The thing that bothered me most was what had actually happened to Bella. When I dozed, I had vivid images of her leaning over the bed and trying to get my attention. And it was the next day when I received yet another unpleasant visit from the local constabulary.
There came a rapping at the front door, more urgent than I had ever heard. The noise drifted through the bright, still May morning and even as I lay in bed willing the visitors to leave, the gravel crunched on the shallow pathway outside the window and the policemen began to hail me.
‘Mr Howard. We need to speak to you urgently.’ I don’t think it was my imagination when I tell you that they sounded much more aggravated than before. The tone was clipped, formal – no longer the understanding tones they would use to speak to a bereaved relative.
I lay in bed, trying to ignore them; but as I heard the front door being battered and calls for forced entry, I dragged myself over to the window and flung it open. Drifts of small, white crystals fluttered to the ground and dusted my toes as I stood there.
‘’I am here. I am neither deaf nor stupid and do not appreciate being shouted at in my own home!’ I called.
‘Mr Howard.’ The main chap I had speaking to recently glared up at me from the pathway. ‘I must insist you come downstairs and we speak to you.’
My heart began to pound. One I had left the safety of this room, what would protect me from anything supernatural?
I shook my head. ‘No. I am not leaving the room. I am indisposed. Whatever you have to say to me can be said to me here. I can answer you just as well from the bedroom.’
‘Very well, if you insist. We would, in actual fact, like to ask you some questions about your sister’s murder,’ said the policeman. He looked smug and self-satisfied and I wanted to ram the iron poker between his eyes.
‘My sister was not murdered,’ I said levelly. ‘As I understand it, she fell over the cliffs and was injured.’
‘As we understand it,’ said the smug little man, ‘she was stabbed several times and we have rather a nice knife at the station, which may or may not be the murder weapon. The knife, Mr Howard, bears the crest of Howard House on the handle; and the knife, Sir, was last seen wedged into the bridle on your horse. The horse you apparently rode back from the cliffs, after your sister’s unfortunate accident. The horse the Groom settled down after you returned from an unspecified outing in some disarray.’
‘And what do you need to question me about?’ I asked, although a sickening feeling was creeping up on me.
‘I need to question you to establish exactly where you were that evening, and exactly what happened,’ replied the man.
I swallowed. ‘Are you arresting me?’ I asked.
‘No, Sir, we are not,’ replied the man evenly.
‘I should say not’, I replied. ‘Anything you have is circumstantial and you have nothing to accuse me with at all, really.’
‘Not yet, Sir,’ said the policeman. ‘Our questions will establish your innocence, Mr Howard.’
The unspoken addition, “if you are indeed innocent”, hung in the air between us.
I wished for a rifle at that moment. I would have shot it at the men who stood on my pathway and who were telling me ridiculous tales of my sister’s murder and my own involvement in it.
‘All I can say,’ I said coolly ‘is that you have a greater imagination than even my own. And I will thank you in advance for leaving my property. Come back to me when you have some real information to share. I can answer your questions here and now. Yes, I was riding that evening. Yes, I used the knife. I was cutting flowers and boughs of greenery as it was Beltane and my family wished to uphold the ancient traditions. There was a pile of ash in the gardens which you may have noticed when you first came to visit me – the evidence, Sir, of our family bonfire.
‘The Groom may indeed have found me in a state of disarray the following morning. I had drunk too much - your Scottish whisky has never suited me. I remembered too late that I had left the knife with the bridle. I did not wish for any harm to come to the horse or the Groom whilst he was unbridled, so went to reclaim the damned thing – and then I sank into unconsciousness before I could do so. All I can tell you, is that I regained conscious thought that morning as I woke.’
The man nodded. ‘I see. It is a reasonable explanation.’
‘More than reasonable,’ I said. ‘And now I have a question for you. Was the knife you found bloodstained at all?’
