Dragonfly in Amber

“You might see if Brianna will go with you,” she said casually.

  “She said she isn’t having anything to do with this,” Roger objected.

  Claire glanced at him impatiently. The sun was setting behind her, and it made her eyes glow amber, like a wolf’s.

  “In that case, I suggest you don’t tell her what you’re up to,” she said, in a tone that made Roger remember that she was chief of staff at a large hospital.

  His ears burned, but he stubbornly said, “You can’t very well hide it, if you and I—”

  “Not me,” Claire interrupted. “You. I have something else to do.”

  This was too much, Roger thought. He pulled the car over without signaling and skidded to a stop at the side of the road. He glared at her.

  “Something else to do, have you?” he demanded. “I like that! You’re landing me with the job of trying to entice a drunken sot who will likely assault me on sight, and luring your daughter along to watch! What, do you think she’ll be needed to drive me to hospital after Edgars has finished beating me over the head with a bottle?”

  “No,” Claire said, ignoring his tone. “I think you and Greg Edgars together may succeed where I couldn’t, in convincing Bree that Gillian Edgars is the woman I knew as Geillis Duncan. She won’t listen to me. She likely won’t listen to you, either, if you try to tell her what we found at the Institute today. But she’ll listen to Greg Edgars.” Her tone was flat and grim, and Roger felt his annoyance ebbing slightly. He started the car once more, and pulled out into the stream of traffic.

  “All right, I’ll try,” he said grudgingly, not looking at her. “And just where are you going to be, while I do this?”

  There was a small, shuffling movement alongside as she groped in her pocket again. Then she drew out her hand and opened it. His eye caught the silvery gleam of a small object in the darkness of her palm. A key.

  “I’m going to burgle the Institute,” she said calmly. “I want that notebook.”

  * * *

  After Claire excused herself to run her unspecified “errand”—making Roger shudder only slightly—he and Brianna had driven to the pub, but then decided to wait for their supper, since the evening was unexpectedly fine. They strolled down the narrow walk by the River Ness, and he had forgotten his misgivings about the evening in the pleasure of Brianna’s company.

  They talked carefully at first, avoiding anything controversial. Then the chat turned to Roger’s work, and grew gradually more animated.

  “And how do you know so much about it, anyway?” Roger demanded, breaking off in the middle of a sentence.

  “My father taught me,” she replied. At the word “father,” she stiffened a bit, and drew back, as though expecting him to say something. “My real father,” she added pointedly.

  “Well, he certainly knew,” Roger replied mildly, leaving the challenge strictly alone. Plenty of time for that later, my girl, he thought cynically. But it isn’t going to be me that springs the trap.

  Just down the street, Roger could see a light in the window of the Edgars’s house. The quarry was denned, then. He felt an unexpected surge of adrenaline at the thought of the coming confrontation.

  Adrenaline lost out to the surge of gastric juices that resulted when they stepped into the pub’s savory atmosphere, redolent of shepherd’s pie. Conversation was general and friendly, with an unspoken agreement to avoid any reference to the scene at the manse the day before. Roger had noticed the coolness between Claire and her daughter, before he had left her at the cab stand on their way to the pub. Seated side by side in the backseat, they had reminded him of two strange cats, ears laid flat and tails twitching, but both avoiding the eye-locking stare that would lead to claws and flying fur.

  After dinner, Brianna fetched their coats while he paid the bill.

  “What’s that for?” she asked, noticing the bottle of whisky in his hand. “Planning a rave-up for later on?”

  “Rave-up?” he said, grinning at her. “You are getting on, aren’t you? And what else have you picked up in your linguistic studies?”

  She cast her eyes down in exaggerated demureness.

  “Oh, well. There’s a dance in the States, called the Shag. I gather I shouldn’t ask you to do it with me here, though.”

  “Not unless you mean it,” he said. They both laughed, but he thought the flush on her cheeks had deepened, and he was conscious of a certain stirring at the suggestion that made him keep his coat hung over one arm instead of putting it on.

