Episode 6: For the Ghost, Chapter 2

Flynn heard the small group before he saw them. Cassandra and Ezekiel were arguing over something and Eve was playing peacemaker as usual. Or trying to anyway. He smiled at the sound. It really had felt like there had been something missing lately. Now it felt more like home. If anyone had asked him, a couple of years ago, where he saw his life headed, he would have told them exactly what he had told his little LiT's way back when they first started their training. Now, he realised, it didn't have to be that way. The loneliness, the misery, all of that had gone. The mystery, the adventure, that was all still there, but now he didn't just have a partner to share that with, he had a family. He had even more of a family on its way, if Eve's trip to the future turned out right. She had jumped twenty years forward, Janus coin in hand, and met her son. Their son. The son who had then turned up in their shared dream. A dream of hopes for the future: hers for her son, and his for their relationship. They boy had been then as she said he was when she time travelled: a teenager in that awkward phase between boyhood and manhood, as tall as his mother, old enough to shave but still without the broader frame or maturity of features that denoted adulthood. Flynn placed him at about seventeen, give or take a year. That would put his birthday at maybe two and a half years from now? Again, give or take a year. What if he was wrong? The boy could have been older, after all. What if they put off the wedding too long and...

"Flynn!" Eve's voice broke into Flynn's thoughts. "There you are! We've got a Scottish murder mystery to solve."

"We should get married before Christmas," announced Flynn.

"Too bad, there isn't a decent venue available until spring," Eve rejoined. "If you'd been here earlier, when the three of us spent an entire morning calling round the list we'd spent the whole of yesterday putting together, you'd know that."

"I apologise, my love, my thoughts were elsewhere," said Flynn, sliding an arm around Eve's waist and kissing her forehead. "So when is the earliest date we got?"

"There is a suitable church and nearby hotel that could fit us in the first weekend in April," Eve told him. "That is not why you're here though."

"Nevertheless, global apocalyptic magical catastrophes permitting, that date suits me fine," he replied. "Now tell me all about this murder."

"We're not even sure it was a murder," exclaimed Cassandra. "The only thing that suggests that is the newspaper and it is a bit biased!"

"Biased how?" Flynn frowned.

"Biased by wanting to sell more newspapers," Cassandra shrugged. "They don't mention anything conclusive in the article at all. All the injuries they do mention are simply consistent with a fall from a height similar to that of the cliff below which the body was found so..."

"Yeah, but the body would have had to be closer to the cliff if it was just a fall," argued Ezekiel. "And he would have had to take a running jump to get that far out if it was suicide. He had to have been pushed! And at force too!"

"Have we considered actually going to see this crime scene?" Flynn enquired.

"Well yes, of course," began Cassandra.

"Jenkins just thought we should do a bit of background research first," finished Ezekiel.

"Find out something about where we were going," explained Cassandra.

"See if there were any links to the Library that might give us some clues," suggested Ezekiel.

"Maybe get a better idea of where exactly the cliff was," added Cassandra.

"Maybe work out where to send the door," finished Ezekiel.

"They've been arguing over 'did he fall or was he pushed' ever since," said Eve.

Flynn sighed and smiled. "Show me the article," he said, holding out a hand.

Cassandra handed him her book and the trio watched him read the article carefully. About half way down the page he started nodding.

"Ezekiel, get me a current map of Scotland," Flynn ordered without looking up.

"What shelf?" Ezekiel asked.

Flynn blinked. "Google Earth will do," he grinned. "Not everything needs a library book these days!"

"Done!" Ezekiel hurried to where he had left his laptop charging and began setting it up.

"Cassandra, search the card catalogue for Ayrshire, Scotland," said Flynn, preparing his next order. "Then cross reference with murders and mysterious deaths."

"On it!" Cassandra hurried off.

"Any orders for me, Librarian?" Eve asked, turning to him with folded arms.

"One or two," replied Flynn imperiously. "I want to see these venues you've been looking through, but first I really, really want to kiss you."

"Since when did we start asking permission for that?" Eve smirked.

"Since I started spending more time with an ancient artist than with my fiancée," replied Flynn, putting on a look that could only be described as puppy-dog eyes.

"Wise man," smiled Eve. She let him pull her closer, wrapping her arms around him as the kiss went on. A noisily cleared throat eventually alerted them to the return of other people.

"Google Earth, zoomed in on Ayrshire," reported Ezekiel, uncharacteristically interested in the ceiling. "I looked up a few other reports online and I've put a pin in the beach in question. It's down here by Maybole, about half way along the coast from Croy to Maidens."

"Yeah, yeah, I've put him down, you can look," laughed Baird. "Bring that thing over here and let's have a look."

Unplugging the laptop from its charger, Ezekiel brought it over. "It's here," he said, pointing to a yellow map pin on the page.

