A Step So Grave

by Catriona McPherson

  Perhaps it was the conversation we had just been a part of, but that ‘stroll round the garden’ struck me as terribly thoughtless. Any mention of the garden was tainted now. Biddy was right about the soup, though. The dining room was not chilly but billows of steam rose in rolls from the ten plates. Dickie Tibball’s spectacles clouded as he bent over his serving.

  It was, I saw with horror, so thick as to be not quite flat on top, still showing signs of the ladle’s last drops sitting proud on the surface. I diagnosed barley and mutton from its dark grey colour and the viscous skin over the lumps beneath. It was, in short, Scotch broth, the very concoction that made me weep with homesickness when I was first served it, just after my honeymoon all those years ago. Mrs Tilling, my cook, had been running through the entire Scottish repertoire in my honour, from haunches of venison to plates of humble porridge. Scotch broth, I was to understand, was the jewel in the crown, studded with chunks of Swedish turnip and threaded with scraps of bitter kale.

  I jabbed my spoon into the current bowlful and lifted. There was a sucking sound as the soup below reluctantly loosened its grip. Just as reluctantly I put the spoon to my lips. It was powerfully flavoured, of course; as though a whole sheep, after a long life, had been boiled in the pan with the barley.

  ‘Do excuse my treat,’ said Lord Ross. ‘I thought I’d never get through the party tonight – a lot of silly little nibbles of nothing – without a decent luncheon. Supper is cold cuts and shift for ourselves, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Nothing to apologise for,’ said Hugh. ‘Scotch broth made me the man I am.’

  Alec glanced at me and raised one eyebrow about an eighth of an inch.

  ‘I can eat it as long as I don’t see it being made,’ said Biddy Tibball. ‘Mrs McReadie is terribly old-fashioned. She has a sheep’s head delivered right from the killing and she burns off the wool with a hot poker. She swears by it, but the smell would make you faint, Dandy.’

  ‘Jolly sensible,’ Hugh said. ‘Put the whole thing in the pot, brains and all.’

  ‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘Brains on toast was always a suppertime treat for Mummy. Mrs McReadie splits the skull with a cleaver and removes them.’

  At last, this grisly conversation had strayed too close to recent memories and it petered out. After a few moments of silence, broken only by the swamp-like sucking noises as spoonfuls of soup were separated and then by the gurgling whistles of them being drunk, I felt the spirit of Nanny Palmer move within me and attempted to get things afloat once more.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help with the party preparations, Mallory? I am quite at leisure this afternoon if you need me.’

  Mallory took a minute to think. ‘The flowers are done,’ she said. ‘The food is in hand. I’d appreciate it if you’d take a quick look at the ballroom. See if I’ve got everything laid out in sensible places. The drinks and so on. Are you any good at calligraphy?’

  ‘I can write without making blots.’

  ‘Only there are some people coming who’ve never been in the house before,’ she said. ‘I wanted to make a couple of signs pointing the ladies towards the withdrawing rooms.’

  ‘Mallory!’ said Biddy Tibball. ‘Really, dear, not at the luncheon table, please. But of course I’m very happy to write the signs if you would show me where you’ve put the card. I was well-trained by a very peculiar headmistress in the village school,’ she said, in explanation to Alec, Hugh and me as if we cared. ‘Miss Alva. We all went off to big school already with perfect penmanship, if rather haphazard ideas about arithmetic.’

  The conversation became general, then, and stayed general until we had drained our coffee cups of the nasty bitter coffee the Dunnochs served and gone about our afternoon’s business. Hugh elected to take Bunty for a good tramp over the high ground. I thanked him fulsomely, but I was not taken in. He needed the walk more than she did and once he was away from prying eyes he would shower her with kisses and come home in a better temper.

  Alec and I went to the ballroom, ostensibly to approve Mallory’s arrangements, but actually to discuss her bombshell and plan our attack on Mitten.

