‘I can’t see it,’ I said. ‘He’s taking quite another tack – going around pounding on doors, clothed in righteousness. I don’t think he would skulk about too. He’s far too full of his own rectitude to think he would have to.’
‘Jock Christie, then,’ said Alec. ‘It must be. He skulks about at night, and he’s a single man of good prospect who has not managed to attract a wife – this in a village well served for spinsters. So there must be something off about him. And then there’s the fact that two sensible people visiting his farm in broad daylight both came over all of a tremble.’
‘But you haven’t met him, darling,’ I protested. ‘I have and even through the bars of a jail cell he didn’t seem the slightest bit evil or creepy. Whatever the nasty atmosphere is at the Mains or Luckenheart or whatever we should call it I don’t think it’s emanating from the farmer. And we know it wasn’t him because Molly, even with an over-zealous police sergeant breathing down her neck, said so. I suppose he might have been one of those digging in the graveyard that night – although I can’t see why – but there were at least three of them and probably more.’
‘And you glimpsed them and hared off to get me,’ said Alec. ‘I wish you’d stopped to watch for a bit and worked out who they were, Dan.’
‘I like that!’ I said. ‘It was pitch black.’
‘It was a clear night, actually,’ said Alec.
‘At the dark of the moon,’ I went on. ‘Pitch black, there were tree branches in the way and it was all by candlelight.’
‘Well, anyway,’ said Alec, not very graciously. ‘Returning to practicalities, I think our best plan remains to catch the stranger at it, as we said.’
‘While making sure that no one else is attacked,’ I said firmly. ‘I will not send the good women of the Rural in like lambs to the slaughter and I’m not budging on that no matter what.’ I folded my arms and shook my head as he started protesting. ‘No. Give it up, darling. I’m adamant. Mrs Muirhead has been through mental torments since it happened to her and I’m not taking the chance that November’s lucky winner will happen to be a sturdy unshakable soul and not someone with enough troubles already who’ll be badly upset by it. With that proviso, though, by all means.’
‘Agreed then,’ said Alec. ‘And I’m sure enough about Christie – no matter what you say – to make him my target. I shall lie in wait for him. But I’ll have to move pretty smartly, Dan, because in the earlier part of the evening – wait for it! – I’m going to be at the Rural, just like you. I forgot to say earlier. I’m going to do a painting demonstration before your budget talk. What do you think of that?’
‘Lorna finally twisted your arm?’
‘With the Miss Mortons egging her on. They said they might even rejoin just to see me.’
‘Did you ever find out why they left?’ I asked him. ‘It’s been puzzling me what offended them, because none of the obvious reasons will do. They weathered the famous July meeting – and how I wish I could get to the bottom of that! – and they escaped the attentions of you-know-who. So why did they suddenly take umbrage? They’re as bad as Annette, suddenly giving up on her beau. There’s a woeful streak of caprice running through the Luckenlaw spinsters, Alec, I tell you.’
‘No, the Miss Mortons weren’t being capricious,’ said Alec. ‘It was Miss McCallum that did it. They were quite happy, they told me, waiting patiently while the great and the good filled the programme in the first few months, but when it got to Miss McCallum and her crochet hook being put in front of them their pride was bruised black and blue.’
‘Oh yes, I can see that,’ I said laughing and then I stopped laughing as an idea began to take shape deep inside me. ‘Alec, we’ve got it!’ I cried. ‘We’ve got something anyway. Listen. No one would suddenly be insulted by what she had formerly accepted unless it put her in the way of some new injury.’
‘Hmm,’ said Alec. ‘Not as pithy a revelation as “Eureka!”, Dan. What are you talking about?’
‘Annette Martineau. She gave her fancy man – Fraser – his marching orders all of a sudden in May. Her mother came home to find her weeping buckets because Fraser once again had not seen her home. Now why would she suddenly be so upset?’
‘May?’ said Alec, trying to remember. ‘May?’
‘When the stranger, or so we thought, was unaccountably hiding in a coal shed instead of running across fields, and smelled of boring old whisky, and did much more than usual to his victim.’
