‘But why should it?’ I insisted, infuriated once again by the bovine insipidity, the sheer gormlessness of these women. If they were not colluding in it, how could they be so ready just to take this? ‘Why should it get to run its course,’ I demanded, ‘any more than a burglar should get to burgle until he’s set for life, or a murderer get to murder until he’s removed everyone standing between him and his fortune? Why on earth should we take this lying down?’
‘We?’ said Mrs McAdam. ‘Pardon me, but you’ve had to take nothing, and if those who have are not complaining I don’t see why you should be.’ As soon as she had said this, her eyes flared, her hand fluttered at her hair, and she turned to her copper again, in some confusion.
‘Aha,’ I said. ‘My warning’s too late then. You, Mrs McAdam, were September’s victim. I wondered if you might be.’
‘Aye well,’ she said, sounding brusque with the annoyance she felt at her slip. ‘Now you know and it’s done me no harm, has it?’
‘Now that we have things out in the open where they belong, then,’ I said, ‘perhaps you won’t mind answering a question or two, because you can think what you like, but to my mind this stranger has to be stopped and if we can work out who he is, then we can stop him.’
‘You’d best leave it alone,’ said Mrs McAdam. ‘Mark my words,’ – and I knew exactly what words they were going to be – ‘what’s for you won’t go by you.’
‘Humour me,’ I insisted. ‘I’m taking it as read that he came at you across the fields, flying over the ground, swooping over the dykes like a racehorse etc., etc., that he knocked you over, pinched you, ripped at your head and face and then was off again. How am I doing thus far?’ Mrs McAdam shrugged reluctantly. ‘And he was a wiry chap. Not very tall and rather snaky in his outline. Now,’ I went on, drawing my little sketch map out of my pocket and spreading it on the kitchen table. ‘My guess is that he came from… the direction of… Let me see now… Actually it’s very hard to say. In the spring he was coming more or less from the north, latterly from the south, almost as though he’s always coming in towards the village from the outside.’ Mrs McAdam had drifted over to my side and was peering over my shoulder at the arrows on my map.
‘That’s not right,’ she said. I swung round on her.
‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ I said.
‘No!’ she blurted. ‘Only, he came at me from Luckenheart way.’
‘Where’s that?’ I said.
‘Next farm along,’ said Mrs McAdam.
‘In which direction?’ I said.
‘Och, that’s right, I was forgetting,’ she said, scowling. ‘Thon Howies changed the name when they landed. Thought it made the place sound swankier, I daresay. Luck Mains. But Luckenheart Farm it always was and always will be.’
‘He came at you from there?’ I said. ‘It is Jock Christie, isn’t it? It must be. His name pops up over and over again.’
‘He’s nothing to do with it, poor lad,’ said Mrs McAdam.
‘Why poor?’ I demanded. ‘Why does everyone keep saying that? Is there something amiss there?’
‘Amiss?’ said Mrs McAdam, with a wry twist of her mouth. ‘I’ll say there is.’
‘Everyone says there is.’ Now that I knew that Luckenheart and the Mains were one and the same place, I was remembering. ‘People shiver when they say the name.’
‘Aye well,’ said Mrs McAdam. ‘You’d need to ask Mr Tait about that.’
I stared at her in puzzlement, but could not begin to imagine what she meant.
‘And one more question,’ I said presently, with my fingers crossed that her sudden mood of openness would not run out before I was finished. ‘The dark stranger, when he attacked you that September night – what did he smell like?’
It was her turn to stare at me.
‘What?’
‘I agree it’s an odd question,’ I said. ‘And, since you know who it is, it would make more sense for me to ask for his name, but if you won’t tell me that, perhaps you’ll at least give me a sporting chance to work it out for myself. Was there a smell?’
‘What are you asking?’ said Mrs McAdam. ‘I don’t just understand you.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘in March he smelled like eggs apparently, in April like flowers, in May like whisky, although that might not be as certain as some of the others, in June like bonfire smoke, in August like yeast, and I should like to know what he was dabbing behind his ears in September.’
Mrs McAdam looked thunderstruck and sank down at the table opposite me, her copper full of underclothes quite forgotten.
‘I thought… I thought it was from coming through the fields,’ she said softly. ‘The smell of fresh cut corn on him.’ She shook herself out of the reverie and looked at me piercingly. ‘Say it again,’ she commanded. ‘Tell me again.’ I ran through the peculiar little list a second time. She shook her head at the whisky but made no other response.
‘What is it, Mrs McAdam?’ I said. Her face was changing, her eyes darkening, her mouth turning to a grim line, two darts of white appearing on either side of her nose.
‘Somebody’s been making fools of all of us,’ she said. ‘Mr Tait was right all along.’ She was rigid with fury now.
‘So tell me who it is,’ I said. ‘Tell the police. I know it’s hard if it’s a neighbour, someone you’ve known all your life. I know ties run deep, but he’s got to be stopped before he does someone a real injury.’
‘A neighbour?’ she cried. ‘Someone I’ve known… I tell you this, madam, for nothing. If Luckenlaw had kept to folk born here, and meant to be here, we’d all be a sight better for it. I mind when Mr Tait come back, brought his wife home and that bonny baby girl, we were that happy to see them and we were managing Luckenheart just fine, until those flibbertigibbets changed the name and gave the place to a lad that’s hardly more than a boy, as if a laddie alone could run Luckenheart, but they’re Lorna’s chums so what can we say?’ The white darts were invisible now; her whole face was waxy, her eyes bulging. ‘Even then, though, even then! But there’s that Hetty McCallum at the post office down there and Morag Lindsay teaching our lassies glory knows what in that schoolroom. And Lorna Tait’s as thick as thieves with the pair of them, getting her head turned and nobody saying a word against it. Through the fire and the dry wells and the air over our heads and the ground beneath us, we kept strong and kept believing it would all come right. And all these months, we went out into the night and endured whatever came to us. And now, you say, it was… she was… he’s…’ She ran out of steam at last and sat, panting.
In the silence that followed, I tried to make sense of this, but in vain.
‘I must be getting along, Mrs McAdam,’ I said at last, the polite little formula sounding ridiculous after such histrionics. She nodded dumbly, still staring down at the table although her breathing was beginning to slow again. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea before I go?’ I said, hesitating to leave her in such distress even if I could not account for the cause of it. She shook her head. ‘Can I just suggest, then,’ I went on, ‘that you don’t leave the copper much longer?’ The cauldron of little girls’ underthings was almost at a rolling boil. She nodded again and put her hands to the table top to haul herself to her feet. With one last sympathetic look, I left. An interesting outcome from my point of view, I thought, striding away down the drive, but not a high point in Mrs McAdam’s quiet life, me bringing shocks and horrors and leaving behind cold dismay and shrunken laundry. A lot of good I had done the McAdam household economy today.
One thing we had agreed on, however, was that there was something wrong at Luckenlaw Mains Farm, or Luckenheart to give it its traditional title, and so since I was almost there already I decided to go along and have a closer look.