Now he stood in the changing area corridor, studying the full list of scores from the opening day. At 14 under the Darren Atkinson team had a six-shot lead. Of the twenty-four amateurs in the field, fifteen had handed in completed cards having played out every hole. Skinner saw with satisfaction that in the handicap section his nett 67 put him two shots clear of a Japanese player, off 12, named Hirosaki, while in the scratch calculation, his 74 was one clear of Everard Balliol, an American three-handicapper, and a member of Team Nakamura. He checked its line-up and saw that Mike Morton was among their number, but that he had posted an incomplete card, littered with wasted shots and conceded holes. 'Must have something on his mind,' he muttered to himself with a grim smile.
He stepped out of the clubhouse into the pouring rain, and squelched across to the first tee.
Even in the morning gloom, Sue Kinture shone out like a beacon. She wore a Day-Glo hat and cape and carried a huge umbrella bearing the Witches' Hill name and crest. A tall young man stood beside her wearing weatherproofs and carrying a second umbrella.
`Hello Bob,' she called as he approached. 'This is Joe, from the estate. I thought we could use an extra umbrella-carrier today. Hope it's not against the rules.'
Beside her, Darren Atkinson laughed. 'No Susan, that's OK. No more than fourteen clubs, but as many Witches' Hill umbrellas as you like — especially when there's a chance to flash the logo at a few million television viewers!' She loioed at him with a faint smile, but the downpour seemed to have drenched some of her sparkle.
`Ready for battle then, team?' called Atkinson. 'We're off first today, so the rest of the field will be shooting at us. In these Conditions, the idea is just to get round. Forget all about yesterday and the day before. This is a different golf course today, and you'll need to take a fresh look at every shot.
Whatever your caddies tell you to do, take their word for it and do it.'
He put a hand on Norton Wales's shoulder. 'Today is made for you, friend. So far everyone's been expecting you to be a showbiz clown..
And I haven't let them down! Given them some bloody laughs so far,' said the singer, emphatically.
`So what? Today they'll be saying, "My God, but he's game to be playing in that." They'll cheer every decent shot you play and go "Shame" if you duff one. How about you, Hideo, you OK?'
The heir to the automobile fortune laughed softly. 'You think it doesn't rain on Japanese golf courses? This is nothing for me.' He pointed up at his umbrella, on which the nameMURANO' was emblazoned in huge blue lettering. 'And I can do my advertising too!'
`Bugger this,' said Skinner. 'I should have brought one with a black-and-white check band around it!'
The announcer introduced the team through a PA system which crackled in the rain, and Atkinson stepped up to the tee. He chose a three-wood, rather than the driver which he had used on the earlier rounds. Teeing up his ball, he stood back under his umbrella, which Bravo held aloft until the last possible moment, before booming out a long, high shot which faded in flight along the line of the dogleg. It carried around 260 yards before pitching and pulling up short.
`Remember, Bob,' he said, stepping back amid the applause. 'Give it height off the tee. If you use your driver, tee it high, or the rain will force the ball down. You won't get much run either. Today we're playing target golf.'
Skinner nodded. Normally he detested umbrellas on the golf course, but on this occasion he was glad of Joe, the estate worker, shielding him from the rain as he surveyed his shot. He took out his driver and set the ball as high as he could on the tee, concentrating as hard as he could on keeping his head down and swinging smoothly. The click of the club-face sounded almost damp, and he had trouble in picking the ball up in its flight, but eventually he saw it, soaring high and pitching around 230 yards away, to the right of the fairway, and stopping dead. His sigh of relief was so loud that the television effects microphones picked it up, even above the applause.
He looked over his shoulder and saw Mike Morton, in the gallery less than twenty feet away, glaring towards him from under an umbrella, with a dark, sullen look on his face.
He waved to him as Hideo Murano stepped up to the tee. Enjoy your round when it's your turn, Mike,' he called, with a soft smile. But watch where you put your feet. It's helluva muddy out here!'
