Bury Her Deep (27 page)

Needless to say, some indeterminate time later, having jerked awake from an even more calamitous fall in a much more disquieting dream, I had my face pressed to the window again and this time the flickering, although no brighter, was scattered around, as though that first candle had been used to light some more.

14

Even with one cheek flattened against the glass I was never going to see any more than the flickering from here and, not wanting to appear foolish, I was loath to rouse Mr Tait before I knew more definitely what, if anything, was happening. So, casting my mind over the layout of the manse and deciding that the window at the far end of the passage must overlook the graveyard square on, I wrapped myself in my dressing gown and very softly crept to the door. I had to do without slippers for Grant’s latest purchase in that department was a pair of not particularly well-fitting beaded Turkish mules with terribly clackety soles which made me sound as though I were tap-dancing whenever I moved. In a pair of thick bed socks I eased my bedroom door open and, taking my candle, padded along the dark passageway.

When I got there, however, I found that as well as having heavy curtains drawn across it, the end window was shuttered and the noise I should make opening a set of shutters was impracticable. I looked around at the closed doors on either side of me. Lorna’s bedroom was to the front, in quite another wing, and I was sure I had heard Mr Tait harrumphing from a room near hers in the mornings, so  . . . since there was no housekeeper, old governess or other favoured servant who might be given a room on the main floor I felt I was reasonably safe in turning the handle of the door nearest and stepping into the room.

What lay inside did, I will confess, give me a moment’s pause. The good suite of heavy furniture, the immaculate but old-fashioned satins festooning the bed and window, the spray of silk flowers on the bedside table and, above all, the folded nightgown with white prayer book laid on top of it told me that I was in Lorna’s mother’s room and everything I had ever read, from
Jane Eyre
to the penny dreadfuls Nanny Palmer used to forbid me to look at although she left them lying around, told me to flee.

On the other hand, the curtains were drawn back and even from the door I could see that there was an excellent view of whatever it was flickering away down there in the graveyard. I scuttled over and peered out, snuffing my own candle as I did so.

There were at least four points of light, I thought, although the bare branches of the big trees in the manse driveway obscured the view somewhat. I was sure too that there was more than one person because every so often all the lights would be hidden as though someone crossed in front of them and the crossings were surely too frequent to be just one individual, unless he were running laps.

I hesitated for a moment. I should tell Mr Tait straight away, but he might forbid me to go with him and find out what was going on. If I dressed first it would be harder for him to slip away without me, but I should not waste time dressing before I raised the alarm. There was, I have no shame in admitting it, no question of my striking out on my own; I should have died of fright to walk into a candlelit graveyard scene without someone there to protect me. At this – admittedly rather feeble – thought, at last I remembered. Alec! He was barely five mintues’ walk away.

I threw some clothes on, padded downstairs and stole out onto the porch – Luckenlaw Manse was not the sort of place to lock its doors even at night and so I had no creaky key with which to wake the household. Once outside, I put on my shoes and then, with my lip caught between my teeth, I started down the drive, creeping along on the soft earth at its edge, trying to breathe as softly as I could and straining to see if I could hear anything.

I need not have strained: before I had cleared the gates of the manse, the sounds from beyond the graveyard wall were unmistakable. My scalp prickled and I almost turned back but, summoning reserves of courage from who knows where, I made my feet move again. Keeping to the shadows, shaking with fright, expecting every second to hear a voice raised in alarm or to feel a hand over my mouth, I moved as quickly as I stealthily could out of the gates and along the manse garden wall to the first house in the village square then, with a deep breath, I stepped into the open and raced on tiptoe across the green to the schoolhouse lane and down to the ford. That sound! I began to whimper, unable to stop myself. Skidding on the patches of ice but somehow managing to stay upright, I ran onwards, trying to remember where the footbridge led across to the garden – it was as black as any coal mine down here tonight – until a sudden icy flood around my feet told me I had missed it. I splashed through the stream and sprinted over the grass, banging my leg hard against the stone balustrade at the side of the porch. That sound! It couldn’t be true! I fumbled for the handle, found it, turned it and collapsed inside.

‘Alec!’ I shouted. The cottage was in darkness and I had no idea where anything was except the living room. ‘Alec, wake up! There’s someone in the graveyard.’

