Bury Her Deep

7

On my way to Mrs Fraser at Balniel, I was aware of a lessening of enthusiasm for the encounter, a dread of hearing about any more horridness. Mrs Fraser, however, proved to be just what I needed. Working on the principles of those German doctors who treat like, rather perversely I have aways considered, with like (while watering down their ingredients like an unscrupulous butler eking out the gin) Mrs Fraser’s whole-hearted embrace of the most fanciful elements of the dark stranger had me retreating determinedly into a conviction that he was no more than a farm labourer with an unfortunate kink. We went through the preliminaries: what aspect of household budgeting would interest her most? She had joined the Rural at first, with her husband’s blessing, almost at her husband’s urging, but she did not go now. Heavy emphasis on the ‘now’ and a significant look practically commanded me to ask why not and the floodgates opened.

‘Well, Mrs Gilver,’ she said, glancing over first one shoulder and then the other, although we were quite alone in her kitchen and all the doors were firmly closed, ‘I’ll just have time to tell you before the men get in for their piece. I had a verra Distressing Experience’ – the capital letters were clearly audible – ‘after the August meeting. On my road home, out there in my own lane that I’ve walked up and down, morning, noon and night, woman, girl and bairn, for I was born in Luckenlaw and lived there all my life until Eck brought me here last year. Aye, right there on that lane where I have walked in rain, hail, sleet and snow’ – this last was Fifish for ‘come rain or come shine’; I had heard the expression before – ‘I was visited by evil.’

‘Golly,’ I murmured, since she had left a pause to be filled.

‘Black as the night he was, fleet as the wind. I saw him coming for me over the field-’

‘Which field was that?’ I interjected, sensing that Mrs Fraser would not be thrown off her course by any number of interrupting questions.

‘The lang howe,’ she said. ‘West of the village road.’ I made a mental note and as I had expected, she took a deep breath and plunged on. ‘Saw him coming, flying over the ground, but could I move? Could I never. I was Transfixed’ – she drew nearer and dropped her voice – ‘and Ravaged.’ She drew back again the better to view the effect she caused in me.

‘Heavens,’ I supplied and she nodded gravely.

‘Ravaged,’ she said. ‘He streamed over the dyke and just lunged at me. Knocked me clean off my feet, pinching at me, plucking at me, all the time breathing his hot breath on me.’

‘Did you scream?’ I asked. She looked as though she could put up a pretty fair bellow if she tried.

‘He had his hand over my mouth,’ she told me. ‘A grip like iron it was too.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I prayed,’ she said. ‘And he heard me.’

‘He heard you praying?’ I echoed. ‘What did he do then?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Fraser. ‘I mean, He heard me and He answered my prayers.’ I must have looked sceptical, for she hurried to assure me. ‘I cannot explain it any other way,’ she said. ‘For as soon as it had started it stopped again. Up he got and off he swooped, back over the dyke into the field. I just thank the Lord I have always lived a good life and asked for nothing until that moment. Aye, He heard my prayers.’

I should have been happier to have some other, rather more mundane, way to account for the abrupt end to the ravagement, but I thought it most politic to say nothing. Instead I decided to attack on another flank.

‘I don’t suppose that you recognised him, did you?’ I began. ‘I mean, I know that had you recognised him at the time you would have said something, but thinking it over since, have you ever thought of who it might be?’

‘Certainly, I recognised him,’ said Mrs Fraser.

‘John Christie?’ I said, before I could help it.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Fraser. ‘His name’s been all around the place. He’s an incomer. Lives up there on his own and by all accounts he’s a bit of a queer one, although his notions are no more daft than many I’ve heard from old enough to know better. He’s a tenant of those Howies, you know, and they’re not liked. Oh yes, it would have suited some folk down to the ground to blame Jockie Christie.’

‘But it wasn’t him?’ I guessed.

‘It was not,’ she said stoutly. ‘I knew right away who it was and I went straight to Mr Tait at the manse to tell him. I’m surprised, if ye’re staying there, that Mr Tait hasn’t told you.’ As was I.

‘And?’ I prompted. ‘Who was the man? Who was this dark stranger?’

‘Oh, it was no stranger,’ said Mrs Fraser. ‘It was Himself.’

I ran quickly through the possibilities that this extraordinary statement seemed to offer. She could not mean that it was Mr Tait himself; anyone less snaky could hardly be imagined. Nor could she possibly be hinting that it was a visitation from God or one of His angels. For one thing, He would hardly swoop over dykes and knock people down, and for another, visions of God were far too theatrical for the likes of Mrs Fraser. No, there was only one being by whom a self-respecting Fife housewife would submit to being bothered on a dark night.

