Free Ashes to Ashes by Lillian Stewart Carl Page B

decanter.
    “Yeah.” Even here in the brightly lit Hall Rebecca’s nape crawled.
    “Gave me a cold grue.” He shivered, suiting action to word. “So austere. When I go I want to be planted in Tomnahurich, the firth gleamin’ beyond the yew trees and fairies pipin’ beneath the sod.”
    “The big cemetery in Inverness built on a fairy mound? That’s an awfully romantic image for a skeptic like you.” Caught him, but his quick glance and dismissive gesture wouldn’t admit it. He didn’t have to. It was a relief to know she wasn’t the only one affected by the atmosphere of the tomb. She eyed the stack of black notebooks on the table. “Do you have any preference where I start?”
    Michael stood up, dusted his hands, and started to stack his booty on the table. “I did the kitchen, the lobby, and the sittin’ room when I first got here. No much there. Been spendin’ most of my time here. Startin’ at the bottom and workin’ up seems as good a plan as any. There’s no order to this rat’s nest.”
    “I noticed. What about the store— er, lumber room?” She wondered if he was dragging matters out just to irritate Eric, or if he was more meticulous in his working habits than in keeping his room tidy.
    “Take more than one pair of hands to fetch and carry around that lot. I was thinkin’ of savin’ it for last.”
    Rebecca wouldn’t have minded saving the cold, quiet upper room for last, but it wouldn’t seem so daunting after she’d grown used to the place. “Because the lumber room might have the most valuable things?”
    “No.” He tossed a yellowed linen tablecloth onto a paper and twine package that might have contained anything from a Tupperware canister to the Holy Grail. “I doot it has the least value. Wouldn’t John have put his dearest things out where he could show them off?”
    “But you said this morning he probably didn’t know what he had.”
    “We’ll never ken what he had if we dinna look at it!” he retorted, a little louder than was necessary. Rebecca felt a prickle of shame; she’d been baiting him. Odd, she never acted like this normally, she was always Miss Meek and Mild, the harmless drudge. With a sudden laugh that made Michael’s brows knit, nonplussed, she chose a notebook labeled “Prophet’s Chamber” and asked, “There?”
    “Be my guest,” he said, bowing her out the door.
    In a chair in the study Rebecca found Dun Iain’s presiding genius, Darnley, curled up in the feline version of the fetal position. He acknowledged her entrance with his usual salute, a blink of the eyes and a stiffening of the whiskers. She paused a moment to stroke his sleek, warm head. Give me, she thought, an animal smaller than a bread box.
    Just inside the door to the prophet’s chamber were two snuffboxes and a miniature portrait of a Tudor lady. Hilliard? Rebecca flipped open the notebook. Hilliard it was. That was a valuable piece the museum would want. She found a pencil on the desk and checked it off.
    A faint gurgling and rumbling must be water pipes. Above the desk a brown stain spread like a Rorschach blot across the plain plaster ceiling. A pipe had leaked, or else someone had let the tub in what was now her bathroom overflow. Rebecca found a sheet of paper and made a list of repairs: shelf in pantry, stain on ceiling.
    The armchair in front of the desk was a dilapidated affair of heavy varnished wood, the kind of chair Rebecca associated with bank presidents in prewar movies. It was not only not an antique, it probably wouldn’t even make a decent pile of firewood. She perched on its edge, opened the roll top of the desk, and winced. The jumbled contents threatened to spew into her lap. Sparring with Michael and flirting with Eric were all well and good, but now it was time to prove herself. She dug in.
    Three hours later she sat back with a sigh. She had scrounged through the desk and the filing cabinets, searched the walls and the floors, and uncovered two other