Bury Her Deep

4

Lorna, the soul of diplomacy, would never have mentioned my faux pas, but as we made our way back up the lane to the green the Howies’ motor car slowed beside us and Vashti stuck her head out of the window and hailed me.

‘Such a hoot, your ghost story idea,’ she said. ‘Just the breath of fresh air this place needs. In fact, if you’re staying overnight at the manse, do come round in the morning. You too of course, Lorna darling.’ She withdrew her head as Nicolette ‘revved’ the engine and they roared off, leaving Lorna and me in awkward silence.

‘I must apologise,’ I said at last. ‘One forgets, even after all these years, what might cause offence up here in Calvin’s stamping ground.’ I remembered, too late, that Lorna’s father was a minister of the very church that was Mr Calvin’s legacy. ‘Not that I’ve anything against…’ but I could not continue. How could one not have at least something against some of it?

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ said Lorna. ‘Gosh, no. Luckenlaw is just as in thrall to a good spooky story as anywhere. You’ll have heard about the locked chamber?’

‘A little,’ I admitted.

‘Well, you wouldn’t believe the superstitious stories about it. Except that it’s rather mean to call it superstition, my father always says. Folklore, he says, is just history without the books. Or is it history that’s just folklore written down? Well, anyway,’ she concluded and in the cold glare of the moonlight I could see her beaming smile.

The women had come up the lane in a clump but were now splitting into small groups and pairs and setting off in their various directions, up to the green, down the lane to the road, through gates into the fields. No one seemed to be striking out alone, as I was relieved to see since I had not managed to attach myself to a likely victim, and no one seemed exactly what one would call anxious. There were no high spirits to be sure, but the cold air and the prospect of a long walk home might have been enough to account for that and I suspected too that the drawing to a close of this interval of camaraderie and a resumption of duties towards husband and home might be responsible for the downward droop of some of the shoulders and for the hefty sighs I heard being heaved on all sides.

Mrs Hemingborough, lugging her basket and accompanied by a young woman in a rather threadbare coat, walked with Lorna and me as far as the manse gate and carried on.

‘Have they far to go?’ I asked Lorna, gesturing after the pair. ‘I could always get my motor car.’

‘Oh no,’ said Lorna. ‘Only a step. Mrs Hemingborough is at Hinter Luckenlaw Farm and Jessie – she’s married to their cowman – has a cottage on the way.’

I was satisfied. Young Jessie was safe and the doughty Mrs Hemingborough with her strong hands was as likely to come off best in a tussle with the stranger as she was unlikely to be the object of his peculiar affections.

Anyone who has followed my short career, or indeed spent an afternoon with me I am afraid, will not be surprised to learn what happened next. Mr Tait and I were sitting before the fire minutes later, sipping our cocoa and already beginning to think of bed – Lorna had disappeared into the kitchen quarters with an apology and a muttered word about the next day’s menu – when we heard a hammering at the front door. Mr Tait put down his cup and rose to his feet and I was just thinking that he was taking this late-night rumpus suspiciously calmly, when he said to me:

‘Please excuse me, Mrs Gilver. It sounds as though some poor soul is in extremis tonight.’

At that moment, Lorna appeared through the connecting door into the dining room – a short cut from the kitchen, I guessed – and her father nodded at her. ‘Lorna will take care of you,’ he said. ‘Sleep well and I will see you in the morning.’

‘Poor Father,’ said Lorna once he had gone.

‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘I should have thought that being summoned to deathbeds in the night might make him regret those naughty little boys at Kingoldrum even if nothing else did.’

‘He does miss them sometimes,’ she answered, ‘but Luckenlaw called and my mother was very happy to come home again, I think.’ She looked as though she were about to say more, but at that moment Mr Tait hurried back into the room.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘I wonder if I could trouble you for a minute of your time.’

‘Father?’ said Lorna, half rising from her chair.

‘More unpleasantness, I’m afraid, Lorna,’ he said. ‘More of the same.’

