Bury Her Deep (41 page)

Her high-flown language, like something from a cheap adventure, made the tide of terror which had been rising in me begin to subside again. I felt sickened and angry, but no longer scared.

‘So you made her the love charm,’ I said. ‘As an advertisement of attractions to come.’

‘And to earn her gratitude, of course,’ Nicolette went on. ‘Except it didn’t, did it?’ She almost spat the words. ‘Not only – thanks to you, I might add – did she find out about the “poor darling little kitty-witty” and decide that Vash and I were beyond the pale, she heard about the stupid skeleton too – you again, I assume – and that shocked our Lorna to her milk-and-water little core. But worst of all – and this will make you laugh – she sent him packing. Our beautiful charm, nine months in the making, worked so well that it brought that maggot Watson to his knees, and Lorna turned him down.’

‘That’s what she told you?’ I said.

‘That’s what happened,’ said Nicolette. ‘We found her in a broom cupboard at her party all upset because he’d forced himself on her. And so, you see  . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she was silent for a moment. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘what brings you here tonight?’

‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘If you hoped to get away with it, why did you kill the cat?’

‘What?’ barked Nicolette, her ease gone in an instant.

‘This morning,’ I said. ‘Someone killed the little cat that I saved on the road.’

‘Oh Lord,’ said Nicolette. ‘
That’s
where she was then. My sister! I don’t know what to do with her. She was very angry with you – we both were, actually – but Vashti takes it so seriously. I mean, look how she dresses, darling. She was most mysterious at supper last night, saying that unpropitious elements had to be swept away to allow the power to flow. So, she came and slaughtered the cat, did she? How theatrical. How very typical of Vashti. Still, she did volunteer for the messy end of tonight’s work, so I’m not complaining.’

‘The messy  . . . ?’ I said. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘She’s killing two birds with one stone tonight,’ said Nicolette. ‘She’s restoring the fortunes of Luckenlaw and shaking that irritating creature off our backs for good. I do admire neatness, don’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Where
is
Vashti? What’s she doing?’

‘She’s preparing Lorna.’ I held onto the rough stone of the wall behind me as my head clouded and cleared again. ‘We’ve been at it all day, actually,’ Nicolette went on. ‘We asked Lorna to come round for breakfast and bring her father’s car. Wasn’t that a clever touch? My idea, if you’ll forgive me bragging. I thought even if she was missed no one would think she was anywhere nearby so long as the car was gone too.’

‘But how can it work?’ I said, thinking furiously. ‘There are only two of you. I thought you needed three.’

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ said Nicolette. ‘I expect when the two are as talented as Vash and me the third is immaterial. Look at the love charm after all. That was two of us. Vash in her cat-burglar suit and me doing the incantations. And if Lorna hadn’t spoiled it by turning him down it would have worked  . . . well, like a charm.’ She threw her head back and cackled, smoke billowing out of her nose and mouth, making her look diabolical in the torchlight.

‘Where are they?’ I said.

‘Oh, surely you don’t think I’m going to tell you?’ she said, still cackling. ‘You’ll only spoil it all. Although, actually, I’m surprised you can’t guess.’ I frowned at her. What did she mean by that?

‘I suppose you
would
spoil it, wouldn’t you?’ she said, half into herself. ‘I don’t suppose you’d help out instead?’

Where could they be? I was so sure this place would be the scene of the nightmare if it was going to happen.

‘I mean to say, I really do think Vash and I could do anything we set our minds to, but three is more traditional.’

Would they be in the graveyard? At the kirk? I tried to think of the whole of Luckenlaw, laid out in those sketch maps I had drawn, and in Alec’s terrible pictures where he said it looked like a lollipop.

‘It’s the most tremendous fun,’ Niccy was saying, ‘except for some of the really grisly bits, and Vash does all that.’

The road, leading up, the village in a cluster, the kirk and manse like gateposts, the five farms all around and  . . . the law. Of course, the Lucken Law.

‘And there is a way to make it even more fun. I’ve got some tonight to give me courage if it’s nasty.’

I began to sidle along to the doorway now, feeling for where the passageway led away to the outside.

