Bury Her Deep (7 page)

‘Terribly brave of you,’ I said, thinking that there was a lot more iron in the soul of this girl than I could be sure of having in mine.

‘No’ really, madam,’ said Jessie. ‘More like I jist didna think. I never even thocht to go in and get John. I jist took off along the lane towards them. He had gone for her jist in the shade o’ a wee bush but I could still see them, quite clear I could see them in the moon we’ve got the nicht. They were strugglin’. Mrs Hemingborough and a man all in black. And Mrs Hemingborough was shoutin’ at him so I shouted too: “Get away fae her. Get away, you filthy so-and-so.” And when he heard me, he let go of Mrs Hemingborough and he was back over that dyke and away across the fields afore you could snap your fingers at him. And Mrs Hemingborough was standin’ there, wi’ her hat torn off and her hair all hingin’ doon and those blessed feathers burst oot o’ her sack and swirlin’ aboot.’ Jessie, finally, gave a sob and then took another draught from her cup.

‘And where is she now?’ I said. ‘At home? Have your husbands gone after him?’

‘Well, this is the thing,’ said Jessie, and her face puckered with concern. ‘Mr Tait, I jist don’t know what to think. I got to her side and I asked her if she was a’richt and she telt me of course she was, she jist tripped and drapped her bundle and look at the feathers! And she was laughin’ – tryin’ to anyway.’

‘Laughing?’ said Mr Tait, sounding more severe than I had ever heard him.

‘I hardly kent what to say,’ said Jessie. ‘What aboot
him
? I asked her. Did he hurt you? And she drew hersel’ up and said she didna know what I was talkin’ aboot and she didna want to hear any nonsense fae me. Well, I know my place and nobody can tell me I don’t but my dander come up at that. I saw him, I telt her. I jist saw the whole thing plain with my own two eyes, and then I telt her that I was goin’ to get her husband and mine and send them away after him. But there was no shiftin’ her. She said she didna know what I was talkin’ aboot and she was “disappointit”. She said she had never thocht I was the kind o’ lassie who would start up wi’ a load o’ silly nonsense. She said that her husband needed a good cowman and a good cowman needed a good steady wife and I should think on that afore I started tattlin’.’

‘Whatever did she mean?’ I said.

‘A threat,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Quite obviously a threat to give John Holland the sack.’

‘And we’re in a tied hoose, madam, with three bairns,’ said Jessie, growing visibly upset again. ‘If I lost John his place, and the lot o’ us ended up putten out on the road I would jist never forgive myself. So I never went and telt Mr Hemingborough and I willna tell John either or anyone else. Only I had tae tell somebody, so I came roond to Mr Tait.’

‘And you’re absolutely sure of what you saw?’ I asked her, looking very closely into her face. She nodded vigorously.

‘As sure as I’m sittin’ here,’ she said. ‘And I ken it’s no’ richt to let him get away wi’ it, no matter whit Mrs Hemingborough says. I dinna ken what’s wrong wi’ her.’

‘No more do I,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to try to find out.’

‘No, madam, please,’ said Jessie, looking quite stricken with anguish. ‘Oh Mr Tait,’ she wailed. ‘Please. If Mrs Hemingborough finds oot I’ve telt—’

‘I’ll keep your name out of it, Jessie, I assure you,’ I told her. I had no clear idea how I should manage this, but I trusted to think of something. ‘Now,’ I went on, ‘this is very important. Tell me everything you can remember about this fellow. Tell me everything you could see.’

Jessie shuddered but spoke up gamely. ‘He was a’ dressed in black, I ken that for sure.’

‘Tall, short? Thin, fat?’ I said. ‘Could you tell if he was a young man or was he stiff and elderly in the way he moved?’

‘Oh no,’ said Jessie. ‘He was anythin’ but that. No’ very tall, I dinna think. He wasna loomin’ over Mrs Hemingborough and she’s no’ much taller than me. And no’ fat. He was  . . . snaky.’ She seemed almost as startled to have said this as Mr Tait and I were to have heard it, but after blinking she nodded. ‘Aye, that’s it. He was snaky. The way he moved, you ken? He wasna like a man in heavy boots moves, he was jist snaky. The way he come over the dyke and the way he was all over Mrs Hemingborough.’ She shuddered again. ‘It was horrible.’

‘It sounds it,’ I said. ‘Now come along. I’m going to run you home.’

