48

WITCH-HUNT

The old-fashioned buzzer whirred somewhere in the depths of the flat. It wasn’t the best part of town, nor was it the worst. Working-class houses, for the most part, some, like this one, divided into two or three flats. A hand-lettered notice under the buzzer read MCHENRY UPSTAIRS—RING TWICE. Roger carefully pressed the buzzer once more, then wiped his hand on his trousers. His palms were sweating, which annoyed him considerably.

There was a trough of yellow jonquils by the doorstep, half-dead for lack of water. The tips of the blade-shaped leaves were brown and curling, and the frilly yellow heads drooped disconsolately near his shoe.

Claire saw them, too. “Perhaps no one’s home,” she said, stooping to touch the dry soil in the trough. “These haven’t been watered in over a week.”

Roger felt a mild wave of relief at the thought; whether he believed Geillis Duncan was Gillian Edgars or not, he hadn’t been looking forward to this visit. He was turning to go when the door suddenly opened behind him, with a screech of sticking wood that brought his heart into his mouth.

“Aye?” The man who answered the door squinted at them, eyes swollen in a flushed, heavy face shadowed with unshaven beard.

“Er…We’re sorry to disturb your sleep, sir,” said Roger, making an effort to calm himself. His stomach felt slightly hollow. “We’re looking for a Miss Gillian Edgars. Is this her residence?”

The man rubbed a stubby, black-furred hand over his head, making the hair stick up in belligerent spikes.

“That’s Mrs. Edgars to you, jimmy. And what’s it you want wi’ my wife?” The alcoholic fumes from the man’s breath made Roger want to step backward, but he stood his ground.

“We only want to talk with her,” he said, as conciliatingly as he could. “Is she at home, please?”

“Is she at home, please?” said the man who must be Mr. Edgars, squinching his mouth in a savage, high-pitched mockery of Roger’s Oxford accent. “No, she’s not home. Bugger off,” he advised, and swung the door to with a crash that left the lace curtain shivering with the vibration.

“I can see why she isn’t home,” Claire observed, standing on tiptoe to peer through the window. “I wouldn’t be, either, if that’s what was waiting for me.”

“Quite,” said Roger shortly. “And that would appear to be that. Have you any other suggestions for finding this woman?”

Claire let go of the windowsill.

“He’s settled in front of the telly,” she reported. “Let’s leave him, at least until after the pub’s opened. Meanwhile, we can go try this Institute. Fiona said Gillian Edgars took courses there.”

The Institute for the Study of Highland Folklore and Antiquities was housed on the top floor of a narrow house just outside the business district. The receptionist, a small, plump woman in a brown cardigan and print dress, seemed delighted to see them; she mustn’t get much company up here, Roger reflected.

“Oh, Mrs. Edgars,” she said, upon hearing their business. Roger thought that a sudden note of doubt had crept into Mrs. Andrews’s voice, but she remained bright and cheerful. “Yes,” she said, “she’s a regular member of the Institute, all paid up for her classes. She’s around here quite a bit, is Mrs. Edgars.” A lot more than Mrs. Andrews really cared for, from the sound of it.

“She isn’t here now, by chance, is she?” Claire asked.

Mrs. Andrews shook her head, making the dozens of gray-streaked pincurls dance on her head.

“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s a Monday. Only me and Dr. McEwan are here on the Monday. He’s the Director, you know.” She looked reproachfully at Roger, as though he ought really to have known that. Then, apparently reassured by their evident respectability, she relented slightly.

“If you want to ask about Mrs. Edgars, you should see Dr. McEwan. I’ll just go and tell him you’re here, shall I?”

As she began to ease out from behind her desk, Claire stopped her, leaning forward.

“Have you perhaps got a photograph of Mrs. Edgars?” she asked bluntly. At Mrs. Andrews’s stare of surprise, Claire smiled charmingly, explaining, “We wouldn’t want to waste the Director’s time, if it’s the wrong person, you see.”

Mrs. Andrews mouth dropped open slightly, and she blinked in confusion, but she nodded after a moment, and began fussing round her desk, opening drawers and talking to herself.

“I know they’re here somewhere. I saw them just yesterday, so they can’t have gone far…oh, here!” She bobbed up with a folder of eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs in her hand, and sorted rapidly through them.

