‘I can’t imagine what you’re referring to, Mrs Palmer,’ I said. ‘I don’t intend to ask anything that could possibly cause upset. What on earth do you mean?’
‘I stopped goin’ to the Rural,’ said Elspeth.
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ said Mrs Palmer. ‘You don’t have to speak to anyone about it ever again.’
‘I seem to have stumbled into something I shouldn’t have,’ I said. ‘I do apologise, Elspeth.’
‘That’s all right, madam,’ she said. ‘I dinna mind tellin’ you.’
‘Least said, soonest mended,’ said Mrs Palmer, a philosophy for which I have never had much time, unless by ‘mended’ one means ‘well-hidden but causing a nasty atmosphere for evermore’, but one which they go in for in quite a big way in Perthshire, and I imagined here in Fife too.
‘I was… I was…’ said Elspeth, turning round to face us again and folding her arms firmly across her chest. ‘Common assault, the policeman ca’ed it. And they nivver caught the man, if it was a man, and half the folk in the village think I made it up.’
‘Why would anyone think that?’ I said. ‘How horrid for you.’
‘It was,’ said Elspeth. ‘It is.’ She was far too well-trained a servant and I daresay too sweet a girl actually to glare at Mrs Palmer, but in her studious refusal even to look at the woman she got her point across.
‘Oh… do what you will,’ said Mrs Palmer, sounding as though she meant anything but, and she took herself back across the yard, leaving us. I heard the kitchen door slam shut.
‘Well,’ I said, in the camaraderie which always ensues when one of a trio sweeps off in a huff and leaves two calmer souls behind. ‘I take it Mrs Palmer is one of the ones who thinks you’re telling stories, Elspeth.’
‘I do not ken, madam,’ said Elspeth. ‘And that’s a fact. I sometimes canna make head nor tail of what she thinks.’ I took the chance to sit myself down unobtrusively on a wooden chair just beside the door, hoping that the girl would speak unbidden if I wore a sympathetic look and said nothing.
Perhaps, though, loquacity is not essential to the dairy maid’s art; Elspeth merely turned her back with a sigh and left me with all the work to do.
‘When you say assaulted…’ I began.
‘He rushed up ahint me, madam,’ she said. ‘Pushed me over – I put the knees oot o’ my good stockings and it was the first time I had had them on – pulled my hair so hard that some of it came oot. I thocht – I thocht-’
‘Well, you would,’ I said. ‘I should if it were me. They never caught him?’
‘They nivver did.’
‘And you have no idea yourself?’
‘None,’ she said firmly, unrolling a straw mat over the big bowl of milk and pushing it to the back of the table. It hit the stone wall with a clunk. ‘I didna recognise him and I couldna tell you now who he was or what he was, for I’ve thocht it all roond and roond until I’m birlin’ with it.’
‘But your first instinct – that night, I mean – was that he was just an ordinary man?’ I was determined to keep the facts firmly in hand. She nodded. ‘And if you didn’t recognise him you must have got a good look at him?’ I said, my heart leaping at this cheering thought.
‘No,’ she said slowly. She had put the dish of cream away on a dim shelf at the back of the room and now she turned and spoke to me directly, wiping her hands and appearing to be casting her mind back. ‘He come up ahint me and then like I said he flitted off again afore I had richted myself. But he was nobody I kent. I’ve never met anybody anything like that, not roond here, nor anywhere else.’
‘It couldn’t have been…’ My nerve crumbled. I could not name blameless men I had never even met, not on Mr Black’s say-so. I could not even, as it turned out, name Mr Black. ‘There’s no one you even suspect?’
‘I kept a sharp eye oot, at the kirk, and roond the village, and I would have kent right away if he had appeart again,’ she said. ‘There was…’
‘Yes?’
‘Folk kept sayin’…’
‘What?’
‘Well, John Christie up by there has no’ been around that very long and he’s no’ that well kent, but it wasna him, no matter whae whispers his name.’
‘You sound very certain,’ I said.
She had finished wiping her hands and now she laid them flat on the table, leaning towards me, remembering. ‘He was the richt height and all that. And John Christie’s a young laddie, fit for scaling’ dykes, to be sure. But the one that come at me that nicht was different. He was… how wid you say it?’ I bit my lip to keep from prompting her. ‘He was… sort of…’ She gave up. ‘It’s no’ even like he was big,’ she said. ‘If I’d seen him first I could mebbes have pushed him off me or ducked and run. I’m wee, but I’m strong and I’m fast on my feet when I have to be.’
‘When someone jumps out at you, he always has the advantage, Elspeth,’ I said. ‘You cannot berate yourself for being surprised.’
‘It wasna like that, though,’ she said. ‘He didna jump oot. He came doon the lane, I’m sure o’ it. Doon to meet me. At first I thocht it was maybe an owl’s wings I could hear, and then I thocht a deer was runnin’ in the field and I stopped to look for it. So I was keekin’ over the dyke when he landed on me.’
‘An owl?’ I said. ‘A deer? He must be remarkably light on his feet for you to think that.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Elspeth. ‘I never thocht before but I suppose he must be.’
‘Did you mention it to the police?’ I ventured, but at that Elspeth seemed to come out of the trance of memory which had engulfed her. She sniffed decisively and seized a large jar which had been upended over the sink, dripping, then she shook it until a heap of new butter fell out onto the table with a flat slap.
‘I did, madam,’ she said. ‘And they jist laughed. I wouldna send for the police again to save my life or theirs.’
‘And once again, I have to agree with you,’ I told her. ‘It must have been absolutely infuriating.’
‘Aye well,’ said Elspeth. ‘Let them as got knocked over and their hair pulled oot by the roots say it’s all tattle, that’s all.’
I believed her, but just to make sure, I thought I would try a little experiment. I thought I would ask her a question she could not possibly be expecting and see if she blurted something out – always a mark of honesty – or if she took time and made something up, the way that honest people never need to do.
‘If you fell over and didn’t manage to push him off you,’ I said, ‘he must have been pretty close.’ I paused, then spoke sharply. ‘What did he smell of, Elspeth?’ The answer came back without a moment’s pause.
‘Eggs,’ she said. We both blinked.
‘On his breath?’ I asked her. ‘As though he had been eating them?’
‘No,’ said Elspeth, looking so startled at what had come out of her mouth that I was convinced she was telling me the plain unvarnished truth. ‘I mean, yes. I mean, it must have been, must it no’? How else could someone smell o’ eggs, after all?’
7
On my way to Mrs Fraser at Balniel, I was aware of a lessening of enthusiasm for the encounter, a dread of hearing about any more horridness. Mrs Fraser, however, proved to be just what I needed. Working on the principles of those German doctors who treat like, rather perversely I have aways considered, with like (while watering down their ingredients like an unscrupulous butler eking out the gin) Mrs Fraser’s whole-hearted embrace of the most fanciful elements of the dark stranger had me retreating determinedly into a conviction that he was no more than a farm labourer with an unfortunate kink. We went through the preliminaries: what aspect of household budgeting would interest her most? She had joined the Rural at first, with her husband’s blessing, almost at her husband’s urging, but she did not go now. Heavy emphasis on the ‘now’ and a significant look practically commanded me to ask why not and the floodgates opened.