The Back of Beyond

by Doris Davidson

  Alistair stumbled slowly down the hill. He had sat by the tower for hours, agonizing, but he needed someone to talk to, so, still shaken by what he had learned, he now took the path towards the village. He had to find out whether or not Nicky was indeed ‘Uncle Ken’s’ son, and the only person who could – or would – tell him, was Lexie. Glancing at his watch, he was pleased to see that she would be closing the shop in five minutes.

  He walked a little quicker when he reached the road, and arrived at the shop as the last customer was leaving. ‘Can I have a word with you, Lexie?’ he asked, anxiously.

  Nodding, she locked the door and led him through to the house. ‘What’s up, Alistair?’ she asked when they were seated. ‘I can see something’s happened.’

  Before he could tell her about the photographs David had unearthed, someone rapped loudly on the shop door. ‘Ignore it,’ she sighed. ‘Somebody always tries it on, and whoever it is, they’ll just have to wait till tomorrow.’

  But the caller, after another assault on the shop door, tramped round the side of the house, making them look at each other in dismay. ‘I’d better answer it,’ Lexie muttered when the heavy knock came at the porch.

  ‘It’s the bobby,’ she said, unnecessarily, in a minute, ushering the tall policeman inside. ‘He wants to use the phone, and I’ll have to show him how the exchange works.’

  Through the open door, he watched her fitting the bulky earphones on her head, picking up a lead and plugging it in and then winding the handle at the side for a few seconds. When the call was apparently answered, she handed the earphones to the constable and waited for him to end his call before unplugging and switching off. Too far away to hear what was being said, Alistair did not have to contain his curiosity very long before they came through from the shop again, both looking somewhat agitated.

  ‘He had to report to Aberdeen,’ Lexie said, her voice trembling. ‘They’ve found a body in the moor, not far from the back of the Jubilee Hall.’

  ‘Good God!’ Alistair exclaimed. ‘I did hear somebody saying there were diggers working there. What …’

  ‘They’re clearing a site for building new houses, but …’ She broke off, then added, ‘They say it’s not big enough for a man, so it must be a woman.’

  Relief coursed through Alistair. For a moment, he had feared that they had found her father. He turned to the policeman. ‘Have you any idea who it is?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Magnus Robbie, from the Police House in Bankside and usually referred to behind his back as Bobby Robbie, sat heavily down on a chair. ‘It’ll need to be examined first, afore they can say for sure it is a woman and how lang she’s been there.’ He took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow and neck. ‘I’d a right turn, I can tell you. It’s my first murder, and she’s nae a bonnie sight. I’d say she’s been there for a good few year, though I could be wrong. They’ll need to ken if any women ever went missing.’

  Alistair looked at Lexie apologetically. ‘What about Nancy Lawrie? You always said your father wouldn’t have run away with her.’

  ‘It … might be her.’ Lexie sounded somewhat hesitant. ‘She did disappear, but that was nearly twenty years ago.’

  ‘I’ve only been up here for about ten year,’ observed Robbie, ‘so I dinna ken what went on afore that. Did any other women ever disappear?’

  After considering this carefully, Lexie shook her head. ‘Nobody that I know of.’

  Robbie shook his head hopelessly. ‘I suppose it could be a gypsy. I’ve heard they used to come to Dotterton, and that’s nae far … five mile at the most. Less, if somebody wasna wanting to be seen and come through the woods.’

  Looking a bit happier about things, he stood up. ‘That’s what it must be. Them gyppos have quick tempers, and … well, if one found his woman wi’ another man, he might have stabbed her in the heat of the minute and then had to get rid o’ the body.’

  Alistair nodded. ‘If it was years ago, you might never find out who she is … was.’

  ‘No, they shift aboot like ants, but a Detective Inspector’s coming up from Aberdeen, so it’s nae up to me to find out who did it. I’d better get back to the scene o’ the crime.’

  When Robbie left, Alistair regarded Lexie in some concern. ‘You’re as white as a sheet. D’you want me to stay with you for a while till you get over the shock?’

