A Step So Grave

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘That was odd, wasn’t it: McReadie grubbing out plants when he did?’

  ‘He was in the throes of great grief,’ I said. I held up a hand as he threatened to interrupt me. ‘Even though he killed her. But perhaps the feud with his mistress over her plantings was too well-known by all the house-hold. Still, one would think he’d nurse those ill-judged little seedlings like his own sickly child with a fever.’

  Alec nodded. ‘And yet he couldn’t rip them out fast enough.’

  ‘What were they?’ I said. ‘Did he say?’

  ‘Can it possibly matter?’ said Alec.

  I shrugged. ‘I just wonder if there was some element of sorcery about them,’ I said. ‘Perhaps they were planted not for scent or colour but for protection. I wouldn’t put it past Lady Love. And so he feared they might invite harm to him that killed her.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Alec said. ‘I mean, this was where she meant to live through the current summer, wasn’t it? And these are just cottage-garden flowers. Speedwell and suchlike. What’s that thing?’

  ‘Dicentra,’ I said. And at Alec’s look: ‘I can’t help it. Hugh has dinned it all into me over the years. And this is lunaria. I have no idea if they have protective qualities.’

  ‘I never understood the lure of the Latin name,’ Alec said. ‘The folk names are so much prettier. What could be sweeter than speedwell?’

  ‘It’s also known as forget-me-not,’ I said. ‘Forget-me-not, honesty and the bleeding heart certainly do sound more poetic than myosotis, lunaria and dicentra.’

  ‘Rather too sweet for my taste,’ Alec said. ‘Do you think they were perhaps chosen for the messages they send? I’d love to know what was in the other knot, in that case. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No doubt the planting plan is in the journal,’ I said. ‘Wherever that is. Look, let’s get back to the house, shall we?’

  And yet what we found ourselves doing – partly because Bunty was tugging us but partly because we could not resist the lure – was climbing the hill behind the house, up to the graveyard, up to where the walls stopped and the land opened and up again, until we were standing on the summit, surrounded by shorn sheep and uninterested cows, panting slightly and looking down on the buildings and the little patchwork of fields as if we were giants or they a model.

  ‘We should be able to see it, don’t you think?’ Alec said.

  I put my hands on my knees and bent over, breathing hard. ‘Is that what we’re doing up here?’ I said. ‘Yes, I’ve been thinking the same. When the boys were tiny, they had a charming little book of painted pictures with objects hidden in them. A seaside scene with ten shells disguised as shadows. Or a circus with top hats everywhere. Of course, they became familiar in the end and then the book was only wheeled out for visitors, but this case makes me feel as though I’m reading another one for the first time. This is a farming scene.’

  For there was indeed a hay-cutting going on in the lower fields, as Alec had guessed earlier from his fit of sneezing. The crofters looked like toy figures as they scythed the virgin sward, then tossed the cut hay, raked it and gathered it, straightened it into bundles and spread it along the walls to dry in the sunshine.

  ‘Or a garden,’ Alec said. ‘With lawn-edgers everywhere.’

  ‘Peat-cutters.’

  ‘Well, there’s one thing we can do,’ said Alec. ‘We can check to see if they’re the same thing and, if not, why the confusion.’

  ‘Let’s ask the haymakers,’ I said. ‘They’re bound to know and they’ll be glad of a rest, don’t you think? It must be hot work.’

  ‘Surely Cherry isn’t amongst them,’ Alec said. ‘She can’t be going straight from a hayfield to her bridesmaid’s dress.’

  She was not. We saw, when we had descended the hill and hallooed the workers, that neither Mitten nor Cherry was part of the fun this morning. Everyone else from the sheep-shearing was there, though, and we were hailed as old friends.

  One of the women brought two tin cups of water over to us and raised her own horn water bottle in salutation.

  ‘You’ll think we’re daft,’ she said. ‘But it’s to rain on Monday and tomorrow’s the Sabbath so it’s this or nocht. We’ll be washed and in our best for the wedding and we’ll enjoy it all the more with the hay cut and drying there.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Alec said. ‘I’m a farmer myself. I quite understand. And we won’t keep you any longer than we have to. Only, we have a question. About farm implements.’

