Too Near the Dead

by Helen Grant

  I ask myself again if I’m going mad. There was that inkstand too – we never got to the bottom of that. I keep staring at the ring lying in the dish. I know it’s real – I had it in my hands a minute ago. All the same, I pick up a pen lying near my laptop and poke the ring with it. There is a tiny clatter as it moves. It’s solid enough.

  “Fen?”

  I lift my gaze and see James standing in the doorway with a mug in his hand, looking at me quizzically.

  “What’ve you got there – a beetle or something?”

  I laugh uneasily. Too late to get rid of the ring without saying anything.

  “A ring. James, did you put this here?”

  He comes over to take a look, leaning so close that I get a distracting waft of aftershave.

  “Nope. It’s a mourning ring, isn’t it? A bit Gothic for your taste, I’d have thought.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  “Well,” says James drily, “It’s not mine either.”

  “Then how did it get here?”

  There’s a pause. A shrug. “Maybe Belle–”

  “It wasn’t Belle,” I say, and then stop abruptly. It came out more snappily than I meant it to, because I’m feeling unaccountably anxious about this whole thing.

  James looks at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to sound as crabby as that. It’s just... it’s creeped me out a bit.”

  “Chuck it out then.”

  Quite unconcerned, James leans over and plucks the ring out of the dish. Touching it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. He turns it over and over in his fingers.

  “It’s old,” he comments. “Sort of a shame to throw it out.”

  “I don’t want it,” I say quietly.

  “You could eBay it or something,” he suggests, putting it back into the dish.

  Or throw it into the nearest river. I don’t say that; instead I just say, “Maybe.”

  “Anyway,” James says, “How’s the book going?” He speaks casually, but his gaze is serious. I sense it’s not really the book he’s asking about.

  “Awful,” I tell him, keeping it light. “What about yours?”

  “Really well,” he says. “It’s practically writing itself.” He grins ruefully. “Sorry. I feel your pain. Honestly.”

  “You really don’t,” I tell him. “You have no idea.” I slide off the bar stool again and pretty much into his arms. “I’m glad yours is going well though. At least one of us is having fun.” I look up at him slyly. “Are you going to tell me what it’s about yet?”

  James never tells anyone what his work in progress is about, not even Laura – not in any detail, anyway.

  “No,” he says cheerfully. “Not until it’s finished.”

  “Oh, go on. At least a clue.”

  “Well, it’s pretty dark.”

  “All your books are, James. They’re always about dead people.”

  He tries unsuccessfully to look put out. “There are some live ones too.”

  I keep looking at him, not letting him off the hook.

  He says, “Well, it’s set here.”

  “What, right here?”

  But he won’t be drawn. “Scotland.”

  I look at him beseechingly but he shakes his head.

  “You’re so annoying, James.”

  “And you’re very tempting, but it won’t work.”

  Shortly after that, he fetches himself another coffee and vanishes back into his study. I sit and look at my laptop, the screen now dark from neglect. Then I look at the dish with the black and gold ring still sitting in it. I could ignore it. It’s just an old ring, after all.

  I sigh and get down from the stool again. I carry the dish out of the kitchen and down the passage. In the room which may become my office and which is currently a repository for all the spare bits of furniture, there is an old bureau. I pull open the lid, put the dish into one of the cubbyholes inside, and close it again. Then I march out of the room and pull the door closed behind me.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Love you,” is the last thing James says before he gets out of the car, right after: “Make sure the doors are locked, okay?”