She made as though to follow us out – I, of course, had leapt to my feet as soon as he spoke – but he raised his hand to stop her.

‘No, my dear,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you mixed up in this.’

‘But Father, our guest?’ she protested.

‘Was a nurse in the war,’ said Mr Tait. ‘You don’t mind, Mrs Gilver, do you?’

Between remembering that Lorna did not know that I knew what more of the same unpleasantness would be, and making sure to look suitably puzzled as a result, and also trying not to think about what I might be just about to witness, as well as trying to contain my eagerness to get at it, whatever it was (within reason), I could neither assemble a sensible expression nor summon a sensible response, and so I simply squeezed Lorna’s hand and left the room after her father, at a trot.

In the sitting room across the hall, horribly cold now hours after the teatime fire had begun to die down, Jessie the cowman’s wife was perched on the edge of a chair hugging her arms and trembling slightly either from fright or from chill.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ I said, guilt washing over me. ‘Oh my poor dear girl.’

Mr Tait was at that moment taking possession of a blanket and a steaming cup of something which a maid had brought to the room. He handed the cup to Jessie and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders with the tender dexterity the father of an orphaned daughter might be expected to show. She lifted the cup to her chin, breathing in the steam, and slowly her shivering began to ease. She was no more than twenty-five, at a guess, getting careworn – the wife of a farm worker has no easy time of it – but still young enough for the sweet steam from a teacup to turn her face instantly bonny and pink.

‘Now, my dear,’ said Mr Tait, with infinite patience in his tone. ‘You must tell Mrs Gilver everything. She’s here to help.’

‘It was jist like they said,’ said Jessie after another stiff swig of her drink. ‘A dark stranger.’

‘Start from the beginning,’ I told her. ‘You and Mrs Hemingborough left Lorna and me at the gate, and then what?’

‘We kept on up tae the corner,’ said Jessie, ‘and turnt into the farm road. My wee hoose is halfway along and the farmhoose is at the end, so I got hame first and Mrs Hemingborough carried on. I should have gone straicht in, but… I dinna ken, maybe because it was such a lovely nicht with the moon and a’ that… anyway I jist stood at my gate a while.’

‘You weren’t frightened?’ I said.

‘I was not,’ said Jessie. ‘I didna believe in this stranger, to be honest. Pardon me, Mr Tait, but it’s the truth.’ Mr Tait inclined his head graciously. ‘I always thocht that believin’ in all-what-have-you was for them as had a big wage and a wee family and no’ the other way on. I’ve been that proud and that sure o’ myself.’ She began to look white again and gently I tried to urge her back to the story.

‘What happened then? While you were standing at your gate.’

‘I saw somethin’ in the field,’ Jessie said. ‘It was movin’ richt fast, running across towards the lane, and before I got a chance to shout oot, I saw it lowp over the dyke and I heard Mrs Hemingborough.’

‘Mrs Hemingborough?’ I echoed. ‘It wasn’t coming for you?’

‘Oh no,’ said Jessie. ‘Thank the Dear. It made a beeline for Mrs Hemingborough and I ran to see could I help.’

‘Terribly brave of you,’ I said, thinking that there was a lot more iron in the soul of this girl than I could be sure of having in mine.

‘No’ really, madam,’ said Jessie. ‘More like I jist didna think. I never even thocht to go in and get John. I jist took off along the lane towards them. He had gone for her jist in the shade o’ a wee bush but I could still see them, quite clear I could see them in the moon we’ve got the nicht. They were strugglin’. Mrs Hemingborough and a man all in black. And Mrs Hemingborough was shoutin’ at him so I shouted too: “Get away fae her. Get away, you filthy so-and-so.” And when he heard me, he let go of Mrs Hemingborough and he was back over that dyke and away across the fields afore you could snap your fingers at him. And Mrs Hemingborough was standin’ there, wi’ her hat torn off and her hair all hingin’ doon and those blessed feathers burst oot o’ her sack and swirlin’ aboot.’ Jessie, finally, gave a sob and then took another draught from her cup.

