Three Bags Full (9 page)

It was obvious to her that nothing was going to come of the other sheep. If anything was to happen here, then she, Zora, must make it happen. She took a glance back at her own flock, whose heads were turned her way. For a moment it seemed as if even her own sheep were looking at her oddly. But then she realized that wasn’t true: Sir Ritchfield was standing on the hill, looking stern and attentive; Cloud, Maude, Lane, and Cordelia had crowded together and were watching her expectantly. A little ahead of them stood Mopple, looking hard in her direction. Zora knew that at this distance he couldn’t make out much more of her than a black-and-white blur. She was moved. Suddenly it didn’t seem difficult to speak to these strange sheep.

“Hello,” she called. She decided to try some harmless subject. “Do you like the grass around here?” she asked. It occurred to her, too late, that this might be taken badly, as alluding to the fact that they were tucking into other people’s grazing.

“The weather’s not bad either,” said Zora. The sky was gray and warm, the air refreshingly moist, and the meadow fragrant.

The strange sheep said nothing. A few of the heads that had been lowered to graze rose again. Perhaps they didn’t care for idle chitchat. Who could say what intellectual books Gabriel might have read aloud to them?

“We could talk about how you get into the sky,” suggested Zora. Gabriel’s sheep did not respond. “I mean, it must be possible somehow,” Zora said. “We can see the cloud sheep in the sky, after all. But how do you get there? Is there a place where you can just climb into the sky? Or do you just carry on grazing straight up into the air?” Zora looked at the sheep intently. Nothing. Or yes, a slight change. The unsettling flicker in the sheep’s pale eyes was stronger now. “All right, I don’t mind what
you
think about it. To be honest, I’m just about sure it’s connected with conquering the abyss. But I certainly didn’t come here to discuss that with you!” She decided to be straightforward. “It’s about Gabriel. He’s been your shepherd for a long time. We want to know what he reads aloud to you.”

The sheep stared at her. Didn’t they understand? That was impossible. No sheep could be so stupid. Zora snorted.

“Your shepherd, understand? Gabriel! Gabriel!” She turned her head briefly his way, and saw that he had almost finished getting the next roll of wire netting ready. Time to be off.

She turned to look at Gabriel’s flock again, and saw that still nothing had changed.

A strange ram was standing right opposite Zora, only a few steps away. She cast him a last furious glance—and stopped. She saw that the strange sheep weren’t so small after all. Rather short in the legs, yes, but long in the body and heavily built. The ram opposite her made a very powerful impression that reminded Zora of the butcher. She had meant to say something sarcastic and scornful by way of good-bye, but now she thought it would be better to get out, fast. The ram looked at her, and it seemed to Zora that the strange flickering had gone from his eyes. For the first time she felt that he was really
looking
at her. The ram slowly and almost imperceptibly shook his head.

Zora turned and galloped straight back to her rocky ledge.

Gabriel finished the fence around midday. He sat down on the steps of the shepherd’s caravan, where George always sat to smoke a pipe. The fine tobacco fumes rose to the sheep’s noses in a strange way. Behind the veil of smoke the real Gabriel was hidden, in a place where no sheep could pick up his scent. Even Maude had to admit that she could tell very little about Gabriel himself beneath those aromas of sheep’s wool and tobacco.

The middle of the day was more peaceful than they’d known it in a long time. The mild sun, half covered by hazy clouds, was part of it, and so were the magnificent view of a spotlessly blue sea and the humming of the insects. But the best part was relief at knowing such an efficient shepherd was sitting on the caravan steps. And looking forward to Gabriel’s stories when twilight fell.

When the man on the bicycle raced toward them, however, the peace and quiet were suddenly gone. The sheep didn’t trust bicycles. They withdrew to the hill for safety’s sake. But the man on the bike wasn’t after them. He was making straight for Gabriel.

Once they were at a safe distance, the sheep calmed down slightly, and turned their nervous ears toward the shepherd’s caravan. They recognized him as soon as he got off his bicycle and stood right in front of Gabriel. He had come with Lilly, Ham, and Gabriel and was the first human to examine George’s body: Josh, the tall, thin man who had pressed his nose against the windows of the shepherd’s caravan last night. He had the scent of alcohol on his fingers, and he also smelled of soapy water and unwashed feet. His aura was slightly rancid. Mopple hid behind the dolmen and peered anxiously out between the stones.

