‘I really should apologise for my father, Mrs Gilver,’ said Lorna, once the fuss of setting me up with my desired breakfast dishes was behind us. ‘He’s always so very keen to protect me from nasty things, I swear he must still believe me to be a child.’ Her smile faded for a moment then reblossomed as she carried on in a rather too hearty voice: ‘When in fact, of course, I’m comfortably old enough to take all manner of things on the chin.’
‘And are you old enough to talk about your father in thon disrespectful way?’ said Mr Tait, twinkling at her. ‘I told you, my dear. Mrs Gilver was a nurse in the war and last night young Jessie Holland was in such a state of shock I thought a nurse was called for. Mrs Gilver did not mind.’
He turned to me, inviting me to agree with him, and I nodded, although I was tackling some ferociously thick porridge and could not, at the moment, answer. I never do remember when away from home but still in Scotland, how long it took me to coax my own cook back from the excesses of Scotch habits, so that my winter days could begin with the soothing, creamy treat I expected and not the vile, salty lump which passes for a good plate of porridge around these parts. Once, I witnessed Hugh dig his spoon into the edge of his porridge only to have the whole thing shoot away up the far side of the dish and land, all of a piece, on the tablecloth. Yet still he has the cheek to prefer his to mine.
‘Of course I didn’t mind,’ I said at last. In fact, had young Jessie really needed a nurse I should have minded like anything, and I should have been quite useless, my nursing duties at Moncrieffe House having been confined to playing cards, lighting cigarettes and muttering the occasional ‘there, there’.
‘Such a shocking thing to have happened, though,’ I went on. I knew that Mr Tait did not want Lorna in the thick of it, but it would have been beyond peculiar not to discuss the matter at all.
‘It is,’ said Lorna. ‘A very nasty affair. We had hoped, hadn’t we, Father, that it was all behind us. I know Miss McCallum and Miss Lindsay will be very sorry to hear of last night’s trouble. They’ve worked so hard to get the Rural off the ground.’
‘And truly no one has any idea who might be behind it?’ I said. ‘There’s no one around the village who’s known to be a little odd? It must be a local chap, don’t you think, if the trouble’s confined to Luckenlaw again and again.’
Mr Tait and Lorna looked as uncomfortable as might be expected to have a guest in their house thus impugn the neighbourhood, and Mr Tait in addition began to frown at me. I had, I realised, begun to betray a little more knowledge of the facts than Lorna could suppose me to have come by and I swept on with a change of subject before she could begin to wonder.
‘I can’t help admiring your lovely brooch, Lorna,’ was the best I could come up with. She was wearing the same rose, ribbon and love-heart as the day before and I realised just too late that it was hardly sensitive to draw attention to her mourning.
Mr Tait dropped his spoon into his porridge, but Lorna only smiled gently and fingered the little brooch before answering.
‘Yes, it was my mother’s,’ she said, and I winced slightly in case I had caused Mr Tait pain too.
‘You must have been flattered to see the Howie ladies attempting to imitate it,’ I said. Lorna looked momentarily puzzled by this.
‘Well, that was by the by,’ she said. ‘The Rural badge is a very similar design, based on it indeed, except the Rural one has just four points to the crown. For S. W. R. I., you know. But the older ones like this always had five. Why would that be, Father? Why was it always five?’
‘A lucky number, I daresay,’ said Mr Tait, looking uninterested.
‘But it’s seven that’s lucky, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘That’s right,’ said Lorna. ‘I remember from the skipping song.’
‘I’m not familiar with that,’ I said. ‘The girls on the green didn’t include it in their repertoire yesterday. How does it go?’
Lorna hummed a few notes and then shrugged. ‘I can’t remember it,’ she said. ‘It must be a skipping song, though, mustn’t it? One and one make two and two makes true love. Then, how does it go, Father? Three is mighty, five is good. Seven is certainly luck.’
‘I can’t bring it to mind at all,’ said Mr Tait, sounding rather strangled and looking a little pale. Perhaps it was not a skipping rhyme after all; perhaps it was a lullaby or even a love song and it reminded him more painfully of his wife than even the brooch itself.
