Cold in the Earth
Page 34
‘I can be patient. I’m just so grateful to see signs of the man I know and love coming back. It’s going to take time for the community to heal too, but at least this dreadful epidemic seems to be over at last. What with that, and the Mason case, it feels as if the sun hasn’t shone for weeks.’
‘I don’t think it has, has it? Anyway, tell me what’s happening out there. They won’t let me have the newspapers yet.’
Fleming pulled a face. ‘You haven’t missed a lot. It’s the usual disgusting frenzy of speculation, hype and downright lies, and you can imagine what they made of the were-wolf angle.
‘Max hasn’t been charged with your sister’s murder yet – we’re still questioning him. Forensic tests are just starting but they’ve found some clothes left in the wardrobe of Max’s old bedroom, including a black cloak he might just have used, and they’re hoping they might manage to match up fibres. And we’ve got his fingerprints on the silver mask.’
‘He put it on and – and gored her with it, didn’t he?’ Laura’s mouth quivered. ‘He described it to me as if Conrad had done it – and mentioned a black cloak, actually – and I was fool enough to react. I can’t think why I didn’t realise before. I’d been right there and seen Conrad being a bull – he didn’t need to dress up.’
‘I see!’ Fleming was pleased to have a major question answered. ‘We went round and round it – couldn’t think why he should have decided to take such a risk as to attack you.
‘Anyway, he’s pled not guilty to attempted murder but he’ll probably be advised to change his plea given that you’ll be able to testify and that he had a knife in his pocket in a plastic bag with someone else’s fingerprints on it—’
‘Brett’s,’ Laura said with a shudder. ‘That was the plan. He couldn’t resist boasting about it to me, showing off how clever he had been.’
Fleming listened to her account, fascinated. ‘Is he a psychopath?’
Laura wrinkled her nose. ‘Loose term. You could hardly say he was normal – but after that you get into difficult territory.’
‘That whole family is stark raving mad,’ Marjory said firmly. ‘Another loose term, but it does it for me.’
‘What about Jake?’ Laura asked suddenly. ‘You know, while I was in that – that place, I kept thinking about Dizzy and about him. What sort of man was he? Was she in love with him? Did he love her?’
Marjory sighed. ‘Piecing things together, I think he was an arrogant, hot-tempered man who was taught a terrible lesson. I think he still loves his wife, who is a woman of remarkable strength of character who made a sad miscalculation which she’s been paying for ever since. Whether, after she left him, he and your sister – we’re never going to know, are we?’
She told Laura about the success of the experiment she had suggested. ‘That saved your life, you know,’ Marjory said soberly. ‘But I was talking to the consultant yesterday and now Jake looks to have given up, quietly slipping out of life. Rosamond’s spirit seems broken; she hardly talks to him any more, just sits holding his hand. She’s put in a request to go and see Max in prison but he’s refused to see her.’
Laura sighed. ‘So terribly sad! And Conrad – what about him? I – I really liked him, you know. He was nice to me – kind and funny.’
Marjory gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Oh aye,’ she said. ‘Charming enough when it suited him, right enough. Bit of a hunk too, I’d have to say. But take a wee bit sandpaper to the surface and he was an ill-tempered bully. Took it out on anyone too weak to hit back.’
‘Oh dear!’ Laura looked dismayed at first, then started to giggle. ‘So much for my talents as a psychologist!’
‘You won’t get me saying a word against psychology,’ Marjory declared, then, as Laura’s laughter turned into a cough, looked alarmed. ‘Here – I’d better go. I’ve one ward sister who’d poison my tea given half a chance. I’m not needing another.’
‘Wait,’ Laura said taking a sip of water, ‘what’s the scary Mrs Mason doing in all this?’
‘Keeping very, very quiet, I’m happy to say. Conrad will probably be released before too long and then it’s my guess they’ll sell up and disappear. Now, I’m away to leave you to rest.’
She went to the door, then paused. ‘And you, Laura? What are you going to do? Is it back to London?’
