After the Armistice Ball

Chapter Seventeen

It took the usual aeons for the call to be put through, clickings and whirrings and sudden hollow silences. While I was waiting, Alec whispered at me again.

‘What are you going to say?’

‘No idea. But don’t worry – it’s a favoured ploy of mine.’

The telephone was ringing at last.

‘Yes, hello, what is it?’ said a clipped voice at the other end. If this was Mrs Milne, then I pitied the doctor.

‘Might I speak to Dr Milne?’ I said. ‘Or leave a message?’

‘Can you not come to the surgery?’ said the voice, surely a housekeeper.

‘Oh, no,’ I trilled. ‘This is not a professional call. I’m a friend. Mrs Gilver. But I’ll happily ring back if Dr Milne is busy.’

‘Oh, Mrs Gilver,’ said the voice with deep interest. I supposed I was famous in Gatehouse by now. The doctor was in for Mrs Gilver, no doubt about it, and the housekeeper, for such she must be (a wife would hardly be so accommodating in handing over even her husband’s ear to such a female), bustled off to fetch him.

‘My dear Dr Milne,’ I began, greetings over, ‘if you send me a bill this time it will be no more than I deserve, but please let me trespass for a moment. I’d like you to back me up in my efforts to get my boys to maturity in one piece. You didn’t meet my little boys, did you? Well, they are monkeys. I use the term advisedly. They’ve been learning mountaineering at school this year and I cannot keep them off the roofs. The stable roofs have always been a draw, but now they’re up on the house roofs day in and day out and will not listen to me telling them they could kill themselves. Now, here’s how you can help me. I told them a heavily edited version of what happened to that poor little kitchen maid of the Duffys’.’

‘You did what?’ He almost shouted, and Alec too was looking at me as though I was gaga.

‘What I mean is I told them that a girl I knew jumped from the tiniest height and ended up dead. She did jump, didn’t she? I’m almost sure you said she jumped, or that’s what I had understood you to mean.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Dr Milne. ‘She jumped.’ I wiggled my eyebrows at Alec.

‘And I’ve been telling them that jumping is safer than falling because you’ve planned for it and that this poor girl jumped off something miles lower than our roofs here – you remember the house, don’t you? Terrible Gothic additions, turrets everywhere – so then they said, What did she jump off, Mother? And I had to admit that I didn’t know. And now they think it was a cliff-top or something and they won’t heed my warnings the least bit. And to cut a long story short, we’ve got ourselves into a betting situation over it. There are scones at stake. Shocking when one thinks of the poor creature, I know, but there it is. Now, what did she jump off? Do you know?’

Alec’s face was caught midway between stunned admiration and disbelief, but I held out the earpiece towards him to let him hear Dr Milne laughing cosily at the other end and he mimed a salute to me. I smirked back, and put the earpiece to my ear again.

‘She jumped from the landing, my dear Mrs Gilver. Down the stairwell. Hit her head as she fell and snapped her neck when she landed.’ We both sighed.

‘Well, since there couldn’t have been more than a dozen steps in a cottage staircase, I should think that might sober my little demons no end. Thank you, Dr Milne.’

‘You’re very welcome, Mrs Gilver. But don’t dwell on it now, or you’ll give yourself nightmares again.’

‘You are very kind to think of that,’ I said. ‘Can I ask one more thing?’ I knew I was headed for thin ice now, but I could not help myself. ‘I suppose I’m right, saying to them that a fall is even worse than a jump? Even more dangerous, I mean.’

‘I would imagine so.’

‘And, I suppose, a shove is worst of all.’

There was silence at the other end.

‘But can one tell the difference?’

More silence. Alec was making furious gestures at me and I could feel a pulse quicken as it rose in my throat.

‘Because they do muck about up there, pretending to push one another and whatnot. It’s terrifying to watch. And if I could say I had it from a reputable doctor that a shove and a fall are both worse than a jump and that even a doctor can’t tell the difference… Well, the thought of one dead and the other in jail for fratricide might have some sway.’

‘I think I would rather you did not quote me on this topic,’ said Dr Milne, after a huge pause. ‘As you say, a reputable doctor has a great deal of sway and has to be very careful.’ My mouth dropped open in amazement.

‘What?’ Alec hissed, jumping to his feet. ‘What’s he saying?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘Well, be assured that if I need to call upon a witness for corroboration, I shall leave you out of it.’ I gave my best attempt at a gay little laugh. ‘I shan’t see buttered scones for days to come, Dr Milne.’