‘And where is she now?’ I said. ‘At home? Have your husbands gone after him?’

‘Well, this is the thing,’ said Jessie, and her face puckered with concern. ‘Mr Tait, I jist don’t know what to think. I got to her side and I asked her if she was a’richt and she telt me of course she was, she jist tripped and drapped her bundle and look at the feathers! And she was laughin’ – tryin’ to anyway.’

‘Laughing?’ said Mr Tait, sounding more severe than I had ever heard him.

‘I hardly kent what to say,’ said Jessie. ‘What aboot him? I asked her. Did he hurt you? And she drew hersel’ up and said she didna know what I was talkin’ aboot and she didna want to hear any nonsense fae me. Well, I know my place and nobody can tell me I don’t but my dander come up at that. I saw him, I telt her. I jist saw the whole thing plain with my own two eyes, and then I telt her that I was goin’ to get her husband and mine and send them away after him. But there was no shiftin’ her. She said she didna know what I was talkin’ aboot and she was “disappointit”. She said she had never thocht I was the kind o’ lassie who would start up wi’ a load o’ silly nonsense. She said that her husband needed a good cowman and a good cowman needed a good steady wife and I should think on that afore I started tattlin’.’

‘Whatever did she mean?’ I said.

‘A threat,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Quite obviously a threat to give John Holland the sack.’

‘And we’re in a tied hoose, madam, with three bairns,’ said Jessie, growing visibly upset again. ‘If I lost John his place, and the lot o’ us ended up putten out on the road I would jist never forgive myself. So I never went and telt Mr Hemingborough and I willna tell John either or anyone else. Only I had tae tell somebody, so I came roond to Mr Tait.’

‘And you’re absolutely sure of what you saw?’ I asked her, looking very closely into her face. She nodded vigorously.

‘As sure as I’m sittin’ here,’ she said. ‘And I ken it’s no’ richt to let him get away wi’ it, no matter whit Mrs Hemingborough says. I dinna ken what’s wrong wi’ her.’

‘No more do I,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to try to find out.’

‘No, madam, please,’ said Jessie, looking quite stricken with anguish. ‘Oh Mr Tait,’ she wailed. ‘Please. If Mrs Hemingborough finds oot I’ve telt-’

‘I’ll keep your name out of it, Jessie, I assure you,’ I told her. I had no clear idea how I should manage this, but I trusted to think of something. ‘Now,’ I went on, ‘this is very important. Tell me everything you can remember about this fellow. Tell me everything you could see.’

Jessie shuddered but spoke up gamely. ‘He was a’ dressed in black, I ken that for sure.’

‘Tall, short? Thin, fat?’ I said. ‘Could you tell if he was a young man or was he stiff and elderly in the way he moved?’

‘Oh no,’ said Jessie. ‘He was anythin’ but that. No’ very tall, I dinna think. He wasna loomin’ over Mrs Hemingborough and she’s no’ much taller than me. And no’ fat. He was… snaky.’ She seemed almost as startled to have said this as Mr Tait and I were to have heard it, but after blinking she nodded. ‘Aye, that’s it. He was snaky. The way he moved, you ken? He wasna like a man in heavy boots moves, he was jist snaky. The way he come over the dyke and the way he was all over Mrs Hemingborough.’ She shuddered again. ‘It was horrible.’

‘It sounds it,’ I said. ‘Now come along. I’m going to run you home.’

When I stopped the motor car at the Hollands’ cottage gate and stepped down to let Jessie out, she pointed to the great mess of feathers lying on the lane and caught in the bare branches of a hawthorn bush a little way along. In the moonlight, they were as plain as day and I could see no possibility for Jessie to have imagined the scene she had described to me. The sound of the engine brought a young man to the cottage door – John, I guessed – and since he frowned in puzzlement, I called to him.

‘We ran on late at the Rural, Mr Holland. I’m delivering Jessie home.’

