Murder at Midnight Read Online Free

money, for the satisfaction of a gambling debt. The case got convoluted, to say the least, but a judge finally ruled in our favour and we were able to get the castle back. The usurping owners only wanted it so they could boast they had a castle. They never did anything with it, as you can see.”
    “‘Dead hand’ is an apt description for restricting the transfer of property,” Alistair opined. “You can just feel the weight of the dead hand controlling the destiny of the castle from the grave.”
    “Like a curse.” Catriona Fraser nodded solemnly. “Red Dougal’s dead hand.”
    “Aye, most interesting,” said Rex, who normally liked nothing better than discussing the ins and outs of anachronistic legal terminology, but the tone of the conversation was turning morbid for a New Year’s Eve party. Dead hands rising from the grave were better suited to Halloween.
    _____
    He racked his brains for a more cheerful topic.
    Ken Fraser raised a finger and spoke before Rex could think of one. “Moreover, it was a thorny legal point whether the old inheritance law still applied once the property had been forfeited. But to make a long story short …”
    “Thank goodness,” Vanessa Weaver said under her breath, apparently waiting for a pause in the conversation so she could present her business card.
    “The law was upheld. Catriona and I were happy to wed and comply in every respect.”
    “The old law didn’t take into account what a family of profligates the Frasers were,” his wife remarked.
    “They really were,” Ken added with relish. “I could tell you some stories—”
    “Perhaps later,” Alistair cut in, to Rex’s relief. Ken Fraser was a windbag of the first order, as he had already demonstrated during the course of the evening.
    “You’re a Fraser, aren’t you?” Helen asked Alistair.
    “Frazer with a ‘z,’” he specified. “It’s possible, even probable that way back when, before clan lineage was properly recorded, we belonged to the same clan. In the olden days there was one member in every clan community who was the official genealogist and could recite for hours on end who was the son of whom, and so on down through the generations. It can’t always have been a reliable source.”
    “A sort of bard,” Helen ventured.
    “Exactly,” Alistair said. “And hangers-on and servants often assumed, or were attributed, the chief’s clan name, to add to the confusion.”
    “There would have been epic tales of exploits and derring-do, especially around the time of the Jacobite Rebellions,” Ken Fraser enthused, adding ruefully, “before Bonny Prince Charlie fled ‘over the sea to Skye.’ ”
    “I visited the island of Skye as a child,” Helen said. “I never realized its historical significance at the time. Didn’t Prince Charles return to France afterward?”
    “He returned briefly to Scotland first,” Ken replied. “But when all hope of putting him on the British throne was lost, he took a ship back to France; though he did send a spy to Scotland in seventeen fifty-three to find out where all his gold had disappeared to. The French had sent a fortune in payroll for his army,” he explained, speaking mainly for the benefit of Helen, who might not have been so familiar with Scottish history, being English. “Spain also wanted a Catholic monarch in Britain and likewise shipped a vast amount of gold over to these parts to fund the Forty-Five Rising against the protestant Elector of Hanover.”
    “But much of it went astray,” Professor Cleverly interjected slyly, smoothing down his bald pate. He’d had hair in college, quite a bit of it, recalled Rex, who had retained his, though the passage of time had faded the red to a more ginger hue.
    “The treasure was entrusted to various clan chiefs,” Cleverly continued in a professorial manner, peering through a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles perched upon his beakish nose. “Some of it was buried close to here,” he informed Helen.