The Murder Hole Read online

  “That’s not good science,” Jean murmured.

  “It sure as hell isn’t good science. Ambrose should have mentioned the old legends. Shape-changing animals like water bulls and water horses and kelpies were the local people’s way of explaining heads, humps, snaky coils—a variety of sightings. I talked to one old guy who grew up in Foyers in the thirties, says his grandmother told him to stay away from the loch because there were nasty creatures in it. They take their myths seriously here.”

  Yes they did, realizing that myth didn’t have to be true to be real. And yet taking legends too seriously could be as big a mistake as not taking them at all—or so Alasdair maintained, and, as usual, he had a point. Jean suggested, “What better way to keep a little kid from drowning than to scare him so badly that he doesn’t go near the water?”

  “Listen,” Roger insisted, blithely disregarding that that’s exactly what she was doing, “just a few years ago the skipper of a sport-fishing boat wanted to sneak through the Caledonian Canal during the night because his customers had caught over their limit. But the crew absolutely refused to sail up Loch Ness after dark.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “From a guy who knew the skipper himself.”

  “Roger, that’s urban legend territory. For one thing, how was the boat planning to get through the canal when all the locks close down and their operators go home for the night?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then grinned. So he’d learned since the conference that when painting your way into corners, charm got you out again much faster than combativeness. “Well, okay, so much for eyewitness evidence, huh? Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “I don’t.” Jean couldn’t help but return his grin and remind herself that she had not come here to praise, bury, or even debate him, simply to report on his point of view.

  Dempsey raised his hands in surrender. “Granted, if the sightings were just a matter of opinion, of hearsay, that wouldn’t be good science. Even if you count psychology as a science, which I don’t. Where I come in is crossing quantifiable science—you know, the bit about repeatable results, that sort of thing—with something that makes academically-trained scientists uncomfortable.

  “Every science needs dedicated amateurs,” he continued, “Archaeology had Schliemann uncovering Troy and Ventris deciphering Linear B and, well, me. You saw the article in the press kit—I plotted a Roman city in Turkey that was being flooded by a new dam. Nessie had Mackintosh and Dinsdale and Edgerton and all, and now she has me, too. Nothing against academics. Some of my best friends are academics.”

  “Mine too. And a more hidebound group it would be hard to find. Fundamentalists, maybe, but I’m not going to go there.”

  “Then we’re on the same side.”

  Jean wouldn’t go that far, but she said only, “Tell me about your equipment. Your flyers talk about submersibles . . .”

  “No, no, no. Old hat.” He shooed that concept away as though it were a mosquito. “We’ve got state of the art ROVs. Remote operating vehicles. You control the whole shebang from the boat, safe and sound. No risk to the operator. We’ve got cameras, sonar, hydrophones that can hear an underwater fart at three hundred meters. And that’s just for the water part of the mission. On land we have a magnetometer, a new ground-penetrating radar, an electromagnetic ground conductivity meter—all manufactured by Omnium, top of the line. We’re going to work from the boat while the Festival crowds are milling around, then look for evidence on land when it’s over.”

  “On land?” Jean repeated. “It would be even harder for Nessie to hide on the land than in the water.”

  “There have been sightings on land, and not just by people on their way home from the pub.” He paused while she laughed, then indicated the boat, the pier, the water, and the distant hillsides, like an evangelist beseeching the Almighty for a sign. “Jean, people have been laughing at me for years. They said I’d never make a living buying used lab equipment, fixing it up, and selling it. Wrong! Rebuilt lab equipment, computers, sensors, some tweaks of the existing technology, and the next thing you know, I was starting Omnium. They said it would never get off the ground. Wrong again. So here I am, re-paying my debt to the scientific community. Like Thomas Edison moving on from inventing the light bulb to doing research in physics.”

  Unlike Edison, Roger hired other people to invent his light bulbs. But like Roger, Edison had also been a businessman with a good opinion of himself. No one built empires on either light bulbs or used microscopes, Jean allowed to herself, without nerve as well as brain.

  Brendan heaved himself back over the gunwale and splashed onto the deck. That water was forty-two degrees. Even with the diving suit he must be cold.