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ said Mrs Fraser. ‘He doesn’t ayeways come on cloven hooves.’

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m not surprised that you opted for Mr Tait then, in preference to the police.’

‘You’d think,’ said Mrs Fraser with some asperity. ‘Him being a minister o’ the kirk. But he’s all for it.’

Again, I forced myself to stay within the bounds of reason. She could not possibly mean what her words implied. I took a guess.

‘All for the Rural?’ I said. ‘All for the gallivanting which opened the door to… it?’

‘Aye, there’s that for sure,’ said Mrs Fraser. ‘The devil watches, waits and picks his time, right enough. But it’s not that I was meaning. Mr Tait does not believe in keeping out of evil’s way. He invites evil in. Mr Tait has unleashed the beast.’

‘He’s done wh…’ I began.

‘And given it succour,’ said Mrs Fraser.

I took my leave rather hurriedly after that, as might well be imagined, but on my way out of the door I did steel myself enough to ask one question.

‘Please don’t think me prurient, Mrs Fraser,’ I said, ‘but is it true what they always say? What did this beast with his hot breath and his hand clamped over your mouth… What did he smell of? Can you remember?’

Mrs Fraser lifted her chin in the air as though sniffing at the memory.

‘Beer?’ she ventured, but she shook her head and tried again. ‘No, not beer. But definitely yeast.’

‘Yeast?’ I had been ready for eggs, of course.

‘Yeast,’ she said again.

What did she mean? I asked myself as I retraced my path back to the village. Mr Tait unleashed the beast? What could she possibly mean? I marched straight back to the manse to ask him.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Tait, removing his spectacles and rubbing the bridge of his nose. I was perched on the hard chair in front of his desk where Mr Black had been but, unlike Mr Black, I was beginning to feel my self-righteous indignation seeping away. ‘Mrs Fraser no longer believes that I am a right-thinking man, you see. And so she imagines I am quite happy to see my parishioners being ravaged by evil spirits in the night.’

I was speechless.

‘It was most unfortunate,’ Mr Tait went on. ‘Nothing to do with our current troubles of course. This was years ago. When the archaeologists came.’

‘To open the chamber?’ I said. ‘This chamber certainly does keep popping up, doesn’t it?’

‘Nice chaps,’ Mr Tait said, ignoring me. ‘Two of them lodged here with us. Well anyway, they found a body.’

‘In a burial chamber?’ I asked drily, expecting another of Mr Tait’s teases.

‘Oh certainly,’ he said. ‘There were numerous cists in there and a sort of sarcophagus in pride of place too. But as well as those there was a body. Unembalmed and unsheltered, just lying on the floor.’

‘Heavens,’ I said. ‘Who was it?’

‘All that they could say was that it was the body of a young girl who had died by violent means.’

‘A murder victim?’

‘Just so.’

‘But how long had she been there?’ I said. ‘I thought you said the chamber was sealed.’

‘Oh it was, it was,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I’ve misled you, I think. When I say body I should more properly say skeleton. The skeleton of a girl. And as to how long she had been there, there was no telling. Hundreds of years anyway. That much the scientists could say at a glance, for her poor bones were as light as a bird’s and as soft as biscuits.’ I shuddered. ‘Their phrase, Mrs Gilver, not mine. And it’s only a small part of their… callousness, will we call it? Detachment is kinder, perhaps. Because of course they wanted to take her away to their laboratories and try to find out more about her, but I put my foot down.’

‘You did?’

‘They called on me when they found her, and after that I felt I had a say in the matter, as minister of the parish. I felt it was my duty to the poor child to see that she had a decent burial at last.’

‘I don’t suppose there was any thought of trying to find out what happened?’ I said. ‘The police?’

‘They came along,’ said Mr Tait. ‘They wrote in their notebooks. But seventy years is the rule for starting up with a murder inquiry, you know, and this body was hundreds of years old, maybe even a thousand – nobody really knew.’

‘Couldn’t you tell from the style of her clothes?’ I said. ‘Or had they rotted away?’

‘I try to hope that they had rotted away,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Certainly there were no clothes to be seen.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said feebly.

‘And they say she was only a child. Perhaps twelve or thirteen.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ I said. ‘Even if it was a thousand years ago, one doesn’t like to think of a child of thirteen…’

‘Indeed not,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I suppose that’s partly why I was so determined to get the poor girl buried. I thought it would be the final indignity to have her taken away to some laboratory and…’

‘I agree,’ I said, grimacing at the thought of it. ‘And so she’s buried here? At Luckenlaw?’

