Bury Her Deep (36 page)

‘Watch out, Niccy,’ said Vashti, giggling. ‘The “phallic element” could be outdone yet.’

‘I shall make sure you all get home safely,’ I said as the women who had raised their hands looked at one another in confusion. ‘I won’t take a minute of your time.’

It quite destroyed the mood of the meeting, although not as much as my household budget talk would have done, I daresay. Miss Lindsay and Miss McCallum, feeling slighted, carried the canvas away carefully to set it to dry in Miss Lindsay’s private rooms. Niccy and Vashti mounted a spirited attempt to be allowed to stay, ridiculing the notion that there might be something I could say to the handful of matrons that I could not say to them, but I was adamant. The rest of the meeting melted away, although clearly beginning to feel as though what should be theirs had been comprehensively stolen from them by the outsiders tonight.

When everyone else had gone, I addressed the women remaining.

‘It’s about this dark stranger,’ I said. There were a couple of groans and a couple of nervous giggles. ‘He’s going to strike again tonight,’ I went on, ignoring all of it, ‘and he’s going to pick on someone who has children, a mother.’ I waited to see if the penny would drop in any of the rest of them about the skipping rhyme we had heard only minutes ago, but it was just as Mr Tait had said right back on the first day: no one ever listens to the words. ‘I am determined to get you all home safely, but there are too many for one trip in the motor car, so I propose we work out two sensible routes and in between times the second batch waits here.’

‘I’m no’ a believer in this dark stranger,’ said one woman. ‘I think it’s just stories.’

‘Luckenlaw’s always had stories o’ this and that, but it’s nothin’ to do wi’ the likes o’ us.’ The speaker looked sharply around the room as she said this, then nodded. ‘Naw, nothin’ to do wi’ us.’

‘Aye,’ said another. ‘We dinna believe in a’ they bad spirits and ghosties.’

‘I assure you,’ I said, ‘if it were a spirit or a ghostie – if it were just a story, that is – no one would be more delighted than I, but he is real, he has attacked every month since March, although some have kept it quiet, and he will attack again tonight. He’s not going to hurt you badly, but we do need to stop him. Now, how shall we get you home?’

‘We both live on the green,’ said one woman. ‘And Cissie’s just doon the road fae the post office.’

‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Three of you in the village itself. That’s going to be very easy. Four can squash into the motor car with me somehow. Now, where do you all live?’

Haltingly, and only too obviously still not believing, they told me. One was from a cottage in the Luckenlaw House grounds, one was from a road worker’s house down towards Colinsburgh, the third was from Kilnconquhar but she always came to this Rural and stopped the night with her sister who was married to Mr Fraser’s shepherd at Balniel, and the last was an ancient old lady who said she lived the back Largoward road and she couldna see any stranger making a beeline for her at her age, but mind if it was mothers he was after, who could say, for she’d had eleven of family all told.

‘That’s us off, Miss Lindsay,’ I called into the sitting-room door as we hurried out to where my motor car was waiting. I bundled the four passengers in, which was rather a tight squeeze, but they were diverted enough by the prospect of the ride not to care, and once they were snugly packed, we crawled up the school lane at a juddering pace behind the three walkers and waited with headlamps shining as they scattered to their houses and shut their doors behind them. Then we set off down the road to Balniel to the shepherd’s house, to the road worker’s cottage beyond, around to the little place tucked amongst the trees on the estate at Luck House and eventually to the Largoward road, the old lady directing me, although with some difficulty because as she said it was that fast in a motor she nivver had time tae think where she was afore she was away past it. Our arrival brought to the door an ancient man in a patched jersey and with a scarf tied over his chest and a middle-aged son with a newspaper folded open and a pipe in his mouth. I left her to do whatever explaining she felt was needed and trundled off again.

After a little confusion amongst the unfamiliar lanes, I finally got back onto the road at Luck House and sat with the engine idling, tussling with myself. Our arrangement had been that I should go straight home to the manse, but I could not resist it. If Christie were our man, Alec would this very minute be creeping along behind him somewhere, in the moonlight. If we had been wrong, however, my gallant Watson would be crouched in a field, watching Christie’s house and cursing, not a hundred yards from where I sat. I switched the engine off, stepped down and struck out along the lane. A cold, white light blanketed the empty fields, gave faces to all the stones in the dykes and turned every bush and gatepost into a silent, waiting stranger, but Luckenheart Farm was no more than a darker smudge against the greater hulking darkness of the law behind it. At the end of the drive I summoned all my courage and turned in.