‘My condolences,’ he intoned, not even trying to match my gaiety.

We rang off.

I tried to relay it word for word to Alec; at least I got the gist of the important bits.

‘A reputable doctor has a great deal of sway?’ Alec echoed. ‘Oh my God, Dandy, he’s going to sue you for defamation. You just wait. You’re not safe to be let out.’

‘I like that,’ I said. ‘What would you have done? Nothing, that’s what. And where would we be once you had? Nowhere.’

‘Well, where have you got us?’ he said.

‘I’ve shown Dr Milne up for what he is,’ I said. ‘I always knew he was. The way he spoke about the girl that very first time – you weren’t there, Alec, you don’t know. And now it’s quite sure. Just because she was a servant (he thought) and had got into trouble he didn’t even bother to wonder whether she had jumped or was pushed. Didn’t even think to question Lena’s version of things. A snob and a fool.’

‘A snob and a fool now thoroughly on his guard. I wish you had talked things over with me before launching into it, Dandy. That was a very silly thing to do.’

So, from self-taught philosopher to reckless idiot overnight. There was ages until the dressing bell, but I stamped off anyway, feeling under-appreciated and sick of the lot of them. (I was even cross with Donald and Teddy for the playing on the roof.)

Grant, evidently, was in one of her mellower moods and did not seem put out to be summoned early. She had taken delivery that afternoon of a collar and cuffs in mauve rabbit-fur edged with seed pearls, which she planned to attach to a lilac chiffon evening wrap of mine. I could not remember ever hearing of these monstrous articles, much less rubber-stamping their purchase, and when Grant opined that there was plenty of time to get them on in time for dinner that night I panicked.

‘Bit of a waste, isn’t it?’ I asked, cajolingly. ‘Only Mr Gilver and Mr Osborne to see them.’

Grant sighed.

‘Yes, I daresay, madam,’ she said, laying the collar back in its tissue paper nest. ‘When’s the next time anyone will be here?’ By anyone, I knew, Grant meant any ladies. We make no pretence about that.

‘As soon as I can arrange it,’ I said feelingly, stepping out of my dress and turning to let her unbutton my underbodice. ‘I am sick up to my teeth of men and boys, Grant. I’d join a convent for tuppence.’

‘Oh, madam, no,’ she said, genuinely shocked. ‘Grey serge and no lipstick. And all that praying must give them knees like leather. They must thank heavens habit hems never go high enough to show them.’

Grant’s take on the preoccupations of nuns, utterly serious and utterly typical, cheered me up no end.

‘Well, all right,’ I said. ‘Not a convent. Perhaps a harem.’ I suspect she is unshockable, but it does not stop me from trying. She smirked at this, though, and I saw that I had failed again.

‘What have “men” done anyway, madam?’ she asked presently through a mouthful of hairpins. I have offered many times to hold the pins and pass them to her, but I do not pass them quickly enough or hold them out at the right angle and she is best left to manage it herself.

‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ I said. ‘Just been unwilling to face up to the plainer side of life and made everything more difficult as a result.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Grant. ‘As to that, madam, the kitchen cat brought in a mouse this morning and started to eat it right under the upper servants’ breakfast table, and guess who crawled under with a bit of newspaper and got it away from the little beast? Mrs Tilling. Mr Pallister was the colour of milk.’

‘Exactly,’ I said, lifting my chin while she untied my dressing cape. ‘What if the mouse had still been alive, though?’

‘Lord, I’d have run a mile!’ said Grant.

‘Me too,’ I said, and even the thought of it made me tuck my feet up off the carpet. ‘Men do have their uses,’ I concluded.

‘No doubt about it, madam,’ said Grant. ‘You said yourself you’d prefer a harem to a convent.’ (When it comes to shock statements, Grant outstrips me without trying.) ‘But birth, death and nappies, as my mother always used to say.’

I stared at her.

‘Birth, death…?’

‘And nappies, madam. Things men don’t do. Are you all right?’

I didn’t answer, but continued to stare.

‘Madam?’

‘I shan’t need you tonight, Grant,’ I said. ‘And tomorrow is your day off, isn’t it? Well then, let’s say I’ll do without you in the morning too.’ I stood and turned slowly, arms out, while she inspected me.

‘I hope I haven’t said anything to offend you, madam,’ said Grant. ‘I meant nothing by it.’

‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

I waited until she had cleared the end of the passageway and disappeared through the door to the servants’ stairs, then, shoes in hand, I crept along to the guest wing on tiptoe. Before I reached Alec’s door he emerged dressed for dinner but, seeing me, he backed into his room again and drew me after him.

