Bury Her Deep

10

We sat in silence for a long, empty moment, listening to the clock ticking and the soft patter of rainfall beginning outside. Then I took a mustering breath and began to speak, looking just over her left shoulder as I did so.

‘You do nothing,’ I said. ‘When the baby comes you will love it just the same. We must catch this beast, my dear, make no mistake about it, but you do nothing. Knit and sew and get ready and, you’ll see, it will all be fine in the end.’

‘But what if the baby…’ she began. She was looking at me strangely. ‘What if it’s no’… a baby?’ I was speechless. ‘Mrs Black next door telt me,’ she went on. ‘It happened to a woman fae Dundee and it wasna a baby she had, nothin’ like.’

‘Mrs Muirhead,’ I said. ‘I’m going to speak very plainly and I hope you forgive me. This creature is a man. He is not a demon or a devil, just a very bad, evil, nasty man. Of course, your baby is going to be a baby. Put that nonsense right out of your mind.’

‘But then where did it come fae?’ said Mrs Muirhead. ‘He swooped down on me and hung over me. He pulled at me, but he didna… I mean, no man could o’ made this happen just by his evil touch. It’s no’ possible. Oh, what am I goin’ to do?’

‘Well, of course it’s not possible,’ I exclaimed. ‘Are you saying that this creature didn’t force himself upon you?’ She shook her head. ‘And your husband?’

‘He thinks it’s his,’ wailed Mrs Muirhead.

‘Then why, I beseech you, do you think otherwise? What in the name of sanity are you frightened of?’

‘It started that nicht,’ she said. ‘I ken it did, for the next mornin’ I was as sick as sick could be and every mornin’ since too.’

‘But my dear,’ I said, ‘that means nothing at all.’ I was not about to launch into a lecture on biology, but I had to say something; she had told me her mother was dead and Auntie Bessie McAdam was obviously of little practical help if ‘keep quiet and don’t be daft’ was typical advice from her lips. ‘The sickness doesn’t start the very next day, you know,’ I told her, trying to sound both fierce and gentle. ‘The… night in question’ – at this point we both blushed – ‘might have been weeks before that. Simply weeks.’

‘But Mrs Black,’ she whimpered. ‘Mrs Black next door telt me I had opened my soul to the devil and asked him in. And then Auntie Bessie asked me if I had been visited, but she disna believe in the devil, none o’ them do, and so she jist said that whit’s for me would never go past me and no’ to worry.’

I was rubbing the bridge of my nose between finger and thumb, trying to see a thread of sense in this tangle.

‘Why did Mrs Black accuse you of such a thing?’ I said. ‘Did she see him? If she did, then she’s a sweep for not backing you up.’

‘She saw nothin’,’ said Mrs Muirhead. ‘She said I had invited him in wi’ a’ my traipsin’ about at nicht. When she saw me start to show she said a bairn takes in sin wi’ its mither’s milk and that this one would be a foot sojer for Satan. That’s what she said. And then she telt me aboot the woman fae Dundee who had met the devil on the road and nine months later… it was terrible, she said.’

‘My dear girl,’ I said, trying to speak briskly although I was shaking with anger. ‘Mrs Black would have us all in the fires every day, just for breathing. Don’t ever ever pay any attention to anything she tells you and you won’t go far wrong.’ I sat back and passed a hand wearily over my face, trying to restore myself to something more everyday. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘let’s get this completely straight and clear. Most unfortunately, at just the moment when you should have been overjoyed by your happy news, purely by coincidence…’

‘Coincidence?’ she echoed.

‘Truly,’ I said. ‘I promise you. I give you my word of honour. I’m a mother myself twice over and was a nurse in the war.’ Ludicrously, since maternity wards hardly dominated in military convalescent homes, it was the nursing that appeared to clinch it and at last, she let her shoulders drop and gave me a watery smile.

‘So now that we agree what didn’t happen,’ I went on, ‘perhaps you would tell me what did. You were walking home from the Rural meeting in June and…?’

‘He come doon the lane fae the law, as fast as fast, fairly flyin’ over the ground he was and then…’ She stopped, trembling again.

‘He pounced on you, knocked you over, held a hand over your mouth so you couldn’t scream, and pinched you.’

