The Blue Hackle

What reviewers are saying about The Blue Hackle

Jean Fairbairn and Alasdair Cameron are getting married on New Year's Eve at friend Fergie's Dunasheen Estate on the Isle of Skye. Alas, a guest is found murdered beforehand. Fifth in what is billed . . . as a cross-genre series (mystery, romance, paranormal) . . .—Library Journal

. . . Carl's spirited fifth mystery featuring American travel journalist Jean Fairbairn and her Scottish fiancé, retired detective inspector Alasdair Cameron (after 2009's The Charm Stone) . . . diverting.—Publisher's Weekly

Lillian Stewart Carl is very adept at placing her readers in her geographical settings. [She] weaves an interesting plot with myths, legends and the paranormal along with a secondary storyline for the upcoming wedding. In The Blue Hackle each and every character is skillfully portrayed with diversity. A most enjoyable read intertwined with Scottish history and geography.—Connie Gregory, conniesreviews.blogspot.com

I've enjoyed this series so far and The Blue Hackle is the best so far . . . As you'd expect there's a great sense of place, in this case, the Isle of Skye. The people are definitely individuals—there are no interchangeable characters as filler . . . Normally, I can figure out mysteries quite early, so it is a joy to find books where I can't guess until nearly the last page . . . get yourself a copy of The Blue Hackle. If you enjoy it as much as I did, you can then read the earlier works since each one can stand alone.—Gayle Surrette, Gumshoe Review

The Blue Hackle

Book four of the Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron series

Lillian Stewart Carl

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2011 by Lillian Stewart Carl

This book is available in print at most on-line retailers

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Anjali Ravi Carl, The last but far from least book of the series for the last but far from least member of the next generation.

Chapter One

Jean Fairbairn peered over the railing of the footbridge. If sufficiently motivated—chased by bloodthirsty swordsmen, for example—she could have dangled by her hands from the walkway and dropped into the rocky, muddy gully that had once been a moat. She’d be skewered anyway, but giving up and going quietly had never been part of her vocabulary.

Nor was it part of the vocabulary of Scotland, where the past had played out in scenes of blood and thunder, fire and sword. Now popular memory and the Scottish Tourist Board elided here, revised there, and edited fierce bloody-mindedness into high Romance. Though history could still be perilous, as the thud and blunder of Jean’s own, lowercase, romance had proved.

Alasdair Cameron, the object of her romantic inclinations, inspected the ruined castle that rose above the far end of the narrow walkway even as he said, No need to go chucking yourself over the edge just yet, the wedding’s not ’til the third.

Thank you, light of my life, Jean returned. Was it this Dunasheen Castle or the other one where Rory MacLeod tried to jump from wall to tower to see his lady love?

This one, I’m thinking, it being a medieval tale. Though it goes that he reached his lady love via the stairs, her husband came breaking in, sword in hand, and he made the leap from tower to wall, meaning to escape.

Both versions are variations on a theme, the lover’s leap, fatal or otherwise. That brought Jean back around to the choice she did not, thank goodness, have to make, between a sharp edge and a hard place—her imminent matrimonial plunge notwithstanding.

She hadn’t intended to fall for anyone, let alone a Scottish detective inspector. And now-ex-policeman Alasdair hadn’t meant to fall for a part-time historian, part-time journalist, full-time inquiring mind wanting to know. But their hearts had led, leaving their heads to play catch-up, and here they were, on a bridge both literal and symbolic.

Smiling, Jean also considered the snaggle-toothed battlements of the ancient castle keep. Outside the tower, lichened blocks of dark gray stone imperceptibly became lichened bedrock, knitted together with tussocks of grass and tufted by saplings springing from crevices. Inside the tower, seabirds nested in empty windows and in hollow fireplaces now suspended from sheer walls. The wooden floors where people had stood warming their chilblains, cooking their food, and thanking goodness for strong defenses atop a small, craggy islet—moats and drawbridges making good neighbors—had decayed into nothingness long ago.

