“As I think back to the first meeting in Deacon Brodie’s pub, I realize I mistook your shared smile with Jack as loving, friendly. Now, with what I know, you were icy with each other,” I said.
“He wasn’t happy about the turn of events, and he thought I’d gotten his father there. I hadn’t. I wasn’t responsible for that part at all. Ritchie was there of his own accord, wanting to let his son know he knew he was up to something.”
“Shelagh!” Louis came through the common room’s doors. Brigid followed close behind.
Louis hurried to Shelagh, but Brigid stayed by the doorway. She nodded for me to join her.
No one seemed to notice or care that I stood and moved away from the crowd.
“You okay?” Brigid asked.
“I am. It’s quite a story. I’ll share it all with you.” It was the least I could do.
“I think I know most of it by now, but thank you,” she said doubtfully as she looked toward Shelagh and Louis.
“What?”
“Have you seen the picture from all those years ago? The one that got Shelagh in trouble?”
“No. Why?”
“Want to?”
“Of course.”
She reached into her pocket.
As she retrieved a photocopy of the picture from her pocket, another piece of paper came out too and floated to the ground. She handed me the copy of the picture, and then she reached to the ground for the other paper. She kept it folded, her attention on me as if waiting for a reaction.
I inspected the picture. It was much more disturbing than I could have imagined. Oliver McCabe’s body was facedown in front of the museum. I would have recognized those stairs anywhere.
Surrounding him was a crowd of people.
“Is this Shelagh?” I pointed at a smallish woman in a shabby coat and hat.
“Aye.”
“I can’t see her face well, but she seems … shocked.”
“Aye. Keep looking.”
My eyes scanned the rest of the people in the crowd. At first I didn’t see anything, but a second time over, I did.
Behind Shelagh a bit, hunched over with a dirty face and a terrifying expression was someone else I was pretty sure I recognized. He’d been bald even when he was younger.
“Louis?” I whispered to her.
“I can’t get confirmation, but I’m working on it. Look at him. Look how he’s dressed, the evil in his eyes.”
I looked again. Everything she said was true.
Together we looked toward Shelagh and Louis. They were speaking to each other, holding each other’s hands.
“You think he killed Ollie?” I said, thinking about the word Birk had used when he mentioned his conversation with Louis after Shelagh and he had broken up. Vitriol.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to try to find out.”
“Back then he worked for Shelagh’s family but the connection might not have been made.”
“Aye.” Brigid opened the piece of paper that had fallen to the ground. “It’s the potion he gave us at the museum.”
I glanced at the paper, but there was more than the potion on the page, there were other words along the bottom.
“What else does it say?” I asked as Brigid read aloud.
“‘Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of the day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.’”
She looked at me. “What in the heck?”
“It’s Dr. Jekyll,” I said. “From his final statement in the story.”
They were the words, via a bookish voice, that he’d spoken to me inside Louis’s basement. I rubbed at the hair that had risen on my arm.
“Aye, it’s creepy,” Brigid said.
She had no idea.
“Come with me,” I said.
Brigid followed me back to the crowd.
When there was a lull in all the conversations, I said, “Louis, you did see Jack take the money from Birk’s event, didn’t you? You’re the one who returned it the next day.”
At first he was going to deny it, but even he knew it was time to be honest; well, about most things.
“Aye, lass, it seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Anonymously?” Inspector Winters interjected.
“Aye. At the time, I didn’t know what trouble the lad would bring, couldn’t have known what he would eventually do. I thought he must have needed the money. I didn’t think much about it. Just slipped the money back into the office at the stables the next day. No one saw me.”
“You are the best man on the planet,” Shelagh said to him as she took his hand again. “The absolute best. You always save the day.”
Both sides of me were in dead earnest.
I heard the good doctor’s voice as clearly as if he really were in the room. I looked at Louis.
Maybe he was.
Shelagh turned to me. “You found the book?”
I pulled myself back to the moment. “Yes. Birk, Brigid, and I did. At The Banshee Labyrinth.”
“It’s quite the place, isn’t it?”
“It is, and considering the legend associated with it, we should have probably tried there first,” I said.
