Authors: Pat McIntosh
‘Nor did I, mistress,’ said Henry drily, ‘but I never heard that a mandrake had a fingernail. See, this side.’ He indicated one end of the thing. She tipped it over on her palm, and saw the nail, thick and cracked, as yellow as the rest of the finger. She jerked the object away from her in a sudden convulsion of horror, and it flew between the two men and landed in a clump of heather.
Socrates pounced, and came up grinning, the hideous thing clutched in his teeth. Alys lunged at him, but he bounded away, tail waving.
‘Give!’ she ordered. ‘Leave it!
Leave!
’
‘What is it, anyway?’ demanded Steenie, crossing himself again.
‘A thumb,’ said Henry grimly. Alys drew a deep breath, and forced herself to stand still and consider matters.
‘It could be a relic of some sort,’ she said, ‘all wrapped up like that, but there was no paper with it to name it, as a relic should have. I don’t –’ A crunching sound alerted her, and she flung herself at the dog again. ‘Socrates! Give, you dreadful dog, give!’ This time, despite Steenie’s attempt to help, she managed to get the animal by the collar, and prised his narrow, powerful jaws open with difficulty. The fragments of bone and dried flesh which emerged were bonded with saliva; she caught them in the linen binding and pushed the dog away, holding the unpleasant bundle out of his reach.
‘What do we do wi’ it, mistress?’ asked Henry, scratching the back of his head. ‘If it’s a relic it’ll no do to let on the dog got it –’
‘It’s no relic,’said Steenie scornfully. ‘Hid in a filthy place like that? I say we put it in the bag and drop it down the shaft, mem, and nobody’s to ken how it got there if it’s ever found.’
‘It is a proof of witchcraft,’ said Alys, stuffing the bundled linen back into the bag. Socrates pushed at her hand with his long nose, hoping to get his new toy back, and she tapped his muzzle with her finger. ‘No! No, I think I must show it to Gil at least, though I do not like taking it with me.’ She pulled up her skirt to reach her purse, and after a moment’s thought wound her beads round the damask as some protection, before she stowed it beside Gil’s tablets. ‘Did you find anything in the thatch?’
‘Only the hole where Simmie Wilson pulled out whatever he got,’ said Henry. ‘Mistress, is that the family coming home? There’s a deal o’ ponies coming across the hill yonder.’
‘Your brother stayed behind,’ said Arbella in a faint voice, ‘to see to the coffining and arrange a burial. But Maister Michael here, seeing how weary I was, offered to bring me away.’ She accepted a glass of the omnipresent cordial from Bel, sipped at it, and gave Joanna a smile of infinite sympathy.
‘It went well enough,’ reported Michael, nodding at her words. ‘The assize brought it in as murder, and directed Maister Gil to search out who was the guilty one.’
‘He was there in time, then?’ said Alys. She moved her feet to allow the offended dog to lie down under her back-stool, and her purse bumped against her leg.
‘Oh, never doubt it, my dear,’ said Arbella. ‘So all will be well. I’m certain he’ll get that settled in good order. And what brings you up here? Did I see you at the over wind-house the now?’
She has eyes like – like an owl, thought Alys.
‘Davy Fleming’s on the policies,’ burst out Phemie before she could speak, ‘and searching the place for evidence of witchcraft so he says. Cauldhope’s man Simmie found something up at the windhouse, so he said, and she went up for another look at it. Did you find aught, Alys?’
‘We found the hole in the thatch where Simmie got the bundle he had,’ said Alys truthfully, though the object in her purse seemed to burn her shin through kirtle and shift.
‘Fleming?’ said Arbella, her voice suddenly much stronger. ‘I thought he was dying!’
‘So did I,’ said Michael. ‘Mistress Weir, I’m right sorry if he’s up here again making a nuisance of himself –’
‘He’s barred himself into the office,’ said Phemie, ‘wi’ the great desk across the door, and Jamesie set three of the men to have an eye to the place in case he got out. They’d found – Simmie found –’ She halted, and looked at Alys.
‘Wax figures,’ said Joanna into the hesitation, and shivered. ‘Jamesie told me. Little mommets, all clothed and stabbed through wi’ thorns. Who would make such things here, Mother? Is it all true, then? Mother, I canny believe it, that one of this household –’
‘I’ll not believe it,’ said Arbella, and slammed her stick on the floorboards. ‘There’s none in my household would practise such a thing. Fleming has made them himself, to cast suspicion on us!’
