Too Soon a Death: A Scottish mystery where cosy crime meets tartan noir: Borders Mysteries Book 2 (11 page)

By the time she’d passed the Golf Club and Kelso Ice Rink, rejoining her original route at a mini roundabout, she felt foolish. ‘Sorry. I was being silly, wasn’t I?’ she said, patting her bump. ‘But we’re going to the garden centre now. Nothing sinister ever happens in one of those.’

Forty minutes later, having wandered around the tempting displays of shrubs and trees and treated herself to a beautiful hardback book on garden design by the Royal Horticultural Society, Zoe drove out of the garden centre’s car park. As she set off in the direction of Kelso Abbey, she noticed a blue Fiesta parked at the side of the road, a hand hanging out of the driver’s window with a cigarette clamped between its fingers. She checked out the sole occupant as she went past. He wore a baseball cap and aviator sunglasses.

She pulled into an empty space up ahead and got out.

By the time she reached the passenger side of the Fiesta, the little car was already indicating to pull away, but a succession of vehicles coming from behind it prevented this manoeuvre. Even with his face turned from her, the driver, in a faded red tee-shirt and ripped jeans, looked unlike any journalist or freelance photographer she’d been hassled by in the past. And he seemed desperate to get away, not confront her.

‘Why are you following me?’ Zoe shouted. The driver kept his face averted. She went to grab the door handle and at that moment, the Fiesta jerked forward and pulled away in a cloud of diesel fumes. She stumbled back against the hedge which lined the pavement.

A middle-aged woman rushed up to her. ‘Are you alright, hen? You need to take care of yersel, y’know.’

‘Thank you, I’m fine.’

For much of the way home, Zoe berated herself for not having had the presence of mind to take the Fiesta’s registration number, but by the time she arrived back at Keeper’s Cottage she realised that information would only be useful if she intended to involve the police, which she definitely didn’t want to do. Mather would insist on making it official and she couldn’t bear getting caught up in yet another investigation.

For the first time in months, she locked her front door as soon as she got inside. Mac’s greeting was more subdued than usual, probably because his inflamed eye was troubling him. Although reluctant to go out again, she couldn’t ignore it and called the vet for an appointment. Only the last one of the day was left and it became obvious as soon as they entered the crowded waiting area that Patrick and his colleagues were behind schedule. The smell of disinfectant hung in the air and a wet-floor sign stood in the passageway leading to the consulting rooms. A young woman dressed in a tiny pair of shorts and balancing a cat basket on her knees slid along the bench seat to make room for Zoe to sit down. Mac lay at her feet, his tail wagging slowly as he sized up the other dogs.

Patrick appeared beside an elderly man with red-rimmed eyes who carried a small dog-collar. He nodded at Zoe and as the man produced his wallet with a shaking hand, took his arm and escorted him past the reception desk, murmuring, ‘Don’t worry about that now.’ The waiting pet owners looked on in sympathy and several reached for their own pets. Zoe got out her book.

Forty minutes after their appointed time, Patrick ushered them into his room.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting so long. It’s been a hectic afternoon.’

‘Don’t worry. I often find it impossible to stick to a schedule too. You can’t just throw patients out of the door when their time’s up.’

He bent down to look at Mac’s eye. ‘So this has come on since his adventure at the weekend?’

‘I thought there was no lasting damage but a couple of days later he started rubbing his head on the carpet then he developed a squint in that eye. Now there’s a discharge coming from it.’

Mac was on his best behaviour as Zoe held him and Patrick cleaned out his eye then put a warm compress over it for a few minutes. Apart from reassuring the dog this wouldn’t take long and praising him for his patience, neither of them spoke.

After administering the first dose of antibiotic drops and rewarding Mac with a biscuit, Patrick stood up, stretched his back and looked at Zoe. ‘You’ll need to clean his eye morning and evening before putting the drops in. I don’t have to tell you to wear gloves, do I? Especially at the moment.’

‘No you don’t,’ Zoe said, putting Mac’s lead back on. Worried she may have sounded curt, she added, ‘Thanks for seeing us. You’ve had to work very late this evening.’

Patrick reached for the door to let her out, but stopped short of opening it. ‘I enjoyed our chat at the Mackenzie barbeque, and Mac got on well with Peggy. I wonder if you’d like to come out for a walk with us over the weekend? Not a long one, of course. Even dachshunds with a full complement of legs don’t need as much exercise as a dog Mac’s size.’