  “There you are! What took you so long?” said Roger, not to Brendan but to a woman who emerged from the hatchway carrying a tray lined with several mugs.

  “That cooker’s a beast itself,” she said. “I’m resigning as galley slave. With people tramping about here all day long I could do with a sundowner.” Like flicking a switch, she turned a neon smile on the tramp of the moment. “Hello! Jean, isn’t it? I’m Tracy.”

  Jean politely accepted a mug. “Jean Fairbairn with Great Scot. So you’re the woman behind the great man?”

  “That I am, yes,” said Tracy, without the least hint of sarcasm. “Is your husband here with you, Jean? I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

  So both Dempseys had checked Jean out. Well, she, too, believed in being prepared, and answered coolly, “Brad and I are no longer married.”

  “I, uh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Roger’s caterpillar-like eyebrows crawled toward his hat, then toward each other.

  Tracy shot him a sharp glance Jean could not interpret. To Jean she said, “Ah. That’s why you’ve gone back to your maiden name, I expect, not the change of career. Quite right—mustn’t cling to the past.”

  Jean smiled politely, sipped her tea, and offered no more details, since the details had nothing to do with the case in hand, Roger’s false intimacy and genuine charm be damned.

  Roger took off his cap, revealing shaggy salt-and-pepper hair, and tilted the mug into his beard.

  For a moment Jean thought she detected the scent of Earl Grey tea, but no, hers was plain black tea, brewed so strong that even with milk and sugar it was stiff enough to scrub the deck. Sipping, she watched as Jonathan and Brendan claimed their mugs and retreated toward the front deck of the boat. They sat there, either chatting or exchanging barbs, short English vowels dueling with long American ones.

  Then there was Tracy, who posed gazing off over the loch. Now here was a woman who was not aging gracefully, but was fighting every step of the way. Jean could sympathize with that. She herself felt as though she were being frog-marched into middle age.

  Still, didn’t Tracy realize that her linen pants and cotton sweater were so tight they gave the impression she was plump when she was merely woman-shaped, like Jean, not girl-shaped like, say, Kirsty? And while her designer-cut hair showed not one gray strand, the bronze color didn’t look natural next to her fair skin. Assuming “fair” was her actual skin tone—her complexion was smooth as porcelain, and as liable to crack at any moment beneath its layers of foundation, blusher, and shadow. Jean had never been able to wear foundation without feeling as though she’d dipped her face in Crisco. But to each her own.

  According to Dempsey’s biography, he and Tracy were both in their late forties and had been married for twenty-five years, with no issue except a corporation. They gave the lie to Jean’s theory that after a while man and wife would start to resemble each other. If Tracy was trying out for Vogue, Roger was ready for the special Popular Mechanics issue of National Geographic.

  Tracy turned to Roger. Her thin, miserly lips, meticulously lined to make them seem full—and therefore making them seem hard—kept on smiling, while a flatness in her eyes informed Jean that the woman was not. “I’m off to the hotel. You’ll want a wash and
brush up before the Tourist Authority dinner, won’t you, dear? And we’re opening the Festival.”

  “I’ll get there, I’ll get there, give me a chance.” Roger replaced his cap, leaving several tufts of hair sticking out at odd angles, like horns.

  “Where are you staying?” Jean asked Tracy.

  “The Cameron Arms Hotel, the new one working with Starr to sponsor the Festival. And to sponsor us as well.”

  “So it’s not exactly a blinding coincidence that y’all happened on the scene just in time for the hotel opening and the Festival?”

  “Marketing and promotion. It’s all part of protecting one’s investment.”

  “And the anonymous letters haven’t discouraged your work?”

  The corners of Tracy’s mouth dropped abruptly and her lips tightened to a red slit. Her smile may not have been reflected in her eyes, but her anger certainly was. “Iris sent them, mark my words. She may think Loch Ness is her private preserve, but she won’t interfere with Operation Water Horse. You won’t keep Roger much longer, will you now, Jean?” Without waiting for an answer, let alone adding, “There’s a good girl,” Tracy headed toward dry land. The high heels of her impractical but handsome strappy sandals tiptoed across the gangway and tapped up the pier. A moment later the deep-throated roar of the sports car rolled across the water and faded toward town.

