Chapter Eight (Untitled)

Comments on this work in progress are welcome and invited. We writers love to know whether something is working — or not. At the moment, I think I know where this story is headed. But as Kurt Vonnegut once advised any writer sitting down to begin a novel, "Keep your hat on. We may wind up miles from here."

The officer removed his cap, revealing a head to match the grey skies outside my hotel window, and nodded at the proprietors.

“Mrs. MacLean. Mr. MacLean.”

His eyes rested on me.

“I’m Gloria Davidson,” I said, reaching across the bed to shake his hand.

“George Russell. How do you do.”

I knew this to be a rhetorical question, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Terrible, frankly,” I informed him. “I’ve just traveled twenty-six mostly sleepless hours to attend my grandmother’s funeral, only to learn that there is no funeral and for some unfathomable reason the police have been called in. It’s enough to drive a woman to drink!”

“May I?” Mr. MacLean asked, lifting the decanter.

“Please,” I replied, holding out my empty glass, as much to annoy his wife (she’d frowned at his offer) as for the comfort of the drink itself.

“Aye, thanks, lad,” Officer Russell murmured, although I hadn’t heard Mr. MacLean offer him a drink.

I had to suppress a smile.

Our host glanced about.

“Ah, of course. Mrs. Davidson, would you mind, please? There’s another glass on the dresser behind you.”

“Of course.”

I handed the glass across and the four of us stood there, ringed around the bed with our whiskies in hand, as if the mattress, pillows, and flowered comforter comprised some sort of holy shrine. Which, I supposed, would make our whiskies the holy water.

“ Slanji va,” the officer said and we all — even Jean — sipped.

“Now then,” he went on, suddenly businesslike. “Perhaps you can tell me how this all came about.”

“Would that I knew,” I muttered and quite without planning to, sank into the chair that was squeezed between the dresser and the wall. “I’m sorry to be rude but I simply must sit down. I’m worn out.”

“Of course. Perhaps — ”

Before he could finish the sentence, Mrs. MacLean butted in, reciting her version of all that had happened, somehow managing to make me sound like a suspicious character.

She finished by saying, “Nobody seems to know that the woman is dead but her.”

She was really pissing me off.

“Wrong,” I said. “Captain MacKay knows, obviously. He’s the one who telephoned me.”

“Then why didn’t he notify the authorities?” Mrs. MacLean demanded.

That did it.

But even as I got to my feet to respond, both Malcolm MacLean and Officer Russell moved to intervene.

“Perhaps,” the officer said with a sternness that for some reason seemed false to me, “you could allow me to conduct this interview, Jean.”

Mr. MacLean, meanwhile, had grasped his wife’s arm and was already urging her toward the still-open door.

“Right, then, Jeannie, why don’t we leave Mrs. Davidson and George, er, Officer Russell, to their, ah, business.”

Jean’s eyes on mine were like shards of stone as he half-pushed her past the policeman, who was forced to press his backside against the chest of drawers to allow them to get by. I couldn’t recall ever having been the target of such unveiled malice.

With a last apologetic nod in my direction, Mr. MacLean pulled the door closed.

I took a breath and let it out forcefully.

Unbelievable.

But I was still left facing a police officer over the top of my flowery bed.

I was suddenly aware that I had my second glass of scotch in hand, although I hadn’t eaten since an early morning breakfast on the plane from Chicago.

“Do you mind?” I murmured, and without waiting for an answer sank back into the room’s only chair.

Waving a hand at the flowered expanse between us, I said, “Make yourself at home.”

“No bother,” he replied.

He remained standing.

“Perhaps, Mrs. Davidson, it would be best if you could tell me your version of what has happened.”

I observed that he played free and easy with the word perhaps — except, of course, when he’d seen the opportunity for a free drink. There’d been no perhaps about it then.

Still, the smile he gave me was encouraging and somewhat rueful. I breathed a bit more easily at that. Perhaps I wasn’t to be considered a villain after all.

My telling didn’t take long, but by the time I’d finished Officer Russell had seen fit to pour himself another tot of whiskey.

He nodded as I finished.

“Well, that does seem cut and dry. I’m not sure why Jeannie was getting her knickers in such a ... er, what she was getting so, ah, agitated about.”

“Nor I,” I assured him.

I was fascinated by the reference to Jeannie’s knickers and tempted to ask him to complete it, but sensed that this wasn’t the time.

“Mrs. Davidson, what can you tell me about this Captain MacKay?”

“Next to nothing, I’m afraid. He’s elderly. Sounded quite frail, actually. And according to my Gran’s letters, he shared her interest in stones.”

“Stones in general, or The Stones?”

I could hear his capitalization of the words.

“Oh, definitely not the Rolling Stones,” I assured them. “That wasn’t Gran’s kind of music.”

Officer Russell gave me what seemed a puzzled look.

“Do you know much about Orkney, Mrs. Davidson?”

Now I was embarrassed. I’d never had any reason for interest in the islands, never expected to travel to them, and frankly had never understood why my Gran had chosen to live her final years here. As for stones, well, to me the hobby of stone collecting made about as much sense as philately. I stammered something to that effect and the policeman murmured understanding.

