I went over and looked down into the jumble of string ends, seed packets, blunt penknives and the papery detritus of many flower bulbs. There was, naturally, nothing left to be seen. I could follow her and ask her what she had found. On the other hand, I had no standing here to be quite as inquisitive as all that. I decided to stay put and try, valiantly and alone, to turn this monstrous harvest into a selection of floral arrangements that could be plonked in vases and dispersed around the house. Wreaths and garlands were not necessary for a woman of fifty in my view. I attacked the drawer on the other side of the dresser, still hoping for the test-tubes, and it sprang open. There was another identical tangle of plant labels, envelopes, bulb skins and a sprinkling of sunflower seeds that had escaped their packet.
There was also – or so I very firmly believed – another object to match that which had just been found in the first drawer. I considered it closely without touching. It lay on top of the disordered contents in a way that could not be chance. I put a hand to my neck and remembered the scratchy feeling of the wool necklet I had worn last night. What lay in the drawer of this dresser was something quite different, although it was made of the same stuff. This wool had been worked into a little figure like a corn dolly. Its face was blank, although my fancy supplied some shadowy features from among the heathery light and shade of the yarn itself. Its arms were thick plaited straps and its hands had been formed by knotting the plaits and burning them into charred lumps. Its body was a stiff barrel shape made by wrapping the wool round a bobbin. Its legs were two single strands wisping off to nothing at their raw ends. It was crude but its meaning was clear. This was Lachlan, with his scarred fists and his withered legs.
I reached out a hand to the nasty thing, then I remembered Biddy Tibball’s words about the crow – ‘It’s when it flies off that it takes souls with it’ – and my hand froze halfway to the drawer.
‘Oh nonsense!’ I said to myself. I snatched the figure up, closed the drawer and left the flower room.
But who to ask? I could hear the low murmur of Hugh’s and Lachlan’s voices through the library door and was loath to bother them. Lady Love was nowhere to be found and not to be disturbed if one did track her down. Donald and Teddy would never let me live it down if I spoke to them of such a ludicrous superstition. The Tibballs were strangers to me. Cherry was already too upset for a girl in her condition, Mallory had been rattled last night and did not need me rattling her further. David Spencer had gone out for the day. I was standing at the foot of the stairs, wondering where to turn, when my eye landed on the telephone.
Alec Osborne is as English as English can be, hailing from the Dorset coast, but he has taken to Perthshire life with gusto and can match Hugh, fact for fact, when it comes to the ancient traditions and surviving ways. If there was anyone I could ask about this without sinking myself in his estimation, it was Alec.
I sat down on the hard chair beside the telephone and rang the exchange. With a great many clicks and buzzes and three or four of those ghostly conversations one used to hear all the time before the Perth exchange was modernised, my call was put through.
‘Dunelgar,’ said Barrow, Alec’s valet cum butler, in his usual way. That is to say as if one had just opened his tomb and shaken him.
‘It’s Mrs Gilver, Barrow,’ I said. ‘Good morning. Is Mr Osborne around?’
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Gilver,’ said Barrow. It was, I saw with a glance at a nearby grandfather clock, just gone twelve. ‘Mr Osborne is at Gilverton.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Dealing with the correspondence,’ Barrow said witheringly. Fussing over my dog, I interpreted. Molly, Alec’s spaniel, had finally lain down in her basket one night just after Christmas and breathed her last and I had a Dalmatian pup of great beauty and intelligence, who adored Alec and who was offering so much succour to him through his mourning that at times I felt a bit green about it all. If only we had not procured her, Bunty the second, from the single-end of a Glasgow gangster, I would have been tempted to go back and see if there was perhaps another litter with another such angel in it.
The exchange was quietly disapproving of a second call so shortly after I’d abandoned the first one, but the girl relented after a bit of coaxing and soon the bell rang out. I saw in my mind’s eye the set in my sitting room and the set in Hugh’s business room and Pallister, our butler – who could teach even Barrow a thing a or two about sounding recently disinterred – padding calmly towards one of them.
But when the receiver was dislodged it was Grant’s voice I heard, cheerful to the point of cockiness, coming down the line.