‘Just so,’ said Mrs Muirhead, with enormous relief that I had taken the worst part of the memory out of her hands. ‘He was trying to jab at my face, but I kept my head doon and so he just plucked away at it with his claws-’

‘Nails,’ I said sternly.

‘His nails, aye,’ she said. ‘Then he disappeart again.’

‘Back where he had come from? Back towards the law?’ She nodded. I took another deep breath, resisted the urge to cross my fingers and asked the question that was burning in me.

‘Cast your mind back,’ I said, ‘and tell me this: was there a smell of any kind when he was close to you? Can you remember anything like that?’ Mrs Muirhead’s eyes flared, fear beginning to grow on her face again. ‘Don’t worry if it seems odd,’ I assured her. ‘Just tell me.’

‘It disna,’ she said. ‘It’s just what you’d think.’

‘Whisky?’ I ventured. It would not be the first time in my experience that the demon drink had been interpreted as literally as that. She shook her head, still holding her bottom lip in her teeth and with eyes still widening. ‘Sulphur? Yeast?’ Young Mrs Muirhead looked more and more horrified with each outlandish suggestion. ‘Flowers, perhaps?’ I suggested.

‘Flowers?’ she echoed. ‘No, nane o’ that. He smelt o’ the fire itself. He smelt as though he’d come straicht fae… there.’ She looked down as she spoke.

‘Brimstone?’ I said.

‘I dinna ken what that smells like,’ she said. ‘He just reeked o’ smoke.’

‘Whisky, smoke, eggs, flowers and yeast,’ I repeated to myself as I left the cottage a moment later. Mrs Muirhead was restored to something approaching serenity and the pastry dough had come together at last, so I made my escape while the going was good and during a break in the rain. I did take the time, however, to stop off next door.

Mrs Black answered my peremptory rap looking more than ready for me; I was sure she had heard the Muirheads’ cottage door close and had been watching me.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ I said, before she had a chance to talk. ‘Mischief-making, salacious creature that you are. I’ve a good mind to tell Mr Tait what you said to that poor girl.’

‘Him!’ spat Mrs Black. ‘I’m no feart fur him. A fine state my immortal sowel wid be in if he wis mindin’ it.’

‘It’s a great sin,’ I told her firmly – I thought I might as well address her in her own tongue – ‘a very great sin to cause the kind of trouble and unhappiness you have caused.’ Mrs Black drew herself up.

‘Nae whip cuts sae deep as-’

‘Spare me,’ I said, talking over her. ‘Mischievous, salacious and a crippling bore to boot. Goodbye, Mrs Black.’

With that, I stamped back to the manse, far too cross to attempt further interviews and needing a good long stint of hurling sticks for Bunty from the shelter of the porch before I was ready for tea.

Mr Tait was installed as before in front of the sitting-room fire when I entered, looking even more cosy than ever; he evidently felt that after a total of three days in his household I was no longer to be treated as an outsider and he was wearing carpet slippers now as well as the cardigan jersey and had an embroidered tea-napkin tucked over his dog collar. Lorna, however, was nowhere to be seen.

‘Pancakes, my dear,’ he sang out to me, ‘or you’ll know them as drop scones, I daresay. Come, come, while they’re hot. And before Lorna gets here from wherever she’s lost herself, tell me: how does it go on today?’

‘Tremendously well, as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘I’ve unearthed another victim.’

Mr Tait made a creditable job of registering concern, admiration and interest all at once with just one expression and then he circled his butter knife in the air as though whisking something, telling me to carry on.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Who was it? What poor soul has been suffering in silence?’

‘I don’t think,’ I said slowly, ‘that I’m at liberty to say.’ I could not remember whether young Mrs Muirhead had sworn me to secrecy or not – the whole conversation had been rather fervid and the details were blurred – but if she had not, I was sure it was because she had taken my discretion as a given.

‘Oh, come,’ said Mr Tait, looking rather startled. ‘I’m sure there’s not one of my parishioners who wouldn’t give me her troubles to share.’ I forbore from pointing out that there was at least one of his flock – Mrs Black – who would scarcely give him the steam off her porridge to share.

‘But she didn’t, did she?’ I pointed out. ‘And so I rather think I shall keep my own counsel too.’

