The Wicker Man: A Novel

by Robin Hardy

  ‘Priest? Minister?’ Loam reacted to the question as a canon of Canterbury Cathedral might if asked the whereabouts of the Grand Inca. Then the gardener smiled gently and walked away, slowly shaking his head. Howie watched him go.

  The spectre of the unknown, the fear of which he had banished from his mind as he left the inn that morning, came crowding back on him. He was in the midst of a community of several hundred souls utterly divorced from the Word of God in his very own police precinct. It was quite literally fearful! He made his way hurriedly into the church to pray for little Rowan’s soul and for Summerisle.

  The church, which Howie entered, his hat cradled under his arm, he was further shocked to find in utter ruination. A gaping roof let the sun flood down onto a floor overgrown with weeds, while the pews gave every evidence of having been hacked up for firewood. In the centre of the church was an ancient tomb with the skull and crossbones beneath a Celtic cross. The Latin legend Memento Mori was much worn but could still be discerned. As Howie rounded the tomb he caught sight of the sanctuary, where a woman was sitting upon what was left of the altar rail. She sat staring at him curiously, her legs plumped wide apart, the left one in the nave, the right one in the sanctuary. In her left hand she held an egg, while a babe sucked at her right pap, which was thrust through her open blouse. Howie averted his gaze from this, to him, weird sight and faced the altar, or what remained of it.

  Rotting fruit and vegetables littered the area around the altar and the shards of broken fruit boxes lay upon the Lord’s table itself. Howie walked forward and reverently cleared the table, removing the debris. Then, noticing that there was no single sign of the cross in the entire sanctuary, Howie took a piece of apple box and, splitting it in two, fashioned it into the shape of a cross and placed it upon the altar and bowed his head in prayer.

  Behind him the nursing mother was so surprised by what she, no doubt, saw as his curious ceremonial that she allowed her child to become detached from its eleven o’clock feed. The baby complained, a loud voice, frightening a rookery that was inhabiting a beech tree that overhung the church, filling the old ruin with a cawing and a crying that nevertheless did not disturb the sergeant’s silent prayer for poor, dead little Rowan.

  Gentle Jesus,

  Meek and mild,

  Look upon

  A little child

  And suffer her to come to Thee!

  As the sergeant left the now-echoing church, he looked back and saw something from which the sight of the nursing mother had at first distracted him. The sanctuary was quite clearly the same place in which the Thanksgiving photographs had been taken at the end of each summer. Howie remembered the piles of luscious produce in the pictures on the wall in the bar and remembered too that in each had stood a young girl dressed entirely in white, like a lass going to her First Communion back at Saint Andrew’s in Portlochlie.

  Could Rowan have stood in the missing photograph? He resolved to get the negative from Mr Lennox, the photographer, and check.

  Indeed much would now have to be checked and double-checked. Since these folk had this strange coyness about mentioning ‘death’ he must revisit Mrs May Morrison and see if she changed her story in any way. Above all, he must now establish beyond doubt how Rowan had died. Nothing in the past twenty-four hours made Howie very sanguine about getting a straight answer on the subject. Death certificates, however, rarely lied and, at the very least, a doctor was obliged to give an opinion as to the cause of death.

  Howie, as he emerged from the church, was all too conscious that his job was but half done. The anonymous letter, whose lead he had been following, was right about Rowan having disappeared from her home. Death was certainly a conclusive form of disappearance. Yet it seemed to Howie, as he stood in the graveyard watching Loam now busy deepening an already freshly dug grave, that he could tick off a whole series of questions that the discovery of Rowan’s grave now raised.

  Why had no one recognized the photograph sent him of Rowan Morrison? Unless the dead girl and the pretty creature in the photograph were not one and the same person.

  If her mother was not May Morrison, why was she listed as from that address in the school register?

  Why did her sister, Myrtle, insist she existed but that she was a hare? Childish gibberish, perhaps? Or containing a kernel of truth? Locked, perhaps, in some associated idea in the child’s mind?

  Since the anonymous letter had been postmarked Summerisle, the writer clearly either lived there or spent time there recently. Then why did he, or she (judging by the handwriting), not know of Rowan’s death? Unless the islanders had been as reticent about the child’s death with the letter writer as they had been with himself.