  She gave a semblance of a smile. ‘I’m all right. I thought at first it might have been my father’s body, so I was glad when Robbie said it was a woman, but it can’t have been anybody from round here. Who’d have wanted to kill Nancy Lawrie? She was only about seventeen, and nobody else went missing. Go home; Alistair, I’m OK, and Gwen’s likely wondering where you are.’

  He hadn’t the heart to mention his own problem, not after what she had just been through, and so he took his leave, giving her a comforting pat on the shoulder as she saw him out. He didn’t really believe that she was all right; he was far from all right himself. Hearing about that body had given him a bit of a shock, too. Whoever she was, the dead woman had been somebody’s daughter, or girlfriend, or wife, and even if she had been a gypsy, being murdered and buried in a moor was no way to end up.

  His mind jumping like a grasshopper, he wondered if he had made something out of nothing with regard to the snap of the man his son had obviously been quite fond of. While he, himself, had been far from home, he had accepted invitations to the homes of a few girls he had met, had been made very welcome by their parents, had felt happy to be part of a family for even a short space of time. He had done nothing out of place with any of them, so why should he think the worst of this ‘Uncle Ken’? And, now that he came to think of it, he had never told Gwen about those friendships, either, so she wasn’t the only one to have kept secrets. It was Marge who had betrayed her husband, and although he didn’t like the idea of Dougal being cuckolded and even worse, fooled into believing he was a father, it was probably best all round for him to hold his tongue.

  Gwen was still sitting by the fire when he went in, her face showing evidence of prolonged weeping. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said, holding out his arms to her.

  She jumped up and ran into them, and while he held her tightly, he told her that he had spent a long time at the tower thinking, then he’d gone to see Lexie.

  ‘I thought that’s where you’d go,’ his wife said, tremulously. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘I didn’t get round to asking her,’ he admitted, and told her about Magnus Robbie’s visit. ‘He’d to report a body being found.’

  ‘A body?’ she gasped. ‘Do they know who …?’

  ‘I thought it might have been Alec Fraser – Lexie’s father – and so did she at first, but apparently it’s a woman, and the bobby says it could be a gypsy.’

  He told her about the platonic friendships he had made during the war and went on, ‘So you see, I wasn’t any different from that Ken, was I? It was … well, Marge …’

  ‘I told you, Alistair,’ Gwen said, relieved that he had stopped being so aggressive, ‘there was never anything other than friendship between Marge and Ken. I swear it! And she never wrote to him after he was posted.’

  Going by the years of the Finnies’ childlessness, the colour of the boy’s hair, plus the fact that Lexie had said it could have been Marge with the soldier, Alistair was more convinced than ever about her guilt, but he said, ‘OK, we’ll leave it at that.’

  In bed that night, listening to Alistair’s deep steady breathing, Gwen was thankful that he had dropped the subject, but she was well aware that he hadn’t changed his mind. The problem was, although he obviously hadn’t the slightest suspicion that it was his own wife who was Nicky’s mother, if he ever told Dougal that he wasn’t the boy’s father, she would have to own up, and take the consequences.

  Unable to sleep, Lexie was turning things over in her mind. Nancy Lawrie, out of all the women who had ever left Forvit, was the only one unaccounted for. If, as the gossips had said at the time, she had been
expecting Alec Fraser’s baby, had she told him about it? If she had – Lexie’s blood ran cold at the thought – would he have killed her to keep it from his wife and fled in shame? It would be the natural reaction … but her father would never have killed anybody … whatever else he had done.

  But … he had run away. With no clothes. No money. Not even his bank book!

  Chapter 25

  The funerals – Rosie being interred with her beloved Tiny, and Alf in the adjacent part of the double lair which she had thoughtfully purchased to accommodate her entire family – had been heart-wrenching for all of them, but Peggy, having lost her husband as well as her mother, was harder hit than her sisters. Dougal and Alistair did their best to comfort all three, but there were also the younger members of the family to consider.

