The Murder Hole by Lillian Stewart Carl

Author:Lillian Stewart Carl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: suspense, mystery, ghosts, paranormal, police, scotland, archaeology, journalist, aleister crowley, loch ness monster
Publisher: Lillian Stewart Carl

Chapter Twenty

Between her stiff, sore knee and the duvet, she had to negotiate her way carefully down the steep staircase. Maybe Eileen had met her fate on the stairs, maybe not, but Jean didn’t intend to join her in the fourth dimension and ask.

Between the soothing aura of the electric fire and the soothing aura of the sleeping cat, the living room was almost hot. Just as Jean dumped her things on the couch, her twitching ears picked up the sound of voices. She tiptoed to the window and peeked out between the closed drapes. Alasdair’s constable was confronting the Ducketts. “. . . just wanted to see if she needs anything,” Patti was saying.

“Glad to hear she’s all right,” added Dave. “Accidents can be fatal, you know.”

“She’s resting,” the constable stated, which was more polite than No kidding.

Even though they apparently felt honor-bound to support a compatriot in her hour of need, the couple ceased and desisted. On their way into the house they passed the lanky figure of Martin Hall, identified by the fiery dot of a cigarette at his lips. Above them all, lights gleamed from the top of the tower. Was someone there, or were the lights on an automatic timer?

The constable was wearing a yellow slicker, which shone spectrally in the last cloud-filtered gleam of midsummer, but none of the others were using umbrellas. The rain must have stopped. Jean turned away from the window, wondering if she’d ever see her own umbrella again. It had probably been trampled or run over or both. Well, better it than her.

She poured herself another cup of tea, sponged off her muddy bag, and turned off the electric fire. On the coffee table she arranged all her journalistic implements—her laptop, the photo of the Pitclachie Stone, copies of passages from books and newspapers, Internet print-outs, the books on Nessie and on Crowley, Roger’s press release and the Omnium brochures. And, last but not least, the envelope with the transcripts. Most of the notes in her notebook had been saved on her laptop—all she’d lost was another layer of insulation from her nerves. But Alasdair or no Alasdair, she wasn’t going to assume the vanishment and the not-an-accident were cause and effect. Not yet, anyway.

Jean settled down on the couch, tucked the duvet snugly around her, and picked up the new addition to her bag of tricks, the old copy of Loch Ness: the Realm of the Beast. She fanned the yellow-rimmed pages and her nostrils puckered.

At Fraser’s table in the open air, all she’d detected was a whiff of mildew and something sweet. Now, after the book had spent several hours in a plastic shopping bag in her wardrobe, that whiff had intensified to a charnel house stench. The book had been steeped too long in this damp climate, in a storage shed or barn, perhaps. The librarian with the beautiful Thai name would be appalled.

Holding the book gingerly, at arm’s length, Jean inspected the flyleaf with its faded autograph: To my dear E.

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