‘Is your valet -?’

‘He’s long gone,’ said Alec. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m going to come upstairs straight after dinner,’ I said. ‘And then tomorrow the story is that… let’s say… Daisy Esslemont rang very early and I’ve gone off to see her at Croys. I shall think of some reason Hugh won’t question. Actually, I’m going to drive to Gatehouse tonight.’

‘You’re not tackling Dr Milne on your own,’ said Alec. ‘He’s backed into a corner, Dandy. There’s no telling what he might do.’

‘I’m not tackling Dr Milne,’ I said. ‘Alone or otherwise. I’m going to track down our witness and I need to leave tonight in case Dr Milne has the same idea.’

‘Our witness? What makes you so sure we have one?’

‘We do.’

‘And what makes you think it won’t be as bad an idea for you to tackle him on your own as -’

‘It’s not a him,’ I said. ‘It’s a her.’

‘Who?’ said Alec.

‘I don’t know her name or where she lives,’ I said. ‘But I know she exists. She’s the person who laid out Cara’s body before the undertakers took it away. And unless I’m very much mistaken, she is also the local midwife. She will know not only that the girl she laid out was not a servant, but also that she was still pregnant when she died, and perhaps – since she’s probably the nearest thing there is to a doctor for those who cannot afford Dr Milne – she might also know that Cara’s injuries came from being shoved over, not from jumping off any landing. I don’t know how they managed to hush her up, Alec – money probably – but I shall unhush her if it’s the last thing I do. Now go and entertain Hugh while I prepare a few things and…’ I hesitated and may even have blushed although the lamplight was too low for him to see me. ‘Could you possibly make sure that he has a great deal to drink tonight at dinner and after? I don’t think he’s likely to come to my room, but it’s best to be sure.’

By ten o’clock, dressed in a warm coat in case I ended up sleeping in the motor car, I was huddled in the porch of the side door plucking up the nerve to start walking. The stable block is just around the corner of the billiard room and across the yard and it was a trip I made daily without thinking, being generally too impatient to wait for my little Austin motor to be brought round. Now though, as I set off, the carriage house doors seemed to dwindle into the distance and the yard stretched endlessly in front of me. The stone chippings too crunched explosively under my tread, like horses eating apples, and my neck grew stiff with the effort not to peer around me.

Alec had urged me to take his hired motor but my own, ramshackle as it might be, was at least familiar and was small enough for me to roll it out of the garage with one foot on the running board and one on the ground. This I soon did, then hopped in and pulled the door to without slamming it. I hoped against hope that it would continue to roll down the gentle slope of the yard and the back drive and that I should not have to start the engine until safely away from the house. It was agonizingly slow at first, barely moving. I could hear individual stones on the drive popping under the tyres as I inched towards the first of the gates, then gradually we gathered some speed, hurtling down the bumpy drive and shooting at last out of the gates on to the road and away.

It was light by the time I pulled off on the moor above Gatehouse, but too early for visiting, and I thought anyway that my mission would be the better for waiting until I had rested. Now, sick and gritty-eyed with exhaustion, I did not feel I could rely on myself to navigate the extraordinary interview I hoped was to come. I walked around the motor car a few times until my back and neck began to ease and then got into the passenger side, curled up and closed my eyes.

Awakened by the sound of a cart clopping past on the road beside me, I opened my eyes on to dazzling brightness and felt sure I had slept away the morning, but a glance at my watch told me that it was only just seven o’clock. Melting hot in my thick coat, still screwing up my eyes against the glare, and with my throat so dry that it clicked when I tried to swallow, I started the car and began the descent towards the town. Fearing to drive down the main street and pass Dr Milne on an early call, however, I veered off to the west at the fork in the road and from there picked my way among the criss-crossing lanes towards the sea until I arrived at my destination, stopped the car and let myself in at the gate. The cabbages looked in very good heart, I noticed as I made my way to the front door, hardly any slug holes at all.

I saw through the kitchen window that Mrs Marshall was dispensing porridge to an astonishing number of assorted large sons and small grandchildren and she came to the door with the ladle still in her hands. She cried out in delight at the sight of me and lifted her arms like a runner breaking the winning tape (causing flecks of porridge to leap off the ladle and spatter the floor around her). I wondered for a moment why my appearance should cause such immoderate joy, and then I remembered that the last thing I had promised was to tell her when naughty Cara was found and brought home again. My face must have betrayed something of what I felt because hers fell, and her mouth was turned down at the corners as she nodded me towards the parlour and returned to the kitchen.

