Apologies for the late chapter. Work, life and lack of sleep intervened, and when my cleaning cupboard turned itself into a tea shop I thought I'd better get some rest before finishing the chapter. Hopefully it makes up for its tardiness, though. For anyone checking out the updates on my profile, it should also explain the title of the next episode, due tomorrow!
Episode 6: For the Ghost, Chapter 6
Cassandra and Ezekiel had been walking, and in some cases climbing, for what felt like hours. They edged around a corner and Ezekiel stopped. Cassandra, still linked arm in arm with him, but following slightly behind because of the now narrower passageway, cannoned into the back of him.
"What?" Cassandra whispered in the thief's ear. She edged around the corner and scanned the barely illuminated part of the tunnel ahead of her. She could see nothing unexpected.
Ezekiel removed his unconventional headgear and deposited it on her head. "See for yourself."
Cassandra adjusted the goggles to sit properly over her eyes and looked up. "Oh," she blinked. "Oh wow. Now what?"
Standing in front of them, bagpipes tucked neatly under one arm, was a kilted piper. You could tell he was a real ghost, rather than some out-of-phase victim of electrical experiments. It wasn't so much the fact that his feet were hidden by the fallen rocks that had partly filled the passageway. Nor was it the fact that he could only be seen with the special filters on the goggles. It was more the fact that he was missing a rather large chunk of his skull that gave the game away. Cassandra closed her eyes, but the grisly apparition tended to stick in one's mind.
"You're the ghost expert," murmured Jones, leaving the goggles on her head. "What do you think we should do?"
"Back away slowly?" Cassandra suggested. "He doesn't look angry, though, just sad. Maybe we should try talking to him?"
"I vote we go with your first suggestion," said Jones. "He's a ghost. Last ghost I met tried to kill me. In fact, all the undead things I've met have tried to kill me!"
"Yes, but there is a common factor there," Cassandra reminded him.
"Yeah, the whole lack of being fully dead for one!" Ezekiel huffed.
"Not the one I was thinking of, but let's just go with it anyway," she replied. "Okay, shine that torch back this way and we'll try that side tunnel we passed three metres ago."
"I thought you couldn't build a map?" Jones asked, turning his back on the ghost and leading Cassandra, plus goggles, back the way they had just walked.
"Doesn't mean I can't judge how far I've walked, or the turns I've taken," the redhead corrected him. "Just means I can't predict what might be coming up ahead of us."
"I can live with that," the thief nodded. "That's still one way out of here."
They turned up the side tunnel and followed it. There was a sharp right turn, then a left, then the tunnel began to wind in circuitous curves. Before long, even Cassandra had no idea which way she was pointing. They rounded another bend and the torch light fell on a pile of fallen rubble.
"Great!" Jones exclaimed. "Now we need to go all the way back. You didn't see any side tunnels on the way did you?"
"None," Cassandra shook her head. "You?"
"None," sighed Jones, turning them round. "Plan B it is. Choose your words carefully, Librarian, because they're gonna be spoken to a dead man!"
XXXX
Getting Stone to the library didn't take as long as Eve thought it might have. There was a sense of urgency about him that she hadn't seen since before Cassandra's tumour had been healed. No, that wasn't true. She had seen it since. She had seen it in Nepal. Jones hadn't been there, hadn't seen the rock and snow crushed bodies, hadn't listened to the cries grow fainter as they raced to reach a buried villager in time. He hadn't seen the broken bodies, signing death warrants before the rescuers even had a chance to reach them. If he had, maybe he would have understood why she had ordered him not to go clambering around in a maze of unstable tunnels, dragging Cassandra with him into harm's way.
"These are the doors to the two turrets?" Stone asked, indicating the two doors on the land ward side of the external wall. They were both marked 'Staff Only'. Without waiting for answer or permission, Stone headed straight for the door to the corner turret and pulled it open. A vacuum cleaner sat neatly below the spiral staircase. He removed it.
"Tell me what you're looking for," said Flynn, crouching down beside him. "Let us help."
"I don't know what I'm looking for exactly," Stone replied, his eyes still scanning the space methodically. "I'll know it when I see it though, I hope."