‘Wha—’ came a groggy voice to the left of me. ‘Dandy, is that you?’

‘There are people in the graveyard, Alec,’ I said, feeling my way into the room from where his voice had come. ‘Oh God, where are you? Where are your matches?’ I heard the creak as he got out of bed and the rasp of a match being struck and at last his face, owlish with sleep above a striped nightshirt, appeared before me.

‘People?’

‘With candles set out,’ I told him.

‘What are they doing?’ said Alec, reaching for his trousers. ‘Who is it?’

‘I’ve no idea who it is,’ I said, ‘but I know what they’re doing. I heard the scrape of the shovels. Oh Alec, they’re digging.’

He was only a moment dressing and we made better time on the way back up the hill than I had coming down, because Alec took an electric torch and kept it trained on the path in front of us, only switching it off when we reached the village green. Again, feeling horribly exposed even in the blackness we flitted across to the top corner, and then slowly, without a sound, feeling for each footstep before we made it, we crept along, pressed into the hedge, to the corner of the kirkyard wall. I do not know when I realised that we were too late; it came upon me gradually. We were nearly there and yet it was as dark as ever, no flickering. We were at the gate of the kirkyard and yet there was no sound to be heard.

‘Are you sure?’ Alec breathed.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ I said a little louder although still whispering. ‘But we’ve missed them. Switch on your torch again.’

‘Maybe they heard us,’ said Alec. ‘They could be hiding in there.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘They’ve gone.’

Alec turned the switch on his electric torch and I could feel him bracing himself, but I was perfectly at ease now. I knew they were nowhere near.

‘But
where
have they gone?’ said Alec. ‘It can’t have been down through the village or we would have passed them. Do you think they’re in the church?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think the church is the very last place they’ll be.’

I sounded bleak with the aftermath of terror, even to myself, and Alec, hearing it too, put an arm round me.

‘Dandy,’ he said. ‘Are you absolutely sure you heard what you said you heard? Could it have been tree branches scraping in the wind?’

‘What wind?’ I retorted. ‘And what about the candles?’

‘Lovers?’ said Alec, sounding doubtful. ‘A poacher?’ He heard me sigh and hastened to placate me. ‘But let’s look around by all means,’ he said. ‘Let’s check thoroughly and see if anything’s out of place. Where shall we start?’

‘We don’t need to look around,’ I said. ‘I know where the out-of-place thing is going to be. I know what they were doing.’ And taking his torch, I led him to the spot, picking my way between the graves as though I was stepping through a flower meadow on a summer’s day, all fear gone. When I got there, I played the torch briefly over the scene and then swung the beam backwards to light Alec’s way.

‘Well?’ he said, when he drew up beside me. I shone the torch down at our feet once more. The grave was open and the coffin lid lay teetering on the heap of earth at its side. I played the torch around. There was one candle left there, forgotten, stuck with dripped wax to a jam pot lid.

‘Sh-shine it inside,’ said Alec, stuttering with cold or fear, I could not say which. I did as he asked and we both looked at the emptiness of it, the white folds of the linen covers flapped back, making it look grotesquely like a picnic basket down there.

‘Now tell me I’m silly to think there could be witches,’ I said.

‘Wh-whose grave is it?’ said Alec.

‘Can’t you guess?’ I asked him. ‘I knew she had something to do with all of this. I just
knew
it.’ I moved the beam of the torch up to the headstone. It was partially obscured. I could make out
In my father’s house are many mansions
but the rest of it,
Her sins, which are many, are forgiven
, was lost under the earth which had been thrown up out of the grave.

Alec took some persuading that he could not accompany me to fetch Mr Tait and I suppose it was gratifying that he did not wave me off into a night full of grave robbers without a care, but we wasted valuable time arguing before he finally gave way.

‘Well, at least let me see you safely back to the manse,’ he said. ‘Then I’m going to come back here and hide behind a headstone to see what happens.’

‘Darling, you can’t,’ I said. ‘He’ll probably call the police and if they come and find you lurking about they’ll arrest you.’

‘I could jump over the wall and run away if I hear them,’ he said, sounding rather mulish for him, as though determined to be heroic in some way.

