Bury Her Deep (42 page)

He had had time to gather himself, right enough. He had, of course, not believed me that nothing was wrong and had run to the manse at a sprint as soon as I had left him. He met Alec coming out of the gates.

‘I need to see Mr Tait,’ Christie panted.

‘He’s not in,’ said Alec, whose sides were also heaving. ‘I’m trying to find him too. I’ve just been up the law and there are lights, candles. I saw them and went to investigate but there’s no one to be found.’

‘I think they’re in that cave-thing at my place,’ said John Christie. ‘That dark-haired lady went in after them.’

‘A dark-haired lady?’ said Alec, starting to run. ‘Didn’t you try to stop her?’

By the time they had reached the cleft in the rock and Alec had seen my motor car sitting there, Mr Tait was almost all the way down the hill with Lorna in his arms, his knees threatening to give out at the strain.

‘Help!’ he shouted. ‘Captain Watson? Jockie? Someone help me.’

‘I’ve got her, sir. You can let go now,’ said Christie.

‘Where is she?’ demanded Alec.

‘I saw the lights,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I should have gone for help, but I was so worried about Lorna I just hared off up there alone and—’

‘Where is she?’ Alec almost shouted.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mr Tait, sounding enfeebled by his fright and exhaustion. ‘I couldn’t manage them both. She’s still up there.’

So she was, but she was quite safe. I had one of the stone angels kneeling at my side, smoothing back my hair and murmuring softly until, hearing Alec gallop up the stony steps and scramble to the top of the law, his breath ragged, she melted away. Alec returned to the rest of the party with me over his shoulder, like a fireman, and we all staggered and stumbled into Luckenheart Farm kitchen and collapsed there.

I did not remember any of this, of course. I remembered nothing after the black bell that was Vashti and the five stone angels who had disappeared except perhaps for that one who sat with me, but when Alec told me about the kitchen and, afterwards, the journey to the manse laid out across the back seat of my motor car beside Lorna, it was as though he was reminding me about a dream someone had told me a long time ago, or describing a picture I had seen once in a book in my nursery, but only once and never again.

The first thing I remember clearly was coming round in the spare bedroom, feeling sick and weak, and turning my head to find Hugh at my bedside, staring at me.

‘Mr Tait has told me everything,’ he said.

‘Lucky you,’ I croaked back. Hugh held out an invalid’s cup of water to me and I sucked thirstily on the spout before speaking again. ‘He’s hardly told me anything,’ I said.

‘A private detective?’ said Hugh, but I could not tell what he might be thinking from his voice, which was as blank as his face. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

I thought about it for a moment.

‘We’re not given to confidences,’ I pointed out. ‘I have no idea what you’re doing most days.’ Hugh looked at me as though he were my school matron and he had caught me inking my legs instead of darning my stockings like a good girl. ‘All right,’ I said at last. ‘I thought you would stop me.’

‘And how did you think I should do that?’ said Hugh, sounding resigned. ‘What have I ever managed to stop you doing?’

‘What else have I ever done?’ I said.

Hugh regarded me for a long time before he spoke again.

‘I saw “Captain Watson” this morning.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well, the thing is, Hugh, that Alec is my  . . . assistant. Actually my Watson, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘And truly.’

‘I thought,’ Hugh began, but then cleared his throat and started again. ‘I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear you’re not foolish enough to be harbouring ideas, Dandy.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said, lifting my head a little but letting it fall back to the pillow as my head swirled and a sharp stab of pain reminded me that my rib was broken. ‘Ugh, I feel so sick. I could never be a bohemian.’

‘What do you think I meant?’ said Hugh. ‘You’d be making a fool of yourself, that’s all. You are very unworldly, my dear, which is a pleasant trait for any woman to exhibit, so don’t think I’m complaining, but what you don’t realise is that Osborne is no threat to another man’s wife.’

‘It was a disguise,’ I said, gaping at him. ‘You know it was. He was pretending to be an artist.’

‘Well, he looked very at home in it,’ said Hugh, sounding so comfortable and superior that I wished I felt well enough to kick him. ‘One man can tell these things about another.’

I forbore from pointing out that Hugh had been as thick as thieves with Alec over their two estates, their walls and drains and spaniel puppies and bird tables for the last two years, and had not been able to ‘tell’ anything.

‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘you must admit that you haven’t been a good judge of character recently.’

‘I admit no such thing,’ I retorted. ‘Which characters? The Howies were perfectly respectable people as far as anyone could tell.’

‘Mr Tait tells me they were connections of the Balnagowan Rosses,’ said Hugh.

‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘Those women never shut up about the Balnagowan Rosses and their illustrious ancestress.’ Hugh stared at me, his mouth pursing in that way that makes his moustache bristle.

‘The illustrious Ross ancestress,’ he said, ‘poisoned half her family and killed the other half with darts driven into wax dolls. And then her son, if memory serves me, buried his brother alive and sold him to the devil in exchange for his own life.’

I stared at him.

‘When was this?’ I asked, boggling at the matter-of-fact way he spoke.

‘Oh, a while back,’ said Hugh. ‘But still.’

‘That explains a great deal,’ I said. ‘They married into a lineage and found out their husbands couldn’t care less about it.’

‘Best thing I’ve heard about them,’ said Hugh. ‘And I’m glad I could clear it up for you, Dandy. I only wish you had asked me before.’

This, it pained me to reflect, was a good point. In fact, if I had ever listened to Hugh on the subject of ancient Scots history I might have been able to see the Howies for what they were at the outset. I closed my eyes, not feeling up to admitting it out loud.

‘That’s right, you rest,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ll go and tell Mr and Miss Tait that you are quite recovered and there’s no need to fuss you. They’ve had a dreadful shock, finding out about those two  . . . women. And I have to say, Dandy, you didn’t really handle this case with a light touch. Surely it would have been better to get to the bottom of things without a lot of rushing about in the night and fainting. In fact  . . .’

With great thankfulness, I felt myself beginning to fall into a doze again and when I reawakened, he was gone.

He had barely referred to any of it since then, but he had looked askance at me when I said I was coming back to Luckenlaw for the Christmas Social.

‘Very well, then,’ he had replied at last. ‘But let that be the end of it. I am putting my foot down.’

Poor Hugh, I suppose he had to be allowed to put his foot down about something; now that I had told him a bit more about a detective’s rates of pay he certainly was not going to stamp on
that.
So, I concluded, I should just have to find it in myself to let the chance of addressing the Rural on the topic of the Household Budget pass me by.

I was glad to have the chance to see them all one last time, though, and to have a quiet word with Mr Tait the next day too, once Lorna had excused herself. She was off to Luckenheart Farm with a basket over her arm.

‘Taking a picnic luncheon?’ I asked her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to plant some crocuses in all those clay pots at the back door. They look a fair disgrace sitting there empty.’

‘And I’m sure they’ll be very happy,’ I said to her father as we watched her stroll off down the drive from his study window. ‘I’m glad the young curate didn’t work out in the end, aren’t you?’

‘Curate?’ said Mr Tait.

‘Wasn’t there a minister in the offing at one time, whom you dissuaded?’

‘No,’ said Mr Tait. ‘It was John Christie I was trying to keep her away from. I could tell he took to her from the first time he clapped eyes on her five years ago.’

‘And you disapproved?’

‘We all want the best for our children, don’t we?’ said Mr Tait. ‘We all want better for our children than we’ve had ourselves. It’s the one thing that we can do to change things.’

‘Well, it’s a hard life, I suppose, being a farmer’s wife,’ I said, slightly puzzled. ‘But he seems an excellent young man. Lettered and cultured, not at all a  . . . well, a peasant, although it makes me sound a fearful snob to say so. And your wife was a farmer’s daughter after all.’

Mr Tait smiled at me for a while before he spoke again.

‘What can’t be cured must be endured, or even embraced – which makes for a happier life in the end, don’t you think, Mrs Gilver?’

I nodded, absently. I was still puzzled by his reluctance about Jock Christie, but there were many more puzzles besides.

‘What of the Howies?’ I asked him. ‘Are you adamant about not going to the police?’

‘No good would come of it,’ said Mr Tait. ‘And a great deal of harm.’

‘They kidnapped Lorna when you get right down to it,’ I reminded him, although he surely could not need reminding. ‘And they killed the kitten. They should be punished.’

‘Oh, they will be, I’m sure,’ said Mr Tait.