“Then perhaps I could have a look at her letters?” he suggested, in a way that only a policeman can suggest.

“I’d be happy to let you see them, but they’re in my house. In the States.”

“Ah. Well, then, that’s — ”

Suddenly, he stood.

“I beg your pardon, I’ve a call. I’ll just take it in the corridor.”

He stepped out the door, pulling a phone from his pocket as he did so.

I allowed myself to sink lower in the chair, but had no inclination to close my eyes. I was feeling oddly exhilarated.

Officer Russell was back within moments. His demeanor had changed. He seemed more serious, if that were possible.

“Well, then, Mrs. Davidson.”

I wondered with distant interest whether I was about to be cast back into the role of villain.

He closed the door behind him, lifted his glass from the chest of drawers, and murmured, “My condolences on your grandmother’s passing.”

“I beg — Oh! Then you’ve found her.”

“Aye, lass, we have.”

He stood in silence for a moment, studying the flowered comforter.

Then he repeated, “My condolences,” and reached across the bed with his glass.

I realized that I was meant to raise mine as well. It was empty.

“Oh, dear, dear. That will never do,” he muttered.

Bustling round the bed like a concerned old aunt, he took my glass, poured another tot for me, then stood over my chair and with great solemnity intoned, “To the memory of your grandmother.”

Our glasses clinked.

We drank.

It occurred to me that never in my life had I drunk so much liquor on an empty stomach. It occurred to me that I should — perhaps — be worried about indulging in all this whiskey. Yet I wasn’t. In fact, I wasn’t worried about much of anything at the moment.

“So will there be more fuss now?”

“Fuss?”

Officer Russell scratched his head.

“Jean MacLean,” I suggested.

“Och well, I think wee Jeannie reads too many murder mysteries. Don’t you be bothered with her.”

Quite forgetting himself, he sat casually on the edge of the bed. The scotch was apparently making itself felt in Officer Russell, as well.

“You could say that Jeannie’s a wee bit over-endowed with imagination. Pour soul is here day in, day out, watching exciting people from all round the world come and go. I believe she entertains herself by inventing wee fantasies.”

I wasn’t ready to believe that “wee Jeannie” was quite so harmless. I was the one who’d been the object of her malice, after all. But I murmured something agreeable.

Officer Russell began making apologies, trying to explain away the mix up.

“Your e-mails weren’t read on Sunday, of course — ”

“Of course,” I echoed.

Maybe Scotland wasn’t so bad after all. When was the last time I’d been able to use Sunday as an excuse for not reading an e-mail?

“And John was tied up with a wake last night, so it was late this morning — or perhaps it was early this afternoon — before he was able to give the situation any consideration."

“John?”

“Pardon. John Corse. The funeral director.”

“Oh, right.”

“That’s when we were called, as it seemed the only way to solve the mystery was to send someone out to your Gran’s house. But before we were able to resolve the matter, here you already were.”

“Yes, here I am.”

I was feeling a bit stunned by that.

Here I was indeed.

My stomach growled loudly enough to be heard across the hall.

As Officer Russell chattered on (I was reminded again of an old aunt), I thought of the hearty breakfast Harry had prepared for us the morning of my departure. It seemed eons ago. What I would give for a meal like that now.

But the good officer was going on about cause of death. Apparently it would have to be officially determined, but to those on site it appeared to be natural causes.

“Which does bring to mind, though, Captain MacKay,” he said. “Perhaps he notified you instead of the authorities because — ?”

I was tired and hungry and drunk, but not that dense yet.

A cop is a cop is a cop.

“No idea. Don’t know the man. Couldn’t begin to guess at his motives.

“What I can guess at, however,” I went on, before he could speak again, “is that if I don’t get some food into my belly soon, I’ll be joining my Gran on the dark side of the sod.”

He stared at me dumbly for a moment, then, as what I’d said sunk in, gave that rueful smile again.

“I take it, Mrs. Davidson, that you weren’t very close to your Gran?”

“Not a bit,” I confirmed.

“And might I ask — ”

“She was a crazy old bat.”

“Ah.”

“Come to think of it,” I mused aloud, completely forgetting my determination of just a few moments ago to never rock the boat where the police are concerned, “that might explain Mrs. MacLean’s behavior. Maybe she’s met my Gran.”

“Surely she wasn’t — ” Officer Russell began, then stopped. He peered at me.

“That bad then, was she?”

“A loon,” I assured him. “A lunatic. Mad as a hatter. Nutty as a fruitcake.”

This was getting to be fun.

“A screw loose. Nutso. Off her rocker. Outrageously buggy. Certifiably cracked. Criminally insane.”

Oops.

Thank goodness he saw my outburst for what it was.

I was bundled off to a by now empty dining room with flowered curtains and lots of bone china, where I was served a solitary meal of reheated lamb curry. The steaming hot tea I poured from the bone china teapot left on my table was excellent, however. As hearty as Gran herself used to make for me. I added milk, something I would never do with the insipid and tepid drink that we Americans like to pass off as tea.

Thinking of Gran, I felt a mild sense of guilt at the way I’d described her to the cop.

But in the end, I decided to blame it on the scotch.