‘She is,’ said Mr Tait, with a hard edge to his voice. ‘And so we come to the crux of the matter. She was buried in the face of some opposition.’ I wondered at that for a moment.

‘You mean there was a worry that she might be much older than a thousand years. Too old for a Christian graveyard?’

‘That’s rather a sophisticated line of argument for those who were doing the arguing, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘It was more a feeling that if she had been killed and denied burial in the first place it must have been for good reason.’

‘Surely not,’ I said. ‘That’s horrid.’

‘Roots run deep in a place like this,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Some of those making the most noise about it were no doubt thinking that if their own ancestors had decided she was to be dishonoured then who were they to gainsay it now.’

‘But if she were a thief or a murderess or something dreadful like that, she would still have been buried. Somewhere, surely.’

‘Ah, but that’s not what they were imagining at all,’ said Mr Tait. ‘This is what I’m trying to tell you. There were those – and this was only a few years ago, remember – who thought the bones should be burned at the stake, who wondered why she hadn’t been dealt with that way in the first place. They thought my giving her rest was a sign that I had been taken in by the devil himself. Yes, my stock fell sharply over that business. And it has stayed rather depressed in some folk’s estimations ever since. So, when Mrs Fraser came to tell me about her recent ordeal and I tried to reason with her – tried to get something as trifling as a description from her – I’m afraid she took it as more evidence that I had lost my way.’

My head was reeling. The only time in my life before I had felt so dizzy was when I had been persuaded to dance the Viennese Waltz after drinking two glasses of champagne at a hunt ball and had had to go and stand on the terrace for fear I might disgrace myself, and, while young men in high spirits can be expected to whirl their partners around without a care, I had never dreamed that a minister of the kirk sitting in his study in a manse in Fife could make my head swirl in just that way again. Witches, lucky chambers, ghostly strangers? I needed some fresh air.

Miss Lindsay was in the school playground again, waving off the last of her charges for the day, and when she saw me she raised her arm higher to include me in the salute. Here was quite another kettle of fish. Here was respite and a return to cool sanity after the unexpectedly torrid session in the kitchen at Balniel and the staggering interview with the good Reverend, so I turned my steps into the school lane passing the last of the stragglers and presented myself just as Miss Lindsay was drawing the gates closed. Hospitably – for who could blame her if she had wanted nothing but peace and quiet after a long day with a roomful of children; I should have been lying down with vinegar paper had it been me – she threw the gates wide again and invited me in.

‘Still among us, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘Come away in and have a cup of tea.’

Minutes later we were ensconced in her sitting room, where a kettle was already beginning to pipe and a tray of biscuits, which I can only assume she had thrown together with schoolmistressly competence either before breakfast or over luncheon, was scenting the air and making my mouth water. Not that Miss Lindsay seemed the domestic type overall. The sitting room was well provided with books and dust and rather sparse when it came to the lacy covers, china rabbits and framed studio portraits of loved ones which I had always imagined the home of a woman who lived alone might boast, extrapolating from the knick-knacks which had cluttered up the tops of our dressing tables at school. She did not strike me as the sentimental type either. She might wear a heart-shaped brooch on her black cardigan jersey, as Lorna did too, but there was no rose nor ribbon here.

‘I’ve had the most extraordinary afternoon,’ I said, dropping into a sofa, rather lumpy and needing a cushion but a far more comfortable perch than Mrs Fraser’s kitchen chair or the seat in Mr Tait’s study, since it seemed unlikely that the devil and his minions would be joining us here for tea – china tea too, I noticed, as Miss Lindsay spooned it into the pot. ‘It began as an attempt to ensure satisfaction for my audience next month. I meant to ask around and form an idea for the content of my talk.’ As usual at the mention of the talk, even from out of my own mouth, my insides made their presence felt. I ignored them and went on. ‘But my choice of informants conspired against me. I went to Mrs Palmer at Easter Luck and then to Mrs Fraser at Balniel and I’m afraid that poor old household budgets didn’t stand a chance.’

Miss Lindsay, proffering a cup and a biscuit, gave a slight sigh and rolled her eyes wearily.

‘I can imagine,’ she said. ‘At least I can imagine what Mrs Fraser had to say. She’s a pillar of the kirk and she’s one of those who to use the local parlance “wid dae little for God if the devil wiz deid.”’