‘No, Sir;’ said the man, having the grace to look a little embarrassed. ‘But you understand we must follow all leads.’
‘I understand,’ I said.
The man perked up again, just as I thought it was safe to send them on their way and slam the window closed.
‘Witnesses, Sir,’ he said. ‘Did you have any witnesses to your Pagan adventure that evening?’
‘None that I could name,’ I said. ‘I believe there were some people celebrating Beltane around the area, though. I saw fires in odd places and groups of strangers singing and dancing and feasting on the moors. I encountered them whilst on my travels.’ Some may call it a lie; some may suggest I embellished the truth. But I am fairly certain I did see groups of people. That was not in question. I stood straighter, more confident in my story now. ‘I would swear to that on a Bible, if you required me to.’
‘So, gypsies, Sir? You suggest there were groups of gypsies on the moors? And they are the people who could vouch for you?’ The smug man now looked cynical, but I nodded. The description would do. Good luck to the policemen if they tried to interview any gypsies they met in the area.
‘Gypsies. You could say that,’ I said. ‘You might want to search for them. If you suspect a murder, it may well be one of those people who committed it. You would do well to investigate that angle, I think.’ I nodded, decisively. ‘Am I free to retire to my bed? I am, as you can see, quite unwell. I suspect I am still in shock from the fact that you have recently advised me my sister has died, then suggest she was murdered, then almost immediately accuse me of the crime. Me! The man who has been her guardian for much of her life, the only surviving relative she has.’ I shook my head sorrowfully. ‘I pity you men your job. Good day to you.’ I closed the windows on them before they had a chance to respond.
I climbed back in between the covers, shaking. I pulled the covers up to my chin, but the sweat was breaking out all over my body and I finally tossed the sheets aside.
There was something about the idea of that knife which I found unsettling. I had no idea what a knife was doing in my horse’s bridle; I only knew that my mind had, quite possibly, made up the greatest story I’d ever had to imagine.
***
Chapter Thirty Seven
The answer came to me in the middle of the night.
Again, I had tossed and turned, drifted in and out of consciousness and imagined I had heard crying and tapping at the door again.
Let me in! Let me in!
The phrase was like an echo in my mind. I knew she was out there, outside my door. Finally, I sat up in bed and made the only decision I could.
I would unlock the door.
If she were innocent, she could simply walk into the room. She could defy the iron tower I had built and we could laugh at my sister’s judgement, point out how ridiculous it was of her to dust the place with salt and to create little heaps of protective metal everywhere.
For all I knew, poor Ceit might have sat outside in the hallway, worried as I turned in on myself and had silly conversations with policemen.
I could feel her presence out there, now I thought about it. I slid out of bed and looked at the door. There was a small tap, becoming more urgent as she must have sensed me walking across the floor to unlock it.
I took hold of the handle – and, God knows why – I picked up a poker as well.
***
Ceit flew at me, her arms outstretched, waiting in the corridor as I had suspected.
However, she pulled herself up short at the door
way. She hissed and stared at the iron poker, accusingly.
What’s that? Put it down!
She pointed at it, jabbing her finger irritably.
‘What? This?’ I asked. I held the poker out and she recoiled. She flew back against the banister and pressed herself against it, never taking her eyes from the poker.
‘I was lighting a fire,’ I lied. I bent down and picked up a coal scuttle from Bella’s defences. I stepped out into the hallway, over the remaining pile of iron and Ceit sped along the corridor, hovering at the top of the stairs.
She hung onto the stair-rods, half up, half down the stairs, her eyes wild.
I approached her slowly and tried to keep my voice even. ‘I just have to get something from the kitchen. You’re welcome to join me. Would you mind carrying one of these for me? Bella built herself a little tower, silly girl.’
I held the poker out and Ceit shook her head, her beautiful hair swishing around her pallid face.
‘What? Not even for me?’ I thrust the poker out again and she screamed, a gutteral sound that I had no idea she could create. It made me quake, but I held my ground. ‘Oh very well. I just hope I can find the coal.’