Laura hesitated. ‘I don’t know, Marjory. You know, when I was in that awful place, waiting to die, I felt that the tragedy of Dizzy’s disappearance had shadowed the past fifteen years, imprisoned me almost. Now – well, I suppose in psychological jargon you could say I’ve had closure, and I’m free. I don’t think I’ve made the most of my life, and that’s going to change. When I’m an old lady I want to be able to look back and say, “Well, I enjoyed that!”’
‘Sounds good to me. Kick up your heels – paint the town red – steal traffic cones – oh well, maybe not the traffic cones.’ They both laughed, then Fleming said more seriously, ‘I never thought we could do this, you know – get at what happened after all these years. Max must have felt quite safe with his secret.’
‘Yes, he probably did. But he should have remembered about truth and oil.’
‘Truth and oil?’
‘Dizzy used to say that.’ Laura’s eyes were wet. ‘It’s a Spanish proverb. Truth and oil always come to the surface.’
Postscript
Marjory Fleming stood in the orchard in the May sunshine, watching her chickens pecking hopefully in the long, lush grass. They were acclimatising well; the new rooster, Tony, was a quieter type than his predecessor Clinton and somewhat in awe of the alpha hen, inevitably christened Cherie.
Above, there was pink apple-blossom in the gnarled old trees while below the home meadows were bright with daisies, buttercups, white clover and soft blue speedwell. The white starry clusters of cow-parsley edged the margins of the field like sea-foam, making an idyllic picture for a lovely spring morning.
But there in the pastures, when you looked closer, were rank grasses, nettles, docks and sorrel, the ungrazed land rapidly succumbing to the stranglehold of weeds. It was happening in every field, on every hillside: the pretty, ‘natural’ landscape with its velvet-soft green contours, so beloved of visiting town-dwellers, was produced by its flocks of sheep and no more natural than a shed of battery chickens. She was reminded of the old gardener’s reply to the minister who had congratulated him on what a good job he and the Almighty together had made of his garden: ‘Aye, but you should have just seen it when the Almighty had it to himsel’!’
It could all be reclaimed in time, of course, just as their community life could be. It wouldn’t be easy for these wounds to heal and there would, even years later, be areas which hurt when you touched on them. Marjory sighed. She was sadder and wiser, certainly: that was always talked up as being a good thing, though she wasn’t convinced.
A thin, demanding bleating suddenly made itself heard, a sound once so familiar that she would barely have noticed it. Now she smiled; she had shamelessly used her contacts to have Mains of Craigie chosen as one of the farms to host ‘sentinel’ animals – sheep which would be regularly monitored to ensure that pastures were clean of the foot-and-mouth virus – and had even managed to find a black lamb for Bill, an engaging, leggy replacement for the one they hadn’t saved.
The children idolised Hope, as they had christened it, and it was rapidly becoming thoroughly above itself. Silence had fallen again so it must be getting its bottle now; she’d better get back and tell the kids to hurry up. Even the conscientious Cat was inclined to be offhand about schooltimes when there was a lamb to play with.
They’d settled back with surprisingly few complaints about not having their friends round the corner and being offered Mum’s cooking instead of Granny’s. Her father, on the other hand . . . When she had phoned, after the high drama of Laura’s rescue and Max Mason’s arrest, to apologise for her non-arrival, he had said harshly, ‘Oh, no doubt it’s fine for you. But Cammie missed his rugby, with you
being too busy strutting round being the big shot – what sort of mother does that make you?’
Foolishly, she had allowed her anger to speak for her. ‘And you think I was happy, every time your work made you let me down? What sort of father did that make you? That was different, somehow?’
He hung up on her. Despite Janet’s best efforts the atmosphere was still frosty and the GameBoy she had given him remained untouched. The television, to his wife’s distress, was once more permanently switched on, to the accompaniment of his endless complaints.
It was time she wasn’t here. She picked up the empty mash pail and the bowl of eggs and walked to the gate, then stopped for an affectionate look at her chookies. It was good to hear that warm, comforting clucking and crooning again.
And perhaps it was childish to wish that Bill had thought of buying her the replacements. Laura had warned her she’d have to be patient, and patient she would just have to be.
About the Author
Aline Templeton has worked in education and broadcasting. She grew up in Scotland, read English at Girton College, Cambridge, and now lives in Edinburgh. She has a grown-up son and daughter.