It was the same bed where Mrs Dunn had lain drugged. Murray saw it for an instant, the curtain drawn to one side, the soiled bedclothes slung onto the floor. Mrs Dunn had lost her baby. He wiped a hand across his face and asked, ‘Where is your daughter now?’
‘With Archie’s poems, buried down by the limekilns.’
Murray wasn’t sure how long he sat staring in silence at Christie after she had spoken, but eventually he said, ‘I think you’ve miscalculated how much I want to get my hands on Archie’s poems, Miss Graves.’
‘Nature can be cruel.’ Her face tightened. ‘It had its way.’
‘So you took the child and buried it? Simple as that?’
‘More or less.’
‘Did Bobby Robb have anything to do with the baby’s death?’
Christie’s laugh was hard and brittle. She said, ‘Bobby Robb was a fool and a fantasist. We’d tolerated him because he could supply us with drugs, but Fergus had grown sick of him and his stupidity. If the weather hadn’t been so bad, he would have been gone on the ferry to the mainland and a lot of tragedy would have been avoided.’
‘The child would have lived?’
‘No, the child was never going to live. It was small and weak and had been born to fools who didn’t know or care enough to look after it. Idiots who filled the room with smoke and fed it with water when the stupid girl that was supposed to be its mother let her milk dry up and still drank and got high, and the stupid man that might have been its father drank and smoked, took drugs and talked poetry.’ She sighed. ‘We’d thought we could manage it ourselves, but the birth was horrendous. Bobby shot me full of something to help with the pain. It knocked me out so hard it’s a miracle the child was born at all. She must have clawed her way out.’
‘Didn’t Archie do anything?’
‘Archie had been big on having the child. He was full of fantasies about what it would be like to belong to a real family, but when she arrived, sickly and underweight, Archie did what he always did. He drank. When we discovered she was dead, he was sure it was Bobby’s doing. Bobby was always setting his stupid spells, rambling on about purity and sacrifice. Archie jumped to conclusions, even though there wasn’t a mark on her body. Maybe he wanted someone to blame. He beat Bobby badly. He might have killed him, if Fergus hadn’t managed to force him out of the cottage and bolt the door. I was a little mad too, I suppose. I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew that my baby was gone. I held her by the fire and rubbed her body, but it stayed as limp and as cold as she’d been when I found her dead in the bed beside me. Bobby and Fergus finished our supply and I joined them. We didn’t think about Archie until the next day. We had no idea he would take the boat out in the storm. It was stupid.’
Murray whispered, ‘It was suicide.’
But it was as if Christie didn’t hear him.
‘She was tiny. I wrapped her in my silk scarf and we put her in a tin box we’d found in the cottage. Fergus placed the poems Archie had been working on beside her and then we buried her and marked the spot with a stone.’
‘Why?’
‘What else could we do? Archie was missing, presumed drowned, and we were drug-taking hippies in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t like we believed in God. I had neglected her and lost her. Do you know how the judicial system treats neglectful mothers? How the press crucifies them? How they get dealt with in prison? A funeral wasn’t going to make any difference and jail wouldn’t have made us better people. Archie had paid the ultimate price, people would have thought that I should too. We did what we thought we had to.’
‘And now?’
‘Tomorrow they’re going to start digging where we buried her. It’s only a matter of time before they uncover her corpse and Archie’s poems. It’s the last chance I have to be reunited with her before I die.’
Murray got to his feet. He felt weary in his bones.
‘Where’s your phone?’
Her voice was wary.
‘Why?’
‘Because one of us has to call the police. I think it would be better if it was you, but if you won’t then I’ll do it myself.’
‘There are no police on the island.’
‘I think they might consider this worth the journey.’
Christie leaned back in her chair, looking old and ill.
‘You haven’t asked me where Fergus is.’
‘I know where he is, up to his neck in shit.’
‘He had to go back to Glasgow. Apparently his wife tried to commit suicide. Like I said, he has a penchant for attracting women who want to explore their limits, then pushing them too far.’
The horror of it was hot in Murray’s throat.
‘Will she be okay?’
The woman made a gesture of impatience.
‘I expect so. There’s a difference between seeking attention and doing it for real.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘It takes real courage to kill yourself.’
Christie held Murray’s stare, and he remembered a piece of advice his father had given him: ‘Always approach a trapped animal with caution. It’ll bite you, whether you’ve come to kill it or set it free.’
He wanted to go now, back to Glasgow to see Rachel and find out how she was, but a suspicion that the woman still had more to reveal held him there.
‘Dr Watson, do you think I spent forty years on an island where I’m hated because I’m in love with the landscape? I stayed to be close to my child. She’s been on her own for too long. I want us to be buried together. If you help me, I’ll give you the original manuscript of my memoir, all the photographs and documents I have relating to Archie, and the poems buried beside our daughter. It’s more than you could have hoped for.’
The temptation of it stopped Murray’s breath for a moment. He took a gulp of air and plucked his jacket from the floor.
‘I reckon it’ll be around twenty minutes before I can get a signal. As soon as I do, I’m calling the police. I advise you to ring them first.’
Christie gave a wry smile.
‘It won’t be the ferry or a police launch that takes me from the island, Dr Watson. I already have what I need to transport me. I think I’ve proved my staying power, but I’ve no intention of waiting for the final chapter.’
He took a step towards her.
‘There’s no certainty you’ll go to jail.’
‘My mother would have said that my prison had already been appointed by a higher court — a wheelchair, incontinence, loss of speech, choking to death.’
‘You’re nowhere near that stage yet.’
‘Aren’t I? I didn’t realise you were a medical doctor as well as a doctor of literature.’ She sighed. ‘I’m tired of it all. If it’s time for me to leave my home, then it’s time for me to leave. You said you supported a woman’s right to choose. Well, this is my choice. Fergus understands that at least. He brought me the means.’ She forced herself to her feet and stood, her face raised, her eyes locked on his. ‘All I wanted was for you to help me make a good death, and to bring some peace to Archie and to our daughter.’
It was the words ‘good death’ that did it. Murray sat back down in his chair and put his head in his hands.
Chapter Thirty
MURRAY DROVE SLOWLY, with the headlights off. It was the kind of night that men who wanted to be up to no good craved. The sky was free of moon and stars, the road ahead black, his vision marred by mist and rain. Murray kept his eyes on the darkness before him and asked, ‘How will I know where to dig?’
Christie’s voice was hushed, as if she were still afraid Murray might change his mind.
‘We left a marker. I used to visit every day, but lately it’s been too difficult.’