Bury Her Deep

15

Alec was all business and bustle, planning his investigations of the wandering farmers, but I rather thought I should put in an appearance back at Gilverton, and I decided to break news of my departure to the Taits that very day. Mr Tait, however, foiled my plan.

‘You seem in excellent spirits,’ I said, when we assembled for tea. He had regained his colour and all of his buoyancy since the morning.

‘I am,’ he cried. ‘I’ve had a tremendous idea, you see.’

Lorna and I waited expectantly.

‘I’m going to organise a visit to the chamber in the Lucken Law.’ This was declaimed with a triumphant flourish. ‘I think I’m being overly squeamish in keeping it shut up this way,’ he went on. ‘In fact, I think we should set an example to the village – don’t you, Lorna dear? – and start to treat it as the ancient curiosity it is. We should, we really should, put all the more unfortunate associations behind us.’

I was stumped for something to say. Right now, when what he called ‘the more unfortunate associations’ were being ripped from their resting place and spirited away, it seemed the very last moment to begin treating the chamber as a tourist attraction. On the other hand, I was agog to see it.

‘I’m thinking of forming a little party,’ Mr Tait said. ‘Tomorrow afternoon perhaps for, if we don’t go before the winter sets in, it will be cruelly cold and we shall have to wait until the spring.’

‘A party?’ I asked faintly.

‘Yourself of course and the Howies – as the first family of the neighbourhood they are due the honour. Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum perhaps, for they are keen scholars of local history although incomers both.’

‘Captain Watson would surely be interested too,’ said Lorna predictably.

‘Indeed,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I have yet to meet this Captain Watson, but if he has an interest in the arts then he will certainly want to see the place. And if he is to be included perhaps we should make sure and ask the Miss Mortons too. I fear their noses are in a way to be out of joint over the warmth of the Captain’s welcome, Lorna.’

Lorna looked uncomfortable at that.

‘By all means, Father,’ she said. ‘The Miss Mortons must be asked along, but they won’t come tomorrow.’ She turned to me. ‘They go to the Episcopal church, Mrs Gilver, and they’re never home before tea on a Sunday, because it’s three buses.’

‘I keep telling them they’re more than welcome to join my little flock,’ said Mr Tait, ‘but their uncle’s a bishop, you know.’

‘Father!’ said Lorna.

‘Och, I’m just teasing,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Of course it’s their adherence to the Episcopalian principle that’s worth the three buses and not the snob value of their uncle at all. Of course it is.’ And winking at me, he took a hearty bite out of his scone. ‘That’s settled then. You could telephone around this evening, Lorna, if you like.’

‘I will,’ she said. ‘Although of course Miss Lindsay and Captain Watson are not on the phone, so I’ll just step over and tell them about it after tea.’

And from the moment that stepping over to Captain Watson’s appeared on the agenda, Lorna seemed to put the whole of teatime into a higher and rather frantic gear, urging us to accept more tea before our cups were half finished and splitting scones to butter while we were still savouring the one before, until finally her father furnished her with an exit cue.

‘I don’t want to hurry you away from the fireside, Lorna dear,’ he said, ‘but if you’re going to call at the schoolhouse and Ford Cottage, you had perhaps better do it sooner than later. Captain Watson I cannot answer for, but Miss Lindsay goes in for high tea, does she not, and this might be your only chance to catch her without disturbing a meal.’

He had hardly time to get all of this out before Lorna was up, patting vaguely at her hair and excusing herself to me.

‘Dear Lorna,’ said Mr Tait once she had gone. ‘She seems very taken with this mysterious Captain. What did you make of him, Mrs Gilver?’

‘I believe he is very “advanced” in his art,’ I said carefully. I felt a bit of a heel, but someone had to arrange a few mattresses so that poor Lorna could fall onto something soft when the end came. ‘So one does wonder whether he might not be equally “advanced” in his life.’

‘But then he is a Captain,’ said Mr Tait, reasonably enough. ‘He cannot be quite lost to the “left bank” surely. And given the poet, it seems that Lorna has a yen for romantic types.’ He roused himself – he had been staring into the fire – and smiled at me. ‘Than which there are many worse things, don’t you agree? I cannot set my face against every young man within ten miles.’

‘I didn’t know you had set your face against any,’ I said, matching his jocular tone with my own.