He nodded, although still frowning slightly, and Jessie scurried past him into the house. Perhaps my presence and the lift in a motor car would, in John’s eyes, tip the Rural firmly over into the realms of gadding about and young Jessie’s monthly excursions would be over. I hoped not, but then one had to question whether after the experience this evening she would ever cross her door in the dark again. I drove on a little way – I had to turn in a field entrance – and stepped down to look at the scene in the light of my headlamps. There were a great many trodden and over-trodden footprints in the muddy lane just by the hawthorn bush with feathers pressed into them here and there, but much as I should have liked to point to two distinct sets of vastly different sizes, nothing so clear presented itself to me. Anyway, the ‘snakiness’ of the dark stranger had to have its origin somewhere in his physique or deportment even if Jessie could not put her finger on its source and I imagined that anyone light enough in his movements to earn the description must have rather neat little feet. Full of questions and utterly empty of answers I got back into the motor car and drove home.

In the morning, I had a rare brainwave. I was at the washstand in my bedroom, shivering in my petticoat despite the fire which had been relit at seven by a cheerful little maid, and admiring the scene outside the window; the spare bedroom of the manse was at the back and looked out over fields towards the law. It was the hill, naturally, which held my attention at first but then movement in the foreground caught my eye and I saw a farmer on a cart, precariously laden with turnips, making his careful way along between the hedgerows one field’s distance from the house. After gazing at him until he was out of sight again in the usual witless fashion of the early morning, I suddenly realised several things: that this lane must be the one which led to Hinter Luckenlaw Farm; that since I could see the lane from my bedroom window I could perhaps – had I been looking out at the right moment last night – have seen the scuffle with the stranger; and that the wiry little man on the cart whom I had just watched lumbering along this lane was more than likely Mr Hemingborough – for he was too well turned out to be a labourer and who else would be heading away from his farm in the morning with a cartload of turnips – which probably meant that Mrs Hemingborough was at home alone.

I dressed rapidly and waved my hairbrush around my head in a token gesture at a toilette – in fact, whenever Grant sends me off on an overnight stop without her, she sets my hair so very firmly the day before that it would take far more robust a tool than a mere hairbrush to make a dent in it – and skipped downstairs hoping that breakfast in the manse was a brisk affair and I could soon escape.

The sight of Lorna beaming behind two enormous teapots and Mr Tait in a cardigan jersey and with a napkin tucked in at his neck soon did away with any thoughts of a hasty exit from the morning gathering of the little household however. Not wishing to be rude, I settled myself for the duration.

‘I really should apologise for my father, Mrs Gilver,’ said Lorna, once the fuss of setting me up with my desired breakfast dishes was behind us. ‘He’s always so very keen to protect me from nasty things, I swear he must still believe me to be a child.’ Her smile faded for a moment then reblossomed as she carried on in a rather too hearty voice: ‘When in fact, of course, I’m comfortably old enough to take all manner of things on the chin.’

‘And are you old enough to talk about your father in thon disrespectful way?’ said Mr Tait, twinkling at her. ‘I told you, my dear. Mrs Gilver was a nurse in the war and last night young Jessie Holland was in such a state of shock I thought a nurse was called for. Mrs Gilver did not mind.’

He turned to me, inviting me to agree with him, and I nodded, although I was tackling some ferociously thick porridge and could not, at the moment, answer. I never do remember when away from home but still in Scotland, how long it took me to coax my own cook back from the excesses of Scotch habits, so that my winter days could begin with the soothing, creamy treat I expected and not the vile, salty lump which passes for a good plate of porridge around these parts. Once, I witnessed Hugh dig his spoon into the edge of his porridge only to have the whole thing shoot away up the far side of the dish and land, all of a piece, on the tablecloth. Yet still he has the cheek to prefer his to mine.

‘Of course I didn’t mind,’ I said at last. In fact, had young Jessie really needed a nurse I should have minded like anything, and I should have been quite useless, my nursing duties at Moncrieffe House having been confined to playing cards, lighting cigarettes and muttering the occasional ‘there, there’.