‘Oh, don’t go,’ said Nicolette. ‘Aren’t you listening to me? It’s marvellous fun. A scream.’ She was stalking towards me. ‘Look, try some of this if you need to.’ She rummaged in the pocket of her tight little suit, bearing down on me. ‘You’re going to love it, truly.’

At the same time as I sprang away from her into the passageway, she lunged for me and knocked me to the ground. I fell on my side and felt a sharp crack as I came down onto the unyielding lump of the padlock. The pain shot through me, needle-sharp and sickening, but still I struggled and rolled, ignoring it, trying to get away from her, to get out from under her as she lay across me, using her weight to pin me down, while she wrestled with something she held in her hand. At last I heard a popping sound and Nicolette giggled.

‘Welcome to Wonderland,’ she said, and before I knew what was happening she had poured a stream of thick, bitter liquid into my mouth. I choked on it and tried to spit it out but I could feel some of it trickling down my throat, burning. With all of my strength I heaved her off me and got to my knees, gagging.

‘Ow!’ said Nicolette, sounding amused. ‘Careful now. You could have hurt me.’

Whimpering with pain and trying to scrub out my mouth with my coat-sleeve I hauled myself up. The torch lay on its side a little way from us. Nicolette was still on the floor of the cave, with her legs tucked demurely to one side, ankles together, as we had been taught to sit on picnics, but when she had finished tidying her necklaces and turning her many rings around to the front of her hands again, all of a sudden she changed. She leapt up to her feet and stood, braced in a half-crouch with her arms wide, her hands flexed like little claws and a new look of excited concentration on her painted face.

‘Now, Dandy,’ she said. ‘You’ve had your fun, but you surely didn’t think I was going to let you walk away, did you?’

With that, she sprang towards me. I dropped to the floor and kicked out with all my strength. Nicolette’s feet shot away from under her, her high heels screeching against the stone, and I heard a dull, wet clunk as her head hit the wall above. She rolled down, groaning, but she was starting to scrabble her way up again before I had even got to my feet and so, hugging my ribs with both arms and biting down hard on my lip to bear the pain, I groped my way along the passage to the open door.

I could hear her dragging herself after me and did I only imagine that, as I scraped the door round on its gritty hinges and forced the hasp closed, I could feel her weight slump against the other side? I snapped the padlock shut and stood against the door, trying to breathe without moving.

I was out. And if she had poisoned me then it was poison that might leave me time to get Lorna before I fell. I started first one way along the little sheep track and then the other, but I needed to get to the top, so I put my hands down on the steep grass slope stretching upwards and started to climb. I could see nothing, but Nicolette’s face still hung in front of me, swinging like a pendulum and cackling, and the cackling was the grating of my bones and the pendulum swing was the new booming pain that swelled up around it.

On and on I scrambled, slipping back almost as much as I pressed upwards, clutching at tussocks to stop myself from sliding all the way. My hands were scratched and I felt my nails bend back and break as the earth pitted in behind them. My knees were raw, scraped bare through my stockings. Still I climbed, and time began to slow down, to roll past, falling away behind me in heavy folds; each time I lifted a hand and hauled myself upwards it was like a tree uprooting itself; each time my foot struck the ground a tide rushed up through me and shattered behind my eyes.

Was that a light? Was I imagining it? Up ahead of me I thought I could see a thick glow smeared across the darkness and I could hear a noise that was not a hum and was not a howl but was both of them and neither and then I was up on top of the law standing immensely tall, with all the darkness splintered and streaming away from me, my ears rushing with the howling humming sound and there was the dark stranger, all in black, but his legs had stuck together and turned into a bell and the bell swung around as he moved. It was Vashti, it must be, in a black robe like a bell and there were the bones, white and shimmering, too big to be a kitten’s bones. And they were clothed with flesh again and it was Lorna’s body, lying white and still.

I moaned and the humming howl broke off, whispering and rustling like a thousand crows’ wings all around me. I staggered forward and fell as the black bell turned, clanging.

There were five of them, stone angels, their carved robes grey-white like bones, and they were coming from all sides. And they were past me, closing in on her now, walking slowly in their grey stone robes, chanting. Four of them closing over the black bell, making it stop, and one of them, huge, monstrous, bigger than the hill, bigger than the sky, bowing over the bones that were clothed in flesh, that was Lorna, and lifting her. The black bell clanged.

I closed my eyes. It was over.