  It was a newish wing, as they tend to be, with a billiards room downstairs and this great barn above, and was as unappealing as any ballroom empty at two o’clock in the afternoon with daylight pouring in and showing up all its little imperfections. The folds in the curtains were darker than the planes, the floor was shinier at the edge than in the middle, the wallpaper was sooty behind the sconces and faded from washing at the chair rail. Later that evening, in gentle candlelight, the floor covered in dancing couples and the air filled with music and laughter, it would take on a satisfactorily fairy-tale quality, but for now it was drear.

  The one feature I had not expected, although perhaps I should have, was Grant, on a high stepladder in the middle of the floor, stringing what looked like ropes of beading between the two chandeliers.

  ‘It looks like a cobweb,’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘They’re glass,’ said Grant. ‘They’ll twinkle when the lamps are lit. It’s going to be magical. And I see you glaring at the curtains, madam, but I have glass roses to poke into the folds there too to catch the light.’

  ‘Glass roses,’ I said. ‘Where did you get them? I assume you didn’t blow the glass yourself this morning?’

  ‘They were decorations for Lady Love’s fortieth birthday,’ said Grant. ‘Held outside in what they call the “apple crosses”, which is inviting confusion if you ask me. But since it was such an unhelpful time of year for real flowers they brought in false ones. It must have been a picture, madam, don’t you think? Glass roses on sticks and electric lamps to light them up. I wish I’d seen it. Anyway, there they were in the attics doing nothing but gathering dust so I brought them down, had those footmen of theirs’ – she meant Lairdie and Mackie – ‘wash them and now I’m nearly finished.’

  ‘What do you mean, “there they were in the attics”?’ I said. ‘What were you doing in the attics?’

  Grant opened her eyes very wide and spoke in tones of injured innocence. ‘I was searching for the missing bags,’ she said. ‘The trunk, the two cases and the all-important diary.’

  ‘Pull the other one,’ I said.

  ‘Oh very well,’ Grant said crossly. ‘I was looking for “something old” for Miss Mallory’s going-away outfit. I’ve convinced her she doesn’t have to have it as part of her wedding costume itself. It’s far from practical with the clean lines of this year’s silhouette. Not like your wedding dress, madam, where any bit of old ribbon tied on just merged into the overall … fun.’

  ‘Clean lines?’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me Mallory’s going to be one of those sylphs in a nightie? They’re barely decent at all and certainly not for church.’

  ‘She has a lovely ligne,’ said Grant. ‘No point hiding it under a milkmaid costume.’

  ‘Or in other words, Mallory had a perfectly respectable pretty dress all picked out and you’ve nagged her into ditching it for a scrap of chiffon that will make the vicar blush.’

  ‘Personally, I don’t mind young girls making the most of their bloom even if mine is faded,’ said Grant. ‘It’s a shame to resent them.’

  I opened my mouth but found myself to be speechless. When I turned to Alec to see if there was support in that quarter I saw him over at the wall of windows, staring out of the central one.

  ‘What time did it start and stop snowing?’ he said. ‘Could Mitten really have killed Lady Love out there in the early evening and counted on the snow to cover her?’

  ‘He must have,’ I said. ‘She was there. She was there by nine the next morning anyway, when Hugh and I feasted our eyes.’ Alec grunted but kept staring. ‘So either she was left there before the heavy snow started or she was moved there long before it stopped.’

  ‘What’s this?’ said Grant, coming down her stepladder and walking over to join Alec.

  ‘There is a way it could have been done,’ he said.

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nbsp; I hurried over and stared down at the view. It had changed entirely since I stood at the landing window with Hugh. Then it had been stark and white with the naked apple boughs a kind of cross-hatching above. Now it was like looking down on clouds of blossom with a few dots of green grass peeping through. Alec shifted to another window and then yet again to a window in the corner, before returning. He looked at the garden through first one eye and then the other.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  ‘I’m pretty sure,’ he answered, ‘that there’s a route from the far side – from the potting shed where a peat-cutter might be kept – to the middle where her body was found, where the top bit of the arbour or whatever you call it hides every inch of the ground.’

  ‘And?’ I said.

  ‘Imagine Lady Love met her killer – Mitten, for the sake of argument – in the potting shed. And she was killed there. I think he could have dragged her body to the middle without his footprints being visible from the house.’

