“Why didn’t Mother—”
“She did what she could. But his will usually prevailed.”
“Now that you mention it, I do recall one or two incidents, and I remember sometimes thinking I had been served more than you, but . . . I hardly know what to say.”
“Start by saying you’d like another helping of beef pie.”
“Yes, please,” Ian replied, even though his appetite had evaporated when he heard his brother’s confession. Donald rose and went out to the kitchen, and Ian gazed into the fire, as if the answer lay in the rapidly flickering flames.
“You know,” Donald said as he came back into the room, “I often wondered if you knew. But now I see that you didn’t—not really.”
“I’m sorry—truly I am.”
“You could not have changed anything. He took no one’s counsel but his own.”
“He was a respected policeman, though, so surely he—” Donald’s look stopped him cold. An icicle of dread pierced his heart. “What is it?” he said.
“It’s late, and I have morning rounds with Dr. Bell.”
“Please—you cannot just leave me wondering.”
“This is too delicate a subject to delve into without—”
“Without what?”
“I was going to say without warning, but the truth is . . .” Donald walked over to the sideboard and grasped the bottle of brandy.
Ian’s heart jumped into his throat. “Donald—”
“Calm yourself,” he said, refilling Ian’s glass. “You have more need of it than I.”
Ian drained the snifter in one gulp. “I implore you—”
His brother lowered his bulk into the wing chair in front of the fire, and Ian took the matching one opposite. Donald turned to him, his face shiny in the yellow glow of the fire. “Can you recall a single day when our father did not have a drink?”
Ian thought about the many evenings they spent at home as a family, the summertime trips to the coast, the holidays with Aunt Lillian and Uncle Alfred in Glasgow. In every one of them, he could picture his father with a glass in his hand.
“And yet I don’t recall seeing him drunk,” he said finally.
“Not in front of us, perhaps.”
“Are you saying that—”
Donald held up a hand. “I am not suggesting my problem is anyone’s fault but my own. However, it is instructive, don’t you think?”
Ian looked at his brother, who sat, head cocked to one side, a strand of blond hair falling over one eye. The cat, curled next to him, looked on impassively. “You need a haircut,” Ian murmured, unable to focus on what now struck him as a monumental lack of observation on his part. Donald did not reply. Ian stared at the fire, the embers glowing blue beneath the red and yellow flames.
“Well?” said Donald finally.
“What does it mean?”
“In my experience, one often drinks in an attempt to escape unpleasant thoughts and emotions. And if one finds it impossible to go a day without imbibing, it seems logical to infer that one is trying to avoid rather a lot of unpleasantness.”
Ian looked longingly at the bottle of brandy on the sideboard.
“Go ahead,” said Donald.
“It’s not fair to you.”
“I’ll enjoy it vicariously.”
“No. I’ve had enough.”
Donald studied his fingernails, then looked at Ian. “What do you remember of what he was like as a father?”
“Stern, firm, disciplined . . . strong willed.”
“A typical Scottish father, then?”
“What are you implying, exactly?”
“Over time, alcohol seeps into your soul. It changes you—what you care about, what you are capable of. It rots you from the inside. It can alienate you from love itself.”
“I always had the feeling he loved Mother.”
“She was easy to love,” Donald said, his voice soft. “But I fear at some point she stopped caring for him.”
“When she took a lover, you mean.”
“Did you not notice the chill between them?”
“Now that you mention it, they did seem more distant.”
“But being a typical Scottish family, of course we did not speak of such things. And now you may be on the trail of their killer,” Donald continued. “What do you intend to do?”
“Find this Nate Crippen fellow, for starters.”
“And then what?”
“Shake the truth out of him, if need be.”
“Have a care, Ian. You always were too impulsive for your own good.”
“Time has tempered us both, I think.”
“Perhaps.” Donald stretched and yawned. “Tempered or not, it’s time for this medical student to slip off to bed, or I shall be useless tomorrow.”
“It’s strange to hear those words,” Ian said. “To think of you as a medical student. What I mean is that it’s easier to think of you as a physician,” he added hastily in response to the look on his brother’s face.
“From your lips to God’s ears.”
“I never heard that.”
“A Hebrew friend of mine in Glasgow used to say it. You know,” Donald added, “you’re still a long way from solving what happened all those years ago. I suggest you be prepared for more unpleasant surprises. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Donald padded off to his bedroom, Bacchus trotting close behind. Ian sat gazing at the fire for some time, struggling with facts he thought he had made peace with years ago. The world was not a fair place, there was no guarantee of justice, and evil often prevailed over good. He knew these things, yet tonight he could not help feeling oppressed by the stark reality of it all. The thought that he had not seen his father clearly rankled him most of all. He was aware his father was stern, but always felt he was treated fairly. Obviously Donald had an entirely different experience. How was it he had not seen this? His forehead burned with shame at the thought that he had been so involved with his own comfort and happiness that he missed what was right under his nose. What kind of a detective was he that he could not even perceive his own brother’s misery?
The fire had long died out when at last he rose and retired to his bedroom. Wrapping himself in the comforter Aunt Lillian had given him last Christmas, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Major George Fitzpatrick was uneasy. Pacing in front of the study window in his well-appointed flat on Royal Terrace, he ruminated on his life, the mistakes he had made, and what to do about the situation now facing him. He had fought in Afghanistan with the Gordon Highlanders and seen action in the Bhutan and Second Ashanti Wars, and his shoulder still carried a piece of the bullet that felled him in Kandahar. Yet the disquiet he felt was paralyzing—a threat was apparently headed his way, but he knew not how it would present itself, nor where or when. He wasn’t even certain there was any real danger at all. And yet . . . he broke into a cold sweat as he fingered the letter in the pocket of his dressing gown for the hundredth time that day.
He had memorized it by now, the words etched starkly in his brain.