‘What do you make of it?’ I asked her.

‘The “dark stranger”?’ she said with emphasis almost so heavy as to be ironic. I thought this was a bit much since she was the only one of the entire Rural Institute who was not required to walk home after the meetings and so have to face him. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised, but it’s rotten luck just the same and if I got my hands on the scoundrel, I wouldn’t be responsible for what happened to him.’ Her annoyance, dismissal of the man as a scoundrel and desire to give him a good punch on the nose were just about the first normal reaction to the entire affair I had come across since I got here.

‘Who do you think is behind it?’ I asked her. ‘Have you any idea?’

‘Oh, a husband, I’m sure,’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘Or a father. Even a little band of them perhaps. Who knows how organised they might get to win the day.’ And as quickly as that, I discovered that Miss Lindsay had just as many peculiar ideas, albeit of quite a different stripe, as anyone else. ‘They want to stamp us out, you see,’ she went on. ‘You’ve no idea the trouble we had to get the Rural up and running, Mrs Gilver. Just to secure one evening a month – one a month! – away from the children and chickens and mending.’

‘Well, Mr Tait hinted at it,’ I said.

‘Mr Tait didn’t have to bear the brunt,’ said Miss Lindsay stiffly. ‘Mr Tait is treated with respect wherever he goes.’ This was far from being true but I did not correct her. ‘No one would call names after him,’ she finished with a sniff.

‘Who called names after you?’ I asked, thinking that here was the first whiff of a suspect, for surely Miss Lindsay must have recognised at least the voice of the caller.

‘Mr McAdam,’ she said. ‘Although he denies it. I saw him quite clearly at my gate. And Mr Hemingborough.’

‘Mr Hemingborough?’ I blinked at her in surprise. ‘But his wife is a member.’

‘Now she is,’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘She joined in the summer with Mrs Palmer – I’ve heard that she wears the watch-chain in that house, so I daresay he couldn’t prevent her. But last winter he stopped his cart on my lane and called me some very unpleasant names.’

‘Such as?’ I asked her, but she only shook her head, flushed slightly, and concentrated on nibbling away furiously at her biscuit. ‘Mr Tait said there were political concerns,’ I hinted.

‘Oh, that too,’ Miss Lindsay admitted. ‘They found out that Miss McCallum and I had gone on the Women’s March and decided we were planning to lead Luckenlaw into revolution, beginning with their wives.’

‘But you saw them off,’ I said, suppressing the thought that two spinsters from the Women’s March would have sent exactly those same tremors through Gilverton and, I admit, through me.

‘And now, since the men,’ this was spoken in very withering tones, ‘can’t bully us into giving up they – or at least one of them – are trying to sabotage our efforts by frightening the women away. And succeeding. We’ll never see Mrs Fraser or young Elspeth again.’

‘But Mrs Hemingborough and Mrs Palmer started coming along after the trouble began,’ I reminded her. ‘And didn’t the Howie ladies join rather recently too?’

At the mention of the Howie ladies, Miss Lindsay pursed her lips.

‘The meetings were never meant for the likes of them,’ she said. ‘And I am sure that the unfortunate event in July could have been handled perfectly discreetly if only they hadn’t picked that very meeting to roll up to.’

‘This was the Wisconsin preacher?’ I prompted, as agog to hear the details as I was unable to imagine them.

‘And his wife,’ breathed Miss Lindsay with such a look of anguish that I could not bring myself to ask any more. Her thoughts, however, soon returned to the Howies and anger rallied her. ‘Of course, they’ve been there every month since, hoping for sport,’ she said. ‘And I don’t deny, Mrs Gilver, that if I could see a way of getting them out and keeping them out, I would not hesitate to use it.’

I thought quietly to myself that Miss Lindsay was not a socialist in the classic mould, being rather keen on getting precisely her own way.

‘So, apart from Mr Hemingborough and Mr McAdam,’ I said, getting back to the central issue, ‘is there anyone else you can think of who might be behind it?’ She shook her head apparently without giving the question much thought. ‘Or looking at it from another angle – opportunity instead of motive for a change – is there any newcomer, any loner, any odd type? Anyone at all who wasn’t born here and doesn’t have ten generations of ancestors and a web of relations to vouch for his good standing?’ I wanted to see if the same name would pop up again, unbidden.

‘I suppose you mean Jock Christie,’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘I’m not sure who first started bandying his name around, as if a Luckenlaw man who’d lived here all his life couldn’t be behind it. They’re all the same. It could be any of them.’