Zoe’s immediate reaction was to make an excuse, but wasn’t that a bit silly? Mac did enjoy spending time with other dogs.

He took her silence as a no and opened the door. ‘Another time, maybe. If Mac’s eye is still weeping when the drops are finished, bring him back.’

‘Yes,’ Zoe said. ‘To the walk, I mean.’

Patrick’s face lit up. ‘That’s great.’

‘Where will we go? I’m not good going up or down steep hills anymore.’

‘Leave the route to me. Sunday morning suit you?’

‘Alright. As long as I can drive. I’m most comfortable in my own vehicle these days.’ It also meant she could control how long they stayed out.

‘You come to me and we can go on from there.’

After agreeing on an early start to avoid the worst of the heat and Patrick giving her directions to his house just outside Duns, Zoe left him to do whatever vets do after taking surgery and went to the reception desk to settle her bill.

During the short drive home, she remained on the alert for that blue Fiesta, experiencing a moment of panic as she approached Westerlea and saw one driving along Main Street towards her. However, its occupant was a white-haired woman who looked unlikely to even know what aviator sunglasses were.

ELEVEN

Wellies?
Zoe tapped into her mobile.

Kate replied immediately.
Yes & trousers. Do you own walking stick?

No. Ground rough?

No. Brambles!

By the time Kate arrived at Keeper’s Cottage on Friday morning, Zoe was beginning to regret agreeing to join her on another of her expeditions, this time to an abandoned graveyard. However, the day felt a little cooler and she didn’t have to work, so providing they weren’t out for long it might prove interesting. She just hoped not to be caught short like on a recent walk, when she’d had to hide behind a hedge to pee, all the time being stared at by Mac.

‘Weren’t you supposed to be going back up to Edinburgh today?’ she asked Kate once they were in the kitchen.

‘I need to solve the mystery you set me first,’ Kate said. ‘I’ve come up with a theory and today we’re testing it out.’

‘Before we do that, I need to tell you something.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve been looking into the eye colour issue, and I’m afraid I may be sending us on a wild-goose chase. Your client’s great-great-grandfather could have had brown eyes when his parents had blue ones. It does happen, though not often. I can email you a link to the research I found, if you like.’

‘Actually, I don’t think you were wrong at all, but I’m not going to tell you my theory until we find the evidence I hope is in the graveyard.’

Zoe raised her eyebrows. ‘So you’re going to make me wander around without knowing what I’m looking for?’

‘It’ll be fun. I’ve got a flask of coffee and a packet of biscuits in the car.’

‘I’ll need more than that.’

‘You’re not playing the pregnancy card, are you? I’m trying to do what you tell me everyone should do—not treat you any differently despite the baby you’re carrying.’

After raising her hands in mock submission, Zoe moved to the sink to fill her water bottle. A few minutes later, they were sitting in Kate’s car, but instead of pulling away, Kate stared at the side of Zoe’s head.

‘What?’ Zoe asked.

‘Your earlobe’s all red and swollen. Does it hurt?’

Zoe put her hand to her ear. The lobe felt hot and a little tender. ‘A bit, yes. I’ll bathe it when I get back.’

‘I had to take my belly bar out every time I got pregnant because it kept on getting infected. But I don’t suppose you have one of those.’

They both burst out laughing at the thought.

About twenty minutes later, Kate brought her car to a halt in front of a pair of intricately carved stone pillars, each of which supported a high metal gate. Zoe looked on as she took a pink backpack, two wooden walking-sticks and something large and flat, wrapped in a hessian sack, from the boot.

‘What on earth’s that?’ Zoe asked, pointing at the sack.

Kate passed her a stick and put on the backpack. ‘You’ll see.’

One of the gates stood open, beckoning visitors to follow the track leading from it towards a band of trees.

‘This is the start of the old Allankirk estate,’ Kate said. ‘The big house is long gone, as are the workers’ cottages. All that’s left are these gates and the graveyard. Hard to believe a couple of hundred people lived here in the early nineteenth century, isn’t it?’

‘What happened?’ Zoe asked. ‘Did they all just move away or was it something more sinister?’

‘The laird decided he didn’t want to look out on his workers anymore, so he built them a new settlement a few miles away and moved them there. We drove through it on the way here. Clarefield, remember? He named it after his wife.’

