‘Shall we?’ he said. ‘Better late than never, my dear Hugh. Now ladies, the first thing you will notice is the surprisingly modern-looking stonework of the entrance way, which suggests that this place was in use until perhaps Georgian times and was repaired using the builders’ know-how of the day. Certainly these blocks you see in the lintel have been quarry-cut and dressed and could not be original, but as we go further you will be pleased to hear that the inner lintels are made of free surface slabs that . . .’
The history lesson had begun and it carried on the whole time we were in there, much to the evident delight of what I came to think of as the three scholars of the party, the schoolmistress, the postmistress and, of course, Hugh. The three sensation-seekers, if I might lump myself in with the Howies and describe us that way, would have been better served by a deathly hush or whispered legends, but it is perhaps just as well that Mr Tait did not indulge in such things, for Nicolette and Vashti looked quite mesmerised enough as it was, even while the description of hair-strengthened mortar and estimations of the weights of the stones and their provenance and the flint marks upon them and the significance of the whale-jaw shape to the entrance pillars droned on and on. Hugh, of course, was transported. The only one of us, in fact, who strolled down the passageway to the burial chamber, quite unruffled, neither enchanted nor intrigued, was Lorna.
Even when we reached the chamber itself, more of a cave really, she stood as calmly as though she were in a museum, looking at the exhibits in well-lit glass cases safely behind velvet ropes. I, in contrast, had icy prickles up the back of my neck and was concentrating on not noticing anything identifiable in the many prints on the dusty floor, dreading to see where the bones of the poor girl who had lain here all these years might have rested on their recent brief return.
‘ . . . can’t have been intended for burial,’ Mr Tait was saying. ‘For as you know, a stone cist in the ground covered by a mound of earth is the normal thing in these parts, but it was probably used as a resting place for the king, or chieftain – hence the central sarcophagus – and for generations of his family too, judging by the number of cists which have been constructed over time.’ He waved a hand at the tiers of little cubby-holes, half hewn out and half built on, all around the walls of the chamber, turning it into something resembling a giant honeycomb. ‘The small size of these – smaller even than the usual short-cist – is thought to indicate ash burial or bone burial rather than the interment of recently deceased corpses.’
Beside me I could hear Vashti Howie’s breath, fast and shallow.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked her.
‘Perfectly,’ she said, sounding anything but; sounding strangulated, her dry throat clicking as she swallowed. ‘I’ve always hated little dark places, that’s all,’ she said, with an attempt at her usual drawl. ‘Too many games of sardines with wicked old uncles in my youth, you know.’ And she laughed, a sound ghastly enough to attract the attention of one or two others who turned towards her, frowning.
‘And were all of the remains in place when the chamber was discovered?’ said Hugh, turning away again.
‘None of them,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Perfectly normal, so I believe. The place would have been cleared for use as a fortress in war or as a storage stronghold. The archaeologists told me they’ve found chicken droppings and old beer flagons and goodness only knows what in some of the places they’ve opened.’
‘Had they ever found what they found here, though, Mr Tait?’ said Nicolette. She was tracing a path around the perimeter of the chamber, trying to make it look desultory, I suppose, but appearing as though she feared with every step to put her foot upon an adder.
‘Niccy,’ said Lorna, mildly as ever – one could not imagine Lorna Tait ever sounding sharp – but clearly rather shocked at her friend for mentioning so plainly what everyone else was busy pretending to have forgotten.
‘Good Lord,’ said Nicolette, suddenly, peering into one of the honeycomb holes. ‘Lorna darling, you have good eyes. What’s that in there? I can’t make it out.’
Lorna stared at her and made no move towards where she was pointing.
‘What’s this?’ said Hugh. ‘What have you found?’ but he could not cross to where Nicolette stood, since Miss McCallum was peering intently down at the floor as Mr Tait described its construction and her broad beam was stuck immovably in his path.
