Oh God.

  The office smelled as it had always done, of wool, paper, and old sausage sandwiches. Beyond the window the rain fell. Puddles on the pavement reflected the orange glow of the street lights. Above the sign reading “Dewar’s Fine Woolens” rose the distant, gnarled outline of Edinburgh Castle, half-erased by the mist and the gloom.

  “I dinna believe this,” Mick said. “It’s not happening.”

  It was happening. And he was sitting there like a gowk. He batted at the phone cradle. When he heard the ordinary electronic pips of British Telecom he punched “999.”

  “Emergency services.”

  “Mick Dewar here. My father rang from a petrol station outside Carlisle. He’s ill, off his head … Aye, I’ll wait.”

  He threw his rucksack on the floor. It hit with a solid thunk, spilling books and folders and the long case of his practice chanter. If he didn’t get himself to his lecture and hand in his essay he’d be docked points. Right now he didn’t give a damn for either the lecture or the essay.

  He dropped onto the chair. On the desk stood the snap taken last spring, of him with his father in front of Dunnottar Castle. The stark ruins on their cliff above the sea looked like a studio backdrop behind the two smiling faces. Faces that were strikingly similar: square chins, keen gray eyes accented by supple eyebrows, high foreheads fringed by dark hair, Calum’s silver at the temples, Mick’s caught in a ponytail.

  That day Calum went on about a braw lassie smuggling the crown of Scotland away from besieged Dunnottar. The crown was a relic, right enough, but it was safe in Edinburgh Castle.

  That had been their only outing this year. Mick no longer had time for playing tourist. Now his dad was on his own, ill, hurt, far from home … Mick slammed his fist onto the top of the desk. The picture fell over.

  He crammed the books back into his rucksack. On top lay Idylls of the King and other Poems by Tennyson. One passage leapt suddenly to his mind: “The curse has come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott.”

  “Hello?” said the dispatcher in his ear. “Mr. Dewar?”

  “He sounded as though his curse had come upon him,” said Mick.

  “Sorry?”

  “His fate, his doom. His weird.” Mick pulled a face. He was havering, daft as Calum. “My father rang me from a petrol station. He’s off his head, he needs help. Carlisle. The car’s a Ford Mondeo…”

  His hand clenched round the phone. He was going to bloody well find out what had happened to his father. And then he’d sort it out.

  Maggie added a spoonful of sugar and a dollop of milk to the mug, and pressed it into Rose’s hands. The British regarded tea as a specific against anything from toothache to war. When in Britain do as the Brits do. There wasn’t much else she could do.

  It had been an hour since Rose ran into the youth hostel as though the hounds of hell were at her heels. Her hands were at last starting to warm up. Her color was better, too, if her features were still pinched. Although even in shock she was beautiful. With her fresh complexion and waves of golden hair Rose fulfilled the promise of her name, all the more lovely because she seemed artlessly unaware of her beauty.

  Turning forty, Maggie informed herself, isn’t so bad you have to envy a twenty-year-old girl who looks her age.

  Sean buffed the far end of the dining table, adding the smell of polish to those of disinfectant and bacon, his face carefully neutral. He was a handsome young man, yes. His manner ranged just far enough between cocky and callow to be charming. But Maggie sensed something deliberate in both.

  She told herself, so you’re down on men. You don’t have to get your back up because a twenty-year-old boy acts his age.

  “Sorry I went off by myself. I should’ve asked Sean to go with me, but I didn’t…” Rose glanced at the young man’s broad back.

  Maggie filled in the rest of the sentence, want to encourage him, and said aloud, “…think there would be any danger. Of course not. Small town, a civilized country—uh-oh. Here we go.”

  A man in a dark suit thrust open the doors of the vestibule and walked into the dining room. “Good morning. I’m Detective Inspector Jivan Gupta, Somerset Constabulary.” Although he wasn’t a large man, he carried himself like a king—or a maharajah. His mahogany complexion was cut horizontally by a splendid black moustache. Similarly black hair was trimmed in a military style.

  Maggie started to run her fingers through her own short, thoroughly undisciplined auburn hair and caught herself. “Good morning.”

  Pulling out a chair, Gupta sat down. From his inside pocket he produced pen and notepad. “Miss Kildare? Do you mind answering a few questions?”

  “Anything I can do to help.” Rose shoved the mug away, set her chin, and sat up straight.

  Maggie extended her hand. “I’m Maggie Sinclair. Instructor in British History, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. I’m leading the seminar group.”

  “Dr. S
inclair.” Gupta’s handshake was brisk and firm.

  Maggie’s jaw tightened. “No. Just ‘Ms.’”