  Although no longer a child, and blossoming out as a woman, Leila couldn’t stop crying. She had loved her grandmother and had missed her deeply when they moved away from her again. But she had also thought a great deal of her Auntie Peg and Uncle Alf, and couldn’t bear the idea of one without the other.

  David, still a boy, had tried to behave like the man he wanted to be, and had successfully hidden his grief until his grandmother’s coffin was being lowered into its final resting place beside the grandfather he could not remember. Then he had to let it out, scrubbing his cheeks with his handkerchief in great mortification until he managed to stem his tears.

  Nicky could not quite take in the fact that he would never see his Nanna again, nor his Uncle Alf, who had often slipped him a tanner to buy sweets, but the strained atmosphere in whichever house he happened to find himself over the past few days had effectively subdued his loud boyish treble.

  At the funeral tea, Gwen was in constant dread that Ivy Crocker – who had come all the way from Newcastle on her own – would let it slip that she had been present at Nicky’s birth and lay bare the secret his biological mother was struggling to keep from Alistair and Dougal, and she felt faint with relief when the seventy-year-old just clasped her hand for slightly longer than was necessary before leaving. She should have known that she could depend on her old friend not to let her down.

  She desperately wanted to warn Marge that David had let the cat out of the bag about Ken Partridge’s visits, but they never had a chance to be on their own. If their husbands took the children out of the way for a while, Peggy was always hovering somewhere near and she, too, had to be kept in the dark. She had more than enough to cope with already.

  Gwen’s worst fear, however, was that Alistair might inadvertently say something to Dougal about Ken, perhaps mention that he had ginger hair and thus sow suspicion in his friend’s mind, even though he had promised not to.

  Despite her sorrow, despite not wanting to leave Peggy just yet, she was glad when Alistair said, on the second evening after the funeral, ‘We’d better go home tomorrow. If the shop’s shut too long, customers might think it’s shut for good.’

  ‘You put a card in the door saying “Closed due to family bereavement”,’ Leila reminded him, ‘so they’ll know you’ll be back.’

  ‘But it’s best not to stay away too long.’

  The leave-taking was the hardest any of them had ever had to endure, the emotional kisses and long embraces seemed to go on for ever, even David lingering inside the group as if that would delay the parting, and it took the arrival of the taxi Alistair had ordered to take them to King’s Cross to finally make the split.

  * * *

  Lying back in the carriage, Alistair closed his eyes and, because of the tension of the past few days, he soon fell asleep, and it was some time later, he didn’t know how long, when he became aware of where he was and why. Reluctant to talk, however, he kept his eyes shut and let his thoughts return to Lee Green. Each time he had been alone with Dougal, he had been sorely tempted to tell him the truth about Nicky, but it would have been barbaric to inflict further heartache on the family – it would have affected every single one of them. He had tried to keep his manner to Marge as civil as he could, and even if he’d had to count to ten occasionally, they’d all been too upset about Rosie and Alf to notice.

  If he’d been there any longer, though, the slightest thing could have lit the fuse of his anger at Marge for betraying her husband. It wasn’t fair to Dougal to let it run on, and there would come a time when he wouldn’t be able to hold his tongue, but it hadn’t been possible to say anything in the circumstances. Besides, he had given his promise to Gwen.

  ‘Mum, d’you think Auntie Peggy’ll ever get over losing Alf?’

  Leila’s voice suddenly got through to him, and he listened listlessly to see how his wife would answer.

  ‘She’ll never forget him, if that’s what you mean,’ Gwen murmured, ‘but she will get over his death eventually.’

  ‘It was awful Grandma dying like that, too. Auntie Marge must have had a terrible shock.’

  ‘Your Auntie Marge is a much stronger person than Peg. She can cope with anything, and she’ll help her baby sister to get over things.’

  ‘Baby sister?’ Leila laughed. ‘Auntie Peg’s not a baby now.’

  ‘Marge and I always looked on her as our baby sister, and it annoyed her. When she was still at school, she wanted to do the things we did, but our Dad wouldn’t allow it.’

  ‘Boyfriends and that, d’you mean?’