‘Very proper,’ said Mr Tait, almost managing to sound as though he meant it. ‘But you can surely tell me this much: has it filled in another piece of the puzzle for you? Has it moved things along?’

The honest answer to this was, no. I had gained confirmation that the stranger often came around the law from the north, but I had known that anyway. I suppose I had gathered another note to add to his signature scent, but all I had really achieved was confirmation that there really were missing victims and that it was worth pursuing the rest of them, in the hopes that one of the others might provide a more vital clue.

‘Ish,’ I said, and Mr Tait smiled at me ruefully. ‘There’s always a great deal of “ish” before one finally breaks through.’

‘Can you at least assure me that she is quite well after the ordeal? That she has rallied and put it behind her?’

Again, I could not easily think how to answer. Up until this afternoon she had done anything but and had been set fair for a complete blue funk, but now I flattered myself that if she took my words to heart she would begin to recover.

‘She’s fine,’ I said in the end, crossing my fingers and trusting that it was true.

‘Splendid,’ said Mr Tait. ‘They are a stalwart band, these farmers’ wives of mine, are they not?’

I was about to agree with him – they certainly were – and then I checked myself.

‘What gives you the idea that she is a farmer’s wife?’ I asked.

Mr Tait grew very still at that and did not answer for a moment or two.

‘I can’t honestly imagine,’ he said at last, sounding interested. ‘How peculiar of me. Unless… perhaps the strange case of Mrs Hemingborough made me assume that this latest doughty lady must be another like her. Or perhaps,’ he chuckled, ‘it’s just that my dear late wife was a farmer’s daughter, as I’ve told you. In the ordinary way of things she might have married a farmer and been a farmer’s wife too, but she married a clergyman who kept her from her home…’ His normally cheery face had clouded, his cushiony cheeks falling.

‘But brought her back again,’ I said, trying to comfort him.

‘All too briefly,’ said Mr Tait. ‘And now her home, where generations of her family tilled the good soil, has passed into other hands.’ He gathered himself with a brave sigh. ‘But you are quite right, my dear. Even although there are so many farmers’ wives and they’re all so very good to the kirk I should not forget the others.’ This, I was sure, was closer to the truth, and might even account for why the likes of Mrs Black felt so disapproving of him. A minister should not have favourites, but even that first day at Gilverton when Mr Tait had told me the tale he had mentioned farmers’ wives and, in reality, Mrs Fraser of Balniel was the only wife of any sort who had come forward with a story about the stranger by then. That had always niggled me in some way I could not put my finger on, but I set it aside as the unmistakable sounds of Lorna arriving home, late and flurried, came to us from the front hall.

She appeared to have been out tramping around in a very different October afternoon from the one I had endured for, although her hair was frizzed with rain and a dark patch on each shoulder showed where her mackintosh seams had let in water, her eyes were alight and her smile as sparkling as any I have ever seen on a sunny picnic.

‘Do forgive me, Mrs Gilver,’ she said, beaming as she sat and ignoring her father’s mild remonstrances about the wet hair and shoulders. ‘I’ve been visiting, Father. Welcoming our new addition to the parish.’ Mr Tait looked understandably put out at that; it was his job to welcome incomers, not to mention his job to know they were coming. ‘Ford Cottage is let at last,’ she went on. ‘To an artist.’ She was almost breathless as she said this, and I very briefly caught her father’s eye.

‘He’s been walking in the area and he passed through the village only last week,’ said Lorna, accepting a plate absent-mindedly, ‘looking for inspiration, he said, for “a piece”. When he saw Ford Cottage he immediately sent a telegram to the Howies begging them to let him rent it, and moved in the very next day.’

‘What kind of artist?’ said Mr Tait. ‘A painter?’

‘Yes,’ said Lorna. ‘He’s got great big canvases stacked everywhere all over the living room.’

‘And what’s his name?’ said her father.

‘Captain Watson,’ said Lorna, rather reverently it seemed to me. ‘He’s just resigned his commission and he’s looking for somewhere to settle down.’ Her father looked slightly comforted at that. A Captain Watson with such a respectable excuse for finding himself rootless was much to be preferred to the impulsive wastrel he had at first understood this stranger to be.