  I sit behind the wheel and watch him walk into the station. The windscreen is speckled with raindrops; I have to turn on the wipers before I pull away. It’s not just the rain that’s dismal. James is going to be away tonight. I shall be sleeping alone at Barr Dubh House for the first time since James’s trip to Spain. That time, when he went off, I knew I’d miss him, but I wasn’t worried, because that was before the first of the dreams. Now, I’m dreading it. Before, I thought I’d have a bit of me-time and relish being in our fabulous new home. Now, I think about dark passages and rooms and the blind black squares of windows looking out into an absolutely lightless night. I think of myself wandering around in my sleep, with no James to find me if I manage to make my way outdoors again. I chew my lip, thinking up preventative strategies in my head. When I’ve locked all the outside doors I could hide the keys somewhere I can’t easily get at them – I could lock the bedroom door –

  I follow the curve of the street and in the rear view mirror the station vanishes from view. A couple of minutes later, I pull into a small and crowded car park. There is one space left. After I’ve parked, I sit there for a few moments looking at the building in front of me, distorted by rivulets of rain running down the glass.

  I told James I was going to look at another bridal shop. It’s not actually a lie. I probably will – after I’ve finished here. I get out of the car, wincing at the rain driving into my face, and scurry towards the building. I pull my coat close around me. It’s cold today – properly wintry. I hunch my shoulders, shivering as I skirt a puddle.

  The building looks old from the outside, with a stone portico and big arched windows. It’s a surprise to get through the lobby and find myself in a well-lit and very modern-looking library. It’s instantly reassuring, too. Books have been my friends, my comforters, my advisers my whole life long. I hope that they will help me now.

  I don’t even have to ask where to start looking. Directly ahead of me is a staircase, and halfway up there is a notice reading Local and family history. I start up the stairs, unbuttoning my coat as I go.

  Euphemia Alexander, I say to myself. If you’re here, I’ll find you.

  A little of my confidence ebbs away when I get to the top of the stairs. There are a lot of different sections. Do I start with Local history or maybe Biography or perhaps the big banks of what seem to be actual card files, something I haven’t seen in a very long time? There’s also a glass door with Archive written on it in large letters. I suspect I’d have to speak to someone if I went in there, which might be awkward. I’d have to think how I’d explain a personal interest in Euphemia Alexander, died 1872, no relation.

  Too late. A middle-aged woman with an armful of books has seen me hesitating. “Can I help you?” she says.

  “I’m looking for some information – historical information – about a particular... area.”

  “A parish?” she suggests.

  “I guess so.”

  “In Perthshire?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long ago?” She doesn’t wait for a reply, but heads over to one of the bookshelves. She juggles the stack of books so that she has a hand free and points to a row of dry-looking volumes in identical cream dust jackets. “There’s the Old Statistical Account of Scotland; that’s 1791 to 1799. It has a description of each parish and its population, the crops that were grown, some local history and so on. If you want something a bit later, there’s the New Statistical Account, which is over there.” She’s already walking off towards another bookcase so I trail after her again. When she reaches the shelves she turns to face me, her free hand resting on a book bound in red, with faded gilt letters on
the spine. “The New Statistical Account is from 1834 to 1845.”

  New? I try and fail to do the exact calculation in my head, but 1845 is definitely over a hundred and fifty years ago.

  “Is that the most recent one?”

  “No, there’s a Third Statistical Account,” she says crisply. “We have that too. The Perthshire volume was published in 1979.”

  “I guess I’ll look at the new one,” I say. “Thanks.”

  After she’s gone, I carry the volume over to a table and sit down. When I open it, I detect a faint musty smell of old book. It’s hard to imagine this ancient tome telling me anything relevant to the here and now; it’s like expecting the dead to speak. That particular thought is not encouraging. I turn the pages gingerly.

  The contents pages run to two sides, beginning with Aberdalgie and Dupplin and ending with Weem. Barr Dubh House lies about halfway between two of the towns listed, so I start with those. It’s hard going. The entry for each parish begins with its topography and natural history before moving on to civil history, population, industry and parochial economy, whatever that is. “There are few animals in the parish which can be called rare in Scotland,” begins one of the sections.

