I managed not to look around, not to glance at the windows where on this wintry morning no sunlight whatsoever penetrated the rather dusty, rippled old glass, but I could only agree.
‘I can tire of country life at times too,’ I said sympathetically, feeling myself warm to these kindred spirits a little.
‘Hindsight is one of the cruellest curses,’ said Vashti. ‘How were we to know?’
‘To know . . . ?’ I prompted. Vashti gazed blankly at me for a while and then sniffed.
‘Oh, just how much everything was going to change,’ she said. ‘Money, chiefly.’
‘But it’s not just money,’ said Nicolette. ‘You must know what we mean, Dandy. Nothing’s the same as it was.’ I did, of course, know exactly what they meant and while it was refreshing to hear it talked about in this way, for proud shabbiness is far more of a social minefield than plain old shabbiness any day, I felt a little impatience with them too, with the paraffin heaters, and the ennui. They should really . . . I caught myself short. My thoughts had just been turning towards a brisk walk in the fresh air and an order to the girl to wash the windows. Hugh has a great deal for which to answer.
‘Now Lorna darling,’ said Vashti, rousing herself far enough to light another cigarette, ‘tell us the news.’ She waved her cigarettes in my direction and when I nodded lobbed her case to me over the low table.
‘None of it is good news, I’m afraid,’ said Lorna. ‘I’m sorry to say that last night there was another attack. Mrs Gilver and Father were called in to help.’
‘Blood-curdling scream,’ said Nicolette with great relish. ‘Tell all.’
‘And then,’ said Vashti, ‘we’ll tell you.’
‘Tell us?’ said Lorna. ‘Tell us what?’
‘No, no, no,’ said Vashti. ‘You first.’
‘Well,’ said Lorna, ‘it’s much the same tale as before. He did no real harm and she didn’t recognise him. Just the same as always.’
‘And was there a search?’ said Nicolette. I was aware that some of the conversation had penetrated the newspapers again and the Howie men were listening in.
‘She didn’t want one,’ I said. ‘She didn’t want anyone to know. In fact, she seemed very reluctant even to admit that it had taken place.’
‘Who was it?’ said Johnny Howie.
‘Oh, yes of course,’ Vashti chimed in. ‘You must tell us who it was. Don’t be bores and say it’s a secret.’
‘It was Mrs Hemingborough,’ I said, then I caught my lip. I should have kept that to myself and not blurted it out to avoid being called a bore.
‘And she’s one who wants it kept quiet?’ said Nicolette. ‘Well, well, well. She never seemed an imaginative sort to me.’
‘Before you think we’ve all gone mad, Dandy,’ said Vashti, ‘perhaps I should explain. There are quite a few souls in the village and surrounding farms who don’t quite believe in this dark stranger.’
‘So I gather,’ I said. ‘But I wouldn’t have said that Mrs Hemingborough didn’t believe in him. Not exactly.’
‘Let me put it another way,’ said Vashti. ‘There are those who believe that our dark stranger is not the sort of stranger who can be caught by the police and clapped in irons.’
‘Vashti, really,’ said Lorna. ‘I’m surprised at you. Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum are sure . . .’
‘Oh yes,’ said Nicolette. ‘Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum are perfectly sure. No nonsense about them. But, Lorna darling, we’re not saying we think that. We’re just passing it on.’
Lorna smiled uncertainly.
‘You’re such teases,’ she said. ‘I never know what you think.’
‘Well,’ said Vashti, ‘our minds are made up now, Lorna, I can tell you that. Because . . .’ She paused dramatically. ‘ . . . last night, we saw him.’
The effect she produced was surely exactly what she was expecting: a stunned silence which lasted until Nicolette broke it.
‘Speak for yourself, darling. I saw nothing. I was concentrating on the road.’
‘All right then, I saw him,’ said Vashti. ‘Running across the field that goes around behind the manse. Just as we were driving down the lane. I was sure it was him. And now that you’ve told me about Mrs Hemingborough, I know I’m right. He was headed straight for her farm.’