  ‘Scythes?’ the woman said. ‘Hoy! Wullie. Gentleman’s wanting a lookie at your scythe.’

  Alec waved his arms back and forth to tell ‘Wullie’ not to interrupt his rhythm. ‘Not scythes,’ he said. ‘Peat-cutters. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one and we were just wondering … how big is the blade?’

  The woman wiped her lips and recorked her bottle, frowning at us. ‘You were “just wondering” what like the spit depth is on a peat-cutter?’ she said. It did sound foolish when she repeated it that way.

  ‘Look,’ Alec said. ‘It’s about the night Lady Love was killed. Unbelievable as it sounds, no one is entirely sure what weapon was used. It’s been called a peat-cutter and a lawn-edger and we’d like to make sure – doubly, trebly sure – that we’ve got it quite straight.’

  ‘A lawn-edger?’ said the woman. ‘Likes of for the garden? That’s a wee half-moon thing, isn’t it not? Aye, and a peat-cutter’s a great big thing, bigger than a shovel. They’re nothing like.’

  ‘Well, but is there perhaps a small peat-cutter, for cutting small peats, for a small fireplace?’ I said. ‘One that would do service as a lawn-edger?’

  Now the woman was staring at us as though we were children, and not particularly bright ones. ‘Naw,’ she said. ‘If you’re after small peats you split big ones.’

  ‘So it’s impossible to mistake one for the other?’

  ‘Aye, only a softie would think they’re the same.’

  Alec made a strangled noise and nudged me.

  The woman frowned at him. ‘But why are you intere—?

  ‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ Alec said, with an unmistakable note of triumph in his voice. He had solved the puzzle; I knew it. ‘Don’t let us keep you.’ He lifted his hat politely.

  When, with a troubled backwards glance, she had returned to her work, he lit his pipe and waggled his eyebrows at me.

  ‘Oh go on then,’ I said. ‘Don’t milk it. Just tell me.’

  ‘I know why no one can say whether Lady Love was killed with a lawn-edger or a peat-cutter,’ he said. ‘You’ll kick yourself.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Remember that McReadie took his pruning saw with him even though he’d used it to kill David Spencer.’

  I thought for a moment and then felt my gorge rise. ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘He killed her with his favourite lawn-edger. Mitten saw it. But by the time McReadie had moved the corpse to the knot garden he’d put a peat-cutter in its place.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Alec.

  ‘But why did he put anything in its place?’

  ‘Exactly again,’ Alec said. ‘It’s too gruesome for words.’

  ‘It is,’ I agreed, ‘but if a peat-cutter’s right there, still lodged in the wound, it does stop one wondering what the murder weapon was, doesn’t it? It does stop one deciding it was a gardening tool and casting one’s eye at the gardener.’

  ‘Ssshh,’ Alec said. He had seen another woman, older, broader and somewhat threatening in her foursquare stance, coming up. ‘What’s this you’re asking Kate?’ Her face was stony under its sheen of sweat and sprinkling of hayseeds.

  ‘Just chatting,’ Alec said. ‘She was kind enough to give us some water.’ He handed back the empty cups.

  ‘You’re the detectives, are you not?’

  ‘Not today,’ I said, smiling. ‘Mother of the groom and family friend. Why would you be thinking along the lines of detection?’

  The woman shook her head wordlessly then turned awa
y, wiping her brow with her forearm. I saw the glint of a wedding ring there and took a guess. I had an even chance of being right.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Roderick?’ I said.

  She turned at the sound of her name, as one will, helpless not to.

  ‘Good work, Dandy,’ Alec whispered. ‘Oh jolly good work indeed.’

  22

  ‘We should be getting back,’ I said, as we walked into the blessed shade of the woods down near the house. ‘Grant is much taken up with Mallory and Cherry, of course, but I’m sure she’s got plenty in store for me too.’

  ‘I’ve never understood why it takes so much time for women to get dressed,’ Alec said. ‘You wear far fewer clothes and no cufflinks.’

  I decided it was not worth the effort to explain. Besides, we were not alone. There was a rhythmic knocking noise coming from somewhere off to our left. I peered through the trees and realised that we were just outside the high garden wall that formed the back of the hothouses.

