Bury Her Deep

6

Accordingly, Lorna withdrew herself from the luncheon table as soon as she politely could, with talk of jelly-making and a young kitchen maid who could not be trusted to scald the jars.

‘The crab-apple from last week is cloudy already,’ she said, ‘and we’re starting this afternoon on the damsons.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well, you must certainly hurry along then. Crab apples are one thing…’ Actually I cared not a hoot for either the lowly crab apples or the precious damsons – one visit to the SWRI had not made quite so much of a mark as all that – but I recognised my cue.

‘Dear Lorna,’ said Mr Tait once the door had shut behind her. ‘This is far from the life she thought would be hers but never a word of complaint.’

‘She did mention something,’ I murmured. ‘But,’ I went on heartily, ‘she seems very happy as you say. Good friends all around her. I hear the Howies are giving a birthday party for her soon.’ Mr Tait threatened to frown but managed not to.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘You must make sure and come along.’

‘Now, Mr Tait,’ I said and I may even have sounded a little stern. I certainly felt a little stern. ‘I have had a number of rather peculiar conversations this morning. The meeting with Mrs Hemingborough you know about already, but also at Luckenlaw House and again talking to Lorna I get the distinct feeling that there is rather more going on here than you told me.’

‘My dear Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I assure you that I’ve told you all I know.’ And yet there was a teasing quality in his voice which invited me to keep trying even as his words told me there was nothing to learn.

‘Can you explain then,’ I persisted, ‘why it should be that everyone – no, not everyone; but some – are so ready to believe what seems to me quite unbelievable? That this dark stranger is not real.’

‘But you knew that from the outset,’ Mr Tait insisted. ‘I told you.’

This was true but when we had discussed the matter in my sitting room that day, we had entertained two solutions to the trouble at Luckenlaw. Now, as Lorna had struggled to relate, there seemed to be a troubling third.

‘It’s more than that,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean that the women are imagining a man, or making a man up out of mischief. I’m referring to the idea – and the Howies talked about it quite matter-of-factly; even Lorna concedes it – that this dark stranger is… very much of the darkness and rather more than strange?’

‘Is that what they’re saying?’ said Mr Tait. ‘I see.’

‘Yes, but why?’ I demanded, my voice rising. ‘Why do you see? I don’t. And what do you see?’

‘It’s all nonsense of course,’ he said, ‘but it’s the kind of nonsense that can easily take root even in the most ordinary of places. I assure you, Mrs Gilver, that Gilverton would succumb just as easily under similar trials.’ I must have looked sceptical. ‘We were speaking of much the same thing this morning – the chamber of the Lucken Law.’ He folded his napkin, patted his mouth firmly with it and sat back in his chair. ‘You would scarcely credit the panic when it was opened.’

‘It was opened?’ I said, my eyes wide.

‘Yes, just after the war,’ he said. ‘With all the interest in archaeology and all those eager pilots looking for excuses to stay in their cockpits, anywhere with an interesting name and a whiff of a past got used to the sight of a rickety little contraption overhead and someone hanging out of the side with a camera, and as soon as someone had taken a look at the place from up there they found the entrance. That much was to be expected.

‘Now, however, we move into the realms of pure fantasy – a mixture of pharaoh’s curse, an understandable confusion about the name of the place, and… human nature, I daresay.’ He had the air of regret one might expect in a minister who sees so much of it. ‘When the news broke that the archaeologists were coming, decent God-fearing folk started barring their doors and demanding blessings and goodness knows what else. I had to preach on it more than once, and even in the kirk pews I saw a few stubborn looks thrown back at me.’

I could imagine. I have long thought that Hindustanis with their endless gods would feel quite at home in Scotland with the blasphemous jumble of saints, fairies, charms and omens which seemed to trouble neither priest nor congregation ever a jot.

‘You see then, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, ‘it is not really a surprise to find that a faction of my parishioners is willing to whip up a ghoulish fantasy about the next thing to come along. Willing to believe, that is, that our dark stranger is not of this world.’