Braver sheep like Othello, Cloud, and Zora, feeling curious, trotted closer.

“Josh,” said Gabriel, without taking his pipe out of his mouth. His blue eyes were fixed on the thin man. The sheep knew how he must be feeling at this moment. There would be a flattered expression on his face, and he’d be a little weak at the knees.

The thin man rummaged around nervously in his jacket pocket, found a key, and held it out to Gabriel.

“It’s from Kate. She just found it in a packet of oatcakes, would you believe it?” said the thin man with a laugh. The sheep understood why he was so nervous. He had probably eaten the oatcakes.

“Kate thinks it must be in the caravan,” said the thin man. “Because it’s certainly not in the house.”

“Right,” said Gabriel. He took the key and put it down carelessly on the top step of the caravan.

“Gabriel?” asked the thin man. A magpie flew curiously over the roof of the shepherd’s caravan. “Suppose we don’t find it, then what?”

“So long as nobody else finds it either…” said Gabriel. His blue eyes were searching the blue sea while clouds of smoke wafted out of his mouth.

“Do you know what they’re saying, Gabriel?”

Gabriel looked as if he didn’t know and didn’t want to. All the same, the thin man went on. “They’re saying it’s not in the caravan at all. They say it’s all in the will.”

“Then if that’s right we’ll find out on Sunday,” said Gabriel.

The thin man made a nervous sound. Then he hunched his head down between his shoulders and walked back to the bicycle. After about three steps Gabriel called him back.

“By the way, Josh.”

“Yes, Gabriel?”

“There’s been enough nonsense going on around here, see? You want to make sure it stops. Now.”

“Nonsense? How d’you mean, Gabriel?” Josh sounded alarmed.

“Well, like midnight expeditions to George’s caravan, for instance. What’s the idea? You’ll only scare the sheep.”

Cloud was touched. Even now Gabriel was thinking of them.

Josh didn’t seem to want to discuss last night. “What sort of sheep are those anyway?” asked the pub landlord, looking critically at Gabriel’s sheep and speaking very fast. “They look odd, they do. I never saw sheep like that before.”

“A new meat breed,” said Gabriel out of the corner of his mouth. His blue eyes were fixed on Josh. The two men said no more for quite a time.

Then Josh sighed. “You really know everything, right?”

Gabriel said something in Gaelic. The sheep wondered if he had a second tongue in his mouth for speaking that language.

“It couldn’t be helped,” said Josh. “Tom and Harry would have gone anyway, the idiots that they are. Find the grass, avoid scandal, keep the tourist trade going, same old story. As if
that
was it…They’ve no idea, that they haven’t. So I thought I’d better be there than not, see what I mean? I gave them a wrong key so they wouldn’t bring any tools, but they’d be sure not to get in.”

Gabriel nodded understandingly, and Josh was obviously relieved. Talking seemed to come more easily to him now.

“You know something, though?” he said. “We wasn’t the only ones. There was someone else around. A stranger. One of the drugs people, if you ask me. So there’s something going on. If
they
find it before we do…”

The magpie flew back over Gabriel and Josh. Of course there was no saying whether or not it was the same magpie, but it described an elegant curve and landed on the roof of the caravan, chattering.

“They won’t find it,” said Gabriel. “They don’t know anything about the cassette. They’re just after their stuff. Anyway, I’m here now. You want to get the folks in the pub to calm down.”

Josh nodded enthusiastically. The sheep knew just how he felt. It was his pleasure to do Gabriel a favor.

“Gabriel?” Josh had been on his way again but turned back once more.

Gabriel shifted his pipe from the right to the left corner of his mouth and looked inquiringly at Josh.

“You fixed all this really good.” He waved his hand in a gesture taking in Gabriel, the shepherd’s caravan, the sheep, and the whole meadow.

Gabriel nodded. “The sheep need a bit of looking after, at least until the will is read. They were really grateful to me in the management office—animal welfare, hygiene regulations, and that. And I’m saving on grazing for my own.” He smiled an engaging smile. “And of course I can sit here,” he added, slapping the steps of the caravan with his hand, “just as long as I like.”

Josh grinned with relief. He nodded good-bye to Gabriel, mounted his bike, and clattered away in the direction of the village.

As soon as Josh had disappeared round the bend in the path across the fields, Gabriel’s brown hand came down on the top step of the caravan. But it felt around in vain. The key was no longer there. It was clinking and shining at Gabriel from high up on the roof of the shepherd’s caravan, in a magpie’s beak.

