Ian held out a flattened hand and oscillated it, indicating that the difference between Mrs. Locke and an ill-feckit corpse was negligible in terms of providing good company.
“I wanted to see what he looked like.” He raised one sketchy brow at Jamie. “And ye’re here because …？”
“I wanted to see what he looks like, again. I maybe didna get a clear keek at him, earlier.”
Ian nodded and moved aside, holding his lantern high above the body. They looked at it in silence. Jamie closed his eyes and took two or three deep breaths, despite the smell. Then he opened them again.
Was it? The stranger seemed different now than he had on first sight. Shorter. The neck was maybe longer, and it was scrawny, in spite of the bulging stomach. The other’s neck had been creased, two deep lines dividing the fat into rings. “Fat lumpkin,” his sister had called the man who’d raped Claire. The pressure in his chest eased a little, and he considered the face, carefully this time.
No. No, it wasn’t the same at all, and his belly hollowed with relief. The face was unshaven and had been for some time, but if he disregarded that, then … no. Nose and mouth were a different shape altogether.
“Ye thought ye might ken him, Uncle?” Ian was looking at him from the opposite side of the table, interested. “I thought that, too.”
“Did ye, indeed,” Jamie said, and the pressure in his chest was back. He resisted the urge to turn and look outside. Instead, he said in the Gàidhlig, “A man ye might have seen by firelight once before?”
Ian nodded, his gaze steady, and replied in the same language.
“The man whose filth defiled your fair one? Yes.”
That was as much a shock as finding Ian here, and it must have shown on his face, for Ian grimaced, then looked apologetic. “Janet Murray’s your sister, bràthair-mhàthair, but she’s my mother.” Dropping back into English, he added, “I’ll no say she canna keep secrets, for she does. But if she sees reason to speak, then ye’re going to hear what she has to say. She told me some weeks ago, when I came to say I was going to Beardsley’s trading post, and did she want anything. She told me to keep an eye out for the fellow.”
This eased Jamie a little, and he looked back at the dead stranger.
“We dinna want to say anything to her about this.”
“No, we don’t,” Ian agreed, and a faint shudder went over him at the thought.
“From curiosity,” Jamie said, returning to the Gàidhlig, “why did your mother tell ye about the mhic an diabhail?”
“If it might be that you needed my help in the killing, a bràthair mo mhàthair,” Ian said, with the trace of a smile. “She said I must not offer, but if ye asked, I must go with you. And I would have done so,” he added softly, his eyes dark in the lantern’s glow. “Without the telling.
“What do you think?” he said then, changing subjects with a nod at the stranger. “Plainly, it is not the same man. That man is dead?”
“He is.”
Ian nodded, matter-of-fact.
“Good. Do we think this one might be his kin?”
“I dinna ken, but this one is also dead, and I canna think his death”—Jamie nodded at the corpse—“can have aught to do with the other.”
Ian nodded in agreement.
“Then I think it hasna anything to do wi’ us, either.”
Jamie felt air in his chest, light and cold and fresh.
“He has not,” he agreed. Then, struck by a thought, asked, “How do ye come to ken what the—other—looked like?”
“The same as you, I expect. Went to Beardsley’s and asked after the man wi’ the birthmark. Dinna fash,” he added. “I didna make a meal of it; no one would remember.”
“No,” Jamie said flatly. No one would remember, because no one would ever see the man again, or think to look for him—he wasn’t the sort of man who had real business with anyone. He was the sort of man who lived and died alone. Save for his dog.
And even if someone thought to visit him, they willna find him. It wasn’t unusual for solitary men to disappear in the backcountry, their passing unremarked. Killed by accident, died of untended illness, wandered away …
They stood together for a moment, scrutinizing the stranger’s face. Jamie felt Ian relax, his decision made, and a moment later, Jamie also shook his head and stepped back.
“No,” he said, and Ian nodded and, leaning forward, blew out the lantern’s wick, leaving them in darkness with the smell of the dead man.