Conversation thereafter becomes more general, a genial dinner, but one at which the undercurrents of calculation are clear, everyone sizing up everyone else, deciding just how deep a given pocket might be. I love private auctions. They come with all the intrigue of my former profession without the risk of dying.
By the time the dessert plates are cleared a tiredness has crept over me, and I’m glad when the meal ends. Some of the guests ask for another brief look at the books on display in the drawing room, but I pass, leaving Madame LeBlanc to the others with a gallant kiss of her hand.
I SLEEP LONG AND HARD, surely the aftereffects of the whisky, the dinner, and exhaustion from yesterday’s travel from Denmark. I awake early, feeling fresh as the day outside. A bright sun shines through the slit in the drapes and, when I open them, the moor stretches out before me in a brilliant, rolling green under a cloudy sky.
A mass of crumpled shirts and creased slacks confront me when I open my travel bag. I’d been too tired last night to hang anything up. I glance again out the window and, shrugging, find the least-wrinkled shirt and an Arran sweater from the bag, pairing them with my kilt, sporran, and hose from the night before. Might as well stay in the mood.
A shower and shave refreshes me even more.
Downstairs, breakfast is full Scottish, meaning full English, with a choice of eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, muffins, fried tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, and a disemboweled haggis. A discreet notice advises the availability of porridge, which I think is probably the only thing saving the Scots from epidemic constipation. I help myself liberally from the groaning sideboard and place a request for the porridge, then make my way across to a table at which Madame LeBlanc has just sat down.
“May I join you?” I ask.
“By all means.”
She’s chosen a light breakfast of sliced melon with raspberries—obviously a special order from the kitchen as I’ve seen none of that on the buffet—with a tiny medallion of steak and a dab of baked beans.
She leans toward me. “Have you heard?”
“All I heard this morning was a lot of seagulls screaming on the roof.”
She laughs. “I caught those too.”
I butter my toast, add a few slices of bacon, a fried egg, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, then another slice of buttered toast and create my own Scottish Egg McMuffin. She observes me with an indulgent smile, but one that doesn’t quite erase the deep line of concern between her brows.
“It appears that one of the books for the auction has gone missing,” she tells me, glancing sideways to be sure she isn’t being overheard. But the dining room is sparsely filled. Most of the guests appear to be sleeping in.
A thump of adrenaline forms in the pit of my stomach, one that has always primed me for action in my former occupation. But I also know the value of a poker face. So I keep my attention on the sandwich and ask, “I take it you don’t mean mislaid? Missing as in gone?”
Her mouth twitches with mischief, but her eyes are serious. “Malcolm didn’t want to raise an alarm. Not yet. He hasn’t made an announcement, but I couldn’t sleep last night, and when I came down about two o’clock, all of the lights were on. The servants were everywhere, quite plainly making a thorough search. Malcolm saw me on the landing and told me what had happened.”
I listen as she explains that the books had all been locked inside their glass cases following the cocktail hour. Malcolm and his factor, John MacRae, had come into the drawing room at midnight to see that all was in order for the detailed inspection to be held at eleven this morning. All had seemed to be as it should, but something had tingled Malcolm’s antiquarian sense and he returned for a second look.
“It was the incunabulum. The little grimoire,” she says. “There was a book in the case of the same size and also with a rough leather cover. But it had been put there so only the back cover showed. When turned over, it was revealed to be a first edition of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler. Certainly valuable, but nothing compared to the 15th-century grimoire.”
My porridge arrives, fresh and steaming, along with a silver cream jug and a dish of sugar lumps.
“Oh, that looks good,” Eleanor says, sniffing the heady steam that rises from the bowl.
“I tell you what. You have this one. I have to make a phone call. I’ll order another when I come back.”
I stand and place the bowl ceremoniously in front of her with a bow.
Then leave the breakfast room.
I’m concerned about the gun in my travel bag.
I flew in on a private charter that Malcolm Chubb arranged. In my former profession I went nowhere without a weapon, but in those days I carried an official United States Justice Department badge that granted me security exceptions. I still carry a badge, though unofficially, given to me by my former boss, Stephanie Nelle, since I often work for her as contract help. My display of it had satisfied Scottish customs. But the people in this house are another matter. Its presence will raise a lot of questions.
The first thing that occurred to me when Eleanor noted that the servants were searching the castle is that they’d certainly search the guests’ rooms too. Most likely discreetly, after the occupants come down for breakfast. And, sure enough, I watch as one of the maids lightly raps at a door near the end of the hallway in which my own room is located, a stack of fresh towels in her arms by way of an excuse for her presence. I hang back behind a Victorian stand until the woman, receiving no answer to her knock, lays the towels aside and steps quietly inside. I quickly open my own door, find the Beretta, and tuck it into the kilt’s internal waistband, concealing its presence with the baggy Arran sweater.
I descend the narrow zigzag stairway, one hand on the slick banister, back to ground level. More people are now around and I feel a suppressed air of consternation in the scraps of muted conversation I manage to hear. I don’t think it will come to a physical search of the guests. Not yet, anyway. But I don’t want to explain why I’m carrying a gun inside a remote Scottish castle. So I find the foot of the stairs and stride purposefully through the entrance hall, straight for the front door.
A young servant is on duty there.
Or maybe on guard?
“Off for a morning walk, are you, sir?”
I nod. “I thought I’d take advantage of the nice morning.”
“Best move fast, then,” the young man says. “Weather here changes every quarter of an hour. If you’re going to walk along the cliffs, be sure to keep to the marked footpath. There’s no missing it—some of the other guests went that way not ten minutes since.”
I toss the guy a cheery wave. “I’ll keep an eye out for them.”
Outside, another servant at the front gate, this one wearing a Barbour jacket and flat cap with his kilt, evidently doesn’t trust the weather any further than his pal inside. The young man adds the suggestion that if I mean to traverse the moor, I should stick to the road.