lighting, and poor ventilation. He had chosen it deliberately.
He was not at all happy with the way this case was beginning. Macaskin liked to pigeonhole, liked to have everything put in its proper place with no muss and no fuss. Each person involved was supposed to act out his appropriate role. Victims die, police question, suspects answer, and crime-scene men collect. But right from the beginning, aside from the victim, who was cooperatively inanimate, the suspects had been doing the questioning and the police had been answering. As for the evidence, that was something else entirely.
"Explain that to me again." Inspector Lynley's voice was even, but it carried a deadly tone that told Macaskin that Lynley had not been made party to the peculiar circumstances that surrounded his assignment to this case. That was good. It made Macaskin decide to like the Scotland Yard detective right on the spot.
They had shed their outer garments and were sitting round the pine conference table, all save Lynley, who was on his feet, his hands in his pockets and something dangerous simmering behind his eyes.
Macaskin was only too happy to go over the story again. "Hadn't been at Westerbrae thirty minutes this morning before there was a message to phone my people at CID. Chief Constable informed me that Scotland Yard would be handling the case. That's all. Couldn't get another word out of him. Just instructions to leave men at the house, come back here and wait for you. Way I see it is that some highbrow at your end made the decision that this would be a Yard operation. He gave our chief constable the word and, to keep things on the up and up, we cooperatively put in a 'call for help.' You're it."
Lynley and St. James exchanged unreadable glances. The latter spoke. "But why did you move the body?"
"Part of the order," Macaskin answered. "Blasted strange, if you ask me. Seal the rooms, pick up the package and bring her in for autopsy after our medical examiner did us his usual honour of proclaiming her dead on the scene."
"A bit of divide and conquer," Sergeant Havers remarked.
"It looks that way, doesn't it?" Lynley replied. "Strathclyde deals with the physical evidence, London deals with the suspects. And if someone somewhere gets lucky and we fail to communicate properly, everything gets swept under the nearest rug."
"But whose rug?"
"Yes. That is the question, isn't it?" Lynley stared down at the conference table, at the stains created by myriad coffee rings that looped across its surface. "What exactly happened?" he asked Macaskin.
"The girl, Mary Agnes Campbell, found the body at six-fifty this morning. We were called at seven-ten. We got out there at nine."
"Nearly two hours?"
Lonan answered. "Storm last night closed the roads down, Inspector. Westerbrae's fi ve miles from the nearest village, and none of the roads were ploughed yet."
"Why in God's name did a group from London come to such a remote location?"
"Francesca Gerrard-widowed lady, the owner of Westerbrae-is Lord Stinhurst's sister," Macaskin explained. "Evidently she's had some big plans of turning her estate into a posh country hotel. It sits right on Loch Achiemore, and I suppose she envisaged it as quite the romantic holiday destination. Place for newlyweds. You know the sort of thing." Macaskin grimaced, decided that he sounded more like an advertising agent than a policeman, and finished hastily with, "She's done a bit of redecorating and, from what I could gather this morning, Stinhurst brought his people up here to give her a chance to work out the kinks in her operation before she actually opened to the public."
"What about the victim, Joy Sinclair? Do you have anything much on her?"
Macaskin folded his arms, scowled, and wished he had been able to wrest more information from the group at Westerbrae before he had been ordered to leave. "Little enough. Author of the play they'd come to work on this weekend. A lady of some letters, from what I could gather from Vinney."
"Vinney?"
"Newspaperman. Jeremy Vinney, drama critic for the Times. Seems to have been fairly thick with Sinclair. And more broken up about her death than anyone else, from what I could tell. Odd, too, when you think about it."
"Why?"
"Because her sister's there as well. But while Vinney was demanding an arrest that very minute, Irene Sinclair had absolutely nothing to say. Didn't even ask how her sister had been done in. Didn't care, if you ask me."