20

The moon, looking as tremulous and iridescent as a soap bubble balanced on the branch tips of the bare dark trees, shone down through the windows of the schoolroom onto the heads of the Rural ladies. Miss Lindsay, standing on a set of steps with a taper in her hand, began touching its glowing tip to the candles and as the dots of light steadily grew into pointed, flickering flames and the flames spread all around the tree with each touch, the ladies began to murmur.

‘Oh, did you ever see so bonny!’

‘My, those bottle tops fair catch the light when they’re strung together.’

‘Away. It’s your bobbles you made that are twinkling.’

‘And what a fair heat comes off it. You’ve got the fire bucket there, eh no, Miss McCallum?’

Miss Lindsay stepped down and blew out the taper and we stood in silence for a while, admiring.

‘Let’s not put the lamps on again,’ she said. ‘Let’s have our tea in the candlelight.’

‘Are those mincemeat pies warmed through yet, Moyra?’

‘Aye, they’re rare and hot.’ And then, sotto voce. ‘I’d be as happy with a scone myself, mind.’

‘No! Fruit only lies heavy if you’ve put too much peel through it. You’d better have one of my ones, Mrs Martineau – with the wee stars on the top – and you’ll be fine.’

When we had collected our cups from the tea table and sat back down in the ring of chairs around the tree we looked, in the soft light, like children gathered around a manger, or rather like children pretending to be wise men gathered around a manger, half the air of wonderment acting and half of it real.

Miss McCallum settled down next to me.

‘I’m sorry about your talk, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘You’re fated never to give it, it seems.’

‘If I’d insisted on the Household Budget instead of a Christmas party with a tree, there might have been a riot,’ I said and there was some soft chuckling from the ladies nearest us, who were listening in.

‘Well, you’re always welcome to come back and join us,’ said Mrs Hemingborough, from across the way. ‘You’ve been a good friend to Luckenlaw.’

‘Aye, some folk can fit in anywhere,’ said another voice, sounding rather grim for the setting. ‘And some folk just fit in nowhere, try as they will.’

There was a slight silence after that, and a few throats were cleared. I had seen the board as I drove past the gateposts of Luck House on my way down that afternoon.
Fine small estate, historic mansion house, tenanted farm, cottages, trout stream, stocked shoot. Enquiries and viewing strictly through agents.

‘I hear that Vashti one is still in the hospital,’ said Annette Martineau. ‘What is it that’s wrong with her again?’

‘They’ve never said,’ said Molly.

‘I heard the pair of them had been dabbling  . . .’ said a timid voice. I stiffened. ‘In  . . . drugs.’

‘Now, ladies,’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘The Rural is no place for gossip.’ There was a rumble of assent, with just a hint of amusement too. ‘There but for the grace of God  . . .’

‘I cannot agree with you there,’ said Mrs Palmer. ‘I think you make your own luck in this world.’

‘You’re right,’ said Mary Torrance. ‘The good you do and the harm you do: both come back to you threefold.’

‘And what’s for you won’t go by you,’ said Mrs McAdam, of course, because someone had to.

‘Let’s not dwell on it,’ said Miss Lindsay. ‘It’s Christmas time. Let’s be happy that we’ve got this first year behind us and the Rural is going strong.’

‘And we’ve a lot to look forward to next year,’ said a voice from the other side of the tree, sounding slightly knowing. ‘I hear we’ve a wedding coming.’

Lorna Tait looked down and said nothing, but she was smiling. Jock Christie from Luckenheart Farm had been there at the manse for tea before the meeting tonight, very well-scrubbed and uncomfortable in his good shirt and squeaky shoes, looking younger than ever but not much younger than Lorna with her rosy cheeks and dancing eyes, and while I was changing I heard from Grant who had heard from Mrs Wolstenthwaite in the kitchen that he was there two and three times a week, and they had been seen out walking together with no chaperone, and last Sunday young Christie had sat in the manse pew at the kirk and Mr Tait had looked mightily pleased and said nothing.

It could not have been the ideal way to meet one’s future mate, being carried down a hillside in a dead faint and laid on his kitchen table wearing nothing but a blanket, but Alec told me that Christie had taken it all in his stride and had attended to Lorna as he would attend to any sick calf or heifer struck with milk fever.