Of Books and Bagpipes Page 5

  “Just like any good horror movie,” I said.

  Tom laughed.

  “There wasn’t a fence around the grounds, but will we be locked out?” I said.

  “It’s a possibility, but we’ll see.”

  I looked at his profile again.

  “What?” I said, in response to his mysterious tone

  “Nothing,” he said far too innocently.

  He had something planned. If it didn’t include killing me and leaving my body at the castle or dumping me into the nearby River Teith, it would probably be something fun. He was good that way.

  “Do you know about the castle, who used tae live there?” he asked.

  “No. I meant to research it, but things went sideways.”

  “Aye. It was the home of Robert Stewart, the first Duke of Albany, who was for all practical purposes the ruler of Scotland from the late thirteen hundreds to the early fourteen hundreds. It was a bloody time in our history, and he and his son, I believe, spent much of their time fighting and acquiring land. He was ruthless, but it was probably a necessary trait tae have. He was also the great-grandson of Robert the Bruce. You’ve heard of him?”

  “Of course. He and Mel Gibson did something together once. In fact William Wallace was involved in that story. Maybe that’s why this castle was chosen as the meeting place, even if Edwin said he’d picked a neutral location.”

  “Neutral?”

  “I still don’t understand completely, but a place neutral to what went on in the past.”

  “I see. Maybe, but Stirling is just about the same distance from Edinburgh. Edwin’s historical knowledge would extend to Robert Stewart, but maybe he didn’t think about it.”

  “Maybe it was just a place that popped into his head.”

  “Aye. We Scots love the films but your Hollywood isn’t much for the facts,” Tom added.

  “I know. I heard about the kilt issue. William Wallace would never have worn a kilt.”

  “Other things too. Movies might be required tae stretch the truth, but Mel Gibson, a fine actor, isn’t a big man. William Wallace was huge, according to what we think we know at least. It’s difficult tae find many specifics. Then there’s Liam Neeson, who took on the role of Rob Roy. Roy was a smaller man of stature than Neeson, but thick and muscled. Also, there’s little evidence that William Wallace was ever married. It’s thought he became such a warrior because his father was killed, not his wife.”

  “That’s a pretty big difference from the movie,” I said.

  “Aye, but it’s still a great film.”

  “I agree. And I’ve just been given an item to research from Rob Roy’s time. It’s a letter he wrote. Well, allegedly. That’s what I’m going to try to find out.”

  “Aye? That’s fascinating.”

  “Wanna see it?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Deal. It’s in the warehouse. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

  “I look forward tae it.” Tom slowed the car. “What was Billy Armstrong’s job?”

  “Other than reenactor I don’t know.”

  “That wouldn’t have provided him with any income.”

  “I’ll ask Edwin if he knows.”

  As Tom steered the car around the curve next to the parking lot and at the bottom of the walkway that led up to the courtyard door, he said, “There’s some evidence that Castle Doune might be built on the remains of another castle.”

  “Who did that castle belong to?”

  “It’s a mystery, but here comes someone who’s trying tae solve it, or who is at least assisting those who are trying tae solve it.” Tom turned the key, making the night silent, extra dark, and the approaching disembodied flashlight’s glow really eerie.

  “Come on, let’s get out,” he said.

  I hesitated, but only briefly. I hadn’t seen the other car just past the lot and next to the walkway, but I noticed a glimmer off its chrome as a voice that seemed to be with the flashlight spoke.

  “Delaney, dear lass who has straightened oot my boy for only the guid.” The flashlight moved closer.

  “Artair!” I said. “What a nice surprise.”

  “Weel, how could I resist?” he said. “Tom calls me aboot a dead man on the top o’ the castle. I grabbed my torch and came right oot.”

  “I don’t understand, but I’m glad you’re here.” I hugged him.

  Artair Fletcher, pronounced AR-ter, Tom’s father and a librarian at the University of Edinburgh, had been another welcome surprise in my Scotland adventure. I’d become so woozy with book love when Tom had taken me on campus to visit his father that I frequently teased that I continued to date the dashing Scot with the cobalt eyes only for the fact that his redheaded father worked inside a library as magical as any I’d ever seen. The building stretched both long and tall, and was replete with packed but organized shelves, curved cornices, and domed ceilings. I could get lost inside, forget to eat or drink ever again, my body someday to be found under a stack of books. However, there would be a smile on my lifeless face.

  “Da is working with some of the researchers at the university regarding the remains of the earlier castle. They don’t lock the castle up at night, but I thought he should let the appropriate people know about our visit. Technically it’s past closing. He wanted tae come along.”

  “That’s perfect. Thank you, Artair,” I said.

  “Och, ’tis a pleasure. Come along. It will be dark, but I’ve got the torch,” Artair said as he turned and started back up the walkway.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly to Tom.

  “It’s too dark tae see your expression, but you sound like you’re smiling. That’s thanks enough,” Tom said.

  “Are you for real?” I said.

  “I keep telling you I am,” he said. “Come on.”