‘I still think it’s very odd,’ I insisted, ‘but it might play into our hands. You see, if everyone half believes the dark stranger is some kind of phantom they might well ignore any clue that doesn’t fit. They will have been very interested in his snakiness and his ability to fly over walls and not at all concerned, for instance, with such mundane facts as where he flew from or what kind of boots he had on. Do you see?’

Mr Tait nodded.

‘That makes a good deal of sense, Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘A rationalist, I see.’

‘In this instance, I better had be, don’t you think?’ I countered, although one would not care to be accused of anything quite so cold as rationalism in the general way of things ‘So,’ I concluded, ‘leaving aside the exasperating Mrs Hemingborough, I have the three girls from the spring to talk to and then the farmer’s wife from the summer.’

Mr Tait screwed up his eyes in concentration and began to count them off on his fingers.

‘Elspeth McConechie, the Palmers’ dairy maid, was the first,’ he said. ‘You’ll find her at work this afternoon at the Palmers’ place: Easter Luckenlaw Farm. Then Annie Pellow. A Largo lass. She works in the kitchen at the Auld Inn in Colinsburgh but she lodges here with Mrs Kinnaird. The house on the green nearest the pillar-box. And the third one was Molly… I forget her surname… but she’s up at Luck House. Maid of all work, near enough.’

‘Luckenlaw House, do you mean?’ I said. ‘In that case I think I saw her this morning.’

‘You would have,’ said Mr Tait. ‘There’s just her most days now. Heaven knows how they run the place. There were a dozen indoor servants before the war.’

‘And then nobody for two months and then the farmer’s wife?’ I prompted. ‘Mrs…?’

‘Young Mrs Fraser,’ said Mr Tait. ‘From Balniel Farm down to the main road. She came straight to me, frightened out of her wits. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting her to tell you all about it.’

‘And then just one month of peace before Mrs Hemingborough,’ I finished up. ‘Bafflingly not frightened out of her wits by it and very unlikely ever to give me the time of day again, I’m afraid.’ Mr Tait said nothing. ‘I even wondered if she knew who it was and didn’t want to drop him in it.’ Mr Tait was silent once more. ‘Or perhaps Jessie Holland was not telling the truth after all. Perhaps Mrs Hemingborough stumbled and dropped her bundle and Jessie’s imagination supplied the rest. Except, of course, Vashti Howie’s sighting certainly does back Jessie up. Oh, bother it,’ I said, rising from the table and smacking down my napkin. ‘I refuse to be fuddled by this. I shall put Mrs Hemingborough and her mysteries out of my mind in hopes that when I get to the answer it will shed light on her extraordinary behaviour too.’ Mr Tait did not look at all convinced by my sudden optimism and I could hardly fault him for that but in truth I really was buoyed up by the prospect before me. If only I could keep my thoughts firmly on the facts and put aside all the nonsense I should surely prevail. I would start at Easter Luckenlaw Farm, where Elspeth would be in the dairy; I would take in the refreshingly normal Mrs Fraser and then hope to catch Mrs Kinnaird’s lodger in the pub kitchen at Colinsburgh. I did not see quite how I might organise a trip to Luckenlaw House to talk to the Howies’ maid but I had more than enough for one afternoon already and I had promised Hugh to be home for a late dinner, so she would have to keep.

I opened the front door of the manse moments later to let myself out – all hands appeared to be on deck in the kitchen safeguarding the clarity of the jelly – and was confronted by a face. I stepped back sharply and then stayed back, for this face was not only unexpected but, even after a second and a third look at it, extremely unnerving. It was a thin, white face, indifferently shaved, and boasting a pair of narrow eyes and a lantern jaw, grimly set under pursed lips. It sat above a high-buttoned and rather rusty black suit and below an equally rusty black bowler hat worn so far down on the bony skull beneath it that it must surely have been crammed on in a moment of violent rage, in lieu, perhaps, of throwing something through a window.

The jaw unclenched.

‘I’m here tae see the meenister,’ said an accusing voice. ‘I’ve something to say.’

With that the man stalked past me, rather insultingly careful to make sure his garments brushed against none of mine, and made for the study. He clearly knew Mr Tait’s habits, and was sure where to find him.