‘We’ve never had an artist at Luckenlaw before,’ said Lorna, cheerfully, and she took a hearty bite out of her buttered pancake. ‘I must tell Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum. He could do a painting demonstration at the Rural, or at least give a talk.’ She gave what I thought was a little shiver of anticipation. Her father, however, thought otherwise and took her cup and tea plate out of her hands, setting them down firmly on the table again.

‘I insist you go and wrap your hair in a towel,’ he said. ‘You’re chilled, Lorna dear. Wrap your hair and change your blouse like a good girl and I’ll pour you a fresh cup when you come down again.’ Lorna beamed at him and felt her damp hair as though noticing it for the first time, then obediently rose and left the room.

We were silent for a while once she had gone. I was thinking hard about this artist; he did not seem quite plausible to me. Mr Tait too was troubled at the thought of him.

‘Odd for this chap to want to settle here, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘Just after the war, of course, there were plenty of officers who wanted to escape the world, but a career soldier, as this Watson must be…’

‘… might be expected to look for something a bit more lively,’ I agreed.

‘Different story with the poet, of course,’ Mr Tait went on. ‘Have you heard about him?’

I nodded. ‘I was wondering about what Lorna said; that this artist had been walking in the area. Moonlight walks, do you suppose? Might his recent passage through the village have been on the night in question?’

‘Surely not.’

‘It’s certainly worth making sure that Elspeth McConechie, say, or Annie Pellow, gets a look at him to see if he seems familiar.’

‘On the quiet, mind,’ said Mr Tait softly as we heard Lorna returning, and we shared a smile.

After tea the rain began to fall more determinedly than ever and the two Taits and I settled in by the sitting-room fireside for a long evening of respectively mending, snoozing over a book of essays and making notes on the case under cover of planning my talk. My beginner’s luck that afternoon had been considerable, but I could not hope to meet such good fortune every time I ventured forth and I quailed when I looked in the Post Office Directory and saw just how many dwellings there were scattered about the lanes where my other missing victims might be waiting. There must, I thought desperately, be some way of doing this more efficiently, of avoiding the time I might waste knocking on doors where no one had ever been to the Rural or was not there on the night in question. July and September were the months which were missing a name to enter against them, so if I could find out who had stopped going by then – scared off by the stranger or forbidden by a protective husband, perhaps – I could save myself the kitchen visit, the household budget subterfuge of which I was already growing weary, and the chastening haughty put-downs which were bound to ensue if I accused some blameless woman of being implicated in the trouble that beset Luckenlaw. If Miss Lindsay kept a record, it could be just what I needed. But what excuse could I give her for wanting to see it?

‘Can I help you?’ said Lorna, and I realised that I was staring at her as I tried to think.

‘I do apologise,’ I said. ‘I was miles away.’

‘Only… you haven’t asked me yet,’ she went on. I stared at her. ‘About my household budget, I mean.’

‘Of course!’ I said. ‘Well, I’d be very grateful for anything you can tell me.’

‘I may not have much to tax me just now,’ she said. She glanced over at the drowsing head opposite and went on softly. ‘My father has a very generous stipend and a pension from Kingoldrum as well and my mother had money of her own, so I don’t really need to worry as long as it’s the manse we’re considering. But’ – another glance at her father – ‘I was all set to run my little household once before using my own small inheritance, and I would have been equal to it, would have delighted in it.’

‘Of course you would, my dear,’ I murmured, trying to ignore the echo of Professor Higgins in my head, sneering at anyone who essayed happiness on a pittance and called it fun.

‘And I haven’t changed my mind or grown too set in my ways,’ she went on. ‘A daughter of the manse I might be but I could be happy with a much less… a much more… I mean, a bohemian life can be managed on a shoestring, don’t you think?’

I refrained from hazarding a guess about how big a hole daily servings of opium and absinthe would make in her mother’s money, and anyway I am sure that the mild, smiling Lorna meant something quite different when she spoke of a bohemian life. I supposed too that it was inevitable for her to harbour some wistful thoughts upon hearing that another artistic soul had come to rest, and in such romantic circumstances, in her poet’s cottage, and perhaps he had seen in her his heart’s desire when she hove through the rain towards him and she was only responding in kind, but I doubted it and I hoped for her sake that she was a little less transparent in this Captain Watson’s hearing and in the Howie ladies’ too; they were bound to laugh at her, friends or no friends, for Lorna was just the kind of girl to tease little spikes of cruelty from the best of hearts and the Howies, although kind, were always on the look-out for diversion too.