‘Such a shocking thing to have happened, though,’ I went on. I knew that Mr Tait did not want Lorna in the thick of it, but it would have been beyond peculiar not to discuss the matter at all.

‘It is,’ said Lorna. ‘A very nasty affair. We had hoped, hadn’t we, Father, that it was all behind us. I know Miss McCallum and Miss Lindsay will be very sorry to hear of last night’s trouble. They’ve worked so hard to get the Rural off the ground.’

‘And truly no one has any idea who might be behind it?’ I said. ‘There’s no one around the village who’s known to be a little odd? It must be a local chap, don’t you think, if the trouble’s confined to Luckenlaw again and again.’

Mr Tait and Lorna looked as uncomfortable as might be expected to have a guest in their house thus impugn the neighbourhood, and Mr Tait in addition began to frown at me. I had, I realised, begun to betray a little more knowledge of the facts than Lorna could suppose me to have come by and I swept on with a change of subject before she could begin to wonder.

‘I can’t help admiring your lovely brooch, Lorna,’ was the best I could come up with. She was wearing the same rose, ribbon and love-heart as the day before and I realised just too late that it was hardly sensitive to draw attention to her mourning.

Mr Tait dropped his spoon into his porridge, but Lorna only smiled gently and fingered the little brooch before answering.

‘Yes, it was my mother’s,’ she said, and I winced slightly in case I had caused Mr Tait pain too.

‘You must have been flattered to see the Howie ladies attempting to imitate it,’ I said. Lorna looked momentarily puzzled by this.

‘Well, that was by the by,’ she said. ‘The Rural badge is a very similar design, based on it indeed, except the Rural one has just four points to the crown. For S. W. R. I., you know. But the older ones like this always had five. Why would that be, Father? Why was it always five?’

‘A lucky number, I daresay,’ said Mr Tait, looking uninterested.

‘But it’s seven that’s lucky, isn’t it?’ I asked.

‘That’s right,’ said Lorna. ‘I remember from the skipping song.’

‘I’m not familiar with that,’ I said. ‘The girls on the green didn’t include it in their repertoire yesterday. How does it go?’

Lorna hummed a few notes and then shrugged. ‘I can’t remember it,’ she said. ‘It must be a skipping song, though, mustn’t it? One and one make two and two makes true love. Then, how does it go, Father? Three is mighty, five is good. Seven is certainly luck.’

‘I can’t bring it to mind at all,’ said Mr Tait, sounding rather strangled and looking a little pale. Perhaps it was not a skipping rhyme after all; perhaps it was a lullaby or even a love song and it reminded him more painfully of his wife than even the brooch itself.

‘I wonder what happened to four and six?’ I said, trying to lighten the mood.

Lorna giggled.

‘They’re both terribly unlucky,’ she said. ‘I mean to say, six is the number of the devil himself, Mrs Gilver.’

Mr Tait, if anything, looked more troubled than ever although whether it was the minister or the man who was suffering was hard to say. Lorna did not seem to notice, at any rate.

‘Well, be thankful the Rural doesn’t have six initials, then,’ I said, and Lorna laughed again.

‘But why is four so unlucky, I wonder?’ she said. ‘Father, do you know?’

‘Do I know why four is an unlucky number?’ Mr Tait echoed. ‘It’ll be lost in the mists of time. And anyway, you might as well ask why the sky is blue, Lorna dear. Luck and sense have no connection.’

‘Hear, hear,’ I replied. ‘I have never had much patience with luck, good or ill. I always find it impossible to remember what I should and shouldn’t do in the cottages I visit. I must give tremendous offence.’

‘You’d be better off at Luckenlaw,’ said Lorna, ‘with just one big source of luck that everyone agrees on.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought my father had told you. About the sealed chamber in the Lucken Law.’