‘Alec?’ I hissed. ‘Alec, can you hear me? Are you there?’

There was not a sound, not a breath of wind, not so much as a snapping twig to say that any creature was abroad tonight except me. Slowly, the same feeling of crawling dread began to spread through me, but I scurried on.

‘Alec?’ I whispered more softly than ever.

I was almost at the farmyard when I heard something at last; a groan and the sound of feet stamping repeatedly as though some animal were pawing the ground. I stopped, held my breath, and peered ahead. I could just make out a figure standing in the shade of a hedge on the other side of the field dyke. It turned to face me; I could see the moonlight glinting off its hair. My heart leapt into my throat like a trapped frog, but my feet were rooted, my legs trembling. You fool, Dandy, I said to myself. You might be a sensible married woman with children of your own but you’ve been a fool tonight and you are just about to pay for it.

Then the figure spoke.

‘Dandy? What the devil are you doing here? God, my back’s killing me! And both my feet have gone to sleep.’

I willed my quivering legs to propel me forward and tried to keep my voice steady as I spoke.

‘We were wrong then?’ I said. ‘Were we?’

‘Thumpingly wrong,’ said Alec. ‘Staggeringly wrong. Either that or they’re onto us.’

‘What do you mean?’ I had drawn up close to him now and was facing him across the top of the dyke, squinting to make out his features in the deep shadows. ‘Who’s “they”?’

‘In there,’ said Alec, gesturing towards the farmhouse. ‘Where’s the gate? I couldn’t jump over a wall now if all the demons of hell were after me. I’m frozen solid. I swear, Dan, this damned field must lie in a direct draught straight from the Arctic.’

‘Alec, please! Who is “they”? What’s happening?’

‘Well, as you could tell from the number of carts pulled up in Jock Christie’s yard – if your eyes were attuned to the dark as mine are, having been crouched freezing to death in it for the last hour instead of tootling about in a cosy motor car – our sinister stranger has a houseful of visitors tonight. Drew Torrance, Logan McAdam, Bob Palmer and Tom Hemingborough are all in the kitchen with him. They’ve stabled their ponies across the yard there as though they’re in for the night.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I crept up and looked in the window when I got here, just to check that I wasn’t too late.’

‘What are they doing?’ I asked.

‘No idea,’ said Alec. ‘They’re bent over something or other at the table, looking pretty intent too but I didn’t hang about long enough to see. It suddenly struck me that I – a stranger in these parts – was prowling around looking in windows and there were five large and rather handy-looking farmers whom I didn’t want to catch me at it.’

‘Are you sure they’re all still there?’ I asked. ‘One of them couldn’t have slipped out another way since you arrived?’

‘There
is
no other way, unless it’s a secret tunnel through the hillside. Not outside the bounds of possibility, I’ll grant you. No, I’ve seen this place from up the hill when I’ve been painting and there’s no side door. There’s no way that anyone could have left tonight without crossing at least one patch of bright moonlight and being spotted.’

‘But what else could they be doing,’ I said, ‘if not giving one another alibis?’

‘No idea,’ said Alec again. ‘Cards, dice and the demon drink, perhaps, as Mr Black said all along?’

‘And who is the stranger if not one of those five?’

‘Mr Black himself?’ said Alec. ‘Could Mr Fraser be giving his wife the slip?’

‘It could be someone else entirely,’ I concluded. ‘We could be right down at the tail of the snake again.’

We stood there for a moment or two longer, and I for one was feeling rather sheepish, then suddenly I became aware of the night cold creeping into me and shivered audibly.

‘Yes, you run along, Dan,’ said Alec. ‘No point in both of us catching our deaths, is there?’

‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ I said, surprised. ‘What is there to wait here for? All the ladies are safely home now.’

‘I’m not leaving until they do,’ said Alec grimly. ‘I might be able to work out what they’re up to if they’re still talking about it when they come out. Noise carries tremendously well on these icy cold nights, you know. Or maybe I’ll throw caution to the wind – march up, bang on the door and join them. I could always say I was out painting and felt chilly.’