‘Oh Nic, don’t tease,’ said Vashti, pleadingly. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘No, Vash,’ said her sister. ‘Look, there’s something in there. Lorna?’ Nicolette clasped Lorna’s arm and wheeled her round so that they were both squinting into the darkness of the opening. Mr Tait had gone quiet and was watching them, and maybe it was just the upward shading from the lantern but he appeared to have a look almost of glee upon his usually kindly face.
Lorna stepped forward at last and stretched her arm into the dark place. We all heard the gritty scrape as she began to pull something out.
‘Ugh,’ she said, turning her head away as though to save herself from breathing in an unpleasant smell.
‘Please don’t. Stop it,’ said Vashti at my side, and I put an arm around her. Lorna Tait turned back to face the rest of us, cradling a white bundle in her hands, then a sudden look of horror flashed across her face and she dropped the bundle which unfurled like a sail, releasing a puff of dust.
‘What—’ said Nicolette.
Miss McCallum and Lorna both screamed and Miss McCallum lurched backwards, bumping into Hugh and setting his lantern swinging.
Vashti Howie crumpled in my arms and sank to the floor.
‘A rat!’ shrieked Miss McCallum. ‘A rat!’
‘Nonsense, only a mouse,’ said Hugh.
‘Father,’ wailed Lorna, putting her hands over her head as the shadows skirled about and the screams echoed and echoed again.
‘Where did it go?’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘I’ll kill it, Hetty. I won’t let a rat touch you.’
‘It’s a mouse!’ said Hugh.
‘Oh Hugh, for God’s sake,’ I said. ‘Rat or mouse, can’t you see this woman has fainted? And can’t you steady that damned lantern before we all run mad?’
Hugh, stung at being addressed that way in public by his own wife, although I don’t think anyone was listening, heaved into action at last, handing me the lantern and stooping to lift Vashti Howie into his arms.
‘You go ahead with the light, Dandy,’ he said. ‘We need to get this lady some air.’
‘It was just a dust sheet,’ said Mr Tait, when the others had joined us on the little brick platform, where I was flapping my handkerchief rather uselessly in Vashti’s face and wishing I had some water to splash on her. ‘They must have left it behind when they were working here.’
‘Here she comes,’ said Hugh, looking at Vashti’s fluttering lashes. She groaned and started a little as she opened her eyes and remembered where she was.
‘Don’t say anything, darling,’ said Nicolette, kneeling at her side and shaking her head a little between her bejewelled hands. ‘Who could blame you for fainting? I’ve never heard such a ghastly racket in my life.’ She shot a poisonous glance at Miss McCallum, who was the colour of a vanilla custard and was being supported on one side by Miss Lindsay and on the other by Lorna Tait, who had either regained her colour or had never lost it despite the lusty shriek.
‘If you hadn’t gone poking about,’ said Miss Lindsay to Nicolette.
‘Now, now, ladies,’ said Mr Tait. ‘We’ve all had a nasty shock and I feel most remorseful about having put you in the way of it. Please, I beg you, forgive me. Now, if Mrs Howie is feeling quite recovered and Miss McCallum thinks her legs will stand it, I think we should make our way slowly back to base camp and go home for tea.’
It was a quite outstandingly mournful little procession which trailed back down through the gorse and bracken to the motor cars. When we got there, Nicolette helped her sister into the two-seater and left, hurtling backwards towards the farmyar
d without another word. Miss McCallum collapsed into the nearest seat, which happened to be in Hugh’s Daimler, and Miss Lindsay inevitably hopped in beside her. Lorna, with a glance at her father, made a third and Hugh climbed in to chauffeur the three of them back to the village, reversing out very slowly, as though he thought the slightest bump under the wheels would start one of them off howling again.
That left Mr Tait and me. My legs were still feeling a little woolly from the alarums, but I managed to turn my motor car in the space and drive fairly smoothly down to the Mains farmyard and out onto the road. It was around about Wester Luck Cottage when I heard the first gulp from beside me and I looked round to see Mr Tait’s lips twitch just once, before he drew his eyebrows down in a frown and cleared his throat. There was silence for a moment and then another gulp, this one with a slight whinny behind it. My lips twitched too, I let out a shriek to equal any of Miss McCallum’s and then we both put our heads back and roared.