I hesitated before following; after all, parishioners must visit all the time – that must be amongst the heaviest of a priest’s burdens – and so this individual could be here about anything at all, but surely such an air of offended outrage could not spring from an everyday matter and it was not too fanciful to imagine that his business with Mr Tait might also be mine. Perhaps, although he did not look like a farmer in his black suit, this was Mr Hemingborough come with information. Perhaps – as I had the thought I broke into a trot – he had come with a confession. I sidled into the study just in time to see Mr Tait lay down his book and fold away his spectacles with a patient air, although with his customary sunny expression somewhat dimmed.

‘And whae’s this?’ said the man, turning to look at me from the perch he had taken up in a chair opposite the desk.

‘This is Mr Black, Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait, very properly ignoring the query and presenting the man to me. ‘One of my parishioners. This is Mrs Gilver, from Gilverton in Perthshire, Dick, she’s my guest here.’ He did not carry on and say that he would thank Dick Black to keep a civil tongue in his head, but I understood it and gave him a grateful smile.

‘Aye, I ken all about you,’ said Mr Black. ‘You’d be as well to hear this too.’

Thus given permission to stay, I subsided meekly into a chair and waited.

‘I tried again last nicht, Mr Tait,’ said Mr Black. ‘While those Jezebels were carousing and cavorting in that schoolhouse, I tried again and again I failed. You have to take a stand, now, before the very pit opens under our feet and swallows us all.’

‘Mr Black is no fan of the Rural, Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait with breathtaking understatement. ‘He always drops in the day after the meetings. It’s getting to be quite a tradition.’

‘I can assure you, Mr Black,’ I said, ‘there was no cavorting and carousing last evening. I was there myself.’

‘I ken you were,’ he said. ‘I heard you. The lot of you… chanting!’

‘We did recite a little poetry,’ I said. ‘Did we disturb you? I shouldn’t have thought it was loud enough to carry to another house.’ Mr Tait was sitting back, enormously entertained it appeared to me.

‘I was ootside in the lane,’ said Mr Black. ‘I heard it as plain as day. Chanting.’

‘You were outside?’ I said, my interest aroused.

‘On my mission,’ he announced, startlingly. ‘As how I wouldna have to if them as should would.’ With that he turned away from me and addressed Mr Tait once more. ‘I went as far as the Frasers’ last nicht. I thocht he’d be sure to give me his ear what with his wife seein’ the licht, and him stayin’ at his own fireside since she did, even if he was as bad as the rest for wanderin’ beforetimes. And he should ken to listen to his elders and betters, but do you know what he said to me?’

‘I cannot imagine,’ said Mr Tait.

‘He said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.”’

‘Well, Dick,’ said Mr Tait, ‘you can hardly expect me to disagree with that.’

‘Not one sorry soul did I bring back to the richt way o’ thinkin’ last nicht,’ Mr Black went on. ‘For most o’ them were nowhere to be found, Mr Tait. The men as bad as their wives, everybody oot in the nicht, givin’ the devil an easy job tae find them.’ Mr Tait was trying to interrupt the flow, but Mr Black spoke all the louder and drowned him out. ‘Right roond the lanes and not a soul could I raise,’ he said. ‘Logan McAdam, Drew Torrance, Jim Hemingborough, Bob-’

‘It’s no crime, Dick,’ said Mr Tait. ‘When the cat’s away, you know.’

‘All the husbands were out?’ I said.

‘Aye, a corpse rots fae the heid doon,’ said Mr Black. ‘What can we expect o’ a pack o’ women if their men are lost to sin?’

‘Come now,’ said Mr Tait, hoisting a smile out of his seemingly bottomless store of goodwill. ‘Lost to sin? Lost, perhaps, to a quiet game of cards or a glass of ale but no more.’

This, I concluded, was pure mischief and right enough Mr Black’s white face began to change to a mottled purple and he struggled with himself in silence for quite some time before he spoke again.

‘And what can we expect fae the common fowk when their meenister and their masters see Satan comin’ and jist wink at him?’

‘What masters are these?’ said Mr Tait.

‘They feckless eejits up by Luck Hoose,’ said Mr Black. ‘Sodom and Gomorrah on our very doorstep, Mr Tait. I saw it with my ain eyes last nicht.’

