The Avalon Chanter (37 page)

Maggie nodded stiffly, her jaw set.
“When?”

“
You and Lisa were going on six or so.
James and Wat were preparing a barbecue at the school and Elaine
and I were here cutting vegetables and the like.”

“
Not when did she tell you. When did it
happen?”

“
Ah. Well. Whilst Wat was on tour in
seventy-one, she said. He was on the road more than he was home in
the old days, working to pay for building the school and all. She
was telling me that if he could he’d have locked her up tight in a
chastity belt every time he was away.”

Jean caught Rebecca’s glance and tossed it
back again. Chastity belts were creations of the Victorian
obsession with sex, illicit and otherwise, not truly medieval
artifacts.

“
He always accused her of infidelity,”
said Maggie. “No more than his usual bluster, I always
thought.”

“
It was that. And as Elaine told me
that day, it was all too little, too late. She’d locked herself
away years ago, after the one disastrous—adventure was the word she
used. Adventure gone wrong.” Pen brushed at the snow-white
tablecloth and then considered her fingertips, perhaps to see if
they were matted with blood rather than crumbs. “I remembered that
day, a sea fret in late seventy-one, the day Athelstan went
missing. Two days before Tom vanished from the island.”

Maggie pushed her scone away. “Athelstan told
everyone he was going wildfowling. When he saw the fret coming up
he made his way to Farnaby, knowing Dad was away. Is that it?”

“
I believe so. You must understand,
love, Elaine didn’t tell me all this as a coherent narrative, but
in bits and pieces, like coals dragged out of a fire.”

“
Yes. I should think so.”

“
She said
he
turned up at Gow House—it’s only now I’m
realizing
he
was Athelstan.
Only a few students were living there at the time, and they were
all away. She and
he
were
alone. They ended up in her bedroom. How, I didn’t ask, although I
suspect the whisky was involved.”

Lots of poor decisions were incited by
alcohol, Jean thought. “Did he force himself on her?”

“
I’m thinking not, no. Easy for her to
say he took her flirting as agreement, but she never said that.
Likely she did agree, however briefly.”

Maggie’s hands on the tabletop closed into
fists.

“
She said when she saw
him
asleep on Wat’s pillow, snoring
fit to beat the band, she was overcome with disgust. With guilt.
She hated herself. She hated
him
.” Pen made a thrusting motion, barely missing
the coffee pot. “She gestured with the knife she was using to cut
the carrots, an outward sort of punch that made me think she’d hit
him with something whilst he slept, to wake him and send him on his
way. Now, though, now I see . . .” Reclaiming her hand, Pen buried
her face in it, hiding her eyes.

Maggie leaped from the chair and walked
across the room to the bookshelves, where she stood with her back
turned. Rebecca eased to her feet and slipped away, whispering,
“I’ll have a look at the baby.”

Jean’s center of gravity seemed to have sunk
to her feet. She sat immobile, not seeing the coffee pot, the
plate, the crumbs. She saw Elaine in a paroxysm of guilt and grief
snatch up the first thing that came to hand—Tom’s chanter; he lived
at Gow House; his pipes were there—she saw Athelstan asleep,
snoring, maybe drooling as people sometimes did when sleeping
soundly . . . That was why the victim held still. He was
asleep.

Elaine’s gesture was one of sexual violence.
A long object inserted forcibly in an open mouth. The thrust with
the distraught woman’s full weight behind it. Athelstan waking,
gasping, choking, but Elaine unrelenting, leaning in. It was as
much her fault as his, but in that moment it was on his head. It
was in his head.

No, as Pen had said over lunch, it hadn’t
been like Wat to creep about and premeditate. No one had crept
about and premeditated. It had been very much a crime of passion,
in more ways than one.

Jean croaked, cleared her throat, asked, “Do
you know how Athelstan’s body ended up in the tomb?”

Pen looked up, sniffed, dabbed at her eyes
with the corner of her apron. “No. How could I? I didn’t know he,
the lover, was dead, did I? Not till Maggie opened the grave
yesterday.”

Maggie said to the bookshelf, her voice
barely carrying across the room, “Mum’s always been beguiled by
that tomb. That was when she levered up the inscribed stone and
broke it, I reckon. When she had a body to hide.”

