Ghost Walk (4 page)

A skeletal ruined abbey drifted into view, carefully railed off, its remains much abused by time and the removal of its stones from which most of Eildon had arisen.

Mrs Macmerry drew my attention to a rather ugly modern church which had not been so fortunate in its architects.

‘That’s where we were married. Our Jack was baptised there. As you’re not attached to any particular church in Edinburgh,’ a sigh bravely lamented such a shortcoming, ‘we were sure Jack would like you to be married here among the people who have known him all his life.’

A pause for a polite smile to indicate my approval as she went on: ‘The minister and his wife are close friends. They are very understanding.’

‘He won’t worry that you aren’t a regular churchgoer,’ Mr Macmerry put in hastily.

While his wife took up the theme of similar weddings with bride and groom of different persuasions, I listened politely thinking, Well, well, Jack, I have been much discussed over your kitchen table. Our marriage has been a fait accomplait in this
particular
family long before I said yes to your proposal. A brand new version of the tough strong man who was my lover arose before me and I even wondered if Detective Inspector Jack Macmerry, in the role of obedient son, had asked his parents’
permission
first.

‘Is there a Catholic church?’ I asked.

Looks of horror were exchanged.

‘Oh, you aren’t an RC, are you?’ cried Mrs Macmerry in a voice of doom.

‘No. But my late husband was Irish and very devout.’

‘You didn’t turn, did you?’ she whispered in sepulchral tones.

‘Of course not. That was never expected of me.’ And taking the plunge headlong, ‘I’m only interested because one of Danny’s relatives was a priest down here.’

Further mention of my late husband by name raised a sudden acute and embarrassed silence, broken at last by Jack’s father.

‘Would that be Father Sean McQuinn?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, expecting the worst.

Mr Macmerry smiled. ‘Was and still is, lass. Been here for years. Ever met him?’

‘No, but I’d like to look in on him. Say hello.’

Mrs Macmerry had recovered from the shock that I was remotely connected with RCs. She shook her head, regarding me tight-lipped to make it quite clear that visiting a priest indicated feet trembling on the very threshold of Popery.

‘I’m sure he’ll make you welcome,’ said Jack’s father, his
magnanimity
earning a scorching look of disapproval from his wife.

‘We don’t need a Catholic church. There’s just a handful of them in the village. Nothing like our own congregation,’ she added proudly.

‘Nothing like. He has to go out to the remoter places and take services in the house for Catholics who don’t have a church,’ said Mr Macmerry, a piece of information which caused Mrs Macmerry to open her mouth in protest and then close it sharply again as we entered the road to the farmhouse.

‘There are still some old families like our laird Lord Verney who never turned at the Reformation and stayed loyal to the Stuarts. His carriage was at the railway station meeting that young nun who was on your train,’ said Mr Macmerry, handing me down from the dogcart.

So that was the explanation, I thought, of why she looked so well-groomed. My mind raced ahead, picturing her visiting her family for the last time before taking her final vows.

Setting foot for the first time in the house where Jack had been born and bred, square-faced and unimposing on the outside, I
was pleasantly surprised by the interior. Dating from the
beginning
of the century, the kitchen was large and comfortable,
originally
intended to seat a large family and servants round an immense table, the size of a room in itself.

When I remarked upon this I learned that the Macmerrys lived very economically in a positively feudal system. Nothing was wasted. The wives of their farm labourers dealt with Mrs Macmerry’s domestic requirements. Without wages. This service was expected of them as part of the rent-free accommodation they enjoyed in the tiny row of dwelling houses along the
roadside
and the model cottages on the Verney estate.

Mrs Macmerry added to this account by telling me proudly that the younger members of the workers’ families were also recruited and expected to follow in their parents’ footsteps, if they were willing and had no other ambitions.

If, however, they yearned for pastures new beyond the confines of the Eildon Hills, her disapproving expression told me that this was regarded as a sense of betrayal. She might have deplored the laird’s religion but she approved of his politics. The slave owners of America’s deep south could have learned nothing new from Jack’s mother.

