"I am."
"Then go, as you came, in peace," Adam said quietly. "And may all the blessings of the Light attend you."
So saying, he raised his ring hand to touch McLeod lightly on the forehead with the sapphire. The inspector exhaled softly as the spirit of Grant withdrew, and sagged forward against the hand Adam shifted to steady him.
"Your guest has gone, Noel," he said quietly. "Draw a deep breath, take a moment to reorient yourself, and come back when you're ready. When you open your eyes, you will find yourself once more firmly grounded in the present, feeling relaxed and renewed."
Obedient to his superior's instructions, McLeod inhaled deeply. A slight tremor registered in his extremities, and Adam sat back to wait. When McLeod roused a moment later, his gaze was fully awake and aware.
"Welcome back," Adam said. "How are you?"
"Not bad at all," McLeod said. "My visitor made a most courteous withdrawal. I guess he was more experienced than I first thought." He looked from Adam to Claire's sleeping form and back again. "What happened while I was out?"
Briefly Adam acquainted him with what had taken place. McLeod heard him out in thoughtful silence.
"Well," he exclaimed, when Adam had finished. "This has been a very busy day - and it's only half over. By the way, did I think to tell you earlier that the Scanlan postmortem's at two?"
Adam rolled his eyes heavenward. "No, you did not."
"Sorry. Is it a problem?"
"No. It's - nearly eleven now, though," Adam said, consulting his pocket watch, "and I promised to look in on that other patient before lunch. If we hustle, though, we ought to just make it."
"Ready whenever you are," McLeod replied, getting to his feet. "At least it appears we've accomplished one worthwhile objective today."
As he glanced at Claire, Adam smiled and nodded.
"Quite true - and in a rather spectacular fashion. Unless I'm very much mistaken, when Claire next wakes, she'll be on her way to becoming a complete woman again."
"Aye, thank God for that!" McLeod murmured fervently. "And Carnage Corridor will be a safe stretch of road to travel again. Now all we have to do is hie ourselves off to Dumbarton. Your car or mine?"
Chapter Sixteen
THAT same morning, in Glasgow, Peregrine Lovat was completing his second orbit around a block near the city center, looking for a place to park.
"I still don't understand why you were so keen to have that roll of film developed," Julia remarked as he began a third circuit. "What's so urgent about those Kintyre snaps, that they won't wait till we get back to Strathmourne?"
Peregrine's eyes flicked ahead, still hopeful that someone might leave. "If I said it was merely a fit of artistic caprice, would that satisfy you?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to do better than that," she replied, with a lift of one fair eyebrow.
Peregrine summoned a sidelong grin and rolled his eyes heavenward in an exaggerated show of resignation.
"All right, I'll come clean. I'm really a top secret agent for MIS, and the photographer's shop is a front for our Glasgow operation."
Julia merely echoed his gesture of resignation and returned his grin. They had arrived in Glasgow the previous night, having booked into a period guesthouse not far from here. This morning, after the usual hearty breakfast in which tourists usually indulged, they had set out to begin touring the city's museums, starting with the Burrell Collection, an eclectic and sometimes eccentric assemblage of ceramics, textiles, furniture, stained glass, and a particularly good selection of nineteenth-century French paintings.
But Peregrine had spotted the photography shop the night before, as they pulled into their guesthouse; and it had been an easy matter to slip out this morning, while Julia was in the shower, and drop off the roll of film in question for one-hour processing. He had also had the camera checked; it was working perfectly.
Now, with the necessity to collect the processed film, he was aware of a prickly feeling of anticipation that had nothing to do with his desire to shield Julia from whatever unpleasantness the photos might hold. Ever since leaving Kintyre two days before, he had found himself strangely preoccupied, haunted by the elusive ghost-image that he had sensed hovering over the body of the dead man - an image he had not been able to commit to paper. He wondered if there would be anything in his photos to show that the strange ghost-effect he'd observed was more than a mere trick of his imagination.
"Peregrine?" his wife broke in softly. "Is there something on that roll of film that you don't want me to see?"
The look that went with the question was as blue and unwavering as a kitten's, and Peregrine found himself incapable of dissembling.
"Actually, there is," he admitted with a sigh. "Back on Kintyre, while you were off fetching the police, I took some photos of the dead man. It occurred to me this morning that while we're here in Glasgow, we probably ought to turn the prints over to the Strathclyde Police, in case there's anything in them that might assist them in their investigation."
"Ah," said Julia. "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?"
Peregrine grimaced. "I thought you could probably do without the reminder."
"Well, that's very gallant of you," she said affectionately, "but it isn't really necessary. How soon we forget! Whatever concerns you concerns me - for better or for worse!''
"Point taken," Peregrine agreed with a sheepish grin, "though I hardly think it need extend to ruining your honeymoon - our honeymoon."
"There you go again!" she declared, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. "I told you it isn't possible to do that."
He was grinning as they completed their third circuit of the block, but he still had not found any legal place to park.
Switching on his left-turn indicator, he pulled the Alvis into a designated loading zone a short distance up the street from the shop and pulled on the hand brake.
"You'd better shift into the driver's seat, in case a traffic warden comes along," he told Julia. "I'll be back as quickly as I can."
Waiting for traffic before easing open the door, he alighted from the car and sprinted off up the sidewalk to the entrance to the photographer's shop. The premises seemed dim after the bright sunshine outside. The shop's proprietor was at the counter, offering advice to a middle-aged couple who spoke English with an accent that might have been Dutch. When at last they turned and started for the door, Peregrine darted forward and presented his claim slip.
"The name's Lovat," he murmured, watching as the man began rooting in a drawer beneath the counter. "I left in a roll of film earlier this morning for one-hour processing."
"Here it is," the man said, handing over a large yellow-and-orange film envelope. "That'll be six pounds eighty, please."
Peregrine gave the man a ten-pound note, received his change, and pocketed it as he stepped over to the window, pulling the prints out of their envelope to examine them. The photos on top were all views of Kintyre, most of them with him or Julia in the foreground, a few of them showing architectural details of some of the castles and country houses they had visited in the preceding days. These he hurriedly passed over in favor of the more sober forensic studies he was looking for.
The abrupt shift in motifs made him flinch. Though his first instinct was to avert his gaze, he forced himself to take a closer look - and was startled to discover that there was, indeed, more caught in the photos than he had been able to see clearly at the time.
The shimmer he had observed on the beach at Mull of Kintyre had resolved on film into a ghostly figure. Though the details still were a bit blurred, the robed form hovering over the dead man appeared to be that of a Hare Krishna, or perhaps a Buddhist monk, with shaven head and dressed in flowing orangey robes. The figure's hands were clasped as if in prayer, but there seemed to be an implement of some kind extending below the palm. Different aspects of the image appeared in the two closer shots, which had been shot from different angles.