‘And didn’t you say that your dairy maid’s mistress, right back at the start, seemed reluctant to let her talk to you? What was her name, Dandy? Where was she from? And have you ever had the chance to view her husband’s figure?’
‘Steady on,’ I said. ‘Our suspects are multiplying most intemperately.’
‘But you did say there were a few of them there at the graveside last night. And we already thought the husbands might have ganged up together.’
‘Did we?’
‘Well, I did. If half a dozen men are all out on the same night and keeping quiet about it, the simplest explanation is that they’re all doing the same thing.’
‘But their wives are members,’ I pointed out.
‘A bluff!’ said Alec. ‘The wives join up so that if anyone suspects their husbands someone will say, “But their wives are members.” Don’t you see?’
‘And Mrs Hemingborough was attacked.’
‘Another bluff! A corker of a bluff. This is it. I’m sure of it. Now, how many are there altogether? Who lives at the other farms? They do begin to swim in front of the eyes after a while, don’t they?’
‘Not if you have,’ I said, fishing in my pocket again and drawing out the bundle of papers I had stuffed in there before leaving the manse, ‘a handy pocket sketch map.’ Alec leaned forward as I unfolded it.
‘Working round from the village,’ I said, ‘there’s Hinter Luck, where the wife denied the attack and the wiry husband shouted at Miss Lindsay; Easter Luck, where Mrs Palmer put on a decent hundred yard dash to keep me away from Elspeth in the dairy and Mr Palmer remains to be seen. And then on the other side, Wester Luck where Mrs Torrance stood in the lane and denied to a woman who practically brought her up that the attack happened.’
‘Mrs Torrance!’ said Alec. ‘What did you say about her home life, Dandy? She married a young man from a different village in the spring.’
‘My goodness,’ I said. ‘Yes, perhaps young Drew Torrance from Ladybank way is not that nice after all. And in fact, Mrs Gow hinted that he had been giving his wife some kind of trouble although she wouldn’t say what.’
‘Any more?’ said Alec. ‘Not that we need any more.’ He drew himself up and I recognised the superior look he gets when he is about to lecture me. ‘It’s just as well I didn’t listen to you telling me there was nothing for me to do here, Dandy, because—’
I waved my hand to try to get him to shut up while I studied my map again.
‘I’ve never been right round the top of the law,’ I said, ‘but up there somewhere are Over Luck where the pooh-poohing Mrs McAdam and her name-calling husband reside. He can’t be the stranger because he’s simply elephantine – I pity the dry stone dyke he clambers over – but he might be protecting the stranger, for he has relations everywhere, or at least his wife does. Mrs Muirhead is one, and Sergeant Doolan’s wife and there might be others. And that leaves . . . Oh my goodness, Alec, Luckenlaw Mains.’
‘The home of a young, snaky-figured man who lives alone and is known to walk around at night for no good reason,’ said Alec. I was nodding, marvelling at the way it had all fallen into place. Then the bubble popped.
‘No, that’s wrong,’ I said. ‘Remember Molly said it wasn’t him.’
‘But it’s her word alone,’ said Alec. ‘And you did think she was less than certain.’
‘True. What a pity Elspeth was too terrified to join us.’
‘Terrified of what, though? Perhaps her mistress has that young dairy maid completely under her thumb and had warned her not to say Jock Christie was guilty.’
‘That would explain why Mr McAdam was so concerned to get Jockie out of jail,’ I said. ‘If they were all in it together and Jock was doing the dirty work for them.’
‘Jock or Drew Torrance or Mr Palmer or even Mr Hemingborough.’
‘Maybe they take it in turns,’ I said. ‘Maybe the stranger is not the same man each time. Well! I knew they were pillars of the parish – Mr Tait and his farming families, you know – but if we’re right, they’ve taken rather more on themselves than any church has a right to expect.’
‘And does Mr Tait know, do you think?’ Alec asked me.
‘Of course not, goose,’ I said. ‘Mr Tait employed me to find out. I don’t look forward to telling him, I must say. He’s very fond of them all, and he wouldn’t hear a word against young Christie before.’