I took my leave shortly after, finding Miss Lindsay’s jaded view of the male sex as unhelpful, in the end, as Mrs Fraser’s peculiar fixation and Mrs Hemingborough’s even more peculiar dismissal of the stranger altogether. At least there was an explanation of sorts for it, however, even if her spinsterhood and her view of men were a chicken and an egg of cause and outcome. As to the others, I still did not find Mr Tait’s explanation satisfactory. It was one thing surely for spooky discoveries in the dark hillside to bring with them a few legends, but quite another for spooky stories to be the first choice if ever an explanation were needed for anything at all.

As I skirted the green, I heard the children’s voices raised, as usual, for a skipping game. They carried easily in the still afternoon and I recognised the rhyme.

‘Not last night but the night before,’ they sang, ‘Thirteen grave robbers came to my door.’

I shivered and then, smiling as I remembered Mr Tait telling me not to listen too closely, I turned away and almost missed the rest of it.

‘Dig her up and rattle her bones.

Bury her deep, she’s all alone.

Dark night, moonlight,

Haunt me till my hair’s white.

Moonlight, dark night,

Shut the coffin lid tight.’

I stopped with a gasp, mouthing the words over to myself, and then shook my head in disbelief at my own stupidity, at my wide-eyed trust of my charming employer. Mr Tait, I now saw, while making a great show of answering my every question, had been far from candid with me. He had fed me the story drip by drip – of the sealed chamber, its opening and the discovery there – all the time stressing that here were more examples of the kind of nonsense that credulous villagers might believe. Here were further instances of nastiness, nothing more. But that girl in the hillside was not just another story. She was at the heart of this story. She was the key.

Before I could help it my steps had turned for the gate into the churchyard and I was walking amongst the headstones, searching, noting the names – the Palmers and Frasers, Gows and McAdams – reading the verses inscribed near the ground as though intended to be as much a message for the grave’s occupant as for those walking above. Suffer the little children to come unto me, I read and Even so in Christ shall all be made alive, listening to the teasing, lilting sing-song: ‘Knock, knock, who’s there? Knock, knock, who’s there?’ The girls were evidently in fine step today, the chant going on and on, fainter as I passed behind the church to the shadowy side where the ground of the graveyard began to slope up with the rise of the law. Here the earth was soft and the gravestones mossy and lichened. Here was Mrs Tait, beloved wife and devoted mother, Father into thy hands I commend my spirit. Here too under an enormous monument, bristling with curlicues, was the grave of the Reverend Empson, Mr Tait’s forerunner, and the rather more confident: Well done thou good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. I came back around the side of the church. My feet, cold and clumsy, were slipping on the soggy tussocks, and the girls’ voices were beginning to sound weary, slowing a little. ‘Knock, knock. Who’s there? Knock, knock. Who’s there?’ I was almost back where I had started. ‘Knock, knock. Who’s there? Caught you!’

There it was. This must be it. A stone cross with no name, no date of birth or death but only the words: Buried here 21st June 1919 AD and along the bottom In my father’s house are many mansions and Her sins, which are many, are forgiven.

‘A hard-won compromise,’ said a voice behind me and I jumped, pressing my hand to my chest.

‘I didn’t hear you, Mr Tait,’ I said.

‘I saw you come in the gate and guessed what you’d be looking for,’ he said. ‘I came to guide you to it, but of course, you with your detective’s nose…’ He smiled at me and tucked my hand under his arm.

‘What did you mean by a compromise?’ I said. Mr Tait gave a laugh that was three parts sorrow.

‘It was not our finest hour at Luckenlaw,’ he said. ‘I told you there were those who would have denied her burial altogether. They certainly wouldn’t have stood for what I suggested first: “To be with Christ”, which is far better.’

‘Very apt, I should have said, considering.’

‘They would rather have had: “Strait is the gate and narrow the way.”’ He laughed again and I almost joined him.

‘I saw that on a headstone once,’ I said. ‘I could hardly believe it. Imagine choosing such words for one’s dear departed. It’s almost like saying, “Good luck, but I don’t fancy your chances.” How did you prevail?’

‘Oh, quite easily in the end,’ said Mr Tait. ‘It’s my church and what I say goes.’

This, I reflected, was hardly very lamb of God (which is what vicars are usually aiming for), but I can imagine that it was effective and, remembering I should be suffused with just this spirit of getting the job done, I decided to talk plainly to him.