‘My God!’ said Alec.
‘You were right about Molly embellishing,’ I said. ‘Only you didn’t go far enough. She made up the whole thing from start to finish. The dark stranger attacked Annette Martineau in May.’
‘Yes!’ said Alec, and then his shoulders slumped. ‘But so what?’
‘So what? Oh come on, darling, catch up.’
Alec stared back at me for a moment or two further and then gave a yelp and all but bounced out of his chair.
‘The jail cell!’ he yelled. ‘Molly couldn’t say who it was or who it wasn’t if her life was at stake!’
‘It’s Jock Christie,’ I said. ‘At last we know.’
‘And next full moon I’m going to nab him and give him two thick ears, two black eyes and a fat lip.’
We sat back and beamed at one another for a while, until presently Alec began to check his watch and rumble about making a move before Lorna Tait came home for luncheon and collared him.
‘Poor Lorna,’ I said. ‘She’s actually a very nice girl. Mrs McAdam didn’t seem much of a fan, but I think it was just jealousy.’
‘Of what?’ said Alec, standing and stretching and arranging his lavender scarf as he caught sight of himself in the glass.
‘Her father’s indulgence of her, chiefly,’ I said. We were in the hall now, and Alec, getting back into character as Captain Watson the artist, turned and took my hand, bowing over and brushing his lips against it.
‘Eyes peeled, ears pricked, Dandy, and I shall see you anon.’
‘For the last time,’ I said. ‘I don’t need to be told to keep my eyes peeled. It was dark. There were tree branch— Look.’ I grasped his arm and dragged him across the hall, up the stairs and along to the end of the passageway. ‘I couldn’t see anything,’ I said firmly, pointing down to the kirkyard.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Alec. ‘There’s quite a good gap if you ask me. I can see the headstone. It’s that one between the Celtic cross and the angel with all the vines, isn’t it?’ I looked down at it and saw that he was right.
‘Ah, but I wasn’t at this window,’ I said. ‘It was shuttered. I was in here.’ I turned the handle on the late Mrs Tait’s bedroom door, but it wouldn’t open. ‘That’s odd,’ I said. ‘It was open before.’
‘I believe you,’ said Alec, archly.
‘It was!’ I insisted. ‘Why on earth would a bedroom be open at night and locked in the daytime?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ said Alec, still very arch and most annoying.
‘Oh, I can,’ I said, wincing suddenly. ‘I must have disturbed something. It’s Lorna’s mother’s room, Alec, complete with prayer book on the pillow and a floral tribute. And now they know I was in there. I wonder if it was Mr Tait or Lorna who found out? Oh, I could just shrivel and die!’
‘Hm,’ said Alec. ‘If you think that’s embarrassing, how about this? Here comes Lorna.’ He pointed out of the window and I saw Lorna Tait, cloth-covered shopping basket over one arm, almost all the way up the drive and heading for the front door.
‘And if I’m not much mistaken,’ said Alec, ‘that’s a basket full of sustaining treats for nice Captain Watson. Only he wasn’t there when she went to call on him because he’s upstairs with Mrs Gilver who seemed like such a respectable soul. And in a minister’s house too.’
I fled along the corridor to my bedroom and was safely inside when the front door opened. With my ear to the crack, I heard Lorna’s voice raised in surprise as Alec’s tread descended the stairs.
17
And so all we had to do was wait. Alec had to wait at Luckenlaw, painting like fury in the few short hours of daylight whenever it was not raining, and trying to engage anyone who happened along upon the topic of folklore, moonlight, good and bad luck, ancient burial customs, and anything else that seemed at all likely to uncover the identity of the grave-diggers. I had to wait at Gilverton, drafting and redrafting my wretched talk, heaps of household manuals spread around me and so many spoiled sheets being thrown onto the fire that the housemaid began to clear the ash twice a day.
Mrs Tilling tried to help me, reaching back into her memories of a country childhood for hedgerow recipes and telling me about such esoteric matters as sealing the stalk of a stored pear with a blob of wax to stop it softening, feeling that the truth of the saying ‘Waste not, want not’ made all such hints perfectly relevant to the budget in the end.