‘I know you’re joking,’ I said. ‘But promise me you won’t do anything reckless.’

‘I promise,’ said Alec. ‘I’m too precious to risk, I know. Now get home for heaven’s sake before your chattering teeth bring them all out to see what the racket is.’

I gave him a quick squeeze for encouragement and warmth and then picked my way back up the drive and along the lane, stepping more cautiously than ever, now that I knew there was a gathering of our best – our only! – suspects just a stone’s throw away. Before long, I could see the bulky outline of my motor car where I had left it at the junction and, clambering back in at last and closing the door softly but firmly behind me, I began my journey, crawling along, scanning the fields as I went, loath still to leave the night and its adventures. After all, Alec had got the glory of working out the rhyme as well as the chills and cramp of waiting to nab the stranger. I could not help but smile when I thought of him standing in the kiosk one of the days after telephoning me, seething with irritation at the incessant chanting and then, all of a sudden, really hearing the words for the first time. I was nearly home now. Nothing stirring at Balniel tonight, just the empty fields, neatly ploughed and looking like candlewick in the moonlight.

Then it happened. Inching along, I saw on the road in front of me what I thought at first was a leaf flapping in the wind. I looked again. It wasn’t a leaf: could it be a glove? I slowed down even further, peering at it in the beam of the headlamps, and it turned its head, showing me two dazzling eyes and a tiny mouth open in a soundless yell. It was a kitten. I was sure of it. And it was in considerable distress of some kind. I stopped the motor car, jumped out and hurried forward.

The kitten, a little tabby scrap, was mewing piteously and struggling in vain to run away, its claws scrabbling at the dirt of the lane. I crouched down beside it and tried to pick it up but I could not move it. I pulled at it and its mewing rose to a miniature squeak.

‘What on earth  . . . ?’ I said, trying to sort out its paddling legs and still its writhing. And then I touched its tail, wet and sticky, finding something hard and flat which should not be there. Somehow it had got stuck under a piece of wood litter embedded in the ground. I picked at it, confused, and then took a closer look.

‘No,’ I breathed. ‘No!’

At each end of the piece of wood, no more than a splinter really, there was something hard and shiny, like a button. This was no piece of wood litter caught under a stone; someone had nailed it to the road, with the kitten’s tail trapped, bleeding, underneath it.

‘But when?’ I said. ‘I can’t have driven past you on the way down.’ I was desperately trying to get my fingers under a nail head to prise it out. ‘And why? Why in heaven’s name would anyone
do
that?’

As soon as I asked the question I knew the answer and, as I rose, I felt no surprise to see the dark figure, rippling over the field towards me.

I could have run. I could have got into the motor car and locked the door, and yet I stood there. I should like to think it was courage. Hindsight might almost persuade me that it was clear thinking, the idea that the stranger must have emerged from Luckenheart Farm and Alec could not be far behind, that it would be better for the pair of us to catch the stranger in the very act. I am far from sure, though; it certainly did not feel like courage and common sense at the time. He was scaling the dyke now, up on one side and down on the other like a hound, like a panther. I took my hat off and bowed my head, walking away from the writhing kitten, waiting for it to happen, and I think this act of knowing submission must have fuddled him and distracted him from the fact that tonight, for the first time, he was running not into darkness where a tree, bush or building obscured the moon, but right into the glare of my headlamp light.

He was here, reaching out, breathing hotly on me, filling my nostrils with his stink, waxy and vegetative at the same time, familiar and yet strange. He took hold of a handful of hair and pulled. As though the pain had jerked me back to life again, I put my hands around his arms, gripping as hard as I could, and looked up from the black pumps on his feet to the close-fitting black suit of trousers and jersey into the black mask over his face, into the holes where his eyes were glittering. It was then, when I looked into his eyes, that he realised the mistake he had made. He snapped his head round to the lights and hissed with fury, a noise so dreadful that I stumbled back to get away from it and, free of my grasp, he was gone.

The eyes stayed burned into mine. They were not Jock Christie’s eyes; I was sure of it. But I had seen them before. I had seen them tonight.