The Blue Hackle. Lillian Stewart Carl
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Pritchard oozed back into the pantry and Fergie stumbled behind, leaving the door swinging.
Dakota made her way to the hall door, inspecting every photo and print she passed on the way. Jean smiled, remembering the words of one of her own cousins: “I bet you read cereal boxes, too.”
Why yes, she did.
She had to talk to the child about ghosts in general and what she’d seen tonight in particular, without going behind her parents’ backs. Although if Gilnockie decided Dakota needed to help the police with their inquiries, all bets were off.
With a last look at the portrait hanging at the head of the table, and a last glance over her shoulder at Jean—did she sense a kindred spirit, or was she just wondering why the older woman kept smiling at her—Dakota followed the others into the hallway, and that door shut, too.
Alone at last, but this was no time for billing and cooing. Just one thing…
Jean had been looking at the portrait all evening. It depicted a blond woman wearing a moss-green dress with a satin shawl collar, a locket at her exposed throat. Her features were clumsily drawn, but with such affection that her smile beamed from the painted canvas like the glowing fire in the Calanais fantasy. “Is that Fergie’s portrait of his wife—what was her name?”
Alasdair looked up at it. “Oh aye. That’s Emma MacDonald. Mind you, I only met up with her two, maybe three times, having nearly lost touch with Fergie during those years.”
“I see the resemblance to Diana,” Jean said, without employing any adjectives such as “cool” or “smooth.” “He hung the portrait at the head of the table so she could still be the lady of the house. Although I don’t suppose she was ever the lady of this house.”
“No, he inherited Dunasheen—and the title, come to that—three years ago, and she’s been gone four, I’m thinking. Breast cancer. Pity, that.”
“Oh yes, it is.” Jean sat back down and leaned her elbows on the table, a casual, even sloppy, pose she’d hesitated to assume in front of Diana. “Fergie was talking about his Green Lady, as in a household chatelaine returning after death to continue her domestic duties. But Dunasheen isn’t haunted by his wife.”
“Got it in one. Dunasheen’s haunted, Fergie’s not.” Alasdair inclined his head toward the portrait. “I’m thinking that’s why he’s so keen on seeing ghosts.”
“On believing in the supernatural. He wants to know that Emma’s not really gone.” The room fell silent, the dense wooden doors and stone walls muffling any sounds. Still, Jean lowered her voice. “I’m pretty sure I heard Seonaid MacDonald, the Green Lady, in the drawing room, right after you went after Tina. A kind of murmuring wail, just like in the stories.”
Alasdair nodded. “So she’s real, then, it’s that Fergie cannot sense her. Nothing peculiar about that, not to us, leastways.”
“But what is peculiar is that Dakota, the little girl, was insisting she saw a ghost when they drove up the driveway, which would have been about the same time.”
“Maybe she’s got the allergy, poor lass.”
“Or maybe she saw a person. There was a man in black standing in the parking area about six. Pritchard yelled at him to go away.”
“Thomson was going on about a hermit living nearby. Sounds to be the local character. Maybe it was him.”
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