Forty-five
‘To think, Inspector Rose, that this was once part of a department store.' He paused, awkwardly. 'But pardon me, you'll barely be old enough to remember those days.'
Maggie laughed. 'Oh no, Mr Wills. My mother used to drag me around Patrick Thomson's every Saturday morning. Usually she didn't buy anything, but it was part of her ritual.
Nowadays, your behavioural psychologists would call it mother/daughter bonding. I just remember girning all the time, because I wanted to be playing with my pals, not looking at school shoes, new lampshades and God knows all what.' She looked nostalgically around Carlyle's Coffee Shop on the North Bridge, where Henry Wills had suggested they should meet. 'I guess this would have been the cosmetics section. Another regular stopping-off point.'
She smiled. 'Rituals don't change, you know. Only their locations. She still drags me out on the odd Saturday morning… except now we go to the Gyle Centre, together with half the folk in South-east Scotland!'
A fresh-faced young waiter appeared at their table, order pad in hand. 'Hello there,' said Wills. 'You're a student, aren't you? Law Faculty, yes?'
`That's right, sir.'
I thought so. May we have a pot of coffee for two, and something self-indulgent for me, an eclair, I think? Miss Rose?'
The Inspector shook her head. 'I wouldn't dare. My wedding dress will be tight enough as it is. That's something else I'm doing for my mother on a Saturday morning. Personally I'd rather get married in uniform!'
The young waiter left a copy of their order on their table and disappeared towards the kitchen. 'You've got a good memory for faces, Mr Wills. You have thousands of students in the University.'
The Registrar smiled at the compliment, and heavy laugh lines creased his eyes. 'I always have had. Every so often I'll see a face I think I recognise, and it'll come to me a day or two later that it was someone I taught twenty years ago. My trouble is that I'm not so good at putting names to the faces.'
He paused. Now, talk of names brings us to Elizabeth Carr. What can we find out about her?
Why don't you begin by telling me about your meeting with the former Lisa Soutar.'
Step by step Rose took him through her visit to Germany, and through Lisa's story. From her briefcase, she produced her copied version of the family tree and handed it to him. He read it eagerly. 'Fascinating,' he said, when he had finished. `Parentage is traced back through the line, until Elizabeth Carr. We are given no clue as to who she is, or why Matilda Tod chose to entrust her story to her.
And what of Matilda Tod herself! The sister and last witness of a doomed woman accused of witchcraft, and rightly accused according to the words of the curse as it is written down.
What an amazing occurrence: to stand history on its head! Our understanding of the witch hunt is one of superstitious persecution of simple, innocent women. Yet here we have Agnes Tod, with the firewood piled around her, declaring, "Yes I'm a witch, and you who are crossing me will suffer for it." And here's something else. This self-proclaimed witch has a sister who is literate, an uncommon attribute in those days, when country people were no better than serfs.
Oh yes, Miss Rose, we must find out all we can about Elizabeth Carr, but Agnes and Matilda Tod are even more important. Who were they? What of their lineage? Who are their descendants, and who else might hold the knowledge behind these letters to the press?
Is there someone else guarding the Devil's altar of Witches' Hill, and are they prepared to kill for it? Doesn't it set your detective's blood tingling?'
Wills's excitement had infected Maggie Rose, in spite of herself. As the young waiter delivered their coffee-pot and cups, she realised that s
he was gripping the table-edge so tightly that her fingers had gone white.
`Realistically,' she said, 'can we find out anything about any of them? After all, we're talking about people who lived four hundred years ago.'
I won't know that until I start to look.'
`Where will you begin?'
Wills poured coffee for each of them. 'I'll begin and probably end at the General Register Office. Registration as we know it today began about a hundred and fifty years ago. Before that records were kept in parishes, fairly informally, and those old records that still exist are stored now in the GRO. Some of them are even computerised… courtesy of the Mormon Church, believe it or not, but that's another story.