“There,” she said. “That’s her, with one of the digging expeditions, out near town, but you can’t see her face, can you? Let me see if there’s any more…”

She resumed her sorting, muttering to herself, as Roger peered interestedly over Claire’s shoulder at the photograph Mrs. Andrews had laid on the desk. It showed a small group of people standing near a Land-Rover, with a number of burlap sacks and small tools on the ground beside them. It was an impromptu shot, and several of the people were turned away from the camera. Claire’s finger reached out without hesitation, touching the image of a tall girl with long, straight, fair hair hanging halfway down her back. She tapped the photograph and nodded silently to Roger.

“You can’t possibly be sure,” he muttered to her under his breath.

“What’s that, luv?” said Mrs. Andrews, looking up absently over her spectacles. “Oh, you weren’t talking to me. That’s all right, then, I’ve found one a little better. It’s still not her whole face—she’s turned sideways, like—but it’s better nor the other.” She plopped the new picture down on top of the other with a triumphant little splat.

This one showed an older man with half-spectacles and the same fairhaired girl, bent over a table holding what looked like a collection of rusted motor parts to Roger, but which were undoubtedly valuable artifacts. The girl’s hair swung down beside her cheek, and her head was turned toward the older man, but the slant of a short, straight nose, a sweetly rounded chin, and the curve of a beautiful mouth showed clearly. The eye was cast down, hidden under long, thick lashes. Roger repressed the admiring whistle that rose unbidden to his lips. Ancestress or not, she was a real dolly, he thought irreverently.

He glanced at Claire. She nodded, without speaking. She was paler even than usual, and he could see the pulse beating rapidly in her throat, but she thanked Mrs. Andrews with her usual composure.

“Yes, that’s the one. I think perhaps we would like to talk to the Director, if he’s available.”

Mrs. Andrews cast a quick glance at the white-paneled door behind her desk.

“Well, I’ll go and ask for you, dearie. Could I tell him what it’s for, though?”

Roger was opening his mouth, groping for some excuse, when Claire stepped smoothly into the breach.

“We’re from Oxford, actually,” she said. “Mrs. Edgars has applied for a study grant with the Department of Antiquities, and she’d given the Institute as a reference with the rest of her credentials. So, if you wouldn’t mind…?”

“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Andrews, looking impressed. “Oxford. Just think! I’ll ask Dr. McEwan if he can see you just now.”

As she disappeared behind the white-paneled door, pausing for no more than a perfunctory rap before entering, Roger leaned down to whisper in Claire’s ear.

“There is no such thing as a Department of Antiquities at Oxford,” he hissed, “and you know it.”

“You know that,” she replied demurely, “and I, as you so cleverly point out, do too. But there are any number of people in the world who don’t, and we’ve just met one of them.”

The white-paneled door was beginning to open.

“Let’s hope they’re thick on the ground hereabouts,” Roger said, wiping his brow, “or that you’re a quick liar.”

Claire rose, smiling at the beckoning figure of Mrs. Andrews as she spoke out of the side of her mouth.

“I? I, who read souls for the King of France?” She brushed down her skirt and set it swinging. “This will be pie.”

Roger bowed ironically, gesturing toward the door. “Aprés vous, Madame.”

As she stepped ahead of him, he added, “Aprés vous, le déluge,” under his breath. Her shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t turn around.

Rather to Roger’s surprise, it was pie. He wasn’t sure whether it was Claire’s skill at misrepresentation, or Dr. McEwan’s own preoccupation, but their bona fides went unquestioned. It didn’t seem to occur to the man that it was highly unlikely for scouting parties from Oxford to penetrate to the wilds of Inverness to make inquiries about the background of a potential graduate student. But then, Roger thought, Dr. McEwan appeared to have something on his mind; perhaps he wasn’t thinking as clearly as usual.

“Weeeel…yes, Mrs. Edgars unquestionably has a fine mind. Very fine,” the Director said, as though convincing himself. He was a tall, spare man, with a long upper lip like a camel’s, which wobbled as he searched hesitantly for each new word. “Have you…has she…that is…” He trailed off, lip twitching, then, “Have you ever actually met Mrs. Edgars?” he finally burst out.

“No,” said Roger, eyeing Dr. McEwan with some austerity. “That’s why we’re asking about her.”