‘We’ve put you in the best room, next to the bathroom and WC,’ she told me proudly as I followed her up a wide uncarpeted stair. ‘Come down when you’re ready. We have our supper at seven.’

Left alone, the room met with my immediate approval;
white-washed
walls and low ceiling beams, an oak floor well-polished, spread with a few bright rugs. Made by Mrs Macmerry with help from the farm labourers’ wives, I fancied that the church’s annual sale of work would be an event not to be missed.

Untouched walls were a pleasant change from the present fashion prevalent in most Edinburgh houses for heavily embossed wallpapers where every inch of floor was adorned by some small table or potted plant.

Very agreeably, Jack’s home had changed little in the passing years and still clung to the uncluttered style that had existed before Queen Victoria ascended the throne, apart from the laird’s modern installations of running water and gas. Looking around approvingly at mahogany furniture, a large bed with snowy white covers and an armchair, chest of drawers and a vast wardrobe, I had been honoured indeed. This best bedroom was the one Jack and I would have after our wedding.

The bow window with its upholstered seat looked towards the Eildon Hills. In the foreground and reaching as far as the eye could see before lines of trees intercepted, were fields of sheep. I had never seen so many, certainly their presence would be a
singular
advantage should I ever find myself sleepless and need to count them in the recommended manner.

Unpacking my valise I withdrew my most recent purchase:
The Leavenworth Case
by Anna Katherine Green, and the latest exploits of Amelia Butterworth assisting a middle-aged police constable whose ‘sense of probability’ and specialised knowledge in cigar ash and different grades of writing paper I found immensely satisfying. Despite his contempt for what he
dismissed
as ‘women’s fiction’ I felt that Pappa would have
thoroughly
approved of PC Ebenezer Gryne.

Like a guilty secret, I tucked the book away at the back of the drawer, alongside
Thou Art the Man
featuring female detective Carolis Urquhart, a one-time lady’s companion. The life of the author, Mrs Braddon, was almost as sensational as her books and certainly more scandalous. Rumour had it that she lived with her London publisher John Maxwell, a married man with two
children
, whose wife was confined in a lunatic asylum (shades of Jane Eyre and Mrs Rochester, indeed!) Mrs Braddon bore him two children, showing an independence of convention to be met with the approval of the women’s rights movement.

This was the country of the ‘shilling shocker’, scorned and shunned publicly and vociferously by upright intellectuals but,
according to gossip when we were in America, authors like Robert Louis Stevenson found them vastly entertaining leisure reading.

Danny went so far as to wonder if in his days of hardship in California, Stevenson added to his meagre income by writing ‘such tongue-in-the-cheek nonsense’, under a pseudonym, all traces of which would have been destroyed by high-minded Fanny Osbourne, who spent sleepless nights guarding her
husband
’s literary reputation.

Danny had encouraged my leisure reading. I could never find enough books to read and he certainly wasn’t afraid that they were secretly encouraging my ‘morbid’ ambitions, as Jack called them.

We had both encountered enough violence and bloody deaths first-hand to realise that no fictional representation could ever equal the horrors of real life, but I recognised the resolve, the ambition that burned within me, in the heroines of these books.

The seeds were there in my blood waiting to be cultivated and long before I read
Lady Audley’s Secret
, smuggled into Gran’s house in Orkney, those seeds had been helped to grow and thrive with Pappa’s help. Our games of ‘observation and deduction’ on railway journeys had certainly helped me solve my first case.

And had I been a boy, my constant moan, I would most
certainly
have been encouraged to follow my illustrious father into Edinburgh City Police. No one would have had anything but praise and commendation for my decision. It would have been expected of me.

But a female. Shocking, outrageous! Life was so unfair.

And thinking of Pappa I knew that I could no longer delay writing to Vince and Emily to inform them of my impending marriage. They would be delighted, both were very fond of Jack, but I doubted whether my sister, with a young baby, would even contemplate the journey from Orkney. True my stepbrother might have news of Pappa’s present travels with his companion
Imogen, but as junior physician to Her Majesty’s household, it seemed unlikely that Vince would be free to make the journey from London.