‘A rat! A rat!’ I said.
‘Nonsense, only a mouse,’ wept Mr Tait.
‘I’ll save you, Hetty,’ I cried in a falsetto tremble.
‘Good Lord,’ said Mr Tait, wiping his eyes and forehead with his handkerchief. ‘What a disaster.’
‘Nonsense,’ I told him. ‘If you wanted the tale spread around, the more packed with incident it is the better.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Tait, as though only just remembering. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
16
The next morning, Alec and I held a dawn meeting under cover of another early walk for Bunty. Hugh, still smarting at being ticked off so peremptorily in the chamber the day before, and in a considerable sulk about the way his long-awaited adventure had descended into hysterics, had taken himself off home straight after breakfast, not even pretending to care when – and possibly whether – I joined him there again. I had been all ready with a long list of dreary facts about household economy that I still needed to ascertain, but he had waved my explanation away with an imperious hand. If only he had known that my preparations for this wretched talk consisted of precisely one page of notes which read: Insurance, daily/weekly marketing, pastry, and that every time I imagined having to stand up and talk sense in front of all those women who thought I was either an expert or an idiot (and I knew not which was worse), I felt I should be lucky to faint dead away like Vashti Howie and be carried off in someone’s manly arms.
‘Well, that’s a great pity,’ said Alec, when I had brought him up to date. ‘If the grave robbers are not in fact bent on preserving the honour of the church but are in thrall to the silliest kind of superstitious nonsense, and the SWRI is not, after all, a front for a band of witches, then our neat little picture looks rather dish-evelled again. I still believe that either Jock Christie or Drew Torrance could be the dark stranger, though. I took the chance of going round to the Torrances’ yesterday afternoon, after I ducked out of facing Hugh – what a narrow squeak that was, eh? – and had quite a long chat under cover of asking permission to paint on their land.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he’s rather a poor specimen. Not quite rickety, but far from burly, so he fits the silhouette and he was not at all truthful about his moonlight meanderings.’
‘How on earth did you get him onto that?’
‘I bemoaned the fact that there’s nothing to do in the evening in Luckenlaw – unless you were a female, I said, in which case you at least got a jaunt to the Rural once a month, but what were the men supposed to look to for entertainment?’
‘Masterly,’ I said. ‘How did he answer?’
‘He said that after a day of sweat and toil on the farm he was happy to kick his boots off and doze with his feet on the fender. As a matter of fact, once he was on the subject of agricultural toil, it was rather a job to get him off it again. It must be marvellous to be a policeman who can just rap on the door, ask ten questions, tip his hat and leave. I thought I was going to grow roots standing there.’
‘So that just leaves Mr Palmer to be viewed,’ I said. ‘I suppose you’ll do that, will you?’ My enthusiasm for a wifely return to Perthshire had cooled, not to say chilled, after the short visit from Hugh, and I should be happy to find some excuse for remaining at Luckenlaw.
‘Certainly,’ said Alec. ‘Perhaps the dairy at Easter Luck would lend itself to a study in white, but right now I’m off to Luckenlaw Mains where I hope to fall in with young Christie. And you should keep on with your researches into the—’
‘Oh, please don’t say it,’ I groaned. ‘Every time I think of it, I could swoon.’
‘Yes, but you could start with Mrs McAdam. You haven’t spoken to her yet. You might even warn her – a married woman with children of her own – that she should be very careful at November’s full moon. You might get some idea of just how well she knows that already.’
It was as cheerless as any day could be – grey, cold, never managing quite to rain or quite to stop, just near enough to frost to make one’s feet cold but not near enough to freeze the mud and make the going easy. It was, in short, dreich and drumlie; two words which have always seemed to me to mean exactly the same thing but which, given the number of dreich and drumlie days to be described in Fife, are both absolutely essential. Bunty, nevertheless, managed to be in the same ebullient frame of mind as ever and watching her set off at a prancing trot with her head up and nose quivering hauled my spirits up just a shade too and I tried to enjoy the view of the distant sea and the great shrieking flocks of seagulls over the flat fields as they looped and wheeled, tying invisible knots and loosening them again.