In Gabriel’s care, the sheep were more ambitious than they had been for a long time. They grazed conscientiously, taking long, straight steps, they craned their necks gracefully, they felt they were being “good doers,” and even ate the dry, less-tasty grass with pleasure. When they rested in the shade of the old hay barn they held their heads high and watched Gabriel out of the corners of their eyes. Gabriel was running after a magpie, like a lamb frolicking in high spirits, chasing from bush to tree, from tree to shrub, back and forth all across the meadow…

9

Miss Maple Investigates

“Glendalough, for instance,” said the strange woman. “This saint goes off there to live alone and be a hermit, and the moment people find out about it he can hardly move for pilgrims. The most popular place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, and why? Because human beings are herd animals. You have to make them believe everyone’s coming here, and if they believe it, then everyone
will
come here. It’s that simple.” She took a bite of her buttered scone and smiled at the same time. Her dress was as red as autumn berries.

A whole basketful of buttered scones lay in front of her, neatly covered with a napkin to keep the flies away, but the sheep could smell them all the same. The woman dipped her scone first in softly whipped cream, then in red jam. She poured tea from a teapot into a plastic cup, added two brown sugar cubes, and then some more cream. The scones, jam, tea, sugar, and cream were set out on a huge, brightly checked picnic tablecloth. There was also a bottle of orange juice, some cream cheese, biscuits, toast, a little pot of mayonnaise, and a bowl of tomato salad with chopped parsley. The cloth itself covered a small part of the sheep’s meadow close to the cliff tops, luckily spread over a place where the interesting plants had already been grazed. The bright colors alarmed the sheep. They were nervous anyway because after his summery dance with the magpie, Gabriel had left them to their own devices.

Aromas that they had never guessed at wafted over the meadow and tempted their nostrils. They kept a safe distance, but they squinted with undisguised greed at the basketful of scones and the tomato salad.

Beside the cloth sat Bible-thumping Beth, a black picture of uneasiness with slender wrists and a tidy hairdo, trying to make her full skirt take up as little space as possible. She wasn’t eating anything, but sometimes her hand moved to her breast and closed around a small, glittering object there. When she did that the pot of mayonnaise wobbled.

“Belief,” she sighed now. “Belief is never easy.”

“Not your own belief, no. Other people’s beliefs are—very easy.” The strange woman laughed. Her second scone received its baptism of cream. “Do help yourself!” she said.

Beth silently shook her head. Her eyes wandered to the dolmen.

“You really ought to have some,” said the woman. “They’re good. You don’t look as if you eat much usually,” she added, glancing at Beth’s thin, hairy arms.

“No,” said Beth firmly, “I don’t eat much usually. I live next door to a takeaway. If you see people stuffing themselves senseless instead of thinking about the salvation of their souls, it spoils your appetite.”

Unimpressed, the woman bit into her scone with relish.

“Do you know the really strange thing?” she went on a little indistinctly, because she hadn’t finished chewing her scone yet. “Do you know just
when
people will believe everyone’s coming here? When you persuade them it’s an isolated place! That convinces them. Everyone’s after isolation. If a place is isolated, crowds of people just have to come rushing to enjoy it.”

Beth stared blankly straight ahead. The little pot of mayonnaise wobbled. Maude was thinking how unpleasant Beth smelled, both sour and sweetish. She smelled of long starvation and early death. She was spoiling Maude’s pleasure in the aromas rising from the bright check tablecloth.

“I really don’t understand why you’re worried, though.” It didn’t seem to bother the red woman that Beth smelled nasty and was silent. “It’s absolutely dreamy here. Anyone would feel good in this place.”

“I don’t,” said Beth. “No one from Glennkill would feel good. Terrible things have happened here. I shouldn’t just say so, I ought to convince you of it. But I do say so all the same. I’m not going to be intimidated anymore. The Lord is with me.”

“Terrible things?” asked the woman, unfazed. “All the better! People just love terrible things. A saint tortured by heathens? Great! A heathen chucked into the sea by saints? Even better! When it comes to crime, you can hardly go wrong in the tourist trade.”

The red woman had no problem with words. Cordelia listened to her admiringly: this woman was full of stories.

Beth swallowed. It sounded like a suppressed giggle, but anyone looking into Beth’s face could guess that it must have been a desperately concealed sob.