‘I wonder what happened to four and six?’ I said, trying to lighten the mood.
Lorna giggled.
‘They’re both terribly unlucky,’ she said. ‘I mean to say, six is the number of the devil himself, Mrs Gilver.’
Mr Tait, if anything, looked more troubled than ever although whether it was the minister or the man who was suffering was hard to say. Lorna did not seem to notice, at any rate.
‘Well, be thankful the Rural doesn’t have six initials, then,’ I said, and Lorna laughed again.
‘But why is four so unlucky, I wonder?’ she said. ‘Father, do you know?’
‘Do I know why four is an unlucky number?’ Mr Tait echoed. ‘It’ll be lost in the mists of time. And anyway, you might as well ask why the sky is blue, Lorna dear. Luck and sense have no connection.’
‘Hear, hear,’ I replied. ‘I have never had much patience with luck, good or ill. I always find it impossible to remember what I should and shouldn’t do in the cottages I visit. I must give tremendous offence.’
‘You’d be better off at Luckenlaw,’ said Lorna, ‘with just one big source of luck that everyone agrees on.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought my father had told you. About the sealed chamber in the Lucken Law.’
‘I told Mrs Gilver the facts, Lorna dear,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I did not trouble her with the rest of it. It’s the usual thing, Mrs Gilver. Any secret chamber you care to mention has engendered some tale or other about all the good fortune depending on the sealed door and trouble raining down if it is broken. Thankfully, though, not everyone gives it credence, no matter what Lorna says.’
‘You are not usually so scornful,’ said Lorna.
‘I’m not scornful at all,’ her father protested.
I was feeling scornful enough for all three of us, being firmly with young Jessie Holland in believing that such fancies were for those with too much time and nothing better to fill it.
‘I promised Jessie I would visit this morning,’ I said, using her name since it had come unbidden into my thoughts. ‘I’d like to see how she’s bearing up, of course, but also I thought I might sound her out about household matters. In advance of my talk, you know. In fact, I might pay a few visits around the district to get some ideas about what might be useful.’
Mr Tait looked tremendously impressed, as well he might, at my effortless subterfuge and even Lorna nodded with approval.
‘Only please do be careful,’ she said. ‘The villagers are terribly proud, terribly private about anything to do with money.’ She chuckled. ‘Now later this morning will be quite another matter. You can say whatever you like about money and budgets then. Vashti and Niccy talk of nothing else.’
‘Ah yes,’ I said. ‘Our visit to Luckenlaw House. I had forgotten.’
‘Great favourites of Lorna, that pair,’ said Mr Tait, with an edge to his voice. ‘And she of them too.’
Which, I mused to myself as I trundled out of the drive and up towards Hinter Luckenlaw Lane shortly afterwards, was rather a mystery. Lorna was a sweet girl but Vashti and Nicolette Howie, on our short acquaintance, had seemed rather too sophisticated to choose a sweet girl – and especially a sweet girl from the village manse – for their companion. Perhaps the paucity of other options might explain it. At Gilverton years ago, had it not been for Bunty, I might easily have thrown myself on the doctor’s wife and the minister’s daughter had I been the type; as it was, I had always felt that the few minutes of my day not hounded and harried by Grant, Nanny, Hugh and the rest of
them were delicious islands of peace and not to be disturbed lightly. Now, of course, there was occupation and diversion to spare what with my trickle of commissions – or could it now be called a flow? a steady trickle anyway – and with Alec ensconced at Dunelgar and gratifyingly in need of all manner of advice on his household, although I admitted to myself with a quick frown that these days, his staff in place and his furniture arranged, it was Hugh he turned to more often than not, the pair of them, over trout stocks and deer fences, growing as thick as two thieves and as dull as two Hughs at times.
I was well advanced along the lane to the farm before I dragged my concentration back to the matter of the moment and, shaming as that is to admit, it is not the worst of it. Much worse is the fact that I was distracted enough by my musings almost to miss an important point of physical evidence or rather, in true Holmesian fashion, the absence of one – which amounts to the same thing. The barkless dog in this instance was the lane itself, stretching from road to farm gate quite bare and featureless; someone had been out and gathered up every single feather from the night before.