‘But really and truly, madam,’ she concluded, ‘when it comes to the hedgerow, the wild fruit is so tart you can use twice the sugar to get the jelly made, and you’d have been better with a nice basket of raspberries from the farm. And even if you did manage to get a squirrel pie over your back teeth, you’d want such a treat afterwards for pudding it’s hardly worth it. I’d ask Miss Grant, madam, for it’s always seemed to me that most of the extravagance downstairs at Gilverton goes on in that there laundry room. Did you know your lavender water comes from London? When the south wall is bursting with it all summer long? No, I thought not.’
When I asked Grant about economy she blanched, suspecting an end to the glorious spell of plenty she had been enjoying of late, and when I assured her that my interest was academic she only replied that she had lived in theatrical digs with insects the size of rats and rats the size of cats when her family was touring and once she had put that life behind her she had thought it best to remember nothing at all.
‘Except for a Brillo in a mousehole,’ she said. ‘That works wonders – they don’t like the taste.’
‘I don’t think my audience would be flattered if I weighed in with tips on seeing off vermin,’ I replied, ‘but thank you for trying.’
Alec kept me up to date, with daily postings from the kiosk on the green.
‘I do like the old boy,’ he said. ‘Mr Tait, I mean. He has a very dry wit for a parson. I only wish he had passed some of it on.’
‘No one could call poor Lorna dry, right enough,’ I said, laughing. ‘Are you coping?’
‘Oh, fairly well,’ Alec said. ‘There have been a couple of ticklish moments, chiefly when the Howies are on the scene. I’m sure Niccy Howie has seen through me, you know. She keeps giving these tremendous guffaws whenever I talk about Art, and she seems to find the Lorna angle highly diverting. But that’s by the by. What I do need to tell you is that another one of those farmers’ wives has been poking around the manse. Lorna told me.’
‘Details?’ I said, with a pencil at the ready to make notes.
‘Very few,’ said Alec. ‘Lord, I wish those girls would shut up with their endless skipping and go home. Can you hear them?’
‘Just,’ I said. ‘I thought they were charming, actually. Although the librettist tends to the macabre. And it’s just as bad here with the twittering and squalling all day. Hugh might be convinced that his little bird tables are instrumental in turning the place into a botanical paradise, but I notice he hasn’t plonked one right outside his window. Never mind that, though. What did Lorna tell you?’
‘She asked my advice, actually. She thinks her father is having a dress made for her for her birthday. She says she found Mrs Torrance raking through her wardrobe and the woman wouldn’t say what she was doing, which threw Lorna into a flutter, because the Howie ladies are organising her entire outfit and she thought her father knew that, and doesn’t want to hurt his feelings.’
‘And what are you supposed to do about it?’ I said. ‘She is a very peculiar girl in some ways.’
‘I was supposed to have a view on it, as a man, you know. Mind you when she said that, Niccy Howie did another one of her snorts and Vashti joined her.’
‘Hmm,’ I said, shrinking from telling Alec that the Howies thought him much more able to debate the dressmaking than to give the man’s-eye view. ‘Now tell me, have you managed yet to track down Jockie Christie?’
Alec gave a mighty sigh, which caused a great deal of buzzing and fluffing on the line.
‘I have,’ he said. ‘I’ve been up there painting that stairway thingummy for days – Cubist, don’t you know, which I thought would lend itself to stairs but it’s jolly difficult, actually – and by the end I was more depressed than I’ve been in my life, except for the trenches. But I don’t think the gloom is coming from him. I like him.’
‘He’s still our first suspect, isn’t he?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ said Alec. ‘I haven’t uncovered anything material. It’s just that I like him. He’s a miner’s son from somewhere called Lochgelly, got a scholarship to grammar school, worked after school to buy his own books and uniform since his family were having none of it, decided he wanted to work on the land, got himself a scholarship to agricultural college, came out top of his class, and presented himself in answer to the Howies’ advertisement. A really good sort. Knows no end of impressive stuff about soil improvement. I almost made a huge gaffe and asked him for advice, thinking about Dunelgar, you know, before I remembered that Captain Watson doesn’t have any soil to improve.’