I considered the story for a moment and I could see that it made sense. The timing was a little odd, mind you – Vashti and Nicolette had swept past us practically at the schoolyard gate, so if they had seen the stranger crossing the field a moment later and yet he had not set upon Mrs Hemingborough until she was almost home, he must have lain in wait for quite some time.
‘Can you describe him?’ I said, eager for more to add to young Jessie’s rather sparse description.
Vashti hummed a little tune under her breath, clearly enjoying herself. Nicolette was still looking rather annoyed. One presumed that her sister had been attempting to convince her of this sighting since the moment it had happened, that Nicolette had been standing firm and saying ‘Tush!’, and that she was none too pleased to be proved wrong at last.
‘Very hard to say,’ said Vashti. ‘He was extremely fast across the ground and he was in shadow most of the time, but my overall impression was one of . . . Oh Niccy, I do wish you had seen him too. I can’t think how to describe it. He was . . .’
I could not help myself.
‘Snaky?’
Lorna flinched and Nicolette and Vashti turned round eyes upon me.
‘Now why on earth would you say that?’ Vashti said.
I was thinking furiously. I could not claim that Mrs Hemingborough both denied his existence and described his appearance, and I could not in all conscience tell tales on Jessie Holland to this pair. I did not doubt for a moment that Mrs Hemingborough would put the young family out of their cottage if it got back to her ears and the Howie ladies were quite clearly gossips of the first order.
‘I was at my window,’ I said. ‘Upstairs in the manse.’
‘You saw him?’ said Vashti, looking thunderstruck. ‘You actually saw him?’
I was aware of Lorna’s troubled look at my side; she knew very well that I had been downstairs in the library when the knock came at the door.
‘Why shouldn’t Dandy see him too?’ said Nicolette.
‘And he struck you as snaky?’ said Vashti, looking highly diverted. She repeated the word again softly to herself. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said at last. ‘That’s exactly what he was. That’s exactly the word I was looking for.’
‘You must think me quite appalling,’ I said to Lorna as we made our way back to the manse a little later. ‘Cheerfully telling whopping fibs like that. Only I didn’t want to drop poor Jessie Holland in it.’ Lorna still looked far from happy. ‘I know the Howies are friends of yours,’ I went on, ‘and so you might be sure that they wouldn’t breathe a word, but I promised Jessie and there was no other way to explain how I hit on just the right way to describe him.’
‘Jessie said he was snaky?’ Lorna asked.
‘She did.’
Lorna shuddered briefly. Then with a smile she squeezed my arm.
‘Please don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you did the right thing. After all, a promise is a promise and I’m not entirely blinded by affection. I do see that Nicolette and Vashti are . . .’ She stopped; I waited and then we burst into peals of laughter.
‘Oh, I shouldn’t,’ said Lorna eventually. ‘They’re so kind to me and such fun. And they’ve as much right to be at the Rural as anyone, even though Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum would love to find a way to amend the constitution and keep them out. Miss McCallum has been in a terrible sulk since they started coming.’
‘I rather wondered at that,’ I said. ‘They are hardly at home there.’
‘They were drawn in by our American Night,’ said Lorna. Seeing my look, she hastened to explain. ‘It was Independence Day, you know, and we happened to have a clergyman from Wisconsin staying at the ma
nse with his wife. It seemed like such a good idea . . .’ She trailed off rather mournfully.
‘What happened?’ I asked her.
‘Nothing!’ declared Lorna. ‘Absolutely nothing. And besides,’ she added, rather detracting from the vehemence of her denial, ‘Vashti and Nicolette are my dear friends. They’re even giving a birthday party for me next month. Did my father tell you? Isn’t that kind?’
‘It is indeed,’ I said. ‘I can see why you’re fond of them. They are very . . . open.’
In fact, of course, I was grateful to their openness since it had given me an interesting question to ponder: why in heaven’s name should the neighbourhood split down the middle, as Vashti Howie had suggested, on the question of whether the stranger was real?
‘I must say,’ I ventured at last, ‘it’s a monstrous piece of good fortune for this scoundrel, whoever he is, to pick out a playground for himself where so many people seem so peculiarly willing to turn a blind eye. You believe in him, don’t you?’
Lorna hesitated.