‘You went up to Luck House?’ said Mr Tait. ‘You should know better than that, Dick. You’ve overstepped yourself there.’

‘Steeped in it,’ said Mr Black. ‘Soaked in whisky, the pair o’ them. I wasted my time even tryin’. And I see I’m wastin’ more of it here today.’ He stood up and glared down at Mr Tait.

‘You are that, Dick,’ said the Reverend. ‘That you are.’

Cramming his bowler back onto his head as tightly as before, Dick Black stalked from the room without a goodbye and without so much as a glance in my direction.

‘I’m sorry you had to witness that, Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait, when he had gone. ‘Our Bible tells us that “whom the Lord loveth He correcteth” but He hasn’t worked His way round to Dick Black yet as far as I can see.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was rather useful. I’ve learned – if Mr Black can be believed – that the Howie brothers are in the clear, as is Mr Fraser, although I suppose we knew that, since Mrs Fraser has “seen the licht” and given up the meetings and her husband could hardly be out without her knowing. But, it seems, other husbands have no alibis for yesterday evening and countless other evenings too. And of course, I’ve learned that Mr Black himself is wont to prowl around on Rural nights.’

‘Oh come! Mrs Gilver!’ said Mr Tait.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I know he’s one of your flock but you can’t deny that he’s… peculiar enough.’

‘He’s not peculiar at all,’ said Mr Tait. ‘He’s all too common, him and the likes of him. And anyway, Dick Black was born in Luckenlaw and lived here all his days. If he was the stranger, he wouldn’t be a stranger, would he?’

I had to admit that there was a great deal of sense in this, but still I determined to mention his name to the victims.

To the victims, I now turned my thoughts once more. I said goodbye and, with no more encounters on my way, I left the village and strode out along the farm lane, a pad of writing paper and a pencil clutched in my hand, all practicality and purpose, all thoughts of secret chambers and snaky strangers far from my mind. The going was not nearly as dirty as Lorna had feared and the view was, if anything, better: a long sweep of flat fields all the way to the coast where the Forth lay glinting like a bolt of grey silk held in place by the great stud of the Bass Rock. Or was that the Isle of May I could see? Before I had decided I found myself past the Hemingboroughs’ place and turning away from the sea, around the bottom of the hill, to Easter Luckenlaw Farm beyond.

It was an agreeable spot. The square, grey farmhouse faced to the south with its long garden laid out before it and the yard and buildings, as was usual, tucked away behind out of sight. In the sunshine this afternoon, the drying green and vegetable patch inside the garden wall were a feast of cheerful ordinariness to my eyes and I thought I recognised from the Rural meeting of the evening before the woman who was busy at the washing-line, pressing the clothes against her lips to see if they were drying. I stopped and watched her for a while, hoping for her to notice me and let me strike up conversation in an unobtrusive way, but she was intent on her task, working her way along, smoothing, stretching and repegging the succession of petticoats, winter camisoles and knickers, woollen stockings and jerseys, all in strict order on the line. When she was finished, she turned to seize a stretching pole and spotted me at last. She nodded politely.

‘I hope the wind picks up for you,’ I said.

‘I doubt it will,’ she called back. ‘And the sun’ll be ahint the law soon enough.’ She gestured and following her pointing finger I could see she was right. The outline of the hill was already dazzling a little and it would not be long before the afternoon, here at least, was over.

‘I was at Mrs Hemingborough’s this morning,’ I called to her. ‘She has a contraption in her kitchen and she was ironing already.’

‘Aye well, she’s the lucky one,’ Mrs Palmer said, coming down the garden. She was a red-complexioned woman in her thirties, plain and rather severe in her dark dress and apron with her hair pinned tightly off her face, but there was a sturdy charm about the way she strode towards me and her face was frank and friendly-seeming. ‘Jimmy cannot stand wet cloots about his ears in his kitchen,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen it Thursday before it’s all pressed and away again wintertimes. But there, it’s best out here getting a blow about, isn’t it?’ We both looked at the washing, hanging straight down with not a wisp of a breeze to move it, and laughed.