‘We need to do more than tell him,’ said Alec. ‘We need to prove it to him. I mean, there must be something. A man can’t do what the stranger has done and not make at least one mistake along the way.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘He seems to have been extraordinarily lucky so far.’
‘Catching him red-handed would be best of all,’ Alec said. His eyes glittered at the prospect, as though it were some kind of adventure. All very well for Alec: the stranger was no threat to men.
‘Hm,’ I said. ‘By all means, lie in wait for him, but we must stop him from doing any real harm – we could not loose the girls and ladies into the night like bait.’
‘The girls are safe enough,’ said Alec idly. ‘And the young wives too, don’t you think?’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Alec slowly. ‘I spoke without thinking, only if you were making a bet who would you think he’d go for next? Three girls, three wives, two mothers and then what?’ I swallowed hard, a sickly realisation spreading through me. This was the pattern I had almost seen for myself the evening before. ‘Come Christmas time,’ Alec went on, ‘I’d say “Watch out, Grandma.”’
‘But that’s ghastly,’ I said. ‘A deliberate pattern, all in threes, is not just wicked and nasty, it’s . . . it’s insane. It’s as though he’s playing them at their own game.’
‘Yes,’ said Alec. ‘Ghastly and insane. Much like digging up a body and carting it off. Nothing about this case speaks much to the nobility of the human spirit really, does it, Dan?’
15
Alec was all business and bustle, planning his investigations of the wandering farmers, but I rather thought I should put in an appearance back at Gilverton, and I decided to break news of my departure to the Taits that very day. Mr Tait, however, foiled my plan.
‘You seem in excellent spirits,’ I said, when we assembled for tea. He had regained his colour and all of his buoyancy since the morning.
‘I am,’ he cried. ‘I’ve had a tremendous idea, you see.’
Lorna and I waited expectantly.
‘I’m going to organise a visit to the chamber in the Lucken Law.’ This was declaimed with a triumphant flourish. ‘I think I’m being overly squeamish in keeping it shut up this way,’ he went on. ‘In fact, I think we should set an example to the village – don’t you, Lorna dear? – and start to treat it as the ancient curiosity it is. We should, we really should, put all the more unfortunate associations behind us.’
I was stumped for something to say. Right now, when what he called ‘the more unfortunate associations’ were being ripped from their resting place and spirited away, it seemed the very last moment to begin treating the chamber as a tourist attraction. On the other hand, I was agog to see it.
‘I’m thinking of forming a little party,’ Mr Tait said. ‘Tomorrow afternoon perhaps for, if we don’t go before the winter sets in, it will be cruelly cold and we shall have to wait until the spring.’
‘A party?’ I asked faintly.
‘Yourself of course and the Howies – as the first family of the neighbourhood they are due the honour. Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum perhaps, for they are keen scholars of local history although incomers both.’
‘Captain Watson would surely be interested too,’ said Lorna predictably.
‘Indeed,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I have yet to meet this Captain Watson, but if he has an interest in the arts then he will certainly want to see the place. And if he is to be included perhaps we should make sure and ask the Miss Mortons too. I fear their noses a
re in a way to be out of joint over the warmth of the Captain’s welcome, Lorna.’
Lorna looked uncomfortable at that.
‘By all means, Father,’ she said. ‘The Miss Mortons must be asked along, but they won’t come tomorrow.’ She turned to me. ‘They go to the Episcopal church, Mrs Gilver, and they’re never home before tea on a Sunday, because it’s three buses.’
‘I keep telling them they’re more than welcome to join my little flock,’ said Mr Tait, ‘but their uncle’s a bishop, you know.’
‘Father!’ said Lorna.
‘Och, I’m just teasing,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Of course it’s their adherence to the Episcopalian principle that’s worth the three buses and not the snob value of their uncle at all. Of course it is.’ And winking at me, he took a hearty bite out of his scone. ‘That’s settled then. You could telephone around this evening, Lorna, if you like.’
‘I will,’ she said. ‘Although of course Miss Lindsay and Captain Watson are not on the phone, so I’ll just step over and tell them about it after tea.’