Alys preserved her countenance, aware of Michael looking at her.
‘Where is Gil?’ she asked him quietly.
‘He went back to Belstane with Lady Cunningham. I think he expected to find you there, and he wanted a word with Mistress Lithgo.’
‘Aye, where is my good-daughter?’ asked Arbella, catching the name. ‘Phemie, my pet, where is your mother? Not in her stillroom yet, surely?’
‘She’s at Belstane,’ said Phemie, ‘locked up they tell us, seeing she went there to confess to poisoning Thomas.’ She watched with evident satisfaction as Arbella stared at her. The old woman’s mouth fell open, her pale clear skin went an unpleasant blotchy yellow, and it was suddenly obvious that she painted her face.
‘Beatrice?’ she said sharply, making some recovery. ‘Beatrice has confessed to –’
‘She spoke to me last night,’ said Alys. ‘I do not believe it, madame.’
Arbella studied her narrowly, then said much as Phemie had done, ‘Why no?’
To Alys’s relief, she was spared the need to answer this. Yet again, shouting broke out in the colliery yard below the house. Phemie craned to see down the hill, and sprang to her feet with an exclamation.
‘He’s out! Fleming’s out! He must ha’ slipped by the watch. Where’s he making for?’
Alys jumped up to look, and through the writhing glass saw the running figures, the pursuit, the staggering quarry. He reeled down the hillside between the scatter of huts as though he was drunk, the colliers slithering after him through the grey mud, and suddenly changed direction and dived into the doorway of another low wide building like the upper shaft-house. Two men reached it almost immediately, and Alys waited for them to follow him in and drag him out into the light, but they checked in the doorway as if frozen where they stood. Another reached them, and two more, and all stood staring into the little building in what seemed to be dismay.
‘What has happened?’ Alys said in alarm.
‘He’ll have gone down the shaft,’ said Phemie. ‘That’s the low shaft-house. He’ll ha’ fell in, the state he was in.’
‘Just like his father,’ said Arbella slowly, with a strange emphasis. She bent her head, crossing herself. ‘What an end.’
Alys hurried forward into the dark, half crouched, thinking that this was less of a treat than she had imagined it would be a week ago.
‘He still lives,’ said Arbella ahead of her. ‘Mind how you go, mistress.’
Alys nodded, then realized the movement would not be seen.
‘I am minding,’ she said, stooping lower where the candle lit a low curve in the roof.
The mine stank. She had not expected this. Brought up with stone, she knew the scents of damp rock, of the blood-red, rusty water and strange colourless plants which one found in dark places, but she had not been prepared for the distant smell of human ordure and rotted food. And rats, which scrabbled in the dark. Ahead of her Arbella picked her way up the slope, moving freely and confidently like a fish in water.
‘I take it right kind in you,’ the old woman continued, ‘to agree to come below ground with me. If she’d been here I’d ha’ brought my good-daughter, you understand, but you’re near as herb-wise so she tells me, and by what Jamesie said the man still lives.’
He could be heard groaning, Jamesie Meikle had said, the shaft being no more than five fathom deep. This had earned a sharp response from Arbella, along the lines that she had watched them sink it before he was born or thought of. Ignoring this, he had announced that he would not risk sending a man down by the shaft, because the winding-gear was old and needed to be repaired. He would need to get someone to go in with him from the mid ingo. Alys understood this to mean the middle of the three entries, the one not in current use. At this his mistress had announced that she would go, commandeered Alys’s help, and ordered Jamesie to assemble what was needful to get the man out, alive or dead, and follow them in.
So now, her riding-dress and hat left in the office, the skirts of her kirtle belted up, and one of the miners’ hooded leather sarks over all to protect her from falling stones, Alys was groping her way up the surprisingly steep slope behind a similarly clad Arbella, wondering how wise this had been, errand of mercy or no. Whatever Gil resolved about the death of Thomas Murray, it seemed likely to inconvenience the Pow Burn household, and she was uncertain how much Arbella knew she had discovered. Quite apart from Bel’s message on the slate, she reflected. Her purse, with the gruesome find from the upper shaft-house, was in the office with her riding-dress, and though she might feel as if it was outlined in red ink nobody else had reason to notice it, which was a small comfort.
