‘I rather wondered at that,’ I said. ‘They are hardly at home there.’
‘They were drawn in by our American Night,’ said Lorna. Seeing my look, she hastened to explain. ‘It was Independence Day, you know, and we happened to have a clergyman from Wisconsin staying at the manse with his wife. It seemed like such a good idea…’ She trailed off rather mournfully.
‘What happened?’ I asked her.
‘Nothing!’ declared Lorna. ‘Absolutely nothing. And besides,’ she added, rather detracting from the vehemence of her denial, ‘Vashti and Nicolette are my dear friends. They’re even giving a birthday party for me next month. Did my father tell you? Isn’t that kind?’
‘It is indeed,’ I said. ‘I can see why you’re fond of them. They are very… open.’
In fact, of course, I was grateful to their openness since it had given me an interesting question to ponder: why in heaven’s name should the neighbourhood split down the middle, as Vashti Howie had suggested, on the question of whether the stranger was real?
‘I must say,’ I ventured at last, ‘it’s a monstrous piece of good fortune for this scoundrel, whoever he is, to pick out a playground for himself where so many people seem so peculiarly willing to turn a blind eye. You believe in him, don’t you?’
Lorna hesitated.
‘I don’t quite know,’ she said. ‘I certainly don’t believe that he’s… I think either he’s real or it’s an absolute figment of everyone’s imagination. I don’t believe the other thing.’ She was growing quite agitated as she spoke and I could guess why. She did not want to keep me in ignorance but she just simply could not spit it out. It was up to me to say it and then she would agree.
‘You don’t believe,’ I said gently, ‘that it’s real but he’s not? Is that what you mean?’
‘Exactly,’ said Lorna with enormous relief. ‘I don’t believe that for a second.’
‘But why does anyone?’ I said. ‘I’m sure that if the same thing happened at Gilverton no one would even dream of such a thing. Why should Luckenlaw be any different? Why?’
Lorna was silent for a long time and we were almost back at the village before she spoke again.
‘You’d better ask my father, Mrs Gilver. I’m sorry this has come up to spoil your visit and I hope, if you find out, that it won’t stop you from coming back to the meeting next time but if you really do want to know, you had better ask my father. He can explain it all so much better than me.’
6
Accordingly, Lorna withdrew herself from the luncheon table as soon as she politely could, with talk of jelly-making and a young kitchen maid who could not be trusted to scald the jars.
‘The crab-apple from last week is cloudy already,’ she said, ‘and we’re starting this afternoon on the damsons.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well, you must certainly hurry along then. Crab apples are one thing…’ Actually I cared not a hoot for either the lowly crab apples or the precious damsons – one visit to the SWRI had not made quite so much of a mark as all that – but I recognised my cue.
‘Dear Lorna,’ said Mr Tait once the door had shut behind her. ‘This is far from the life she thought would be hers but never a word of complaint.’
‘She did mention something,’ I murmured. ‘But,’ I went on heartily, ‘she seems very happy as you say. Good friends all around her. I hear the Howies are giving a birthday party for her soon.’ Mr Tait threatened to frown but managed not to.
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘You must make sure and come along.’
‘Now, Mr Tait,’ I said and I may even have sounded a little stern. I certainly felt a little stern. ‘I have had a number of rather peculiar conversations this morning. The meeting with Mrs Hemingborough you know about already, but also at Luckenlaw House and again talking to Lorna I get the distinct feeling that there is rather more going on here than you told me.’
‘My dear Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I assure you that I’ve told you all I know.’ And yet there was a teasing quality in his voice which invited me to keep trying even as his words told me there was nothing to learn.
‘Can you explain then,’ I persisted, ‘why it should be that everyone – no, not everyone; but some – are so ready to believe what seems to me quite unbelievable? That this dark stranger is not real.’
‘But you knew that from the outset,’ Mr Tait insisted. ‘I told you.’
This was true but when we had discussed the matter in my sitting room that day, we had entertained two solutions to the trouble at Luckenlaw. Now, as Lorna had struggled to relate, there seemed to be a troubling third.
‘It’s more than that,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean that the women are imagining a man, or making a man up out of mischief. I’m referring to the idea – and the Howies talked about it quite matter-of-factly; even Lorna concedes it – that this dark stranger is… very much of the darkness and rather more than strange?’
‘Is that what they’re saying?’ said Mr Tait. ‘I see.’
‘Yes, but why?’ I demanded, my voice rising. ‘Why do you see? I don’t. And what do you see?’
‘It’s all nonsense of course,’ he said, ‘but it’s the kind of nonsense that can easily take root even in the most 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.’