The Blue Hackle Read online

  “Putting rings on each other’s fingers and daggers in each other’s hearts, to quote some old historian.” And Jean added to herself, oh yes, Skye was conjuring magazine articles. She’d have to ask Greg for more details of his rogue ancestor. In her previous life, she’d learned that putting a personal face on history added entire minutes to her students’ attention spans. The same ploy worked with readers. “Did Tormod MacLeod murder a MacDonald?”

  “It’s not so clear in the old family story just what happened. That’s why I’m here, to get the facts, if there are any facts to get. Our local clan group and the genealogy sites on the Internet only go so far. I found Dunasheen’s website, though. Dun na sithein, fortress of the fairies. I could hardly resist following up on that.”

  “Sithein can mean fairies,” allowed Alasdair. He’d already expressed caution at Fergie’s take on the subject, not to mention Fergie’s promise of a private showing of the famous Fairy Flagon and the unveiling of yet another notion.

  Jean, though, was sharpening her pencil for the revelation. “But what are fairies? The little people who lived here before the Celts arrived? Nature spirits? Lingering ghosts of the dead?”

  “The old Celts remind me of our aboriginal people, seeing spirits in the landscape. You think any of my old MacLeod rellies are still hanging about to answer my questions, give me the good oil now?” Greg laughed, a peal of unaffected merriment. The wind snatched the sound from his lips and whisked it away.

  Jean and Alasdair shared a glance. If Greg was allergic to the paranormal like they were, then his old MacLeod relatives might well answer his questions. Or not. No one knew the capriciousness of ghosts better than the team of Fairbairn and Cameron.

  White gulls sailed overhead, stained pink by the ray of sunlight. Of sunset. “My old granny,” said Alasdair, “she was fond of saying that gulls carried the not-yet-departed spirits of the dead.”

  “Hopefully my old rellies are well and truly departed. I’d rather read ghost stories than end up in one.” Greg raised his arm to inspect his watch, a massive number that probably displayed stock quotes as well as time and date. “Well then, I’ve got time for a squint at the old castle first. It’s straight on, is it?”

  “That it is.” Alasdair pulled the small flashlight from his jacket pocket. “Have a care, the paths are rough and narrow, and there’s no artificial light. You’d best be using this torch. Just bring it back to the house when you’ve finished. It’s Fergie’s.”

  “Ta. See you later, then.” Greg squished away toward the old castle.

  Alasdair squelched away toward the new one. Jean fell into step beside him, not without a cautionary glance at his rosy face. “When did Fergie get nicknamed that, anyway?”

  “My dad was calling him Fergie Beg before I was born. That’s what his own dad called him, himself being Fergie Mor.”

  “Little Fergus and Big Fergus. But your dad wasn’t Alasdair Mor.”

  “No, he was one of dozens of Allan Camerons. Likely there were more than a few murderers amongst the old ones. Raiders, robbers, rapists. Rum crew.” He spoke casually, just stating a fact.

  “I’ve wondered if your choice of profession was overcompensation for a colorful family tree.”

  “Mind that my own dad went for a soldier. And his dad as well.”

  “That, too. Being born to a middle-aged, retired officer would shape your worldview. I’m sorry I never met your dad.”

  “He was right tolerant of colonials such as Americans and Australians.” Alasdair glanced back at the old castle, then stopped and turned. Jean followed his gaze.

  There was Greg, like Jean herself, an outlander called back to the dark and bloody ground of his forebears. Maybe he was a policeman, too, or a chartered accountant, or another mild-mannered academic-cum-journalist.

  He worked his way up the path outside the enceinte and disappeared into the keep. A few moments later the red jacket appeared atop the tower, gleaming like a tiny flame.

  The clouds thickened, the sun sank, and land and sea, loch and castle, fell into shadow. A patch of pale light sparked on the ruined battlements—Greg had switched on the flashlight. The spill of light over the rough and tumbled stones, part man’s work, part nature’s, seemed brighter than the indistinct human shape. Then both man-shape and light eased down behind the wall and were gone.