‘Gilverton. Good morning!’ she said.
‘It’s afternoon,’ I told her. ‘Why are you answering the telephone?’
‘Hello, madam,’ she said, unbowed. ‘How’s it all going? Mrs Tilling said she’d heard on the BBC that the weather’s atrocious up there.’
‘The weather is beautiful up here,’ I said. ‘Snow underfoot and blue sky above. Where’s Pallister?’
‘I am here, Mrs Gilver,’ said Pallister’s voice. ‘But I shall “hang up” now if I am not needed and deal with the matter later.’
There was a short burst of knocks and rattles as he put down the other telephone.
‘Well, Grant,’ I said. ‘You are what the boys would call “for it” and I can’t say I’m surprised. What on earth’s going on down there that you’re answering telephones?’
‘I’m in your sitting room,’ she said. ‘Mr Osborne asked me to take dictation.’ I waited. ‘Well, not true dictation, with a shorthand notebook or anything. But he said what he wanted me to write and I scribbled it down. There were ten letters between yesterday and today and he got overwhelmed. So I’m helping.’
‘And is Mr Osborne there now, too overwhelmed to chip in?’
‘He just stepped out with Bunty,’ said Grant. ‘Do you want me to call for him?’
‘Do I want you to hang out of the French window in my sitting room and halloo for Mr Osborne that he’s wanted on the telephone?’ I said. ‘No thank you. I do not have time to interview new butlers once Pallister drops dead.’
‘Is it anything I can help with?’
I sighed quietly. We have all learned, since the advent of the telephone, the knack of sighing with little enough force to avoid making the line crackle. ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘What would it mean for a little model of a person to be made and then stashed in a drawer?’
‘With pins in it?’
‘No.’
‘A noose round the neck?’
‘Grant,’ I said, ‘if either of those two features had been included, don’t you think I might have mentioned them? No, just a model of a person, in a drawer.’
‘Can you tell who it is?’ she said.
‘Oh yes. It’s …’ I looked around, peering up through the banisters and into the open doorways of the downstairs rooms. The Dunnochs were very insouciant about draughts. I turned away to the wall and put my hand round the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Lord Ross,’ I said, looking down at the little object, which sat in my lap looking blankly up at me from its featureless face. ‘He has withered legs and burnt hands from an act of heroism in the war, and this doll’s legs are single strands of wool and its hands have been charred to lumps. It’s him.’
‘And you’re sure about the act of heroism?’ said Grant.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, how long ago was the doll made? What order did the single strands and the withered legs happen in?’
I shuddered. ‘You are a ghoul,’ I said. ‘It was lying on top of a drawerful of bits and bobs in a flower room. It can’t have been in existence long.’
‘It can’t have been in the drawer long,’ Grant said, which was a fair point.
‘Let’s assume it’s a recent creation, depicting Lord Ross after the fact. Without pins or a noose, what does it mean that it’s in a drawer? Anything?’
Grant kept a thinking silence for a moment
or two, then sniffed. ‘There are some old superstitions about writing a person’s name on a scrap of paper and putting it in a drawer,’ she said. ‘Death within the year, supposedly. But voodoo dolls – that’s what it is, madam; whether you gasp or not – are harmless until the harm is evoked by a weapon.’
‘Weapon?’ I yelped.
‘Symbolic,’ said Grant. ‘Such as pins.’
‘And have you ever heard of two dolls being made, in case the first pins don’t work? One up the sleeve, as it were?’
‘No,’ said Grant. ‘Why?’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘When Mr Osborne gets back with Bunty can you ask him if he’s soaked up any Highland lore about all of this? The other signs have been northern in origin.’
‘What other signs?’ said Grant. Her attention had been wandering but now she was avid again.
‘A vision of Lord Ross walking on the moor, a black dog in the house and a raven in the dovecote,’ I said. ‘They’ve all got unpronounceable Gaelic names and they’ve put the willies up the entire household. The cook has been making charms out of wool for us to wear round our necks.’
‘She has the eolas?’ said Grant. ‘Nice to hear there’s a force at work on the side of good. Oh!’