  The bits about civil history seem to include information about important families living in the parish, but there’s nothing about anyone called Alexander. I drum my fingers on the desk, considering. Is there an index? I turn the book over and open it at the back. Yes. Quite by chance, I’ve opened it at B, so I glance down the page, looking for Barr Dubh. There’s nothing. I remember the old man we spoke to saying that the spot wasn’t always called that. Its real name, he said, was Barr Buidhe. I leaf back to the previous page and there it is: Barr Buidhe.

  I check the page number and then I’m leafing through the book, eager to see what it says. It turns out it isn’t in either of the parishes I’ve already tried. It belonged to one I’ve never heard of, one that no longer exists.

  “Much of the land in the parish is in the possession of Miss Alexander of Barr Buidhe, the last scion of the Alexanders of Strathearn, all other family members being deceased. Miss Alexander is at the present time engaged to be married to Mr. Charles Robertson of Fortingal.”

  Mr.Charles Robertson. I think about the mourning ring that’s still sitting in the old bureau at Barr Dubh House. E.A. C.R., that was the inscription. Euphemia Alexander and Charles Robertson. It has to be them. What are the chances of it belonging to anyone else with those exact same initials? Unease wells up, but I force it down.

  I have to be objective; I have to know.

  That’s all there is. After that, the topic shifts to changes to the parish boundaries. I go back to the index and look up Fortingal, but after reading the entire section on that parish from end to end, I can find nothing about Charles Robertson. I go back to the entry about Miss Alexander of Barr Buidhe, wondering if I can glean anything from that.

  “At the present time engaged” – but when was that? I flip through to the frontispiece, which helpfully has a date entirely in Roman numerals. After a little pondering, and some internet searching on my phone, I manage to work out that it says 1844. The overgrown grave of Euphemia Alexander gave a death date of 1872, and an age of 60. That would mean that the woman buried there was born in 1812, so by 1844 she’d have been 32 years old.

  I rub my forehead with my fingers. It’s difficult to think straight. It has to be the same person. It can’t be a sister or anything, not if there was only one member of the Alexander family living.

  Something about that phrase “At the present time engaged” strikes me as a little strange too. Is it hinting at something – perhaps that the engagement is somehow impermanent? Then it occurs to me that for whatever reason, it didn’t actually come off. Euphemia was still an Alexander when she died and there was no mention of a marriage on her tombstone. So either she broke up with Charles Robertson or something happened to him.

  That last dream slides unbidden into my mind: standing at the door of Barr Dubh House, but an older Barr Dubh House than the one James and I inhabit, gazing east with anguish in my heart. I remember the keen pain of knowing that I was looking for the return of someone who would never come. The mourning ring was on my finger and when I crumpled to the ground I felt myself tangled in long skirts. I was seeing through the eyes of Euphemia Alexander. I don’t know how this can even be possible, but I believe it. The time I saw was her time and the pain I felt was her pain. The person she was looking for was Charles – the man she was engaged to, but never married.

  I put my elbows on the desk and my head in my hands. Unpleasant sensations move sluggishly in the pit of my stomach, like the flow of a poisoned river. I should pity Euphemia Alexander, or whatever faint echo of her persists. Imagine losing someone you love so much you’ve promised to marry them. Imagine if I lost James. The thought is so awful I feel as though I could choke on it. She must have felt that – I know she did, because I felt her agony in my dream. I should be crying for her and for all the years she endured alone. But I don’t feel pity or sadness. I feel dread. I have this horrible feeling that in some way she is trying to get at me. There was the night James came home, when I saw a thin figure pressed against the trunk of a tree, and the time we walked back from the pub and I glimpsed it there, on the very doorstep of the house. There was that feeling when I was at the ruined chapel, that something unseen and ominous was sweeping towards me. There were the times I glimpsed a distant figure in lavender, too far away for me to make out the details. James has never experienced any of these things. It’s me she’s haunting, and I don’t like it. What can she possibly want from me? I can’t change anything that happened to her.

  I have to know more – even though part of me doesn’t want to know at all. It’s like the impulse to gorge on something unhealthy. The more I get of it, the worse it makes me feel, but I can’t seem to stop.

