‘But what else could they be doing,’ I said, ‘if not giving one another alibis?’
‘No idea,’ said Alec again. ‘Cards, dice and the demon drink, perhaps, as Mr Black said all along?’
‘And who is the stranger if not one of those five?’
‘Mr Black himself?’ said Alec. ‘Could Mr Fraser be giving his wife the slip?’
‘It could be someone else entirely,’ I concluded. ‘We could be right down at the tail of the snake again.’
We stood there for a moment or two longer, and I for one was feeling rather sheepish, then suddenly I became aware of the night cold creeping into me and shivered audibly.
‘Yes, you run along, Dan,’ said Alec. ‘No point in both of us catching our deaths, is there?’
‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ I said, surprised. ‘What is there to wait here for? All the ladies are safely home now.’
‘I’m not leaving until they do,’ said Alec grimly. ‘I might be able to work out what they’re up to if they’re still talking about it when they come out. Noise carries tremendously well on these icy cold nights, you know. Or maybe I’ll throw caution to the wind – march up, bang on the door and join them. I could always say I was out painting and felt chilly.’
‘I know you’re joking,’ I said. ‘But promise me you won’t do anything reckless.’
‘I promise,’ said Alec. ‘I’m too precious to risk, I know. Now get home for heaven’s sake before your chattering teeth bring them all out to see what the racket is.’
I gave him a quick squeeze for encouragement and warmth and then picked my way back up the drive and along the lane, stepping more cautiously than ever, now that I knew there was a gathering of our best – our only! – suspects just a stone’s throw away. Before long, I could see the bulky outline of my motor car where I had left it at the junction and, clambering back in at last and closing the door softly but firmly behind me, I began my journey, crawling along, scanning the fields as I went, loath still to leave the night and its adventures. After all, Alec had got the glory of working out the rhyme as well as the chills and cramp of waiting to nab the stranger. I could not help but smile when I thought of him standing in the kiosk one of the days after telephoning me, seething with irritation at the incessant chanting and then, all of a sudden, really hearing the words for the first time. I was nearly home now. Nothing stirring at Balniel tonight, just the empty fields, neatly ploughed and looking like candlewick in the moonlight.
Then it happened. Inching along, I saw on the road in front of me what I thought at first was a leaf flapping in the wind. I looked again. It wasn’t a leaf: could it be a glove? I slowed down even further, peering at it in the beam of the headlamps, and it turned its head, showing me two dazzling eyes and a tiny mouth open in a soundless yell. It was a kitten. I was sure of it. And it was in considerable distress of some kind. I stopped the motor car, jumped out and hurried forward.
The kitten, a little tabby scrap, was mewing piteously and struggling in vain to run away, its claws scrabbling at the dirt of the lane. I crouched down beside it and tried to pick it up but I could not move it. I pulled at it and its mewing rose to a miniature squeak.
‘What on earth . . . ?’ I said, trying to sort out its paddling legs and still its writhing. And then I touched its tail, wet and sticky, finding something hard and flat which should not be there. Somehow it had got stuck under a piece of wood litter embedded in the ground. I picked at it, confused, and then took a closer look.
‘No,’ I breathed. ‘No!’
At each end of the piece of wood, no more than a splinter really, there was something hard and shiny, like a button. This was no piece of wood litter caught under a stone; someone had nailed it to the road, with the kitten’s tail trapped, bleeding, underneath it.
‘But when?’ I said. ‘I can’t have driven past you on the way down.’ I was desperately trying to get my fingers under a nail head to prise it out. ‘And why? Why in heaven’s name would anyone do that?’
As soon as I asked the question I knew the answer and, as I rose, I felt no surprise to see the dark figure, rippling over the field towards me.