‘You’re getting as bad as Hugh,’ I told him. ‘It’s hardly a classic character reference, darling.’
In fact, the modern farming method angle was inclined to make me suspect him more. I had come across someone in the past who knew rather too much about flora and fauna than was normal and he had certainly been what my sons called, with great poetic economy, ‘a stinker’. And did not some of these advanced types bury hollow horns full of sheep’s wool in the corners of their crop fields, and pay a great deal of attention to the waxing and waning of the moon?
As the November moon waxed fatter and fatter in the tingling cold sky, I readied myself as best I could to face both my public and the showdown Alec and I had planned for afterwards. He was to open with his demonstration of painting and I was to follow up after tea, leaving him time to get to Luckenheart Farm and watch for the emergence of Jockie Christie before the ladies ventured home.
On the night, our plan – or my plan, rather, for Alec was keener on the interception than on the protection of the matrons – was all the better served by the fact that there were a few familiar faces missing from the schoolroom. Mrs Hemingborough was nowhere to be seen, clearly happy to risk missing any of the chicken feather poultices that her last month’s audience might have brought along for her inspection. Mrs Palmer, Mrs Torrance and Mrs McAdam too were notable by their absence.
‘Strange,’ said Lorna. ‘Mrs McAdam never said anything this afternoon.’
‘You saw her today?’ I asked and Lorna looked troubled.
‘She was upstairs in the manse again,’ said Lorna. ‘Doing whatever it is they’re doing. Oh, I hope it’s not a frock, Mrs Gilver,’ said Lorna. ‘The one Nicolette and Vashti have got me is such a dream of a thing. It would crush me not to wear it.’
‘What a write-up, my darling,’ said a drawling voice from behind us and Nicolette Howie bent down and clashed her hot, painted cheek against Lorna’s and then mine. ‘I’m very glad you like it.’
‘Rather thin on the ground tonight, aren’t we?’ said Vashti, looking around the room.
‘We are,’ said Nicolette, following her gaze. ‘That’s to say, the senior members have resisted the programme but there
are plenty of girls. Looking rather well turned out too.’ She winked at me.
‘I’m sorry to tell you, Dandy,’ said Vashti, ‘that I rather suspect they are budding artists more than domestic economists in the making, don’t you?’ I smiled ruefully, for I agreed.
At that moment Alec arrived, carrying an enormous canvas that he only just managed to fit under his arm and hold onto with the very tips of his fingers. He was wearing the smock, which produced a terrific hoot from Niccy Howie (the first of many), and the cavalry boots, with bright red woollen stockings pulled up and folded over, and he had a few paintbrushes stuck behind each ear. Miss Lindsay fussed around getting him set up in a favourable spot and spreading waxed paper for him to chuck his rags onto in between wiping his brushes. Miss McCallum sat lowering from under her sandy brows, obviously deploring the skittish air that the presence of a personable young man had brought to the proceedings.
I had been unable to speak to Alec alone since my arrival back at Luckenlaw that afternoon, and now he was trying to communicate something to me here in this crowded room. He rubbed ostentatiously at one eye, opening it and closing it repeatedly – or in other words, winking – and then he put a hand up to his head and quite deliberately pulled out one of his hairs and put it into his smock pocket.
‘I think the poor lamb’s nervous,’ said Lorna, clearly itching to get up and go to comfort him. I thought he would be even more nervous to have heard himself called a poor lamb.
Then Miss Lindsay clapped her hands for order and the November meeting of the Luckenlaw SWRI was under way. First came a prayer for Armistice Day; the motto was: Punctuality is the politeness of princes – chosen rather pointedly after a pair of girls had come in at the last gasp, giggling; the competition was a moth-repeller in worked wool; and the social half-hour was to be filled with an entertainment chosen by . . .
‘Our new face, tonight and for one night only,’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘Captain Watson, what’s your pleasure? Singing, dancing, stories or parlour games?’
Bury Her Deep Page 27