The old castle was dignified in its desolation, and yet Jean also sensed an air of sadness for times past and regret for lives spent. She wouldn’t be surprised if it was also haunted, but she hadn’t lingered long enough for her spectral early warning system to activate.

Alasdair raised his camera, took several photos, then jotted something on a notepad.

Now what? Secret passages? Buried treasure? Jean pulled her hands up into her sleeves in an attempt to warm them up.

That path running outside the enceinte, the boundary wall, he replied. It’s partially eroded, right dangerous, and wants blocking off. Or rebuilding with a railing, but Fergie’s saying he can afford only what will keep the place standing.

Structural faults aren’t really in your line of work.

Oh aye, here’s Fergie—and wee Diana as well—thinking I’ll be advising him on locks and the like for the new castle, not on shoring up the old one, but it’s something I can be doing to help. This bridge, now, is likely no more than thirty years old. A bit damp, mind. It wants checking for rot. He stamped on the walkway, sending a reverberation through the wooden slats beneath Jean’s feet.

A good thing she wasn’t acrophobic. Claustrophobic, yes, and dubious about darkness. She’d declined a visit to the dungeon in the foundations of the old tower, more like a cave than a cellar, never mind Alasdair and his flashlight. The issue wasn’t only its impenetrable shadow and low, vaulted ceiling, but its smell; dead fish, defunct rats, decaying seaweed, mold and mildew.

She inhaled deeply of the cold wind and vaporized Atlantic that scoured her cheeks—out with the bad air, in with the good—and looked up at the sullen gray sky. Sea gulls spiraled like flecks of white confetti, their harsh squawks piercing the thrum and seethe of the waves against the far side of the islet. What isn’t damp? This is the Isle of Skye. It’s a giant soggy sponge. Look at those clouds, it’s going to rain again any minute. Sleet. Snow.

It’s not cold enough to sleet or snow.

Coulda fooled me.

Alasdair glanced at his watch. It’s getting on for half past three. Sunset, this time of year.

Tell me about it. I moved to Edinburgh from Texas last January. That was a shock. It wasn’t until it was still light at midnight in June that I thawed out and dried up. Not least because it was in June that she and Alasdair stopped circling each other like duelists and surrendered to their mutual attraction.

If he caught her reference, he showed no sign of it. Grasping her gloved but cold hand in his, he pulled her toward the mainland—or main island—side of the bridge. Skye can have positively brilliant days in December and January. We’ll be seeing one yet. Just now, though, we could do with a cuppa.

No kidding. Tea, Jean thought. Chocolate biscuits. Caffeine and cocoa, two of the basic food groups.

Their rubber wellie boots clumping, they scrambled up the mud-and-gravel path to the top of the brae. This hill might not be nearly as tall as the towering cliffs propping up other stretches of the Skye coastline, but still it commanded a view. Or would, when one of those brilliant days came along. Fergie promised a panorama, from the islands of the Outer Hebrides across several miles of open sea to the north to the peaks of the Black Cuillins to the south, beyond the end of Loch Roy, a narrow inlet of the ocean that formed the eastern boundary of Dunasheen Estate.

Now, though, either sinking cloud or rising mist blotted the horizon, and the waves where loch met sea, below the ramparts of old Dunasheen, gleamed gunmetal gray. The terrain resembled a tattered crazy quilt laid over the bones of the earth. Patches of olive drab, rusty brown, and more gray were lumped around weathered boulders and pocked by reed-fringed pools scummed by ice. A few blots of light in the murk were all Jean could see of the village of Kinlochroy, at the far end of the loch.

But she and Alasdair weren’t walking to the village, not when the magnificent Scots Baronial pile of new Dunasheen Castle lay just ahead. The warm glow of its windows and the red and green fairy lights edging its eaves made the building into a humongous Christmas card. All it needed to complete the effect was snow softening the stark, black limbs of the trees tucked in behind garden walls.