I could have run. I could have got into the motor car and locked the door, and yet I stood there. I should like to think it was courage. Hindsight might almost persuade me that it was clear thinking, the idea that the stranger must have emerged from Luckenheart Farm and Alec could not be far behind, that it would be better for the pair of us to catch the stranger in the very act. I am far from sure, though; it certainly did not feel like courage and common sense at the time. He was scaling the dyke now, up on one side and down on the other like a hound, like a panther. I took my hat off and bowed my head, walking away from the writhing kitten, waiting for it to happen, and I think this act of knowing submission must have fuddled him and distracted him from the fact that tonight, for the first time, he was running not into darkness where a tree, bush or building obscured the moon, but right into the glare of my headlamp light.
He was here, reaching out, breathing hotly on me, filling my nostrils with his stink, waxy and vegetative at the same time, familiar and yet strange. He took hold of a handful of hair and pulled. As though the pain had jerked me back to life again, I put my hands around his arms, gripping as hard as I could, and looked up from the black pumps on his feet to the close-fitting black suit of trousers and jersey into the black mask over his face, into the holes where his eyes were glittering. It was then, when I looked into his eyes, that he realised the mistake he had made. He snapped his head round to the lights and hissed with fury, a noise so dreadful that I stumbled back to get away from it and, free of my grasp, he was gone.
The eyes stayed burned into mine. They were not Jock Christie’s eyes; I was sure of it. But I had seen them before. I had seen them tonight.
I crouched back down beside the kitten, which had quietened and was lying still now. My hat was on the road near me and I reached over, took the pin out and dug it under a nail head, slowly easing the shaft out of the ground, bending back the little wooden batten, ignoring the renewed cries.
‘There, there,’ I said, when it was free. ‘There, there. Better now.’ It was bleeding quite astonishingly freely for such a tiny thing and although I wound my handkerchief tightly around its tail it immediately seeped through. It protested when I lifted it, protested even louder when I cradled it close, and I looked around for a gentler way to bear it home. I had always hated that ludicrous Beefeater’s hat, I thought, turning it up and laying the kitten inside it then lifting it like a hammock.
‘Let’s see what the manse servants can do for you,’ I said to it, carrying it back to the car and laying it gently on the seat beside me. ‘What a night. I’m so sorry you had to get caught up in it at such a tender age. You’ve helped a lot – at great cost to your poor tail, of course – but you’ve helped a tremendous lot.’
And so he had. Or she had, for who can say with kittens? People, on the other hand, are easier to tell apart. Perhaps it was the black trousers that had done it – Luckenlaw was a backward kind of place, where the lounging pyjama was yet to make its mark – or perhaps it was the air of brutality and confidence combined, or a feeling, usually reliable enough, that frightening ladies in the night was a man’s game, but they had all got it wrong. The dark stranger was a woman.
18
Which woman, was a question for Alec and me to thrash out together, and no one could have been more surprised than we at where our thrashing led us.
‘Nonsense!’ Alec cried, when I said the name. ‘Snaky, shimmering, gliding over walls and ditches? It can’t be.’ He was still a little disgruntled after his long sojourn in the field hedge at Luckenheart Farm. ‘Ow! What are you planning to do with this thing, Dandy?’ The kitten, its bandaged tail sticking straight out behind it like a tiller, had launched itself at Alec’s trouser leg and now hung there, its ears flat back and its eyes rolling with devilment.
‘I’m taking her home,’ I said. �
��And if you were wearing proper suiting instead of striding about looking like Ali Baba her claws wouldn’t have gone through to the skin. Besides, you’re wrong about the snakiness, Alec dear. It’s because everyone thought he was a man. He was wiry for a man, sinuous for a man. Think about pantomimes or fancy dress parties.’
‘What about them?’ said Alec.
‘Simply how the leanest, lithest man you can imagine looks an absolute hulk when he puts a dress on. Believe me, Alec. We have our culprit.’
‘Even if I can persuade myself about the silhouette,’ he said, ‘I still need convincing. So go on and convince me: Lorna Tait.’