‘What?’ I said, boggling rather at the idea that forces were at work on any side.
‘Did you say the dolly was made of wool? Its legs at least? And there’s a woman tying knots of protection? Perhaps the doll is a charm to protect Lord Ross, madam. Where did you find it? A drawer in the flower room? Stone-floored, is it? Tile-walled? I’d put it back, madam, if I were you. It might be there to keep him safe.’
I rang off. I am not ashamed to admit it. While I was replacing the handset and standing up, though, I somehow managed to let the little doll fall out of my grasp. It hit the floor head first and as I stooped to pick it up again, I am afraid that I even got as far as kicking it with the pointed toe of my elegant shoe. It rolled over twice and ended up under the telephone stand.
‘Oh God,’ I muttered, hurrying back to the flower room with it cradled in my arms like a kitten, hoping to make things balance out again. As I passed the closed library door, I listened for the groans and sounds of astonishment that would accompany Lord Ross suddenly pitching out of his wheeled chair and rolling around on the floor as though some giant were kicking him.
The gold dates on the garden journals winked at me as I wrenched the dresser drawer open again. I stuffed the doll back in and scuttled off to my bedroom. I was sitting staring at myself in the mirror when Hugh strode in.
‘Trouble, Dandy,’ he said.
I knew my eyes went wide and my mouth dropped open. I did not believe in voodoo or any of its Highland cousins, but if Hugh was about to report Lord Ross’s sudden collapse my lack of belief would take a deep dent.
Hugh was staring out of the window. ‘And the worst of it is,’ he said, ‘that Mallory’s portion wasn’t too bad. A goodly heap of hard cash and a share of the rich soil to boot.’
‘A share?’ I said, aghast at him. ‘A share, Hugh? I hope you demurred.’ The only way for Mallory to be awarded ‘a share’ of the ground that Maelrubha himself staked out and that the Mallorys and their tenant crofters had been enriching for over a thousand years since was via the most egregious enormity known to any countryman: splitting the land. Splitting the land was something the French did – carving up nice estates amongst enormous families until gentlemen were peasants; it was something Americans did – those forty acres and their single mules; it was something the avoidance of which had kept the English in soldiers and vicars for hundreds of years, as the younger sons were mopped up and the land kept intact.
‘She was to be given one of the crofts, Dandy,’ said Hugh in icy tones. ‘She was to be responsible for a croft.’
‘Oh,’ I said, suitably chastened. Then the odd phrase he had used struck me. ‘Was to be given?’ I said. ‘Is the wedding off?’
‘I think it will have to be,’ Hugh said. ‘There is, I am sorry to say, going to be a divorce in the family.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Yes, I thought there might be. Well, there are worse things.’
‘Not among distant cousins,’ said Hugh. ‘Among the very closest members of the family. The girl’s parents. Lady Love is divorcing Ross.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Both he and Mallory hinted that she had plans afoot. Actually, Mallory hoped that she had. The poor child was worried that her father might be bumped off to get him out of the way. As I said – there are worse things.’
Hugh was blinking rapidly and standing as rigid as he must have in his parade-ground days. ‘You knew?’ he said. ‘You didn’t think of mentioning it to me? Have you no sense of propriety left at all, Dandy? Or did you imagine we would have her birthday party anyway, with neighbours in, and then just toast to absent friends when it came to the bit?’
I turned round then, in case looking at his reflection in my dressing mirror had somehow made me misunderstand him. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Has she actually bolted already? Left her family on her birthday?’
‘What do you think I’m trying to tell you?’ said Hugh. ‘She left a note and legged it.’
‘Oh, poor Lachlan!’ I said. ‘Dear God, did a footman bring it to him on a salver?’
‘She didn’t leave it for Lachlan,’ said Hugh. ‘She left it upstairs in her bedroom. For her cook, if you please.’
‘But does Lachlan know, at least?’ I said.
‘I was there when Dickie Tibball came to tell him,’ Hugh said. ‘He is dumbstruck. He’s sitting in the dining room at the head of an unset table staring into space like a stone statue. Cherry and Mallory are wailing into Mitten and Donald’s necks in the morning room. I think Teddy has locked himself in a lavatory out of sheer discomfiture. And, oh Lord!’