  Who was the anonymous letter writer? Of course, a major fingerprinting operation would probably turn up the answer to that. But this seemed to Howie, at the moment, the lowest of his priorities.

  He was leaving the graveyard when he noticed that the grave that Loam was digging was at least nine feet deep.

  ‘That’s a bit more than the traditional six feet, isn’t it?’ Howie asked, curious.

  ‘Got to dig ’em deep, otherwise they’d be at ’em,’ said the old gardener, shaking his head.

  ‘Who would?’ asked Howie.

  ‘Those who need the Hand of Glory, for a start,’ said the old gardener.

  ‘What?’ Howie felt he was struggling with a foreign language.

  ‘You know!’ said the old gardener. ‘To make people sleep. Grave earth for a light sleep–Hand of Glory for a deep ’un. I don’t mind ’em taking a bit of earth–that don’t make no extra work–but the other’s something else.’

  ‘What exactly is the Hand of Glory?’ asked Howie fascinated.

  ‘Don’t you ever stop asking questions?’ grumbled Loam. ‘I got this job to finish.’

  The old man turned back to his digging.

  ‘It’s my job to ask questions,’ said Howie emphatically. But the gardener continued to dig, unperturbed.

  ‘Look, I’m a police officer, and when I ask questions I expect answers!’

  The gardener paused briefly in his work.

  ‘There are some answers you wouldn’t understand,’ he said. ‘Go home. You’ve found what you came looking for.’ He went back to work, completely ignoring the fuming Howie.

  If only ‘dumb insolence’ were an indictable offence, he often thought, how happy it would make police officers. He contented himself with a dry retort:

  ‘I’m not so sure what I’ve found yet,’ said Howie. ‘And seeing you like digging so much, old man, I think I can get you some extra employment, pretty soon.’

  As Howie walked away towards the lych-gate, the old man spat expressively and went back to work.

  CHAPTER V

  Afternoon –

  the 30th of April

  SERGEANT HOWIE FELT CONTENT AS HE WALKED BACK across the green towards the High Street that in spite of its frustrating and, indeed, shocking moments, the morning had been fruitful. Apart from the progress he’d made on the Rowan Morrison case, and it had been substantial, the inquiry had made it possible to discover the desperate need for some solid police work on this extraordinary island.

  There was no question in his mind either but that the churches should send a minister or priest here, at once, to do the essential missionary work of bringing these poor people back to Christ. The sergeant was grateful that he, and not some atheist like McTaggart, had come to Summerisle. Not every police officer would have recognized the spiritual evil here as quickly or clearly as he. Howie allowed himself no false humility in acknowledging that.

  Now that his stomach told him that it was lunchtime, he hesitated to go to the inn where the food was so disgusting. Instead, since his duty took him there anyway, he decided to lunch on a chocolate hare bought from Mrs Morrison. Well, he thought, perhaps, under the circumstances, not a hare … For as he walked again into the shop there seemed a great deal else from which to choose. Like many people who took compara
tively little alcohol and abhorred smoking, Howie had a sweet tooth. He gazed greedily at an iced marzipan sugar baby and some sherbet-filled liquorice skuttles in the window, before entering the shop. Mrs Morrison, who was in her back parlour with Myrtle, shouted through the open doorway for the sergeant to kindly await her for a ‘wee moment’.

  Howie was happy enough to have time to survey the other goodies on the counter but was distracted by the sound of little Myrtle whining about something. Looking up, he saw that the child was refusing to take some form of medicine that was hidden from his view by May Morrison’s back.

  ‘What a silly child you are, to be sure, making all this fuss,’ Mrs Morrison was saying. ‘It’s just a little frog. Anyone would think you didn’t want to get better. Now open wide … and in he goes.’

  Myrtle reluctantly opened her mouth very wide indeed and the astonished Howie watched her mother cram a live frog into her child’s mouth. Mother and child looked at each other, the former pursing her lips to show that the frog must be kept in place. The child’s cheeks bulged and her eyes watered. Then Mrs Morrison took the frog out again.

  ‘… And out he comes, and it’s all over. There, that didn’t hurt, did it? Now you can have a sweetie.’

  Mrs Morrison was both solicitous and loving after the little ordeal. She put the frog in a transparent plastic biscuit box pierced with holes, and replaced the lid. Then she bustled out to attend to Sergeant Howie.