‘It’s Mrs Gilver, is it not?’ Mrs Palmer said. ‘You’re a friend of the Howies?’

‘No!’ I blurted out, far too decisively for politeness. ‘A friend of the Taits.’ Mrs Palmer smiled broadly at me.

‘And so what can I do for you?’ she said, suggesting that any friend of the Taits was a friend of hers.

‘Well, yes, you can help me actually, as a matter of fact,’ I said, and cleared my throat. I was rather proud of my little plan and had further refined it while walking here, but as always when the moment came my heart was in my mouth. ‘As you know, I’m talking at the Rural next month on household budgets and rather than just spout on I thought it would be a splendid idea to find out what would be most useful to you. I mean, not just to you, you understand, but to everyone.’

Mrs Palmer was blinking at me, her mind clearly an absolute blank as I am sure mine would have been if someone had asked the same of me.

‘I don’t mean to put you on the spot,’ I assured her. ‘The idea was to come back in a few days perhaps and see what you’ve come up with. If anything. If you care to.’ I began, as I so often do, to babble. ‘I mean to say, things have been very different recently for all of us. Why even the ladies at Luckenlaw House were saying as much this morning. And farming, gosh. Farming is never the most… My husband farms and so I know.’

‘Well, as to the farm,’ said Mrs Palmer, ‘we’ve been lucky. I tell Jimmy that, time and again. There’s no need to go fussing and fretting. We’re fine as we are.’ I thought I could discern a kindred spirit here, for clearly ‘Jimmy’ was another Hugh and how I wished I could prevail upon him to stop ‘fussing and fretting’ about his farms.

‘And we should count wur blessings,’ Mrs Palmer went on. ‘The Hemingboroughs have had a terrible time with the blight down at Hinter Luck these last few years and I cannot begin to tell you the troubles over at the McAdams’. Some long fancy name for it, but fifty good cows dead and gone for dog meat was the upshot. And then there’s the kind of troubles, there’s just no name for.’ On that cryptic note she stopped at last, with a shudder.

‘It was more the household side of things really,’ I said hastily. That was bad enough, but I could not have worked sick cattle and blight into my address if my life depended on doing so.

‘If anything,’ Mrs Palmer said, ‘off the top of my head…’

‘Yes?’ I prompted, with real eagerness. For not only was this exercise in reconnaissance my cover story but also there was, actually, the talk. I had a month, it was true, but already every time I let my imagination stray towards it my mouth went dry.

‘I mean to say if it was my man you were asking…’ said Mrs Palmer, ‘but I’m not sure if that’s the kind of thing you mean…’

‘I’m open to any ideas at all,’ I assured her.

‘Well, what I really wish I knew more about,’ she said, ‘is insurance.’

‘Insurance?’

‘Jimmy’s forever pestering me about it. I say to him we should trust to Providence, but then I see folk all about struggling away, like you said, Mrs Gilver, and I just wonder. Our well went dry, you know. A few years ago now but it was a terrible thing when it happened. It was summertime and there was beasts in the fields to be watered and crops in the ground and we’d to give a fortune over to the spaeman to find us another one, not to mention Jimmy and the men taking so much time off to howk it we had to hire an extra man to do the farm work. Then blow me if the same thing didn’t happen again with the new well that winter. Or at least, it went sour. If we couldn’t have collected the rainwater we’d never have got through. So what I would really like to know is if there’s insurance for that? Water insurance. Would you know anything about that? For trouble aye comes in threes and the next time could break us.’

‘Water insurance?’ I echoed limply.

‘All insurance really, I suppose,’ said Mrs Palmer. ‘Jimmy’s just as keen on life insurance, if you would credit it, but there I have put my foot down, for it’s just not right. Mind you, goodness only knows how we would manage if anything happened to him, with all my girls still at the school. And I do worry about the house after that fire over by Wester Luck. You won’t have heard about that, Mrs Gilver, not belonging Luckenlaw, but it was a dreadful thing. The house was left a shell and half the buildings too, and I worry, even though I know it’s wicked of me.’ She stopped at long, long last and gave me a brave smile that I managed to meet with some sort of sickly stretching of my own lips.