Flynn stepped back and watched as the cowboy scrutinised the base of the staircase. It was the longest he had remained still and quiet since hearing of the gunshot. Eventually, he finished his study of the one turret and moved immediately to the other. The other tower, not being on the corner of the final building, did not have stairs climbing upwards. It was also being used as a cleaning cupboard. He emptied it.
Eve joined Flynn. "He's a little more... taciturn than usual."
"The love of his life is currently trapped in unstable tunnels with Ezekiel Jones, a gunman, and a ghost," replied Flynn. "I'm not sure which of those three worries him more."
"That's not fair," murmured Eve. "Jones adores Cassandra. He'd never let any harm come to her. You saw him on the beach."
"Yes, I did," agreed Flynn. "Stone didn't. Besides, I don't think it's Ezekiel's intentions he doubts so much now as his ability. He knows how much Cassandra means to him, he just still seems to think Ezekiel's instincts will always be to protect himself over someone else."
Stone bounded up from the floor of the turret and around the room, scanning the original Adam features.
"I do hope we didn't ruin the wedding with all this running around after gunmen," Flynn mused, watching Stone checking every inch of the walls.
"We haven't even got a date for the wedding yet, officially," replied Eve, her brow wrinkling. "All we've got so far is the first weekend in April some time, and a couple of possible venues."
"And your dress, of course," added Flynn.
"Of course," nodded Eve.
"I meant the wedding here though," he continued. "The one Emily is here for, and Professor Wilkins' colleague."
"About Emily..." Eve began.
"It was ten years ago, let it go," sighed Flynn.
"But it was something, right?" Eve persisted. "End well, did it? I mean, who left who?"
"Whom."
"Not a good place to start," she warned.
"Circumstances brought us together," he sighed. "When those circumstances changed, so did we. She went back to her archaeology work. I went back to the Library. At the time, I would have liked for her to come with me, but it would have been a mistake."
"Why?"
"We were too alike. It wouldn't have worked," he shrugged. "I had a lot in common with her, but the gaps that were there in my life were the same as the gaps in hers, more often than not. If a relationship is going to last, you need someone who fills those gaps. Someone who completes you. Like you complete me."
"Good answer, Librarian," Eve smiled at the obvious endearment.
"Why thank you, Guardian," Flynn smiled back, wrapping an arm around her waist.
"Found it!" Stone called, interrupting the tender moment going on behind him. When Flynn and Eve turned to him, he was standing by the fireplace. "Adam was no fool," continued Stone. "He knew fashions change and rooms change with them. He was right: almost everything in this room has been changed. Who bothers to change the back of a fireplace though?"
His hand reached into the chimney piece and up. There was a sound like a stone sarcophagus being opened from the inside, and the dark interior of the fireplace seemed to get darker. Flynn hurried over and helped Stone remove the now purely decorative grate. One corner of the back of the hearth had opened up. Stone switched on the torch on his phone and aimed its bright beam at the darkness. A corridor of stone-cut steps descended into the space between the library and the curved wall of the old eating room. The two rooms may have had their functions switched a hundred years or so after their completion, but the curve of the wall had remained, creating a space between the two rooms where a stairway could be hidden.
"It'll be a squeeze, especially for all three of us," said Stone.
"Just one," Baird corrected him. "I'm the guardian. I have the gun. I'm going after them, and the gunman."
"I'm coming with you," both men cried out immediately.
"Stone, I need you to stay here in case this thing closes," replied Baird, removing her jacket and handing it to Flynn. "Flynn, I need you to try and answer the one question we've all forgotten about in all this excitement."
"Which is?" Flynn eyed her suspiciously.
"Why?" Baird said simply. "We've been so side-tracked by getting Cassandra and Jones back to safety we've forgotten to ask why we're here. If our murder victim was thrown from the roof by an actual person, not a ghost, as it now seems, why call us in? If it's not the means, or the murderer, it must be the motive. Find out why our dead guy died, find out why we're here."
XXXX
Cassandra tightened her grip on Ezekiel's arm. "He's here," she said, pointing a finger at the small pile of fallen rocks they had returned to. "He's watching us."
"How do you know he's not just staring in this direction?" Jones asked. "Maybe he does that all the time."
"He's moved from last time," replied Cassandra. "I'm going to try asking him something."
"Be my guest, Melinda," said Jones, waving a hand in the direction of the ghostly piper.
Cassandra stepped toward the ghost. "Can you hear me?"