“Is there anything…” Claire paused delicately, inviting, “that you think perhaps the committee should know, Dr. McEwan?” She leaned forward, opening her eyes very wide. “You know, inquiries like this are completely confidential. But it’s so important that we be fully informed; there is a position of trust involved.” Her voice dropped suggestively. “The Ministry, you know.”

Roger would dearly have loved to strangle her, but Dr. McEwan was nodding sagely, lip wobbling like mad.

“Oh, yes, dear lady. Yes, of course. The Ministry. I completely understand. Yes, yes, Well, I…hm, perhaps—I shouldn’t like to mislead you in any respect, you know. And it is a wonderful chance, no doubt…”

Now Roger wanted to throttle both of them. Claire must have noticed his hands twitching in his lap with irresistible desire, for she put a firm stop to the Director’s maundering.

“We’re basically interested in two things,” she said briskly, opening the notebook she carried and poising it on her knee as if for reference. Pick up bottle sherry for Mrs. T, Roger read out of the corner of one eye. Sliced ham for picnic.

“We want to know, first, your opinion of Mrs. Edgars’s scholarship, and secondly, your opinion of her overall personality. The first we have of course evaluated ourselves”—she made a small tick in the notebook, next to an entry that read Change traveler’s cheques—“but you have a much more substantial and detailed grasp, of course.” Dr. McEwan was nodding away by this time, thoroughly mesmerized.

“Yes, well…” He puffed a little, then, with a glance at the door to make sure it was shut, leaned confidentially across his desk. “The quality of her work—well, about that I think I can satisfy you completely. I’ll show you a few things she’s been working on. And the other…” Roger thought he was about to go in for another spot of lip-twitching and leaned forward menacingly.

Dr. McEwan leaned back abruptly, looking startled. “It’s nothing very much, really,” he said. “It’s only…well, she’s such an intense young lady. Perhaps her interest seems at times a trifle…obsessive?” His voice went up questioningly. His eyes darted from Roger to Claire, like a trapped rat’s.

“Would the direction of this intense interest perhaps be focused on the standing stones? The stone circles?” Claire suggested gently.

“Oh, it showed up in her application materials, then?” The Director hauled a large, grubby handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face with it. “Yes, that’s it. Of course, a lot of people get quite carried away with them,” he offered. “The romance of it, the mystery. Look at those benighted souls out at Stonehenge on Midsummer’s Day, in hoods and robes. Chanting…all that nonsense. Not that I would compare Gillian Edgars to…”

There was quite a lot more of it, but Roger quit listening. It seemed stifling in the narrow office, and his collar was too tight; he could hear his heart beating, a slow, incessant thrumping in both ears that was very irritating.

It simply couldn’t be! he thought. Positively impossible. True, Claire Randall’s story was convincing—quite awfully convincing. But then, look at the effect she was having on this poor old dodderer, who wouldn’t know scholarship if it was served up on a plate with piccalilli relish. She could obviously talk a tinker out of his pans. Not that he, Roger, was as susceptible as Dr. McEwan surely, but…

Beset with doubt and dripping with sweat, Roger paid little attention as Dr. McEwan fetched a set of keys from his drawer and rose to lead them out through a second door into a long hallway studded with doors.

“Study carrels,” the Director explained. He opened one of the doors, revealing a cubicle some four feet on a side, barely big enough to contain a narrow table, a chair, and a small bookshelf. On the table, neatly stacked, were a series of folders in different colors. To the side, Roger saw a large notebook with gray covers, and a neat hand-lettered label on the front—MISCELLANEOUS. For some reason, the sight of the handwriting sent a shiver through him.

This was getting more personal by the moment. First photographs, now the woman’s writings. He was assailed by a moment’s panic at the thought of actually meeting Geillis Duncan. Gillian Edgars, he meant. Whoever the woman was.

The Director was opening various folders, pointing and explaining to Claire, who was putting on a good show of having some idea what he was talking about. Roger peered over her shoulder, nodding and saying, “Um-hm, very interesting,” at intervals, but the slanted lines and loops of the script were incomprehensible to him.

She wrote this, he kept thinking. She’s real. Flesh and blood and lips and long eyelashes. And if she goes back through the stone, she’ll burn—crackle and blacken, with her hair lit like a torch in the black dawn. And if she doesn’t, then…I don’t exist.

He shook his head violently.

“You disagree, Mr. Wakefield?” The Director of the Institute was peering at him in puzzlement.

He shook his head again, this time in embarrassment.

