LITMIR.BIZ

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generate a crime of passion, you know, the argument, the shoving match, the weapon drawn.”

      His reflected expression was both bemused and amused. “You’re making bricks without straw, Jean. Mind you, I’m agreeing with you, for the most part. Greg meant to meet someone at the church. Whether that someone is the murderer, or knows who the murderer is, we’ll be seeing. It’s possible he killed himself and the someone took away the knife, but without further evidence, I’m thinking there’s no need to go complicating matters any further than they already are. As for an argument, well, some arguments fester for centuries.”

      Putting rings on each other’s fingers and daggers in each other’s hearts. Yeah, she’d had to say that, hadn’t she? But free association was her specialty. So was color commentary. “There aren’t too many arguments festering on this side of the Irish Sea, not fatal ones, anyway, not any more.”

      “When we know the why,” said Alasdair, “then we’ll know the who.”

      She smiled at him saying “when” rather than “if.” “And when we know the who, then we’ll know the why.”

      “Oh aye.” He looked around and up. At first Jean thought he was again considering Fergie’s painting, an interpretation of the legend of St. Michael and the dragon. Archangel and beast were entwined in mortal and gaudy combat, silver lance against green scales, both splashed with crimson. Michael’s helmeted face might look like a canned potato and his lance like a ray gun, but Fergie’s figures had a blocky integrity, and his design was quite nice, dragon and man resembling a knotwork figure from the Book of Kells.

      But Alasdair hadn’t turned art critic; he was looking at the small, ornate clock. “It’s going on for five. Portree should be arriving soon. Gilnockie, though, he’s got a long road.”

      “Only a Brit would think that less than a hundred-and-fifty miles was a long road.” Jean visualized the route south along Loch Ness, then west past Eilean Donan Castle of a million postcards and calendars, over the Skye Bridge and across almost the entire island. “The roads are all two-lane, no single-tracks until you’re past Dunvegan, and the odds of getting behind a caravan/camper trailer or tour bus are next to nothing this time of year.”

      “In daylight and fine weather,” he replied, “you could be driving the route in maybe three, three and a half hours. In the dark and wet, well, he’ll likely be here by nine, depending on how long he’s spent assembling his team.”

      As though summoned by his words, another set of headlights flashed beyond the window. Alasdair spun around like a cat spotting a canary and Jean trotted to his side. Two vehicles materialized in the glow of lights from the house and stopped beside the Krums’ SUV that still sat in the middle of the gravel parking area.

      A patrol car and a small panel van disgorged assorted human figures, which donned reflective canary-colored jackets and fired up flashlights. The cavalry might be arriving, but from here it looked more like the circus.

      The clock on the mantel emitted a tinny, tinkly version of the Westminster chimes and struck five times. From somewhere in the house a deeper version of the same was followed by the two sonorous notes of a doorbell. “Now it’s decided to start working again,” Jean said.

      “You’re not in the hall playing footman just now.” Alasdair picked up his coat and gloves. “Portree wants guiding to the scene. You’re coming out as well, are you?”

      A spousal point to the man for asking. She replied, “Thanks, but no. I’ll see if there’s something I can do to help Fergie and Diana. Poor Fergie, the last thing he needed was a fatality. And yes, I know, the situation is a lot harder on the MacLeods.”

      Dougie was sleeping soundly. Food, drink, and sanitary facilities were available in the dressing room—he could spend his holiday in the suite, no need to get closer acquainted with the household dogs. Switching off first the electric fire and then the overhead light, Jean joined Alasdair in the hall and waited while he locked the door, then handed her an extra key. He didn’t need to point out that half the people in the house would have keys. There was a murderer afoot.

      Jean and Alasdair didn’t need a trail of breadcrumbs or a ball of string to find their way. In the course of their heritage-industry duties, they’d learned how to navigate this sort of pile, from artifact to artwork to antique. You passed the tapestry depicting the Irish myth of Grainne, Fionn, and Diarmuid—faded threads telling a soap-operatic tale of passion, jealousy, and death. You turned left at the sculpture of a goblin holding a functioning if dim light bulb. You turned right at the suit of armor with a pink handbag slung over one steel gauntlet and a pink feather boa looped across its breastplate. You went straight ahead past the mock-Tiffany stained-glass window depicting a mermaid that Fergie had rescued from a biscuit factory scheduled for demolition.

      On their arrival yesterday, he had given Jean and Alasdair a more comprehensive tour than usual, since they were friends—and prospective sponsors—of the family. Despite its faint smell of mildew, Dunasheen was indeed a fairy-tale castle, a fabulous warren of a place. Some areas were beautifully fitted out, fabrics brushed, wood gleaming. Others were still works in progress or works never undertaken. The place was romantic, oh yes, and mysterious, although “mysterious” was not a word Jean planned to use in her article for Great Scot. Assuming an article was still viable, now.

      Alasdair strode on ahead, the floor emitting a series of squeaks and creaks beneath his tread, and stopped beneath the arch leading onto the turnpike stair. He cast a jaundiced look at the sprig of mistletoe dangling from the light fixture. No, it wasn’t a good time to put the provocative vegetation to use.

      Voices echoed up the spiral staircase, Diana’s dulcet tones saying, “. . . I don’t believe we should be doing that, in the circumstances.”

      “We’ve got no choice. It’s part and parcel of the plan,” Fergie said, his mild tones whetted.

      Alasdair looked at Jean. Jean looked at Alasdair. Plan? Fergie’s ploy to exchange security advice and favorable publicity in return for a wedding? Or his plan to reveal another marketing gambit along with their private viewing of Dunasheen’s most famous artifact, the Fairy Flagon?

      “As you wish—” began Diana.

      “It’s not my wish, we agreed—”

      “Very good,” she stated, her voice sharpened to a gingersnap. Light steps went down the stairs to the first floor and faded away.

      No need to point out to either Diana or Fergie that a murder on the doorstep did have a tendency to make the best-laid plans gang agley. No need to let them know they’d been overheard.

      After a discreet pause, Jean and Alasdair started down the staircase. “Mind the tripping stane halfway along,” he reminded her, “the one Fergie was going on about.”

      Oops. Jean grabbed for the handrail, a stiffened rope strung through giant metal eyelets, and placed her feet even more carefully on the long, slightly dished steps like misshapen slices of stone pie. There it was. One of the treads was half the height of the others, designed to trip up a charging attacker and let a defender get the drop on him.

      Just as they had the first times she’d gone up and down and up again, her five-and-a-half senses detected a chill gathered in that spot, a different sort of chill than that of the draft sliding invisibly up the shaft. This time, instead of pushing through the spot, she stopped.

      The back of her neck puckered at a ripple of emotional energy, at the catch between her shoulder blades and the weight on her shoulders that signaled a leak from the next dimension. “Do you feel that?”

      “Oh aye,” said Alasdair, his presence at her back mitigating the chilly creep of her flesh. “There’s a wee bit ghostie just here, not near as strong as some, though.”

      “Fergie said a guest told him he was pushed by invisible hands here.”

      “He tripped himself up. I’ve never yet sensed a ghost could push. As I’ve told Fergie…”

      Fergie

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