  ‘We could take a shortcut if that gate’s open,’ I said.

  Alec led the way, chivalrously whacking away a nettle or two with a stick. The gate was indeed open and we passed through. The source of the knocking noise was then revealed to be a carpenter who was constructing some kind of bower out of smooth pine poles. The two legs were complete and he had got as far as nailing the top piece into place.

  ‘Fur photies,’ he said, and nodded in through the open hothouse door where, upon the staging, lay the kind of extravagant floral garland – quite ten feet long and as thick as a chimney brush – that I had not seen since my Victorian girlhood.

  ‘Good heavens,’ I said. ‘What an enterprise.’ Hoping I was not disparaging his efforts, I nevertheless went on, ‘But why not take the photographs under the arbours already in situ? You could poke a fair few flowers in amongst the apple boughs, surely? Or you could do it at the manse against roses.’

  ‘Wrong flowers,’ said the carpenter. ‘Lady Love left a list.’

  I did not understand how roses could be the ‘wrong flowers’ for a wedding day, but the news that a list had survived Lady Love’s death made me hopeful of a planting plan too and I was round the first corner of the labyrinth, on my way to the flower room, before I noticed that Alec was not beside me. I retraced my steps and saw him standing staring down at where the carpenter was kneeling. He nodded his head to draw my attention to the man too.

  I looked. He was a middle-aged chap dressed in rough corduroy trousers, a woollen waistcoat and a collarless shirt, and was bare-headed on this warm morning – made even warmer, no doubt, by his industry. He was hammering the bower together with such long nails so closely spaced that the resulting structure would be sturdy enough for its job even if the Dunnochs decided to add a marble pediment to the garland of flowers. As he selected yet another six-inch nail from his collection, finally I too saw what had struck Alec. The box where the man’s nails and screw nails were arranged in natty compartments, where hammers of various sizes and chisels too were arrayed, was not a toolbox in the usual style. It was rather more sumptuously lined than any toolbox I had ever seen, rather more intricately constructed and more stylishly shaped. And I had never, in my long life, seen a toolbox with gold hinges.

  ‘Do you mind, my good man,’ Alec said, ‘if I close this case, just for a minute?’

  The carpenter, pausing the rapid percussion of his hammer briefly, sat back on his heels and stared up. ‘My box?’ he said. ‘Help yourself. It’s a good one, is it not?’

  ‘It’s a beauty,’ said Alec. He lowered the lid. It fell to with a soft click and we found ourselves looking at some rather fine marquetry – swollen and sprung here and there but well mended – with a mother-of-pearl inlay at its centre where gold initials curled and twisted a great deal but still just about managed to convey the short message ‘LAPM’.

  ‘Lavinia Something Mallory,’ Alec said softly; then, in a louder voice, he added, ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘My box?’ said the carpenter again. ‘From the ciste-ulaidh.’ At our looks, he translated. ‘The treasure chest. From the sea.’

  I do not know what emotions passed over Alec but I was flooded with shame. We had asked ourselves incessantly what had happened to Lady Love’s bags and had never once considered the obvious place for someone to ditch them. Even when Mallory admitted she meant to tip her mother’s body into the sea we did not make the short leap.

  ‘It washed up on the beach,’ the carpenter was saying when my flood of shame receded. ‘Finest thing I’ve found on that beach for many’s a long day.’

  ‘When was this?’ I said.

  ‘Winter time coming spring,’ said the man. ‘That’s the best time for jetsam. The currents, you see. Terrible for the fishing but grand on the tideline.’

  ‘Was it sprung open when it washed up?’ I asked. I thought not, for the wood inside the box, not to mention the satin lining, showed no water damage. Only the exterior was warped and stained.

  ‘’Deed it was not,’ the man said. ‘It was locked tight but I gat at it with my pins and hooks and gat it opened.’

  ‘And was there anything inside it?’ I said.

  ‘’Deed there was. Chock-full of papers.’

  ‘Papers?’ said Alec, the leap in his voice matching that in me.

  ‘Letters, mostly. And a good big bookie quarter-full of scribbles. A diary, maybe it was. Or suchlike.’

