Bury Her Deep (30 page)

‘And put her back again?’ I said.

‘Of course,’ said Mr Tait. ‘It was wicked and wrong, that goes without saying, but it has a kind of sense to it.’

‘It’s even worse than I was imagining,’ I said. ‘Mr Tait, how can you say these are good people? How can you call this mere superstition? They sound as though they have given their souls to the devil. It sounds like  . . . Well, I hesitate to say it in case you laugh or order me away from the house, but it sounds like witchcraft to me.’ Mr Tait neither laughed nor took me by the collar and frogmarched me out of the manse, but just nodded as though what I had said was a mild notion that he could take or leave, but which caused him no upset.

‘And if it is witchcraft, then I think I know who is behind it.’ At that, he opened his eyes very wide and stared at me, his face growing solemn.

‘It’s the Rural,’ I said. ‘The SWRI. And I can prove it too.’ Mr Tait’s mouth twitched and his eyes had started dancing again.

‘I’m not joking,’ I said. ‘Their badge – the brooch they all wear – is called the witch’s heart.’

At that, Mr Tait threw back his head and let out a peal of sustained laughter loud enough to set the pendulum in the mantel clock humming along with him.

‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘The witch’s heart, quite so. But you have got the wrong end of the stick, I’m afraid. The witch’s heart keeps witches
away
.’

‘What?’ I said, wondering how much of an improvement on my first suspicions that could really be.

‘It was given as a love token by departing sweethearts, to keep the loved one safe from harm. Why, I gave one to my own wife when we were courting. Lorna wears it now.’

‘I see,’ I said, blushing furiously. ‘But why was it chosen as the Lucken Law Rural badge?’

‘No, the whole federation has this same one. There was a competition, you know, and our dear Miss Lindsay, who was a member of the Glamis branch back then, actually helped to draw the winning design.’

‘Gosh, how exciting,’ I said, and I hoped that my tone matched my words rather than the sickly flood of shame which was spreading through me. ‘And tell me,’ I went on for I have never sought to spare myself the pain of humiliation when it is deserved, ‘what does it say on the blue banner across the heart shape? I couldn’t decipher it.’ I steeled myself to hear exactly how blameless and pure my so-called coded symbols might turn out to be.

‘For Home and Country,’ said Mr Tait, confirming my worst fears. ‘And who could object to that? Witchcraft indeed!’ I felt his enjoyment of my mistake was beginning to shade into rudeness, but I managed to keep smiling as though still enjoying the joke. ‘So called by those who fear its power, Mrs Gilver,’ he went on, and at last I understood that he was not harping on my blunder, but was mounting a little hobby-horse of his own. ‘But I am a man of God and because of that I fear nothing. I find it better just to nod at “the old ways” if I pass them. That’s what I call it – the old ways, for that’s all it is. The midsummer bonfires and the honoured loaves of Lammas Day. Why, I’m sure your own lovely home is full of holly and mistletoe every Christmas time and that you rolled an egg every spring of your girlhood, didn’t you?’

I nodded, conceding the point, but I was only half listening, my brain whirring round. If the bones of the girl were not removed by Mr Tait’s devout busybodies after all, but were taken back to the law by villagers more in thrall to the ‘old ways’, and he did not know who exactly it was who moved them, then  . . .

‘Why have you organised this visit to the chamber?’ I asked. Mr Tait laughed lustily again and leaned over from his chair to squeeze my knee and shake me in a friendly fashion.

‘That’s my girl!’ he said. ‘Nose back to the ground, eh? I thought it the best way to show the grave robbers that their plan has been foiled. And, to be honest, I meant what I said about starting to treat the place with a little more architectural and historical interest and a little less reverence. It’s one thing to nod but I don’t want to be seen to honour the old ways. That wouldn’t do at all.’

‘To show the grave robbers  . . . ?’ I echoed. ‘Do you mean they’re in the party?’ I desperately tried to remember the names he and Lorna had suggested they invite. The Howies, the Miss Mortons, Miss Lindsay and her postmistress friend.

‘Good Lord no,’ said Mr Tait. ‘That would look far too pointed even if I knew who they were. No, I’m just asking the proper people and trusting that village gossip will ensure it gets back to the ears of those who need to hear it. Miss McCallum talks to everyone over that post office counter, you know.’