‘Well, it didn’t come to that,’ he said, more serious again. ‘But we cannot help steering our children towards calm waters, no matter what our own lives may have given us to bear.’ The only sense I could make of that mystifying statement was that some young clergyman had made faint advances towards Lorna and her father had headed him off, but it did not seem all that likely. One could imagine a coal miner or a circus acrobat wanting a different kind of life for his daughter than washing overalls or bringing up five children in a caravan but surely a minister’s daughter could not be said to have fallen short of her father’s hopes by becoming a minister’s wife.

‘You’ll see soon enough,’ said Mr Tait. ‘When those boys of yours start to introduce young ladies to you at dances you’ll find that not a one of them ever seems quite good enough in your eyes even if everyone you know is whispering at what a match it would be and urging you to give it your blessing. You’ll see.’

I smiled, convinced that he was right. I am no soppy, clinging mother to my boys, far from it, but already at the few parties where I have seen them standing silent and awkward, surrounded by giggling little misses in ringlets, I have felt a strong urge to sweep one up under each arm and take them home.

‘Your feelings do you great credit as a warm-hearted father,’ I said, ‘but if I might talk to the meenister and no’ the man for a moment: I haven’t had a chance to ask you about last night.’ Mr Tait stiffened visibly. ‘I am here to help you, Mr Tait. You must let me help you with this or at the very least tell me why not, for I cannot understand why you won’t take me into your confidence. Really, I cannot.’

‘I have dealt with the matter,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I have no need of your help, although I thank you most sincerely for the offer.’

‘Dealt with the matter?’ I said. ‘How?’

‘She has been laid to rest in another parish, where none of the parishioners know and she won’t be disturbed again.’

‘And do you have any idea who it was who removed her? You must have or how did you know where to look to find her.’

Mr Tait sighed as though, with the sigh, he was trying to heave the sorrow of a lifetime out of him.

‘My parishioners are good people,’ he said, ‘but they are old-fashioned and superstitious like people anywhere, and eager to lay the blame for their misfortunes anywhere but where it belongs.’

‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘There is a marked reluctance to blame the attacks by the stranger on the stranger, for instance. But on the whole, I’d say laying blame is not a feature of the Luckenlaw folk at all. A remarkable stoicism seems very much more to the fore.’

‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ said Mr Tait.

‘Oh, surely you’ve noticed,’ I said. ‘Mrs Hemingborough’s quiet tidying up of her feathers was the least of it. Wells drying up, parasites in the earth, blight in the air, a house lost to fire and they take it all in their stride. “What’s for you won’t go by you,” they say. If I’ve heard that once in the last weeks I’ve heard it a dozen times.’ Mr Tait looked rather thunderstruck at this for some reason.

‘You seem to have got to the heart of things in short order,’ he said. ‘But I suppose that’s what you’re here for, eh? And you’re right, of course, there is a strain of that thinking running through my flock, but it’s not in everyone.’

‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve noticed that too.’

‘Well, you’ll have no trouble believing me, that some of the others, some of my parishioners less stocial, as you put it, more superstitious and – although I should not speak harshly of them for they are good souls really – more simple-minded, thought that if trouble came from taking the poor girl out of the law, then trouble would go if they undid what was done…’

‘And put her back again?’ I said.

‘Of course,’ said Mr Tait. ‘It was wicked and wrong, that goes without saying, but it has a kind of sense to it.’

‘It’s even worse than I was imagining,’ I said. ‘Mr Tait, how can you say these are good people? How can you call this mere superstition? They sound as though they have given their souls to the devil. It sounds like… Well, I hesitate to say it in case you laugh or order me away from the house, but it sounds like witchcraft to me.’ Mr Tait neither laughed nor took me by the collar and frogmarched me out of the manse, but just nodded as though what I had said was a mild notion that he could take or leave, but which caused him no upset.

‘And if it is witchcraft, then I think I know who is behind it.’ At that, he opened his eyes very wide and stared at me, his face growing solemn.

‘It’s the Rural,’ I said. ‘The SWRI. And I can prove it too.’ Mr Tait’s mouth twitched and his eyes had started dancing again.

‘I’m not joking,’ I said. ‘Their badge – the brooch they all wear – is called the witch’s heart.’

At that, Mr Tait threw back his head and let out a peal of sustained laughter loud enough to set the pendulum in the mantel clock humming along with him.

‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘The witch’s heart, quite so. But you have got the wrong end of the stick, I’m afraid. The witch’s heart keeps witches away.’

‘What?’ I said, wondering how much of an improvement on my first suspicions that could really be.

