“I doubt if it’s very important,” said Elizabeth. “You didn’t know Colin Campbell, did you?”
“Yes, he did,” Dr. Carson put in. “Met him yesterday.”
“Damn!” said Cameron, pronouncing the word as if Notre came before it. “The bloke who was on about sea monsters!”
He walked to the hospitality tent, framing a careful explanation of his slight acquaintance with the deceased and trying to decide how best to express a correct, but detached, sense of regret at the gentleman’s passing. He was, therefore, completely unprepared for the sheriff’s line of questioning.
“Am I a what?”
“Whatever you English call them.” Lightfoot shrugged.
“I’m not English. I’m a Scot,” snapped Cameron. He would answer to British or Scottish, but not English, and certainly not Scotch.
“You seem familiar enough with English, though,” the sheriff observed. “However, if you need an interpreter, we can see about finding you one.”
Cameron closed his eyes. What did they bloody think he spoke? “Just ask your questions, please. Or better yet, tell me what this is about.”
Lightfoot MacDonald flipped again through Cameron’s passport, looking for some indication of his status with the government-a telltale 007 stamped beside his name, for example. He said carefully, “According to my information, Mr. Dawson-”
“Dr. Dawson.”
“Whatever. According to my information, this was a political killing, and as an agent for the English government-”
“British!” muttered Cameron under his breath.
“You would have some knowledge of the circumstances.”
“Right. This dotty old man who had a thing about sea monsters gets killed with a skian dubh, and you think the British government is responsible?”
“No, sir. According to my information, the Scottish Republican Army killed him.”
Cameron stared. “Nonsense! You have us mixed up with Ireland. There is no Republican Army in Scotland. And I am not a secret agent for anybody! I’m a marine biologist. I do seals and porpoises.”
“Do you know the Earl of Strathclyde?”
“I’m practically sure there isn’t one. I mean, I haven’t got Debrett memorized, but I’ve certainly never heard of an Earl of Strathclyde.”
“One…” Lightfoot consulted his notes. “Geoffrey Chandler.”
“Ah,” said Cameron, with an arctic light in his eyes. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I’ve sent someone to fetch Mr. Chandler,” said Andy Carson. “Meanwhile, Sheriff, perhaps you’d like to interview somebody else. I promised her I’d mention it to you.”
“Why waste time?” Lightfoot shrugged. “I’ll talk to everybody, and sort it all out later.”
“Are you sure you want me to stay, Sheriff?” asked Cameron.
The sheriff nodded. “If you are a secret agent, you certainly can’t admit it. Everybody knows that. And even if you aren’t, why, you might be helpful to me in the investigation, because I don’t know much about this Scotch business.”
Cameron cringed. Scotch. But there might be a diplomatic limit to the number of times one should correct a policeman, so he said nothing. He didn’t think he was going to be much help, though.
The next witness was a sturdy little woman in her mid-forties, dressed in what Lightfoot considered the preppy golfing costume: tan canvas skirt, knit shirt, green espadrilles. Only the tartan scarf pinned to her shoulder indicated that she was a festival participant.
“Hello, Sheriff,” she said in her board-of-directors voice. “I’m Lacy Campbell.”
“Any relation to the deceased?” asked the sheriff, making a note of the name.
Lacy Campbell stopped, open-mouthed. Was this a trick question? “Well,” she said, “I suppose back in Argyll, if you assume that the Ian Campbell of Glenlyon was the same Ian Campbell who in 1787-”
“So you weren’t his wife or his daughter or anything?” the sheriff put in.
She smiled. “Oh, no. In the sense you mean, we weren’t connected at all. He was just the president of our clan society, and of course quite a lot of us are named Campbell.”
“How come you’re not wearing a kilt?”
“Oh, Colin Campbell would have had a conniption, Sheriff. It is not traditional for women to wear kilts, and no matter what the other clans do, Colin was not about to permit it in ours.”
The sheriff looked at Cameron for confirmation, and received a barely perceptible nod in return.
“Now, as to what I wanted to report in connection with Colin’s murder”-Lacy Campbell permitted herself the briefest of smiles-“I suppose you think it odd that I should be so composed-and, really, it has been quite a shock hearing about the poor man; but to tell you the truth, he wasn’t as popular as he might have been. Several people dropped out of the group altogether because Colin was such an overbearing old… Anyway, he had arguments with everybody, but I did happen to know of one quite recent one that might be important.”
“Not the sea monsters!” cried Cameron. Seeing the others’ look of astonishment, he scrunched down in his seat. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Carry on.”
“We’ll get to that one directly,” Lightfoot promised him. “Now, what were you referring to, ma’am?”
“The first part I only heard about, but I witnessed the second one. Have you heard of Dr. Walter Hutcheson? No? He’s the president of the MacDonalds this year, and he and Colin are both physicians at the community hospital. Myra Logan told me that she heard Colin and Walter Hutcheson arguing yesterday. Myra’s girl is in the country-dancing competition with my Fiona. Myra said that they were actually shouting-something about real estate, she thought. Well, I didn’t think too much of it at the time, because somebody is always shouting at Colin Campbell, but then today at the herding fiasco-”
“Fiasco?”
Lacy Campbell digressed to explain about the mysterious appearance of rookie ducks in the herding box, and the resulting chaos. “I was standing right beside Walter Hutcheson watching the whole thing, and I distinctly heard him say ‘Colin Campbell’ as he stalked off looking like thunder. Now, the reason I think that’s important is that the exhibitor in the sheep trials was Walter’s wife. Well, his ex-wife, actually, but they’re still friends, I believe. They’d been married for decades, you know,”
“So you think he might have killed Colin Campbell over some ducks?” asked the sheriff carefully.
“No. But I think he might have gone to argue with him about it, and one thing may have led to another,” said Lacy Campbell, proud of her powers of detection.
Lightfoot MacDonald considered it. “Cantankerous old body, wasn’t he?” he mused. “So he put rookie ducks in the dog trials?”
“No, he didn’t!” Cameron blurted out. “We did. The Earl of Strathclyde and I.”
After collecting a few more particulars about her testimony, the sheriff shooed Lacy Campbell politely out of the tent and took a long look at the uncomfortable Cameron Dawson. He flipped again through the blue British passport, reading the visa, the description, and making a face at the passport picture.
“You’ve been here… I make it three days.”
“Just about,” Cameron agreed.
“Uh-huh. Three days. And you’ve already made contact with a terrorist organization, had an argument about sea monsters with a man who promptly gets murdered, and now you tell me you’re responsible for this herding duck business?”
Cameron sighed. He didn’t believe it, either. In Scotland he’d been pretty average, studied a lot-the word dull came to mind. It’s the American insanity, he thought ruefully; I’m infected already.
“Haven’t established a time of death yet, but suppose you tell me where you’ve been for the past twelve hours or so.”