Bury Her Deep by Catriona McPherson Page B

ordinary of places. I assure you, Mrs Gilver, that Gilverton would succumb just as easily under similar trials.’ I must have looked sceptical. ‘We were speaking of much the same thing this morning – the chamber of the Lucken Law.’ He folded his napkin, patted his mouth firmly with it and sat back in his chair. ‘You would scarcely credit the panic when it was opened.’
    ‘It was opened?’ I said, my eyes wide.
    ‘Yes, just after the war,’ he said. ‘With all the interest in archaeology and all those eager pilots looking for excuses to stay in their cockpits, anywhere with an interesting name and a whiff of a past got used to the sight of a rickety little contraption overhead and someone hanging out of the side with a camera, and as soon as someone had taken a look at the place from up there they found the entrance. That much was to be expected.
    ‘Now, however, we move into the realms of pure fantasy – a mixture of pharaoh’s curse, an understandable confusion about the name of the place, and  . . . human nature, I daresay.’ He had the air of regret one might expect in a minister who sees so much of it. ‘When the news broke that the archaeologists were coming, decent God-fearing folk started barring their doors and demanding blessings and goodness knows what else. I had to preach on it more than once, and even in the kirk pews I saw a few stubborn looks thrown back at me.’
    I could imagine. I have long thought that Hindustanis with their endless gods would feel quite at home in Scotland with the blasphemous jumble of saints, fairies, charms and omens which seemed to trouble neither priest nor congregation ever a jot.
    ‘You see then, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, ‘it is not really a surprise to find that a faction of my parishioners is willing to whip up a ghoulish fantasy about the next thing to come along. Willing to believe, that is, that our dark stranger is not of this world.’
    ‘I still think it’s very odd,’ I insisted, ‘but it might play into our hands. You see, if everyone half believes the dark stranger is some kind of phantom they might well ignore any clue that doesn’t fit. They will have been very interested in his snakiness and his ability to fly over walls and not at all concerned, for instance, with such mundane facts as where he flew from or what kind of boots he had on. Do you see?’
    Mr Tait nodded.
    ‘That makes a good deal of sense, Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘A rationalist, I see.’
    ‘In this instance, I better had be, don’t you think?’ I countered, although one would not care to be accused of anything quite so cold as rationalism in the general way of things ‘So,’ I concluded, ‘leaving aside the exasperating Mrs Hemingborough, I have the three girls from the spring to talk to and then the farmer’s wife from the summer.’
    Mr Tait screwed up his eyes in concentration and began to count them off on his fingers.
    ‘Elspeth McConechie, the Palmers’ dairy maid, was the first,’ he said. ‘You’ll find her at work this afternoon at the Palmers’ place: Easter Luckenlaw Farm. Then Annie Pellow. A Largo lass. She works in the kitchen at the Auld Inn in Colinsburgh but she lodges here with Mrs Kinnaird. The house on the green nearest the pillar-box. And the third one was Molly  . . . I forget her surname  . . . but she’s up at Luck House. Maid of all work, near enough.’
    ‘Luckenlaw House, do you mean?’ I said. ‘In that case I think I saw her this morning.’
    ‘You would have,’ said Mr Tait. ‘There’s just her most days now. Heaven knows how they run the place. There were a dozen indoor servants before the war.’
    ‘And then nobody for two months and then the farmer’s wife?’ I prompted. ‘Mrs  . . . ?’
    ‘Young Mrs Fraser,’ said Mr Tait. ‘From Balniel Farm down to the main road. She came straight to me, frightened out of her wits. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting her to tell you all about