"Cull-zee-an Castle," read Baird. "Well, castles are usually good for old weird creepy stuff."

"Cull-ayn," corrected Flynn. "The 'z' in the name is a variation on the old Scots, and middle English, letter 'yogh'. It looked more like a number three and was replace in typesetting by the 'z' the same way the thorn was replaced by the 'y', leading to signs like 'ye olde tea shoppe' which actually simply read 'the old tea shop'. The extra e's and p were not needed, of course: they were just there to give it a more mediaeval feel."

"Any more Scottish place names you think you might have to correct me on?" Eve asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

Flynn missed her tone entirely. "Probably plenty," he breezed. "I think it was the Scots' secret way to spot a rogue Englishman: they booby-trapped their language!"

"Hmm," growled Eve. "So tell me about this Culzean Castle, then."

"It has ghosts!" Cassandra called, hurrying up the stairs towards them. "Loads of ghosts! Some really well known ones though. There's a mysterious piper, a weird mist, a young woman..."

"I guess we know why the Library picked you then!" Ezekiel laughed. You're the only person I know with form for killing a ghost!"

"Try to say that without making me sound like a criminal please," bristled Cassandra. "I did save all of you, after all!"

"Only because we were stuck in a magical dollhouse," protested Ezekiel. "If we hadn't been..."

"Remind me, Jones," cut in Baird. "What did you do to try and get out of that dollhouse?"

"So what does this piper do, then?" Jones asked, switching the topic at the drop of a hat, or dollhouse reference. "Stand on the battlements and play Scotland the Brave when somebody's due to go join him on the other side?"

"Actually, he's the ghost of a piper who was sent, by the lord of the castle, to play his way through the tunnels below the building to prove there were no ghosts or witches there. The locals were too scared to go down there, you see," explained Cassandra, her eyes shining with the excitement of her tale. "So off he went and started playing, and the lord of the castle, and his men, went round to meet him at the other side. They could hear him soon enough, but that was all. The piper was never seen again! Now people say that he plays before the wedding of a Kennedy daughter."

"Kennedy? Like John F?" Baird asked, her brow wrinkling.

"No, like clan Kennedy," clarified Cassandra. "They owned the castle for most of its lifetime, and it was a Kennedy lord who sent the piper into the caves."

"So no link to dead presidents, that's good," breathed Baird.

"Actually President Eisenhower was there for a while," Cassandra supplied.

"He's not one of the ghosts, is he?" Baird sighed.

"Depends on which psychic you ask," shrugged Cassandra.

"So we're going to a cliff top castle in Scotland, in the middle November, to investigate a murder that may have been committed by the ghost of a dead American president?" Baird summed up, looking from Jones, to Cassandra, to Flynn.

"Better than the ghost of a live American president," quipped Jones.

"And we don't know which ghost actually is the murderer," added Flynn.

"Or if it's even actually a murder," added Cassandra.

"Let's assume if we're hearing about it, it is," said Baird. "Go grab your bags and, Jones, find us somewhere to stay overnight just in case. The closer the better."

"I know just the place," grinned the thief, disappearing with his laptop.

XXXX

"Ah, the crown of King Arthur," murmured Leonardo, looking appreciatively at the painting. "You've had it moved here then?"

"Once we moved the crown itself, Jones was on a mission to steal the world's only immobile painting," explained Stone. "The gallery were going to make a fuss once they discovered it missing, but they received a letter from an eminent art historian congratulating them on their decision to finally remove from display what had been an obvious fake, and somehow they decided not to make quite so much a fuss as all that."

"An eminent art historian such as yourself?" Leonardo smiled.

"Couldn't possibly comment," replied Stone, looking away.

"What gave it away as a fake?" Leonardo frowned, looking over the painting with a critical eye. "The artist is unknown so it shouldn't be the brushwork."

"The carmine," nodded Stone, pointing out the colour on the canvas.

"Of course," Leonardo sighed. "And I thought I'd been so clever bringing back an unknown pigment from the New World!"

"You?" Stone's eyebrows shot up. He pointed at the painting. "You did this?"

"When one is good enough to paint a da Vinci, boy," replied the old master with a grin, "one is good enough to paint anything!"

"Why didn't Jenkins tell us?" Stone remonstrated. "He must have known!"

"Did he know?" Leonardo asked. "This was your first case, you said. When did you meet my old friend, Jenkins?"

"That's true enough," nodded Stone. "We found this and the crown before we met Jenkins, and it was only much later that Jones decided to take on his little 'challenge'. What is it with you and he anyway? You and Jenkins, I mean."

"Does Mr Jones know about your letter?" Leonardo queried, ignoring the question.

Stone eyed the old man carefully and shook his head. "Nope, and I'm happy for it to stay that way."

"Now take that answer," said Leonardo evenly, "and apply it to the question of whether or not you really want to know what went on between Jenkins and I."