‘Just leave they plates and get on with you,’ I heard her say. ‘Jock, Willie, your pieces are ready standing at the back door. Peggy, tie your ribbon or you’ll lose it. Jean, put the wee one’s boots on his right feet before you go. And don’t any of you come through the room, mind. Granny’s busy.’ She sidled back into the parlour and sat opposite me.

‘Mrs Marshall, I’m so very sorry,’ I began. ‘But I don’t have time to tell all just now.’

‘From your face, I don’t think I want to hear it,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘Just tell me, was she in thon fire, after all?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘She is dead, I’m afraid, but she didn’t die in the fire. I’m sure of it.’ I felt a fraud and a heel at the relief that suffused her face, slackening the drawstring purse of her mouth and softening the swimmy old eyes in their baskets of wrinkles.

‘So what are you after?’ she asked, in a bright voice.

‘I need to speak to whoever it is around here who lays out corpses,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean the undertaker.’

‘You mean Nettle Jennie,’ said Mrs Marshall.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I expect I do.’

‘I’ll tell you where to find her, madam, and glad. She has a wee hoose on the Cally estate up by Gatehouse, just on the edge. But you mind out for yourself when you go there.’ I looked at her enquiringly.

‘The thing is, you see, madam, Nettle Jennie is a witch.’

I had anticipated as much. For all that reading the Bible and feeling glum were still the only Sunday pastimes in the respectable homes of Scotland, one only has to mention felling a rowan tree or eating a wild mushroom to realize that St Columba did not make a very thorough job of it. And I have no call to be superior for my legs were trembling as I approached Nettle Jennie’s house. It was a tiny building, but with something about it that hinted at a nobler purpose than a worker’s cottage sometime in its history. Small wonder, though, that the local witch was welcome to it: it was gloomily situated on the banks of a slow-moving burn surrounded by large trees, and midges were dancing in the air and rising from the ground in front of me as I made my way through the long grass to the door.

Almost too grotesque to be anything but comical was the way the door swung open as I approached it and a disembodied voice said: ‘I’ve been expecting you.’ Almost, but not quite, and I was equally balanced between trepidation and amusement as I bent my head under the lintel and entered.

The interior was dark but while the darkness of Mrs Marshall’s cottage rooms came from the thick walls and tiny windows, here it arose from walls panelled with black wood and from the fact that, although there was a large arched window of leaded diamond panes set in the end wall, most of the light from it was blocked by a collection of stoppered bottles, one jammed into each diamond, wedged right in if they fitted, held in by putty and string if not. The effect was that of a home-made stained-glass window, and it was this thought which led to the realization that Nettle Jennie’s house had once been a chapel. I wondered if this added to or detracted from the lore. It seemed rather macabre to me. The woman herself as well, once my eyes adjusted to the dimness, was revealed to be satisfyingly to type. Thick, grey hair in a plait, the creased dark skin of a gypsy and eyes set so deep in shadowed sockets that their light was the dull gleam of velvet rather than any kind of shine. Set against all of this, however, was her blue work dress and clean white pinny, and her voice – clear and sweet, and pure Galloway in its vowels. She had been at work on some greenery, piled on newspaper on her table, and she returned to it now, stripping leaves from branches and separating them into piles. Not having been asked to sit, I leaned against a cupboard and watched her.

‘I saw you at the inquiry,’ she said. ‘And I heard you were asking questions.’

‘I dearly wish you had come to me then,’ I said. ‘What a lot of bother it would have saved.’

‘That’s not my way,’ said Nettle Jennie. ‘I keep myself to myself and people come to me. They wouldn’t come if they thought I’d go running with tales.’ I could see the sense in this, but I slumped with disappointment.

‘I don’t suppose then,’ I said, ‘that you would be willing to be a witness. To come to the police, I mean.’

‘Well, now me and the police, we keep our distance, see? Suppose you tell me what it is you want to know.’ She nodded towards a chair at last and I sat, while she carried on with her picking over of the stems and branches. Every so often she would put one of the leaves into her mouth, as I have seen Mrs Tilling do shelling peas in the yard in the sunshine. The leaves might have been spinach for all I knew, but still it made me shiver.

‘Well, the little kitchen maid who died at Reiver’s Rest,’ I began.

‘Was no kitchen maid, for a start,’ said Nettle Jennie. ‘That’s the first thing.’

Hallelujah! At last, for the first time in all these months, there was someone else besides Alec and me who was willing to say so.