  ‘Which would only make sense if he happened to know that there was a route where his footprints could not be seen,’ I insisted. ‘And anyway, why would he drag her there at all?’

  ‘To make sure she wasn’t discovered,’ said Alec. ‘As Mallory said. If the snow had started and no one was allowed to step on it then she was safe under the dovecote until it melted.’

  ‘It would have been very risky,’ Grant said. ‘Why not leave her in the potting shed and lock the door?’

  ‘Depends how many keys there are,’ I pointed out.

  ‘But leaving her out in the open would have been madness,’ Grant insisted.

  ‘Look,’ said Alec. ‘Can you see the dovecote? Yes, all right, I know you can see the weathervane, but can you see the base of it? Can you see the ground?’

  ‘Alec, dear,’ I said, ‘Hugh and I not only saw the base of the dovecote; we saw the handle of the peat-cutter sticking up. Honestly, you can see everything through the branches in winter.’

  ‘Well, either she was killed there or she was moved there,’ Alec said. ‘Because she was there! So someone must have left her there or put her there. I’m just trying to work out who and when. And why.’

  ‘And how, darling,’ I said. ‘Because snow is the most unhelpful surface to drag a bloody corpse through, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Perhaps if you lean hard on the suspect he’ll tell you,’ said Grant. ‘Mitten, you say?’ I rather thought she wanted rid of us so she could get back to her strings of glass beads and roses. But she made a good point and so we obeyed her.

  On our way down the stairs, we passed Mallory on her way up them, with Donald in tow. ‘I’m going to dust the chairs and Donald said he’d carry them one by one to the ballroom,’ Mallory said.

  ‘Jolly good,’ I said. ‘It’s nice to see you pitching in, Donald. Where’s Teddy?’

  ‘Out with Father,’ Donald said gloomily. Carrying dusted chairs, even with his beloved, was dull stuff compared with racketing about the countryside, I surmised. And Hugh, on the topic of other landowners’ shortcomings, can be inadvertently entertaining.

  ‘The room looks lovely, by the way, Mallory,’ I said. ‘We’ve just come from there. All shipshape.’ She beamed and then I ruined it, by adding: ‘Do you happen to know where Mitten is?’

  Donald shot me a poisonous look and put his arm round Mallory, drawing her away.

  ‘We really do need to find him,’ I said, as we descended to the ground floor. ‘We can’t follow him up and down the rows in the potato field asking the kind of questions we need to ask.’

  ‘They were getting on too well this morning to still be at it now,’ said Alec.

  In fact, we stumbled upon him without effort. As we crossed the hall in search of anyone who might give us directions to his cottage, a loud groan came from the offshoot leading to the flower room. Alec shared a frown with me and then walked softly towards the door. I followed on my tiptoes, lest the metalled rims of my country shoes ring out. When we were halfway, another groan, even deeper and more pained than the first, met our ears.

  ‘I say, are you all right?’ Alec said.

  ‘Nothing an hour in Epsom salts won’t cure.’ It was Mitten himself. Alec pushed open the door and entered the room with me at his heels. Mitten sat on a low stool in his stockinged feet, a pair of muddy boots unlaced before him. He wiggled his toes and groaned again.

  ‘The tatties are planted!’ he said, like an emperor making a proclamation. ‘It’s back-breaking work but one can hardly complain when one’s wife and old women in their eighties are hard at it alongside. Oh!’ he said, as some bit of him cracked with an explosive report. I could not help wincing.

  ‘I applaud your dedication to the crofting life,’ I said. ‘It’s quite remarkable the way you and Cherry join in.’

  Mitten smiled. He was a pleasant-looking young man, even when begrimed and perspiring. His hair was reddish and sat in crisp curls on his head and his jaw was strong and square. I glanced at his hands, workworn and reddened. And something that should perhaps have occurred to me before occurred to me then. If Mitten Tibball had killed Lady Love by bashing her in the head with a peat-cutter, why would he have blood on his hands? Even if he had dragged her to the middle of the garden after the blow was delivered, he would have pulled her by the feet or by the arms, surely. Certainly not by the head anyway. Once again, where would blood have come from?

