Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

mist. Next thing the sky had turned green, and long, vertical columns of light, like immensely tall ghosts, sprang up and wavered this way and that. From the center, a plume of red expanded and within it, light flashed and seemed to move around in some crazy kind of dance. Dehan had gone rigid, gripping my hand as though she were trying to crush the bones. The red plume swelled, rising above the green light until half the sky was awash with eerie, alien light, twisting and flickering like a gossamer curtain over a parallel world of Norse gods and daemons. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it began to fade.

She turned to face me. Her eyes were huge and bright. She tried to speak, but words cannot express the way you feel the first time you see the Northern Lights. So she expressed it to me a different way.

A footfall behind me made me turn. Dr. Ian Cameron stood framed in the doorway. He studied me a moment and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt. We’re going in to dinner, if you’d like to join us.”

Like the honeymoon suite, the dining room was exactly what you would have expected from a Hollywood production of Murder at Castle Gordon. The ceiling was high, the table was long, dark, highly polished and mahogany, and set with placemats because tablecloths are considered vulgar. Three large silver candelabras were set down the center, and a vast crystal chandelier made tiny rainbows of the candlelight above the table.

Charles Gordon Sr., naturally, sat at the head. Bee—Lady Jane—sat on his right and Sally Cameron on his left. I was next to Bee, with the major opposite me and Pamela on my right, with her son, Gordon Jr., on her right. Dehan was between the Major and Ian.

A door opened at the far end of the room and Brown, very dignified in tails, entered carrying a very large tray with a silver soup tureen. Behind him were two girls in uniform with white aprons. They each carried a silver ice bucket with a bottle of white wine in it. I caught Dehan’s eye and winked at her. While the butler was serving the soup, and the maids were pouring the wine, Gordon Sr. boomed down the table, “I am an American, Carmen.”

She glanced at him. “Boston born and bred, I’d say.”

He laughed like a caricature of Orson Wells at his most hammy. “See! She is a detective!”

“I just know my accents, Mr. Gordon. Here I’m not a detective. I am a newly wed bride.”

His face went sour. “How charming,” he said. “I am an American, but this island belonged to my ancestors, along with much of the coast, for at least a thousand years. It was my father who reclaimed it, back in 1980. He was obsessed with his Scottish roots. He used to wear a kilt, you know? I haven’t the legs for it.”

He sipped his wine and smiled at Sally. She looked away and Bee simpered. “Nonsense, Charles. You have a well turned leg!”

“How would you know, Bee?” It was Pamela.

Bee affected to think, with her finger on her cheek. “Well, I’m blessed if I know, darling! But am I wrong?”

Everybody laughed except Pamela.

I said, “Have you been here since the ’80s, Mr. Gordon?”

“Yes. Since my father, Richard Gordon, died.” He stared at me, as though challenging me to ask. I didn’t, so he went on, “He committed suicide in his study, almost forty years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Pamela replied, breaking a hot bread roll. “Not everybody thought it was suicide.”

He snapped, “That’s quite enough of that, Pamela!”

She ignored him and went on, “Some people thought it was murder.”

THREE

By the end of the soup, Gordon Sr., Bee and Sally had fallen into conversation with each other. I couldn’t help feeling grateful. Ian and Pam maintained their characteristic sullen silence throughout, and Dehan, the major and I fell into conversation about the history of the island.

“It was,” the major said, “for a long time merely a glorified pig farm! Hence the name Swona. It derives from ‘swine’. Keeping them on an island was safer than a farm, easier to protect and impossible for the animals to stray.”

Dehan asked, “How old is the castle?”

“There has been a small fortress here since the Vikings, first intended to fend them off, and then used by them to protect their settlements. The swine were a highly prized asset, as you can imagine.”

We had been served lamb cutlets with new potatoes, Vichy carrots and fresh garden peas, all from the castle’s own orchards. Dehan was engrossed in her food, but looked up to ask, “So when did it come into the possession of the Gordons?”

“Oh.” He sipped his claret and smacked his lips. “The earliest record of a Gordon owning the island dates back to the 13th century. In the parish record it is stated that it was a dispute settled by contest of arms, which was won by one Charles Gordon, who fatally wounded his opponent with a blow to the head, thus rendering the estate his in lieu of moneys due.”

“They didn’t mess around in those days, huh, Major?”

“Quite so. It remained then in the Gordon family for almost seven hundred years, until the 18th century, when they were overtaken by several misfortunes, not least an attack of swine fever which wiped out the pigs on the island and ruined the family. Charles Sr.’s great grandfather, six times over, if you follow me, sold what little possessions he had left and sailed for Boston in 1780 or thereabouts, but it wasn’t until the great drive east, after the Civil War, that Charles, Richard Gordon, began to amass his fortune. He never left Boston, but he invested in cattle farms, mining, gun trafficking… you name it! And by