  Gwen laughed softly. ‘You probably won’t believe it, but Marge never had a boyfriend till she met Dougal.’

  ‘What about you, Mum? Was Dad your only one?’

  After a brief hesitation, Gwen said, ‘No, I did go out with another boy first, but it was all over before I knew your Dad.’

  Having known this anyway, Alistair was glad that Gwen was being honest with their daughter. That was the difference between her and Marge. She would never tell lies, or do anything she might be ashamed of later … whereas Marge …

  The low voices carried on, but it was only when Nicky’s name filtered into his semiconsciousness that he listened properly, wanting to know what Leila was saying about the boy. ‘He’s not so naughty as he was in Forvit. Don’t you think so, Mum?’

  ‘He’s that bit older,’ Gwen explained. ‘I thought he was going to be a ragamuffin like David used to be, but he was never as bad as that, I don’t think.’

  Wondering why David wasn’t objecting to this slur on him, Alistair took a cautious peep out of the eye farthest from his wife. David was fast asleep, which was why his mother had said what she did.

  Nothing was said for another few moments, then Leila murmured, ‘Mum, can I ask you something? About Nicky.’

  ‘Yes, dear, of course you can.’

  Discerning a hint of apprehension in his wife’s voice, Alistair strained to hear.

  ‘I couldn’t help thinking …’ Leila went on, ‘… he’s awfully like … Uncle Ken.’

  ‘That’s only because of his red hair.’

  ‘But his eyes are the same green as Uncle Ken’s, and he …’

  What Leila was about to add was never said, because Gwen interrupted. ‘Wake up, David, we’re coming into York. If you’re thirsty, you’ll get something at the trolley on the platform.’

  The boy jumped up at once. ‘Are you coming, Leila?’

  ‘No, I’m too sleepy.’

  Through all the squealing of brakes, banging of carriage doors and other loud noises, Alistair still feigned sleep. What he had just heard had convinced him that his suspicions were well founded. Gwen’s abrupt interruption of Leila’s questioning had been too fortuitous to be coincidence. She’d been afraid of what the girl might say, and if they hadn’t arrived in York, she’d have roused David on some other pretext. It dawned on Alistair now that Leila might have been old enough at the time to twig that something was going on between Marge and her soldier ‘friend’ – kids were a lot more perceptive than adults gave them credit for – and was only just beginning to understand what it was. But he had better not ask her anything.

  It was Leila and Gwen who sle
pt all the way to Edinburgh, although Alistair suspected that his wife was shamming; as he had been earlier, but David, his usual inquisitive self again, kept asking about the places they were passing and gave him no space to think.

  Lexie’s heart sank when Magnus Robbie walked into the shop for the first time since the discovery of the body. ‘Have they found something else?’ she asked, still not convinced that it wasn’t her father. ‘Are they still sure it’s a woman?’

  Robbie took off his hat and gave his head a thorough scratch before answering. ‘They are that, and the coroner’s report says she’s been dead for anything from ten to twenty years, so they’re putting out an appeal to find that lassie you spoke aboot.’

  ‘Nancy Lawrie?’

  ‘That’s her. Apparently, she disappeared in 1929, so I dinna ken aboot you, Lexie, but my money’s on her.’

  ‘No, I’m nearly sure it’s not her, I don’t know why. It’s just a feeling I’ve got.’

  The policeman regarded his chubby fingers for a second, then pronounced, in his more official tongue, ‘But the law doesn’t work on feelings, Lexie. It’s facts that’s needed – indispupital … indist … facts that naebody can argue aboot. Proof! Absolute proof!’

  She managed to ignore his lapse in pronunciation, if lapse it was; he wasn’t very bright at the best of times. ‘How do they expect to get proof, then?’

  He looked somewhat put out at being expected to know this. ‘The proof …’ he began, stopped and started again. ‘The proof is in the eating.’

  ‘What?’ Lexie took a moment to fathom out this ridiculous statement. ‘Oh! It’s the proof of the pudding that’s in the eating,’ she corrected, gathering that he must have been in the bar earlier. ‘The proof of a crime …’