When I stopped the motor car at the Hollands’ cottage gate and stepped down to let Jessie out, she pointed to the great mess of feathers lying on the lane and caught in the bare branches of a hawthorn bush a little way along. In the moonlight, they were as plain as day and I could see no possibility for Jessie to have imagined the scene she had described to me. The sound of the engine brought a young man to the cottage door – John, I guessed – and since he frowned in puzzlement, I called to him.

‘We ran on late at the Rural, Mr Holland. I’m delivering Jessie home.’

He nodded, although still frowning slightly, and Jessie scurried past him into the house. Perhaps my presence and the lift in a motor car would, in John’s eyes, tip the Rural firmly over into the realms of gadding about and young Jessie’s monthly excursions would be over. I hoped not, but then one had to question whether after the experience this evening she would ever cross her door in the dark again. I drove on a little way – I had to turn in a field entrance – and stepped down to look at the scene in the light of my headlamps. There were a great many trodden and over-trodden footprints in the muddy lane just by the hawthorn bush with feathers pressed into them here and there, but much as I should have liked to point to two distinct sets of vastly different sizes, nothing so clear presented itself to me. Anyway, the ‘snakiness’ of the dark stranger had to have its origin somewhere in his physique or deportment even if Jessie could not put her finger on its source and I imagined that anyone light enough in his movements to earn the description must have rather neat little feet. Full of questions and utterly empty of answers I got back into the motor car and drove home.

In the morning, I had a rare brainwave. I was at the washstand in my bedroom, shivering in my petticoat despite the fire which had been relit at seven by a cheerful little maid, and admiring the scene outside the window; the spare bedroom of the manse was at the back and looked out over fields towards the law. It was the hill, naturally, which held my attention at first but then movement in the foreground caught my eye and I saw a farmer on a cart, precariously laden with turnips, making his careful way along between the hedgerows one field’s distance from the house. After gazing at him until he was out of sight again in the usual witless fashion of the early morning, I suddenly realised several things: that this lane must be the one which led to Hinter Luckenlaw Farm; that since I could see the lane from my bedroom window I could perhaps – had I been looking out at the right moment last night – have seen the scuffle with the stranger; and that the wiry little man on the cart whom I had just watched lumbering along this lane was more than likely Mr Hemingborough – for he was too well turned out to be a labourer and who else would be heading away from his farm in the morning with a cartload of turnips – which probably meant that Mrs Hemingborough was at home alone.

I dressed rapidly and waved my hairbrush around my head in a token gesture at a toilette – in fact, whenever Grant sends me off on an overnight stop without her, she sets my hair so very firmly the day before that it would take far more robust a tool than a mere hairbrush to make a dent in it – and skipped downstairs hoping that breakfast in the manse was a brisk affair and I could soon escape.

The sight of Lorna beaming behind two enormous teapots and Mr Tait in a cardigan jersey and with a napkin tucked in at his neck soon did away with any thoughts of a hasty exit from the morning gathering of the little household however. Not wishing to be rude, I settled myself for the duration.

‘I really should apologise for my father, Mrs Gilver,’ said Lorna, once the fuss of setting me up with my desired breakfast dishes was behind us. ‘He’s always so very keen to protect me from nasty things, I swear he must still believe me to be a child.’ Her smile faded for a moment then reblossomed as she carried on in a rather too hearty voice: ‘When in fact, of course, I’m comfortably old enough to take all manner of things on the chin.’

‘And are you old enough to talk about your father in thon disrespectful way?’ said Mr Tait, twinkling at her. ‘I told you, my dear. Mrs Gilver was a nurse in the war and last night young Jessie Holland was in such a state of shock I thought a nurse was called for. Mrs Gilver did not mind.’

He turned to me, inviting me to agree with him, and I nodded, although I was tackling some ferociously thick porridge and could not, at the moment, answer. I never do remember when away from home but still in Scotland, how long it took me to coax my own cook back from the excesses of Scotch habits, so that my winter days could begin with the soothing, creamy treat I expected and not the vile, salty lump which passes for a good plate of porridge around these parts. Once, I witnessed Hugh dig his spoon into the edge of his porridge only to have the whole thing shoot away up the far side of the dish and land, all of a piece, on the tablecloth. Yet still he has the cheek to prefer his to mine.

‘Of course I didn’t mind,’ I said at last. In fact, had young Jessie really needed a nurse I should have minded like anything, and I should have been quite useless, my nursing duties at Moncrieffe House having been confined to playing cards, lighting cigarettes and muttering the occasional ‘there, there’.