‘It was given as a love token by departing sweethearts, to keep the loved one safe from harm. Why, I gave one to my own wife when we were courting. Lorna wears it now.’

‘I see,’ I said, blushing furiously. ‘But why was it chosen as the Lucken Law Rural badge?’

‘No, the whole federation has this same one. There was a competition, you know, and our dear Miss Lindsay, who was a member of the Glamis branch back then, actually helped to draw the winning design.’

‘Gosh, how exciting,’ I said, and I hoped that my tone matched my words rather than the sickly flood of shame which was spreading through me. ‘And tell me,’ I went on for I have never sought to spare myself the pain of humiliation when it is deserved, ‘what does it say on the blue banner across the heart shape? I couldn’t decipher it.’ I steeled myself to hear exactly how blameless and pure my so-called coded symbols might turn out to be.

‘For Home and Country,’ said Mr Tait, confirming my worst fears. ‘And who could object to that? Witchcraft indeed!’ I felt his enjoyment of my mistake was beginning to shade into rudeness, but I managed to keep smiling as though still enjoying the joke. ‘So called by those who fear its power, Mrs Gilver,’ he went on, and at last I understood that he was not harping on my blunder, but was mounting a little hobby-horse of his own. ‘But I am a man of God and because of that I fear nothing. I find it better just to nod at “the old ways” if I pass them. That’s what I call it – the old ways, for that’s all it is. The midsummer bonfires and the honoured loaves of Lammas Day. Why, I’m sure your own lovely home is full of holly and mistletoe every Christmas time and that you rolled an egg every spring of your girlhood, didn’t you?’

I nodded, conceding the point, but I was only half listening, my brain whirring round. If the bones of the girl were not removed by Mr Tait’s devout busybodies after all, but were taken back to the law by villagers more in thrall to the ‘old ways’, and he did not know who exactly it was who moved them, then…

‘Why have you organised this visit to the chamber?’ I asked. Mr Tait laughed lustily again and leaned over from his chair to squeeze my knee and shake me in a friendly fashion.

‘That’s my girl!’ he said. ‘Nose back to the ground, eh? I thought it the best way to show the grave robbers that their plan has been foiled. And, to be honest, I meant what I said about starting to treat the place with a little more architectural and historical interest and a little less reverence. It’s one thing to nod but I don’t want to be seen to honour the old ways. That wouldn’t do at all.’

‘To show the grave robbers…?’ I echoed. ‘Do you mean they’re in the party?’ I desperately tried to remember the names he and Lorna had suggested they invite. The Howies, the Miss Mortons, Miss Lindsay and her postmistress friend.

‘Good Lord no,’ said Mr Tait. ‘That would look far too pointed even if I knew who they were. No, I’m just asking the proper people and trusting that village gossip will ensure it gets back to the ears of those who need to hear it. Miss McCallum talks to everyone over that post office counter, you know.’

It was a gem of a plan, subtle and yet bound to be effective, and I felt some admiration for Mr Tait for having thought of it, even while I felt a little pity for the unknowing guests being used to execute it for him. I was seeing him in a new light today, between this chamber visit and the quiet but effective finding of a new place to bury the bones. I wondered how much of the tale he had told the other minister who now sheltered the poor girl in his kirkyard, whether he had come clean or had acted as he had with me, while enticing me into taking the case; that is, told his colleague as much as he had to and as little as he could, planning to reveal the rest when it was too late to do anything but dig the wretched thing up again, which I imagined no man of the cloth would lightly do.

Just then an even more unwelcome and unsettling thought struck me. Was that the extent of Mr Tait’s toying with me or was it even worse? Perhaps I was being fanciful, but it had seemed to me more than once that Mr Tait’s only surprise whenever I had told him of some little discovery, some little step forward in the case, was that I had got there, or got there so quickly and never, not once, surprise at where I had got. Was he using me to solve a mystery which had him stumped or did he feel he had better not know, that it would be much more suitable if I were the one who found it out?

I vowed that, from that moment on, I should keep a weather eye on Mr Tait. I would no longer trot along like a good little bloodhound and report my latest findings, the better to be shown the next bit of path towards where he was guiding me. Instead, I would plough my own furrow and find out, in the name of truth, just what the devil was going on.

