Bury Her Deep (40 page)

‘Please don’t throw the poor thing in the boiler, Timpson. If you could find a stout box and put her in the flower room on the stone floor, I’ll bury her later.’

‘Just you give me a shout, madam, and I’ll dig the hole,’ said Timpson, and the kindness in his voice made my eyes fill again. ‘I’m fond o’ a cat myself,’ he went on. ‘Verra clean wee creatures and they keep the finches out o’ the fruit garden like nothin’ else can.’ Timpson and Hugh did not see eye to eye on the question of birds, it seemed.

For the rest of the day I sat in my own room, moping a little, waiting for Alec to ring back, eventually trying the manse again, in case he had missed her return.

‘I’m beginning to feel quite worried, Mrs Gilver,’ Mr Tait told me. ‘I haven’t seen her all day, and even if she had happened upon some poor soul in need of succour and she was busy making broth in a cottage somewhere she would have got word to me, I’m sure of it.’

‘Have you tried her friends?’ I said.

‘I can’t seem to find anyone,’ he answered. ‘Miss Lindsay’s house is in darkness and Miss McCallum isn’t in the post house – they must have gone off somewhere together, I suppose. No answer from the Howies all day, either. And Captain Watson hasn’t seen her, for I went down and asked him.’

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ I told him. ‘She’s a big girl and she can look after herself. Only, you will tell her I rang, won’t you?’

He had surprised me when he said that Miss Lindsay’s house was in darkness – I had not realised how the day was passing – but looking out of my window now I saw that night had indeed fallen and I went over to close the shutters. I sighed heavily, looking out, but I could not even see the little break in the turf of the lawn which showed where the scene of the morning’s horrors had been. It was a perfectly black, moonless night. That was right, I realised, calculating it, exactly a month since that other perfectly black moonless night when I looked out and saw the grave robbers at Luckenlaw. Well, at least I knew that was nothing to do with Lorna. Her surprise, the night of her party when she heard of it, was quite genuine. ‘They robbed a grave?’ she had said. ‘But that’s  . . .’ what had she called it? No, I remembered, she had been incapable of words at the thought.

And yet, how could it be so? How could someone be responsible for what happened at the full moon and for what had happened to my poor kitten at the dark moon last night, and yet be so shocked by the dark deeds of the moon before? It was just as the little girls sang: dark night, moonlight  . . . and then how did it go? Haunt me something, something white. Moonlight, dark night, shut the coffin lid tight, like any other little rhyme carving up the days and weeks into tidy parcels. Sneeze on a Monday, kiss a stranger, sneeze on a Tuesday, sneeze for danger. The days of the week with their meanings and the phases of the moon, each with their allotted tasks. Surely, it would make more sense to think that the same person was responsible for it all.

But she could not have been; she was speechless with horror at the very idea of it. ‘They dug up a grave?’ she had said, again and again. ‘But that’s  . . .’ All of a sudden, my memory seemed to sharpen and an idea took hold of me. ‘But that’s  . . .’ she had said, and I had imagined she was going to go on and call it evil or insane. But what if she had been going to say something quite different? What if she had been going to say it was no good, that it would never work, that it was not old dug-up bones that needed to be put there. And was it not true that when we visited the chamber that awful, hilarious day Lorna had been perfectly unperturbed even when she had reached into the little hollow and pulled out the dust sheet? She only screamed when she saw that it was empty.

Was I making something out of nothing? Rattled by the horridness of the kitten that morning, was I sitting here telling myself ghost stories like any ghoul?

It was the dark of the moon again. Miss Lindsay was missing, Miss McCallum was missing, and Lorna had not gone home after her trip to my garden last night. She believed in charms and spells and yet her love charm had been powerless. Would she blame that on the grave robbers – whoever they were – putting tired old bones into the law? Was it possible that this time she would replace them with something fresher? Miss Lindsay, Miss McCallum and the Howies were all missing from home.

I started to pace up and down my sitting room. The Howies were safe, I was sure. They were married women and was it not most likely that the sacrifice of a young girl was less to do with her youth than with her virginity? So Miss McCallum and Miss Lindsay could be in danger. Who could I turn to? Who could I tell?

