‘I shan’t join you in your dance of joy just yet, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘But if we find the bag, just try and stop me.’
‘Come on then. If I don’t move after Mrs Tilling’s pie I get drowsy. Let’s walk it off. We might even see the sun if we’re quick about it.’
The Gallow Hill was a gentle delight after the stern soaring faces of the Beef Tub fells and if it had been clothed in elms and oaks, and had a few pretty cottages around its base, it might almost have been at home in the Cotswolds. As it was, the cottages were grey and mean-looking and the trees were the spindly larches and lichened beeches which cling onto Scotch hillsides long after they have ceased to have any value in the landscape. Constable himself would have left them out and just painted the sky behind them.
We left the motorcar tucked safely into the side of the lane where it could come to no harm and Alec lifted the latch of the gate to a path and ushered me through. Immediately we were enveloped in silence, none of the noises of life from the town managing to penetrate the high walls of brambles and dog rose which closed around us, darkening and scenting the air with a sweet dampness. Ahead, the path led straight and only slightly upwards for twenty yards and then the hill rose and the path disappeared in a way that reminded me of yew mazes and of being lost and tear-stained as a tiny child.
‘I’m glad I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I said.
‘What’s the handbag made of?’ said Alec. He was already looking studiously at the ground on either side.
‘Oh, best brown leather, I have no doubt,’ I said. ‘Absolutely invisible in this leaf litter. I suppose we must just hope for a glint off the clasp or something. Or Bunty might sniff it out if there are peppermints.’
‘Wouldn’t any dog in the last month have done the same?’ Alec sounded troubled. ‘I suppose we are hoping for rather a lot, expecting it still to be here, aren’t we? Look for signs that Mrs Addie passed along. What size feet would you say?’
‘I can never take us seriously when we go all out for snapped twigs and footprints,’ I said. ‘Have we ever found a footprint, Alec dear?’
He ignored me and so I trained my attention towards the ground at my side of the path and kept walking.
I held out no great hopes; unless Mrs Addie had thrashed her way through the brambles with a stick, it was hard to see how she could have left the path. On the other hand, her bag, if dropped on the path, could surely not have lain a night there, never mind a month. And it was the same all the way to the top: a winding track, close growth on either side, a few tree roots underneath, a pleasant smell of earth and the odd wink of light where a branch had broken off and left a chink in the canopy. All in all, if one went in for country walks I could see that this was a charming one, but I could not help but feel that our quest was pointless.
Well, at least it was dry and not too cold and at its end was not a grouse drive and an endless tramp to the next one, but a view, a descent and a cup of tea. We were drawing near the summit now, the beeches and brambles growing sparser and the ground underfoot changing from leaves and dryish mud to blades and then tussocks of grass. At the top we found ourselves in a clearing of sorts, with a view through the treetops to the Hydro chimneys. I made a movement to step forward, but Alec put out an arm to stop me.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the ground.
The grass was long and lush and all around it was flattened by footprints. They circled the clearing and criss-crossed it and appeared to converge on a spot towards the faraway end just before the trees began again. I made my way over.
There was no cairn, no marker of any kind, nothing to say that this was the very place which had given the hill its name. I suppose it was the highest point – at least, looking around, I saw none higher – but if I had had to guess at where the gallows would be, I would have plumped for the middle, not here almost under the lee of the nearest beech.
‘Was this the gallows?’ I asked. Alec walked over.
‘Seems likely,’ he said. ‘I wonder what all the feet were milling around for? A Sunday school picnic maybe?’ I shrugged. ‘Well, let’s look for the bag, the watch, the lock of hair, the precious letters and the proof that Mrs Addie died here, eh?’
Within minutes I could be sure that the trampling feet were no Sunday school picnic, for there was not a sweet wrapper, a lemonade bottle nor an apple core anywhere in the undergrowth around the clearing. There was nothing. Even Bunty failed to snuffle up so much as a peanut shell.
‘Any luck?’ I called to Alec. He had gone further than me into the woods, to examine a fallen log about ten yards from the edge of the clearing. He ducked down behind it and I made my way towards him. ‘Any luck?’ I repeated, looking over. He was bent double scrutinising the bare brown earth, but as far as I could tell there was nothing to see.
‘None,’ he said. ‘I think we’re wasting our time, Dandy.’ He looked around himself. ‘What would she be doing here?’
‘If we believe her daughter that she had no time for spooks?’ I said. ‘An assignation? A widow in her sixties would hardly go to the winter gardens to bat her eyes at some man who took her fancy.’
‘Or,’ said Alec, taking the baton, ‘perhaps Mrs Addie was interested in nature, or local history, or just wanted some-’
‘Fresh air and exercise!’ I said.
‘Quite,’ said Alec. ‘But why declaim it that way?’
‘It’s Dr Laidlaw’s favourite cure,’ I said. ‘She told me so. Oh, Alec, this is good. If Mrs Addie was sent out – sent as part of her treatment regime – and then she saw a ghost and got her blessed fright and dropped dead, then the doctor who sent her might well not want the family to know!’
Alec was nodding.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘nothing old Dr Laidlaw prescribed ever killed her.’ We beamed at one another for a bit. Eventually, Alec drew breath to continue but caught it again. I turned slightly towards the clearing and saw him do the same. From the way we had come a murmur of voices had arisen, but they were not speaking words. Instead, the sound was of a whispering, rhythmic chant, very quiet but growing louder. I clicked my tongue to Bunty to follow me, stepped over the log, and joined Alec, crouching. My lips were dry, and as I tried to lick them I found that my tongue was too.
‘Guess who!’ said Alec. ‘Goodness, it sounds like all of them.’
‘All twenty?’ I whispered.
‘Are there twenty?’ he whispered back, looking astonished.
‘Well, seven already and many more expected,’ I said. ‘Surely you remember.’
Alec’s eyes danced and, although he kept it in, the laughter bubbled through him.
‘Dandy, you goose!’ he said. ‘I meant the mediums. It’s the mediums coming chanting up the hill. You thought it was the ghosts? Really?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, reddening and dipping my head to hide it. ‘I misunderstood you. Now, shush, before we’re heard.’
We crunched ourselves down even further behind the log, I sending a silent apology to Grant for the fate of my skirt, and waited. The voices grew louder and before too long we caught sight, through the trees, of half a dozen figures, all moving slowly in loops and crosses, passing one another and repassing, gathering – with many feints, but gathering all the same – on the well-trodden spot just at the edge of the trees. In the centre of them all was Loveday Merrick, his bare head thrown back and his hair streaming down. He was muttering under his breath just like the rest of them and as the crescendo swelled, he lifted his silver-topped cane and banged the tip of it hard against the lowest branch of the beech tree. One of the younger mediums uttered a small shriek and then there was silence except for the rattle and rush of a few beech cobs falling through the boughs and dropping to the ground.