I threw the car into the reversing gear and rolled back along the lane to the hawthorn bush. Even this was picked clean, not a single feather left in its branches, which must have taken quite some time even though the job had clearly been hurried, with numerous little twigs being snapped off here and there. Chastened – imagine almost missing this! – but more than ever a-quiver to get to the bottom of it I started up again and shot along the lane to the farm, sweeping round into the yard, sure of finding Mrs Hemingborough in her kitchen.
There indeed she was. She came to the kitchen door in her pinny to meet me and I took a huge bolstering breath and launched into my performance.
‘My dear,’ I said, taking both of her hands in mine. ‘My poor dear Mrs Hemingborough. What a relief to find you up and about. You look marvellous! I do hope you don’t mind my coming round – I know we’ve barely met, but I couldn’t help myself. Mr Tait is going to pop in later too.’
When I had got to the end of this Mrs Hemingborough, surprisingly to me, was looking just as calm, but decidedly colder. She flapped a hand which I took to be an invitation to enter and I swept into the kitchen and plonked myself into a chair at the end of the table furthest from the range, the other end being spread with a padded cloth for the ironing which waited in a basket on the floor.
‘Mrs Gilver,’ began Mrs Hemingborough, disapproval and natural politeness fighting each other in her voice, ‘please don’t think me inhospitable, I beg you, but I’m not following you. Did someone tell you I was ill?’
For just a fraction of a second, she and I eyed one another. She knew that I knew, I knew that she knew and we both knew that no one was going to give in. Her look to me seemed to say ‘Let battle commence’ and I hoped that mine to her said the same.
‘Mrs Hemingborough, dear,’ I said. ‘I understand absolutely if you want to keep it quiet and I’ve told no one except Mr Tait, but no matter what he did to you you have nothing to be ashamed of and you must not bottle it up. Now, Mr Tait told me that your dreadful experience was not the first and he told me too – quite shocking! – that the police are dragging their feet, which almost beggars belief.’
‘I don’t want to be rude,’ said Mrs Hemingborough, and still she spoke quite gamely but was betrayed by a tiny tremor in the hand which lay on the table top as she sat down and faced me, ‘but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Why, the attack,’ I said, all innocence. ‘The dark stranger. Last night.’
At this Mrs Hemingborough drew herself up magnificently, so magnificently in fact that I began quail. What if Jessie had been imagining things? I remembered the feathers and, with that thought, rallied again.
‘I see someone has been telling tales,’ said Mrs Hemingborough, ‘but I can assure you, Mrs Gilver, there is no such person as this “dark stranger” and even if there is he made no attack on me last night.’
‘But Mrs Hemingborough,’ I said, gearing up for my master-stroke, ‘my dear, I saw it. I was looking out of my bedroom window at the back of the manse, you know, and in the moonlight, I saw the whole thing. Now, Mr Tait asked me to make his apologies to you for not immediately coming round to help, but the truth is that I didn’t tell him until this morning. I could hardly believe my eyes, you see, and I put it out of my mind, or tried to. And then when I did mention it, at breakfast, of course Mr Tait assured me that it was not a trick of the moonlight at all. It was just the latest instalment in this horrid affair. Well, you can imagine how I felt then. But I daresay, since Mr Tait is not a young man he would more likely have been hindrance than help to any search party and he assured me that you have a good handful of men about the place better suited to it, and your own telephone to summon the police. I suppose it’s too much to hope that they found him?’
At last I stopped talking and I watched her intently to see what the effect of this outpouring might be. She licked her lips with a quick darting gesture and clasped her hands together on the scrubbed table top, but remained silent for so long that my attention began to wander. Around me, the farmhouse kitchen spoke of an ordered, capable life; the life of the woman who could pluck a chicken on her lap, no less. The kettle was on the back of the burnished range, an array of irons sitting on the hotplate before it, and above the range the dolly groaned with the rest of the wash, jerseys and men’s overalls turning the air soft as they dried. In the sink, however, an unwashed porridge pot balancing on top of a frying pan told the tale of a morning rushed and upset by the need to go out in the lane and pick feathers as soon as the sun had come up.
