‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘Nor why suddenly finding out that the stranger was human would make Mrs McAdam not just angry, but absolutely aghast. She turned as white as her laundry.’
We sat in silence, thinking, for a while.
‘What about this?’ said Alec at last. ‘If, thinking the girl in the grave had unleashed a demon, you’d dug her up and got rid of her, then you found out you were wrong and you’d dug the poor girl up for nothing, wouldn’t that make you go pale? It would me.’
I was shaking my head.
‘The “demon unleashed” contingent is quite separate from the… oh, what shall we call them? The fatalists. The stoics who think you can’t dodge what’s coming for you and if what’s coming is a dark stranger then you take it, button your lip and endure. Mr Tait’s farmers’ wives can’t have been the ones who were out digging.’
‘Although maybe he thought they were,’ said Alec, sitting up very straight all of a sudden. ‘Maybe he went to Mrs Hemingborough or Mrs Palmer or someone that morning to say that they’d been seen, and they said “Seen doing what?” and that’s why he was in a funk when you met him.’
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Only then he reasoned that whoever had taken her, he knew where they’d have put her so it was all one in the end anyway.’
‘Precisely,’ said Alec and sat back, looking satisfied. ‘Now, where does that leave us?’
‘Unless I’m mistaken, it leaves us not knowing who the stranger is or who the grave-diggers were,’ I said, and we both sighed heftily.
‘Right,’ said Alec, slapping his hands on his thighs and looking ready to wrestle the thing to the ground. ‘Fraser? No. His wife has left the Rural and he doesn’t have the freedom to roam any more.’
‘And he was roaming with Annette Martineau anyway,’ I reminded him. ‘Until she unaccountably took umbrage at his casual manners.’
‘Hemingborough, McAdam, Torrance and Palmer have the same problem except at the other end. The stranger started his campaign long before their wives joined the Rural, so the menfolk couldn’t have been slipping out from March onwards, even if they are slipping out now. I wish I could find out what they’re up to. But back to our suspects. Black?’
‘I can’t see it,’ I said. ‘He’s taking quite another tack – going around pounding on doors, clothed in righteousness. I don’t think he would skulk about too. He’s far too full of his own rectitude to think he would have to.’
‘Jock Christie, then,’ said Alec. ‘It must be. He skulks about at night, and he’s a single man of good prospect who has not managed to attract a wife – this in a village well served for spinsters. So there must be something off about him. And then there’s the fact that two sensible people visiting his farm in broad daylight both came over all of a tremble.’
‘But you haven’t met him, darling,’ I protested. ‘I have and even through the bars of a jail cell he didn’t seem the slightest bit evil or creepy. Whatever the nasty atmosphere is at the Mains or Luckenheart or whatever we should call it I don’t think it’s emanating from the farmer. And we know it wasn’t him because Molly, even with an over-zealous police sergeant breathing down her neck, said so. I suppose he might have been one of those digging in the graveyard that night – although I can’t see why – but there were at least three of them and probably more.’
‘And you glimpsed them and hared off to get me,’ said Alec. ‘I wish you’d stopped to watch for a bit and worked out who they were, Dan.’
‘I like that!’ I said. ‘It was pitch black.’
‘It was a clear night, actually,’ said Alec.
‘At the dark of the moon,’ I went on. ‘Pitch black, there were tree branches in the way and it was all by candlelight.’
‘Well, anyway,’ said Alec, not very graciously. ‘Returning to practicalities, I think our best plan remains to catch the stranger at it, as we said.’
‘While making sure that no one else is attacked,’ I said firmly. ‘I will not send the good women of the Rural in like lambs to the slaughter and I’m not budging on that no matter what.’ I folded my arms and shook my head as he started protesting. ‘No. Give it up, darling. I’m adamant. Mrs Muirhead has been through mental torments since it happened to her and I’m not taking the chance that November’s lucky winner will happen to be a sturdy unshakable soul and not someone with enough troubles already who’ll be badly upset by it. With that proviso, though, by all means.’
‘Agreed then,’ said Alec. ‘And I’m sure enough about Christie – no matter what you say – to make him my target. I shall lie in wait for him. But I’ll have to move pretty smartly, Dan, because in the earlier part of the evening – wait for it! – I’m going to be at the Rural, just like you. I forgot to say earlier. I’m going to do a painting demonstration before your budget talk. What do you think of that?’
‘Lorna finally twisted your arm?’
‘With the Miss Mortons egging her on. They said they might even rejoin just to see me.’
‘Did you ever find out why they left?’ I asked him. ‘It’s been puzzling me what offended them, because none of the obvious reasons will do. They weathered the famous July meeting – and how I wish I could get to the bottom of that! – and they escaped the attentions of you-know-who. So why did they suddenly take umbrage? They’re as bad as Annette, suddenly giving up on her beau. There’s a woeful streak of caprice running through the Luckenlaw spinsters, Alec, I tell you.’
‘No, the Miss Mortons weren’t being capricious,’ said Alec. ‘It was Miss McCallum that did it. They were quite happy, they told me, waiting patiently while the great and the good filled the programme in the first few months, but when it got to Miss McCallum and her crochet hook being put in front of them their pride was bruised black and blue.’
‘Oh yes, I can see that,’ I said laughing and then I stopped laughing as an idea began to take shape deep inside me. ‘Alec, we’ve got it!’ I cried. ‘We’ve got something anyway. Listen. No one would suddenly be insulted by what she had formerly accepted unless it put her in the way of some new injury.’
‘Hmm,’ said Alec. ‘Not as pithy a revelation as “Eureka!”, Dan. What are you talking about?’
‘Annette Martineau. She gave her fancy man – Fraser – his marching orders all of a sudden in May. Her mother came home to find her weeping buckets because Fraser once again had not seen her home. Now why would she suddenly be so upset?’
‘May?’ said Alec, trying to remember. ‘May?’
‘When the stranger, or so we thought, was unaccountably hiding in a coal shed instead of running across fields, and smelled of boring old whisky, and did much more than usual to his victim.’
‘My God!’ said Alec.
‘You were right about Molly embellishing,’ I said. ‘Only you didn’t go far enough. She made up the whole thing from start to finish. The dark stranger attacked Annette Martineau in May.’
‘Yes!’ said Alec, and then his shoulders slumped. ‘But so what?’
‘So what? Oh come on, darling, catch up.’
Alec stared back at me for a moment or two further and then gave a yelp and all but bounced out of his chair.
‘The jail cell!’ he yelled. ‘Molly couldn’t say who it was or who it wasn’t if her life was at stake!’
‘It’s Jock Christie,’ I said. ‘At last we know.’
‘And next full moon I’m going to nab him and give him two thick ears, two black eyes and a fat lip.’
We sat back and beamed at one another for a while, until presently Alec began to check his watch and rumble about making a move before Lorna Tait came home for luncheon and collared him.
‘Poor Lorna,’ I said. ‘She’s actually a very nice girl. Mrs McAdam didn’t seem much of a fan, but I think it was just jealousy.’
‘Of what?’ said Alec, standing and stretching and arranging his lavender scarf as he caught sight of himself in the glass.