  Okay, Jean told herself. Roger might dismiss the letters, but Tracy, spousal minder and manager, didn’t. Did she know about the Nessie-hunting expedition that had been fire-bombed in the eighties? Did Roger? If not, it wasn’t Jean’s place to fan the flames—so to speak.

  With a jaunty wave after Tracy, Roger turned back to Jean. “I’ll get Brendan to set up another interview once we start the land part of the expedition.”

  “Where on shore are you going to look?” Jean set her half-empty mug down beside her chair—she’d reached the day’s complement of caffeine—and picked up her pen.

  “Pitclachie Farm, to begin with. ‘Pit’ is an old Pictish prefix, and ‘clachie’ is probably the Celtic ‘clach’ or stone. In other words, the place was named after the Stone.”

  Oh yeah. Roger’s theory about the Stone. He was digging at Pitclachie?

  “Pictish animal carvings are perfectly recognizable as eagles, bulls, boars, whatever. Except for the ‘beast’.” Roger indicated the logo on his T-shirt. “Maybe this symbol is from the life, too, huh? What if the horse’s head on the Stone is Nessie’s head sticking out of the water? Some witnesses say the Loch Ness monster looks like a horse. You know, water horse?”

  Jean, expressing no opinions, kept on writing.

  “And maybe the broken part had a gripping beast on it, which is a representation of the creature out of the water, on land!” Beaming, Roger saluted the loch with his mug and then took another gulp.

  Jean kept her opinion of that flight of fancy to herself. She was going to be the combative one if she wasn’t careful. She had yet to learn the art—the trick—of just letting her interview subject run on and on until he’d revealed more than he’d intended.

  She realized she wasn’t smelling Earl Grey tea, she was smelling whiskey. No wonder Roger’s tea was the dark brown of the water surrounding the boat, not caramel-colored like hers. She remembered how he had been the first in line at the conference cash bar. When it came to alcohol consumption, he was no amateur. But then, he was no drunk, either. Or hadn’t been, then.

  “Pitclachie Farm?” Jean asked. “Iris Mackintosh isn’t a big fan of yours, whether or not she sent the letters.”

  “Iris is kind of a nut, yeah, but in ways she’s the opposite of Ambrose. She isn’t imaginative enough to think of sending anonymous letters, and too straight-arrow to do it.”

  That was pretty much Miranda’s assessment. “But she gave you permission to search her farm, even though she doesn’t believe in what you’re doing?”

  “Yes, she did.” Roger swirled the liquid in his mug, his cap hiding his eyes, contemplating the drink, or the deck, or a coil of wire at his feet—anything that was not Jean’s face.

  Her own personal remote-sensors blipped, although she didn’t know why. If he didn’t have permission from Iris to search Pitclachie, he wouldn’t be announcing to all and sundry—Jean being the sundry—that he did. But it seemed a bit Quixotic, even for Dempsey, to search for Nessie on land. She tried, “Maybe Iris intends for you not to turn anything up, then she can say she was right all along.”

  “Let her. It’s no skin off my nose if she won’t see what’s right beneath hers.”

  “And if Iris didn’t send the letters,” Jean persisted, “who did? Who doesn’t want you here? Who’s harassing you?”

  “How could searching for Nessie threaten anyone? Some dork’s just playing a stupid joke.” Roger picked up one of his electronic gadgets and inspected its tiny screen. “Nessie can run, or swim, whatever, but she can’t hide. We’ll find her, or evidence that she exists.”

  End of interview. “Well, you have places to go and things to do,” Jean said to the button on the top of Roger’s cap. “I’ll leave you with it. When’s the press junket—er—cruise tomorrow?”

  “Ten a.m. I’ll save you a seat.” He offered her another ingratiating grin, this one from under his brows, warily.

  “Thanks. I’m looking forward to it.” Jean stowed her notebook and pen and stepped across to the pier. The gangplank disappeared from behind her heels the moment she gained terra almost firma.

