On the other hand, I had no particular desire to encounter the pack of ravening collies, but the prospect which did entice me was that of announcing to Alec that I had done so. I suppose, too, that a small part of me did not quite believe the tale of the mysterious arm and hand and the advance of the beasts. It sounded quite unlike sheepdogs, farmers’ wives and in particular anyone who offered home cooking to paying guests.
I was decided, and set off across the sheep-cropped turf to the first of the gates with a swing in my step which belied the way my heart was thudding.
The first of the gates had latches and hinges, despite its share of barbed wire, and the second had hinges and not too nasty a knot holding it closed, so I made it to the last one without having to climb or wriggle. This, however, was a beast of a thing, tied in three places with baling twine and leaning into the field at an alarming angle. I studied it. And while I stood there, I saw something move from the corner of my eye. A dark figure was flitting up the farmhouse garden, racing towards the house. It disappeared around the corner leading to the yard and I heard a door bang. Sure that I was safe from the dogs, for no farmer’s wife alive would let them into her garden, I squeezed through the gap between the gatepost and the wall and crept closer. She had been hanging out washing; a basket of linen sat in the middle of the patch of grass and a pair of underdrawers hung by one leg where she had abandoned them. Rather a splendid garment for a sheep farmer’s wife, I thought, studying the satin waist-tape and the lace trim. And next to them on the line… I blinked.
‘Never,’ I said out loud. ‘Preposterous.’
For next along the clothes line to the splendid underdrawers was a bandeau brassiere in the same white linen with straps of the same satin tape and no Scottish farmer’s wife from Gretna Green to John o’ Groats could possibly possess such a thing. Not only was it a bandeau instead of a chemise, but a bandeau of a texture and outline that was positively…
‘Parisian,’ I said, and I was over the wall and round the corner before any thought of a collie with ice-pick teeth could stop me.
‘Mademoiselle Beauclerc?’ I called out, banging on the door she must have gone through. ‘Est-ce que vous êtes Mademoiselle Jeanne Beauclerc, la maîtresse?’ There was only silence. ‘Miss Beauclerc?’ I called out again in an even louder voice, and this time I tried the handle. I heard the creak of a floorboard first and then saw a shadow behind the muslin of an open upstairs window.
‘Who is this, please?’ said a timid voice.
‘A friend,’ I said. ‘An old friend of Fleur Lipscott and a friend of yours, too, if I can be of any assistance.’
The shadow moved again and at last she came into plain view, a pale young woman dressed in black.
‘You came over the fields?’ she said.
‘From the headlands, yes,’ I answered. ‘Miss Beauclerc, is it you?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘And you say Fleur sent you?’
‘Perhaps you could come down,’ I said. ‘Or could I come in? I feel a bit like Romeo calling up to your window like this. It never seemed to me to be conducive to a proper discussion.’
She moved away from the window and from deep inside the house – Scotch farmhouses are extremely solid – I could hear the faint sounds of movement, receding along an upstairs passage, advancing down a staircase and then approaching a door near where I was standing. Bolts were drawn, keys turned and at last it opened.
‘Where is it?’ said Jeanne Beauclerc, looking past me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Didn’t you bring my luggage? Is Fleur bringing it? Are you coming too?’
‘If I could just come in,’ I said again and she drew back against the passage wall to let me enter. At the end of the passage, facing the sea view, was a sitting room of comfortable armchairs, reading lamps and low tables and from the walking guides, touring maps and picture magazines fanned out upon these tables I quickly surmised that this was the residents’ lounge for Low Merrick’s paying guests.
‘So,’ I said, perching on the arm of a chair, ‘when you left St Columba’s last week you came here?’
‘And Fleur was supposed to pack a few things for me,’ said Miss Beauclerc. ‘If she could get away. But here I am with one change of linen and my toothbrush waiting and waiting and you haven’t brought so much as a spare nightgown. And I can’t stay here much longer.’
‘Why not?’ I said, puzzled by her air of grievance. Surely she did not mean to suggest that she was above the simple comforts of this pleasant farmhouse. ‘Paying guests are quite the norm here, aren’t they?’
She frowned and shook her hair back. She wore it in long loose curls, like a child.
‘Mrs Paterson tells me she needs my room at the end of the week, for Parents’ Day at the school. And they do not like keeping it secret that I am here. I shall not be sorry to go.’
‘Why did you come here?’ I said.
‘We chose this place because it was right on the other side of the town from Miss Shanks but near enough to walk to, and very quiet. Hah! Quiet! First came the police and then a very strange young man – but I got rid of him.’
‘I heard,’ I said drily. ‘Where are the dogs today?’
She ignored the question and the reprimand, although she had the good grace to blush a little.
‘And now you!’ she cried. ‘What is happening?’
‘Might one ask why you and Fleur were running away?’ I said. ‘In the middle of term, like two schoolgirls instead of two mistresses?’
‘Hasn’t Fleur told you?’ said Miss Beauclerc, warily.
‘Fleur, I’m afraid to relate, is gone,’ I said. ‘She left on Saturday.’
Miss Beauclerc was silent for a full minute, the blood draining from her face and her eyes widening and widening until I could see the whites all around. When she spoke again her voice was ragged.
‘She left without me? She took her things and sailed away? Without me?’
‘Sailed?’ I echoed.
‘Oui,’ said Miss Beauclerc. ‘This was our plan. We were to hire a little boat on Saturday, smuggle our things into it overnight – pretend to be ill and miss church if we needed more time – and set sail tonight on the tide. We even thought we might throw some of our clothes over the side to wash up and maybe people would think we had drowned and never look for us.’
‘A boat,’ I said. ‘Of course.’ The police had asked about trains and ferries and taxis, had even asked fishermen if they had had a passenger. They had dragged their minds into the twentieth century enough to ask at the garage if a young lady had hired a motorcar but it had never occurred to them to think that Fleur might have hoisted the mainsail of a little boat and taken herself away across the sea.
The worst of it was that, while one could forgive them – the police force of a small and traditional town where such modernity was unknown – I did not know how I was ever to forgive myself. I, who knew all too well of Fleur’s love of boats and the sea, who had watched her playing at sailing ships in the lake and had read in Pearl’s letters through the years that followed all about how marvellous Fleur had been crewing for this or that friend in some race or other. Even that summer when she was a baby of seven she had sat imperiously on her sandcastle that day at Watchet, a chicken leg in one hand and a spyglass in the other, watching the yachts out in the bay and regaling us all in her precocious way with where each crew had got its trim wrong and how differently she would have managed things if she were the skipper.