‘I’ll not have Will Fleming’s son fall to his death in my coal-heugh,’ said Arbella suddenly, as if there had been an argument, ‘and let folk say I did nothing about it. If this one is no more than half the man the father was.’
Alys made some mechanical answer. She was staring about her, moving cautiously. The candle flame leaped and flickered in surprising draughts, but showed gaping dark places to right and left, perhaps the rooms Phemie had described, which meant that the massive pillars of living rock between them were the stoops. The roof was uneven, but seemed to be the lower surface of a bed of sandstone, the flame striking tiny sparks in the grains of sand in its matrix. The tunnel walls were black, but only a section at knee height was coal. There were sounds – dripping water, the rattle of an occasional falling stone, a faint creaking now and then. A shout, presumably from the surface, which resounded eerily in the tunnels and spaces. And it was dark, darker than she would have believed possible, outside the patches of candlelight.
At least, she reflected, there were likely to be no owls underground.
There was a groan which echoed along the tunnel, and faint voices, sounding oddly flat. Of course, if we are close, she thought, we must hear the men at the top of the shaft even when they don’t shout.
‘Here he is,’ said Arbella. She had halted, and was holding the candle over a sprawled shape on the tunnel floor. ‘Bring your light, lassie, and we’ll see what ails him.’
The tunnel was wider here, and there were various items strewn about, a broken basket full of spare tools, a couple of coils of rope, two wooden buckets big enough to hold a ten-year-old child. A bundle of timbers lay just to one side of the patch of stones and earth which had come down the shaft, and on it, back ominously reflexed, lay Fleming. Alys came forward, turned up one of the buckets and fixed both candles on its base by dripping wax to secure them.
‘It does not look good,’ she said.
‘Aye, he’s about ready for the priest, I fear,’ agreed the old woman. She bent and patted Fleming’s face. ‘Davy! Davy Fleming! Can you hear me?’
There was a pause; then the man’s eyes opened.
‘Who –?’ he croaked.
‘That’s me, Davy. Arbella Weir. I’m sorry to find you like this, Davy. Death unshriven’s no what I’d ha’ wished on your father’s son.’
‘I am shriven,’ he croaked.
‘Where does it hurt?’ Alys asked, taking his hand. His eyes rolled towards her, and in the light of the two candles he knew her. A wisp of his ingratiating smile crossed his face, and he drew a harsh breath.
‘Mistress,’ he whispered. ‘Doesny hurt. Thanks be – Our Lady. Did you read –?’
‘I read it,’ she said. And keep quiet, man, she thought. ‘Save your strength, Sir David. We’ll get you out of here and made comfortable as soon as maybe.’
‘I willny – last so long.’
‘Aye, well, you meddled in things that wereny your concern,’ said Arbella, her face in shadow, ‘and it’s brought you to this end, the same as your father. I’m right sorry, man.’
‘I’ve learned,’ Fleming whispered. ‘I know. I know what you’ve been –’
Arbella sat back, and knocked the bucket which supported the candles. They fell over, rolling across the flat wooden base, sending shadows leaping wildly round the three of them, then on to the floor of the tunnel. One went out. Arbella twisted awkwardly in pursuit of the other, and put her hand on it.
Alys exclaimed as darkness complete enveloped them.
‘Never fear, lassie,’ said Arbella’s voice. Alys could hear movement close to her, the rustle of clothing, a creak from the thick leather of the collier’s sark Arbella wore. Fleming drew another harsh breath, and breathed out, and made a short choking noise. In sudden alarm she crouched there in the dark, waiting for his next breath.
It never came.
Gil gazed in exasperation at Beatrice Lithgo.
‘I’ll not believe you,’ he said. ‘I don’t accept this confession.’
She shrugged, suddenly looking very like her older daughter. ‘I’ll not retract it.’
‘Who are you protecting?’
‘Protecting?’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘Then what about the other deaths?’
‘The forester?’ She crossed herself. ‘I’m right sorry he died, Our Lady bring him to grace. I never intended that.’
‘I meant,’ said Gil, and counted them off, ‘Matt Crombie, Will Brownlie, your own man, your good-father. Did you kill them too?’
‘No,’ she said blankly. ‘Why would I kill any of them?’ There was a pause in which she seemed to be thinking over the list. ‘No, I’d no reason to poison them. They wereny poisoned,’ she added hastily.