Mrs Hemingborough cleared her throat; she had gathered her wits about her once more.
‘I don’t know how to account for it,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I know the story you’re referring to – a lot of silly nonsense – and I can assure you nothing happened to me on the way home last night.’
‘But I saw it,’ I said again. ‘I can’t for the life of me imagine why you would deny it. Oh!’ The exclamation escaped me before I could bite my lip, for all of a sudden I could see. I did see. ‘Oh dear.’
Mrs Hemingborough raised an eyebrow at me with an admirable attempt at detachment, but for the first time I had really rattled her.
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But I can’t say I approve. After all, even if you are able to take it so unaccountably in your stride, who’s to say who’s next?’
‘Well, I’m glad to have your understanding, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘I only wish it was mutual. And though I’m sorry to have your disapproval, there I think I can say we’re more in step.’ And with that she rose and went towards her irons, leaving me gasping at her rudeness. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Gilver. I know you’re a friend of Mr Tait’s and he’s a good man, been a good friend to Luckenlaw since he came here, and his wife was a lovely girl we had all known from her cradle, but . . .’ She tested the temperature of one of the largest irons – and although I know that spitting on it is just the way it is done, I could not help but feel there was a bit of a message for me there too – and selected a garment from the top of the crumpled pile in the basket on the floor.
‘It’s perfectly plain to me,’ I said, liberated from any call on my own politeness by her extraordinary behaviour, ‘that the only reason for you to deny it, in the face of a witness’ – here I did that little thought-dance which is the mental equivalent of crossing one’s fingers behind one’s back; after all there was a witness – ‘is that you know who it was and you are protecting him.’
‘And why would I be doing that then?’ she said, scathing enough to sound quite insolent.
‘I can’t imagine,’ I retorted. ‘If it were me, no matter whether it were my husband, son or brother, I should not shield him.’
‘I don’t have any sons,’ said Mrs Hemingborough. ‘Nor any brothers.’
The unspoken thought hung between us, but it was ludicrous enough to make me blush and
she give a short, sneering laugh; for why would her husband bother to rush around in the night just to catch his own wife who was on her way home to him anyway.
‘I do not accuse your . . . anyone in particular, Mrs Hemingborough,’ I said, trying to sound haughty. ‘I only say I think you know who it was and are refusing to name him.’
Mrs Hemingborough had got the shirt stretched out flat to her satisfaction on the padded table and she looked at me, her meaning plain: she wanted me to leave and let her get on with her busy day.
‘Is that what you think, then?’ she said. ‘Aye well, you play bonny.’
This was a little saying I knew well and one which had always irritated me, cutting one off at the knees as it does and rendering any further protestations quite useless. It has no equivalent in the King’s English, the nearest thing being when Nanny Palmer would say, ‘Heavens, we are in a temper’ in that maddening, cosy way of hers when one’s entire world had collapsed and one had ceased to practise any restraint in the face of it. I remember this happening once in my nursery over the matter of whether a poached egg could be eaten off a slice of toast with a knife and fork or must be mashed up in a cup with bread squares and fed to one with a spoon. ‘Heavens,’ Nanny Palmer had said over the din of my howls, ‘we are in a temper’ and feeling foolish, I had shut up.
It is a peculiarly British response to distress, I think. At least, I remember holidaying in Florence once, watching a fat bambina of three or so work herself up into just the same state, although one doubts it was over poached eggs and bread squares, and all of the grown-ups around her cooed and consoled, sent for cool cloths to lay on her cross little face, and generally commiserated with her over the tragedy that is this our life, some of them even wiping away a tear or two of their own as they did so.
‘That child should be smacked on the bottom and sent to bed with no supper,’ Hugh had hissed through his teeth, as though expecting me to step in and effect this for him.
Bury Her Deep Page 6