All right! Jean pulled Alasdair to a halt. Take some photos to go with Fergie’s interview. Look, there’s even a guy in a red jacket walking out of the courtyard—perfect timing, very photogenic.

Muttering something about electricity rates and Fergie not knowing when to stop, Alasdair raised his camera. The interview’s covering the estate, the renovations, the paying guests and all. You’re not meaning to encourage his fancies and odd notions.

Define your terms. You think not putting milk in your tea is an odd notion.

His slate-blue eyes that could be chill as the North Sea sparkled like a tropical lagoon. A wry crumple only deepened the graceful curve of his lips.

Jean ignored his silent retort. "Sure, that’s the deal, your security expertise and my journalistic skills in return for a New Year’s Eve party and a wedding. The weird stuff is off the record. It would hardly scare away the customers, though. A lot of people love weird stuff. I love weird stuff. But Fergie’s your friend, so he gets a free pass. Especially now, during the Daft Days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve."

Especially as we’re all a bit daft, in our own ways.

That was one concession, Jean thought, he would not have made even a few months ago.

Either rain or sea spray drifted across her face and glasses, making her squint at the suddenly blurry landscape. But the welcoming windows and cheerful lights still shone, and with Alasdair at her side she walked toward them.

It wasn’t her step that was springy, it was the ground she walked on—water, peat, layers of cultivation both literal and cultural. Skye, An t-Eilean Sgithanach, the wing-shaped isle, a name to conjure history, legend, and the dubious shores between. She could create multiple articles for Great Scot, the magazine that was partly her investment and fully her employment, without getting too close to Fergie’s more marginal notions, although his notion of making a self-sustaining business of a Scots Baronial white elephant was the point of the exercise.

New being relative in this part of the world—new Dunasheen dated to the early 1600s, when the local MacDonald laird had, after years of conflict, at last dispossessed the local MacLeod laird. He’d then abandoned the old castle and proclaimed his wealth and sophistication by erecting a manor house a la mode. Since then, generations of Lords Dunasheen, MacDonalds all, had renovated, rebuilt, and recreated. Annexes and towers encrusted the original building. Bow windows sprouted from walls, and dormer windows from moss-lined slate roofs edged by crow-stepped gables. Conical turrets called bartizans seemed to hang onto corners by sheer will power but were actually supported on corbels, protruding stones set in decorative tiers. Chimneys both tall and short capped the exuberant, if time-stained, structure like exclamation points.

Even in the dull light, the stucco-like lime harling that protected the stone walls from the uncompromising elements reflected a sheen of pink. The original had been colored by the bull’s blood used as a gelling agent, Fergie had said, just as the mortar holding together the bare stones of old—eight hundred years and more old—Dunasheen had been coagulated by the eggs of sea birds. You used what resources you had here at the outer rim of civilization, thought Jean. You called in favors from old friends. You promoted your white elephant as a fairy-tale castle.

The man in the red jacket marching along the footpath toward her and Alasdair must be a product of Fergie’s marketing scheme, moats and drawbridges now making good customers. They met up with him just where the path twisted between fissured, lichen-encrusted boulders, half-concealed by unblooming heather.

His bulbous nose was red, too, and his square, blunt face was burnished by the wind. Sandy hair streaked with gray fluttered back from his wide forehead. Hunkered down into his thickly padded jacket, his hands thrust into his pockets, he was still taller than Alasdair, who in turn was taller than Jean. But then, most people who were not children or hobbits were taller than Jean.

The man’s face creased into a triangular grin, wider on one side than on the other, filled with uneven teeth. His oddly pale gray eyes gleamed with humor. If this was a golf course, it’d be all rough and no fairway.

Oh aye, Alasdair replied. He and Jean turned sideways, giving the man passing room.

He maneuvered past, saying Scuse me, mate in a twang squeezed against the roof of his mouth. You too, Missus. Is this the way to the church?