  Howie decided to temper his natural anger with this woman, who, he considered, had lied to him so abominably, in favour of encouraging her to talk. It was impossible, for instance, that she could now deny her daughter’s existence before death even, if, like Miss Rose, she had some hang-up about the state of being dead itself. Subtlety might pay dividends in this case, he thought.

  ‘I’d like a barley sugar maypole, and a quarter pound of mint bullseyes,’ said Howie.

  ‘I made the maypoles fresh today. I put a wee spreckit of whisky in ’em to give ’em a little bite,’ said Mrs Morrison as she weighed out the bullseyes. While Howie counted out some change to pay for the purchase, Myrtle spoke in a complaining voice, close to tears, from the parlour.

  ‘You promised me a sweetie. I want a mulberry gobstopper. The froggy tasted horrid. Horrid!’ she added with emphasis.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Howie taking his package. ‘Mrs Morrison, I’ve just come from the graveyard!’

  He was not really surprised at her reaction, although he noticed a flicker of hesitation and a slight reddening of her face as she spoke.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Mrs Morrison with a hint of contrition. ‘And we’ve been so remiss about the headstone. I hope poor Rowan will forgive us, wherever she is.’

  ‘Mrs Morrison,’ said Howie quietly, ‘why did you tell me that Myrtle is an only child?’

  ‘But she is,’ Mrs Morrison insisted. ‘Rowan isn’t my child any more!’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me her soul lives on in a bush or an animal,’ said Howie angrily.

  ‘Of course it does,’ cried Mrs Morrison happily. ‘It’s as I say, she’s not my daughter any longer. She’s something else. Excuse me, I’ve got to take this sweet to Myrtle.’ Mrs Morrison, who had unscrewed a huge gobstopper jar, carried it back to a now weeping Myrtle. The child was crouched near the transparent biscuit box watching the frog.

  ‘I hated that frog in my mouth, Mummy. Hated it! Horrid, Horrid!’

  ‘I know, dear,’ comforted Mrs Morrison. ‘But it’s all over now. Here’s your sweetie for being a brave girl.’

  Mrs Morrison let Myrtle select her favourite gobstopper, put her arm around her child, and pointed to the little frog.

  ‘He’s got your horrid old sore throat now, hasn’t he, poor creature. Can’t you hear him croaking?’ she asked.

  The frog croaked mournfully as Myrtle went to work on the enormous sweet in her mouth. Howie tried not to let the extraordinary idea of the frog having assumed Myrtle’s sore throat distract him. He knew there was something else he’d wanted to ask Mrs Morrison. What was it?

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Sergeant?’ asked Mrs Morrison, anxious to be rid of him.

  ‘I doubt it, seeing as you’re all raving mad!’ Howie said, but he smiled his gentle smile at the woman who had lost her daughter. He was probing his memory. Then it came to him. ‘There’s just one thing I’d like to know. What was the cause of … death?’

  Mrs Morrison looked for a moment distant and sad.

  ‘She was so hot, burning … poor love! I’d rather you talked to Dr Ewan about it,’ she said, indicating Myrtle. ‘He only lives over the street, next to the chemist.’

  Howie gazed pityingly at the three of them. The woman, the child, and the frog. From such superstition, he believed, had Our Lord delivered all Christians. Few people realized how fortunate they were in this respect. He touched his hat politely and left.

  Howie found the doctor’s residence at once. A shiny brass plate advertised Dr Ewan’s house conveniently next door to the chemist’s shop. He rang and waited. There was no answer. But the door of the chemist’s shop opened and its proprietor emerged, reminding Howie of a creature that, having been stuffed, somehow became reanimated but in a limited kind of way.

  ‘He’s out on his rounds till lunchtime, I’m afraid!’ the man said. ‘Perhaps I could take a message or assist in some way?’ Howie looked at the chemist, then up at the name above his shop, which read T. H. Lennox.

  ‘You are Mr Lennox, the photographer?’ Howie’s card index mind was at work. He remembered the photographs at the inn.

  ‘I am first a chemist, secondly a photographer, and thirdly a purveyor of Thermos flasks and hotties,’ said Mr Lennox.

