Page 16 of A Scot on the Rocks

Afterward, Olivia took her tea into the archive room. Metal shelving covered two walls, much of it filled with records collected during the ongoing restoration. Some were originals sealed properly in archival sleeves, but most were copies from estate papers, church records, excise documents, and private collections.

Olivia took off her jacket, pushed up her sleeves, and got started.

This was the part she loved. Not because old records were romantic. Mostly they were made up of difficult handwriting, unexplained abbreviations, incomplete dates, and lists written in tiny handwriting to conserve paper. But eventually patterns appeared.

Barley purchased after a poor harvest. Repairs to a kiln. Peat taken from higher ground when the lower moss flooded. Payments to coopers. Casks moved between farms. Water diverted after storms.

A great whisky didn’t come into being from one decision, it came from hundreds of them.

Fiona appeared several times with tea and once with an apology about the files.

“Stop apologizing. I’ve seen corporate archives with color-coded filing systems that made less sense.”

By late afternoon, she’d filled several pages of her notebook. No footsteps sounded behind her, no invisible hands opened the door.

The radiator clanked twice, one box shifted when she moved another beneath it, and the old window rattled whenever the rain came down harder.

So far Glenbrae’s supernatural menace appeared to be a simple old building.

After finishing another cup of tea, Olivia opened the third box from the bottom shelf. Inside were copies of correspondence from the 1780s, along with several pages relating to the movement of casks.

Most meant very little, until she found mention of casks that had been moved through an old passage near Dunarraidh lands.

She read the entry again. Another notation several pages later mentioned the upper burn after a heavy rain.

She stopped. The two references might have absolutely nothing to do with each other. That was how research worked. One interesting word didn’t make a revelation, no matter how badly someone wanted it to.

Still. She copied both. A little while later, Fiona appeared in the doorway.

“You’ve got that look.”

Olivia glanced up. “What look?”

“The one my brother gets when he’s about to make everyone work late.”

“I might have found something.”

Fiona sat beside her as Olivia slid the copy over.

“This references casks moving through a passage near Dunarraidh.”

“The old smuggling tunnel.”

“You know about it?”

“We know parts of it still exist. Some sections collapsed years ago. There’s an entrance on the old castle property and another that was found during some drainage work behind one of the warehouses.”

Olivia looked toward the window. Dunarraidh was barely visible through the rain and fog now. From the chill coming through the window, she could feel that the temperature had dropped.

“What do you know about the upper burn?”

“We tested it.”

“When?”

“Several times.”

“No, when relative to rain?”