‘I told Mrs Gilver the facts, Lorna dear,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I did not trouble her with the rest of it. It’s the usual thing, Mrs Gilver. Any secret chamber you care to mention has engendered some tale or other about all the good fortune depending on the sealed door and trouble raining down if it is broken. Thankfully, though, not everyone gives it credence, no matter what Lorna says.’

‘You are not usually so scornful,’ said Lorna.

‘I’m not scornful at all,’ her father protested.

I was feeling scornful enough for all three of us, being firmly with young Jessie Holland in believing that such fancies were for those with too much time and nothing better to fill it.

‘I promised Jessie I would visit this morning,’ I said, using her name since it had come unbidden into my thoughts. ‘I’d like to see how she’s bearing up, of course, but also I thought I might sound her out about household matters. In advance of my talk, you know. In fact, I might pay a few visits around the district to get some ideas about what might be useful.’

Mr Tait looked tremendously impressed, as well he might, at my effortless subterfuge and even Lorna nodded with approval.

‘Only please do be careful,’ she said. ‘The villagers are terribly proud, terribly private about anything to do with money.’ She chuckled. ‘Now later this morning will be quite another matter. You can say whatever you like about money and budgets then. Vashti and Niccy talk of nothing else.’

‘Ah yes,’ I said. ‘Our visit to Luckenlaw House. I had forgotten.’

‘Great favourites of Lorna, that pair,’ said Mr Tait, with an edge to his voice. ‘And she of them too.’

Which, I mused to myself as I trundled out of the drive and up towards Hinter Luckenlaw Lane shortly afterwards, was rather a mystery. Lorna was a sweet girl but Vashti and Nicolette Howie, on our short acquaintance, had seemed rather too sophisticated to choose a sweet girl – and especially a sweet girl from the village manse – for their companion. Perhaps the paucity of other options might explain it. At Gilverton years ago, had it not been for Bunty, I might easily have thrown myself on the doctor’s wife and the minister’s daughter had I been the type; as it was, I had always felt that the few minutes of my day not hounded and harried by Grant, Nanny, Hugh and the rest of them were delicious islands of peace and not to be disturbed lightly. Now, of course, there was occupation and diversion to spare what with my trickle of commissions – or could it now be called a flow? a steady trickle anyway – and with Alec ensconced at Dunelgar and gratifyingly in need of all manner of advice on his household, although I admitted to myself with a quick frown that these days, his staff in place and his furniture arranged, it was Hugh he turned to more often than not, the pair of them, over trout stocks and deer fences, growing as thick as two thieves and as dull as two Hughs at times.

I was well advanced along the lane to the farm before I dragged my concentration back to the matter of the moment and, shaming as that is to admit, it is not the worst of it. Much worse is the fact that I was distracted enough by my musings almost to miss an important point of physical evidence or rather, in true Holmesian fashion, the absence of one – which amounts to the same thing. The barkless dog in this instance was the lane itself, stretching from road to farm gate quite bare and featureless; someone had been out and gathered up every single feather from the night before.

I threw the car into the reversing gear and rolled back along the lane to the hawthorn bush. Even this was picked clean, not a single feather left in its branches, which must have taken quite some time even though the job had clearly been hurried, with numerous little twigs being snapped off here and there. Chastened – imagine almost missing this! – but more than ever a-quiver to get to the bottom of it I started up again and shot along the lane to the farm, sweeping round into the yard, sure of finding Mrs Hemingborough in her kitchen.

There indeed she was. She came to the kitchen door in her pinny to meet me and I took a huge bolstering breath and launched into my performance.

‘My dear,’ I said, taking both of her hands in mine. ‘My poor dear Mrs Hemingborough. What a relief to find you up and about. You look marvellous! I do hope you don’t mind my coming round – I know we’ve barely met, but I couldn’t help myself. Mr Tait is going to pop in later too.’