Shelagh shrugged. “You had to follow the clues.”
As Shelagh turned back to Louis and everyone fell back into conversations, Elias moved in between me and Tom.
“Ye ken, people do forget that Jekyll and Hyde were the same person. It’s my humble opinion that, ultimately, Hyde was just an excuse for Jekyll tae behave badly without any consequence. It wasnae two different creatures—it was one.”
I looked at Louis, then lowered my voice to match Elias’s. “Are you saying we aren’t getting the full story?”
Elias thought a moment before he answered. “Lass, I dinnae think we will ever get the full story.”
“Aye, ye have a point,” Tom said.
“Yes.”
Ritchie John’s killer had been caught and arrested, Shelagh’s ankle would heal. The New Monster was gone. Or so we all hoped. I agreed with Elias, that we never really knew everyone’s full story. The best we could hope for was that all the monsters were gone for good, but that didn’t mean we shouldn’t stay aware.
We’d all be more careful now, at least for a little while. I looked at my husband and hoped with every fiber of my being there wasn’t a Mr. Hyde in there somewhere. I was pretty sure there wasn’t.
But what about me? Though I’d named the side of the bookshop with the warehouse the dark side because of the lighting, there was still a connotation there. No, we never did know the whole story, and bad usually did come right along with the good.
I squeezed Tom’s hand again, and he squeezed back, smiling at me, his cobalt eyes telling me how much he loved me, how worried he’d been.
I leaned close to his ear and said, “Let’s always be the Jekylls to each other’s Hydes. Or something like that.”
Tom smiled and winked. “Aye, lass, I’ll drink to that.”
We were going to be just fine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my agent, Jessica Faust, and my editor, Hannah O’Grady.
As always, thanks to my husband, Charlie, and my son, Tyler. Thanks too to Lauren—I’m so excited about the future.
I wanted to go back to Edinburgh to visit all the pubs I talk about in this story but it wasn’t meant to be. Thankfully the internet was very helpful. Any mistakes I made are on me—but I still hope to go back again soon and see what I got wrong, and what I got right.
Take care, dear readers.
ALSO BY PAIGE SHELTON
ALASKA WILD SERIES
Thin Ice
Cold Wind
SCOTTISH BOOKSHOP MYSTERY SERIES
The Cracked Spine
Of Books and Bagpipes
A Christmas Tartan (a
mini-mystery)
Lost Books and Old Bones
The Loch Ness Papers
The Stolen Letter
COUNTRY COOKING SCHOOL MYSTERY SERIES
If Fried Chicken Could Fly
If Mashed Potatoes Could Dance
If Bread Could Rise to the Occasion
If Catfish Had Nine Lives
If Onions Could Spring Leeks
FARMERS’ MARKET MYSTERY SERIES
Farm Fresh Murder
Fruit of All Evil
Crops and Robbers
A Killer Maize
Red Hot Deadly Peppers (a mini-mystery)
Merry Market Murder
Bushel Full of Murder
DANGEROUS TYPE MYSTERY SERIES
To Helvetica and Back
Bookman Dead Style
Comic Sans Murder
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAIGE SHELTON had a nomadic childhood, as her father’s job as a football coach took her family to seven different towns before she was even twelve years old. After college at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she moved to Salt Lake City. She thought she’d only stay a couple years, but instead she fell in love with the mountains and a great guy who became her husband. After many decades in Utah, she and her family moved to Arizona. She writes the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series and the Alaska Wild series. Her other series include the Farmers’ Market, Cooking School, and Dangerous Type mystery series. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Acknowledgments
Also by Paige Shelton
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by Minotaur Books, and imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
DEADLY EDITIONS. Copyright © 2020 by Paige Shelton-Ferrell. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by Rowen Davis and
David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover illustration by Mary Ann Lasher
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shelton, Paige, author.
Title: Deadly editions / Paige Shelton.
Description: First edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, 2021. | Series: A Scottish bookshop mystery; 6
Identifiers: LCCN 2020047434 | ISBN 9781250203908 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250203915 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3619.H45345 D43 2021 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047434
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First Edition: 2021