The Burning Glass by Lillian Stewart Carl

Author:Lillian Stewart Carl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: suspense, mystery, new age, ghosts, police, scotland, archaeology, journalist, the da vinci code, mary queen of scots, historic preservation
Publisher: Lillian Stewart Carl

Chapter Twenty

A tentative ray of sun brushed the hillside with color, but left Alasdair and Jean enveloped in the shadow-pall of the castle. She craned to look straight up the side of the building, past the stained stone blocks and the blank apertures of windows, some softened with molding, some harsh as knife wounds. High above, the sky was becoming silver, but the hue of the castle remained gray. “Look there,” she said, and Alasdair turned to look.

Against the back wall of the castle, beneath the easternmost window of the Laigh Hall and next to a drain pipe, lay a couple of smallish boulders. Balanced against them was what looked like a rough wooden pallet for transporting goods on a truck or rail car. “That’s how the kids were planning to get out of the castle after you locked up,” Jean said. “They could let themselves down from the window and use the drain pipe for balance. Nothing like planning ahead.”

“That wasn’t there when I arrived,” Alasdair said. “They might have shinned into the building that way as well, though there’s no reason they didn’t slip inside whilst I was selling sweeties or carrying your things into the flat.”

“Well, at least you’ve found the postern gate. One of them, anyway. This path is another one, isn’t it?” The trail zigged past a giant boulder, zagged into the trees that here pressed close to the back of the keep, and faded into shadow and tangled undergrowth. The trees grew all the way up to the perimeter wall—Jean caught a glimpse of squared stone, dank and dark, between the gnarled brown-green trunks. Back in medieval days no castellan would have let cover for enemies accumulate so close to his defenses. Tomorrow Alasdair would be out here with a chainsaw.

“I’m not so sure.” He climbed several paces up the path, disappeared beneath the overhanging branches, and a moment later returned. “The track runs up to the broken corner I recorded on the Friday, where the two stretches of wall have each settled away from the other and one’s caved in a bit. It’d be a good scramble to get over, but not impossible, not at all.”

“Well, okay, that’s fine for kids, but did Angus and the flashlight-person get in the same way?”

“On the plans, the wall’s three sides of a rough rectangle and the river’s the fourth. I’m guessing the wall stops short of the river nowadays, and you can walk round its end.”

“Someone could always have taken a boat across the river.”

“Let’s have us a look at the wall before we begin searching dockyards and boathouses, eh?” Deadpan of face but nimble of foot, he walked down the path, then kept on going down the hillside. “I should have had a look at those wall-ends on the Friday. Certainly yesterday.”

“You didn’t have a reason to look at them until yesterday afternoon, and then you were busy.” Jean fell in behind him, then against him as, sure enough, she slipped.

Alasdair took her hand

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