  “Well, after enough of that stuff, anything’s possible,” she said, indicating the whisky bottle with a mildly malicious smile. “Terrible taste, though.”

  “It’s acquired, lassie,” Roger informed her, letting his accent broaden. “Only Scots are born wi’ it. I’ll buy ye a bottle of your own to practice with. This one’s a gift, though—something I promised to leave off. Want to come along, or shall I do it later?” he asked. He didn’t know whether he wanted her to come or not, but felt a surge of happiness when she nodded and shrugged into her own coat.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Good.” He reached out and delicately turned down the flap of her collar, so it lay flat on her shoulder. “It’s just down the street—let’s walk, shall we?”

  * * *

  The neighborhood looked a little better at night. Some of its shabbiness was hidden by the darkness, and the lights glowing from windows into the tiny front gardens gave the street an air of coziness that it lacked during the day.

  “This won’t take a minute,” Roger told Brianna as he pressed the buzzer. He wasn’t sure whether to hope he was right or not. His first fear passed as the door opened; someone was home, and still conscious.

  Edgars had plainly spent the afternoon in the company of one of the bottles lined up along the edge of the swaybacked buffet visible behind him. Luckily, he appeared not to connect his evening visitors with the intrusion of the afternoon. He squinted at Roger’s introduction, composed on the way to the house.

  “Gilly’s cousin? I didn’ know she had a cousin.”

  “Well, she has,” said Roger, boldly taking advantage of this admission. “I’m him.” He would deal with Gillian herself when he saw her. If he saw her.

  Edgars blinked once or twice, then rubbed an inflamed eye with one fist, as though to get a better look at them. His eyes focused with some difficulty on Brianna, hovering diffidently behind Roger.

  “Who’s that?” he demanded.

  “Er…my girlfriend,” Roger improvised. Brianna narrowed her eyes at him, but said nothing. Plainly she was beginning to smell a rat, but went ahead of him without protest as Greg Edgars swung the door wider to admit them.

  The flat was small and stuffy, overfurnished with secondhand furniture. The air reeked of stale cigarettes and insufficiently taken-out garbage, and the remnants of take-away meals were scattered heedlessly over every horizontal surface in the room. Brianna gave Roger a sidelong look that said Nice relatives you have, and he shrugged slightly. Not my fault. The woman of the house was plainly not at home, and hadn’t been for some time.

  Or not in the physical sense, at least. Turning to take the chair Edgars offered him, Roger came face-to-face with a large studio photograph, framed in brass, standing in the center of the tiny mantelpiece. He bit his tongue to stifle a startled exclamation.

  The woman seemed to be looking out of the photograph into his face, a slight smile barely creasing the corner of her mouth. Wings of platinum-fair hair fell thick and glossy past her shoulders, framing a perfect heart-shaped face. Eyes deep green as winter moss glowed under thick, dark lashes.

  “Good likeness, i’n’t?” Greg Edgars looked at the photo, his expression one of mingled hostility and longing.

  “Er, yes. Just like her.” Roger felt a little breathless, and turned to remove a crumpled fish-and-chips paper from his chair. Brianna was staring at the portrait with interest. She glanced from the photo to Roger and back, clearly drawing comparisons. Cousins, was
it?

  “I take it Gillian’s not here?” Roger started to wave away the bottle Edgars had tilted inquiringly in his direction, then changed his mind and nodded. Perhaps a shared drink would gain Edgars’s confidence. If Gillian wasn’t here, he needed to find out where she was.

  Occupied in removing the excise seal with his teeth, Edgars shook his head, then delicately plucked the bit of wax and paper off his lower lip.

  “Not hardly, mate. ’S not quite so much a slum as this when she’s here.” A sweeping gesture took in the overflowing ashtrays and tumbled paper drinks cups. “Close, maybe, but not quite this bad.” He took down three wineglasses from the china cupboard, peering dubiously into each one, as though checking for dust.