Once again Lorna looked over at her father and when she spoke again it was almost in a whisper.

‘Do you believe in fate, Mrs Gilver?’ she said. ‘I do.’

‘Um,’ I said.

‘This afternoon,’ she went on, ‘when I went to Ford Cottage, I could almost have sworn… Well, what I mean is, I’m glad I knew already that Captain Watson was there. If I had just caught sight of him I would have sworn Walter had come back to me. It took quite ten minutes for the feeling to disperse, and I think it’s a sign.’

‘Really?’ I said. One would have imagined that a pacifist poet and a retired soldier with enormous canvases strewn about would be at either end of the spectrum of artists, nothing much in common at all. But perhaps it was just red hair or something. ‘Is there a very strong likeness, then?’

‘Oh no,’ said Lorna. ‘None at all, really. It was just seeing him there, I daresay, in Walter’s cottage. In Walter’s setting.’

Or, as Alec would say, in Walter’s context. Was he right after all? If Lorna could be persuaded that she recognised someone just because of where she saw him, was it possible that frightened women would not recognise a neighbour just because they saw him where they could hardly believe he would be? Was I wasting time with the women when I should have been sleuthing away after the men? I had a small, sneaking feeling down inside that I had blundered.

It was long after dinner, almost bedtime, just the moment when one is deciding whether to ring for more coal or bank the embers and begin to turn down the lamps, that all the commotion began. There was a banging at the manse door and Mr Tait heaved himself to his slippered feet with a weary sigh and padded out to see what was the matter. Lorna and I followed him, for surely this hammering was something beyond the usual supplicating call for the minister.

In the hallway, lit by a housemaid’s raised candle, stood a large man of early middle-age, who was twisting his cap and breathing heavily, although whether from some turmoil or just from the exertion it must take to move his bulk around – he really was quite enormous when one got close – was hard to guess at immediately.

‘Logan?’ said Mr Tait. ‘What is it? Is something the matter?’

The man flicked a glance at Lorna and me, but clearly was in no mood to observe niceties and demand that the womenfolk be protected from whatever he had to say.

‘They’ve arrested Jockie Christie,’ he announced. Lorna, standing beside me, breathed in with a harsh gasp.

‘Arrested him for what, Mr McAdam?’ she said.

‘Prowling,’ came the answer. ‘Constable Whatsisname spied him at it and went down to the police station to get Sergeant Doolan, then the two of them came up and nabbed him and took him away to the jail and if Ella Doolan hadn’t sent her lad up on his bicycle to tell Bessie we’d never have known a thing about it. It looks bad for him with this “dark stranger” starting up again.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ said Mr Tait.

‘Will you help? The lad’s done no wrong, not really, and you don’t like to think of him in a jail cell, Mr Tait. Will you go down and speak to Mike Doolan in the morning?’

‘I’ll do better than that,’ Mr Tait answered stoutly. ‘I’ll go down there now. There’s no reason for the poor lad to spend a night in a cell. Prowling, indeed! Prowling where?’

‘I’ll be getting back then,’ said the messenger, lumbering round awkwardly on the mat and preparing to take his leave. ‘Thank you, Mr Tait. It’s much appreciated.’

‘The least I could do,’ said Mr Tait, sounding rather gruff, as though embarrassed, as we watched the door close on the visitor’s departing back. Logan McAdam, I thought. Husband of Auntie Bessie McAdam of Over Luckenlaw Farm and one of Miss Lindsay’s erstwhile name-callers. The very floor shook as he descended the porch steps and I thought that at least he could be crossed off my list of potential snaky strangers. No one in the world could fail to recognise him.

Lorna, with a little twittering about making up a parcel of biscuits and a hot flask, disappeared along with the kitchen maid. Mr Tait went into the little cloakroom by the front door and sat down on the bench there to pull on his boots. I followed him, casually.

‘Why would the sergeant’s wife tell Mrs McAdam that John Christie was arrested?’ I said.

‘Ella Doolan is Bessie McAdam’s cousin,’ said Mr Tait.