  Chapter Two

  With a slight shrug, Alasdair turned from the old castle toward the new. “Old Tormod was transported rather than hanged, and in those days judges and juries weren’t likely to split hairs. He may have killed the man in self-defense. Or else the jury was packed with MacLeods. At any rate, Greg’s right, there’s more to that story. Eighteen twenty-two’s a bit late for a clan feud. And for religious conflict, come to that.”

  “I wouldn’t think even your finetuned instinct for the criminal could do much about a two-centuries-old case,” Jean told him.

  “Does anything need doing about it? Other than you writing it up for Great Scot.”

  “Well, no,” conceded Jean. Several raindrops raked her face.

  They walked on toward the welcoming, if expensive, glow of Dunasheen’s windows and what had to be a mile and a half of fairy lights. Her ears and nose felt brittle as ice, and her hair waved so wildly around her wool scarf that the chill wind penetrated to her scalp. A flock of black-and-white birds whorled upward from the moor, their cries eerier than those of the gulls. Gulls sounded like rusty screen doors. The cry of the oystercatchers, though, carried a trailing bittersweet that made Jean think not of soon-to-depart souls, but of lost ones.

  The call of the birds faded into the silence. Or, rather, into the absence of human noise—no car engines, no voices, none of the constant electronic hum of modern life. All Jean heard was their own footsteps, the sigh of the wind and the unceasing rise and fall of the sea, like distant thunder. The snap and flap of the blue-and-white Scottish flag flying from Dunasheen’s highest tower. And the ring of a telephone.

  Hiking up his coat, Alasdair dug into the pocket of his jeans and eyed the glowing screen of his cell phone. “Ian said he’d phone before the office closes down for Hogmanay. Half a tick, Jean.”

  Typical Alasdair, to set the ring tone of his mobile to the ordinary double bleat of a British telephone. Typical Alasdair, to double-check with his provider before leaving Edinburgh and make sure his mobile would work here in this remote northwestern corner of Skye. He’d been dependent on her phone when they were in the United States in November. Now she was the one restricted to Fergie’s land lines. Funny, Jean thought, how even a portable phone on a base unit looked like an antique while a rotary dial seemed antediluvian.

  Beyond Alasdair and his electronic umbilical, the faintest of blushes still tinted the waves of the loch. Loch Roy probably meant Red Lake, from ruadh, red. Although the stones here weren’t red, not like those on the far side of Skye. Had the waters of the loch been tinted red with blood from various clan battles? More likely, the name came from a person’s name—Rory, also from ruadh, as in red hair. Or, considering the climate, red face, red from the cold or red from the reaction to that bright yellow globe in the sky when it condescended to appear.

  Did he have red hair, the ill-fated Rory MacLeod who had chosen the hard place below old Dunasheen over the sharp edge at his back? How about Greg’s ancestor Tormod, of dubious but intriguing memory?

  Alasdair said, “It’s by way of being a fake, is it? Well then, the Duke has no call claiming a large insurance settlement.”

  Cold as they were, Jean’s ears twitched, and she abandoned her wordsmith’s reverie.

  A pause while Ian, whose virtues lay in method rather than imagination, spoke. Then Alasdair replied, “No, it’s not at all surprising. Crusaders, soldiers, toffs on their Grand Tours, they’d bring back loads of art, antiques, artifacts, holy relics—not all of it legally, mind you. And half the time not knowing what they had, nor caring, come to that, so long as they put on a good show. There’s a trait’s
not yet died out, not by a long chalk.”

  No, it hadn’t, Jean thought, with another look at the castle. But she couldn’t criticize Fergie and his daughter and business partner—who, despite Alasdair’s “wee,” was almost thirty years old—for trying to present a good enough show to hang onto their house, the physical representation of their own family tree.

  “Cheers, Ian. Enjoy your holiday.” Tucking the phone into his pocket, Alasdair turned to Jean.

  Her feet in their wellies were so cold she felt as though she was wearing ice buckets, and shuffled rather than stepped. “Tea,” she reminded him. “Coffee. Maybe a wee dram, even. A warm fire. One of Fergie’s dogs or our own cat, whatever, as long as it’s got fur. I’ll get my notebook and lie in wait for Greg and his murder story. Or Fergie and his plans for saving the estate, whoever crosses my bow first.”

  “Right,” Alasdair said. Once again, they started off toward the house, this time walking even more briskly.