“
You don’t pick up a dead body like a
sack of groceries.” There was an echo in here. Jean had said the
same thing to Alasdair in this very room, last night. Funny how
close to the truth he’d come when he’d pointed out the
inconvenience of dying during sex. “You don’t put clothes on a dead
body, not easily.”

“
Maybe Athelstan didn’t remove his
clothes,” Maggie said. “A quick encounter, there’s no real
need.”

Jean envisioned the wellie boots. There were
romantic articles of clothing for you. But yes, he could have died
with his boots on. “The bottom line is, she couldn’t have hidden
the body alone. She had help.”

“
That old rusted wheelbarrow in the
garden. She used it all the time when I was a child.”

“
Okay, yes, a big wheelbarrow to roll
the body across to the priory in the fog. But I meant human help
getting the body into the wheelbarrow to begin with . . .
Oh.”

“
Tom,” said Pen, taking the name from
Jean’s lips. “That’s Tom’s role. He came home and found Elaine with
Athelstan’s body. He found that his own chanter had been used to
kill a man.”

“
He found his queen was a murderer. A
murderess, she’d probably have said herself.” Maggie’s voice fell
into a whisper. “She was only defending herself.”

“
A little hard to claim self-defense,”
Jean replied as quietly.

Maggie darted a look like a javelin over her
shoulder. “You—your husband—the police—they can’t bring her up on
charges! Look at her!”

“
They can’t bring her up on charges,”
Jean replied, “because this is all supposition. Even if they found
Elaine’s fingerprints on the chanter, well, she picked it up
yesterday, didn’t she? Any older prints on there have probably
decayed into illegibility anyway. And no. She’s not
competent.”

Maggie turned again to the bookshelf and ran
her fingertips lightly down the spines of the books.

Rebecca padded back into the room. “So, in
the fall of seventy-one, when did Wat get home?”

“
Soon as the fret cleared,” Pen said.
“The next day. He appeared unexpectedly, saying his gig had been
cancelled, as though he meant to catch her at it. All this time
I’ve been thinking he did catch her at—at something. At something
with Tom. The next day he’d vanished as though abducted by aliens.
He even left his pipes. You don’t do that without good
motive.”

“
He had one,” added Jean. “Sergeant
Darling says Clyde says his father remembers Tom beating such a
fast retreat he left ‘bits and bobs’ behind. A set of pipes is more
than bits and bobs.”

Maggie pulled one of the excavation reports
off the shelf. “I’ve seen those pipes. They’re at the school.”

Well then.
D.C.I. Webber could have the chanter tested to see if it was
part of the set. And if he could prove it was, what then? Pin the
crime on Thomas Seaton, deceased? Wat Lauder, deceased? Elaine
Lauder, no longer part of this space–time continuum?

Pen slid down in her chair. “Tom must have
untied Athelstan’s boat, pushed it offshore—if the tide was
running, it was long gone by the time the fret cleared. He couldn’t
defend himself to Wat. He couldn’t tell anyone the truth. He’d
helped cover up a murder. He’d have been on trial alongside
Elaine.”

“
I suppose,” said Rebecca, “they hid
the body in the tomb instead of putting it back into the boat,
fearing that the boat would be found . . .”

“
As it was,” Pen said.

“
. . . and the nature of Athelstan’s
injury would tell all. Or tell too much, in any event.”

The hum of the electric fire and Hildy’s
quiet breath made the only noise. Then Pen said, “I know why now
Elaine was so generous to Lisa and Edwin when they married. Blood
money. Edwin growing up without a father. It was on her head.”

“
If not for me opening the grave, Mum
would have gotten away with murder. Edwin would never have known
the ugly truth. Inspector Grinsell would still be alive and
badgering someone else. And Donal . . .” Maggie turned around,
setting her shoulders, eyeing the photos along the mantelpiece, her
face grim as granite. She held the book against her chest like a
shield. “I meant to validate Mum’s work, damn it. That’s all I
meant.”

Pen hauled herself to her feet and plodded
across the room as though every step hurt. She put her arm around
Maggie. “There, there, lass. You didn’t know.”