And from the moment that stepping over to Captain Watson’s appeared on the agenda, Lorna seemed to put the whole of teatime into a higher and rather frantic gear, urging us to accept more tea before our cups were half finished and splitting scones to butter while we were still savouring the one before, until finally her father furnished her with an exit cue.
‘I don’t want to hurry you away from the fireside, Lorna dear,’ he said, ‘but if you’re going to call at the schoolhouse and Ford Cottage, you had perhaps better do it sooner than later. Captain Watson I cannot answer for, but Miss Lindsay goes in for high tea, does she not, and this might be your only chance to catch her without disturbing a meal.’
He had hardly time to get all of this out before Lorna was up, patting vaguely at her hair and excusing herself to me.
‘Dear Lorna,’ said Mr Tait once she had gone. ‘She seems very taken with this mysterious Captain. What did you make of him, Mrs Gilver?’
‘I believe he is very “advanced” in his art,’ I said carefully. I felt a bit of a heel, but someone had to arrange a few mattresses so that poor Lorna could fall onto something soft when the end came. ‘So one does wonder whether he might not be equally “advanced” in his life.’
‘But then he is a Captain,’ said Mr Tait, reasonably enough. ‘He cannot be quite lost to the “left bank” surely. And given the poet, it seems that Lorna has a yen for romantic types.’ He roused himself – he had been staring into the fire – and smiled at me. ‘Than which there are many worse things, don’t you agree? I cannot set my face against every young man within ten miles.’
‘I didn’t know you had set your face against any,’ I said, matching his jocular tone with my own.
‘Well, it didn’t come to that,’ he said, more serious again. ‘But we cannot help steering our children towards calm waters, no matter what our own lives may have given us to bear.’ The only sense I could make of that mystifying statement was that some young clergyman had made faint advances towards Lorna and her father had headed him off, but it did not seem all that likely. One could imagine a coal miner or a circus acrobat wanting a different kind of life for his daughter than washing overalls or bringing up five children in a caravan but surely a minister’s daughter could not be said to have fallen short of her father’s hopes by becoming a minister’s wife.
‘You’ll see soon enough,’ said Mr Tait. ‘When those boys of yours start to introduce young ladies to you at dances you’ll find that not a one of them ever seems quite good enough in your eyes even if everyone you know is whispering at what a match it would be and urging you to give it your blessing. You’ll see.’
I smiled, convinced that he was right. I am no soppy, clinging mother to my boys, far from it, but already at the few parties where I have seen them standing silent and awkward, surrounded by giggling little misses in ringlets, I have felt a strong urge to sweep one up under each arm and take them home.
‘Your feelings do you great credit as a warm-hearted father,’ I said, ‘but if I might talk to the meenister and no’ the man for a moment: I haven’t had a chance to ask you about last night.’ Mr Tait stiffened visibly. ‘I am here to help you, Mr Tait. You must let me help you with this or at the very least tell me why not, for I cannot understand why you won’t take me into your confidence. Really, I cannot.’
‘I have dealt with the matter,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I have no need of your help, although I thank you most sincerely for the offer.’
‘Dealt with the matter?’ I said. ‘How?’
‘She has been laid to rest in another parish, where none of the parishioners know and she won’t be disturbed again.’
‘And do you have any idea who it was who removed her? You must have or how did you know where to look to find her.’
Mr Tait sighed as though, with the sigh, he was trying to heave the sorrow of a lifetime out of him.
‘My parishioners are good people,’ he said, ‘but they are old-fashioned and superstitious like people anywhere, and eager to lay the blame for their misfortunes anywhere but where it belongs.’
‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘There is a marked reluctance to blame the attacks by the stranger on the stranger, for instance. But on the whole, I’d say laying blame is not a feature of the Luckenlaw folk at all. A remarkable stoicism seems very much more to the fore.’
‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ said Mr Tait.