With letters, short and little more than invitations, hastily
written
, I went downstairs and was rewarded by an open door and a glimpse of the farmhouse parlour where doubtless important and influential visitors were entertained.

Here, alas, Mrs Macmerry had bowed to the conventions of the day and provided a well-off hostess’s background of
hospitality
: wax fruit and tropical birds under glass, some rather sombre thundery landscapes encased in heavy gold frames seeing their reflections in a gleaming highly-polished table and a set of rigid chairs daring visitors to lean back and relax.

I headed towards the kitchen, identified by the pleasant aroma of roasting meat. As a future member of the family, indications were that meals would be served here, for which I was truly thankful.

Mrs Macmerry’s brief nod acknowledged my presence while two old labradors lying by the fire idly glanced in my direction. Even before her sharp warning to: ‘Bide now!’, deciding I wasn’t worth the effort of an exploratory sniff, they feebly wagged tails and resumed their slumbers.

Informed that it was early yet for supper but would I like a cup of tea, I accepted gladly.

After I had consumed two cups and my second scone with jam and cream plus a large slice of fruit loaf, a performance Jack’s mother watched with some astonishment – having politely declined a third cup – she asked weakly:

‘What would you like to do now?

I asked for directions to the post-box.

‘There’s no collection until morning.’

This was a mere excuse as I had already decided I was going in search of Father McQuinn who would soon settle that most
urgent question and prove that Sister Mary Michael could not have heard from Danny three weeks ago.

‘I think I’ll take a walk,’ indicating the letters and my
sketchbook
.

‘Jack didn’t tell us you were an artist,’ she said accusingly.

Was this hint of bohemian loose living to be held against me, I thought, as modestly declining such aspirations I wondered whether Jack had revealed my true vocation and I hoped
earnestly
not to be present when he launched that thunderbolt on his family.

I met his father at the gate with two collies, his working
sheepdogs
, trailing obediently at his heels. I hadn’t enough wool to make me interesting to them either.

‘Where are ye off to now, lass?’

I told him and was given even more precise instructions about the post-box.

‘There’s a grand view of the Abbey just down the road there.’

Off I went. As soon as he was out of sight, I turned the opposite way clear of the house and made my way into the village we had passed through in the dogcart.

At once I saw my destination. Father McQuinn’s church, its exterior somewhat shabbier than the prosperous Presbyterian kirk.

The door was open. Empty pews, a few candles bravely
burning
and the lingering smell of incense.

I called: ‘Hello?’ No answer. Back across the path to the
modest
and minute cottage adjoining the church, raising my hand to ring the bell, the door was opened by the priest himself.

At first glance I was disappointed. I had hoped he might look like Danny but there was not the least family resemblance.

He was on his way out, in a tearing hurry, formally clad in biretta, stole, clutching a rosary and leading a scared looking lad of about twelve years old.

‘Father Sean McQuinn?’ I said smiling and introducing myself. ‘I am Danny’s wife.’

‘Danny? Danny who?’ He stared at me for a moment before realisation dawned. ‘Oh – Danny. You must be Rose, of course.’

Shaking my hand briefly, he indicated the small tearful boy at his side. ‘Sorry I can’t stop now. The lad’s father,’ he whispered. ‘He’s dying. Can we talk later.’

‘Of course. I’m here for a few days.’

And rushing down the path, he shouted over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be in church later this evening. After Mass. We can talk then.’

That would be fine I thought. Just an hour or two.

But it was not to be. As I walked back towards the farm, the rain began and so it remained, unyielding in its ceaseless
downpour
and holding me trapped for the rest of the evening.

The Macmerry’s main meal was at midday. Supper was a lighter version, meat and potatoes again but without the soup and with cake or scones substituting for a dinnertime rich plum duff or bread pudding served with cream.