Perhaps Monday morning was not the best time to catch and hold the attention of a busy farmer’s wife since Monday was washday, in the farms of Luckenlaw the same as everywhere, and she had, I guessed from counting the petticoats and bodices she was shaking out and dipping into the bubbling copper, at least three daughters as well as the husband whose overalls lay bundled on a sheet of newspaper on the floor awaiting the dregs of the wash-water once the daintier items had been seen to. On the other hand, it is always easier to talk to someone whose eyes and hands are occupied than to someone who is sitting across a table staring back at you, and the scented steam in the large kitchen-scullery was excellent camouflage, throwing both of us into what they call on the pictures ‘soft focus’, capable of making Mary Pickford look like a schoolgirl when she was thirty if a day and allowing me, I hoped, to appear as a kind of shimmering Fairy Godmother come to issue kindly advice, and not the gimlet-eyed nosy parker I was really.
It would be best, I had decided, to go fairly straight to the point and, thanks to my session with young Mrs Muirhead, I felt I had an opening.
‘My brief, Mrs McAdam, as you know, is the household budget,’ I began. ‘But I have to say it’s fading into the background the more I learn about what’s going on here at Luckenlaw.’ She did not look up – she was pounding energetically with her dolly – but I saw her stiffen slightly and I thought that the rhythm of the dolly became a little slower as though, instead of listening while she pounded, she was now pounding while she listened. Her dark head, the scraped-back hair just touched with grey but still strong and shining, inclined ever so slightly my way.
‘I think I’ve just about got a handle on the thing now,’ I went on, ‘and so I’ve come to warn you.’ A glance flicked my way, but she kept working. ‘It was your – is she your niece or your goddaughter? Young Mrs Muirhead, anyway – who got me interested in the problem. She had worked herself up into a dreadful state. Such a shame just when she should be keeping calm and thinking happy thoughts, don’t you agree?’
‘She’ll be fine,’ said Mrs McAdam. ‘She’s young and strong. But . . . can I trouble you to say just what it is you’re getting at, madam? I’m not just quite following you.’
I pursed my lips at her words: I have always thought it monstrous to declare that a person is ‘strong’ simply to excuse oneself from being more kindly and careful than one feels like being. Indeed, th
e old saw which declares ‘What does not kill you makes you stronger’, no less than Luckenlaw’s own ‘Whatever’s for you won’t go by you’, has always seemed to me to be the worst kind of heartless nonsense and the one time that a grand benefactor was heard to utter it, with oily condescension, in Moncrieffe House Convalescent Home, I was immensely gratified to witness him receiving a swift bop on the nose from a young lieutenant, with one arm blown off and a bad gas tummy. Mrs McAdam had just, unbeknownst to herself, got on my wrong side in rather a big way.
‘I’m talking about these nasty attacks by the fellow they’re calling the dark stranger,’ I said. ‘I’ve worked out the pattern, you see. I know what’s going on, and I’ve come to warn you.’ She let go of the handle of the dolly at last and it fell to the side of the copper with a dull clunk. Blowing a wisp of hair away from her eyes and putting her hands on her hips, she faced me.
‘To warn me?’ she said.
‘Not to come in November,’ I told her. ‘To the SWRI. It’s like this you see: three young girls, three young women and two matrons attacked in that order, every month.’
‘Every month?’ said Mrs McAdam, frowning.
‘Oh yes,’ I told her airily. ‘I’ve found them all. Every month since March it’s been. And so married ladies with families, like yourself, need to be told to beware, because it’s going to be one of you in two weeks’ time if we’re not careful.’
‘This is what you’ve worked out, is it?’ said Mrs McAdam, looking almost amused, which took some of the wind out of my sails. I thought I was due a bit of credit for having untangled it, surely. ‘And what do you make of it, madam? What do you reckon it’s all about?’
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