We were six for luncheon the following day after church, Miss McCallum, Miss Lindsay, the Taits, ‘Captain Watson’ and me; making for a mood around the table which was somewhere between high spirits and hysteria, following as it did a terribly brimstone-ish sermon – surely designed to wag a finger at the culprits, should they be in the congregation, without alerting any of the innocent to what was going on – and preceding an outing which was a kind of Sunday School Trip imagined by Edgar Allan Poe. Added to that there was Lorna’s solicitousness over her beloved Captain, which came out as relentless maternal clucking, Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum’s frosty disapproval of the clucking, Miss Lindsay’s attempts to engage Alec in Arty Talk, Alec’s mounting terror that this would uncover him for the sham he was, Miss McCallum’s attempts to turn the talk to politics to find out if Captain Watson’s captaincy or artistry was the determining factor there, Alec’s mounting terror that she would uncover him for the Tory that he was and conclude that he could not be an artist too, Mr Tait’s open appraisal of him, which was thankfully silent because if it had taken the form of words it would only too obviously have been a series of questions on his background, prospects and intentions, Alec’s increasingly strained performance of upstanding chap (for Mr Tait), right-thinking, or rather left-thinking, modern young man (for Miss McCallum), talented and dedicated avant-garde artist (for Miss Lindsay) and friendly but unenthralled new acquaintance (for Lorna), and finally my dread that the rising bubbles of hilarity could not be contained inside my chest much longer and that any minute I was going to hiss like a steam kettle and have to slide off my chair to roll about under the table, screaming.

Mr Tait carved thin slices off the roast beef, and Lorna urged everyone – but especially Alec – to another and yet another of the Yorkshire puddings, little round ones as light and crisp as meringues and quite unlike the slab of flannel which usually masquerades as Yorkshire pudding north of the border. Even my own dear Mrs Tilling cannot quite shake off the ancestral influence when it comes to Yorkshire puddings: hundreds of years’ worth of suet, after all, must eventually seep into the very soul.

‘Mrs Wolstenthwaite’s Yorkshire puddings are Father’s very favourite thing,’ said Lorna. ‘But he can get terribly caught up after church and end by sitting down to everything dried up and nasty at half-past three.’

‘We are more fortunate today, my dear,’ said Mr Tait.

‘And I’m so happy to have you, Captain Watson,’ she went on. ‘I hate to think of you, down there all alone, frying sausages over a gas ring, while we sit down to such feasts. Would you be offended by an open invitation to luncheon any day you care to join us?’

Since I was sure that Alec could no more fry a sausage than make these little puffs of nothing with which I was at that moment mopping up gravy as though I had not eaten for a week, I thought that an open invitation to breakfast, luncheon, tea and supper would be a godsend.

Finally, when the large bowl of custard trifle had been finished, with Alec manfully spooning away the two helpings Lorna had insisted on serving him, and we were toying with our coffee cups, some of the pressure was relieved by the sound of the rather clanking manse doorbell.

‘Aha,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I was beginning to worry that there had been some trouble on the road. Lorna?’

Lorna got up, giving me one of her most beaming smiles, and Mr Tait followed her. I saw him noticing Alec’s unthinking rise as Lorna left the table and nodding in satisfaction at him for the properness of the little chivalry, just as Miss McCallum scowled at him for the same.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait, ‘would you step outside? We have a lovely surprise for you, Lorna and me.’ Intrigued, I folded my napkin and went after them, noting Alec jerking upwards again and Miss McCallum’s eyebrows jerking down. Outside in the hall, the housemaid was just turning the handle and hauling open the front door and there on the porch stood my lovely surprise.

‘Hugh!’ I exclaimed. Lorna clapped her hands in glee and then held them together under her chin, almost luminous with vicarious romance. Really, she was in for a dreadful let-down if she ever did manage to land a husband of her own.

‘Sir, Miss Tait,’ said Hugh, very properly, causing the beacon of Lorna’s smile to dim just a little. ‘Dandy,’ he said at last.

‘Hugh!’ I said again even louder, loud enough to penetrate the dining-room door. ‘Darling!’ I rushed forward and threw my arms around him, almost knocking him over since he was – understandably – reeling from the shock of the greeting. Thankfully, we avoided toppling onto the porch floor and having to untangle ourselves. ‘What a lovely treat to see you. Oh Mr Tait, you are a poppet, to remember how much Hugh wanted to come, isn’t he, darling?’ Hugh was stony with outrage; Mr Tait was one of his most revered boyhood heroes – poppet, indeed!

