Grab some tea set out on the table for you, have a seat, and meet Dr. Ferguson!

I’m Dr. Isobel Ferguson, and I am presently a tourist on Claire Barclay’s British Mystery Book Tour. I’m a psychologist and grounded in practical work of helping the anxious, the fearful, and the oppressed, but I love a good mystery, just wallow in it, you know. So I lit out of Texas for Scotland. I just love the medieval atmosphere of the guest hotel where, although the rooms are spick ’n’ span, the floors are irregular in height and the walls are not quite straight. I like people, friendly folks, and I’m going to enjoy myself and my fellow guests.

We all congregate like birds from different flocks at the Magpie Café, next door to the Royal Stuart where I meet the owner Brue MacBain and his daughter Isla, who waitresses when she’s not at her university. She interests me as she’s taking psychology and doing a research paper on psychopaths, something I know quite a lot about, more than anyone should. One or two of my patients have been downright scary. It isn’t just academia that interests me. There’s a local mystery.

“You’ll not believe it,” Isla said as she delivered our orders. “There was another murder last night. I heard it on the early telly news.”

“Near here?” I ask her.

“Nae. Nae.” Her father denies it as he tries to keep bad news away from paying tourists.

“It was so,” Isla says indignantly. “Just around the corner the telly says.”

I looked at her fellow tour mates. They were mystery fans. They’d be slaverin’ to know details. “A real mystery?”

Joseph, from Los Angeles, is one of our group. He’s my age and seems an interesting man but not interesting enough for me to indulge myself. Worthy but too respectable. He’s a true crime mystery reader. He looks up alert. “What happened.”

“I dinnae have the details. I will get them later at the uni,” Isla promises.

“I’d appreciate that,” Joseph said.

I would as well. We got more news later in the day when Isla came back from her classes. It was a friend of hers who had been killed, and Isla was both upset and furious.

“You’ll help me, won’t you?” she asked me. She knows I’m a psychologist.

“I will help you.” That was how I came to spend time sitting with a group of university students, trying to create a profile of the killer.

Isla has other help. Her friend is a detective inspector of Police Scotland as it is called here. He and his constable came to the café for breakfast and encouraged Isla in her pursuit of knowledge about the killer, more to help her assuage her grief, in my opinion, than to seriously consider her efforts.

Joseph showed a lot of interest in the crime, but then he was a true crime reader and was interested in many crimes. I got a little distracted by a personable professor of history from the local university who paid me flattering attention, but I kept my hand in with Isla and her friends and was astounded and horrified when the killer made an attempt on Isla. The identity of the killer fascinated me, and I’m surprised how close we came to creating the perfect profile.

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