‘You’re certain?’ said Gil. She raised her eyebrows. ‘I’ve just come back from Walston.’
‘From where? Oh, aye. The parish where Auld Adam died. And what did you find there, maister?’ she asked in conversational tones. ‘I was never there myself.’
‘You’ve not missed much,’ Gil admitted, ‘it’s two villages and a high hill, but I’d a read of the parish records, kept by Sir Billy Crichton in very good order, and this morning at first light I got a word with the folk that took Adam Crombie in when he fell from his horse.’ She watched him, still giving nothing away. ‘It seems he ate his dinner in the High House at Elsrickle, along with his two men, and drank a toast to Arbella’s birthday from a silver flask he had with him, which he didn’t share. He set out to ride on to the next house on his round.’ She nodded. ‘A mile or so down the road he seemed dazed, as if he was unsure of where he was, and fell from his horse in a swoon, and struck his head. He was carried into the nearest house, and there he died without speaking again.’
‘Was his belly afflicted?’ she asked, frowning
‘No. I asked about that particularly, after what you said the other day, and he had neither vomited nor purged. I spoke with the woman of the house,’ he added, ‘she’d be like to know.’
She nodded again, accepting this. He waited, but when there was no further reaction said, ‘It seems very like whatever slew Murray and the forester. But of course you’d know that, wouldn’t you?’
Another long look, but no words. This was hard work.
‘My mother has suggested it was orpiment slew your good-brother and Will Brownlie. Does that sound right?’
She nodded again, very slowly, and closed her eyes. ‘Orpiment. Arsenical salts. Of course, it fits, of course. And the collier’s bairns and all, that were took ill the same summer. But why? Who would want to kill Matt, the bonnie lad? And what had the man Brownlie done, save father Joanna?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ he said patiently. ‘You could help me, if you weren’t wasting my time trying to confess to all sorts of wickedness.
The falshede of the
woman is wonder merveyllous
.’
Her eyes flew open, and she gave him another long look. But he had lost her again, he could see that. He would get no further co-operation.
He paused on the stairs down from the steward’s room, looking from of one of the slit windows out over the grazing-land towards the peat-digging and the track which led to the coaltown. He had dreamed again before dawn, and it was still with him; this time he had stood on a bare hillside, looking across this same landscape. Someone stood beside him; when he turned to see, it was a man, a stranger, naked but for a leather cap and a russet fox-skin belt. Smiling at Gil, he had held out in one hand a dull black stone with a little fish drawn on it, in the other a sprig of yew, the green needles and waxy red berries vividly identifiable.
Thank you
, the stranger said.
You need
these
. Then Sir Billy had roused him for the ride over to Elsrickle.
It felt important, but it seemed to mean nothing.
His mother, restored to her working clothes, was in the stable-yard inspecting her horses, and looked round as he came down from the house.
‘Are you for the Pow Burn, dear? Here’s Patey just come in – Alys has your message.’
‘Is all well up there?’ he asked the man.
‘Oh, aye. Well, they’re all to sixes and sevens, but apart from that. And the auld wife away, and Davy Fleming playing merry-ma-tanzie about the yard, and –’
‘Fleming?’ said Gil sharply.
‘Michael said he left the man abed,’ said Lady Egidia in surprise, ‘and dying, he thought.’
‘He was dying,’ said Gil.
‘Well, he was up at the Pow Burn the now,’ said Patey sulkily, ‘and making Simmie Wilson and me hunt all about the place for proofs of some sort, whatever he meant by that. No candles in the chapel, and Jamesie Meikle shouting, I went back to their kitchen, you can believe it. Only but Henry sent me home, and I’ve had no dinner yet.’
‘We left Michael and Mistress Weir at the road-end, how long since?’ said Gil to his mother. ‘She must be home by now. Alys will need help.’
‘Take the bay with the white blaze,’ said Lady Egidia, ‘he’s fresh and he’s fast.’
The coaltown was in greater disarray even than Patey had said. Gil could see this as soon as he came over the shoulder of the hill. There was no work going on, and many of the colliers were standing about in the yard in twos and threes, staring grimly up the hillside. The women had come down from the row of dwellings and were also waiting in silence near the topmost ingo, plaids drawn round them, the children in their midst. Nothing seemed to be happening, but as he neared the house, two men emerged from the black entry of the mine, supporting a third one; a woman screamed, and hurried forward, and another fell to her knees wailing.