‘If they come with klaxons blaring and wake up the village and then one of the awakened villagers sees you leaping over his garden wall, you’re likely to be shot. On balance, I’d rather you were arrested.’

‘Oh very well,’ he said at last. ‘But promise me you’ll come down first thing and tell me what happened.’ He switched his torch on again and held it aloft, training the beam up the manse drive. I squeezed his arm and squelched off in my sodden shoes, turning and waving before I opened the door.

It was easy to tell which was Mr Tait’s room; a noise like someone trying to drink soup through a straw came rumbling from behind one of the doors, a noise Lorna could never have produced, even after an evening of neat gin and Woodbines. I knocked softly and immediately the rumble stopped.

‘Come in, my dear,’ said Mr Tait’s voice. I hesitated and then opened the door and entered, blinking, into the darkness. ‘I did not hear the telephone,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you were disturbed, Lorna. Who is it who needs me?’

‘It’s me, Mr Tait,’ I said. ‘And it’s not the telephone. Something dreadful has happened, I’m afraid.’ I told him as succinctly as possible and trying as far as I was able to stick to what was true, although I got into an unforeseen little patch of difficulty trying to mesh the fact that I had heard the shovels with the fact that when I got there all was quiet and the players had left the stage. ‘I fluffed it most dismally,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t the courage to barge in, and so I dithered between lying in wait watching them and coming back here to get you and in the end I missed them.’

Mr Tait stretched out a hand and patted one of mine; I was sitting on the edge of his bed and he was propped up, apparently at his ease, listening and watching me over his spectacles.

‘Do not berate yourself, my dear,’ he told me. ‘You were extremely courageous to go at all. And now, if you will return to your rest, I’ll get me up and see what’s to do about it.’

‘Shall I telephone to the police?’ I said.

He patted my hand again and shushed me.

‘Let me take care of all that,’ he said.

‘But who do you think it was?’ I insisted. ‘What do you think they’re going to do with her?’

‘Hush now,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Don’t you worry. Just leave all that to me.’

He could not have sounded less ruffled if I had been telling him I had put out a pane in his greenhouse with my tennis ball. This was puzzling in the extreme and so, although I did leave him to dress in peace, I did not return to ‘my rest’, but waited until his feet had clumped downstairs and I heard the front door open and close again and then flitted back to the window of Mrs Tait’s bedroom and knelt there, peeping over the sill to watch him. He took a long time to appear and I had begun to wonder if he had gone some other way when at last he came into view, holding a lantern in one hand and, I caught my breath when I saw it, a sturdy shovel in the other. I watched his progress all the way down the drive and then watched through the tree branches as the light bobbed along and came to rest where the candles had been before. I could see nothing more than the lantern light itself, but I did not need to: that shovel had told me as clearly as anything that there were to be no police klaxons or search of the village tonight, but instead a quiet tidying of the mess before anyone should wake at dawn and see it. What in heaven’s name was going on? I leaned my head against the windowpane and watched the yellow glow grow shimmery as my breath misted the glass, wishing I could think of an excuse to go over and join him there. Could I perhaps take him a glass of brandy? I decided I could and settled down to wait until I thought he would be cold enough to welcome it.

I do not know what woke me, only that I lifted my head with a jerk and felt my neck go into a spasm. It was still pitch black outside, but now that I was awake I could hear faint sounds of movement from the bowels of the house and as I unfolded my stiff arms and hauled myself to my feet, shivering, I heard a door open and saw a slice of light grow upon the grass below, into which Bunty suddenly appeared, prancing and shaking her ears, greeting the dawn before the dawn had even arrived to be greeted. I looked over at the kirkyard but could see no lantern glow so, stumbling a little, my feet wooden with cold after their soaking and my legs thrumming as the feeling came slowly back into them, I hurried along the passage and crossed the landing to the front of the house. Knocking softly, I edged open Mr Tait’s door, meaning to launch into the first of many questions while he was fuddled with sleep and at the psychological disadvantage of being in his nightshirt while I was dressed (albeit in last night’s crumpled clothes and with my hair flattened on one side from resting on the windowsill). Mr Tait, though, was not there.