  I get up, leaving the New Statistical Account and my bag on the desk, and scan the shelves. There’s a section of local biographies, but I don’t really expect to find anything there alongside the lives of poets and Duchesses, and sure enough I don’t. The local history section seems to have histories of whole families: The Oliphants of Gask sits alongside The Ruthven Family Papers. But there is no history of the Alexander family. Well, who would write one? If Euphemia Alexander was the last of her family, and she died unmarried, there probably wasn’t anyone to do it.

  There is nothing to be found in either Crieff: Its Traditions and Characters or Annals of Auchterarder and Memorials of Strathearn. Time is slipping by. What concentration I had at the beginning is fading and I’m starting to think about going downstairs to the little café for a cup of tea when my fingers close on a slim blue volume called Strathearn Folk, published in 1872. The binding is leather, with the title stamped in gold on the spine, and the edges are worn-looking. I open it at the back, perusing the index without very much optimism, and there it is:

  Alexander, Euphemia..........106

  I turn to the page and read the title The end of the Alexanders of Strathearn.

  I stare at the page for a moment, a strange cold feeling under my breastbone. The name Euphemia Alexander, further down the page, snags my eye, but I force myself to start at the beginning.

  “There has been much sorrowful interest locally in the extinction of the old family of Alexander, who dwelt in the house and lands called Barr Buidhe in the old Gaelic tongue.”

  I blink at the old-fashioned language. It’s hard to imagine this ever being a tourism bestseller.

  “The place was named for the abundance of yellow gorse that grows there on the hillside. The house that was the home of the Alexander family for some generations also took its name from this. The last of this family was Miss Euphemia Alexander, who lately died at the age of sixty. Miss Alexander was well known in the parish and in the nearby towns, for she had lived there all her life, but also for the tragic
circumstances of her earlier life.

  “Past the first blossoming of youth, she had despaired of matrimony when at the age of thirty she became engaged to Mr. Charles Robertson of Fortingal–”

  Despaired of matrimony?! At the ripe old age of thirty? It would be funny if the whole thing wasn’t so creepy. I read on.

  “Her happiness was of short duration. Shortly before the wedding was to have taken place, her intended husband was numbered amongst the victims of the Garside locomotive fire, to which so many lives were lost. Miss Alexander at first entirely refused to credit the news. Her incredulity was supported by the grisly circumstance of the victims’ bodies being so badly burned and otherwise mutilated as to render identification impossible in many cases. She persisted in her hope that her betrothed would one day return, and it was her custom to stand outside the front door of Barr Buidhe House at sunset and look for him. While she persisted in believing that he would return, she would on no account consent to go into full mourning; however, with the passage of years she at last adopted the colours of half-mourning, which she wore to the end of her life.

  “It was common to see her taking solitary walks about Barr Buidhe dressed all in lavender. The staff of the house and those rustics who lived nearby knew better than to approach or speak to her during these walks, because she looked at them so wildly and strangely. She rarely received visitors except for her lawyer and physician, and lived for several decades in seclusion, not even attending the parish church, but preferring instead to carry out her devotions at home.

  “After Miss Alexander died at her house, it was found when her will was opened that she had desired to be buried in her wedding dress, and on the directions of her lawyer, this was done. It was further discovered that she had bequeathed her entire estate to Charles Robertson, then some twenty-seven years deceased, perhaps in some faint hope that he might still return and profit from it. There is at this time no other prospective heir, and the house stands empty.”

  I shut the book gently and slide it back into its place on the shelf with hands that tremble only slightly. Then I go back to the desk and pick up my coat and bag. I leave the New Statistical Account lying there closed and walk downstairs, across the lobby and out of the front door. The rain pelts me as I make my way to the car, gripping the front of my coat closed with white knuckles. I cannot imagine going shopping for wedding dresses right now. Instead, I get into the car and sit behind the wheel.