It was a gem of a plan, subtle and yet bound to be effective, and I felt some admiration for Mr Tait for having thought of it, even while I felt a little pity for the unknowing guests being used to execute it for him. I was seeing him in a new light today, between this chamber visit and the quiet but effective finding of a new place to bury the bones. I wondered how much of the tale he had told the other minister who now sheltered the poor girl in
his
kirkyard, whether he had come clean or had acted as he had with me, while enticing me into taking the case; that is, told his colleague as much as he had to and as little as he could, planning to reveal the rest when it was too late to do anything but dig the wretched thing up again, which I imagined no man of the cloth would lightly do.

Just then an even more unwelcome and unsettling thought struck me. Was that the extent of Mr Tait’s toying with me or was it even worse? Perhaps I was being fanciful, but it had seemed to me more than once that Mr Tait’s only surprise whenever I had told him of some little discovery, some little step forward in the case, was that I had got there, or got there so quickly and never, not once, surprise at where I had got. Was he using me to solve a mystery which had him stumped or did he feel he
had better
not know, that it would be much more suitable if I were the one who found it out?

I vowed that, from that moment on, I should keep a weather eye on Mr Tait. I would no longer trot along like a good little bloodhound and report my latest findings, the better to be shown the next bit of path towards where he was guiding me. Instead, I would plough my own furrow and find out, in the name of truth, just what the devil was going on.

We were six for luncheon the following day after church, Miss McCallum, Miss Lindsay, the Taits, ‘Captain Watson’ and me; making for a mood around the table which was somewhere between high spirits and hysteria, following as it did a terribly brimstone-ish sermon – surely designed to wag a finger at the culprits, should they be in the congregation, without alerting any of the innocent to what was going on – and preceding an outing which was a kind of Sunday School Trip imagined by Edgar Allan Poe. Added to that there was Lorna’s solicitousness over her beloved Captain, which came out as relentless maternal clucking, Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum’s frosty disapproval of the clucking, Miss Lindsay’s attempts to engage Alec in Arty Talk, Alec’s mounting terror that this would uncover him for the sham he was, Miss McCallum’s attempts to turn the talk to politics to find out if Captain Watson’s captaincy or artistry was the determining factor
there
, Alec’s mounting terror that she would uncover him for the
Tory
that he was and conclude that he could not be an artist too, Mr Tait’s open appraisal of him, which was thankfully silent because if it had taken the form of words it would only too obviously have been a series of questions on his background, prospects and intentions, Alec’s increasingly strained performance of upstanding chap (for Mr Tait), right-thinking, or rather left-thinking, modern young man (for Miss McCallum), talented and dedicated avant-garde artist (for Miss Lindsay) and friendly but unenthralled new acquaintance (for Lorna), and finally my dread that the rising bubbles of hilarity could not be contained inside my chest much longer and that any minute I was going to hiss like a steam kettle and have to slide off my chair to roll about under the table, screaming.

Mr Tait carved thin slices off the roast beef, and Lorna urged everyone – but especially Alec – to another and yet another of the Yorkshire puddings, little round ones as light and crisp as meringues and quite unlike the slab of flannel which usually masquerades as Yorkshire pudding north of the border. Even my own dear Mrs Tilling cannot quite shake off the ancestral influence when it comes to Yorkshire puddings: hundreds of years’ worth of suet, after all, must eventually seep into the very soul.

‘Mrs Wolstenthwaite’s Yorkshire puddings are Father’s very favourite thing,’ said Lorna. ‘But he can get terribly caught up after church and end by sitting down to everything dried up and nasty at half-past three.’

‘We are more fortunate today, my dear,’ said Mr Tait.

‘And I’m so happy to have you, Captain Watson,’ she went on. ‘I hate to think of you, down there all alone, frying sausages over a gas ring, while we sit down to such feasts. Would you be offended by an open invitation to luncheon any day you care to join us?’

Since I was sure that Alec could no more fry a sausage than make these little puffs of nothing with which I was at that moment mopping up gravy as though I had not eaten for a week, I thought that an open invitation to breakfast, luncheon, tea and supper would be a godsend.

Finally, when the large bowl of custard trifle had been finished, with Alec manfully spooning away the two helpings Lorna had insisted on serving him, and we were toying with our coffee cups, some of the pressure was relieved by the sound of the rather clanking manse doorbell.

‘Aha,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I was beginning to worry that there had been some trouble on the road. Lorna?’