  Roger dropped the gangplank onto the deck with a crash. “Brendan! Jonathan! Let’s get the boat anchored in the bay. We don’t want the local fuzz to give us a parking ticket.”

  The two young men jostled each other like brothers confined to the back seat of the family car. A moment later the throb of the engines made the dock vibrate beneath Jean’s feet and filled the air with exhaust. Water churned and splashed, and a cold droplet landed on her hand. She turned toward the shore with a friendly nod at the local fuzz. He glanced at his watch. Time for him to close down the sentry post and proceed to happy hour at the pub. Once the boat was anchored in the bay, it would be protected by a natural moat.

  Funny, she thought as she strolled up the drive, how she found herself not just tolerating Roger’s ego, but actually liking his goofy charm and shameless enthusiasm. Exactly as he’d intended. Several times he’d delivered himself of a statement and then paused, like a stand-up comic revising his routine to suit the audience’s reaction.

  Well, if so, then so what? She was probably the twentieth reporter today to ask him the same questions. Even if she’d been the first to challenge his assumptions about Nessie, he’d handled himself well. His agenda was open for inspection. Nothing shady about Roger and Tracy building on his previous acquaintance with her. Nothing shady about them sucking up to her. She’d come here to tell Roger’s story. To promulgate his myth. Because doing so would entice readers to Great Scot. Scratch my back, I scratch yours. Right?

  Jean paused at the top of the road, frowning. So why was her curiosity about the Dempseys and their agenda leavened with so much skepticism it expanded into suspicion? Because Roger seemed to have a history with Iris? Because he and Tracy had checked up on Jean herself? Because of the threatening letters?

  She looked back, past the pier, to Dempsey’s boat cutting a white furrow in the surface of Urquhart Bay. Beyond it, the open water of the loch glimmered like a great teasing eye, in on the joke . . . No, Jean told herself. She wasn’t going to assume anything—not Roger Dempsey, not the letters, not Nessie herself—was only a joke.

  Chapter Six

  By the time Jean had eaten dinner and whiled away several hours in the town and at the Festival, the sun had sunk far enough to cast Pitclachie House and the bay below into delicate shadow, although light still gleamed on the mountains to the east, across the loch. The waves close to the far shore emitted a furtive gleam or two, although not, so far as Jean could see, any flippers, prehensile necks, or proboscis-sprouting horse heads. She was
disappointed. Considering the power of suggestion, she’d fully expected to see a corps of Nessies performing water ballet.

  Inside the Lodge, there was enough light to find the switches without having to grope for them. Who knew what she might touch, feeling around in the dark? She stowed the food she’d bought in the village, freshened up, and glanced inquisitively at the locked door.

  Jean strolled back outside and around the corner of the main house, brushing at a tickle along her hairline. Ah, good, the wind on the terrace side was strong enough to keep the midges at bay. The infuriating biting gnats played a much larger and less benign part in the Highland psyche than Nessie did, and there was no controversy at all about their existence.

  The expanse of the terrace was deserted. No Kirsty, no Iris, no Bouchards. Jean imagined the honeymooners sitting on a window seat, draped in dressing gowns and Gallic insouciance, pretending they weren’t looking forward to the fireworks.

  In a window on the ground floor sat the calico cat, grooming itself, its eyes glinting eerily. Faint lights glowed in the tower, shining not only through the arched windows but also through each of the mock murder holes spaced beneath the overhang of the topmost story, so that they looked like a string of tawny diamonds. Was Iris up there, watching over her domain? She was hardly boiling up oil—or less evocatively but more probably, water—to repel invaders. These murder holes, like the spires and arcades and ginger breaded gables, were all for show, part of the nostalgia game. At least, thought Jean, one of the re-enactors taking tea at Culloden was stained with the red of blood.

  A rolling cart was parked just outside the French doors of what Jean assumed was the dining room, its array of bottles and glasses twinkling with all the glamour of a jeweler’s window. A small, neatly-printed sign read, “Please help yourself.” Not one to turn down a formal invitation, Jean poured herself a wee dram of the wine of the country and took the most comfortable chair.