Then, unable to think of anything else, I compounded the insult by saying to Hugh in that flirtatious but bossy voice which we both hate to hear issuing from a wife to her husband and which I never use on him: ‘Now, darling, you must come and say hello to Bunty. She always misses you so when I take her away. Come along, this way.’ I threaded my arm through his and dragged him along the passage to the boot-room near the side door where Bunty had been quartered and, since he could hardly wrest himself from my grip in front of the Taits, he was forced to come with me.

‘What’s got into you?’ he said, when the boot-room door was closed behind us and I was trying to stop Bunty from giving him too enthusiastic a welcome. She never does get the plain message which is fired in her direction every time her path crosses Hugh’s. She still thinks he loves her.

‘What?’ I said, playing for time.

‘Have you been drinking?’ said Hugh. As an explanation this had its merits, but he could too easily find out that it was not true.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just had to escape for a minute.’

‘Escape?’ said Hugh coldly.

‘There’s the most tremendous subterranean farce going on in the dining room,’ I said. ‘An artist, a suffragette and a socialist all squaring up to one another and poor Lorna Tait trying to keep things smooth. I’ve been fighting the giggles all through luncheon and when you gave me an excuse not to go back in, I couldn’t resist it.’

It worked. Hugh, during my outburst in the hall, had been looking at me, really looking at me, but now he was back to normal again – viewing me – and, also as normal, viewing me with some disdain.

‘I can’t see what’s funny about that,’ he said. Artists, socialists and suffragettes were some of Hugh’s least favourite characters in the world, and I am sure that the last time he had succumbed to a fit of helpless giggles was back in the days when he was in Mr Tait’s catechism class at Kingoldrum. ‘Now, before I’m made to look even more of a fool than I’ve been made to look already…’ He gave me a glare – again very much the norm, for being glared at is much more like being viewed than being looked at, really – and strode out of the room.

I hurried after him and caught up with him in the dining-room doorway. Beyond I could see Miss McCallum looking rather flushed, Miss Lindsay looking rather knowing, and Lorna with her mouth turned down at the corners and her shoulders in a slump.

‘Artistic temperament, I daresay,’ Mr Tait was saying. ‘We’ve lost Captain Watson, Mrs Gilver. He rushed out while Hugh was saying hello to Bunty.’

‘He suddenly went still when you were out of the room,’ Miss Lindsay explained. ‘Physically blanched, leapt up and said he had to get home immediately because he’d had a tremendous idea for a new work. I thought for a minute he was going to climb out of the window.’

After this inauspicious start to the proceedings, Hugh was at his stiffest and most quellingly polite to everyone in the party for the rest of the afternoon, and when the Howies arrived, dressed as outlandishly as ever, each in her own way, giggling like two schoolgirls on a spree, he became icy with disapproval for the whole bally lot of us and even rather short with Mr Tait for putting such a collection of individuals together and then inviting Hugh to make one of their number.

We set off for the burial chamber of the Lucken Law in three cars, making quite a procession as we swept out of the gates. Hugh was conveying Mr Tait, naturally, and Miss McCallum and Miss Lindsay, showing a marked lack of sisterly respect, I thought, had plumped to be driven by him rather than me. Since Vashti Howie had a two-seater, that left Lorna and me to bring up the rear and me alone to try to raise Lorna’s bruised spirits after the abrupt departure of the Captain.

‘Perhaps you can show him the chamber another day,’ I said. ‘Just the two of you, I mean. I – um – I’d have thought that if he’s interested in its… ambience, or its… ancient – um – aura, it would be far preferable for him to see it without the rest of us all galumphing around spoiling things.’

This worked rather too well, I thought, if my object was simply to cheer Lorna up and not to put Alec in danger of an inescapable tryst. She looked positively entranced by the notion and there was a long dreamy silence before she spoke again.

‘They’ll be turning off in a minute, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘Get ready to slow down.’ We had left the village and worked our way around the law beyond the gateposts of Luck House – really, the Howies had made a terribly inefficient journey down to the manse to meet us – when the two cars in front swung in at a road end and trundled down a drive to where a farmhouse sat, tucked under the slope of the hill above it. We passed straight through the farmyard and out the other side, ending up in a little cleft at the bottom of what was almost a cliff side, as though a portion of the hill itself had been carved away to make room for the farm. There was just space enough for the three motor cars side-by-side, although Mr Tait – the bulkiest of the party – had to squeeze out of Hugh’s passenger door with a little shimmy.

