driving tour of the district. But I did take note of one name.
‘Dr Weir,’ said Jimmy, last of all, ‘taks a rare interest in the local history. He’s a gran man. He’s aye fightin tae save Slains. He’ll be at hame the nicht, if ye’ve a mind tae wander ower there and spik wi’ him.’
‘I’d like that very much. Thanks.’
‘He’s got hissel a bungalow up by the Castle Wood. I’ll tell ye the wye, it’s nae bother tae find.’
I walked out after supper. The dark had settled in, and on the path down from my cottage to the road the strange, uneasy feeling gripped me once again, although there was no one and nothing there that could have threatened me. I shook it off and made my legs move faster, but it followed, like an unseen force that chased me to the road, and then retreated into darkness, waiting…knowing it would have another chance at me, tonight, when I came home.
Chapter Six
The Castle Wood stood not far up past the Kilmarnock Arms. I’d gone through it that first day when I had been driving to Jane’s, and by daylight had thought it a peaceful place, but in the dark it was different, and I was grateful that I could pass by it tonight on the far side of the road. There were masses of rooks wheeling noisily over the treetops, their harsh cries unnerving. And the tall trees themselves with their strange gnarled branches looked twisted and weird, like the wolf-and witch-concealing forests in the illustrations of my old book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales .
Dr Weir’s house was a welcome sight – a neat, low bungalow, with wind chimes hung beside the door and a family of small painted gnomes peering up from the tidy front garden.
I was clearly expected. I barely had to knock before the door was opened to me. Dr Weir looked like a gnome himself: not tall, moon-faced, with round, old-fashioned spectacles. I couldn’t judge his age. His hair was white, but his complexion had a healthy, ruddy smoothness, and the eyes behind the spectacles were clear and sharp. He’d been a surgeon, Jimmy had explained, and had just recently retired.
‘Come in,’ he said, ‘come in.’ He took my coat and shook the dampness from it, hanging it with care upon the antique mirrored hall tree. I could see, in every corner of the entryway, the evidence of good taste and a love of timeworn things. There was no clutter, but the fading prints hung on the wall, the Persian carpet runner on the floor, and the soft light from old glass sconces on the walls, all lent the space an atmosphere of permanence and comfort.
And that atmosphere was stronger in the narrow, lamplit study that he showed me to. One wall was lined from floor to ceiling with glass-fronted bookcases, their shelves packed tight with volumes old and new, hardback and paperback. And where he had run out of room to stand a book up properly on edge, he’d laid it horizontally across the top of its companions and stacked others over that, so there were books wedged in wherever there was space. It had the same effect on me as the sight of a toy shop would have on a six-year -old.
But because I didn’t want to seem like a six-year-old, I held in my enthusiasm and let him introduce me to his wife, who had been sitting in a chintz-upholstered chair, one of a pair that flanked a small round table at the narrow end wall. Behind these, a fall of striped, pinch-pleated curtains had been drawn across the room’s one window, shutting darkness out and keeping in the warm glow of the reading lamps. A leather wing chair with a smoking table at its side completed the room’s furnishings, and on the wall that didn’t have the bookcases, a handful of seascapes and nautical prints caught the light in the glass of their frames.
The doctor’s wife, Elsie, was compact like him, and white-haired , but not round in the slightest. More a fairy than a gnome, I thought. Her blue eyes seemed to dance. ‘We were about to have our evening whisky,’ she informed me. ‘Will
‘Dr Weir,’ said Jimmy, last of all, ‘taks a rare interest in the local history. He’s a gran man. He’s aye fightin tae save Slains. He’ll be at hame the nicht, if ye’ve a mind tae wander ower there and spik wi’ him.’
‘I’d like that very much. Thanks.’
‘He’s got hissel a bungalow up by the Castle Wood. I’ll tell ye the wye, it’s nae bother tae find.’
I walked out after supper. The dark had settled in, and on the path down from my cottage to the road the strange, uneasy feeling gripped me once again, although there was no one and nothing there that could have threatened me. I shook it off and made my legs move faster, but it followed, like an unseen force that chased me to the road, and then retreated into darkness, waiting…knowing it would have another chance at me, tonight, when I came home.
Chapter Six
The Castle Wood stood not far up past the Kilmarnock Arms. I’d gone through it that first day when I had been driving to Jane’s, and by daylight had thought it a peaceful place, but in the dark it was different, and I was grateful that I could pass by it tonight on the far side of the road. There were masses of rooks wheeling noisily over the treetops, their harsh cries unnerving. And the tall trees themselves with their strange gnarled branches looked twisted and weird, like the wolf-and witch-concealing forests in the illustrations of my old book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales .
Dr Weir’s house was a welcome sight – a neat, low bungalow, with wind chimes hung beside the door and a family of small painted gnomes peering up from the tidy front garden.
I was clearly expected. I barely had to knock before the door was opened to me. Dr Weir looked like a gnome himself: not tall, moon-faced, with round, old-fashioned spectacles. I couldn’t judge his age. His hair was white, but his complexion had a healthy, ruddy smoothness, and the eyes behind the spectacles were clear and sharp. He’d been a surgeon, Jimmy had explained, and had just recently retired.
‘Come in,’ he said, ‘come in.’ He took my coat and shook the dampness from it, hanging it with care upon the antique mirrored hall tree. I could see, in every corner of the entryway, the evidence of good taste and a love of timeworn things. There was no clutter, but the fading prints hung on the wall, the Persian carpet runner on the floor, and the soft light from old glass sconces on the walls, all lent the space an atmosphere of permanence and comfort.
And that atmosphere was stronger in the narrow, lamplit study that he showed me to. One wall was lined from floor to ceiling with glass-fronted bookcases, their shelves packed tight with volumes old and new, hardback and paperback. And where he had run out of room to stand a book up properly on edge, he’d laid it horizontally across the top of its companions and stacked others over that, so there were books wedged in wherever there was space. It had the same effect on me as the sight of a toy shop would have on a six-year -old.
But because I didn’t want to seem like a six-year-old, I held in my enthusiasm and let him introduce me to his wife, who had been sitting in a chintz-upholstered chair, one of a pair that flanked a small round table at the narrow end wall. Behind these, a fall of striped, pinch-pleated curtains had been drawn across the room’s one window, shutting darkness out and keeping in the warm glow of the reading lamps. A leather wing chair with a smoking table at its side completed the room’s furnishings, and on the wall that didn’t have the bookcases, a handful of seascapes and nautical prints caught the light in the glass of their frames.
The doctor’s wife, Elsie, was compact like him, and white-haired , but not round in the slightest. More a fairy than a gnome, I thought. Her blue eyes seemed to dance. ‘We were about to have our evening whisky,’ she informed me. ‘Will
Similar Books