Had I but
known
, Jean thought. Funny how often she’d heard
that.

Pen told Jean, “The card Alasdair was
showing me earlier, with Wat’s notes for a memorial for Athelstan.
I found that in a library book when I was tidying up Elaine’s room
some months back. I showed it to her, but she—she didn’t remember.
I brought it along and tucked it away in my copy of
Britannia
. Merlin, that’s Athelstan’s
nickname.”

“
The name on the card is written over
the name ‘Mordred’ or ‘Medraut,’” Jean pointed out. “Her final
summation of Athelstan, maybe? A traitor?”

Pen could only shake her head. “This evening,
when she said Athelstan was the romantic sort, that she gave him
her glove—she’d give out old gloves, yes, part of their
play-acting, but this time roundit’s a metaphor for, well, you
know. Isn’t it?”

“
Probably,” mumbled Maggie.

“
That’s when I dropped the kettle. I
realized I’d had the wrong end of the stick all these
years.”

“
And all your suspicions fell into
place,” said Jean. “I’ve been there, although not on such a
personal basis. By the way, did you take Elaine’s booklet,
Hilda, the Enchanted Prioress
, from
our room?”

“
Oh. Aye, I did that. Sorry. The
inscription in that book, about bodies being buried—when Elaine
wrote that some years ago I thought nothing of it, but after Maggie
found the body, well, I thought it might be a bit too
revealing.”

“
She’s still feeling guilty,” said
Maggie. “Even now. Even when she’s not herself.”

Jean wondered if Elaine, given the choice,
would have preferred to have her personal tragedy play out in
public the way Maggie’s had. Or would Maggie, given the choice,
prefer to have kept hers hidden? Either way produced a psychic
ghost, a mind haunted with a demon that could never be
exorcized.

Again silence filled the room, a silence
prickling with unease. It should by rights be a dark and stormy
night outside. The waves should be crashing on the shore, thunder
should be rolling and lightning flashing. There should be a
wild-eyed face looking in the window . . .

A fusillade of knocks echoed through the
house. All four women jumped, then ran one after another into the
hall.

A haggard face beneath a floppy canvas hat
was pressed to the glass of the back door, and the wide eyes
staring into the house brimmed with terror.

Chapter Thirty-six

When Pen jerked open the door, a shivering
Elaine fell rather than stepped inside. She wore only pajamas, a
bathrobe, and open-toed slippers.

“
Mum!” Maggie wrapped her arm around
Elaine’s frail shoulders. “You’re frozen!”

Words came from Elaine’s purplish lips.
“Wat’s in a frightful temper. He’s cutting up rough. That pretty
girl with the, the hair like that spice—cinnamon, paprika—she’s
blubbing like a baby.”

“
Tara? Tara’s weeping?” asked
Maggie.

A wave of horror made Jean reel with nausea.
“Or does she mean Niamh?”

“
Who’s playing the part of Wat?”
Rebecca asked.

“
Oh, my God.” Maggie almost hurled
Elaine into Pen’s arms. “It’s Donal, he’s got into the house—what’s
he doing with Tara—where’s Lance?”

Through the open doorway Jean saw lights like
fireflies on the hillside above the priory. The search parties,
blundering around in the dark, missing their quarry.

She’d been right about Donal circling back to
a place already searched, damn it all anyway. Jean sprinted for her
bag and her phone. Alasdair. Call Alasdair.

Maggie whipped her phone out of the
pocket of her cardigan. Rebecca slammed the door, then rushed down
the back hall. Pen guided Elaine into the dining area, murmuring
soothingly. Her face, turned to Jean past Elaine’s bent head, was
that of a carnival mask, emotion stripped of all social
constraints.
Help her! Help us!

“
Tara’s not answering her phone.”
Maggie’s fingertips danced over the tiny screen. “The house phone,
no, not that either. Oh shit.”

“
Jean.” Alasdair’s calm voice emanated
from the phone jammed against her ear. “We’ve not
found—”

“
He’s at Gow House. Elaine ran across
to Pen’s saying that Wat’s cutting up rough and the pretty girl
with the cinnamon hair is crying, and she has to be talking about
Donal and maybe Niamh but certainly Tara and Lance are there
too.”