He was either Aussie or Kiwi, Jean deduced, her ear for Down Under accents not tuned finely enough to detect the difference. She’d have to ask.

Alasdair answered, The old church or the new one?

The one with the crusader tombstones that was burned down by the MacLeods in 1645.

Who had surrounded the building, Jean added silently, swords drawn, as the congregation of MacDonalds perished inside—clan conflict fed on religious conflict and vice versa. But the delectable odor of smoke teasing her nostrils this afternoon was that of smoldering peat, implying warmth and sanctuary.

Then, no, you’ve gone the wrong way, said Alasdair. That path runs from the garden at the western side of the house. The new castle. But you can follow the beach below the old castle round to the left, past the wee promontory, and then climb the brae to the church.

Jean assessed the slight pucker between Alasdair’s eyebrows as a mental note: Tell Fergie to lay on directions to the local sights.

Her own mental note was a selfish one. The horrific events at the old church trumped its historical interest, and she was just as glad the wedding was scheduled for the new one, a charming Gothic Revival folly. Not that she’d sensed more than a melancholy chill at the old church—churches, plural, walls layered atop more walls layered atop ancient foundations—when she and Alasdair had stopped there on their tour of inspection.

She tried luring the stranger into conversation with, You’re already familiar with the history of the area, then.

Yeah, I’ve been tracing the family tree. I’m a MacLeod myself. Greg MacLeod, Townsville, Queensland, Oz. You’re at the castle, too? He extended his right hand.

Aye, Alasdair said, without introducing the topic of weddings. Alasdair Cameron, Edinburgh. He exchanged a firm handshake and passed the friendly hand on to Jean.

To her cold fingers, Greg’s hand seemed almost feverishly warm, slightly damp, and linty from his pocket. Jean Fairbairn, also Edinburgh, though I started in Texas. But you’ve come a lot further than I have, all the way from Australia.

Not so far, not these days. My multiple-great grandfather, though, came out on a leaky ship. Transported near two centuries ago, and not for nicking a loaf of bread. For murder. Despite his words, Greg’s grin evened into a rectangle, revealing a few more teeth—Jean wondered if they were issuing extra ones in the southern hemisphere.

Murder, Alasdair repeated, if not amused, then not alarmed, either.

Abruptly the light wasn’t dull at all. A gleam of sunlight pierced the cloud, glanced off the sea, and swelled like a scarlet wound along the southwestern horizon. Every puddle, pool, and trickle of water in the surrounding moorland glittered.

Dazzled, Jean said, After two hundred years, having a murderer in the family seems more exotic than shameful. In fact, I hear having ancestors among the convicts in the First Fleet provides a bit of cachet in Australia these days, when for years it was something you hid beneath the antimacassars. Or was your ancestor in the First Fleet?

Not at all, no. Tormod MacLeod left Skye in 1822. He wouldn’t have had an easy go down under, but he missed out the worst days of Botany Bay. Though I’m starting to think the old guy crossed up the law to get himself a ticket to a warmer climate. Greg returned his hands to his pockets and his shoulders to a crouch. But here I am. Blood is thicker than water.

You’ve not chosen the friendliest time of year, said Alasdair.

Christmas in London, though! Lights, music, food, grand museums, galleries. And Harrod’s, Debenham’s, and Burlington Arcade for the wife. Now my credit card needs resuscitation. I’ll have to take out a second one to pay the overweight luggage fees.

Jean smiled. Alasdair nodded agreement.

Now for Fergus MacDonald’s New Year’s package, a traditional Hogmanay here on the old home ground. Greg stamped his athletic shoes against the black dirt of the path, producing a slight squish and runnel of brown water. Bloodstained ground. The MacDonalds and the MacLeods went at it like billy-o, once.

Putting rings on each other’s fingers and daggers in each other’s hearts, to quote some old historian. And Jean added to herself, oh yes, Skye was conjuring magazine articles. She’d have to ask Greg for more details of his rogue ancestor. In her previous life, she’d learned that putting a personal face on history added entire minutes to her students’ attention spans. The same ploy worked with readers. Did Tormod MacLeod murder a MacDonald?