“No, no. I mean…it’s only…do you think I could have a drink of water?”

“Of course, of course! Come with me, there’s a fountain just round the corner, I’ll show you.” Dr. McEwan bustled him out of the carrel and down the hall, expressing voluble, disjointed concern for his state of health.

Once away from the claustrophobic confines of the carrel and the proximity of Gillian Edgars’s books and folders, Roger began to feel slightly better. Still, the thought of going back into that tiny room, where all Claire’s words about her past seemed to echo off the thin partitions…no. He made up his mind. Claire could finish with Dr. McEwan by herself. He passed the carrel quickly, not looking inside, and went through the door that led back to the receptionist’s desk.

Mrs. Andrews stared at him as he came in, her spectacles gleaming with concern and curiosity.

“Dear me, Mr. Wakefield. Are ye not feeling just right, then?” Roger rubbed a hand over his face; he must look really ghastly. He smiled weakly at the plump little secretary.

“No, thanks very much. I just got a bit hot back there; thought I’d step down for a little fresh air.”

“Oh, aye.” The secretary nodded understandingly. “The radiators.” She pronounced it “raddiators.” “They get stuck on, ye know, and won’t turn off. I’d best see about it.” She rose from her desk, where the picture of Gillian Edgars still rested. She glanced down at the picture, then up at Roger.

“Isn’t that odd?” she said conversationally. “I was just looking at this and wondering what it was about Mrs. Edgars’s face that struck me all of a sudden. And I couldn’t think what it was. But she’s quite a look of you, Mr. Wakefield—especially round the eyes. Isn’t that a coincidence? Mr. Wakefield?” Mrs. Andrews stared in the direction of the stair, where the thump of Roger’s footsteps echoed from the wooden risers.

“Taken a bit short, I expect,” she said kindly. “Poor lad.”

The sun was still above the horizon when Claire rejoined him on the street, but it was late in the day; people were going home to their tea, and there was a feeling of general relaxation in the air—a looking forward to leisured peace after the long day’s work.

Roger himself had no such feeling. He moved to open the car door for Claire, conscious of such a mix of emotions that he couldn’t decide what to say first. She got in, glancing up at him sympathetically.

“Rather a jar, isn’t it?” was all she said.

The fiendish maze of new one-way streets made getting through the town center a task that demanded all his attention. They were well on their way before he could take his eyes off the road long enough to ask, “What next?”

Claire was leaning back in her seat, eyes closed, the tendrils of her hair coming loose from their clip. She didn’t open her eyes at his question, but stretched slightly, easing herself in the seat.

“Why don’t you ask Brianna out for supper somewhere?” she said. Supper? Somehow it seemed subtly wrong to stop for supper in the midst of a life-or-death detective endeavor, but on the other hand, Roger was suddenly aware that the hollowness in his stomach wasn’t entirely due to the revelations of the last hour.

“Well, all right,” he said slowly. “But then tomorrow—”

“Why wait ’til tomorrow?” Claire broke in. She was sitting up now, combing out her hair. It was thick and unruly, and loosed swirling on her shoulders, Roger thought it made her look suddenly very young. “You can go talk to Greg Edgars again after supper, can’t you?”

“How do you know his name is Greg?” Roger asked curiously. “And if he wouldn’t talk to me this afternoon, why should he tonight?”

Claire looked at Roger as though suddenly doubting his basic intelligence.

“I know his name because I saw it on a letter in his mailbox,” she said. “As for why he’ll talk to you tonight, he’ll talk to you because you’re going to take along a bottle of whisky when you come this time.”

“And you think that will make him invite us in?”

She lifted one brow. “Did you see the collection of empty bottles in his waste bin? Of course he will. Like a shot.” She sat back, fists thrust into the pockets of her coat, and stared out at the passing street.

“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.

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.

“Yes,” he said. “I had to. You didn’t see your mother’s face, when she saw the words written inside her ring. That was real—real enough to break my heart.”

“You’d better tell me,” she said, after a short silence. “What words?”

By the time he had finished the story, they had reached the car-park behind the pub.

“Well…” Brianna said hesitantly. “If…” She stopped again, looking into his eyes. She was standing near enough for him to feel the warmth of her breasts, close to his chest, but he didn’t reach for her. The kirk of St. Kilda was a long way off, and neither of them wanted to remember the grave beneath the yew trees, where the names of her parents were written in stone.