Lorna got up, giving me one of her most beaming smiles, and Mr Tait followed her. I saw him noticing Alec’s unthinking rise as Lorna left the table and nodding in satisfaction at him for the properness of the little chivalry, just as Miss McCallum scowled at him for the same.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait, ‘would you step outside? We have a lovely surprise for you, Lorna and me.’ Intrigued, I folded my napkin and went after them, noting Alec jerking upwards again and Miss McCallum’s eyebrows jerking down. Outside in the hall, the housemaid was just turning the handle and hauling open the front door and there on the porch stood my lovely surprise.

‘Hugh!’ I exclaimed. Lorna clapped her hands in glee and then held them together under her chin, almost luminous with vicarious romance. Really, she was in for a dreadful let-down if she ever did manage to land a husband of her own.

‘Sir, Miss Tait,’ said Hugh, very properly, causing the beacon of Lorna’s smile to dim just a little. ‘Dandy,’ he said at last.

‘Hugh!’ I said again even louder, loud enough to penetrate the dining-room door. ‘Darling!’ I rushed forward and threw my arms around him, almost knocking him over since he was – understandably – reeling from the shock of the greeting. Thankfully, we avoided toppling onto the porch floor and having to untangle ourselves. ‘What a lovely treat to see you. Oh Mr Tait, you are a poppet, to remember how much Hugh wanted to come, isn’t he, darling?’ Hugh was stony with outrage; Mr Tait was one of his most revered boyhood heroes – poppet, indeed!

Then, unable to think of anything else, I compounded the insult by saying to Hugh in that flirtatious but bossy voice which we both hate to hear issuing from a wife to her husband and which I never use on him: ‘Now, darling, you must come and say hello to Bunty. She always misses you so when I take her away. Come along, this way.’ I threaded my arm through his and dragged him along the passage to the boot-room near the side door where Bunty had been quartered and, since he could hardly wrest himself from my grip in front of the Taits, he was forced to come with me.

‘What’s got into you?’ he said, when the boot-room door was closed behind us and I was trying to stop Bunty from giving him too enthusiastic a welcome. She never does get the plain message which is fired in her direction every time her path crosses Hugh’s. She still thinks he loves her.

‘What?’ I said, playing for time.

‘Have you been drinking?’ said Hugh. As an explanation this had its merits, but he could too easily find out that it was not true.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just had to escape for a minute.’

‘Escape?’ said Hugh coldly.

‘There’s the most tremendous subterranean farce going on in the dining room,’ I said. ‘An artist, a suffragette and a socialist all squaring up to one another and poor Lorna Tait trying to keep things smooth. I’ve been fighting the giggles all through luncheon and when you gave me an excuse not to go back in, I couldn’t resist it.’

It worked. Hugh, during my outburst in the hall, had been looking at me, really looking at me, but now he was back to normal again – viewing me – and, also as normal, viewing me with some disdain.

‘I can’t see what’s funny about that,’ he said. Artists, socialists and suffragettes were some of Hugh’s least favourite characters in the world, and I am sure that the last time he had succumbed to a fit of helpless giggles was back in the days when he was in Mr Tait’s catechism class at Kingoldrum. ‘Now, before I’m made to look even more of a fool than I’ve been made to look already  . . .’ He gave me a glare – again very much the norm, for being glared at is much more like being viewed than being looked at, really – and strode out of the room.

I hurried after him and caught up with him in the dining-room doorway. Beyond I could see Miss McCallum looking rather flushed, Miss Lindsay looking rather knowing, and Lorna with her mouth turned down at the corners and her shoulders in a slump.

‘Artistic temperament, I daresay,’ Mr Tait was saying. ‘We’ve lost Captain Watson, Mrs Gilver. He rushed out while Hugh was saying hello to Bunty.’

‘He suddenly went still when you were out of the room,’ Miss Lindsay explained. ‘Physically blanched, leapt up and said he had to get home immediately because he’d had a tremendous idea for a new work. I thought for a minute he was going to climb out of the window.’

After this inauspicious start to the proceedings, Hugh was at his stiffest and most quellingly polite to everyone in the party for the rest of the afternoon, and when the Howies arrived, dressed as outlandishly as ever, each in her own way, giggling like two schoolgirls on a spree, he became icy with disapproval for the whole bally lot of us and even rather short with Mr Tait for putting such a collection of individuals together and then inviting Hugh to make one of their number.