‘That’s my Jimmy’s question for you,’ she said. ‘Does it make sense to spend the money every month or not? And my question would be’ – she broke off and looked searchingly at me for a moment – ‘is it right? Should we even try to outwit our fate thon way?’

‘I’ll – I’ll do my very best to answer you,’ I said, and I think she believed me. In truth, I was reeling. ‘What I can say right now, is that it’s not wicked of you to worry about it. Far from it – it’s natural.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ she said. ‘We should maybe just take trouble when it comes and let it run its course. What’s for us will never go by us, especially if we’ve brought it upon ourselves, mind.’

Suddenly, I was sure I knew what she meant but I hesitated about how to broach it. ‘Mr Tait told me about the troubles,’ I started gently. ‘But I have to admit to feeling a little sceptical. I don’t quite see how unlocking a chamber could cause blight. Or start a fire either.’

‘Well, of course it couldn’t,’ said Mrs Palmer, looking at me as if I had sprouted feathers. ‘Did Mr Tait tell you that?’

I shook my head and, chastened, tried to marshal some of my departed dignity.

‘Now Mrs Palmer, is there anyone else about the place I should speak to? In the spirit of the Rural I want to be sure and talk to everyone, not just the lady of the house.’

‘No, just me,’ she said. ‘My daughters are still girls, a long way from a woman’s cares, I’m glad to say.’

‘Really?’ I persisted. ‘I’m sure Lorna Tait mentioned a dairy maid when I said I was coming round here. Elspeth, was it?’

At this, Mrs Palmer’s expression grew rather fixed and she put her head back and looked at me from under her lids.

‘Elspeth is our dairy maid,’ she said, ‘but she’s not in the Rural. She went a couple of times but she didn’t stick at it.’

‘How strange,’ I said, affecting innocence and wondering whether Mrs Palmer would tell me the reason for Elspeth’s departure. She did not. ‘It was all tremendous fun last night. I think,’ I went on, ‘I think I’ll just pop in and have a word with her anyway, Mrs Palmer. One never knows, perhaps if I ask her what she would like to hear included in my talk next month, I might be able to entice her back.’ I began to make my way to the mouth of the drive which ran up the side of the garden and disappeared around to the yard. I was pretty sure I should be able to find the dairy without much trouble: farmyards are much the same throughout the land.

‘But Elspeth doesn’t run a household,’ Mrs Palmer persisted, trotting up the garden on the other side of the wall from me. ‘She doesn’t need to know about budgets.’

‘She’ll have to learn one day,’ I said, still marching very purposefully onwards, ‘if she marries and gets a house of her own, and I think it will be most interesting to hear what concerns her most about the prospect, don’t you?’ At that moment we reached the spot where the garden wall turned the corner and joined to the side of the house, the usual fierce separation of the agricultural from the domestic realm which was designed, I suppose, to keep the sheep out of the flowerbeds but which served an equally useful purpose to me now. Short of clambering over to join me in the lane, Mrs Palmer had no choice but to rush into the house at the front and out again at the back in an attempt to meet me.

I was too quick for her. I sped around the corner into the yard, hopping and leaping over the inevitable deposits underfoot, and made a beeline for the whitewashed building with fly-mesh over the windows and ventilation flaps high up in the walls, which I surmised must be the dairy house. I was right and, slipping inside, I found myself in a dim, cool room where a girl in a capacious apron and with a cap pinned over her hair stood on a slatted board bending intently over an enormous bowl. She glanced over her shoulder on hearing me then, slightly surprised I expect to find me a stranger, she put down the ladle she was holding and turned around wiping her hands.

‘Elspeth?’

‘Madam?’

She was a pretty little thing, very much in the style of storybook dairy maids, with her pink cheeks and her yellow curls peeping out from under her cap, and although she must work hard here at her butter churn and her cheese moulds there was as yet nothing of Mrs Palmer’s brawny competence about her arms and her soft little hands. A spike of anger stabbed me to think of some beastly lout frightening her in the dark and my resolve was strengthened. Before I could even begin to tiptoe my way towards the questions I must ask her, however, I heard Mrs Palmer’s boots clattering over the cobbles of the yard towards us.