"It’s not so clear in the old family story just what happened. That’s why I’m here, to get the facts, if there are any facts to get. Our local clan group and the genealogy sites on the Internet only go so far. I found Dunasheen’s website, though. Dun na sithein, fortress of the fairies. I could hardly resist following up on that."

"Sithein can mean fairies," allowed Alasdair. He’d already expressed caution at Fergie’s take on the subject, not to mention Fergie’s promise of a private showing of the famous Fairy Flagon and the unveiling of yet another notion.

Jean, though, was sharpening her pencil for the revelation. But what are fairies? The little people who lived here before the Celts arrived? Nature spirits? Lingering ghosts of the dead?

The old Celts remind me of our aboriginal people, seeing spirits in the landscape. You think any of my old MacLeod rellies are still hanging about to answer my questions, give me the good oil now? Greg laughed, a peal of unaffected merriment. The wind snatched the sound from his lips and whisked it away.

Jean and Alasdair shared a glance. If Greg was allergic to the paranormal like they were, then his old MacLeod relatives might well answer his questions. Or not. No one knew the capriciousness of ghosts better than the team of Fairbairn and Cameron.

White gulls sailed overhead, stained pink by the ray of sunlight. Of sunset. My old granny, said Alasdair, she was fond of saying that gulls carried the not-yet-departed spirits of the dead.

Hopefully my old rellies are well and truly departed. I’d rather read ghost stories than end up in one. Greg raised his arm to inspect his watch, a massive number that probably displayed stock quotes as well as time and date. Well then, I’ve got time for a squint at the old castle first. It’s straight on, is it?

That it is. Alasdair pulled the small flashlight from his jacket pocket. Have a care, the paths are rough and narrow, and there’s no artificial light. You’d best be using this torch. Just bring it back to the house when you’ve finished. It’s Fergie’s.

Ta. See you later, then. Greg squished away toward the old castle.

Alasdair squelched away toward the new one. Jean fell into step beside him, not without a cautionary glance at his rosy face. When did Fergie get nicknamed that, anyway?

My dad was calling him Fergie Beg before I was born. That’s what his own dad called him, himself being Fergie Mor.

Little Fergus and Big Fergus. But your dad wasn’t Alasdair Mor.

No, he was one of dozens of Allan Camerons. Likely there were more than a few murderers amongst the old ones. Raiders, robbers, rapists. Rum crew. He spoke casually, just stating a fact.

I’ve wondered if your choice of profession was overcompensation for a colorful family tree.

Mind that my own dad went for a soldier. And his dad as well.

That, too. Being born to a middle-aged, retired officer would shape your worldview. I’m sorry I never met your dad.

He was right tolerant of colonials such as Americans and Australians. Alasdair glanced back at the old castle, then stopped and turned. Jean followed his gaze.

There was Greg, like Jean herself, an outlander called back to the dark and bloody ground of his forebears. Maybe he was a policeman, too, or a chartered accountant, or another mild-mannered academic-cum-journalist.

He worked his way up the path outside the enceinte and disappeared into the keep. A few moments later the red jacket appeared atop the tower, gleaming like a tiny flame.

The clouds thickened, the sun sank, and land and sea, loch and castle, fell into shadow. A patch of pale light sparked on the ruined battlements—Greg had switched on the flashlight. The spill of light over the rough and tumbled stones, part man’s work, part nature’s, seemed brighter than the indistinct human shape. Then both man-shape and light eased down behind the wall and were gone.

Chapter Two

With a slight shrug, Alasdair turned from the old castle toward the new. Old Tormod was transported rather than hanged, and in those days judges and juries weren’t likely to split hairs. He may have killed the man in self-defense. Or else the jury was packed with MacLeods. At any rate, Greg’s right, there’s more to that story. Eighteen twenty-two’s a bit late for a clan feud. And for religious conflict, come to that.