‘I know where you mean.’

‘Unfortunately, the cost of doing this was greater than he’d anticipated and it bankrupted him. He sold the big house to someone who in turn sold it on and it was never lived in again. In the 1920s, what remained of it was taken apart stone by stone.’

‘That’s so sad.’

‘Don’t you mean outrageous? Treating people like cattle, shunting them out of the way.’

‘Into brand new houses. We might be outraged at the thought, but maybe for his workers it was a change for the better.’

‘Hmm.’ The expression on Kate’s face told Zoe she wasn’t convinced. ‘Anyway, the graveyard isn’t far but the path becomes a bit overgrown at one point. You must say if you start to get tired.’

Zoe waved the walking stick Kate had brought along for her. ‘I will. Lead on.’

The path was at its widest until it reached the trees, when it started to taper until they could no longer walk side by side. As the height of the trees increased, the sunlight diminished and the path gave up all pretence of being anything but a narrow tunnel. For ten minutes, the only sound Zoe could hear was the scampering of small animals in the dense undergrowth; all birdsong had ceased. Just as she began to wonder if they would ever reach their destination, they stepped into a small clearing. She looked up at the blue sky and welcomed the heat of the sun on her face.

‘The graveyard should be over there,’ Kate said, pointing to their right.

‘“Should be”? Have you never been here before?’

‘No. You’ll probably need your stick now. Come on.’

The final stage of their hike took them back in amongst trees, but these were more widely spaced than before. The soft ground, its surface littered with dead leaves and fallen pine-cones interspersed with patches of bright green nettles and creeping brambles, sunk under Zoe’s feet. She swore as a nettle she’d pushed aside with her stick swung back and stung her calf just above the protection of her boots.

‘Here it is,’ Kate shouted.

Thank goodness. Zoe ducked her head to avoid a low-hanging branch and when she looked up again she saw Kate standing at a gap in an ivy-clad wall twice her height. Several piles of stones lying nearby, covered in moss and overrun by brambles, attested to this entrance not being man-made but the result of gradual decay.

They stared at the final resting place of many Allankirk residents. The graveyard was surrounded on all sides by the wall, except for an opening off to the right which must have been its original entrance. Because no trees grew inside, it was bathed in sunshine.

‘It’s not as overgrown as I would have expected,’ Zoe said.

‘It gets no regular maintenance, but a group of volunteers Auntie Joan belongs to cleared the worst of the vegetation in the spring.’

‘Now are you going to tell me what we’re looking for?’

Kate reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a small notebook. ‘Remember I showed you the photocopy of the Criminal Register for 1861? When Adam and his parents—or, rather, the people I thought were his parents—were arrested, they gave their addresses as Clarefield. It wasn’t long after the new village had been built so they had probably lived on the old Allankirk estate before then.’

‘But whose gravestone are you hoping to find here?’

‘We must look for a baby boy who died in about 1845, and Grace’s sister.’ Kate glanced down at the notebook. ‘Her name was Lily. She would have died around the same time.’

‘I don’t suppose you know Lily’s surname?’

‘Sorry. She was likely married but I haven’t been able to find a record of that yet.’ Kate grinned. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

‘The words haystack and needle do spring to mind,’ Zoe said, rubbing her leg where it had been stung.

‘Let’s look for half an hour. If we don’t find anything by the end of that, I promise we can give up and go home. Here, I’ve brought some vital bits of equipment for you.’ Kate slipped off her backpack and undid the zip to its main compartment, from which she took out a pair of gardening gloves and a dustpan brush. ‘Give me a wave if you find anything interesting.’

As Zoe weaved between the gravestones, she found no statues of angels or intricately carved sarcophagi; the Allankirk graveyard wasn’t inhabited by members of the gentry. This had been a burial ground for working people, their families’ limited means probably stretched to commission even these simple tributes.

Unlike Westerlea’s graveyard, scene of one funeral Zoe had attended the previous November and another she had deliberately stayed away from, the gravestones here may have started off in serried rows but they were now scattered. Hardly any still stood completely upright. Some were supported by large fieldstones placed at their base, one was propped up with a tree branch. Many had fallen over and been piled haphazardly on top of each other, while a number of them looked like oversized paving-stones, having lain on the ground for such a long time that the earth had risen around them. All were covered with lichen and moss, and some with ivy too.