Lorna, as I said, was her cheerful self again; the two spinster ladies were very serious and correct, with pencils and notebooks ready to sketch points of interest or copy down ancient runes; Hugh was unbending slightly at the prospect of such an utterly Boy’s Own Paper adventure as was facing him. The surprise amongst our number came from the Howies. I had been expecting the usual valiant good cheer overlying the rather comical despondency, but they were as genuinely excited, keyed up almost, as I had ever seen them. Nicolette’s face showed a hectic flush and she smoked intently, not waving the cigarette around in a long holder, but puffing on it with every breath, her eyes darting. Vashti, in contrast, was as pale as her muddy complexion could ever get and rather glittery about the eyes, which flared as she caught me looking at her.

‘I’ve been dying to get a look at the place,’ said Nicolette, ‘but now that I’m here…’

‘It’s giving you the creeps?’ I asked sympathetically.

‘Absolutely the willies,’ she said. ‘One envies Miss Lindsay with her sketchbook. She obviously has no qualms.’

‘We don’t have to go,’ muttered Vashti. ‘I don’t think I dare.’

‘Dare what?’ I said. ‘You’re surely not worried about a mummy’s curse, are you? Haven’t there been archaeologists and university scientists all over the place time and again?’ If truth be told, I was feeling rather less hearty than this made me sound, for the last twenty-four hours had seen some terribly murky deeds unfold: this chamber was very far from being a mere historical site in some people’s reckoning.

‘Scoff all you want to,’ said Vashti. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’ But I was with Mr Tait on that one: firmly believing that there were rather fewer things in heaven and earth than one was wont to hear tales of, and that stout refusal to give the tales credence was perhaps best all round.

Standing just where the little cleft became almost a cave, overhung most disquietingly with jagged plates of fissured rock which looked as though they might slide out of place at any moment and plummet, spike first, to the earth, Mr Tait was gathering everyone’s attention.

‘Now then,’ he said, ‘it is perfectly safe inside, solid rock and all most carefully pinned and buttressed by our friends from the university not five years ago, so there is no danger. I have a lantern here, and Hugh has another. You don’t mind coming at the back, Hugh, do you? The going is not arduous – I see you have all been sensible and worn stout shoes. So let us begin.’

He turned and walked into the cave and then, moving to one side, he disappeared, leaving the rest of us to give a collective gasp.

‘Come along,’ said Mr Tait’s voice, sounding rather muffled. Miss McCallum strode after him and stopped at the point where he had vanished, standing with her hands on her hips, looking upwards, then she too walked as though into the solid face of the rock facing her. I followed.

Disappointingly, although I could understand how Mr Tait might have been unable to resist the little show he had given us, there was no mouth of a tunnel, tiny doorway with odd symbols carved above it, or any other fantastical portal to be found there, but just a set of rough steps which led between outcrops of rock, hidden from view and so lending themselves to theatricality, but otherwise, with their edging of brambles, and withered stinging nettle, looking very much like many another flight of steps hacked into a hillside up and down which I had been dragged during the country walks which punctuated the early years of my marriage. I started to climb, ignoring the brush of gorse and bracken against my skirt and hoping that we were not expected to go too far up the law on the outside before being admitted to its secret innards.

We went quite far enough, high above the hawthorn and elder which clothed the lower slopes and ending with a splendid view – almost worth it – of Wester and Over Luck Farms although the Mains was hidden by the trees below us. At last Mr Tait stopped, stepping off the path onto a flat place on the cropped grass, puffing like a bull walrus and with his spectacles slightly misted, and waited for everyone following to catch up with him.

‘Round here,’ he said. ‘Here we are,’ and he picked his way along a path as narrow as a sheep track which wound around and slightly downwards, veering out alarmingly to pass a rather twisted little rowan which was just about managing to cling to the rocky slope. On the other side of this, signs of interference by man could be seen. Earth had been shovelled out of place and was held back by restraining planks of rough wood, themselves buttressed by pegs driven deep into the ground. The resulting niche was floored with brick and there were four metal poles, rather rusted now, set in the corners which must have held up a canopy at one time. At the back of the niche was a plain wooden door, painted with creosote and shut with a sturdy padlock. Mr Tait fished in his trouser pocket and drew out a new-looking, very shiny key. He caught my eye.

‘Yes, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘We very often have to change the padlock on this place, I’m afraid. Boys will be boys, I suppose, and it’s just too much of a temptation for some of the Luckenlaw rascals, this place sitting up here like the den of dens. Look, the staple and hasp are quite buckled with all the attempts over the years. And judging from these bright scratches, the scamps have been at it again not long since. Boys will be boys!’