I continued along the corridor and Ceit threw herself away from the stair-rod and rushed down the stairs. I swear her feet did not touch the floor. A door clashed open and closed somewhere below me and I wondered whether she had disappeared into the gardens again.
Well, so long as she was not in the drawing room. Because that was where I needed to go.
***
Chapter Thirty Eight
I locked myself inside the drawing room, and rummaged until I found the notes I had made about the Beltane festival I had imagined.
There was something niggling in my mind about that knife, and I just could not find the answer within my consciousness. I hoped, therefore, the answer would be in my writing. Bella had been out that night as well. That had been the night she died, and I could not recall the evening with any degree of clarity. Part of me was certain we had celebrated as we always did, with the fire in the garden, but part of me resisted that idea.
‘Oh Bella, Bella,’ I murmured as I scanned the lines about galloping horses and imaginary trails of yellow flowers. ‘Tell me what happened, my dear. Please tell me.’
A shadow flitted past the window and I looked up. Ceit, of course, peering in at me. I laid the poker meaningfully on the desk next to me and she disappeared in a black swirl of cloud. Strangely, that did not seem odd to me. Instead, I read and re-read the notes.
And so it was, with a hollow sense of inevitability, I came across the piece about the dagger. In my fantasy, I had been wearing one – a golden dagger in a bejewelled scabbard. With that dagger, I had fought off a beast with tendrils; stabbed it until it shrieked its last and fell from the cliffs at Tarbert Castle. I had cleaned the dagger, tucked it into my horse’s bridle and returned home.
I pushed the paper away from me, my hands shaking. I stared at them, wondering if it was at all possible that those hands had been capable of murder.
***
I sat for hours. The sun set and rose and, intermittently, a dark cloud swirled up to the window and broke away again.
The door remained locked and the papers lay on the desk beside me. I tried to make sense of the last few months and it was beyond me.
I glanced up at the mirror. The glass was clean.
These Fae are invisible to all except the victim.
There was no name written there now. No trace of Ceit. I wracked my brains trying to think if anyone could vouch for her presence. If she was real, living and breathing, then perhaps we had the Beltane party here. If not – I might have murdered my sister.
***
Chapter Thirty Nine
I asked the Groom first of all.
‘Have you seen a young woman around here?’ I asked him. I leaned heavily on a fire iron. By all appearances I was using it as a walking stick, having found it difficult to drag my ravaged body across the grounds to the stables that afternoon – but only I knew the reason for keeping that precious metal close to me.
‘No Mr Howard,’ said the Groom in that flat voice. He looked at me curiously. The man was dour and I knew he would not ask me for a reason.
I probed just a little further. ‘No young woman with long dark hair who has been my constant companion these last few months?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You’ve never seen her when we have saddled the horses and taken the carriage to Tarbert?’
‘No, sir. Why would I? You’ve always asked me just to bring the carriage round. What happened after that, was not for my eyes.’
I nodded. ‘I understand. May you please prepare the carriage now? I need to travel into Tarbert.’
Yes, sir.’ The Groom disappeared to do his job and I sat down on the grass outside the stable block to wait.
My next stop was the village shop and Mrs Mackie.
‘Mr Howard!’ The woman came bustling out from behind the counter and smothered me in an embrace that smelled of new bread and coal dust. ‘I am so very sorry to hear of your sister. It has fair taken it out of you, I can tell.’
‘Indeed,’ I replied, shifting the fire iron to my other hand. ‘Mrs Mackie, I need to ask you a very important question.’ I really wanted to ask her whether she believed in the Fae and whether the twists of salt and piles of iron by her door were intentional or not; but in daylight, out here in the town, it all seemed very silly.
Instead, I asked Mrs Mackie the same thing I had asked the Groom. ‘Mrs Mackie, when I came in to post my manuscript, did you see a young woman with me? I believe she came partially into the shop and attempted to rescue me when I took ill.’
