Murder at the Castle by M. B. Shaw

Author:M. B. Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2021-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Outside San Cassiano, leaning against the wall of a nondescript tabaccaio, a man watched Iris emerge from the church, her string bag drawn across her body and flapping at her side.

‘She’s leaving now,’ he whispered into his phone, simultaneously snapping pictures, just as he had when Iris had arrived.

‘Is she alone?’ the voice on the other end asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Follow her.’

Wordlessly, the man hung up.

Chapter Twenty

Kathy arrived the next morning in a whirlwind of wedding-dress-related excitement, tossing her Vuitton suitcase onto her four-poster bed and pronouncing herself ‘in love’ with Venice, the apartment and everything.

‘How beautiful is this?’ she sighed ecstatically to Iris, throwing her arms and twirling around as if she expected fairy dust to start falling from the ceiling at any moment. ‘I literally feel like I’m in a dream.’

‘No, you metaphorically feel like you’re in a dream,’ Iris corrected her patiently. ‘Haven’t we already had this conversation?’

‘About a hundred times.’ Kathy grinned. It amused her when Iris picked her up on ‘Americanisms’, as she called them, which, as far as Kathy could tell, just meant ‘talking normally’, and she never took offence at the impromptu grammar lessons.

‘So how was Father Antonio?’ she asked, kicking off her shoes. ‘Was he like the hot priest from Fleabag?’

‘Actually, he was a bit,’ Iris admitted, hastily whipping out her sketchbook. There was no way she was letting Kathy slip out to Gucci until they’d got in at least an hour-long sitting together. ‘He was much younger than I expected, and quite handsome, if you’re into –’

‘Priests?’ Kathy offered, helpfully. ‘And are you?’

‘Me? God, no,’ said Iris. ‘Men are complicated enough without throwing God into the mix, don’t you think? If I ever marry again, it’ll be to a sinner.’

‘Bravo,’ laughed Kathy. ‘I approve.’

Over the course of the next hour, Iris filled Kathy in on Beatrice and her mother, and the long, sad story Father Corromeo had told her yesterday. At long last, it seemed, they might have an identity for at least one of the Girls in the Wood. Whichever way you cut it, that was a huge step forward.

‘So he loved her, this Beatrice?’ Kathy asked wistfully, once Iris had finished.

‘Clearly,’ Iris agreed. ‘He remembered that necklace like it was yesterday.’

‘But he had no idea who the other girl might have been?’ Kathy frowned. ‘Or how either of them ended up at our bothy?’

There it was again, that ‘we’. ‘Our bothy.’ In Kathy’s mind, she and Jock were already married and Pitfeldy castle was already hers. Again, Iris’s mind drifted to Rory, and the anonymous letters, but only for a moment.

‘No,’ she told Kathy. ‘He had no clue. Other than the general sense that Beatrice was in trouble, that she was afraid of something.’

‘Or someone.’ Kathy looked thoughtfully out of the window and across the red-tiled rooftops.

‘Quite,’ said Iris. ‘So that’s the burning question, really, if one set of remains does turn out to have been Beatrice’s: how did a troubled young girl from Venice wind up murdered in Scotland?’

‘Well,’

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