  “How many students do you have, Ms. Sinclair?”

  “Three.”

  Sean left the polishing cloth lumped on the table and leaned against the fireplace. “My name’s Sean MacArthur.”

  “I’m Anna Stern.” Anna stepped into the room, propped her broom against the wall, and sat down.

  Anna’s contained movements, her whip-thin body, her cap of silver hair made her resemble an ambulatory Ionic column. While Maggie insisted on “Ms.,” Anna was unaffectedly “Mrs.,” a widow pursuing her intellectual interests, not a political agenda. You don’t have to envy a sixty-five-year-old’s composure, either, Maggie instructed herself

  Gupta asked, “You’re stopping here at the youth hostel, are you?”

  “Just for two nights,” Maggie replied. “Today we’re moving to the B&B where we’ll be staying until the end of the year. Temple Manor on Old Beckery Road, about a mile west of the Abbey.”

  “Ah, yes. The former owner is a great friend of mine.”

  “Thomas London, the historian?”

  “Yes.” Gupta nodded. “You’ll be stopping in Somerset until the end of December?”

  “We rejoin the other groups in London at Christmas, attend the New Year’s Eve concert at Canterbury, and get home the first week of January.”

  Gupta wrote that down. “Now then, Miss Kildare. Soon after entering the Abbey this morning you found the body of a woman. You told P. C. Barnes you weren’t in the grounds above five minutes. The custodian agrees.”

  “It seemed longer than five minutes,” Rose said in a steady voice.

  “No doubt. Why did you go into the Abbey before it opened?”

  “I left my notebook there yesterday. At least, I think that’s where my notebook is.”

  “But you didn’t collect your book?”

  “No.”

  “Our lads haven’t turned one up. Can you describe it?”

  “It’s an ordinary spiral-bound notebook with a red cardboard cover. My name’s inside.”

  “Did you see anyone in the Abbey grounds?”

  “Yes,” answered Rose. “A man—at least, he walked like a man—was standing next to the north transept, maybe thirty yards away from me. He made eye contact for just a second, then—well, he just melted away into the mist.”

  “Description?”

  “Hard to say. He was wearing a loose coat or a cloak—you know, there was cloth fluttering behind him. A dim light shone around it, like he was carrying a flashlight.”

  “A torch.”

  “No, a flashlight.”

  “Same thing, here,” murmured Maggie.

  “An electric torch.” Gupta’s teeth flashed in a quick grin. “And?”

  “His eyes were weird,” Rose added. “Shiny, like a cat’s.”

  “The custodian didn’t see anyone enter or leave,” Gupta went on, “but climbing the wall’s no trouble. The Abbey attracts all sorts, toe-rags, travelers, layabouts. People looking out a place to kip.”

  And people looking for a Story, Maggie thought.

  “We saw a couple of weirdoes in sleeping bags up on the Tor yesterday morning,” said Sean. “They must’ve been whacked out on something to spend the night in the cold.”

  “Perhaps they felt the holiness, not the cold,” Gupta told him.

  “Is holiness in the eye of the beholder?” asked Anna.

  “Not necessarily,” he answered. “Now, Miss Kildare, was the man standing just beside the dead woman?”

  “No, but close enough he must’ve seen her.”

  “You saw only this one man?”

  Rose shifted uneasily. “Right after I found the—I found her—I heard a noise. I thought the guy had come back, but it was just a bird. I think.”

  The cold shiver already tightening the back of Maggie’s neck started to drip queasily into her stomach.

  “We’ll make inquiries,” said Gupta. “The man might could come forward on his own. If nothing else, perhaps he saw something or someone.”

  “How long had she been dead?” Rose asked. “Do you know?”

  “Our best guess just now is that she died between one and four this morning.”

  “You couldn’t have helped her.” Maggie patted the young woman’s arm.

  Rose sighed acceptance. “Do you at least know who she is?”

  “Not yet,” replied Gupta. “You told P. C. Barnes you thought you recognized her?”

  “I think I saw her at the Abbey yesterday afternoon.”

  Gupta reached into his pocket, pulled out an instant photo, and laid it on the table. “Take your time.”

  Rose’s clear blue eyes narrowed in something between thought and pain. She bit her lip and released it. “That’s her. She was doing yoga exercises where the altar used to be.”

  “She was?” Maggie reached for the photo.

  Her glasses were upstairs, but still she could see this picture altogether too well. A human body rendered every courtesy, painted and permed and displayed on satin cushions, still seemed cruelly empty. This woman’s poor neglected flesh was obscene. Even so, Maggie recognized the woman’s dark hair and eyes and heart-shaped face. “I saw her walking into the Abbey with a man. Later I saw her sitting on the site of the altar, but I missed the yoga poses. My back was turned. As usual.”