He had leaned in towards the window and I stood up to see what had happened. Down on the snowy drive a pair of ladies, well wrapped up in Alpine jackets and britches, knitted caps on their heads and knitted mittens on the hands clutching their poles, were pegging up the sweep on skis. The Miss McIntoshes arriving for Lady Love’s birthday party.
As we stared, there was a knock at my door and Biddy Tibball came in, like a dog looking for forgiveness after a mess and a kick.
‘Dandy?’ she said. ‘Have you heard? Yes, I can see it in your faces. I hardly know what to say. But Dickie suggested I come and tell you that there’s a dinghy going out to meet the late boat in just under an hour. If you think you’d like to go home. And really, who could blame you?’
I thought about being hefted into the arms of a strange Highland man and carried over the shallows, about that dreadful boat, Toulouse-Lautrec at the wheel and sheep in the stern, about being pitched around and buffeted by the elements all the way to Plockton with nothing to look forward to but the long dreary motorcar journey home. Then I thought of facing Lachlan and making chit-chat with his friends and family.
‘I’ll pack,’ I said. ‘Hugh, gather the boys and let’s go.’
9
Half of me thought Donald would refuse to leave and all of me was unsettled by how easy it proved to sway him. Applecross ought to have exerted its hold over him through Mallory. The presence or absence of Lady Love ought to be of no consequence. And yet, there he was in his hat and coat, his packed bags around his feet, waiting for Hugh and me in the hall.
‘Are you sure you want to come back down with us?’ I said. ‘I would understand if Mallory wants you to stick around and …’
‘I think they want to circle the wagons,’ Donald said. ‘Different if it had been announced and was official.’
‘Indeed,’ said Hugh. ‘It has not been announced and is not official. You should think very carefully about your next steps, Donald my boy.’
Donald frowned at his father but before the message could be decoded, all of our attention was drawn away by Mallory arriving, deathly pale and solemn, with a handkerchief clutched in one hand.
‘I’m glad I’ve caug
ht you,’ she said. ‘I’ll write very soon. Or I’ll ring. Once things get a bit better sorted out.’
‘Jolly good,’ said Donald. ‘I should be around to be rung except for the odd day’s shooting.’
Teddy was skulking about in the shadow of the stairway overhang and he snorted at this exchange. Coming forward, he addressed Mallory in much warmer words. ‘It’ll all shake out, old thing,’ he said giving her a squeeze. ‘You’ll see. You’ll end up with a doting stepfather to spoil you and a wicked stepmother to keep you entertained. It’ll all shake out in the end.’
Mallory gave him a watery smile and a peck on the cheek.
‘Or,’ said Donald, roused into something approaching adequacy, ‘I can stay, if you like.’
‘No, that’s all right,’ said Mallory. ‘I’d run away with you, if I could. I certainly don’t expect you to stay. It’s bound to be excruciating. Oh, Mummy!’
And with that, she put her face into her handkerchief and gave way to a series of gulping sobs. Donald, Teddy and Hugh all turned beseeching eyes upon me.
‘There, there,’ I said, moving forward and patting her shoulder. ‘There, there, my dear. Remember what we said. About how much worse it could be?’
‘How could it be worse?’ came a voice from upstairs. I craned my neck and saw the gaunt face of Lord Ross staring down through the banister rails.
‘Daddy?’ said Mallory. ‘What are you doing? How did you get up there?’
‘Dickie helped me,’ said Lord Ross, wheeling himself forward. ‘I had to see for myself. I couldn’t believe it until I saw for myself. But it’s not some kind of off-colour joke. She’s really gone. Clothes gone, writing case gone. That silly little dressing trunk – all gone. She’s even taken this year’s diary, so you know she means it. She’s truly left us.’
The front door opened then, and there was Dickie Tibball himself, clapping his hands together in a cheerful way and telling us that the dinghy was in the water, ordering the footmen around and organising the removal of our bags. In the bustle of leaving, Lord Ross withdrew from the edge of the landing. When I looked up again, he was gone.
A Step So Grave Page 9