‘Oh, surely you’ve noticed,’ I said. ‘Mrs Hemingborough’s quiet tidying up of her feathers was the least of it. Wells drying up, parasites in the earth, blight in the air, a house lost to fire and they take it all in their stride. “What’s for you won’t go by you,” they say. If I’ve heard that once in the last weeks I’ve heard it a dozen times.’ Mr Tait looked rather thunderstruck at this for some reason.
‘You seem to have got to the heart of things in short order,’ he said. ‘But I suppose that’s what you’re here for, eh? And you’re right, of course, there is a strain of that thinking running through my flock, but it’s not in everyone.’
‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve noticed that too.’
‘Well, you’ll have no trouble believing me, that some of the others, some of my parishioners less stocial, as you put it, more superstitious and – although I should not speak harshly of them for they are good souls really – more simple-minded, thought that if trouble came from taking the poor girl out of the law, then trouble would go if they undid what was done . . .’
‘And put her back again?’ I said.
‘Of course,’ said Mr Tait. ‘It was wicked and wrong, that goes without saying, but it has a kind of sense to it.’
‘It’s even worse than I was imagining,’ I said. ‘Mr Tait, how can you say these are good people? How can you call this mere superstition? They sound as though they have given their souls to the devil. It sounds like . . . Well, I hesitate to say it in case you laugh or order me away from the house, but it sounds like witchcraft to me.’ Mr Tait neither laughed nor took me by the collar and frogmarched me out of the manse, but just nodded as though what I had said was a mild notion that he could take or leave, but which caused him no upset.
‘And if it is witchcraft, then I think I know who is behind it.’ At that, he opened his eyes very wide and stared at me, his face growing solemn.
‘It’s the Rural,’ I said. ‘The SWRI. And I can prove it too.’ Mr Tait’s mouth twitched and his eyes had started dancing again.
‘I’m not joking,’ I said. ‘Their badge – the brooch they all wear – is called the witch’s heart.’
At that, Mr Tait threw back his head and let out a peal of sustained laughter loud enough to set the pendulum in the mantel clock humming along with him.
‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘The witch’s heart, quite so. But you have got the wrong end of the stick, I’m afraid. The witch’s heart keeps witches away.’
‘What?’ I said, wondering how much of an improvement on my fir
st suspicions that could really be.
‘It was given as a love token by departing sweethearts, to keep the loved one safe from harm. Why, I gave one to my own wife when we were courting. Lorna wears it now.’
‘I see,’ I said, blushing furiously. ‘But why was it chosen as the Lucken Law Rural badge?’
‘No, the whole federation has this same one. There was a competition, you know, and our dear Miss Lindsay, who was a member of the Glamis branch back then, actually helped to draw the winning design.’
‘Gosh, how exciting,’ I said, and I hoped that my tone matched my words rather than the sickly flood of shame which was spreading through me. ‘And tell me,’ I went on for I have never sought to spare myself the pain of humiliation when it is deserved, ‘what does it say on the blue banner across the heart shape? I couldn’t decipher it.’ I steeled myself to hear exactly how blameless and pure my so-called coded symbols might turn out to be.
‘For Home and Country,’ said Mr Tait, confirming my worst fears. ‘And who could object to that? Witchcraft indeed!’ I felt his enjoyment of my mistake was beginning to shade into rudeness, but I managed to keep smiling as though still enjoying the joke. ‘So called by those who fear its power, Mrs Gilver,’ he went on, and at last I understood that he was not harping on my blunder, but was mounting a little hobby-horse of his own. ‘But I am a man of God and because of that I fear nothing. I find it better just to nod at “the old ways” if I pass them. That’s what I call it – the old ways, for that’s all it is. The midsummer bonfires and the honoured loaves of Lammas Day. Why, I’m sure your own lovely home is full of holly and mistletoe every Christmas time and that you rolled an egg every spring of your girlhood, didn’t you?’
I nodded, conceding the point, but I was only half listening, my brain whirring round. If the bones of the girl were not removed by Mr Tait’s devout busybodies after all, but were taken back to the law by villagers more in thrall to the ‘old ways’, and he did not know who exactly it was who moved them, then . . .
Bury Her Deep Page 23