The woman noticed, and turned serious. “You mean the murder? I’m so sorry, I didn’t know it happened here.” She put her half-eaten scone back on the picnic cloth.

“It did happen here,” said Beth in a graveyard voice. The little pot of mayonnaise wobbled yet again.

“Was he a relation of yours? A boyfriend?” The red woman’s voice sounded gentle now.

Beth shook herself. “Not a relation. Certainly not a boyfriend—he’d have laughed at the mere idea. He always laughed at me. But we were at the village school here together. It was a terrible death, a heathen death.”

“I’ve read about it in the paper,” said the red woman thoughtfully. “With a spade. Not nice. But you really don’t have to worry that it’ll make any difference to the tourists. Although an arrest would be a good thing, of course. Do they have a suspect yet?”

The red woman reached for the tomato salad. A soundless sigh went through the flock of sheep. They were more interested in the tomato salad than any of the other things on the picnic cloth. They had hoped the woman would overeat on scones and leave the tomato salad behind ungrazed. At present the outlook was not hopeful.

“Some say it was about money or drugs or even worse.” Beth flushed red. “But that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is, there’s someone going around here in Glennkill…” Her voice rose to a higher register, so that she didn’t really sound like Beth anymore. The sheep jumped and twitched their ears nervously. “A human being like anyone else on the outside but a wild beast inside, eaten away by such sickness of the soul, such Godlessness, such despair…”

Beth stared into the eyes of the stranger, who held her gaze unflinchingly for a moment. Then the strange woman stuck her fork into the bowl of tomato salad and brought out a tiny whole tomato. The sheep had never seen such small tomatoes. Even the stunted tomatoes in George’s vegetable plot (George had never been particularly successful with tomatoes) were giants by comparison. But they had an aroma just like a big tomato, a delicious aroma—and they were disappearing rapidly between the red woman’s immaculate teeth.

Now that Beth had started to talk, there was no stopping her.

“You see, it’s not an ordinary, logical sort of murder. Not the kind you see on TV, where it’s all about money or power. I can just feel it. I distribute tracts, you see, wonderful writings about the Gospel, and if you do that long enough you get a feeling for what people are like. You may laugh at me, but I have that feeling.”

Beth’s voice, which didn’t sound at all like Beth’s voice anymore, trembled. But the woman’s hand didn’t as she raised her fork to her mouth, with
two
little tomatoes on it.

“I could tell you such things…this murder is to do with souls, I can say that much. It’s a matter of guilt. Whoever did it knew what’s right and what’s wrong, but wasn’t strong enough to do the right thing. It’s so terrible when you don’t have the strength to do the right thing, you feel like cutting your own weakness out of yourself with a knife. A knife …But the weakness is still there, and a time comes when you don’t see any option but to destroy what’s strong. Destroying what you can’t achieve—that’s the worst of human sins. God be with me.”

Beth had spoken directly to the heavens, with her head raised as if she had entirely forgotten the red woman. But now the two of them were looking at each other again. The woman’s eyes had narrowed; a fork with two more baby tomatoes was hovering in front of her red lips, forgotten. Beth’s eyes were round and wide as a child’s and she was smiling sadly. For a second the sheep forgot the tomatoes too. They had never seen Beth smile before. She looked pretty—or better than usual, anyway.

“I can imagine that seems strange to you, but I do have a feeling for these things.”

The red woman shook her head. She was going to say something, but Beth didn’t let her get a word in edgewise. A Beth who wouldn’t let someone else get a word in edgewise was something entirely new.

“You see, I spoke to the police. I was the only one who did too. Imagine that: a whole village, and I’m the only one to ask the police about it. We’ll all stifle in the silence here.” Beth took a deep breath. “Well then, the police say George was poisoned first. He fell asleep peacefully. Then came the spade. When he was already dead, you understand? The question is why, and the CID from town probably don’t think anything much of that. But I’ve been going from door to door with my pamphlets for years. I know what heathens the people here are at heart.”

Two red lips closed round two equally red tomatoes.

“There’s an old superstition, you know. If someone dies, you shouldn’t come too close to the body for the first hour. They say the hounds of the Devil are on watch, waiting to swallow the dead person’s soul. And George’s soul belonged to the Devil, oh dear, yes! Can you imagine what horror that lost soul must have felt beside the body, with the spade? Can you guess what it takes to overcome that horror? You say the murder won’t affect the tourist trade. But I can feel that Glennkill won’t be able to live again until the black sheep has finally left our flock.”