  Ahead of them, the courtyard gate opened and shut with a clang. A woman hurried across the gravel terrace and up the path, arms knotted across the chest of her fake leopard skin coat. One hand held Fergie’s largest flashlight tucked below her elbow like a semi-concealed weapon. Luxuriant golden-blond curls bounced around her pert, tanned face. Her tight red mouth loosened far enough to say, “Hello there. Have you seen a bloke in a red jacket?”

  “Greg MacLeod?” Alasdair returned. “He walked down to the old cas—”

  “Stupid sod! I told him he could wait ’til tomorrow, we’ve just arrived, not even unpacked, but no, we’ve come halfway round the world, he said, what’s a few more yards, dark or no flipping dark?”

  This was “the wife.” At first glance, Jean thought she was twenty years younger than Greg. At second glance, Jean realized that she wasn’t at all younger, she was simply fighting gleaming tooth, painted nail, and hair color a shade too bright for her complexion, against the forces of entropy.

  “I’m Tina MacLeod, Greg’s, well, Greg’s been going on for years about this godforsaken place, imagine that!”

  God had phoned it in a few times out here, thought Jean, but you could say that of Sydney or Brisbane, too.

  Alasdair’s expression remained neutral.

  “London was good, lights, a hotel, nightclubs, but no, that’s not enough, he’s stuck on the flipping family tree, been rattling on about it for flipping years. Here we could be sitting at the C Bar back home, having a cold one beneath the palms—do you know Townsville, that’s in the tropical part of Queensland—I read a brilliant story about a miniature dinosaur in the back garden, made perfect sense.”

  Alasdair managed to get a word in. “He’s gone down to the beach and round to the left.”

  “I’d better yank in his lead, then, it’s almost time for tea. Or drinks, more likely. Anti-freeze. Ta.” She picked her way past, the wellies she, too, had liberated from the stash by the back door slapping along the path. A few paces away, she switched on the flashlight. A bubble of luminescence danced before her like a will o’ the wisp leading unwary travelers to their doom.

  “Have a care,” Alasdair shouted after her. “The path’s right slippy.”

  “Ta!” Tina said again, without turning around.

  They waited while the light disappeared down the slope to the bridge, reappeared at the hulking shadow of the ruined castle, vanished behind the wall. Faintly, Tina’s voice called, “Cooeee, Greg!”

  It was bad luck for a woman or a blond or red-headed man to be first across the threshold at the new year, although whether Fergie’s Hogmanay package included that old custom, Jean didn’t yet know. He could have a twofer with Tina MacLeod.

  Exchanging dubious smiles, she and Alasdair turned away from the old castle, a dark shadow against the clouds. Great minds thought alike, but his was less likely to be visualizing will-o’-the-wisps and doom than pondering how dangerous ruins could be, and not from anything paranormal . . . It was the sky that was ominous, Jean told herself, not Skye. A year ago she’d learned that seasonal affective disorder was a real threat in the depths of a Scottish winter. It said something about the national temperament.

  As long as the free-range Aussies made it past the castle, they’d be okay. Even Jean, whose middle name was not “Grace,” had managed to get from church to castle along the pebbled beach without mishap.

  She and Alasdair pressed on across the gravel and stepped through the gate into the courtyard. The damp cobblestones inside glistened with streaks of gold, red, and green. The arched door in the angle of the wall displayed a wreath of holly and ivy tied with MacDonald tartan ribbons, hung so that the Green Man knocker—one of Fergie’s artistic endeavors—peeked mischievously from its center.

  They walked up the three steps to the door. Alasdair set his hand on the iron handle. From inside came a barely perceptible strain of music.

  Then a long, wavering, shriek, pulsing with anguish, echoed across land and water and set the gulls to screeching and flapping upward like winged ghosts.

  Jean spun around, her heart lurching. “That’s got to be Tina!”

  Instead of leaping back down the steps, Alasdair threw the door open. Sweeping Jean with him, he lunged inside and shouted, “Fergie! Diana!”

  She blinked at what seemed like a flood of light, although it was only the contrast—the aging ceiling fixtures weren’t emitting more than a yellow glow. This was the back door, the postern gate, where old and mismatched boots, limp hats, and a couple of tall vases bristling with umbrellas, walking sticks, and fishing rods had come to roost.