I imagined ringing the manse again and saying this to Mr Tait, imagined myself being wrong and him telling Hugh and Hugh making me go and speak to the kind of doctor I thought Lorna needed. Alec could not be reached except by telegram. I could ask to be put through to the kiosk on the green and let it ring and ring, hoping for someone to answer, but time was wasting.

I looked at the clock above the fire. It was half-past seven now. I had wasted hours here.

‘Stay, stay,’ I said to Bunty as I rushed to the door. I could say I was upset about the kitten and that I had driven away to have a good cry where no one could hear me. I could say the motor car broke down and I had to walk miles to find help. I would worry about all of that later. Right now, I simply had to go.

There was no one in at Ford Cottage, two hours later, when I pounded on the door – where was he? – so I drove through the ford, praying that the full, midwinter stream would not be too much for my motor car. There was a moment when I could have sworn I was afloat and the engine spluttered alarmingly, but I made it up the other side and was soon bucketing along the winding back lane which would eventually bring me around the west side of the law to Luckenheart Farm and the steps leading to the chamber. I had a crowbar beside me on the seat, taken from the old stable we used as a garage now, but I was sure I should not need it. I was sure that the padlock would be open when I got to the little wooden door. At last, I spied in the light of my headlamps the rather crumbling gateposts and sagging rusted gates of Luck House and I knew I was almost there.

A door opened and a light appeared as I shot through the farmyard on my way to the rocky cleft at the foot of the hill, so I slowed and allowed the motor car to roll backwards until I was beside Jock Christie, who was holding up his lantern and staring at me.

‘Mrs Gilver?’ he said. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Are you alone tonight?’ I asked him, looking wildly around for carts, hoping against hope that his kitchen was full of large, competent farmers who could help.

‘Of course,’ said Jock Christie. ‘Mrs Gilver, what’s wrong?’

Part of me – most of me, if I am brutally honest – wanted to beg him to come with me, but he looked such a child standing there in the lantern light and I had no idea what was waiting up the hill.

‘Nothing,’ I told him then I put the engine back into gear and roared off, leaving him blinking. At the stopping place, I climbed out, switched on my electric torch and began to play the beam around, looking for the opening where the stairs were cut into the rock. My mind was all stern resolve and courage, but already, as so many times before, I could feel my body, my blood, my heart, my trembling legs, begin to warn me that dreadful things were coming.

Oh, Alec, where
are
you? I thought again. And then I stopped. It might not be one of the Misses Lindsay or McCallum that she would set her sights upon tonight. After all, they were her friends. Suddenly I was sure I knew who was in danger, for if she had wanted simply to warn me off and cause me grief this morning she would have gone for Bunty, but she must have felt that she needed to pay the kitten back for being the creature which showed me what an evil woman she really was. Well, would she not do the same tonight? If she needed a victim, would she not choose the one who had hurt and humiliated her so badly at that terrible party?

Could she overpower Alec? If she surprised him, could she throttle him or hit him so hard that he fainted? I stumbled up the rocky steps on shaking legs, praying that I was not already too late.

As I rounded the rowan bush and came upon the platform, my torchlight picked out the glitter of the key in the open padlock and the bright, unweathered wood on the inside of the little door. The mouth of the tunnel disappeared into thick, brownish darkness. I stopped to try to quiet my panting breaths, carefully lifting the padlock off the hasp and dropping it into my coat pocket, key and all, for the thought of someone coming after me and turning the lock, the thought of being trapped in there, was enough to run a trickle of cold terror down my spine. I shook myself, put out my torch and stole inside. Along the chill, dank passageway I crept, towards the faint glow of a light at the end. I could smell cigarette smoke, acrid and unpleasant in this closed-in place before I got to the arched stone doorway, the tiny glow of light went out and I could hear someone grinding the cigarette stub on the stone floor, the dust grating.

‘That was quick,’ said Nicolette Howie’s voice out of the darkness. ‘Put your torch on, darling, and let’s get on with it. It’s far too cold to hang around in here.’

I clicked the switch on my torch, too dumbfounded at her air of ease to think whether or not I should. She spoke as though we had met on a street while out shopping.

‘Where is she, then?’ said Nicolette, rising from her perch on the stone slab in the middle of the room. Then she turned and saw me.

