Sharyn McCrumb - Highland Laddie Gone

“Walter must have got it wrong, then. Maybe it’s an earl with a similar title.”

Cameron patted the grass beside him. “Sit down. We’re going to talk about this long-lost love of mine.” When Elizabeth had settled beside him, being careful not to get too close-she still wasn’t sure about all of it-Cameron said, “All right. Granted that Heather and I are both Scottish. But do you notice any differences between us?”

Discarding all the time-wasting smart answers, Elizabeth said, “Well, her accent. And you don’t seem to use the same words much.”

“Very good, ma’am. What about her accent?”

“It’s so cute. Yours sounds sort of BBC, but hers is really Scottish.”

“Bloody hell!” muttered Cameron, shaking his head. “I see how she’s pulled it off then.” He sighed. “Heather’s accent, my dear, is perfectly normal if you happen to be from the Gorbals. That’s the slum area of Glasgow.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! And I let her know it, too, when we were at that party of theirs. I suppose that was why she went out of her way to be insulting.”

Elizabeth tried to remember the gibberish they’d been talking at the party. “Something about a Ming bird,” she said at last. “I remember thinking about Chinese art.”

Cameron sighed. “She said the bobcat stank. A ming is a bad smell.” He paused, thinking how to word the next bit. “And a bird is a girl.”

Elizabeth scowled. “Why that… What else did she say?”

“Let’s see… Right after she made that remark, I decided to test her ladyship. So I said-”

“What was that Bella… something?”

“Oh, that. I was talking about schools. She claimed to have gone to Park, which is an exclusive girls’ school in Glasgow, and I knew that was rubbish. So I said, Bellahouston.”

“What’s that?”

“A public park. The only park she could get into, I meant.”

“You also asked her about a farm, didn’t you?”

“A farm? Oh, I must have asked, did she come from a dear green place.”

“Isn’t that a farm?”

“No. In Gaelic the word for dear green place is Glasgow.” Elizabeth brightened. “You know Gaelic?”

“About a dozen words.”

So Lachlan had been right about that. “She’s been calling you a Sloane Ranger, whatever that is.”

“Yes. I think you have another word for it in America. Preppy?”

“How would she know that?”

Cameron smiled. “Can you spot American ones?”

“Of course! I see what you mean. You spotted her by her accent and vocabulary, and she knew you for the same reasons.” She looked suspicious. “But you must have known her before, because you had pet names for each other.”

“We did? What?”

Elizabeth was never going to forget those. “Jimmy and Senga,” she said promptly.

He laughed. “Do you have a name you call somebody when you don’t know their name?”

She thought about it. “Buddy? Like ‘Hey, Buddy, watch it!’ ”

“Exactly. We say Jimmy. And Senga is…” He hesitated.

“Is what?”

“Agnes spelled backwards. It’s really used as a name.” He smiled. “But not by the nieces of dukes.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly. “Like Ethel-May. So you knew that Heather was a phony aristocrat. Who else would know?”

“Any Scot.” Cameron shrugged. “Anyone who knew much about Scotland.”

“Lachlan Forsyth?”

“None better.”

“And the fact that the Duke of Rothesay is Prince Charles. Anybody who knew a lot about genealogy and Scottish traditions would know that.”

“I expect so. They mentioned it during the royal wedding, which is how I happened to know. Watched it on the TV at the lab.”

“What’s a baby sham?”

“What does that have to do with anything? Babycham is a drink that you might get at the pub… for a Senga.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly. “Then Colin Campbell knew.”

“Of course. I didn’t say anything about her passing herself off as a snob. It wasn’t any business of mine, and I certainly didn’t think you’d be jumping to the daft conclusions you did. Anybody could see she hated me.” He scowled. “She called me a toffee-nose”

Elizabeth kissed him on the cheek. “I think you have a beautiful nose,” she said. “And the rest of you is pretty adorable, too, but right now we have to go and find the sheriff.” She stood up and brushed the grass from her skirt.

“What?” said Cameron.

“We have a murder to solve. And once that’s out of the way, you can get back to biology.” Seeing his bewilderment, she added, “Not seals and porpoises.”

Sheriff Lightfoot MacDonald, already in a black mood at having to spell out skian dubh on umpty-million police forms, scowled at the two young people in front of him-holding hands, yet! “I ain’t no goddamn justice of the peace,” he rumbled.

“No, Sheriff,” said Elizabeth politely, letting go of Cameron’s hand. “We brought you some information about the murder.”

“We’ve solved it!” Cameron chimed in.

Lightfoot’s headache went up a notch. “One of you confessing?” he drawled.

Elizabeth and Cameron looked at each other. “Let me explain,” she said. “You help me out on the cultural points.”

Lightfoot looked at his watch and yawned.

“I guess to understand the murders, you’d have to know about Scottish-Americans,” Elizabeth began.

“We aren’t all crazy,” grumbled the descendant of Flora MacDonald.

“No,” Cameron agreed. “But most of the ones here don’t know much about Scotland in the present century.”

“They don’t even want to. They’re perfectly happy rooting around for ancestors who might have held the Bonnie Prince’s horse, or been a third cousin of someone with a title. Titles are very glamorous to Americans. So when Heather McSkye-”

“Which couldn’t be her real name,” Cameron put in. “McSkye, indeed!”

“-When Heather claimed to be the niece of a duke, it just bowled poor Walter over.”

“So?” growled Lightfoot, hoping this was leading somewhere soon.

“So he divorced his wife and married her, which I’m practically sure he wouldn’t have done otherwise. He might have been attracted to her, but I think it would have passed otherwise. She wasn’t a very nice person.”

“She was a right bloody bitch.”

“Which brings us to another not-very-nice person,” said Elizabeth, ignoring him. “Colin Campbell. He was obsessed with Scottish traditions, and ancestry, and all the rest of it. So when he heard who Heather claimed to be, he knew she was a phony.”

“Why?” asked Lightfoot, interested.

Elizabeth explained about the Duke of Rothesay, and Heather’s real background as evidenced by her accent and manner. “Cameron knew she was a fake right away,” she said.

The sheriff looked over at Dr. Dawson. “Then how come you’re not dead, boy?”

“I think it’s because I let her know that I wasn’t interested in giving the game away,” said Cameron slowly.

“I think it’s because he hasn’t been near her since, and he hasn’t been alone all day,” said Elizabeth. “Anyway, Colin Campbell would have been delighted to make a fool of Walter in front of the whole festival. He already had a score to settle with him about that land business.”

The sheriff nodded. “I know about that. Go on.”

“He told Walter that he wanted to call a meeting about a fraud, and he meant Lachlan Forsyth and the S.R.A., but then he met Heather. I’m sure he was planning to put her in as Fraud: Part Two, and she overheard about the meeting and may have known what he planned. He let her know he was on to her.”