Beth rose abruptly, with surprisingly flowing movements. Othello gave her a nasty look. Once on her two hind legs, Beth lost that little touch of elegance as quickly as it had come.

“Well, if you have any questions—about the tourist openings, I mean—then please come to the parish office. Open daily from ten to twelve, nine to twelve on Wednesdays.”

She was going to turn, but the red woman gently took her by the sleeve. Her eyes were still narrowed.

“And suppose I have questions about George?” she whispered, looking up at Beth. In a deep voice. A husky, beautiful voice. A voice for reading aloud in.

Beth froze. Once again her eyes searched the spotlessly blue sky. When she finally looked down at the woman there was the hint of a smile on her lips.

“In that case,” she whispered, “come and see me this evening. The blue house opposite the church. The takeaway is at the front. I live at the back.”

Beth turned, and was soon only a sharply outlined black silhouette getting smaller and smaller against the background of the afternoon sky. The red woman, motionless, watched her go. The last tomato lay forgotten in the salad bowl.

Othello had got the last tomato. He stood there dreamily, watching the strange woman pack away all the rest of the fodder in her basket and stroll thoughtfully along the cliff tops toward the village. Envious sheep faces surrounded him. How did Othello always know what to do? Who had taught him to get on with humans so well? How did he know simply to stand there in front of the woman, not pushy but not shy, just as she was going to put the salad bowl back in the basket? The woman had laughed in her kind, husky, George-like way, and held the bowl out to Othello. And Othello had eaten the last baby tomato at his leisure.

Now the sheep were in a bad mood. None of them would have dared to do what Othello did, particularly with a woman who was a complete stranger, but they all begrudged him that tomato. Only Miss Maple was looking reflective. She even grazed her way right past an excellent patch of clover, which showed just how deep in thought she was.

“She’s not stupid,” murmured Miss Maple, more to herself than to any of the other sheep. “Beth’s not stupid. She thinks too much of souls and not enough of human beings, but she’s not stupid.”

“The red woman isn’t stupid either,” said Othello, almost a touch too proudly.

“Oh no.” Miss Maple nodded. “The red woman isn’t a bit stupid.”

“I’d never have expected George to have a child,” said Maude. “You did smell it, didn’t you?” Several sheep had now joined the interesting conversation between Maple, Othello, and Maude. They nodded. The family scent. Sweat and skin and hair. Unmistakably George’s daughter.

“We don’t know what it means,” said Cordelia. To sheep, the identity of the ram who sired them is of no importance, but who knew if it was the same with human beings? There had been a father in one of the Pamela novels who locked up his daughter so that she couldn’t run off with some baron.

“That apple-pie Pamela isn’t her mother, anyway,” said Cloud. Once again they looked at each other, baffled. What did it mean? And was it important?

“She did say something important,” Miss Maple went on. “She’s like George: she says important things in ways that a sheep can understand. She said humans are herd animals. I think she’s quite right.”

Miss Maple had forgotten all about grazing now and was trotting up and down, concentrating hard.

“They all live in the same place, in the village. They come to see the spade together. They’re herd animals, like us, we’re a flock. But why…”

Miss Maple stopped trotting.

“Why does it seem so new to us? Why didn’t we know that humans are herd animals? The answer’s simple!”

Miss Maple looked keenly at the sheep around her. From their expressions she could tell that the answer wasn’t simple enough. But just as she was about to go on, Sir Ritchfield bleated excitedly.

“He left the flock! George left the flock!”

Miss Maple nodded.

“Yes,” she said, “George must have left the human herd. He never belonged to their flock. Or perhaps he was chased away. He was always angry with the people in the village, we all know that. Perhaps his death is a
punishment
for leaving the flock.”

The sheep were silent with horror. It seemed terrible to think of their shepherd leaving the flock.

“But the Devil’s hounds!” whispered Cordelia. “He didn’t deserve that.”

Lane shuddered. “They must be terrible hounds if even humans are afraid of them. Perhaps the wolf’s ghost was really one of the Devil’s hounds.”

Despite the sunny weather in the meadow, the thought of the wolf’s ghost sent a misty fear creeping through the fleeces of all the sheep. They instinctively moved closer together. Cloud began bleating anxiously.