I know the staff in New Register House fairly well, so I'll have ready access. It all depends on whether they have records from Longniddry covering the period in which we're interested.
If that is the case, then Lisa's family tree will get us off to a flying start. Elizabeth Carr gave birth in 1623. We can trace back to find her marriage to Tullis and see what that tells us.'
Maggie shook a few grains of salt into her coffee and stirred it. 'If the records are there, how far back will they go?'
‘Far enough, if we're lucky. Many parishes had informal recording going back to the sixteenth century. If that's true of Longniddry, we'll be able to go in search of the Tod sisters, to see what sort of people they were.'
`What d' you mean?'
`Later birth records show the father's occupation. In those days it depended on the whim of the local minister. If we find the Tods' birth records, let's hope that theirs was a stickler for detail:
‘But how will it help us, to know what their father's work was?'
Henry Wills raised his eyebrows. 'Inspector Rose, even today we categorise people by occupation. In those days such things were absolute. The fact that Mr Tod produced even one literate daughter sets his family apart from the mass of artisans of the time.'
Rose sipped her coffee, savouring the sharpened taste. `When can we get started?'
`You want to come?'
Of course. This is detective work, after all'
`Very well. I have some things to do at the University, but I should be clear by around two o'clock. Let's meet in the Cafe Royal bar, at around two-fifteen. I always welcome an excuse to look at those tile pictures'
Rose nodded. 'That suits me. My photographs of Lisa's Bible should be ready by then. I'll let you see them. After that I'll have to find an expert.'
`No difficulty about that. The National Library of Scotland is where you should go. They're book historians, after all.' He paused, leaning his head back slightly, as if he were giving a new idea an airing in his mind. 'You know, that's another thing. That volume was in the hands of Matilda Tod. She gave it to Elizabeth Carr. Yet the family tree begins with Tullis and Carr.
Something odd about that, too.'
He smiled. 'Now, any other medieval mysteries to be solved before we go?'
Maggie Rose looked at him, with an expression which was as close to coyness as she could manage. 'Well, it's not quite medieval, but I did wonder if you could shed some light on the nineteenth-century reference to the curse which you mentioned the other day.'
Wills's smile widened into a beam, and the look in his eyes reached close to smugness. 'I've anticipated that one, Inspector.
`When I thought about it I realised that the story was virtually received wisdom among Scots historians, and that I myself was no longer sure of its foundation. So I did some digging.
It comes from a history of Haddingtonshire — that's what East Lothian was then — written by one John Smeaton and published in 1843.. except that isn't quite true. Actually it comes from a review in the Scotsman of that work. The author must have been wounded when it appeared, because it was an extremely poor review. It said that the book was badly researched and badly written and described it as "a ragbag of gossip and old wives' tales". It made a particularly disparaging reference to what it described as a fairy tale of a bizarre witch's curse, calling down vengeance by blade, fire and water.'
Suddenly his beam by-passed smugness and attained triumph in a single stride. 'But do you know, Inspector, that is all that it said.'
Rose looked at him, intrigued. 'So?'
`Don't you see? It made no mention of Agnes. Now, think back to the note to the Scotsman.
Remember its wording.'
Comprehension dawned on her face. "By the blade, said Agnes." Of course. But what about the book itself, couldn't the writer of the note have a copy?'
`That's remotely possible, but it doesn't counter my argument. I have checked with all the Scottish university history faculties. None of us has a copy. But I did find one. Smeaton was an advocate, and he presented a copy of his work to the Advocates' Library. It was passed on to the National Library when it was set up in the early part of this century. I've seen it. It makes a very vague reference to the Witches' Hill burning, and paraphrases the curse more or less as the Scotsman described it, but nowhere does it mention Agnes Tod, or her sister Matilda.'
`John Smeaton; do we know anything else about him?'
Oh yes,' said Wills. 'His life is well documented. He was a cousin of the then Marquis of Kinture. An undistinguished man, who saw no success at the Bar, and who died in a riding accident, a few months after he published his magnum opus on Haddingtonshire.'