Michael emerged from another outbuilding as Gil dismounted. He cast an anxious glance up the hill, and said, ‘I’m right glad to see you, Maister Gil. All’s to do here!’
‘Where’s Alys?’ demanded Gil. ‘And where’s Fleming?’
‘Underground,’ said Michael. Horror-struck, Gil looked from him to the group at the ingo and the screaming woman. ‘No, no, it’s no that bad. At least, it is, but that’s no where she is.’ He drew a breath, and explained more clearly. ‘Fleming ran in there and fell, went five fathom down that shaft yonder.’ He pointed to the low building from which he had emerged. ‘He’s lying injured at its foot, and Mistress Weir went in by the mid ingo to see to him and took Mistress Mason along wi’ her.’ Gil stared at him, his stomach suddenly churning. ‘Jamesie was to get men and hurdles together and follow her to bear him out, but the two of them had barely gone underground when someone came out at the top ingo shouting that there was a roof-fall in there, and men trapped, and he dropped all to clear it. They’ll be a good while longer, I’d say, that’s only the first one come out now.’
‘And Alys is below ground with Mistress Weir,’ said Gil grimly, tethering his horse. ‘How came you to let her –’ He bit that off. Michael had no authority over his wife. ‘Fleming fell down a shaft, you said? Which one?’
‘Yonder. Where Henry is.’ Michael followed him towards the wide low structure. ‘I tried to call down to them, but the echoes are too strong, you canny hear a word.’
‘I’ve tried and all,’ said Henry, without looking up from his task. ‘Steenie, can ye wedge that balk there – no, that one – under here?’
Steenie gazed uncertainly at the choice of timbers available, but Michael lifted the length indicated and fitted it into position. Henry looked up, nodded, and handed him another piece.
‘Brace that there,’ he said, pointing. ‘I’m fixing the winding-gear, Maister Gil. Aye, that’s right, it goes there. I’ve no notion how we’d get in by the tunnel, but if we can get this sorted we can send a man down on a stick.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Gil, over the churning of his stomach.
‘Better be me,’ said Michael, now almost standing on his head at one corner of the wooden structure. ‘I’m half your size.’
‘That’s my wife down there,’ said Gil. He leaned over the shaft and peered down it. ‘How long a walk in from the ingo would it be? There’s no light down there yet.’
‘There was,’ said Henry. ‘It went out a while ago. Jamesie Meikle said it would be half a mile. Near half an hour’s walking, I’d say, all in the dark like that.’
‘And where’s the dog?’ Gil asked. ‘Did he go with Alys?’
‘He was somewhere about,’ said Michael. He straightened up. ‘That’s it, Henry.’
‘Why has the light gone out?’ Gil fretted. ‘Have they left to come out again? Surely not. What would – if the man fell down this shaft, five fathom, he’s not fit to walk away and two women would hardly carry him. I don’t like this. Are we ready, Henry?’
‘Near it,’ said Henry, with maddening calm. He looked up at Gil. ‘I’m no going to go home and tell the mistress I dropped you down a winding-shaft, now am I, Maister Gil? She’d have my head up on the gate to fright the horses.’
‘Can we lower a light to them on a rope?’
‘Not a good idea,’ said Michael. ‘See, the light causes an updraught, and the draught makes the light to burn stronger, and either it’s all consumed afore it reaches the bottom, or it blows out, or it burns through the rope.’
Light, faintly yellow, flowered at the bottom of the shaft. There was movement, but it might have been the shadows flickering. Socrates barked somewhere, and it resonated with a sound like the Questing Beast. Gil stared downwards in alarm, and called Alys’s name. The word echoed and rebounded and returned, and with it like a bird’s cry her voice, his name.
‘Ready,’ said Henry. He dragged the rope’s end towards him, and inspected it carefully. ‘Aye, it’s lasting well enough. Just don’t swing about, Maister Gil.’ He lifted another piece of timber and proceeded to knot the rope competently about the groove in its centre. Once he was certain it would hold he handed the assembly to Gil. ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Steenie, Maister Michael, we’ll all three man the beam.’
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ said Alys into the dark.
‘Aye,’ said Arbella. ‘He’s no breathing.