I wouldn’t think even your finetuned instinct for the criminal could do much about a two-centuries-old case, Jean told him.

"Does anything need doing about it? Other than you writing it up for Great Scot."

Well, no, conceded Jean. Several raindrops raked her face.

They walked on toward the welcoming, if expensive, glow of Dunasheen’s windows and what had to be a mile and a half of fairy lights. Her ears and nose felt brittle as ice, and her hair waved so wildly around her wool scarf that the chill wind penetrated to her scalp. A flock of black-and-white birds whorled upward from the moor, their cries eerier than those of the gulls. Gulls sounded like rusty screen doors. The cry of the oystercatchers, though, carried a trailing bittersweet that made Jean think not of soon-to-depart souls, but of lost ones.

The call of the birds faded into the silence. Or, rather, into the absence of human noise—no car engines, no voices, none of the constant electronic hum of modern life. All Jean heard was their own footsteps, the sigh of the wind and the unceasing rise and fall of the sea, like distant thunder. The snap and flap of the blue-and-white Scottish flag flying from Dunasheen’s highest tower. And the ring of a telephone.

Hiking up his coat, Alasdair dug into the pocket of his jeans and eyed the glowing screen of his cell phone. Ian said he’d phone before the office closes down for Hogmanay. Half a tick, Jean.

Typical Alasdair, to set the ring tone of his mobile to the ordinary double bleat of a British telephone. Typical Alasdair, to double-check with his provider before leaving Edinburgh and make sure his mobile would work here in this remote northwestern corner of Skye. He’d been dependent on her phone when they were in the United States in November. Now she was the one restricted to Fergie’s land lines. Funny, Jean thought, how even a portable phone on a base unit looked like an antique while a rotary dial seemed antediluvian.

Beyond Alasdair and his electronic umbilical, the faintest of blushes still tinted the waves of the loch. Loch Roy probably meant Red Lake, from ruadh, red. Although the stones here weren’t red, not like those on the far side of Skye. Had the waters of the loch been tinted red with blood from various clan battles? More likely, the name came from a person’s name—Rory, also from ruadh, as in red hair. Or, considering the climate, red face, red from the cold or red from the reaction to that bright yellow globe in the sky when it condescended to appear.

Did he have red hair, the ill-fated Rory MacLeod who had chosen the hard place below old Dunasheen over the sharp edge at his back? How about Greg’s ancestor Tormod, of dubious but intriguing memory?

Alasdair said, It’s by way of being a fake, is it? Well then, the Duke has no call claiming a large insurance settlement.

Cold as they were, Jean’s ears twitched, and she abandoned her wordsmith’s reverie.

A pause while Ian, whose virtues lay in method rather than imagination, spoke. Then Alasdair replied, No, it’s not at all surprising. Crusaders, soldiers, toffs on their Grand Tours, they’d bring back loads of art, antiques, artifacts, holy relics—not all of it legally, mind you. And half the time not knowing what they had, nor caring, come to that, so long as they put on a good show. There’s a trait’s not yet died out, not by a long chalk.

No, it hadn’t, Jean thought, with another look at the castle. But she couldn’t criticize Fergie and his daughter and business partner—who, despite Alasdair’s wee, was almost thirty years old—for trying to present a good enough show to hang onto their house, the physical representation of their own family tree.

Cheers, Ian. Enjoy your holiday. Tucking the phone into his pocket, Alasdair turned to Jean.

Her feet in their wellies were so cold she felt as though she was wearing ice buckets, and shuffled rather than stepped. Tea, she reminded him. Coffee. Maybe a wee dram, even. A warm fire. One of Fergie’s dogs or our own cat, whatever, as long as it’s got fur. I’ll get my notebook and lie in wait for Greg and his murder story. Or Fergie and his plans for saving the estate, whoever crosses my bow first.

Right, Alasdair said. Once again, they started off toward the house, this time walking even more briskly.