While talking, he had undone the padlock, released the hasp and closed the padlock over the staple again, locking the door open, and now he grasped the handle and pulled. There was no spooky creaking as the door swung open, but beyond it was exactly what one might have hoped for – an older doorway, this one of stone and arched to a point at the top. Mr Tait took out a box of matches to light his lantern.

‘Shall we?’ he said. ‘Better late than never, my dear Hugh. Now ladies, the first thing you will notice is the surprisingly modern-looking stonework of the entrance way, which suggests that this place was in use until perhaps Georgian times and was repaired using the builders’ know-how of the day. Certainly these blocks you see in the lintel have been quarry-cut and dressed and could not be original, but as we go further you will be pleased to hear that the inner lintels are made of free surface slabs that…’

The history lesson had begun and it carried on the whole time we were in there, much to the evident delight of what I came to think of as the three scholars of the party, the schoolmistress, the postmistress and, of course, Hugh. The three sensation-seekers, if I might lump myself in with the Howies and describe us that way, would have been better served by a deathly hush or whispered legends, but it is perhaps just as well that Mr Tait did not indulge in such things, for Nicolette and Vashti looked quite mesmerised enough as it was, even while the description of hair-strengthened mortar and estimations of the weights of the stones and their provenance and the flint marks upon them and the significance of the whale-jaw shape to the entrance pillars droned on and on. Hugh, of course, was transported. The only one of us, in fact, who strolled down the passageway to the burial chamber, quite unruffled, neither enchanted nor intrigued, was Lorna.

Even when we reached the chamber itself, more of a cave really, she stood as calmly as though she were in a museum, looking at the exhibits in well-lit glass cases safely behind velvet ropes. I, in contrast, had icy prickles up the back of my neck and was concentrating on not noticing anything identifiable in the many prints on the dusty floor, dreading to see where the bones of the poor girl who had lain here all these years might have rested on their recent brief return.

‘… can’t have been intended for burial,’ Mr Tait was saying. ‘For as you know, a stone cist in the ground covered by a mound of earth is the normal thing in these parts, but it was probably used as a resting place for the king, or chieftain – hence the central sarcophagus – and for generations of his family too, judging by the number of cists which have been constructed over time.’ He waved a hand at the tiers of little cubby-holes, half hewn out and half built on, all around the walls of the chamber, turning it into something resembling a giant honeycomb. ‘The small size of these – smaller even than the usual short-cist – is thought to indicate ash burial or bone burial rather than the interment of recently deceased corpses.’

Beside me I could hear Vashti Howie’s breath, fast and shallow.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked her.

‘Perfectly,’ she said, sounding anything but; sounding strangulated, her dry throat clicking as she swallowed. ‘I’ve always hated little dark places, that’s all,’ she said, with an attempt at her usual drawl. ‘Too many games of sardines with wicked old uncles in my youth, you know.’ And she laughed, a sound ghastly enough to attract the attention of one or two others who turned towards her, frowning.

‘And were all of the remains in place when the chamber was discovered?’ said Hugh, turning away again.

‘None of them,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Perfectly normal, so I believe. The place would have been cleared for use as a fortress in war or as a storage stronghold. The archaeologists told me they’ve found chicken droppings and old beer flagons and goodness only knows what in some of the places they’ve opened.’

‘Had they ever found what they found here, though, Mr Tait?’ said Nicolette. She was tracing a path around the perimeter of the chamber, trying to make it look desultory, I suppose, but appearing as though she feared with every step to put her foot upon an adder.

‘Niccy,’ said Lorna, mildly as ever – one could not imagine Lorna Tait ever sounding sharp – but clearly rather shocked at her friend for mentioning so plainly what everyone else was busy pretending to have forgotten.

‘Good Lord,’ said Nicolette, suddenly, peering into one of the honeycomb holes. ‘Lorna darling, you have good eyes. What’s that in there? I can’t make it out.’

Lorna stared at her and made no move towards where she was pointing.

‘What’s this?’ said Hugh. ‘What have you found?’ but he could not cross to where Nicolette stood, since Miss McCallum was peering intently down at the floor as Mr Tait described its construction and her broad beam was stuck immovably in his path.

‘Oh Nic, don’t tease,’ said Vashti, pleadingly. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘No, Vash,’ said her sister. ‘Look, there’s something in there. Lorna?’ Nicolette clasped Lorna’s arm and wheeled her round so that they were both squinting into the darkness of the opening. Mr Tait had gone quiet and was watching them, and maybe it was just the upward shading from the lantern but he appeared to have a look almost of glee upon his usually kindly face.