  “Fergie!” Alasdair bellowed, drowning out the music Jean could now identify as the CD she had given Fergie, the latest from her friend and neighbor Hugh Munro, who was singing lustily about heaving away and hauling away, bound for South Australia.

  From the open door behind her came a cold draft and an ominous—no, not silence, a distant sobbing, wailing sound that was neither wind nor sea. And Jean doubted it was a banshee, although on Skye, you never knew.

  What had happened? A path given way, a stone turned beneath an unwary foot, slippery mud, the force of the wind, the darkness—it was Greg, wasn’t it? He’d been wearing athletic shoes, not wellies, not that wearing wellies was a guarantee of traction. Or had Tina herself fallen?

  Jean ran back out onto the stone step, but heard nothing. Funny how her face was now hot, so that the wind felt like a slap with a wet fish.

  Two shapes rushed at her through the kaleidoscope of light and shadow and with a gasp she jerked back against the door frame.

  A big black lab and a little white terrier swarmed around her legs, leaving mud and damp on her jeans and the aroma of wet dog in her nostrils, then stampeded into the house. The last time Jean had seen them, they’d been dozing in front of the fire in the drawing room, inert as hassocks.

  She reeled back through the doorway to find Alasdair pulling out his notepad and wallet—there was the phone. He punched three numbers. “We’re needing an ambulance, someone’s injured at old Dunasheen Castle—Alasdair Cameron, at the new castle—Kinlochroy, aye—very good then.”

  He clicked his phone shut, jammed it into his pocket, and bellowed, “Fergie!”

  A wet yellow raincoat fell off its hook, crinkling to the floor. Hugh sang the old sea chantey about South Australia full of rocks, and fleas, and thieves, and sand. The dogs had vanished, leaving only a trail of muddy paw prints across the tile floor.

  In a stately home, no one could hear you scream.

  “No one heard you. No one heard Tina, either.” Jean jittered to the door and the darkness outside, then to the row of coat hooks, where she replaced the raincoat, then back across the tile floor to the cabinet where Fergie kept the flashlights. She grabbed two and handed one of them to Alasdair. “There’s a bell pull in the drawing room, Fergie used it this afternoon.”

  “Give it tug then, see if it rouses Fergie or Diana, or one of the Finlays. If not them, then the manager’s cottage is next the gard
en. The constable at Kinlochroy’s been alerted. I’m away back down to the old castle.”

  No point trying to convince him to stay put and wait for help. The roses in his cheeks had perished under a drift of snow, and his features tautened into his I’m in charge here expression. When he paused on the doorstep to throw her a crisp, ice-blue glance, she forced her chin up and lifted her left hand in a wave. “I’ll catch up with you. Be careful!”

  And he was gone. The rapid crunch of the gravel beneath his boots faded. The gate clanged.

  Her hand was still extended toward the darkness. The diamond on her ring finger glinted, a micro-prism clarifying the brassy ceiling light.

  Don’t think about it. Find Diana. Find Fergie.

  Jean spun around, spun back again, shut the door, and realized she’d tracked mud across the scratched tile floor—well, who hadn’t, the dogs’ paw prints were only part of what looked like a child’s finger painting project.

  Dumping the flashlight on the nearest surface and stuffing her scarf and gloves into her pocket, she pulled off her wellies. Where were the shoes she’d left here earlier? No time to search.

  In her thick wool socks, she skated rather than ran down the dimly lighted corridor, around a corner, and up a short flight of steps beneath a moth-eaten stag’s head sporting a Santa Claus cap. The doors of the Great Hall, the door of the library . . . She threw open the door of the drawing room, zigzagged around the furniture to the Gothic Revival fireplace, and yanked the tasseled end of the bell pull—to no discernible effect. Whether some distant jangle would attract the attention of a MacDonald, or of one of the Finlays, resident caretakers and chief bottle washers, she had no way of knowing. Come to think of it, this afternoon Fergie had supplemented his yank at the bell pull by shouting down the hallway.

  Alasdair should have phoned Fergie, too. Where the hell was everyone?