Mary Daheim - Scots on the Rocks

“We’re all upset this evening,” the doctor said. “Becalm yourself and see to Mrs. Gibbs.” He patted her once. “Go now.”

“We’ll see to her,” Judith volunteered. “Elise needs a cup of tea.”

“Cognac,” Elise said. “Bonne idée.” Rather morosely, she went down the hall in the opposite direction.

Dr. Carmichael’s expression was wry. “The French,” he sighed. “So emotional.”

Judith introduced Renie, who was still looking out of sorts.

“You have an eye problem,” the doctor noted.

“Chronic corneal dystrophy,” Renie said, softening just a bit.

He nodded. “Then you know how to treat it.”

“Yes. I’ve had plenty of practice.”

“Speaking of practice,” Dr. Carmichael said with a faint smile, “I should attend to the rest of mine.”

“One question,” Judith put in. “This may sound strange, but I understand you treated Patrick Cameron the night David Piazza was killed in a car accident. Is it true that Patrick can’t remember what happened and how he got hurt?”

Dr. Carmichael frowned. “So he says. And not unusual, really. Trauma to the head. I’d just come home after delivering a baby. I heard the crash as I was getting out of my car. It wasn’t the first time a driver had gone over the cliff. It’s a treacherous spot. I notified the police and drove to the scene. I could’ve walked, it was so close, but I was tired.” He smiled in a self-deprecating manner. “Not as young as I used to be. In any event, I could see the car upside down against the rocks. It wasn’t easy, but I climbed down to the wreckage.” He sighed heavily. “I had my kit and my torch. When I looked inside the mangled car I saw David Piazza. He was dead. While I waited for the police, I wandered around a bit, not far, since the cliffside isn’t conducive to a late night stroll. About twenty yards away, I found Patrick, unconscious but alive.”

“He couldn’t have been in the car, could he?” Judith inquired as the doctor paused for breath.

“I doubt it, unless he jumped out before it crashed,” Dr. Carmichael said. “Patrick is very fit, but he doesn’t recall anything that happened after he left Hunter’s Lodge on foot three or four hours earlier.”

Judith recalled that Hunter’s Lodge was Patrick’s home outside of St. Fergna. “Were Patrick and Davey friends?”

The doctor glanced at his pocket watch. “Not particularly. I’m afraid Davey didn’t have many friends at Blackwell. Most of the executives were jealous of his intimacy with Moira.”

“Professional intimacy, you mean,” Judith said, noticing Renie, who was studying the ancestral portraits that lined the corridor’s walls.

Dr. Carmichael smiled wryly. “I assume so.”

“Was Patrick hospitalized?” Judith asked.

“Treated and released,” the doctor replied. “He refused to stay.”

Judith frowned as Renie took a pen out of her purse. “I gather his wounds were consistent with an accident injury.”

“Possibly,” Dr. Carmichael said, “but I wasn’t the attending physician at the hospital.” He looked again at his watch. “Forgive me, I must go. I know you’re helping the police with their inquiry, but I do have to call on another patient this evening.”

“Of course,” Judith said. “I’m sorry to take up your time.”

“Quite all right,” he said, and started to walk briskly away just as Judith realized what Renie was about to do. “Stop!” she shouted.

Dr. Carmichael turned around at the head of the stairs. “Yes?”

“Not you. My cousin. Sorry.” Judith marched over to Renie and knocked the pen out of her hand. “How could you? Those pen marks better come off. These portraits must be worth a fortune.”

“I doubt it,” Renie said, studying the mustache she’d drawn on an eighteenth-century lady with a very long nose and slightly bulging eyes. “Most of them are just one step above paint-by-the-numbers.”

“You get worse as you get older,” Judith declared angrily, trying to wipe off the mustache with her finger. “You age, but you don’t act it.”

Renie uttered an impatient sound. “Did it ever occur to you that I get tired of being shoved into the background while you hold center stage? Okay, so I’ve got some ego, but if we were in an opera, you’d be listed as the star soprano and I’d get a small contralto cast credit as Lumpa-Lumpa, Donna Fabulosa’s Drab Companion.”

“For heaven’s sakes,” Judith retorted, “you have your own business, you’re a talented artist, you get plenty of credit for—”

“Not to mention,” Renie broke in, airing yet more decades-old grievances, “that when we were kids, it always bothered me because on the calendar we got every year from church, your October birthday fell on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, not to mention you had both Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux bracketing your big day while I got stuck with St. Willibrord and St. Prosdocimus. Talk about obscure!”

Judith couldn’t help but feel a bit sheepish. “How could I do anything about that? Besides, we’re grown up now. As for my sleuthing, you usually encourage me. But that still doesn’t give you the right to vandalize other people’s possessions.”

Renie gazed at the portrait, which still showed a faint trace of pen mark. “Frankly, I think it’s an improvement.”

“I think it’s childish of you, and—” Judith stopped. “Saint Thérèse. The French one, the Little Flower of God. Who mentioned her recently?”

Renie frowned. “One of us? When we were talking about that spooky B&B in Normandy?”

Judith shook her head. “No, I don’t think so, even though my suitcase had mistakenly been removed from the train at Lisieux, but I got it back before we sailed.” She shrugged. “It’ll come to me.”

Before Renie could respond, Ogilvie came out of Moira’s suite. “Come in. We’ve finished our inquiry about the protesters.”

MacRae joined his sergeant in the hall. “Mrs. Gibbs is calmer. Dr. Carmichael’s sedative must be taking effect. She was still quite distressed when we arrived. We’ll meet you out front.” He turned to Ogilvie. “We should speak with the on-duty personnel.” With courteous nods to the cousins, the policemen made their way down the hall.

Moira looked very different from the impeccably groomed, graceful, and poised young woman Judith and Renie had encountered in the graveyard. Her red-gold hair lay in tangles on the lace-trimmed pillow; her fine complexion was ashen and her face drawn; the graceful fingers seemed more like claws as she grasped anxiously at the elegant duvet.

“You must think me an invalid,” she said in a toneless voice. “I apologize for greeting you from my bed again. I was up for a while earlier but that mob shredded my nerves. Except for Will, I’ve made Fergus turn visitors away ever since you were here. Several people have called on me in the past few days, but I simply couldn’t deal with them. Curiosity-seekers, if you ask me, though Seumas Bell had the courtesy to offer apologies for the ruckus with Patrick when you were here. I was still upset, so I told Elise to send him away.”

“Please,” Judith said, sitting in one of the two brocade-covered armchairs that had been pulled close to the bed. “You’ve suffered so many losses. And the scene this evening was really awful.”

Moira nodded once. “I understand you were there.”

“We were,” Judith said. “We got caught up in the traffic jam.”

“You’d come to call on me?” Moira asked.

“No,” Renie put in from where she was still standing at the foot of the bed. “We were going to the circus. I’ve got a gig as a clown.”

“We were headed to the Priory to see Marie,” Judith said, avoiding her cousin’s glare. “We’d heard Will was missing.”