Lorna stepped forward at last and stretched her arm into the dark place. We all heard the gritty scrape as she began to pull something out.

‘Ugh,’ she said, turning her head away as though to save herself from breathing in an unpleasant smell.

‘Please don’t. Stop it,’ said Vashti at my side, and I put an arm around her. Lorna Tait turned back to face the rest of us, cradling a white bundle in her hands, then a sudden look of horror flashed across her face and she dropped the bundle which unfurled like a sail, releasing a puff of dust.

‘What-’ said Nicolette.

Miss McCallum and Lorna both screamed and Miss McCallum lurched backwards, bumping into Hugh and setting his lantern swinging.

Vashti Howie crumpled in my arms and sank to the floor.

‘A rat!’ shrieked Miss McCallum. ‘A rat!’

‘Nonsense, only a mouse,’ said Hugh.

‘Father,’ wailed Lorna, putting her hands over her head as the shadows skirled about and the screams echoed and echoed again.

‘Where did it go?’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘I’ll kill it, Hetty. I won’t let a rat touch you.’

‘It’s a mouse!’ said Hugh.

‘Oh Hugh, for God’s sake,’ I said. ‘Rat or mouse, can’t you see this woman has fainted? And can’t you steady that damned lantern before we all run mad?’

Hugh, stung at being addressed that way in public by his own wife, although I don’t think anyone was listening, heaved into action at last, handing me the lantern and stooping to lift Vashti Howie into his arms.

‘You go ahead with the light, Dandy,’ he said. ‘We need to get this lady some air.’

‘It was just a dust sheet,’ said Mr Tait, when the others had joined us on the little brick platform, where I was flapping my handkerchief rather uselessly in Vashti’s face and wishing I had some water to splash on her. ‘They must have left it behind when they were working here.’

‘Here she comes,’ said Hugh, looking at Vashti’s fluttering lashes. She groaned and started a little as she opened her eyes and remembered where she was.

‘Don’t say anything, darling,’ said Nicolette, kneeling at her side and shaking her head a little between her bejewelled hands. ‘Who could blame you for fainting? I’ve never heard such a ghastly racket in my life.’ She shot a poisonous glance at Miss McCallum, who was the colour of a vanilla custard and was being supported on one side by Miss Lindsay and on the other by Lorna Tait, who had either regained her colour or had never lost it despite the lusty shriek.

‘If you hadn’t gone poking about,’ said Miss Lindsay to Nicolette.

‘Now, now, ladies,’ said Mr Tait. ‘We’ve all had a nasty shock and I feel most remorseful about having put you in the way of it. Please, I beg you, forgive me. Now, if Mrs Howie is feeling quite recovered and Miss McCallum thinks her legs will stand it, I think we should make our way slowly back to base camp and go home for tea.’

It was a quite outstandingly mournful little procession which trailed back down through the gorse and bracken to the motor cars. When we got there, Nicolette helped her sister into the two-seater and left, hurtling backwards towards the farmyard without another word. Miss McCallum collapsed into the nearest seat, which happened to be in Hugh’s Daimler, and Miss Lindsay inevitably hopped in beside her. Lorna, with a glance at her father, made a third and Hugh climbed in to chauffeur the three of them back to the village, reversing out very slowly, as though he thought the slightest bump under the wheels would start one of them off howling again.

That left Mr Tait and me. My legs were still feeling a little woolly from the alarums, but I managed to turn my motor car in the space and drive fairly smoothly down to the Mains farmyard and out onto the road. It was around about Wester Luck Cottage when I heard the first gulp from beside me and I looked round to see Mr Tait’s lips twitch just once, before he drew his eyebrows down in a frown and cleared his throat. There was silence for a moment and then another gulp, this one with a slight whinny behind it. My lips twitched too, I let out a shriek to equal any of Miss McCallum’s and then we both put our heads back and roared.

‘A rat! A rat!’ I said.

‘Nonsense, only a mouse,’ wept Mr Tait.

‘I’ll save you, Hetty,’ I cried in a falsetto tremble.

‘Good Lord,’ said Mr Tait, wiping his eyes and forehead with his handkerchief. ‘What a disaster.’

‘Nonsense,’ I told him. ‘If you wanted the tale spread around, the more packed with incident it is the better.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Tait, as though only just remembering. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’