Sancta Maria
mater dei, ora pro eo
. It was a long drop, and likely his back was broke wi’ landing on these timbers.’
‘Yes,’ said Alys, trying to keep the doubts she felt from her voice.
‘He’d no ha’ lasted much longer, even without the fall,’ continued Arbella. ‘You saw it too, lassie, didn’t you? Beatrice tellt me what ailed him. It’s better this way.’
‘What, dying underground, filthy and in pain?’
‘Better men than him has died underground!’ said Arbella sharply. ‘Coal comes out the earth, but it aye takes blood in exchange.’
‘How much blood?’ asked Alys softly.
‘More than you’d think. But men come and go, lassie. Mind that. Never grieve for one, for you’ll aye get another.’
Impossible, thought Alys. There is no other like Gil.
‘Like Joanna,’ she suggested aloud. ‘I think she might take the man Meikle, when she has done mourning Murray.’
‘She could do worse,’ admitted the other voice.
‘She has no notion to your grandson?’
‘No,’ said Arbella curtly. Then, after a moment, ‘They’re too close kin. Raffie is her nephew. She was married on his uncle, after all.’
‘I forgot that.’ Alys was groping about her. ‘Did one of the candles fall this way?’ She could feel more lengths of wood, smaller timbers than the ones Fleming had landed on, and some flat pieces of metal whose purpose was not clear, and lumps of stone of every size, but not the candle. The top of the shaft showed faintly less dark in the blackness, but no light came down it.
‘No, they went to my other side.’
The conversation at the top of the shaft continued, and in its silences the sounds of the mine grew. Water dripped, there was a distant tapping, stone creaked again. Alys began to be aware of just how much stone lay above her head.
‘What led your man to find Thomas Murray?’ asked Arbella suddenly.
‘He found the place in Lanark where the man went drinking,’ said Alys, ‘and they told him who his friend was. When he knew also that the friend had not been seen for as long as Murray, he went to his house to see what could be learned, and so found them.’
‘Aye.’ Another pause. ‘Mind, I never knew that about Thomas. If I’d ha’ known –’
‘There was an owl in the trees by the cottage,’ said Alys, as if it was to the point.
‘It wasny within the place,’ said Arbella, as if that answered her.
‘Will you not search for the candles, madam?’ asked Alys. But my flint and tinder are in my purse, she realized.
‘Feart for the dark, are you, lassie?’
‘It doesn’t trouble you, does it – being in the dark, I mean?’
‘It’s never troubled me. You sit here quiet, you’ll hear the voice of the coal. And your man thinks Thomas was poisoned. What makes him so certain?’
‘We tested the dregs of the flask,’ said Alys cautiously. Was that a movement she could hear, along the tunnel they had climbed to reach this place?
‘Oh, aye? The flask. Had they both drunk from the one source, then?’
‘Both are dead,’ Alys said.
‘And they died how? It wasny right clear at the quest.’
I have heard Gil give evidence before, thought Alys, he would have made it very clear. Aloud she said, ‘It seems as if they felt no signs until they were abed, and then perhaps they were dizzy and became unconscious, and so died. There was no other sign to be found, as he told Mistress Lithgo two days since, no effect on their bellies.’
‘Aye,’ said the other voice in the darkness. ‘That would be right. And has your wisdom discerned yet what it was they took?’
‘Not yet.’ Well, she thought, I am not certain yet. She turned her head to listen; there was definitely movement, stones shifting under a footfall. What was the voice of the coal, anyway? Closer at hand Arbella’s leather sark creaked.
‘You’re slow, for one that claims to be herb-wise. And what will your man do next to find who is to blame?’
‘He will ask more questions.’
‘Aye, he’s good at that,’ said Arbella. It was clearly not a compliment. ‘Did my good-daughter talk to you yestreen?’
‘Mistress Lithgo?’ There was a thumping overhead, as if someone was hammering timbers, but there was also certainly movement close to her, on both sides. Arbella was stirring, the little sounds of leather and stone suggesting that she was indeed searching for the candle, and from down the sloping tunnel came the footfalls again. Something was approaching slowly through the dark. She stretched her ears, trying to hear the tiny noises. Not booted feet, surely? ‘Yes, I spoke to her. She said she poisoned Thomas Murray, because he was annoying her daughters and Joanna.’