  He poured the whisky with the exaggerated care of the very drunk, taking the glasses one by one across the room to his guests. Brianna accepted hers with equal care, but declined a chair, instead leaning gracefully against the corner of the china cabinet.

  Edgars plumped at last onto the rump-sprung sofa, ignoring the debris, and raised his glass.

  “Cheers, mate,” he said briefly, and took a long, slurping gulp. “Wotcher say yer name is?” he demanded, emerging abruptly from his immersion. “Oh, Roger, right. Gilly never mentioned ye…but then, she wouldn’,” he added moodily. “Never knew nothin’ about her family, and she wasn’ sayin’. Think she was ashamed of ’em all…but you don’t look such a nelly,” he said, generously. “Yer lass is a looker, at least. Aye, that sounds right, eh? ‘Yer lass is a looker, at least!’ Hear ’at, eh?” He laughed uproariously, spraying whisky droplets.

  “Yeah,” said Roger. “Thanks.” He took a small sip of his drink. Brianna, offended, turned her back on Edgars and affected to be examining the contents of the china closet through the bevel-cut glass doors.

  There seemed no point in beating around the bush, Roger decided. Edgars wouldn’t recognize subtlety if it bit him on the bum at this point, and there seemed a substantial danger that he might pass out soon, at the rate he was going.

  “D’you know where Gillian is?” he asked bluntly. Every time he said her name, it felt strange on his tongue. This time, he couldn’t help glancing up at the mantelpiece, where the photo smiled serenely on the debauch below.

  Edgars shook his head, swinging it slowly back and forth over his glass like an ox over a corncrib. He was a short, heavyset man, about Roger’s age, perhaps, but looking older because of the heavy growth of unshaved beard and disheveled black hair.

  “Nah,” he said. “Thought maybe you knew. It’ll be the Nats or the Roses, likely, but I’ve no kep’ up. I couldny say who, specially.”

  “Nats?” Roger’s heart began to speed up. “You mean the Scottish Nationalists?”

  Edgars’s eyelids were beginning to droop, but they blinked open once more.

  “Oh, aye. Bloody Nats. ’S where I met Gilly, aye?”

  “When was this, Mr. Edgars?”

  Roger looked up in surprise at the soft voice from above. It wasn’t the photograph that had spoken, though, but Brianna, looking intently down at Greg Edgars. Roger couldn’t tell whether she was merely making conversation, or if she suspected something. Her face showed nothing beyond polite interest.

  “Dunno…maybe two, three years gone. Fun at first, hm? Toss the bloody English out, join the Common Market on our own…beer in the pub and a cuddle i’ the back of the van comin’ home from rallies. Mmm.” Edgars shook his head again, dreamy-eyed at the vision. Then the smile faded from his face, and he frowned into his drink. “That’s before she went potty.”

  “Potty?” Roger took another quick glance at the photo. Intense, yes. She looked that. But not barking mad, surely. Or could you tell, from a photo?

  “Aye. Society o’ the White Rose. Charlie’s m’ darlin’. Will ye no come back again, and all that rot. Lot of jimmies dressed up in kilts and full rig, wi’ swords and all. All right if ye like it, o’ course,” he added, with a cockeyed attempt at objectivity. “But Gilly’d always take a thing too far. On and on about the Bonnie Prince, and wouldn’ it be a thing if he’d won the ’45? Blokes in the kitchen ’til all hours, drinking up the beer and arguing why he hadn’t. In the Gaelic, too.” He rolled his eyes. “Load o’ rubbish.” He drained his glass to emphasize this opinion.

  Roger could feel Brianna’s eyes boring into the side of his neck like gimlets. He pulled at his collar to loosen it, though he wasn’t wearing a tie and his collar button was undone.

  “I don’t suppose your wife’s also interested in standing stones, is she, Mr. Edgars?” Brianna wasn’t bothering a lot with the polite interest anymore; her voice was sharp enough to cut cheese. The effect was largely wasted on Edgars.