  ‘We have been given permission by Lord Ross to ask a few questions,’ I said. Alec did his best not to appear startled by my bold opening. I did my best not to blush with shame about the egregious lie of omission I had just told. We had been given permission to ask questions, certainly, but of Mallory, and we had asked them.

  ‘Oh?’ said Mitten. ‘Questions about what?’ Then he winced and dipped his head. ‘Forgive me. Of course. About what happened on Valentine’s Day.’

  Alec and I shared a glance. I shrugged, for it seemed to me that the only way to do this was head on. ‘Mallory just told us she thinks you killed her mother,’ I said. ‘But she loves Cherry so very much she’s willing to go along with this tramp nonsense.’

  Mitten let his head fall back so sharply it knocked against the wall. He rubbed it absent-mindedly as he stared up at us.

  ‘I didn’t kill Lady Love,’ he said. ‘I found her. I tried to help her but I thought it was too late.’

  ‘You found her body?’ Alec said. ‘By the dovecote?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In the potting shed?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Mitten with a puzzled look. ‘Why the potting shed? No, I found her in here.’

  A shudder ran through me from head to toe and left every hair on my head standing up.

  ‘When?’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean “when”?’ said Mitten. ‘The day she died, of course. The eve of her birthday. I came in here to fetch my thick boots to go to church and found her, sprawled on the floor with that … dreadful thing sticking out of her.’

  ‘The peat-cutter,’ I said.

  ‘Lawn-edger,’ said Mitten. ‘Not peat-cutter. It was a little demilune Lady Love and McReadie use for edging the grass paths. But yes. I tried to remove it. It looked so horrific, dug into her. I thought she was dead. She was so cold and felt so wooden when I touched her arm. I was sure she was dead.’

  ‘She was dead,’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She moved,’ said Mitten. ‘So she can’t have been. She must have come round and gone outside. It’s where she would go if she was in extreme distress, I’m sure of that much. To the centre of the garden; that was the centre of her life. I don’t know how to forgive myself for not raising the alarm when I should have. Maybe she would be alive today if I had.’

  I did not want to make the young man feel foolish, but I could not allow him to persist in his delusion. ‘Of course she was dead,’ I said.

  ‘But she moved,’ said Mitten. ‘She wasn’t found where I found her.’

  ‘She was moved,’ sai
d Alec. ‘No doubt about that. Someone moved her.’ He did not say that someone was just about to move her again when that disembodied scream had come out of the darkness.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’ I asked.

  ‘I …’ He bowed his head as though a wave of shame washed over him. When he raised it, he said, ‘I put it in Mallory’s lap. I left it to her and I didn’t try to persuade her. Well …’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I can’t actually remember what I said to her exactly. I was distraught. But she understood me. It was her decision to make.’

  ‘She did not understand you,’ Alec thundered, making the young man flinch. ‘Haven’t you been listening?’

  ‘Mallory thought you were confessing,’ I said. ‘She reported to us that you apologised. You begged for forgiveness.’

  ‘Confe …’ He ran out of breath as though he had suffered a blow in the middle of his chest. It took two gasping gulps get him right again. ‘Why did she not tell someone then?’

  ‘She was protecting her sister,’ I said. ‘She loves Cherry and Cherry loves you. So Mallory decided you were to be kept out of harm’s way.’

  ‘That’s mad,’ said Mitten. ‘I can’t believe it of her.’

  ‘Even though you did the same thing?’ said Alec. ‘Who were you protecting? By washing your hands and keeping quiet?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Answer us that, at least. Who do you think did it?’

  ‘My father,’ Mitten said. ‘I thought he’d seen red and set upon her. He had good reason. She was going to throw my mother and father to the dogs after years of loyal friendship and service. Marooned up here, miles from anything, my father lugging the old man from bed to bath to chamber pot.’

  ‘Don’t scorn an old solider for his injuries,’ said Alec. ‘That’s not cricket.’

  ‘And my mother, a glorified companion, pretending it was good fun, just like when they were girls. I reckoned when my father heard about the scheme— You know what it was, I suppose?’

  ‘To sell the house, give away the crofts and live in the manse,’ I said.