‘I worked that out,’ I said. ‘She was Mrs Duffy’s daughter. But anything you can tell me from having seen her will be invaluable. Next, I think she was murdered, and here is where I very much hope you can back me up, because I have no proof of it at all, beyond my conviction.’

‘That’s not so easy,’ said Nettle Jennie. ‘She’d tumbled down, the poor lass, no mistaking that. But whether she fell or was pushed, how would you know? How could you say?’

‘You don’t think she jumped then?’

‘Made away with herself? Is that what they told you?’

‘They told me as big a heap of nonsense as they told everyone else. But it was one of the possibilities. She was trying to miscarry the baby, you know, and she jumped too far. Isn’t that what they told you?’

Her hands stilled for the first time and rested amongst the leaves.

‘What?’ I said. She shook her head at me.

‘That wee lass couldn’t have been trying to get rid of a baby,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘There was nothing there to get rid of.’

‘Are you sure?’ I asked and she bridled.

‘I’ve brought enough into the world to know,’ she said. ‘Aye, and seen to it that plenty never arrive.’

‘But I know she was pregnant,’ I said. ‘The doctor told me.’

She snorted.

‘The doctor! What did he tell you?’

‘He said it was as easy for him to tell if a girl was – I can’t remember the expression he used exactly – but as easy for him as for me to tell a man from a woman. And “tell-tale marks of pregnancy”. I know he said that.’

‘Aye, she had the tell-tale marks of pregnancy all right,’ said Nettle Jennie, and she watched me, laughing at my irritation with her air of mystery. Something was ringing bells, right at the back of my mind. I squinted up at the cloudy green and brown patchwork of her home-made window and remembered sitting in another church, looking at stained glass, listening to the minister. Man that is born of woman, he had said, reminding me of Alec stuttering while he tried to say ‘with child’. And suddenly I had it. Suddenly I could remember precisely the words that Dr Milne had used. Those ‘tell-tale marks’ had said to the doctor – and should have said to me – not that the girl was pregnant when she died but that sometime in her past she had borne a child.

Cara had had a baby. For, of course, there are no clear marks of being newly pregnant beyond the obvious change in one’s outline. On the other hand I very vividly remembered how cheated I felt after the first time (no one having even hinted at it) to find that I had changed quite markedly and, it appeared, permanently. Even when the baby was safely in the nursery wing with Nanny and there were several shut doors between him and me I could not lie in my bath and pretend it had not happened, not unless the water were very heavily dosed with bubbles and those horrid marks, looking like little pink anchovies draped all over my bosom and stomach, were deeply submerged. This then was what Cara dreaded Alec seeing on their wedding night.

‘But why would Dr Milne be so sure she was pregnant again?’ I said at last.

‘Give a dog a bad name and hang him,’ said Nettle Jennie. ‘That’s all he would have seen. The doctor.’ This accorded perfectly with what I knew of Dr Milne.

‘Could you tell from looking at her how long ago it was?’ I asked.

Nettle Jennie shrugged.

‘Three, mebbes, four years. Something like that. Now, I’m not being rude, but can I ask you just to step into my garden while I do something here. These are my grandmother’s recipes and there’s no one knows them but me.’

What an old fraud, I thought, as I hurried out. Grandmother’s recipes, indeed. As if I cared what she did with her vegetation. But I was grateful for the chance to think.

All kinds of things began to drop into place. Lena must have known about this baby; she must have been instrumental in bundling Cara away to have it quietly somewhere. And this must be the hold she had over her daughter. Yes! This must have been the power she wielded to make Cara take the diamonds to be sold. I wondered whether her father knew about it. Not, I rather thought. Whether Clemence knew? Not, again. Lena always prided herself so on protecting Clemence from the sordid things in life. This would have been top of the list of things to protect her from. So Lena must have handled it all. Perhaps she had got a little cottage all on its own somewhere, just as she had the next time she had something to do that better had not be seen. With a rush of certainty, I thought of the pictures of Cara, beaming and golden – glowing, as they say – against the setting of some unknown cottage somewhere. A cottage Lena had tried to copy at Kirkandrews years later. I thought of Sha-sha McIntosh telling me about the crêpe-de-Chine dress ‘fearfully baggy’ from countless ages ago. Four years would be countless ages for one so young, I was sure. But who was Cara smiling at in those beautiful pictures? Not her mother, certainly. Her lover? Had her mother allowed him to visit her? I could not see Lena letting this happen for the sake of love’s young dream. But she might, I supposed, if it gave her a hold over the boy as well as the girl, whoever he was.