‘I don’t quite know,’ she said. ‘I certainly don’t believe that he’s . . . I think either he’s real or it’s an absolute figment of everyone’s imagination. I don’t believe the other thing.’ She was growing quite agitated as she spoke and I could guess why. She did not want to keep me in ignorance but she just simply could not spit it out. It was up to me to say it and then she would agree.
‘You don’t believe,’ I said gently, ‘that it’s real but he’s not? Is that what you mean?’
‘Exactly,’ said Lorna with enormous relief. ‘I don’t believe that for a second.’
‘But why does anyone?’ I said. ‘I’m sure that if the same thing happened at Gilverton no one would even dream of such a thing. Why should Luckenlaw be any different? Why?’
Lorna was silent for a long time and we were almost back at the village before she spoke again.
‘You’d better ask my father, Mrs Gilver. I’m sorry this has come up to spoil your visit and I hope, if you find out, that it won’t stop you from coming back to the meeting next time but if you really do want to know, you had better ask my father. He can explain it all so much better than me.’
6
Accordingly, Lorna withdrew herself from the luncheon table as soon as she politely could, with talk of jelly-making and a young kitchen maid who could not be trusted to scald the jars.
‘The crab-apple from last week is cloudy already,’ she said, ‘and we’re starting this afternoon on the damsons.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well, you must certainly hurry along then. Crab apples are one thing . . .’ Actually I cared not a hoot for either the lowly crab apples or the precious damsons – one visit to the SWRI had not made quite so much of a mark as all that – but I recognised my cue.
‘Dear Lorna,’ said Mr Tait once the door had shut behind her. ‘This is far from the life she thought would be hers but never a word of complaint.’
‘She did mention something,’ I murmured. ‘But,’ I went on heartily, ‘she seems very happy as you say. Good friends all around her. I hear the Howies are giving a birthday party for her soon.’ Mr Tait threatened to frown but managed not to.
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘You must make sure and come along.’
‘Now, Mr Tait,’ I said and I may even have sounded a little stern. I certainly felt a little stern. ‘I have had a number of rather peculiar conversations this morning. The meeting with Mrs Hemingborough you know about already, but also at Luckenlaw House and again talking to Lorna I get the distinct feeling that there is rather more going on here than you told me.’
‘My dear Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I assure you that I’ve told you all I know.’ And yet there was a teasing quality in his voice which invited me to keep trying even as his words told me there was nothing to learn.
‘Can you explain then,’ I persisted, ‘why it should be that everyone – no, not everyone; but some – are so ready to believe what seems to me quite unbelievable? That this dark stranger is not real.’
‘But you knew that from the outset,’ Mr Tait insisted. ‘I told you.’
This was true but when we had discussed the matter in my sitting room that day, we had entertained two solutions to the trouble at Luckenlaw. Now, as Lorna had struggled to relate, there seemed to be a troubling third.
‘It’s more than that,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean that the women are imagining a man, or making a man up out of mischief. I’m referring to the idea – and the Howies talked about it quite matter-of-factly; even Lorna concedes it – that this dark stranger is . . . very much of the darkness and rather more than strange?’
‘Is that what they’re saying?’ said Mr Tait. ‘I see.’
‘Yes, but why?’ I demanded, my voice rising. ‘Why do you see? I don’t. And what do you see?’
‘It’s all nonsense of course,’ he said, ‘but it’s the kind of nonsense that can easily take root even in the most ordinary of places. I assure you, Mrs Gilver, that Gilverton would succumb just as easily under similar trials.’ I must have looked sceptical. ‘We were speaking of much the same thing this morning – the chamber of the Lucken Law.’ He folded his napkin, patted his mouth firmly with it and sat back in his chair. ‘You would scarcely credit the panic when it was opened.’
‘It was opened?’ I said, my eyes wide.
‘Yes, just after the war,’ he said. ‘With all the interest in archaeology and all those eager pilots looking for excuses to stay in their cockpits, anywhere with an interesting name and a whiff of a past got used to the sight of a rickety little contraption overhead and someone hanging out of the side with a camera, and as soon as someone had taken a look at the place from up there they found the entrance. That much was to be expected.