“I don’t know, Roger,” she said, shaking her head. The neon sign over the pub’s back door made purple glints in her hair. “I just can’t…I can’t think about it yet. But…” Words failed her, but she lifted a hand and touched his cheek, light as the brush of the evening wind. “I’ll think of you,” she whispered.

When you come right down to it, committing burglary with a key is not really a difficult proposition. The chance that either Mrs. Andrews or Dr. McEwan was going to come back and cop me in the act were vanishingly small. Even if they had, all I would have to do is say that I’d come back to look for a lost pocketbook, and found the door open. I was out of practice, but deception had at one point been second nature to me. Lying was like riding a bicycle, I thought; you don’t forget how.

So it wasn’t the act of getting hold of Gillian Edgars’s notebook that made my heart race and my breath sound loud in my own ears. It was the book itself.

As Master Raymond had told me in Paris, the power and the danger of magic lie in the people who believe it. From the glimpse I had had of the contents earlier, the actual information written in this cardboard notebook was an extraordinary mishmash of fact, speculation, and flat-out fantasy that could be of importance only to the writer. But I felt an almost physical revulsion at touching it. Knowing who had written it, I knew it for what it likely was: a grimoire, a magician’s book of secrets.

Still, if there existed any clue to Geillis Duncan’s whereabouts and intentions, it would be here. Suppressing a shudder at the touch of the slick cover, I tucked it under my coat, holding it in place with my elbow for the trip down the stairs.

Safely out on the street, still I kept the book under my elbow, the cover growing clammy with perspiration as I walked. I felt as though I were transporting a bomb, something which must be handled with scrupulous carefulness, in order to prevent an explosion.

I walked for some time, finally turning into the front garden of a small Italian restaurant with a terrace near the river. The night was chilly, but a small electric fire made the terrace tables warm enough for use; I chose one and ordered a glass of Chianti. I sipped at it for some time, the notebook lying on the paper placemat in front of me, in the concealing shadow of a basket of garlic bread.

It was late April. Only a few days until May Day—the Feast of Beltane. That was when I had made my own impromptu voyage into the past. I supposed it was possible that there was something about the date—or just the general time of year? It had been mid-April when I returned—that made that eerie passage possible. Or maybe not; maybe the time of year had nothing to do with it. I ordered another glass of wine.

It could be that only certain people had the ability to penetrate a barrier that was solid to everyone else—something in the genetic makeup? Who knew? Jamie had not been able to enter it, though I could. And Geillis Duncan obviously had—or would. Or wouldn’t, depending. I thought of young Roger Wakefield, and felt mildly queasy. I thought perhaps I had better have some food to go with the wine.

The visit to the Institute had convinced me that wherever Gillian/Geillis was, she had not yet made her own fateful passage. Anyone who had studied the legends of the Highlands would know that the Feast of Beltane was approaching; surely anyone planning such an expedition would undertake it then? But I had no idea where she might be, if she wasn’t at home; in hiding? Performing some peculiar rite of preparation, picked up from Fiona’s group of neo-Druids? The notebook might hold a clue, but God only knew.

God only also knew what my own motives were in this; I had thought I did, but was no longer sure. Had I involved Roger in the search for Geillis because it seemed the only way of convincing Brianna? And yet—even if we found her in time, my own purpose would be served only if Gillian succeeded in going back. And thus, in dying by fire.

When Geillis Duncan had been condemned as a witch, Jamie had said to me, “Dinna grieve for her, Sassenach; she’s a wicked woman.” And whether she had been wicked or mad, it had made little difference at the time. Should I not have left well enough alone, and left her to find her own fate? Still, I thought, she had once saved my life. In spite of what she was—would be—did I owe it to her to try to save her life? And thus perhaps doom Roger? What right did I have to meddle any further?

It isna a matter of right, Sassenach, I heard Jamie’s voice saying, with a tinge of impatience. It’s a question of duty. Of honor.

“Honor, is it?” I said aloud. “And what’s that?” The waiter with my plate of tortellini Portofino looked startled.

“Eh?” he said.

“Never mind,” I said, too distracted to care much what he thought of me. “Perhaps you’d better bring the rest of the bottle.”

I finished my meal surrounded by ghosts. Finally, fortified by food and wine, I pushed my empty plate aside, and opened Gillian Edgars’s gray notebook.