‘Such a shocking thing to have happened, though,’ I went on. I knew that Mr Tait did not want Lorna in the thick of it, but it would have been beyond peculiar not to discuss the matter at all.

‘It is,’ said Lorna. ‘A very nasty affair. We had hoped, hadn’t we, Father, that it was all behind us. I know Miss McCallum and Miss Lindsay will be very sorry to hear of last night’s trouble. They’ve worked so hard to get the Rural off the ground.’

‘And truly no one has any idea who might be behind it?’ I said. ‘There’s no one around the village who’s known to be a little odd? It must be a local chap, don’t you think, if the trouble’s confined to Luckenlaw again and again.’

Mr Tait and Lorna looked as uncomfortable as might be expected to have a guest in their house thus impugn the neighbourhood, and Mr Tait in addition began to frown at me. I had, I realised, begun to betray a little more knowledge of the facts than Lorna could suppose me to have come by and I swept on with a change of subject before she could begin to wonder.

‘I can’t help admiring your lovely brooch, Lorna,’ was the best I could come up with. She was wearing the same rose, ribbon and love-heart as the day before and I realised just too late that it was hardly sensitive to draw attention to her mourning.

Mr Tait dropped his spoon into his porridge, but Lorna only smiled gently and fingered the little brooch before answering.

‘Yes, it was my mother’s,’ she said, and I winced slightly in case I had caused Mr Tait pain too.

‘You must have been flattered to see the Howie ladies attempting to imitate it,’ I said. Lorna looked momentarily puzzled by this.

‘Well, that was by the by,’ she said. ‘The Rural badge is a very similar design, based on it indeed, except the Rural one has just four points to the crown. For S. W. R. I., you know. But the older ones like this always had five. Why would that be, Father? Why was it always five?’

‘A lucky number, I daresay,’ said Mr Tait, looking uninterested.

‘But it’s seven that’s lucky, isn’t it?’ I asked.

‘That’s right,’ said Lorna. ‘I remember from the skipping song.’

‘I’m not familiar with that,’ I said. ‘The girls on the green didn’t include it in their repertoire yesterday. How does it go?’

Lorna hummed a few notes and then shrugged. ‘I can’t remember it,’ she said. ‘It must be a skipping song, though, mustn’t it? One and one make two and two makes true love. Then, how does it go, Father? Three is mighty, five is good. Seven is certainly luck.’

‘I can’t bring it to mind at all,’ said Mr Tait, sounding rather strangled and looking a little pale. Perhaps it was not a skipping rhyme after all; perhaps it was a lullaby or even a love song and it reminded him more painfully of his wife than even the brooch itself.

‘I wonder what happened to four and six?’ I said, trying to lighten the mood.

Lorna giggled.

‘They’re both terribly unlucky,’ she said. ‘I mean to say, six is the number of the devil himself, Mrs Gilver.’

Mr Tait, if anything, looked more troubled than ever although whether it was the minister or the man who was suffering was hard to say. Lorna did not seem to notice, at any rate.

‘Well, be thankful the Rural doesn’t have six initials, then,’ I said, and Lorna laughed again.

‘But why is four so unlucky, I wonder?’ she said. ‘Father, do you know?’

‘Do I know why four is an unlucky number?’ Mr Tait echoed. ‘It’ll be lost in the mists of time. And anyway, you might as well ask why the sky is blue, Lorna dear. Luck and sense have no connection.’

‘Hear, hear,’ I replied. ‘I have never had much patience with luck, good or ill. I always find it impossible to remember what I should and shouldn’t do in the cottages I visit. I must give tremendous offence.’

‘You’d be better off at Luckenlaw,’ said Lorna, ‘with just one big source of luck that everyone agrees on.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought my father had told you. About the sealed chamber in the Lucken Law.’

‘I told Mrs Gilver the facts, Lorna dear,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I did not trouble her with the rest of it. It’s the usual thing, Mrs Gilver. Any secret chamber you care to mention has engendered some tale or other about all the good fortune depending on the sealed door and trouble raining down if it is broken. Thankfully, though, not
everyone
gives it credence, no matter what Lorna says.’

‘You are not usually so scornful,’ said Lorna.

‘I’m not scornful at all,’ her father protested.

I was feeling scornful enough for all three of us, being firmly with young Jessie Holland in believing that such fancies were for those with too much time and nothing better to fill it.