The Shadow of the Sycamores (54 page)

She described the uproar there had been when Anna went missing and the search parties that were arranged. ‘It was queer, though, for it wasna one o’ the men that found her – it was Dolly Miller.’

James asked, ‘What position did she hold at The Sycamores?’

‘She was the Superintendent’s wife and how did she ken where to look? I’m sure somebody had tell’t her and it wasna Jerry – he was one o’ them out looking. Then Tina Paul come running in – she was the nurse that had most to do wi’ Anna – and she was in an awfu’ state. She said Anna’s baby was dead and Dolly Miller made the rest o’ us leave. I’m sure it
was her that covered it up. Mind you, they must’ve forgot I could hear things and I heard Raymond Miller and Jerry going out again – late that night.’

She looked at James with a helpless smile. ‘I wasna really listening but I strained my ears when they come back a good while after. So I heard them telling Mrs Miller they’d found Charles Moonie drowned in the burn.’ Noticing their incredulous expressions, she explained, ‘There had been a helluva lot o’ rain, you see, and he’d been trying to jump across and he’d slipped in the mud.’

Her manner changed now, became more business-like, as if she was about to give a decision that she had long debated over. ‘So now we’ve got two dead bodies – the man’s and the infant’s – and one hysterical lassie in the Millers’ kitchen, screaming she doesna want Jerry to touch her. That’s the reason some folk said he killed the three o’ them – for Anna was dead in no time at all.’

Something that was bothering James had to be explained to him here. ‘I cannot understand how, with so many people milling about, no one knows the truth of what happened that night.’

Giving a low chuckle, the ex-cook said, ‘The truth is, we got ten pound each from Raymond Miller to keep our mouths shut – it cost him a fortune – but I’d say twenty-five year’s long enough to keep a ten pound secret.’ She looked at James first, with her eyebrows raised, then glanced at Malcolm, as though asking for their agreement.

‘I think that would be about right,’ James smiled, his eyes twinkling briefly. ‘You say you have never believed that Jerry Rae was responsible for the three deaths so who do you think
was
guilty?’

Her shoulders lifted briefly, then she murmured, ‘There’s folks swear blind it must’ve been him. He was the only one left alive – there’s no getting away from that – but some blame Charles Moonie. They say he was angry at the lass for getting wed to Jerry and he’d killed the poor wee bairnie to get back at her. She’d’ve went mad at that and, if she hadn’t run off,
they’d likely have had a fight and he’d have finished her off and all.’

‘What about him, though?’ James had to get the proper picture. ‘Who do they think “finished him off”?’ It was an apt phrase in the circumstances.

‘They think he done it himsel’ out o’ shame. But you canna tell what a man like him would’ve been thinking, can you? He was a patient there, when all’s said and done.’ Bending over, she lifted the heavy poker from its stand on the hearth and stabbed at the now barely glowing coals in the range until they burst into flames. ‘That’s better,’ she smiled, replacing the weapon and resuming her recounting of the old rumours. ‘The lass, now, Anna. One story went that it was her murdered the infant ’cos Charles Moonie had fathered it and she didna want it reminding her about being raped.’

Mrs Allardyce gave a wicked chuckle. ‘Folks might think this is a fine, upstanding community but it’s had its share o’ passion and rape and adultery as well as murder. We’ve had near every kind o’ crime you could think on.’

‘But how could Moonie have murdered Anna?’ Malcolm, who had been silently following the woman’s every word, couldn’t hold back the question. ‘You say she was still alive when his body was found.’

‘Some say she committed suicide but naebody kens how she did it. That was another thing. Not one single worker, man or woman, is even sure she was the last to go. The deaths could’ve been in any order, for there was such a commotion going on it was damn near impossible to sort the grain from the chaff, if you see what I mean? I tell you this, I’ve gone ower and ower it in my mind ever since, trying to figure out what happened and when it happened, but it’s still a mystery to me.’

James considered this for several moments before asking, ‘Can you think of anyone who may have been witness to what went on inside The Sycamores during the time following the discovery of Charles Moonie’s body? That, as far as I can make out, was the crucial period.’