  ‘Hotties?’ asked Howie.

  ‘Hot water bottles!’ explained Lennox kindly. ‘More efficacious than most of Dr Ewan’s specifics, believe me. Do you want your photograph taken?’

  ‘No, thank you, but I would like a word with you.’

  ‘Oh, come inside then. Please!’ Mr Lennox was most solicitous.

  Inside the shop, the shelves and counters were full of jars containing bizarre objects like leeches and fillets of snake, omen sticks, and strips of ‘witches’ mummy’, looking like exactly what it was, desiccated corpse flesh. On the counter nearest Howie when he entered, was a glass container of foreskins, slightly bloodstained and packed tight together. Like everything else it was clearly labelled. Howie’s capacity for incredulity was again strained almost to its utmost, as he looked at the jar of foreskins.

  ‘Foreskins? How do you get foreskins?’ he asked.

  It was Mr Lennox’s turn to be incredulous.

  ‘Circumcision. How else? I pay Ewan a reasonable price for them,’ he said a touch defensively.

  ‘But what on earth are they for?’

  ‘If ritually burnt they bring the rain,’ explained Lennox. ‘But, of course, up here, there’s very little call for them.’

  Howie could well imagine that rainmaking might be a neglected art in the western isles of Scotland. Not for the first time he considered the possibility that he was the victim of some gigantic practical joke. That some unseen hand was trying to distract him from the truth.

  ‘Now, how can I help you?’ asked Mr Lennox, politely waiting for his visitor to come to the point.

  ‘You take the Harvest Festival photographs every autumn, don’t you? The ones I saw in the Green Man?’ asked Howie.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Lennox. ‘It’s rather humdrum work, I’m afraid. Though mind you, I do think the one about ten years ago that’s slightly fogged is just about the most literal realization of “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” that could be contrived. Don’t you?’

  Howie was not prepared to discuss Mr Lennox’s art.

  ‘What happened to last year’s picture?’ he asked pointedly.

  ‘Isn’t it there with the others?’ asked Mr Lennox, sounding shocked and surprised.

  ‘No. Apparently it got broken, or i
n some way destroyed,’ answered Howie watching Lennox closely.

  ‘What a pity!’ sighed Mr Lennox in apparently genuine regret.

  ‘Yes!’ said Howie. ‘Would you have a copy of it?’

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t keep copies!’ said Mr Lennox. ‘I’ve got the negative, of course, and I could have one printed up for you if you like,’ he added helpfully.

  ‘Thank you. Yes, I should like that,’ said Howie. ‘I’ve never seen pictures quite like them before,’ he added truthfully.

  ‘No? … Well, perhaps they are rather special.’

  Mr Lennox was clearly flattered. Assuming the conversation ended, he went to open the door to his shop with a courtly flourish. Realizing he was being ‘seen on his way’, Howie paused.

  ‘There’s just one more thing,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’ said Mr Lennox courteously.

  ‘Can you remember who the girl was in the Harvest Festival last year?’ asked Howie.

  Mr Lennox looked at the sergeant sadly, shaking his head.

  ‘I’ve taken so many, y’know,’ he said.

  ‘Could it have been Rowan Morrison?’ asked Howie.

  The eyes of the two men locked for an instant, then Mr Lennox looked away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I get so confused with all the different names.’

  He shrugged apologetically and kept looking evasively away. Howie dragged his photograph of Rowan Morrison out of his pocket and thrust it under Lennox’s nose.

  ‘This girl,’ he said. ‘Was it this girl?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say,’ stumbled Mr Lennox. ‘Why don’t we consult the picture and avoid the tricks of memory?’

  ‘It was only eight months ago, man,’ Howie insisted. ‘Surely you can remember whether or not …’

  Howie was interrupted by the sound of a ‘machine’ outside. The first he’d heard on the island.

  ‘There’s Dr Ewan now,’ said Mr Lennox urgently. ‘If I were you I’d get him before he starts his lunch. He’s very particular about the time of his meals.’

  Mr Lennox was pointing to a man dismounting an ancient motorcycle and making his way towards his house. He was a very typical country doctor, middle-aged and greying, with his plump figure more than adequately filling his creased tweed suit. He carried the usual black bag. Howie ran out of the chemist’s shop to intercept him.