When I had got to the end of this Mrs Hemingborough, surprisingly to me, was looking just as calm, but decidedly colder. She flapped a hand which I took to be an invitation to enter and I swept into the kitchen and plonked myself into a chair at the end of the table furthest from the range, the other end being spread with a padded cloth for the ironing which waited in a basket on the floor.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ began Mrs Hemingborough, disapproval and natural politeness fighting each other in her voice, ‘please don’t think me inhospitable, I beg you, but I’m not following you. Did someone tell you I was ill?’

For just a fraction of a second, she and I eyed one another. She knew that I knew, I knew that she knew and we both knew that no one was going to give in. Her look to me seemed to say ‘Let battle commence’ and I hoped that mine to her said the same.

‘Mrs Hemingborough, dear,’ I said. ‘I understand absolutely if you want to keep it quiet and I’ve told no one except Mr Tait, but no matter what he did to you you have nothing to be ashamed of and you must not bottle it up. Now, Mr Tait told me that your dreadful experience was not the first and he told me too – quite shocking! – that the police are dragging their feet, which almost beggars belief.’

‘I don’t want to be rude,’ said Mrs Hemingborough, and still she spoke quite gamely but was betrayed by a tiny tremor in the hand which lay on the table top as she sat down and faced me, ‘but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Why, the attack,’ I said, all innocence. ‘The dark stranger. Last night.’

At this Mrs Hemingborough drew herself up magnificently, so magnificently in fact that I began quail. What if Jessie had been imagining things? I remembered the feathers and, with that thought, rallied again.

‘I see someone has been telling tales,’ said Mrs Hemingborough, ‘but I can assure you, Mrs Gilver, there is no such person as this “dark stranger” and even if there is he made no attack on me last night.’

‘But Mrs Hemingborough,’ I said, gearing up for my master-stroke, ‘my dear, I saw it. I was looking out of my bedroom window at the back of the manse, you know, and in the moonlight, I saw the whole thing. Now, Mr Tait asked me to make his apologies to you for not immediately coming round to help, but the truth is that I didn’t tell him until this morning. I could hardly believe my eyes, you see, and I put it out of my mind, or tried to. And then when I did mention it, at breakfast, of course Mr Tait assured me that it was not a trick of the moonlight at all. It was just the latest instalment in this horrid affair. Well, you can imagine how I felt then. But I daresay, since Mr Tait is not a young man he would more likely have been hindrance than help to any search party and he assured me that you have a good handful of men about the place better suited to it, and your own telephone to summon the police. I suppose it’s too much to hope that they found him?’

At last I stopped talking and I watched her intently to see what the effect of this outpouring might be. She licked her lips with a quick darting gesture and clasped her hands together on the scrubbed table top, but remained silent for so long that my attention began to wander. Around me, the farmhouse kitchen spoke of an ordered, capable life; the life of the woman who could pluck a chicken on her lap, no less. The kettle was on the back of the burnished range, an array of irons sitting on the hotplate before it, and above the range the dolly groaned with the rest of the wash, jerseys and men’s overalls turning the air soft as they dried. In the sink, however, an unwashed porridge pot balancing on top of a frying pan told the tale of a morning rushed and upset by the need to go out in the lane and pick feathers as soon as the sun had come up.

Mrs Hemingborough cleared her throat; she had gathered her wits about her once more.

‘I don’t know how to account for it,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I know the story you’re referring to – a lot of silly nonsense – and I can assure you nothing happened to me on the way home last night.’

‘But I saw it,’ I said again. ‘I can’t for the life of me imagine why you would deny it. Oh!’ The exclamation escaped me before I could bite my lip, for all of a sudden I could see. I did see. ‘Oh dear.’

Mrs Hemingborough raised an eyebrow at me with an admirable attempt at detachment, but for the first time I had really rattled her.

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But I can’t say I approve. After all, even if you are able to take it so unaccountably in your stride, who’s to say who’s next?’