Back in the car, James thumped his right fist on his left
palm. ‘There must have been someone! The Superintendent and his wife would have been doing their best to hide what had happened, afraid that the good name of The Sycamores would be ruined, and they could not have coped with the hysterical girl, who, according to Mrs Allardyce, was screaming her head off.’

Malcolm slowed down to negotiate a nasty double bend in the road, then said, ‘She was screaming that she didn’t want Jerry to touch her, which proves that he was also in the room at that time.’

‘It does not prove that he was guilty of her death, however,’ James pointed out, then added, in a low voice, ‘nor does it prove him innocent.’

For the rest of the drive back to Ardbirtle, they sat in silence, each caught up in his own thoughts, but, as they approached the first of the houses, James murmured, ‘I don’t think we should tell the Raes what Mrs Allardyce said. There is such a diversity of ways to interpret the old gossip, so many different accounts of what happened, when, in fact, no one can place the events in chronological order.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right. No point in giving them more to agonise over.’ Drawing up at the kerb, the younger man asked, ‘Will we carry on tomorrow or should we give up altogether?’

James blew a noisy breath out through his lips. ‘Do you know something, Malcolm? I cannot give up now. I want to know the truth just as much as Henry Rae does and not just because I feel I owe it to Samara.’

In his room that night, Malcolm read through the pages of notes that he had already taken, mostly guesses from the people James had interviewed and nothing very important … or so he had thought at the time. Tonight, in the light of what Mrs Allardyce had said, he realised that there could possibly be something that might tie up with her statement. Even a very small corroboration of a very small fact could lead on to something bigger, more important.

Having an analytical turn of mind, he turned to the end of his notebook and headed the very last page ‘PARTICIPANTS’. It would be better to have those actually involved listed on one page and, if the name of a person who had not yet been interviewed cropped up more than once, it could be significant.

As was only to be expected, the most repeated names were Raymond Miller, the Superintendent of The Sycamores, and his wife Dolly. They would be the obvious source of information but, equally obvious, they would disclose nothing even if they
were
traced. Still, Malcolm decided it would be worth keeping them in mind in case all else failed.

It was not until he reached his notes on their last call that he shook his head at his own stupidity. Mrs Allardyce, who had been present in the Superintendent’s sitting room for most of the relevant time, had mentioned the nurse, Tina, who had run in carrying the dead infant before Dolly Miller cleared the room. The thing was – and Malcolm felt a tingling in his blood at the thought – Tina would, most certainly, have been left inside. Going by how the ex-cook spoke of her, Tina had been very close to the tragic young mother and had actually been sent to sit with the baby until Anna was found. She must be
the only person, other than the Millers, who knew precisely what had happened and in what order.

His heart hammering at his ribs, Malcolm had to contain his excitement until James said, as they were almost finished breakfast the next morning, ‘I have been thinking, Malcolm. I am very selfish, taking it for granted that you want to spend your precious leave chauffeuring me around.’

Knowing that the old man was giving him the chance to call off their search, Malcolm shook his head forcefully. They needed to see Mrs Allardyce again, to ask if she knew where Tina was now. ‘No, James, let’s have one more day here and that still leaves me a few days to go to see my dad.’

Sliding her arms into the sleeves of her jacket as she made ready to go to work, Mara said, ‘Where is your dad?’

‘He actually comes from Liverpool and works for Lever Brothers but they transferred him to Carlisle last year.’

As soon as they set off in the car, James looked at his driver with great curiosity. ‘You were very positive about having another day here. Have you come up with an idea of some kind?’

On hearing what Malcolm had discovered, he, too, was anxious to get on but felt obliged to issue a warning. ‘If Mrs Allardyce does not know where Tina is, that is it! We give up. I know you will be disappointed but we can only do so much. I would have loved to be able to give Henry and Fay the proof of their son’s innocence but too many years have passed.’

‘They are such a nice couple,’ Malcolm said sadly, ‘and they were meant for each other, weren’t they? He isn’t much taller than she is and they seem to have the same temperaments.’

‘Indeed – warm and affectionate. They welcomed Leo into their family as soon as he started courting Samara and he loved them almost as much as he loved her. They used to make me feel like an old friend when I went to see them – that was while I was on my very occasional visits to Corbie Den.’