  Gupta drew himself to attention. “She was with a man?”

  “A middle-aged man with a Scottish accent. He said something to her along the lines of, ‘No good will come of this, Vivian.’ And she answered, ‘Nothing wrong with having a giggle with the group tonight, Calum. I’ll get a story for the paper.’ He came back, ‘You and your stories,’ and she came back, ‘I’m a journalist. Writing stories is what I do.’”

  “They were arguing?”

  “Disagreeing. He seemed to be worried about this group gathering, while she wasn’t. I would’ve thought he was her father except for the difference in accents.”

  “Hers was English, then?”

  “Yes. I’ve been to the U.K. often enough I can pick up the regional accents,” Maggie explained.

  Gupta didn’t quibble. “This is all very helpful. Thank you, Ms. Sinclair.”

  “You’re welcome,” Maggie said. Funny, people usually didn’t think her curiosity was at all helpful.

  “Did the man—Calum—have odd, shiny eyes at all?”

  “I didn’t notice.” Maggie looked again at the photo. What had Vivian been holding in her hand that now curved so suggestively around thin air? Shaking her head, she handed the photo back to Sean.

  He went a bit pale around the gills, then recovered himself with a grimace worthy of John Wayne. “Yeah, that’s the woman from the altar. She was hard to miss, contorting herself like that. And she was wearing a tight sweater under her coat, she was really…”

  Stacked. Maggie finished for him. Yes, Vivian had a voluptuous figure. She’d probably spent years dieting, and now look at her.

  Sean passed the photo on to Anna and shrugged, a nonchalant gesture that Maggie, through long and often grim experience with the male species, had learned to interpret as embarrassment.

  Handing the photo back to Gupta, Anna said solemnly, “Yes. She was exercising on the site of the altar.”

  “Did she seem despondent at all?” Gupta looked around the room.

  “No,” Maggie replied. “She seemed very pleased with herself.”

  “Yeah,” said Sean. “She was kind of grinning up at a guy in an overcoat—I guess that was Calum—like she was coming on to him.”

  Rose shook her head. “No, not like that. Like she was showing off for him. But he just looked serious and kind of sad.”

  “Suicides,” said Anna, “can be very cheerful once the decision is made, believing peace to be at hand. If that’s why you asked, Inspector.”

  Maggie visualized the agonized ghosts of suicides in the Inferno and thought, peace?

>   “Yes,” Gupta said, “that’s why I asked.”

  “You think she lay down out there on purpose, so she would die of exposure?” Rose asked faintly.

  “She could have done. Although now that you tell me she was after going to a party, I’m thinking she could have been drunk or drugged, and didn’t know what she was doing.”

  Samhain, Maggie thought. When the Unseen becomes visible. When the spirits of the dead walk the Earth. A night that in the twentieth century had become an excuse for role-playing and trick-or-treating. “She could have been killed somewhere else, and her body dragged into the Abbey.”

  Rose’s eyes widened. Sean’s brows rose. Anna tilted her head. A spark danced through the depths of Gupta’s dark eyes and vanished. “No one’s said anything about murder, Ms. Sinclair.”

  “No, of course not. I’ve got too good an imagination,” Maggie said quickly, and wondered just what that spark signified.

  “Did you find her clothes?” asked Sean.

  “Yes, piled in the corner of the chapel. Ordinary undergarments, tights, a long white dress. No coat. No handbag. And the one curious item, the sheath of a small knife. But we didn’t find a knife anywhere about.”

  Maggie asked herself, why not? And she didn’t like her answer.

  “But she wasn’t stabbed?” asked Sean.

  “Not a mark on her, so far as I could tell, but the pathologist will be drawing his own conclusions. I’ll issue a bulletin for this Calum chap and ask Vivian’s friends to come forward. Did you take particular notice of anyone else at the Abbey yesterday?” Gupta looked from face to face. Every pair of eyes looked back at him, but it seemed to Maggie that only hers showed apprehension. Too good an imagination.

  She remembered the two priests. The Druids. The guy with the leather jacket and the kid with the boom box. Assorted tourists. She shook her head. No one else had anything to offer, either.

  Gupta clicked his pen. “Right. If you would be so good as to call in at the station and give us statements before you relocate?”

  “No problem,” Maggie answered.

  “I knew travel was broadening,” Rose said, “but I’m going to have stretch marks on my brain.”

  “Believe me, this was not supposed to be part of the curriculum.”