‘Well, I’m glad to have your understanding, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘I only wish it was mutual. And though I’m sorry to have your disapproval, there I think I can say we’re more in step.’ And with that she rose and went towards her irons, leaving me gasping at her rudeness. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Gilver. I know you’re a friend of Mr Tait’s and he’s a good man, been a good friend to Luckenlaw since he came here, and his wife was a lovely girl we had all known from her cradle, but…’ She tested the temperature of one of the largest irons – and although I know that spitting on it is just the way it is done, I could not help but feel there was a bit of a message for me there too – and selected a garment from the top of the crumpled pile in the basket on the floor.

‘It’s perfectly plain to me,’ I said, liberated from any call on my own politeness by her extraordinary behaviour, ‘that the only reason for you to deny it, in the face of a witness’ – here I did that little thought-dance which is the mental equivalent of crossing one’s fingers behind one’s back; after all there was a witness – ‘is that you know who it was and you are protecting him.’

‘And why would I be doing that then?’ she said, scathing enough to sound quite insolent.

‘I can’t imagine,’ I retorted. ‘If it were me, no matter whether it were my husband, son or brother, I should not shield him.’

‘I don’t have any sons,’ said Mrs Hemingborough. ‘Nor any brothers.’

The unspoken thought hung between us, but it was ludicrous enough to make me blush and she give a short, sneering laugh; for why would her husband bother to rush around in the night just to catch his own wife who was on her way home to him anyway.

‘I do not accuse your… anyone in particular, Mrs Hemingborough,’ I said, trying to sound haughty. ‘I only say I think you know who it was and are refusing to name him.’

Mrs Hemingborough had got the shirt stretched out flat to her satisfaction on the padded table and she looked at me, her meaning plain: she wanted me to leave and let her get on with her busy day.

‘Is that what you think, then?’ she said. ‘Aye well, you play bonny.’

This was a little saying I knew well and one which had always irritated me, cutting one off at the knees as it does and rendering any further protestations quite useless. It has no equivalent in the King’s English, the nearest thing being when Nanny Palmer would say, ‘Heavens, we are in a temper’ in that maddening, cosy way of hers when one’s entire world had collapsed and one had ceased to practise any restraint in the face of it. I remember this happening once in my nursery over the matter of whether a poached egg could be eaten off a slice of toast with a knife and fork or must be mashed up in a cup with bread squares and fed to one with a spoon. ‘Heavens,’ Nanny Palmer had said over the din of my howls, ‘we are in a temper’ and feeling foolish, I had shut up.

It is a peculiarly British response to distress, I think. At least, I remember holidaying in Florence once, watching a fat bambina of three or so work herself up into just the same state, although one doubts it was over poached eggs and bread squares, and all of the grown-ups around her cooed and consoled, sent for cool cloths to lay on her cross little face, and generally commiserated with her over the tragedy that is this our life, some of them even wiping away a tear or two of their own as they did so.

‘That child should be smacked on the bottom and sent to bed with no supper,’ Hugh had hissed through his teeth, as though expecting me to step in and effect this for him.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It must be rather nice to have a tantrum met with ice cloths and kisses.’

‘Yes, and end up with half your officers in retreat and facing the firing squad,’ said Hugh, which put paid to the conversation at a stroke.

Now, in Mrs Hemingborough’s kitchen, this jumble of memories only served to spur me on and quite wiped out the quelling effect of her scorn.

‘I intend to,’ I said. ‘Play bonny, that is. I intend to get to the bottom of this nonsense before anyone else – anyone perhaps more sensitive – is hurt.’

‘Aye well,’ said Mrs Hemingborough, ‘you’re harming no one. Do what you will.’

‘Indeed,’ I agreed, still rather nonplussed at her equanimity. ‘I’m harming no one at all. I certainly feel quite unencumbered by the demands of compassion with respect to you, Mrs Hemingborough, since you seem so utterly and bewilderingly unaffected by your ordeal.’

‘I am that,’ she told me. ‘What’s for you won’t go by you. Not,’ she added, ‘that anything happened.’

‘What’s for you won’t go by you?’ I echoed as I let myself out and climbed back into my motor car. ‘What’s for you won’t go by you?’ What in heaven’s name did she mean by that?