‘Ssh!’ I said, glancing at the door. We were after all in Lorna Tait’s own sitting room. I leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘First of all, now we know it’s a love charm, we have to ask ourselves who is the most lovelorn woman in Luckenlaw? There is a fair selection of spinsters, to be sure, but not many who seem desperate enough to cast spells. Secondly, we already suspected that Mr Tait knew who it was, but didn’t want to make the official discovery. And he kept Lorna in the dark about what I was up to for no very convincing reason, when it comes right down to it. If Lorna is the stranger then all of that makes sense. Mr Tait has been masterminding the whole case like a puppeteer because he wanted his daughter stopped without it all getting out into the open. Consider the scandal – a minister’s daughter dabbling in the occult. No matter what he says about the harmlessness of the old ways, it would be absolutely incendiary. And it explains why he might have tried to stop a romantic entanglement with a young minister, which he once hinted at to me.’
‘I’m not so sure any of that makes sense,’ said Alec. ‘If he wanted Lorna frightened enough to chuck it in, why would he keep your investigation secret from her?’
‘Well,’ I said slowly, ‘maybe that’s not it after all. Maybe he knew what it was all about – the love charm – from the beginning, and knew it was going to run its course and then be over, but he wanted to be able to say he had tried to stop it in case it came out at a later date. He wanted to be able to show that he was not turning a blind eye or even in cahoots with her.’
‘I suppose,’ said Alec.
‘And that’s not all. Remember, dear Alec, how Mrs McAdam, who certainly knows more than she’ll ever say, put Lorna Tait squarely in centre-stage when I spoke to her. She bemoaned the influence of the suffragettes, saying that it was only because they were Lorna’s friends that they were irreproachable in Mr Tait’s opinion. She said much the same about the Howies – that they were pestilential, but they were Lorna’s friends, so they had to be borne.’
‘I’m not sure I understand what that’s got to do with it,’ Alec said. The kitten, having scaled his legs and attained his lap, was now curled up sleeping, with Alec resolutely ignoring it, arms folded above the purring little mound.
‘How you can gush so over a puppy and not be even a bit enchanted by her, I’ll never know,’ I said.
‘When did I gush over a puppy?’ said Alec, shooting a look at my feet where Bunty had settled for a nap, forcing me to sit in a position which would give me cramp any minute.
‘I forgot,’ I said. ‘It’s Barrow who feeds Milly all the treats and titbits. Sorry. Anyway, returning to Mrs McAdam: she thinks Lorna is over-indulged by her father. Do you see?’
‘Sort of,’ said Alec. ‘But how did the smells alert her? Speaking of which, has light dawned about last night’s yet?’ I had described as best I could the waxy, fetid smell of the stranger, but I could still not put my finger on it. ‘It didn’t actually remind you of Lorna in any way?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It reminded me of home.’
‘Home?’
‘Well . . . something very familiar and not particularly pleasant.’
Alec sat for a while, thinking.
‘It was probably Annie Pellow that Mrs McAdam picked up on,’ he said at last. ‘She was the only one of the lot who said there was a smell she couldn’t identify, wasn’t she? Bluebells and cowslips and something else?’
‘But her something else was spicy,’ I reminded him. ‘She thought it was a flower. No one could have believed that stink from last night was a flower. Of the vegetable kingdom perhaps, but not a flower.’
‘Anyway,’ said Alec.
‘Anyway,’ I agreed. ‘Whatever it was that revealed the truth I am convinced that this was the example of Mr Tait indulging Lorna that made Mrs McAdam blow her top. They had been putting it all down to Providence, stoically enduring the attacks – more than enduring, if you think about it, joining up just in time so that they would be the ones who suffered, Mrs Torrance in time for July, all the mothers come September – and then it turns out to have been a lot of silly nonsense that Mr Tait could have quashed if he had just put Lorna over his knee and slippered it out of her.’
‘Very well,’ said Alec, ‘if that’s what was really going on – and it does have some sense to it, I’ll grant you – answer me this. What did they think was going on? Why did they join up in time to have their hair pulled out? Who are “they”, anyway?’
I shook my head, stumped.
‘Just Mr Tait’s ladies,’ I said at last. ‘The first ranks of his parishioners, the inner circle of kirk elders, perhaps. I say, Alec, do you think it could be something as blameless as that that was going at Jock Christie’s house last night? An elders’ meeting? Parish Council?’