  When Tom and I began dating, directly before our very first date in fact, I’d been warned about his habit of short-lived relationships and his issues with commitment. As a result, for a while I’d spent precious time wondering if he was being sincere or playing some sort of game with my emotions. One day, not long into our quickly lit romance, I decided I’d have to take him at face value and quit worrying so much. If it worked out, great. If not, I’d be sad, devastated maybe, but going into any sort of relationship with an underlying thread of waiting for it to be over might end up being the reason it failed. If it was going to fail I was pretty sure I wanted it to be his fault, not mine.

  We followed Artair up the path as he walked with his ever-present quick steps. He and Tom looked nothing alike, Tom having gotten his dark looks from his mother, who’d died when he was a child. Artair’s short stature and wiry frame seemed healthy until you noticed that his clothes were all slightly too big. Tom told me that his father had always dressed that way, not baggy or slovenly, but with shoulder seams that fell slightly too far down his arms, and belts that seemed to bunch about an inch of his pants’ waistlines. He was just comfortable that way.

  Tom’s taller and wider frame was always dressed with clothes that fit perfectly. He didn’t wear much other than jeans and dress shirts and the occasional kilt, but I’d discovered that he was meticulous about keeping his clothes clean and pressed. He was much better about it than I was.

  Though continuing to date Tom was, of course, more about him than his father and that stunning library, Artair and the giant building full of books were good perks. The kilts were nice too.

  “Stick close tae me,” Artair said at the doorway.

  We stepped into the courtyard. I kept close to Tom, and felt his fingers entwine mine. To say the dark, torchlit courtyard was spooky was an understatement. I didn’t see any ghosts, but there had to be some within the ancient stone walls, didn’t there? I imagined them and their murky, milky glow.

  “Awright. Here we are,” Artair said as he scanned the space with the light.

  “You scared?” Tom asked me.

  “No, not really. It’s just so dark,” I said.

  “I
understand,” Artair said. He cleared his throat less confidently than he probably hoped. “Nothing tae fear though. The ghosties are long unable tae inflict the harm they did when they were living. Come along.”

  Artair took off for the stairs that led up to the great hall. I’d all but forgotten that it was cold outside, but a small wind nipped at my nose and I shivered.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Tom asked.

  “Fine, I promise.”

  I squeezed his hand and then let go of it before I followed Artair up the stairs. I made sure Tom was close behind.

  There was no handrail on the exposed side of the stairs so I stayed extra close to the wall on the other side, my fingertips and shoulder tapping along until we reached the top of the steep climb.

  “A wee bit different under the moonlight,” Artair said. “I like it.”

  Light from a half-moon shone through a window at just the right spot to illuminate most of the table in the grand hall.

  “Weel,” Artair said. “The ghosts are kind tonight. Nice effect.”

  “It’s so real,” I said. “I mean, it’s like it must have been.”

  “Aye. This was probably what it leuked like in here back in the days of Robert Stewart. People dinnae live this primitively anymore, but we like tae keep it authentic when we can,” Artair said.

  I took a cold breath and let out a foggy cloud. “I can’t believe I get to be here.”

  “Aye. We’re happy tae have ye,” Artair said. “Now, should we go on up tae the battlements? That’s where Tom said ye found the body.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  If I’d thought the narrow, enclosed, circular stairway was endless, disturbing, and claustrophobic during the daytime, I experienced a few moments of real terror as we climbed it at night. I didn’t even know I was that claustrophobic before that dark, winding, and impossibly long climb.

  Once up to the battlements, Tom grabbed my hand again.

  “There’s not much of a chance of accidentally going over the side, but I’d like tae keep hold,” he said.

  “Works for me,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. I took a quick look over the top at the lights from the smattering of estates and the motorway. The moonlight glimmered off the river and I wondered if there could be a better castle-top view in all of Scotland.

  Despite the sights, however, the wind was definitely colder and stronger up here. We’d be fine but shouldn’t linger.

  “Where was the body?” Artair asked as he shone the light down the long part next to the battlement wall.

  “Over on the far side, past the middle peak that juts up, on the stairs, but I found the comic book over here. May I borrow the flashlight … the torch?” I asked.

  Artair handed it to me. I sh0ne the light in the space where I’d found the book. I was fairly certain I hadn’t seen any other pieces of paper, but I’d been in some shock at the time. I moved the light slowly, up and down and around the space, moving a little farther with each pass. There were no other pieces of paper anywhere.

  “I guess he might have had that paper on him still. Maybe. We didn’t check his pockets or anything,” I said. “Let’s check the spot where we found the body.”

  Carefully, I led us to the other side of the roof.

  “He didn’t look like he was hurt,” I said as I shone the light down the now vacant stairs. “There was no blood.” There was still no sign that something tragic had occurred.

  “Let’s just take a leuk around. Use your mobiles and we’ll see what we can see,” Artair said. “If there’s any paper up here, we should be able tae find it.”

  I couldn’t believe we hadn’t thought of using our phones for light, but I welcomed the additional brightness. Though the roof was good-sized, much of it was taken up by the peaked part, so ultimately there weren’t many places to explore. We shone our lights everywhere we could, up and down the stones beneath our feet, over the peak and down the jagged walls, still sturdy but broken down here and there.

  There was no paper.