He paused. 'While I was at it, I checked the records of the trial and burning of Agnes Tod's coven. It was a very summary affair. Statements were made before the Earl of Kinture, he found guilt and pronounced sentence. There were three defendants in all, Agnes Tod, Christian Dunn and Mary Lewis.'
`But could the Earl do that? Didn't it have to go to a proper court?'
In those days, my dear, the Earl of Kinture was a proper court! He had what was known as
"power of pit and gallows" over his people. That meant that he could imprison wrongdoers, or execute them as he thought fit. Awful as it may seem today, the burning of Agnes Tod and her friends was quite legal.'
`But what was their crime?' asked Rose, real anger in her voice.
Wills's smile of triumph had gone. 'They were accused, believe it or not, of trying to kill King James VI by raising a storm against his ship, in Aberlady Bay, as he sailed down the Firth of Forth towards Leith.'
`What!'
`That's right. And what's more, if you take Agnes Tod's curse, written down by her sister, at face value, they were guilty!'
Forty-six
The rain hammered down as if the plug had been pulled from the Truth Loch and the heavens were trying to keep up the water level.
Skinner stood on the tee of the 230-yard par-three twelfth, not far from the clubhouse, and looked in astonishment as Darren Atkinson hit an immaculate three-iron, cutting upwards through the rain and feathering down on to the green, no more than six feet from the hole.
The US Open Champion was one under par for his round, thanks to a birdie at the par-five seventh. Skinner himself was scrambling to play to his seven handicap, while Norton Wales and Hideo Murano were splashing their way around the course as best they could, every shot being applauded sympathetically, by a crowd which was smaller than on the opening day, but which still ran into the thousands.
`Shot, skipper,' said the policeman in admiration, as the gallery gasped its approval. He emerged from under Joe's protective cover to hit a five-wood, high and wide of the green.
Shaking his head, he retreated beneath the umbrella, as Murano stepped up to play. As he watched the Japanese ready himself, a hand tugged his sleeve. He looked down to see a small boy, clad in waterproofs from top to toe, proffering a squeezable plastic bottle of the official soft drink supplier's newest isotonic product. He put a hand on the child's shoulder, stilling him until Murano had played, then took the drink with a smile and a soft 'Thank you', imagining his own son, seven or eight years on.
A few seconds later the child returned, and handed a drink to Bravo. Then a momen
t later he stepped up for a third time, holding out a drink, and an autograph book, to Darren Atkinson.
The golfer took the bottle from him solemnly, unzipped his golfbag and slipped it into the big container pocket. He reached out his hand to Bravo. `Gimme yours too mate,' he said, 'we'll be on the move in a second.' The caddy handed over his drink. Atkinson stowed it in the bag, then squatted down to sign the autograph book. 'No school today?' he asked. The boy flushed and looked guilty. It struck Skinner that even during competition, when he was at his most intense, Atkinson had never turned away an autograph-seeker.
Norton Wales hooked his drive into deep grass to the left of the fairway. 'I think I'll leave it there, Darren,' he called, loudly enough for the spectators to hear. 'It might meet one just like it in that jungle and live happily ever after!'
They hustled down the fairway. Having underhit his drive, Skinner's second shot was too strong, but a good long putt from the back of the green secured him a four, one better than Murano's score. He stood at the side of the green, pressed alongside Sue Kinture and Joe, as Atkinson lined up his birdie attempt. He glanced at his caddy. She seemed in another world.
'Is the weather getting you down, Susan?'
`What? Oh, no. Sorry, Bob, I was miles away. Thinking about our cocktail party at Bracklands tonight. You and Sarah will come, won't you?'
Of course, we're both looking forward to it. We've got a local baby-sitter this time. Sarah's joined a mother's circle. It's a sort of co-operative, operating on a knock-for-knock basis. No one gets paid money. They all have wee plastic rings and each one's worth an hour.'
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