The ghost's eyes turned to her.
"Can you speak?"
The ghost's eyes dropped to the floor, his face sombre as the grave.
"I'll take that as a 'no' then," murmured Cassandra. "Can you help us get out of here? Back up to the castle preferably, not the beach."
This time, the ruined head nodded downward once, the arm extended, pointing a finger along the narrow, half-filled passageway beyond him, and the piper began to march.
XXXX
"Emily!" Flynn called, jogging across the sun-warmed orangery. The woman in red turned.
"Flynn!" Emily called back, waking over sedately to meet him. "Where is the lovely Eve? Not lost her down some deep dark hole here have you?"
Flynn paused, only for a moment, but it was enough for Ms Davenport to remove the smile from her face.
"What's happened?" Emily asked, reaching out a hand to Flynn's arm. "This is work, isn't it? There's something here."
"Long story. Yes. Don't know," Flynn answered in sequence. "You've been here longer than I have. I need to know if you've noticed anything... anything odd. Library-odd."
"Like what? Crystal skulls? Books by King Solomon? Masonic signs? Give me a rough area, Flynn," replied the archaeologist. "Am I looking for a place, person or piece?"
"I don't know," the Librarian repeated. "Two of my colleagues were investigating a murder down at the beach and someone took a shot at them from the roof. Eve's busy dealing with that. I'm trying to find out why someone would throw a man off the roof of a popular Scottish castle, that's always busy, even at night now, and then risk discovery by shooting someone investigating the crime scene."
"So it's something worth killing for," Emily's brow wrinkled. "And that's supposed to narrow it down?"
Flynn shrugged. "It's all I've got to go on so far."
"Most of the people here today are guests for the wedding or just plain tourists," she pointed out. "I know a lot of the wedding guests professionally, of course, and we're all here for a few days. Apparently when the father of the bride is a business billionaire, you can afford to hire the entire accommodation facilities of a picturesque National Trust estate for the entire run up to the wedding and a day or two after it to recover! We're all booked in for nearly a week, most of us in chalets and the big names up in the castle itself. They've taken over the whole place. If someone was going to look for a relic or magical item here, being part of that guest list would be ideal. Even more so if you could wrangle a room in the main building."
"So we're looking for an evil archaeologist with a yen for something mythical with links to Scottish castles, probably this one," summed up Flynn. "Anyone spring to mind? Any local myths being discussed?"
Emily considered this. "Well," she said. "Everyone is talking to everyone else about lots of things: the digs they're working on; their latest find; the trouble with funding. I've overheard a few conversations about local topics. I remember joining in with a conversation about the latest theories regarding Skara Brae. That was interesting. There was another discussion at cocktails last night about the Stone of Destiny, but that's in Edinburgh Castle, now, not here. Then there was the discussion I overheard this morning about the remains of a Viking longboat wrecked near Largs, just up the coast from here."
"Viking?" Flynn cut in.
"Yes, they're all over Scotland," she replied, "More so up north, and especially around the Orkney and Shetland isles, but down here too. Ayrshire has a particularly strong Viking connection, thanks to Largs."
"Can you point me in the direction of the people who started those conversations?" Flynn asked. "Especially that last one."
Emily wrote down a few names for him in a notepad, described the individuals in questions and pointed out the ones she could see. Flynn took the scrap of paper, thanked her, kissed her cheek, and disappeared among the foliage.
XXXX
Baird made her way quietly through the dark tunnel. The bright beam from her flashlight, which was easier to hold than a phone while trying to point a gun, cut through the darkness to reveal rocks, dust and more darkness. She tried to make her footfalls silent, but settled for only the occasional rolling pebble. She was listening for everything, friend or foe.
The sound of scattering stone stalled her. She paused, foot midway through it's step, and listened. There it was again: a shuffling sound, like some strange, four legged beast. The tunnel extended only a short distance before her, then turned sharply. Whatever was coming towards her, and it was definitely moving towards her, was around that corner. She placed her feet in a fighting stance, and steadied both gun and flashlight, aiming at the rock wall by the turn.
The four legged creature shuffled into view. It had big orange eyes and bright red hair. It also wore a short, floral print frock and had an Ezekiel Jones attached to one arm.