  “It was a long shot, I suppose,” I said after we’d explored the entire rooftop more than a few times.

  “It could have blown off the roof too. Let me shine the torch and we’ll see what we can see,” Artair said as he swung the light out to the grounds around the castle.

  We couldn’t see much or very far away, but a copse of trees started back a good distance from the castle. The open ground we saw didn’t have any obvious pieces of paper fluttering over or around it.

  “Yeah, definitely a long shot,” I said.

  “Aye, maybe, or maybe it’s too far away tae see now,” Tom said. “Or, there’s the other possibility. If Billy was killed, then perhaps his killer took the story with him.”

  I’d thought about that. If a killer grabbed the Oor Wullie after doing the evil deed and then took the story but not the book, maybe the story was the reason Billy was killed in the first place. If the written version was at least some of the same version that Gordon had told us at the bookshop, there might have been reason to take it. Perhaps someone thought it might make for some profitable blackmail. However, I didn’t think Gordon had told us the whole story. Maybe the parts he left out had more to do with Edwin. Edwin was well known in Scotland, and his fortune was well known. His warehouse had become the stuff of legend. When so much was unknown, the possibilities seemed endless.

  Artair turned away from the wall, the light from his torch skimming over the back stairway again.

  Briefly I again saw the glimmer of the river in the light, but then realized what I saw couldn’t have been the river. The river wasn’t on the roof.

  “Could I see the torch again?” I said.

  “Certainly.”

  I moved it the same way and with the same speed Artair had. I caught the glimmer again, but it was brief and difficult to zone in on. I slowed down and did it again, finally homing in on the spot.

  The glimmer was located on the side of one of the steps and seemed to be under the outer wall more than next to it.

  I hurried down the few steps and crouched, aiming the light into a small open space that had been worn away over the hundreds of years.

  “What do you see?” Tom said as he moved to the step behind me.

  “I think…” I reached my fingers underneath and carefully unwedged the item and extracted it from its close space. “I found a knife. A dirk, I believe they’re called.”

  “’Tis a lovely one,” Artair said from the landing above us.

  I looked at it a long moment and then up at Tom and Artair. “Do you suppose it has anything to do with Billy? Maybe I shouldn’t have touched it. Maybe we should have called the police.”

  “I dinnae ken, lass,” Artair said.

  The dirk’s dark wooden handle had been carved with overlapping shapes that I thought were Celtic but I couldn’t be sure, and one single symbol in the middle hilt that had either been painted or stained a lighter whitish color. It wasn’t a small weapon, not the five or six inches I used to think dirks would be. My experience in Edwin’s warehouse taught me that most dirks were closer to a foot long. This one looked old. There was no sign of blood, or anything else gory for that matter, on it.

  “Not certain how we could know,” Tom said. “It could have been hidden under there for years, for whatever reason. Might be old and valuable, but maybe not.”

  “Wouldn’t a dirk be part of an old Scottish getup?” I said.

  “Aye, possibly,” Tom said. “But William Wallace used a longsword. Dirks didn’t come about until later, though I’m not sure when.”

  “I can research that,” Artair said.

  “I’ve probably ruined any fingerprints that might be on it, but we should take it to the police,” I said.

  “There’s something else under there,” Tom said as he angled his phone light under the wall. He moved to the step below me. “It’s a piece of paper, but it’s not in the exact same spot as the dirk was. It’s small.”

 
“Grab it, but try not to touch too much of it,” I said.

  Using his fingers and the edge of his phone, he had the piece of paper out a few seconds later.

  “Is it the story or part of it?” I asked.

  “No, it’s a business card. ‘Grizel Sheehy, Bagpipes,’ and then an address in Edinburgh,” Tom recited.

  “That could have been dropped at any time. A coincidence,” I said.

  Holding on to just the edges of the card, Tom turned it over. “There’s something handwritten on the back. Armstrong.” He looked up at me, a moon shadow over half his face. “Billy’s last name, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ll take that too.”

  “Aye,” Artair said, his voice slightly shaky.

  Tom and I looked up at him.

  “There’s not only a geal tae the air up here, it’s becoming bluid gealing with the wee dirk and the last breaths of the dead man. Perhaps we should take our leave,” Artair said.

  I had no idea what Artair had said. I looked at Tom.

  “Da thinks there’s a chill to the air up here, blood-chilling. Spooky. You ready tae go?” Tom said.

  “If there’s nothing else under there,” I said.

  “Nothing else,” Tom confirmed with another inspection.

  Tom carried the dirk down the tight stairway and out to his car. He hadn’t offered to carry it, but demanded it—in a sweet but insistent way. A part of me wanted to protest and tell him I could handle it. But a bigger part of me was okay with him carrying the weapon, particularly down that awful circular stairway.

  “Do you want tae find some local police?” he asked after we were in the car and following Artair onto the motorway.

  “No, actually I’d like to take it to Inspector Winters,” I said. “Or at least an officer at that station tonight. I’ll want to take pictures of the dirk and the business card before I turn them over though.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “I have a feeling they’re important to Billy’s murder. Maybe very important.”

  “I’ll wager that you’ll figure it out.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  SIX