‘I’m not going to take up much of your time,’ I managed to get out before she reached us. ‘I know you’re a busy girl.’

‘And dairy work cannot be kept waiting,’ said Mrs Palmer behind me, panting rather. ‘You’ve still the butter to finish, mind, Elspeth.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Elspeth, do carry on. I shan’t mind talking to your back under the circumstances. Not at all.’ Elspeth glanced uncertainly between her employer and me and then turned her back and plied her ladle once more. I repeated my spiel in as unconcerned a voice as I could muster, while Mrs Palmer hovered at my elbow, saying nothing.

‘I dinna go to the Rural, madam,’ said Elspeth when I was finished. ‘Not any more.’ She was holding the ladle over a dish, letting the skimmed cream drop from it in soft dollops.

‘So I hear,’ I said. ‘But I’d hoped you might come back if I promised to address your questions in my talk, you know.’

‘No, thank you, madam,’ Elspeth replied. ‘I canna see me goin’ back again.’ She scraped the last of the cream off her ladle with a wooden spoon and turned back to the bowl.

‘Don’t upset yourself,’ said Mrs Palmer. Then to me: ‘I’ll not have her vexed.’ It is, I suppose, very commendable in any employer to be concerned with her servant’s peace of mind and, if I could have been sure that was all that lay behind Mrs Palmer’s sprint up the garden and her anxious hovering now, I should have been absolutely on her side. But had young Elspeth been in need of such solicitousness – had she still been, after all these months, quite as fragile as all that – she would surely not have held such a steady hand above the cream dish, nor looked around so calmly at the sound of my approach. I knew from my nursing days that anyone still wobbly from shock would have jumped a foot in the air at my sudden entrance into their quiet room.

‘I can’t imagine what you’re referring to, Mrs Palmer,’ I said. ‘I don’t intend to ask anything that could possibly cause upset. What on earth do you mean?’

‘I stopped goin’ to the Rural,’ said Elspeth.

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ said Mrs Palmer. ‘You don’t have to speak to anyone about it ever again.’

‘I seem to have stumbled into something I shouldn’t have,’ I said. ‘I do apologise, Elspeth.’

‘That’s all right, madam,’ she said. ‘I dinna mind tellin’ you.’

‘Least said, soonest mended,’ said Mrs Palmer, a philosophy for which I have never had much time, unless by ‘mended’ one means ‘well-hidden but causing a nasty atmosphere for evermore’, but one which they go in for in quite a big way in Perthshire, and I imagined here in Fife too.

‘I was… I was…’ said Elspeth, turning round to face us again and folding her arms firmly across her chest. ‘Common assault, the policeman ca’ed it. And they nivver caught the man, if it was a man, and half the folk in the village think I made it up.’

‘Why would anyone think that?’ I said. ‘How horrid for you.’

‘It was,’ said Elspeth. ‘It is.’ She was far too well-trained a servant and I daresay too sweet a girl actually to glare at Mrs Palmer, but in her studious refusal even to look at the woman she got her point across.

‘Oh… do what you will,’ said Mrs Palmer, sounding as though she meant anything but, and she took herself back across the yard, leaving us. I heard the kitchen door slam shut.

‘Well,’ I said, in the camaraderie which always ensues when one of a trio sweeps off in a huff and leaves two calmer souls behind. ‘I take it Mrs Palmer is one of the ones who thinks you’re telling stories, Elspeth.’

‘I do not ken, madam,’ said Elspeth. ‘And that’s a fact. I sometimes canna make head nor tail of what she thinks.’ I took the chance to sit myself down unobtrusively on a wooden chair just beside the door, hoping that the girl would speak unbidden if I wore a sympathetic look and said nothing.

Perhaps, though, loquacity is not essential to the dairy maid’s art; Elspeth merely turned her back with a sigh and left me with all the work to do.

‘When you say assaulted…’ I began.

‘He rushed up ahint me, madam,’ she said. ‘Pushed me over – I put the knees oot o’ my good stockings and it was the first time I had had them on – pulled my hair so hard that some of it came oot. I thocht – I thocht-’

‘Well, you would,’ I said. ‘I should if it were me. They never caught him?’