Baird lowered the gun. "You two, Thank goodness!" Eve exclaimed. "We've been worried sick. We thought the shooter was in the tunnels with you."
"He was, we hid," replied Cassandra cheerfully.
"You did, did you," sighed Baird. "And he didn't spot you."
"Ezekiel showed me how to hide like a thief," Cassandra grinned.
"I bet Stone's going to love hearing that story," grinned Jones.
"You two look ridiculously pleased with yourselves," said Baird, her eyes narrowing. "What else aren't you telling me?"
Cassandra and Ezekiel looked at each other. Cassandra decided to take the lead. "We made friends with the ghost."
"You made friends with what now?" Baird's eyes widened.
"With the ghost of the piper, from the legend," Cassandra explained. "We met him down by an old rock fall. That's what killed him, by the way. He's buried under there, bagpipes and all. We should tell someone in charge so they can go dig him up and bury him properly, then he can maybe get some rest."
"Of course you did, Egon," sighed Baird. She turned, shining her flashlight back along the path she had just walked. "Okay, let's get out of here, and bring Venkman with you."
XXXX
"Stone!" Flynn called, walking through the new library to the old one. "Are they back yet?"
"I can see a light," the cowboy called back. "Someone's on their way."
"I have a few leads," returned Flynn, joining Jacob at the hearth.
"I should hope so!" Eve's voice called back from the tunnel. "Please tell me they're good ones!"
Stone reached out a hand as the light reached the end of the darkness and revealed Eve Baird's head. The two men helped her and her two giggling charges out of the fireplace.
"Hey, look at that," said Stone, picking up Cassandra and taking the goggles off her head. "My very own girl in the fireplace!"
"You were watching!" Cassandra giggled. "I knew you weren't just reading your book while Ezekiel and I had our little DVD marathon."
"Well, you seemed to like it, so I figured I'd give it a go," he shrugged. "Not a word to Jones though, right?"
"He saved my life, Jacob," said Cassandra softly. "Twice! Give him a break. He's not as selfish as you think he is."
Jacob kissed her dusty forehead. "Anything for you, darlin'."
"What leads did you get?" Baird asked Flynn, batting away his hand as he tried to straighten her hair.
"Three main ones. Of all the archaeology topics being discussed, and there are many, three stand out as having Scottish links. Skara Brae, although that's a bit far both temporally and spatially to be linked to here, The Stone of Destiny, but we know that's in Edinburgh castle, not this one, and the wreck of a Viking longboat just up the coast. Who knows what items may have been brought ashore from that. I think that's our best lead."
"Maybe, but you got one thing wrong," Jones piped up, brushing the dust from his clothes. "The Stone of Destiny isn't in Edinburgh castle. That's just the Stone of Scone. Nobody knows where the Stone of Destiny is."
"What?" Baird and Flynn said together.
"It's the Stone of Scone, where the Scottish monarchs were crowned, not the Stone of Destiny," Jones expanded. "The Scots knew the English were on their way, so they hid the real stone and replaced with another, quarried locally. The English took that one back to London, apparently unaware that red sandstone isn't quite as lasting as the real stone ought to have been, and obviously unaware of the legend that it was carved from a black meteorite anyway! The Scots have been thumbing their noses at the English ever since!"
Flynn stared at Ezekiel, wheels turning in his mind. Eve looked at him and read his features. "It's not the Vikings, is it?"
He shook his head. "We need to find out more about this legend," he decided. "Something that old, and that linked to a country and a people. Something imbued with so much mystery and history that it was used in the crowning of kings. That's our lead. That's what they're after."
"So we join the hunt," said Stone, his arms still wrapped around Cassandra. "Five of us against however many of them, I still say we've a shot at winning that race."
"Not five," said Jones. "We're going to need someone who knew the land then. Someone with more local knowledge. We need Jenkins, and we need him out in the field with us."
"That would mean leaving da Vinci in charge of the Library," commented Baird. "Are we sure that's a good idea?"
"He's an ex-Librarian. The Library seems to trust him," shrugged Flynn.
"Jenkins could show him how to use the door easily enough," agreed Stone. "The man is a genius after all."
"Then it's agreed," nodded Baird. "We go home, find out what we need to know about this Stone of Destiny and bring Jenkins up to speed."
"All six of us on a case together," nodded Flynn with a smile. "Should be fun."