By the time Mary Keogh was twenty-one, however, her father's doting had turned to a fierce possessiveness which totally shut her off from any sort of social life, so that she stayed mainly at home and helped with the housework, or assisted her aristocratic Russian mother in the small psychic circle she had built up, when she would attend and regularly take part in those stances for which Natasha Keogh had become something of a local celebrity.
Then, in the summer of '53, Scan Keogh had been killed when an unsafe wall he was working on fell on him. His wife, who for all that she was not yet fifty was already ailing, had sold the business and gone into semi-retirement, holding the occasional seance to eke out her living, which now mainly derived from the interest on banked money. For Mary, on the other hand, the death of her father had heralded a hitherto undreamed-of freedom; quite literally, a 'coming out'.
For the next two years she enjoyed a social life limited only by her tiny allowance, until by the winter of '55 she had met and married an Edinburgh man twenty-five years her senior, a banker in the city. He was Gerald Snaith, and he and Mary had been very happy for all the gap in their age groups, living in a large house in its own private grounds not far from Bonnyrigg. Unfortunately, by then Mary's mother was rapidly sickening and her doctors had diagnosed cancer; so that Mary lived half of her time at Bonnyrigg, and the rest of it looking after her mother, Natasha, at the seaside house in Edinburgh.
Harry 'Keogh' was therefore born Harry Snaith just nine months after his grandmother died in 1957 — and just a year before his banker father would follow her, dying from a stroke in his office at the bank.
Mary Keogh was a strong girl and still very young. She had already sold the old family house by the sea and now found herself sole beneficiary of her husband's not inconsiderable estate. Deciding to get away from Edinburgh for a little while, in the spring of '59 she had come down to Harden and hired a house until the end of July, spending a lot of time in becoming reconciled with her brother and in getting to know his new wife. During that time she saw how his business was declining and helped out with sufficient hard cash to tide him over.
It was then, too, that Michael first detected an aura of sadness or hopelessness about his sister. When he asked what was bothering her (other, of course, than the recent death of her husband, which still weighed heavily) she reminded him of their mother's 'sixth sense', her psychic sensitivity. She believed she had inherited something of it; it 'told' her that she would not have a long life. That didn't worry her unduly — what would be would be — but she did worry about little Harry. What would become of him, if anything should happen to her while he was still a child?
It was unlikely that Michael Keogh and his wife, Jenny, would be able to have children of their own. They had known this when they married, but mutually agreed that it was not a matter of overriding importance; their feelings for each other came first. Later, when their small business was better established, there would be time enough to consider adoption. In these circumstances, however, and
if anything should 'happen' to Mary — a prediction which, while her brother himself put little store by it, Mary seemed strongly inclined, indeed resolved, towards — then she would not need to let it concern her. Of course her brother and his wife would bring up little Harry as their own. The 'promise' was made more to put her mind at rest than as a real promise as such.
When Harry was two his mother met and was 'swayed' by a man only two or three years older than herself, one Viktor Shukshin, an assumed dissident who had made his way to the West in pursuit of a political haven, or at least political freedom, such as Mary Keogh's mother had done in 1920. Perhaps Mary's fascination with Shukshin was due to this 'Russian connection', but whichever, she married him late in 1960 and they lived at the house near Bonnyrigg. A linguist, Harry's new stepfather had been giving private lessons in Russian and German in Edinburgh for the last two years; but now, all financial problems set aside, he and his new wife gave themselves over to a life of leisure and personal interests and inclinations. He, too, was greatly interested in the 'paranormal', encouraging his wife in her psychic pursuits.
Michael Keogh had met Shukshin at his sister's wed ding, and again, briefly, while on a touring holiday in Scotland — but after that… only at the inquest. For in the winter of '63 Mary Keogh died, as she had predicted, at only thirty-two years of age. Of Shukshin himself Hannant had only ascertained that the Keoghs hadn't liked the man. There had been that about him which alienated them; probably the same thing which had attracted Michael's sister.
As to Mary's death:
She had been a skater, had loved the ice. A river within view of the house near Bonnyrigg had claimed her, when she had apparently fallen through thin ice while skating and been swept away. Viktor had been with her but had been unable to do anything. Distraught — almost out of his mind with horror — he had gone for help, but…
Beneath the ice, the river had been swollen, rushing, at the time of the accident. Downriver were many little backwaters where Mary's body might have been washed up under the ice, remaining there until the thaw. Lots of mud had been washed down out of the hills, too, and this had doubtless covered her. At any rate, her body was never found.
Within six months Michael had fulfilled his promise; Harry 'Keogh' had gone to live with his uncle and aunt in Harden. This had suited Shukshin; Harry had not been his child, and he was in any case middling with children and did not feel inclined to bring the boy up on his own. Mary's will had made good provision for Harry; the house and the rest of her estate went to the Russian. To Michael Keogh's knowledge, Shukshin lived there yet; he had not re-married but gone back to giving private tuition in German and Russian. He still gave lessons at the house near Bonnyrigg, where he apparently lived alone. Not once over the years had he asked to see Harry, nor even enquired about him.
Dramatic as his family history might seem, still, all in all, Harry Keogh's beginnings had not been very remarkable. The only matter which had made any real impression on Hannant had been Keogh's grandmother's and mother's predilection for the paranormal; but that in itself was not very extraordinary. Or there again… perhaps it was. Mary Shukshin had seemed convinced that Natasha's 'powers' had been passed down to her, and what if she in turn had passed them down to Harry? Now there was a thought! Or there might be one, if Hannant believed at all in such things.
But he did not.
It was an evening some three weeks later, four or five days after Keogh had left Harden Modern Boys' for the Tech., when Hannant stumbled across one final 'oddity' concerning the boy.
Up in Hannant's attic he'd long kept an old trunk of his father's containing one or two books and bundles of old papers, dusty bits of bric-a-brac and various mementoes of the old man's years of teaching. Having gone up there to fix a tile loosened in a brief storm off the North Sea, he had seen the trunk and admired it. Stoutly constructed, its dark body and brass hasps and hinges retained an olde-worlde appeal. It would create a very handsome effect beside the bookshelves in Hannant's front room.
Dragging the trunk downstairs, he had started to empty it, glancing again at old photographs unseen for many a year, and putting aside items which might be useful at school (several old text-books, for example) until he'd come across a large leatherbound notebook full of notes and jottings in his father's hand. Something about the pattern and layout of his father's work had held his eye for a moment… until it dawned on him just exactly what it was — or what he thought it was.