‘The minister would be there and it would be at the church,’ said Alec. ‘Not under cover of darkness at the remotest possible farm and all in deepest secret. It can’t be that. Why would you think so?’
‘Well, I noticed that Mr Hemingborough passed the plate around at the Sunday service, that’s all. So he must be the beadle. And remember the beadle has got to be in the know, because he must have seen the mess left behind by all the grave-digging that night.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Alec. ‘And you reckon that the first ladies of the kirk might volunteer to be victims of the stranger just to keep it amongst themselves and avoid a scandal? It doesn’t seem likely that they would go to the trouble when it’s really nothing to do with them.’
‘Oh Alec, in a place like this everything is to do with everyone. Remember how put out Mrs McAdam seemed about the Howies letting Luckenlaw Mains to an outsider? Almost as though she felt personally affected.’
‘Hm,’ said Alec. ‘I have to disagree with her there. I can see that the other four farms belong to Luckenlaw but the Mains has always seemed supernumerary anyway.’
‘Supernumerary?’ I echoed.
‘I’ve always felt it shouldn’t be there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When I’ve been doing my endless painting,’ he said. ‘Think of the map. Over, Hinter, Easter and Wester. With the law in the middle and the manse and kirk at either side of the entrance way. I’ve been painting it as though from an aeroplane, you know – all very throbbing and significant – and that damned fifth farm just mucks the whole thing up.’
‘Do you think a true artist would knock it down and turf it over just to make a tidy picture, then?’ I said, laughing.
Alec laughed too.
‘A true artist would be able to paint the picture so it didn’t look like a lollipop,’ he said.
‘And anyway,’ I told him, ‘five is a far luckier number. It says so in a skipping song, so it must be true.’ I could hear footsteps approaching and in a moment Lorna appeared in the sitting-room doorway. ‘Lorna dear, I’ve just realised,’ I said, ‘we didn’t hear the numbers song last night amongst the others.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Lorna. She looked as serene as a lake on a still evening today, and I took that as proof. Yesterday she would have been put out to see Captain Watson ensconced with me, but this morning, knowing she had her three times three hairs to twist together and pull him to her, she was invincible.
‘One and one make two and two makes true love,’ I reminded her. She smiled again.
‘I don’t think that
is a skipping song,’ she said mildly. ‘Now that I reflect on it, I’m sure it’s something my mother used to sing to me. My father too, once she had passed away. Will you stay and eat with us, Captain Watson?’ Alec nodded. ‘Well, then I’ll just step into the kitchen and make sure there’s enough to go around.’ She leaned over and looked at the sleeping kitten in his lap. ‘Good to see her feeling better, isn’t it, Mrs Gilver? I hope now you’ll forgive yourself for the mishap.’ And she glided out.
‘What did you tell them?’ said Alec, giving the kitten’s head a reluctant nudge with the side of his finger, and setting off a noise like a swarm of angry bees. Even he could not be reminded that the little thing had been nailed to a road and not feel some tenderness.
‘I said I had run over her in my motor car,’ I told him. ‘I don’t suppose she’d have got away with a flattened tail if I really had, but no one has questioned it.’
‘Not even Lorna?’ said Alec. ‘Who knows the truth?’
‘She must imagine,’ I said, ‘that I’m hiding the nasty story from her out of politeness.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Alec. ‘Could she possibly be so calm, if you’re right, if it was her? She’s acting, this morning, as though . . .’
‘The harbour is in sight and the wind’s behind?’ I said. ‘I think that backs my theory up, don’t you? And if it weren’t for the kitten’s tail, I’d almost be inclined to say that it’s run its course and we should just walk away from it.’
‘A minister’s daughter casting spells?’ said Alec, looking rather shocked, for him. ‘Causing such a rumpus that a girl gets dug up from her grave to quiet it down again? How could you walk away from that?’
Viewed that way, I was rather shocked at myself. Perhaps I had been so long at Luckenlaw among the demons and spirits and the talk of the devil, with Mr Tait nodding genially at it all and calling it harmless, that my instincts had deserted me.
Bury Her Deep Page 29