‘No, Mr Howard,’ said Mrs Mackie, shaking her head. ‘I do believe you were alone. Nobody came to find you. If you recall, Mr Howard, I did ask you who you were looking for.’ The woman looked at me sagely. She remembered everything. This was not, however, the answer which I had wanted to hear. Hope was gradually slipping away that the woman I had been in love with even existed. What then, did that mean for me?
‘Thank you Mrs Mackie,’ I said. I dipped my trembling hand in my pocket ‘I would like to post this letter as well.’
‘Hampstead,’ replied Mrs Mackie, taking it from me and reading the address. She looked up at me sympathetically. ‘A letter home.’ She sighed. ‘Dreadful business.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s so the servants know what has happened.’ I was also asking them, of course, if they had ever seen a girl matching Ceit’s description with me at Howard House. I fumbled around for some money and thrust it at the woman. ‘Just take what I owe out of that and add the price of this as well.’ I reached across and took three twists of salt from the basket.
‘You’ve paid far too much, Mr Howard,’ said Mrs Mackie, her little beady eyes widening.
‘Very well. I shall take some more of this,’ I replied and helped myself to three more packets of salt. ‘Good day, Mrs Mackie. Thank you for your help. Oh – one more thing. My Uncle Ruairí.’
‘What of him?’ that good lady asked. It may have been my imagination but she suddenly appeared to go very still. Her gaze, if possible, became even more piercing.
I phrased the question as vaguely as I thought possible. ‘Did you ever see him in the company of anyone towards the end of his life?’
‘I did not, Mr Howard,’ she replied carefully. ‘Although I did hear tell he was found on several occasions talking to himself up at the castle.’
‘Up at the castle. I see. Thank you again, Mrs Mackie. That place has not exactly been kind to our family, has it?’
‘It has not,’ she said. Her gaze transferred to my fire iron. ‘I can sell you a proper stick, Mr Howard.’
‘I’ll keep this one, thank you,’ I replied.
‘As you wish, Mr Howard,’ said Mrs Mackie. She raised the envelope to me. ‘I shall ensure this is sent today.’
‘Very good,’ I said. I tur
ned and walked out of the little shop, then paused. ‘One thing, Mrs Mackie. When your postman delivers the letter in response, would you please ensure he leaves it in the coal scuttle by the front door?’
You see, I had pre-empted this. I had already placed an iron coal-scuttle there. So nobody would meddle with my incoming mail. If there was indeed, anybody who existed to meddle with it. A shiver of fear crept up my spine. If there wasn’t anybody tangible, then who had I been living with these last few months? Who had been the one encouraging my creativity and driving me to distraction with it?
She is the Gaelic muse, for she gives inspiration to those she persecutes.
I tried not to think about those words of Yeats.
But as I stood on the street, sprinkling salt into my carriage, just in case, Ruairí’s own words came back to me in his well-remembered voice.
She is the muse. She is the inspiration. She has killed me.
I drove back to Howard House the long way. I did not go near Tarbert Castle.
***
Midsummer
The Summer Solstice
Chapter Forty
The days that followed the posting of that letter were amongst the longest of my life.
I retired to Bella’s old bedroom and re-erected the piles of iron and re-sprinkled the salt anywhere I could muster. I took the poker with me if I wandered throughout the house. Each morning and each afternoon I checked the coal-scuttle, but there was nothing there.
I saw Ceit on several occasions; a shadowy figure in the corner, weeping or pleading with me to hold her and love her. Each night, the door handle rattled and my ears were assaulted with moans and cries until the dawn broke and the whole thing started again.
My days were full, though. I had begun to write again, and I did not need her to help me this time.
I had, in fact, begun to put this very story you read on paper. This would be my way of relating it to myself, my way of understanding it. If I wrote it down, I told myself, I might understand it.
Upon the Solstice Page 14