‘You misled me,’ I began. ‘I have been mystified about why no one fully believes in this dark stranger and you have let me be so, knowing all along what a starring role this poor child has in the current drama.’

‘Indeed,’ said Mr Tait.

‘Even though everyone agrees that the dark stranger is a “he” and the archaeologists were sure that that skeleton was a “she”.’

‘True,’ he acknowledged.

‘So,’ I went on, ‘shall we say that by putting her into hallowed ground you have awakened the devil himself?’

‘That’s certainly one version,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Not by any means the only one, but I’ve heard it.’

‘It’s what Mrs Fraser thinks. How did she put it? That you unleashed the beast and gave it succour.’

‘Shelter anyway,’ agreed Mr Tait. ‘Other versions would have it not only that the luck has left Luckenlaw since she was released but that now her spirit walks abroad, bringing calamity.’

‘There has certainly been a run of poor luck around the farms anyway,’ I said, but Mr Tait cut me off.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘My farmers’ wives are far too canny to blame dry wells and beef prices on this tortured soul.’

‘But I’ve heard hints of troubles too dreadful to name,’ I said, trying to remember where and what exactly. Mr Tait only shook his head, his eyes closed patiently. ‘Well,’ I said at last, stuck for any other conclusion, ‘why on earth did you spoon it out in such tiny spoonfuls instead of just telling me everything right from the start?’ Mr Tait opened his eyes again and had the grace to look sheepish.

‘Shall I answer honestly?’ he began, leading me away at last. ‘Foolish as it seems now, since it’s all come out in under a day, I hoped that you would not need to know. Also, I thought if I told you before you had been here you might decide you wanted no part of it, whereas if you got the scent…’

I was forced to concede both points: I might well have felt this hotbed of phantoms and curses was no place for me, but now I was here in the thick of it, a dozen sealed chambers concealing a hundred skeletons could not drive me away. I admitted as much to him with a rueful smile.

We were back in his library before I spoke again. Mr Tait, displaying another of his armoury of priestly skills, waited quite contentedly with his arms folded across his ample frontage to see what I had to say.

‘Might I ask one more thing?’ I began. ‘I’ve been mildly wondering why Lorna was not told of my true mission here. Was it because you thought she would pour it all out and sway my judgement?’

‘No, no,’ said Mr Tait, shifting uncomfortably as he often did when Lorna’s name came up. ‘Lorna and I do not discuss the matter daily over tea, but no, it wasn’t that. More that Lorna has a very trusting nature, almost to the point where we could call her suggestible. Certainly, she is easily led. And although she is no gossip, she is inclined to be rather warm and open with her many friends. Miss McCallum and Miss Lindsay, for instance.’

‘Not to mention the Luckenlaw House contingent,’ I added.

‘Indeed,’ said Mr Tait. ‘It seemed best.’

I agreed, although I did not entirely go along with the idea of Lorna being easily led. She had none of the chameleon-like quality of the truly suggestible, picking up neither the arch amusement of the Howies nor Miss McCallum’s cheery vigour, but remaining her own mild, calm, kindly self whatever was going on around her. It was a quality I much admired, since I was forced to be much more like an egg with a truffle these days, fitting in anywhere, all things to all men. (The thought that it was chiefly in the immediate pursuit of confidences and the ultimate pursuit of truth was not much comfort. To be a sucker-up and a flatterer when ulterior motives prompt one into it is hardly a characteristic one would wish included in one’s eulogy.)

A clock chimed five as we sat there and the sound of it, doleful and muffled as it was, jolted me back to life.

‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I still need to pop in to see Annie Pellow and Hugh is expecting me home.’

‘Ah, Hugh,’ said Mr Tait. ‘He was a fine boy and he’s grown into a fine man.’

I am not entirely sure why I heard this as a rebuke; perhaps because with all the names and dates, the farms and lanes, the lurid tales of the dark stranger, and the whisper of sabotage whirling around my head like dust motes in winter sunshine, I needed Alec Osborne as I had never needed him before.

‘One thing,’ I said, rising. ‘Miss Lindsay is stuck on the notion of an irate husband with a grudge against the Rural, Mrs Fraser is determined that the stranger is not of woman born at all, and Elspeth no longer knows what to think, but is there any hard evidence against this Christie fellow? Did the police question him?’

‘Not a shred,’ said Mr Tait. ‘There is nothing more than parochial insularity at work there. He’s a newcomer and he was given a farm to run that was running just fine without him, that’s all. The Howies were perfectly within their rights of course, but changes are always unwelcome in a backward-looking place like Luckenlaw.’