She shakes her head. World War II is too recent in history to have caught her attention.
"During the War, British Intelligence took a Scottish island called Gruinard and deliberately contaminated it with anthrax. They were trying to develop something for germ warfare. It's still contaminated, after all these years. It will be for centuries, in fact, if they don't reverse the process, because anthrax is a spore-forming disease, which means that the organisms don't die. They simply hibernate there in the ground until conditions are favorable again."
"And how do you know so much about it?"
"We were afraid that seals might get it, because Gruinard is in the area they inhabit. They do get it, by the way. I was still in grad school when Hanley did that project, but I got to know quite a bit about the disease during the study, since he was one of my professors."
Elizabeth nods. "Alasdair found the plague pit, and of course he knows what it is. He knows it's still dangerous. And he decides to kill us all?"
"Yes. We'll come back to that. I want to know how he did it."
' T want to know why.''
"He was a medical student. He'd know to scoop up the soil under the quicklime and to put it in a jar of water. After an hour, the sediment would settle to the bottom, and the water itself would contain the anthrax spores. To infect someone, you would have to put the spores in a substance that would make them grow. A sort of culture. Jam perhaps. Or honey."
Elizabeth looks up, trembling. "What about honey and hot wax, poured into the bag of a bagpipe?"
"Oh, God, nothing better! A damp moist place. The spores wake up. You blow into the pipe and disturb the air. You inhale it, and you have pneumonic anthrax. That explains the cough."
Elizabeth is shaking. "It explains everything. Callum played Owen's bagpipes after he found him dead."
"That was stupid!" I say without thinking. "He was infected by that, and from then on, he breathed contagion with every word he spoke. No wonder the rest of you got it. Two days of flulike symptoms, and unless you treat it with penicillin, death comes in a matter of hours.
"So Denny's pills protected me," she murmured. "And if he hadn't been so slack about taking them himself, he wouldn't be sick at all."
"It lessened the severity for him. We can be thankful for that."
Elizabeth takes a deep breath and rubs her eyes. "Now can we get to the why?"
I get up and go into the cabin, where I have left my mail. The newspaper is still folded to the article in question. Silently I hand it to her.
PAROLED POISONER DIES IN HOSPITAL
Alasdair McEwan, better known as Alexander Evans, died in hospital at Inverness on Sunday, from injuries sustained during a fall on the island of Banrigh.
The victim's true identity was not known until his guardian, Dr. Philip Sinclair, came forward to claim the body. Sinclair, who had been Evans's prison psychiatrist, thought the young convict was a gifted youth, and he determined to give him a new life once he had served his sentence, even sponsoring the boy to medical school under his new name.
Evans was sentenced to indefinite juvenile detention at the age of fourteen for poisoning his entire family with thallium. After . . .
Elizabeth lays the article aside. "Owen was right. How he would have rejoiced!"
"Right?"
"Yes! The murder at the Witchery tour. That was Alasdair. The reporter was doing his story on the new lives of convicted murderers. Alasdair couldn't afford to have that get out. It wouldn't have done his medical career any good.''
"I suppose Owen was playing detective. And he got too close?"
"Yes. And the rest of us—perhaps he didn't know that we'd be infected, too."
"He guessed, Elizabeth. Otherwise, why stage an accident so that he could get himself and Gitte safely away before the contamination started?"
She looks troubled. "It was a real fall!"
"It had to be in order to be plausible. I suspect that it went wrong. Alasdair must have meant to break an arm or even a leg in his fall from the cliff. Instead, he hit his head—in just the right place to kill him. Bad luck."
"Unless you consider the alternative. After this poisoning venture, there wouldn't have been another parole."
I see a dark shape ahead of us on the line of the sea. The island will be visible soon. I reach out to hold Elizabeth, and it is only when she shivers that I realize I am still in the black wet suit I wore to the beach.
She smiles up at me, still pale, though. "Seal-men only stay with their mortal lovers for seven years,'' she says lightly.
I smile back and pull her closer. "Seven years is a lifetime if you're a seal. Will you settle for a lifetime?"
We stand on the prow of the launch and watch Scotland rise out of the sea to meet us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharyn McCrumb is an award-winning crime novelist and short story writer. Her first mystery featuring Elizabeth MacPherson was SICK OF SHADOWS; that novel was followed by LOVELY IN HER BONES (named "the outstanding work of fiction for 1985" by the Appalachian Writers Association) and HIGHLAND LADDIE GONE. Ms. McCrumb also wrote the Edgar Award-winning comic whodunit, BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN. Her short fiction has been published in Crescent Review, Appalachian Heritage, Central Appalachian Review, Harvest from the Hills, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. She lives in New Castle, Virginia.