‘What?’ she breathed. ‘What are you doing here? Where are they? What have you done?’

I could not answer her. I did not know. But I began to babble feverishly, unable to stop myself.

‘Where’s Lorna?’ I said. ‘Niccy, you must come with me. All these games you’ve been playing – if you’ve been playing them too – they must stop. She’s dangerous. Where’s Vashti? Do you know where Miss McCallum and Miss Lindsay are? Are they safe?’

Nicolette’s face broke into a smile.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘You have got in a muddle, haven’t you? I have no idea where Miss Lindsay and her little pink gnome of a friend are. Gone on another Women’s March probably. And no, my dear Dandy. Lorna is
not
dangerous. She’s just silly and getting extremely tiresome. I, on the other hand  . . .’ She looked just as calm and amused as ever, rearranging the strings of beads across the lapels of her little suit and smirking up at me from under her lashes.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I thought it was  . . . What are you doing here? How did you get the key?’

‘Lorna brought it,’ said Nicolette. ‘She’s such a sweet girl. She’d do anything for her dear friends, you know.’

She was so calm, so very unperturbed, that I feared for a moment I had imagined everything.

‘Did you  . . .’ I began. ‘Don’t laugh at me for asking this, but did you rob the grave?’ I waited to see if her eyes would widen, if she would shriek with laughter and tell me I was a scream, but there was not so much as a flicker.

‘Yes, well that didn’t work terribly well, did it?’ she said.

‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘You dug someone out of her grave?’

‘Well, Irvine and Johnny helped with the actual spadework,’ said Nicolette, deliberately misunderstanding me, ‘once we had finally talked them into it. But they absolutely refused to enter into the spirit, which can’t have helped. No matter – we’re going to make a proper job of it tonight, just Vash and me.’

‘But why?’ I said. ‘For God’s sake, why?’

‘Well, not for God’s sake,’ said Nicolette, with an ugly laugh. ‘For our sake. Vash’s and mine. Do you know, Dandy, it was six weeks after we bought that God-awful pile that they found the entrance to this place. Six pathetic weeks and then the very thing that gave Luckenlaw its power was stripped away and we were left there with nothing.’

‘You moved here for that? How did you know?’

‘Oh, it’s very well known about in certain circles,’ said Nicolette. She had lit another cigarette now and the smell of it in the dank air of the chamber was sickening. ‘But since the day those wretched archaeologists took her out everything’s gone wrong. Everything we’ve touched has failed.’

‘Do you mean money? That’s happening to everyone.’

‘But it wasn’t supposed to happen to me,’ she said, so grimly she was almost croaking. ‘We come from an illustrious line, Vash and I.’

‘An illustrious line of what?’ I asked, although I was sure I knew.

‘Enchantresses,’ said Nicolette, rolling the ludicrous word around her mouth like brandy. ‘We always knew it – our mother taught us our history from when we were tiny and she made us swot it all up and practise like anything. She was determined that no matter what degradations my useless father made us suffer – rented rooms, Dandy, with the landlady looking down her nose as though we were nobodies – we would find our rightful place in the world one day. And we did, although she didn’t live to see it.’ Here Nicolette gave a small sigh. Her face had grown gentle as she spoke and she gazed at a spot above my head, remembering. Then suddenly her attention snapped back to me and her voice hardened again. ‘We married into Balnagowan just in time for that loathsome Ross cousin to sell it out from under us. And of course we found out that Irvine and Johnny couldn’t care less about it, hardly knew about the family much less tried to keep up the traditions. Vash and I had to nag them to death to make them move here. And no sooner had we arrived than Mr holier-than-thou Tait put those precious bones into the filthy soil of a churchyard and we were stuck here, for nothing, with two useless boobs of husbands and no hope of getting out. We tried all sorts of things over the next few years, everything our mother had taught us, but nothing worked. And so, eventually, we realised that we had to take matters into our own hands and put right what was wrong.

‘Only we needed another one. Three is the powerful number, you know. And there were only two of us, which is where dear Lorna came in. Of course, she didn’t know what was happening. Such a very bovine trusting creature, isn’t she? Only, just recently we began to think it would be better all round if she was  . . . How can I put it?  . . . a full board member? So we thought we would convince her, show her what riches, what power, what ecstasies were in store.’