‘Corbie Den?’

‘That was where Samara and Leo set up house. It was sold after he died – she did not want to keep it on.’

‘She’s a lovely person, as well. It seems a shame that she didn’t marry again.’

‘I told her at Leo’s funeral that she should but she said she would never find another man she would love as much as Leo. It’s a pity you’re so young,’ James laughed now. ‘I think she has taken quite a fancy to you.’

Malcolm grinned. ‘My boyish charm, eh?’

They said little for the rest of the journey; their thoughts concentrated on what they might learn from the ex-cook.

‘Well, I never!’ Rosie Allardyce exclaimed when she answered Malcolm’s knock. ‘I was wondering how I could get hold of you.’

‘You have recalled something?’ James asked, hopefully.

‘Not exactly. I was going ower things in my mind, you see, and I couldna mind if I tell’t you about Tina Paul.’

‘The nurse,’ Malcolm encouraged her.

‘So I did mention her, did I?’ She sounded quite disappointed. ‘You’ll have been to see her, then?’

‘We need to know where she lives.’ James hardly dared to breathe.

‘If you’d asked me that yesterday, I couldna have tell’t you but I was looking in my dresser drawer last night for a recipe I got at the Guild a while back and what did I find?’ She looked triumphantly at both men, whose faces were agog with hopeful anticipation.

Malcolm hazarded a guess. ‘A letter from Tina?’

‘No, not exactly that. It was a letter from one o’ the other nurses. She was the same age as me and we got real pally but, when The Sycamores was tooken ower by the army, Lizzie went to bide wi’ her sister in Portobello. She’s a widow.’

James shot a troubled glance at Malcolm as if to say that their journey had been for nothing – Portobello being practically a continuation of Edinburgh – but Mrs Allardyce was carrying on. ‘We’ve wrote back and fore to each other ever since and one day she writes and tells me she’d seen Tina Paul in Princes Street, when she was in having a look at the shops. And Tina tell’t her she was a caretaker in one o’ the offices in Castle Terrace.’

‘How long ago was this?’ James wanted to know.

‘It was her last letter – along wi’ her Christmas card. So I would think Tina would still be there but I canna tell you the number.’

‘Castle Terrace is not very long.’ James couldn’t keep his excitement out of his voice. ‘We will find her, I am sure.’ Slipping his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a well-padded wallet and extracted some notes.

‘Put that away.’ Mrs Allardyce snapped. ‘I havena done nothing.’

James grabbed her hand and pressed the four five pound notes into her palm. ‘Indeed you have, dear lady. You have given me the means to let Henry Rae know the truth about his son – whether it will be good news or bad remains to be seen.’

Her mouth fell open for a moment and then she gave a sly grin. ‘So you’re nae what you said you were? You were working for Jerry’s father, is that it?’

‘Henry knows nothing about it but he has been in painful ignorance for so many years that I wanted to set his mind at rest – one way or the other. Now take this and keep the secret for another twenty-odd years.’

Her fingers slowly closed round the money. ‘I still dinna ken the right way o’ it so maybe you would write and tell me? I’ll burn the letter as soon as I’ve read it and I’ll keep my mouth shut till the day I die.’

‘I will definitely keep you informed, Mrs Allardyce, and I will be eternally grateful to you.’

After shaking hands with the ex-cook, the two men drove away, James telling Malcolm to stop as soon as they were clear of the houses. ‘What do you think we should do now?’ he asked a few moments later.

Malcolm did not have to think. ‘I’d like to go back to Edinburgh this very minute but I suppose we can’t?’

‘How would we explain it to Henry and Fay?’

‘Maybe we should tell them what we’ve really been doing?’

‘It would spoil the surprise. I visualise us going into Oak Cottage one day and telling them that we have found proof – please
God – of their son’s innocence. But we still have much work to do. We have to find Tina Paul. No, Malcolm, I say we do some real sightseeing today and go to Edinburgh tomorrow. Then I insist that you go to see your father, otherwise I will feel ashamed for making you use up your precious leave in driving me around. What is more, you will take the Rolls – much easier than the train.’

‘But I thought we would start asking for Tina at all the offices in Castle Terrace …? You’re not going without me, are you?’