‘Now, however, we move into the realms of pure fantasy – a mixture of pharaoh’s curse, an understandable confusion about the name of the place, and . . . human nature, I daresay.’ He had the air of regret one might expect in a minister who sees so much of it. ‘When the news broke that the archaeologists were coming, decent God-fearing folk started barring their doors and demanding blessings and goodness knows what else. I had to preach on it more than once, and even in the kirk pews I saw a few stubborn looks thrown back at me.’
I could imagine. I have long thought that Hindustanis with their endless gods would feel quite at home in Scotland with the blasphemous jumble of saints, fairies, charms and omens which seemed to trouble neither priest nor congregation ever a jot.
‘You see then, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, ‘it is not really a surprise to find that a faction of my parishioners is willing to whip up a ghoulish fantasy about the next thing to come along. Willing to believe, that is, that our dark stranger is not of this world.’
‘I still think it’s very odd,’ I insisted, ‘but it might play into our hands. You see, if everyone half believes the dark stranger is some kind of phantom they might well ignore any clue that doesn’t fit. They will have been very interested in his snakiness and his ability to fly over walls and not at all concerned, for instance, with such mundane facts as where he flew from or what kind of boots he had on. Do you see?’
Mr Tait nodded.
‘That makes a good deal of sense, Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘A rationalist, I see.’
‘In this instance, I better had be, don’t you think?’ I countered, although one would not care to be accused of anything quite so cold as rationalism in the general way of things ‘So,’ I concluded, ‘leaving aside the exasperating Mrs Hemingborough, I have the three girls from the spring to talk to and then the farmer’s wife from the summer.’
Mr Tait screwed up his eyes in concentration and began to count them off on his fingers.
‘Elspeth McConechie, the Palmers’ dairy maid, was the first,’ he said. ‘You’ll find her at work this afternoon at the Palmers’ place: Easter Luckenlaw Farm. Then Annie Pellow. A Largo lass. She works in the kitchen at the Auld Inn in Colinsburgh but she lodges here with Mrs Kinnaird
. The house on the green nearest the pillar-box. And the third one was Molly . . . I forget her surname . . . but she’s up at Luck House. Maid of all work, near enough.’
‘Luckenlaw House, do you mean?’ I said. ‘In that case I think I saw her this morning.’
‘You would have,’ said Mr Tait. ‘There’s just her most days now. Heaven knows how they run the place. There were a dozen indoor servants before the war.’
‘And then nobody for two months and then the farmer’s wife?’ I prompted. ‘Mrs . . . ?’
‘Young Mrs Fraser,’ said Mr Tait. ‘From Balniel Farm down to the main road. She came straight to me, frightened out of her wits. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting her to tell you all about it.’
‘And then just one month of peace before Mrs Hemingborough,’ I finished up. ‘Bafflingly not frightened out of her wits by it and very unlikely ever to give me the time of day again, I’m afraid.’ Mr Tait said nothing. ‘I even wondered if she knew who it was and didn’t want to drop him in it.’ Mr Tait was silent once more. ‘Or perhaps Jessie Holland was not telling the truth after all. Perhaps Mrs Hemingborough stumbled and dropped her bundle and Jessie’s imagination supplied the rest. Except, of course, Vashti Howie’s sighting certainly does back Jessie up. Oh, bother it,’ I said, rising from the table and smacking down my napkin. ‘I refuse to be fuddled by this. I shall put Mrs Hemingborough and her mysteries out of my mind in hopes that when I get to the answer it will shed light on her extraordinary behaviour too.’ Mr Tait did not look at all convinced by my sudden optimism and I could hardly fault him for that but in truth I really was buoyed up by the prospect before me. If only I could keep my thoughts firmly on the facts and put aside all the nonsense I should surely prevail. I would start at Easter Luckenlaw Farm, where Elspeth would be in the dairy; I would take in the refreshingly normal Mrs Fraser and then hope to catch Mrs Kinnaird’s lodger in the pub kitchen at Colinsburgh. I did not see quite how I might organise a trip to Luckenlaw House to talk to the Howies’ maid but I had more than enough for one afternoon already and I had promised Hugh to be home for a late dinner, so she would have to keep.
Bury Her Deep Page 8
