Chrissy stared back at her, eyes enormous in her pale face. “But— Is he all right?”
“I don’t know, love,” Alison answered honestly. “We need to get help, a doctor. Go. Hurry.”
Nodding, Chrissy started towards the farmhouse, her gait more uneven than usual over the rough ground. The dog, however, sat down by the door, accusing Alison with his gaze.
“What do ye expect me to do?” she said aloud, but she went back into the cottage. She was afraid to move Callum, afraid she might somehow make him worse. But she could cover him— that she remembered from her school first-aid lessons. Taking the tartan blanket from his narrow bed, she carefully laid it over him.
Her next instinct was to clean up after him, but as she went to the sink for a cloth, realization hit her. If there had been something wrong with the whisky, she shouldn’t touch anything. She saw the green glass bottle on the tabletop, and on the floor beneath it, a pottery mug tipped on its side.
She’d never known Callum to drink much, and certainly not to the point of being insensible. God, why hadn’t she listened to Chrissy? Callum was daft, and aggravating, but he had never lied to her—he’d only shown her things she didn’t want to see.
Why had she thought he would invent an illness just to get her sympathy? He’d called her for help, and she’d refused him the kindness she’d have given freely to a stranger in the street.
If he died, she would never forgive herself. Worse yet, Chrissy would never forgive her.
Chapter Eighteen
It’s ill to break the bonds that God decreed to bind, Still we’ll be the children of the heather and the wind.
Far away from home, O, it’s still for you and me That the broom is blowing in the north countrie!
—robert louis stevenson, from a poem written to Katharine de Mattos,
with a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Gemma pulled herself from Kincaid’s arms reluctantly, loath to leave the cocoon of rumpled sheets and the scent of sleep-sweet skin for the harsh reality of day.
But a cold, gray light shone mercilessly in through the window, and the house was stirring around them.
“What is it about holiday beds?” she asked, yawning.
“It’s never so hard to get up at home.”
Kincaid regarded her seriously. “It probably has something to do with the fact that you kept me up half the night.”
“Me?” She threw a pillow at him. “It was you kept me up!” When he covered his face with it in mimed sleep, she retaliated by snatching the duvet right off the bed.
“Hey, what do ye think ye’re doin’, hen?” he grumbled, in fair Scots.
She stared at him in surprise. “Where did you learn that?”
“I’m a man of hidden talents.” He grinned at her, re-claiming the duvet. “And you haven’t met my father. We really should remedy that someday soon.”
Gemma sat on the edge of the bed. “We should. I’d like to see your mum again. And Kit would love it—Toby, too, of course.” She hesitated, then added, “About Kit . . .
Will we ring him this morning and make arrangements to get him home?”
Kincaid sobered. “I’ve been thinking. This business with Ian is not something I want to discuss with him over the phone—it needs to be face-to-face. If it’s all right with Nathan, I think we should let Kit stay there for another day or two, until I can pick him up on my way back to London. We’ll have to let his school know, of course.”
“Um, right.”
He must have detected some lack of enthusiasm in her response, because he sat up, frowning.
“What? You don’t agree?”
“No, it’s not that. But when are we going to get home, if something doesn’t break on this case? Our hands are tied in every direction. We’ve no idea what’s going on with Tim, and Ross is focused entirely on John Innes—”
“Can you blame him, considering the fact that Innes’s gun seems to have been the murder weapon? Not to mention his dodgy alibi.”
“No,” she said, grudgingly. “I suppose not. But that doesn’t mean I buy John as the shooter. I’ll give you method, and opportunity, but not motive. Why would John Innes have killed Donald?”
“The truth is that you like John, and you don’t want to consider him as a suspect.”
“So?” Gemma countered. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“Flawless logic, love,” Kincaid told her, grinning. “But as it happens, I’m inclined to agree with you. I did make a little headway with John last night. After half a bottle of Scotch, he announced that since he didn’t shoot Donald, he wasn’t going to dig himself another hole just to provide the chief inspector an alibi.”
“Is that all?”
“After that he descended into the maudlin. He told us at great length what a good friend Donald had been to him, and that he didn’t see how he was going to manage without him. Martin and I had to help him up to bed.”
“Would keeping an affair from Louise be worth the risk of being charged with murder?”
“People have killed for less,” Kincaid reminded her.
“Maybe Donald threatened to tell Louise that John was having an affair,” suggested Gemma. “But why would Donald have done such a thing? And I still can’t see John as the Casanova type. He’s much too domestic.”
“You think men who cook don’t have affairs? That’s very sexist of you.”
Gemma refused to take his bait. “None of this is getting us any further forward.”
“So what would you do if you were Ross?”
Gemma considered for a moment. “I’d have another word with Callum MacGillivray. There’s something not right there, although I’ll be damned if I can see what it is.
But for one thing, he was very slippery about what he was doing on Sunday morning.”
“Then why don’t we pay him a call, first thing after breakfast?”
*
By the time they had taken turns squeezing in and out of the tiny shower, Gemma could hear the hum of conversation from downstairs, and the tantalizing smell of frying bacon had begun to drift in under their door.
Not having packed for more than a weekend, she stared at the meager selection in her bag, attempting to decide which of her outfits to recycle. She had glanced out the window, trying to assess the temperature, when she saw Hazel in the back garden.
Pulling on a nubby, oatmeal-colored pullover without further deliberation, she told Kincaid she’d meet him in the dining room. She wanted to have a word with Hazel before breakfast.
Hazel stood at the edge of the lawn, looking out over the wood and, beyond it, the meadow where Donald had died. The crime scene tape still fluttered in the chill little gusts of wind, and the clouds massing in the west were the color of old pewter. Hazel clasped the edges of her cardigan together, as if she were cold.
“The weather’s changing,” Gemma said as she joined her.
“The Gab o’ May. That’s what they call it in the Highlands—the return of bad weather in mid-May.”
“It’s not unusual, then?”
“No. I can remember snow in the Braes in May, when I was a child.” Hazel turned to her. “Gemma, I had the dream again last night. Well, not exactly the same dream, but the same sort of dream.”
“The one where you were at Carnmore?”
Hazel nodded. “But this time there was a man, as well.
It wasn’t Donald, but there was something about him . . .