‘I see, but what’s the connection at the other end? Why are the McAdams bound up in Christie’s concerns?’

Mr Tait looked puzzled for a moment before he answered and then he shrugged.

‘They’re neighbours,’ he said simply. ‘They’re at the next farm round.’

‘Would that we all had such neighbours,’ I replied. ‘Would that we all had such ministers too, Mr Tait. I’m afraid the incumbent at Gilverton Manse would be as likely to let the boy cool his heels as to set out into the night to secure his instant release.’

‘I am very glad to hear that you approve, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, his voice straining as he bent over his bootlaces, ‘because I am going to have to enlist you.’ He sat up and puffed out the rest of his breath. ‘As a chaperone. The best way of getting Sergeant Doolan to see sense, as far as I can think, is to take a handful of the stranger’s victims to the police station and have them tell him that he’s got the wrong man.’

‘I suppose,’ I said, suddenly feeling very doubtful. Perhaps if the victims saw him huddled in a prison cell – in the setting, that is, where such fellows belonged – they would be convinced that he was the stranger after all. Could ‘context’ manage all of that? Mr Tait was looking at me expectantly. ‘I mean, of course,’ I said hastily, ‘I’ll certainly come along. I mean, everyone I’ve spoken to is quite sure it couldn’t be him, so the police are surely in error – although there’s still the prowling.’ Mr Tait waved a dismissive hand at me.

‘Taking a walk after supper is not a crime,’ he said. ‘Now, who should we ask to go with us?’

This was not a straightforward matter, I thought, as I went upstairs to dress for the unexpected outing. Clearly, Mrs Muirhead was out of the running in her condition and I was not keen to include Mrs Fraser in the party. Annie Pellow had seemed a level-headed girl, but she lodged on the green and it would be terribly public for her to be dragged out in her curl-papers at ten o’clock at night in front of her neighbours. Molly Tweed was a far better bet: she had had a good look at her assailant that night in the spring. She was favourably disposed to young Mr Christie, but I still believed that her preference for him would only guarantee her making no mischief if he was not the one, and could not possibly lead her as far as covering for him if indeed he were guilty. And then Elspeth McConechie could perhaps be persuaded to come along too, for she was a sensible soul.

It took some doing to winkle Elspeth out of her employers’ protective grasp in the end; I had forgotten just how solicitous Mrs Palmer had been when I had tracked Elspeth down to her dairy.

‘Come now, Mrs Palmer,’ Mr Tait had said with a stern look over the tops of his spectacles, as we stood on the kitchen doorstep at Over Luck, ‘Elspeth has no objection and Mrs Gilver is here to take care of her. You surely don’t want our young friend languishing in that nasty jail, do you?’

At which, Mrs Palmer had – very reluctantly – nodded to Elspeth that she was free to go and had left us to it, with a ‘Do what you will then, you’re harming no one’ thrown over her departing shoulder.

Our reception at Luckenlaw House could hardly have been more different. Vashti and Nicolette were summoned by the noise of Mr Tait’s motor-car engine – he had unearthed the fabled Napier for the expedition and it made a racket like twenty aeroplanes running out of fuel together in a hailstorm – and were only just persuaded not to come along, as though the trip were laid on for their fun, but settled in the end for giving Molly an archly solemn pep talk each.

‘Remember,’ said Vashti, ‘take a very good look and make sure you are quite certain before you say yea or nay.’

‘And only go in if you are you sure it won’t be too upsetting,’ said Nicolette. ‘I should hate to think you’re going to relive that shocking ordeal.’

‘Well, we had better be off,’ said Mr Tait, ‘and let you ladies get back to your refreshment.’ He glared at the cocktail glass in Nicolette’s hand.

It was only a few miles down to Colinsburgh, where the blue light above the police station shone out alone into the darkness. There were no streetlamps on the long stretch of terraced cottages which made up the bulk of the little town and with the public bar shut up and shuttered and lamps already out behind almost every pair of drawn curtains, it was a picture of slumbering respectability. Mr Tait’s ancient motor car shuddered to a halt and he climbed down.

‘Wait here, won’t you please, ladies,’ he said. ‘I have high hopes of Sergeant Doolan. You might not have to go through with it at all if he can be brought to his senses.’ With that he left us.

