Read Online The Blue Hackle by Lillian Stewart Carl - Free Book Online

playing footman just
now.” Alasdair picked up his coat and gloves. “Portree wants
guiding to the scene. You’re coming out as well, are you?”
    A spousal point to the man for asking. She
replied, “Thanks, but no. I’ll see if there’s something I can do to
help Fergie and Diana. Poor Fergie, the last thing he needed was a
fatality. And yes, I know, the situation is a lot harder on the
MacLeods.”
    Dougie was sleeping soundly. Food, drink, and
sanitary facilities were available in the dressing room—he could
spend his holiday in the suite, no need to get closer acquainted
with the household dogs. Switching off first the electric fire and
then the overhead light, Jean joined Alasdair in the hall and
waited while he locked the door, then handed her an extra key. He
didn’t need to point out that half the people in the house would
have keys. There was a murderer afoot.
    Jean and Alasdair didn’t need a trail of
breadcrumbs or a ball of string to find their way. In the course of
their heritage-industry duties, they’d learned how to navigate this
sort of pile, from artifact to artwork to antique. You passed the
tapestry depicting the Irish myth of Grainne, Fionn, and
Diarmuid—faded threads telling a soap-operatic tale of passion,
jealousy, and death. You turned left at the sculpture of a goblin
holding a functioning if dim light bulb. You turned right at the
suit of armor with a pink handbag slung over one steel gauntlet and
a pink feather boa looped across its breastplate. You went straight
ahead past the mock-Tiffany stained-glass window depicting a
mermaid that Fergie had rescued from a biscuit factory scheduled
for demolition.
    On their arrival yesterday, he had given Jean
and Alasdair a more comprehensive tour than usual, since they were
friends—and prospective sponsors—of the family. Despite its faint
smell of mildew, Dunasheen was indeed a fairy-tale castle, a
fabulous warren of a place. Some areas were beautifully fitted out,
fabrics brushed, wood gleaming. Others were still works in progress
or works never undertaken. The place was romantic, oh yes, and
mysterious, although “mysterious” was not a word Jean planned to
use in her article for Great Scot . Assuming an article was
still viable, now.
    Alasdair strode on ahead, the floor emitting
a series of squeaks and creaks beneath his tread, and stopped
beneath the arch leading onto the turnpike stair. He cast a
jaundiced look at the sprig of mistletoe dangling from the light
fixture. No, it wasn’t a good time to put the provocative
vegetation to use.
    Voices echoed up the spiral staircase,
Diana’s dulcet tones saying, “. . . I don’t believe we should be
doing that, in the circumstances.”
    “We’ve got no choice. It’s part and parcel of
the plan,” Fergie said, his mild tones whetted.
    Alasdair looked at Jean. Jean looked at
Alasdair. Plan? Fergie’s ploy to exchange security advice and
favorable publicity in return for a wedding? Or his plan to reveal
another marketing gambit along with their private viewing of
Dunasheen’s most famous artifact, the Fairy Flagon?
    “As you wish—” began Diana.
    “It’s not my wish, we agreed—”
    “Very good,” she stated, her voice sharpened
to a gingersnap. Light steps went down the stairs to the first
floor and faded away.
    No need to point out to either Diana or
Fergie that a murder on the doorstep did have a tendency to make
the best-laid plans gang agley. No need to let them know they’d
been overheard.
    After a discreet pause, Jean and Alasdair
started down the staircase. “Mind the tripping stane halfway
along,” he reminded her, “the one Fergie was going on about.”
    Oops. Jean grabbed for the handrail, a
stiffened rope strung through giant metal eyelets, and placed her
feet even more carefully on the long, slightly dished steps like
misshapen slices of stone pie. There it was. One of the treads was
half the height of the others, designed to trip up a charging
attacker and