This much I was sure of. Cara’s secret was this baby from years ago. And this was what she had to tell Alec. Now I could see why none of the other options would help her. Postponing the wedding could not get rid of those dark rings and pale stripes. Seducing Alec would only bring discovery sooner. And this was what Lena found out that night at the cottage, what drove her to fury. But wait. That could not be. Had I not just worked out for myself that Lena must have known all along? She could not have managed Cara’s confinement and have been shocked into madness by its sudden discovery. Here were echoes again of that feeling that Lena was split down the middle. Could she be? Could her rigid respectability, her obsession with keeping the vulgar at bay, have led her to that special kind of forgetting that Austrian doctors tell us of?

Nettle Jennie was at my elbow suddenly, holding out a glass of some pale cloudy liquid. It might have been lemonade, I suppose, but I declined.

‘Like I’m saying,’ she began, ‘I don’t meet trouble halfway. I stay out of things, but this time… I don’t know.’ She drifted into silence for a while and then began again. ‘That was her own lassie? That was her own wee lassie she did that to? I might could come to the police with you, if you thought it would help put her away.’

‘But you said you weren’t sure it was murder,’ I said, puzzled.

‘Not that,’ she said. ‘I mean what she did after.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘What did she do to her… after?’ I was not sure that I wanted to hear this.

‘There was some things could not be helped,’ said Nettle Jennie. ‘Her feet, like, were soft and there was nothing could be done about that, but she ground dirt into them, split the nails and dirtied them. She scrubbed her wee fingernails away to nothing, but she couldn’t put calluses where no work had put them. She rough chopped her hair at the ends and greasied it up, bit of dirt, but I could tell it was good healthy hair underneath it all, even combed all up the wrong way into rats’ tails.

‘She grubbied her neck for her, put dirt in her ears. I cannot be sure, but I think she went out to the closet and got muck to put in her mouth. I never smelled anything in my life like the smell of that wee girl’s mouth when I laid her out. But she couldn’t do anything about her bonny white teeth. Cover them in night soil, make them smell so bad the doctor wouldn’t go near, but it all came off with a swish of water.’ Nettle Jennie shook her head and clicked her own strong yellow teeth together.

‘I’ve been to plenty a corp I wished I had gloves for, I can tell you. Years of dirt, ground in. Linens never been off them for months. But this one was all wrong.’ She turned to me suddenly plaintive, a look of real pain in her eyes. ‘What did she do that for, eh?’

‘It fooled the doctor,’ I said.

‘But how could she do that to her own wee girl? Soil in her mouth? How could she?’ I was startled. I should have thought that one in her occupation would be past such sensibility. She drew herself up.

‘I’m a woman just like you,’ she said, with such remarkable appositeness that I wondered whether she might be a witch after all. ‘I do what I have to do, for it must be done by someone. But I couldn’t do it for one of my own, not as tender and as gentle as I am. And as for back-combing the hair on the head you’ve just smashed in, on the neck you’ve just broken -’

I put out my hands to try to block her words, and she stopped at last, turned abruptly and went back into her house. I followed.

‘What you’ve just told me only confirms it, but I thought so anyway,’ I said, standing in the open doorway. ‘She is mad.’

‘She must be,’ said Nettle Jennie. ‘If that’s what happened.’ She looked slyly at me and repeated it. ‘If that’s what happened.’ Facing the sunlight, her hooded eyes were easier to read and I saw an unpleasant look there now – cunning and taking some pleasure in the cunning. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ she said. I nodded. ‘We could find out,’ she said in the same slightly wheedling tone. ‘We could ask the wee lassie.’

‘What do you mean? How could we ask her?’ I said, thinking of ouija boards and upturned glasses.

‘I’m sure she would tell you. She knows you’re trying to help her.’

She looked up at her curious window, pointing at the row upon row of odd bottles. Medicine bottles and scent bottles, beer bottles and oil bottles all corked or stoppered with scraps of rag. I moved towards the window and peered at them.

‘They’re empty,’ I said. ‘What do you mean she would tell me?’

‘They only look empty,’ said Nettle Jennie, right behind me. ‘She could tell you with her dying breath.’

I turned, to see her smiling at me. She mimed breathing out, emptying her lungs, then she bent as though to kiss an imaginary face and mimed sucking in hard. Lips pursed shut, she plucked an empty bottle from the shelf at her side, blew into it and waved it at me, one strong brown thumb over the neck, cackling.