‘I dinna ken why everybody’s so set on Jock Christie,’ said Molly once we were alone. Mr Tait had subdued her on the journey, but she was clearly quite unbowed by my presence alone. ‘It’s no’ him, eh it’s no’, Elspeth?’ Elspeth shook her head. She was in less ebullient spirits than the irrepressible Molly, shivering slightly beside me and looking ghastly pale in the faint blue light. Before she had plucked up the nerve to speak, Mr Tait was back again. He opened the door and climbed in, shutting it behind him with what amounted to a resounding slam at this hour of the night in a quiet village.

‘Confound the man,’ he said, treating the three of us to a scowl which was surely Sergeant Doolan’s by rights. ‘He’s adamant. Said Christie was behaving suspiciously, creeping around in the edge of a field at Balniel with no excuse for being there, and now he’s in his office there stamping pieces of paper and tying up files with pink tape left, right and centre. I’m afraid, my dears, that you are going to have to steel yourselves for a rather unpleasant ten minutes or so. Now who wants to go first? Or shall you both go together?’

‘I canna,’ blurted out Elspeth. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Tait. I canna thole goin’ in there.’

‘But it’s John Christie, my dear,’ Mr Tait said gently. ‘You are not about to face your attacker again. It’s Jockie Christie and you know it wasn’t him.’

‘I canna,’ said Elspeth again, her voice rising. ‘My mother would drop deid if she kent I had walked into a police station and looked at a man in a jail cell. She wis afrontit enough that I didna keep ma mooth shut aboot the stranger. She would dee and she would kill me first, and I canna.’ She stopped talking but continued to shake her head over and over again. Mr Tait looked for a moment as though he were planning to attack this stout resolve, but in the end he turned to Molly, with a sigh.

‘So, it falls to you, my dear,’ he said. ‘You must come in and tell Sergeant Doolan – once again, as though you didn’t tell him until you were blue in the face in the springtime – that you had no idea who attacked you and John Christie is not the man. Come along.’

‘No!’ wailed Elspeth. ‘Don’t leave me, Mr Tait.’ Her nerve, which I had thought so firm, had quite deserted her and so, since she could not be left howling alone at the roadside and Molly could not be sent alone into the jail, I took a deep breath and stepped down into the street.

If truth be told, I was rather wobbly about the knees at the prospect of entering the place. I had been inside a police station once before, but it had been in the daytime and I had been taken in a side door to be interviewed as a witness in a room with an ordinary window; I had never before heard clanking keys and looked through bars at a prisoner. I told myself not to be a ninny and strode through the door sweeping Molly before me.

The front desk was hardly alarming, looking with its worn, polished surface, gleaming brass bell and backdrop of shallow shelves full of wire baskets where papers were neatly filed, just like any other slightly shabby office one might encounter. Sergeant Doolan awaited us behind the counter, hatless of course and with the collar of his tunic unbuttoned in a concession to the lateness of the hour and, no doubt, his sense that he was being highly accommodating to Mr Tait and indeed to Mr Christie.

‘Madam,’ he said, nodding politely at me, before turning to Molly. ‘Now, Miss… Tweed, isn’t it? I ken you said away back when we spoke before that you did not know the man who assaulted yer person, but I want you to keep an open mind and look right close at this fellow we’ve got here. We’ve put a low light on in the cell so you’ll be seeing him much as you would have seen him yon night he attacked you.’

‘Um, Sergeant?’ I said, unwilling to let this pass.

‘Oh quite so,’ said Sergeant Doolan. ‘I mean, you’ll be seeing him in the same light as whoever it was you saw that night. Now, let’s go through.’ He produced a satisfyingly huge bunch of keys from under the skirts of his tunic and picked through them as he strode unhurriedly along a passage leading towards the back of the building. We filed through the gap in the desk made by a lifted flap and scurried after him.

‘Now,’ he said, when he had fitted a key into a door at the end. ‘Just take a good look at him, Molly, and tell us the truth. You can do a tremendous good deed by all your friends and neighbours if you help us-’

‘Sergeant, really!’ I remonstrated again. Molly was beginning to breathe rather fast and, as the sergeant turned the key, she put her hand into mine. Even through my glove I could feel that her fingers were icy and I squeezed them as we stepped through the door and into the dimness on the other side.