‘They nivver did.’

‘And you have no idea yourself?’

‘None,’ she said firmly, unrolling a straw mat over the big bowl of milk and pushing it to the back of the table. It hit the stone wall with a clunk. ‘I didna recognise him and I couldna tell you now who he was or what he was, for I’ve thocht it all roond and roond until I’m birlin’ with it.’

‘But your first instinct – that night, I mean – was that he was just an ordinary man?’ I was determined to keep the facts firmly in hand. She nodded. ‘And if you didn’t recognise him you must have got a good look at him?’ I said, my heart leaping at this cheering thought.

‘No,’ she said slowly. She had put the dish of cream away on a dim shelf at the back of the room and now she turned and spoke to me directly, wiping her hands and appearing to be casting her mind back. ‘He come up ahint me and then like I said he flitted off again afore I had richted myself. But he was nobody I kent. I’ve never met anybody anything like that, not roond here, nor anywhere else.’

‘It couldn’t have been…’ My nerve crumbled. I could not name blameless men I had never even met, not on Mr Black’s say-so. I could not even, as it turned out, name Mr Black. ‘There’s no one you even suspect?’

‘I kept a sharp eye oot, at the kirk, and roond the village, and I would have kent right away if he had appeart again,’ she said. ‘There was…’

‘Yes?’

‘Folk kept sayin’…’

‘What?’

‘Well, John Christie up by there has no’ been around that very long and he’s no’ that well kent, but it wasna him, no matter whae whispers his name.’

‘You sound very certain,’ I said.

She had finished wiping her hands and now she laid them flat on the table, leaning towards me, remembering. ‘He was the richt height and all that. And John Christie’s a young laddie, fit for scaling’ dykes, to be sure. But the one that come at me that nicht was different. He was… how wid you say it?’ I bit my lip to keep from prompting her. ‘He was… sort of…’ She gave up. ‘It’s no’ even like he was big,’ she said. ‘If I’d seen him first I could mebbes have pushed him off me or ducked and run. I’m wee, but I’m strong and I’m fast on my feet when I have to be.’

‘When someone jumps out at you, he always has the advantage, Elspeth,’ I said. ‘You cannot berate yourself for being surprised.’

‘It wasna like that, though,’ she said. ‘He didna jump oot. He came doon the lane, I’m sure o’ it. Doon to meet me. At first I thocht it was maybe an owl’s wings I could hear, and then I thocht a deer was runnin’ in the field and I stopped to look for it. So I was keekin’ over the dyke when he landed on me.’

‘An owl?’ I said. ‘A deer? He must be remarkably light on his feet for you to think that.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Elspeth. ‘I never thocht before but I suppose he must be.’

‘Did you mention it to the police?’ I ventured, but at that Elspeth seemed to come out of the trance of memory which had engulfed her. She sniffed decisively and seized a large jar which had been upended over the sink, dripping, then she shook it until a heap of new butter fell out onto the table with a flat slap.

‘I did, madam,’ she said. ‘And they jist laughed. I wouldna send for the police again to save my life or theirs.’

‘And once again, I have to agree with you,’ I told her. ‘It must have been absolutely infuriating.’

‘Aye well,’ said Elspeth. ‘Let them as got knocked over and their hair pulled oot by the roots say it’s all tattle, that’s all.’

I believed her, but just to make sure, I thought I would try a little experiment. I thought I would ask her a question she could not possibly be expecting and see if she blurted something out – always a mark of honesty – or if she took time and made something up, the way that honest people never need to do.

‘If you fell over and didn’t manage to push him off you,’ I said, ‘he must have been pretty close.’ I paused, then spoke sharply. ‘What did he smell of, Elspeth?’ The answer came back without a moment’s pause.

‘Eggs,’ she said. We both blinked.

‘On his breath?’ I asked her. ‘As though he had been eating them?’

‘No,’ said Elspeth, looking so startled at what had come out of her mouth that I was convinced she was telling me the plain unvarnished truth. ‘I mean, yes. I mean, it must have been, must it no’? How else could someone smell o’ eggs, after all?’