Ahead of them, the courtyard gate opened and shut with a clang. A woman hurried across the gravel terrace and up the path, arms knotted across the chest of her fake leopard skin coat. One hand held Fergie’s largest flashlight tucked below her elbow like a semi-concealed weapon. Luxuriant golden-blond curls bounced around her pert, tanned face. Her tight red mouth loosened far enough to say, Hello there. Have you seen a bloke in a red jacket?

Greg MacLeod? Alasdair returned. He walked down to the old cas—

Stupid sod! I told him he could wait ’til tomorrow, we’ve just arrived, not even unpacked, but no, we’ve come halfway round the world, he said, what’s a few more yards, dark or no flipping dark?

This was the wife. At first glance, Jean thought she was twenty years younger than Greg. At second glance, Jean realized that she wasn’t at all younger, she was simply fighting gleaming tooth, painted nail, and hair color a shade too bright for her complexion, against the forces of entropy.

I’m Tina MacLeod, Greg’s, well, Greg’s been going on for years about this godforsaken place, imagine that!

God had phoned it in a few times out here, thought Jean, but you could say that of Sydney or Brisbane, too.

Alasdair’s expression remained neutral.

London was good, lights, a hotel, nightclubs, but no, that’s not enough, he’s stuck on the flipping family tree, been rattling on about it for flipping years. Here we could be sitting at the C Bar back home, having a cold one beneath the palms—do you know Townsville, that’s in the tropical part of Queensland—I read a brilliant story about a miniature dinosaur in the back garden, made perfect sense.

Alasdair managed to get a word in. He’s gone down to the beach and round to the left.

I’d better yank in his lead, then, it’s almost time for tea. Or drinks, more likely. Anti-freeze. Ta. She picked her way past, the wellies she, too, had liberated from the stash by the back door slapping along the path. A few paces away, she switched on the flashlight. A bubble of luminescence danced before her like a will o’ the wisp leading unwary travelers to their doom.

Have a care, Alasdair shouted after her. The path’s right slippy.

Ta! Tina said again, without turning around.

They waited while the light disappeared down the slope to the bridge, reappeared at the hulking shadow of the ruined castle, vanished behind the wall. Faintly, Tina’s voice called, Cooeee, Greg!

It was bad luck for a woman or a blond or red-headed man to be first across the threshold at the new year, although whether Fergie’s Hogmanay package included that old custom, Jean didn’t yet know. He could have a twofer with Tina MacLeod.

Exchanging dubious smiles, she and Alasdair turned away from the old castle, a dark shadow against the clouds. Great minds thought alike, but his was less likely to be visualizing will-o’-the-wisps and doom than pondering how dangerous ruins could be, and not from anything paranormal . . . It was the sky that was ominous, Jean told herself, not Skye. A year ago she’d learned that seasonal affective disorder was a real threat in the depths of a Scottish winter. It said something about the national temperament.

As long as the free-range Aussies made it past the castle, they’d be okay. Even Jean, whose middle name was not Grace, had managed to get from church to castle along the pebbled beach without mishap.

She and Alasdair pressed on across the gravel and stepped through the gate into the courtyard. The damp cobblestones inside glistened with streaks of gold, red, and green. The arched door in the angle of the wall displayed a wreath of holly and ivy tied with MacDonald tartan ribbons, hung so that the Green Man knocker—one of Fergie’s artistic endeavors—peeked mischievously from its center.

They walked up the three steps to the door. Alasdair set his hand on the iron handle. From inside came a barely perceptible strain of music.

Then a long, wavering, shriek, pulsing with anguish, echoed across land and water and set the gulls to screeching and flapping upward like winged ghosts.

Jean spun around, her heart lurching. That’s got to be Tina!

Instead of leaping back down the steps, Alasdair threw the door open. Sweeping Jean with him, he lunged inside and shouted, Fergie! Diana!

She blinked at what seemed like a flood of light, although it was only the contrast—the aging ceiling