  Alec and I shared a glance that did not dare to be hopeful.

  ‘Did you read any of the letters?’ Alec said. ‘Or the scribbles in the … bookie?’

  ‘I don’t read that English,’ the man said, with a bite of scorn in his words. ‘I speak it but I read the good Gaelic just. And so I just put them in the basket for lighting the fire, for I hate to waste a good newspaper on the fire and the sticks were wet as haddock that February there.’

  I saw Alec’s shoulders slump and felt sure mine did the same. Then a thought struck me. ‘You used the letters – envelopes too, I imagine – to light your fire? Very practical. But what about the book? With the scribbles? Did you rip the pag—’

  ‘’Deed I did not!’ said the man. ‘Twould have been a waste of it. I gave it to my little granddaughter there to draw in. She’s not five but she can draw any animal in the land.’

  Alec’s shoulders had straightened again. ‘Your granddaughter,’ he said. ‘And where might she live? Here in Applecross?’

  ‘Where else?’ The man looked astonished. ‘Down the street with her mammy and daddy and the cailleach and me. Behind the workshop there. The smithy.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Mr Roderick, I believe? I think I heard you were the carpenter and smith here. And undertaker too.’

  The man inclined his head in acknowledgement of his standing and then sent a longing look at his closed toolbox. Alec raised the lid, handed the man a coin for his trouble and then, gripping me firmly under my elbow, steered me away.

  ‘Dare we hope the child still has it?’ he said. ‘If it was a diary, it only had a month and a half’s entries in it and surely that left too many blank pages for young Miss Roderick to have filled already.’

  ‘Even if she has,’ I said, ‘she’s more than likely kept the book. If it’s as fine as the writing case, it will be a treasure for her.’

  ‘A treasure from the sea,’ Alec said. ‘Can he possibly be as innocent as he was making out, Dan? Did he really think that box happened to wash up the sound from an ocean liner exactly when Lady Love went missing?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘If he had anything to hide he would have hidden it and, on the contrary, he was quite open, wasn’t he? Besides, the villagers can’t have known that she packed bags.’

  ‘The villagers who’re Rodericks? Don’t you think Mrs McReadie would have told all her relations and connections every bit of the business?’

  I shrugged. We were almost at the terrace now. When we reached, it I grabbed Bunty’s collar, sprinted up the steps, shoved her in at the nearest French windo
w, telling her to go and find Grant, then scampered back down to rejoin Alec. He was standing staring down at the edge of the gravel path.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Look,’ he said and pointed. The writing case had been well worth pointing out and looking at and so I peered closely. I could see nothing,

  ‘What?’ I said again.

  ‘Look at the gravel,’ Alec said. ‘It’s as smooth as a skating rink almost across the width but there’s a churned-up rim of untidiness along each edge.’

  ‘I don’t know why that’s bothering you,’ I said, ‘but – did I ever tell you? – I had a dream about these paths. A dream in which they turned from snow to ice to glass.’

  ‘Smoother and smoother,’ said Alec. ‘If you were rolling these paths wouldn’t it bother you to leave the edge in this state? There’s a perfect ditch!’

  I could not quite imagine pushing the heavy roller and I only shrugged. ‘I’m not trying to sway you from your concern about an untidy path-edge,’ I said, ‘but imagine if this very minute, young Miss Roderick is playing at the shore, about to drop her sketching book into a rock pool.’

  Alec nodded and started walking again. We skirted the house and set off down the drive at a trot.

  ‘Grant will string me up,’ I said.

  ‘If you’d rather leave it to m—’

  ‘Fat chance,’ I said. ‘I want to read these scribbles just as much as you do and this is one of the many times when a woman’s touch is essential, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Oh?’ said Alec. ‘What reason are you planning to give for storming the undertakers this nuptial morning then?’

  It was a very good question and I had not come up with a sensible answer by the time we arrived at the smithy. Thankfully, such is the nature of Highland hospitality that we were not asked our business when we knocked on the blue-painted door up the narrow close to the side of the workshop. We were simply invited in, ushered to chairs and informed that we would take a cup of tea and a bannock.