  “Stones?” He seemed fuddled, and stuck a forefinger into one ear, screwing it in industriously, as though in hopes of improving his hearing.

  “The prehistoric stone circles. Like the Clava Cairns,” Roger offered, naming one of the more famous local landmarks. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought, with a mental sigh of resignation. Brianna was plainly never going to speak to him again, so he might as well find out what he could.

  “Oh, those.” Edgars uttered a short laugh. “Aye, and every other bit o’ auld rubbish ye could name. That’s the last bit, and the worst. Down at that Institewt day an’ night, spendin’ all my money on courses…courses! Make a cat laugh, ay? Fairy tales, they teach ’em there. Ye’ll learn nothin’ useful in that place, lass, I told her. Whyna learn to type? Get a job, if she’s bored. ’S what I tell’t her. So she left,” he said morosely. “Not seen her in two weeks.” He stared into his wineglass as though surprised to find it empty.

  “Have another?” he offered, reaching for the bottle, but Brianna shook her head decidedly.

  “Thanks, no. We have to be going. Don’t we, Roger?”

  Seeing the dangerous glint in her eye, Roger wasn’t at all sure that he wouldn’t be better off staying to split the rest of the bottle with Greg Edgars. Still, it was a long walk home, if he let Brianna take the car. He rose with a sigh, and shook Edgars’s hand in farewell. It was warm and surprisingly firm in its grip, if a trifle moist.

  Edgars followed them to the door, clutching the bottle by the neck. He peered after them through the screen, suddenly calling down the walk, “If ye see Gilly, tell her to come home, eh?”

  Roger turned and waved at the blurry figure in the lighted rectangle of the door.

  “I’ll try,” he called, the words sticking in his throat.

  They made it to the walk and half down the street toward the pub before she rounded on him.

  “What in bloody hell are you up to?” she said. She sounded angry, but not hysterical. “You told me you haven’t any family in the Highlands, so what’s all this about cousins? Who is that woman in the picture?”

  He looked round the darkened street for inspiration, but there was no help for it. He took a deep breath and took her by the arm.

  “Geillis Duncan,” he said.

  She stopped stock-still, and the shock of it jarred up his own arm. With great deliberation, she detached her elbow from his grip. The delicate tissue of the evening had torn down the middle.

  “Don’t…touch…me,” she said through her teeth. “Is this something Mother thought up?”

  Despite his resolve to be understanding, Roger felt himself growing angry in return.

  “Look,” he said, “can you not think of anyone but yourself in this? I know it’s been a shock to you—God, how could it not be? And if you cannot bring yourself even to think about it…well, I’ll not push you to it. But there’s your mother to consider. And there’s me, as well.”

  “You? What have you got to do with it?” It was too dark to see her face, but the surprise in her voice was evident.

  He had not meant to complicate matters further by telling her of his involvement, but it was clearly too late for keeping secrets. And no doubt Claire had seen that, when she suggested his taking Brianna out this evening.

&nb
sp; In a flash of revelation, he realized for the first time just what Claire had meant. She did have one means of proving her story to Brianna, beyond question. She had Gillian Edgars, who had—perhaps—not yet vanished to meet her fate as Geillis Duncan, tied to a flaming stake beneath the rowan trees of Leoch. The most stubborn cynic would be convinced, he supposed, by the sight of someone disappearing into the past before their eyes. No wonder Claire had wanted to find Gillian Edgars.

  In a few words, he told Brianna his relationship with the would-be witch of Cranesmuir.

  “And so it looks like being my life or hers,” he ended, shrugging, hideously conscious of how ridiculously melodramatic it sounded. “Claire—your mother—she left it to me. But I thought I had to find her, at the least.”

  Brianna had stopped walking to listen to him. The dim light from a corner shop caught the gleam of her eyes as she stared at him.

  “You believe it, then?” she asked. There was no incredulity or scorn in her voice; she was altogether serious.

  He sighed and reached for her arm again. She didn’t resist, but fell into step beside him.