‘Where will they go now? What will they do?’

‘I neither know nor care,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Mischievous, muddle-headed women the pair of them and those husbands no more use than  . . . Ah, but I suppose I should find some charity in myself even for the likes of the Howies.’

‘They really believed it, you know,’ I said to him. This was still a struggle for me to comprehend. ‘They thought that putting a girl back in the chamber – whether the same girl or another one – would bring back the good times to Luckenlaw.’

‘Fools the pair of them,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I don’t know where they got their ideas, for they didn’t understand the first thing about it.’

I was eyeing him, speculatively.

‘And what if they did?’ I said. ‘What would they think then?’

He eyed me just as thoughtfully before he spoke.

‘I suppose I owe you an explanation,’ he said at last. ‘And doesn’t our contract bind you to silence on whatever I tell you?’

‘It does, as would yours with me if you were that kind of minister.’ We both smiled.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘there
are
those who think the Howies brought all the trouble with them. They were the ones who gave Luckenheart Farm to a boy on his own and changed its name. There
are
those who think none of it was anything to do with the girl in the chamber at all.’

‘I rather got the impression,’ I said, ‘that those people who seemed most concerned about Luckenheart – the farmers’ wives, you know – did believe in that girl.’

‘Oh, they did, they did, they do,’ said Mr Tait. ‘They thought she was causing the bother with the dark stranger. I’m talking about the other trouble. Are you familiar with the five elements, Mrs Gilver?’

‘Earth, air, fire, water and  . . . I can never remember the other one.’

‘Ether,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Spirit. Well, there are those who looked at the blight and the fluke, the dry wells and the burned-out house and saw it as a punishment for what had happened at Luckenheart Farm.’

‘And Luckenheart Farm itself?’ I said. ‘Do you mean there was bad  . . . ether there? That the place had a bad spirit?’ I spoke rather tentatively, unable to believe that I could be having this conversation, with a minister of the kirk, in
Fife.

‘No spirit at all,’ said Mr Tait. ‘The place was dead with just that young boy who didn’t belong here. Although there was no harm in him, none whatsover. So that was the trouble – for those who believe it.’

‘But they thought the girl who had been buried in the law was the cause of the dark stranger?’

‘Until you found out about all the bread and bonfires and eggs and flowers and all that nonsense.’

‘I worked out the last smell in the end,’ I told him. ‘The first day I ventured out for a walk at Gilverton, it hit me. Stubble turnips.’

‘Wonderful winter fodder,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I’m quite with Hugh there.’

I shuddered. It has always been one of the least pleasant features of country life in the depths of winter as far as I am concerned – the smell of half-frozen turnips strewn in the bare fields for the sheep to nibble, rotting slowly there until spring.

‘It was a jack o’ lantern I could smell,’ I said. ‘For Hallowe’en. Candle wax and smouldering turnip. Eggs in March, flowers in April, bonfire smoke in June.’

‘Easter, Beltane and the Solstice,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Yeast in August and corn in September.’

‘Corn for the Autumnal Equinox,’ I said. ‘But what was the yeast in August for?’

‘Lammas bread,’ said Mr Tait, but he sounded very scathing. ‘That was just like those Howies, making a pantomime of what they didn’t understand.’

‘What do you imagine they did exactly?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, they probably just cobbled together some little ceremony out of their books, some blessing or what have you.’

‘In their motor car?’ I said, but actually it did make some kind of sense; I had always thought the timing was odd on that first night when Vashti Howie had reported seeing the stranger. If they had drawn into a hedgerow to sprinkle seasonal foodstuffs around, it would have used up a good while. This thought immediately sparked another.

‘The change of direction,’ I said, smacking my hand against my forehead. ‘At first the stranger was coming from the north and then from July he suddenly started coming from the south. The only thing that changed in July was that the Howies joined the Rural. Vashti Howie always drove on the main road, never round the lanes. There was a solid, physical clue there all along, that was nothing to do with strangers or devils or any of it.’

‘I was sure there would be,’ said Mr Tait. ‘That’s why I needed you, my dear, to unearth the solid clues.’

‘I was so distracted by all those men,’ I said, ‘out of their houses and refusing to say where they’d been. Do you know what they were doing at Jock Christie’s all those nights their wives were at the Rural?’