He left her sleeping, went into his dressing-room, and slowly took off his clothes. In the bathroom, he turned on the taps, and the boiling water filled the air with steam. He sat on the lavatory seat and unbuckled his harness and his tin leg, and laid the awkward contraption out on the bath-mat. Then, with a cunning expertise perfected over the years, he lowered himself into the scalding bath-water.
He soaked for a long time, turning on the hot tap whenever the water threatened to turn chill. He soaped himself, shaved, washed his hair. He thought about going to bed, and then decided against it. The new day had begun, and he might just as well see it through.
Later, dressed in old corduroys and a polo-necked sweater of great age and thickness, he went back downstairs and into the kitchen. The dogs were waiting for him, ready for their morning outing. He put on the kettle. When he came indoors again he would make a cup of tea. He led the dogs across the hall and out through the front door. They raced ahead of him, over the gravel and off onto the grass, scenting the rabbits who had played there during the night hours. He stood at the top of the steps and watched them go. Seven o'clock and the sun was on its way up the sky. A pearly morning with only a little light cloud drifting about in the west. Birds were singing, and so still was it that he could hear the sound of a car, far below in the glen, starting up, and driving away through the village.
Another sound. Footsteps on the gravel, approaching from the direction of the cattle-grid. He looked and saw, in some surprise, the unmistakable figure of Willy Snoddy, his lurcher at his heels, walking towards him. Willy, as disreputable as ever in his tinker's cap and muffler and his old jacket with its bulging poacher's pockets.
"Willy," Archie went down the steps to meet him. "What are you up to?" A ridiculous question, because he knew perfectly well that Willy Snoddy, at this hour of the day, was up to only one thing, and that was no good.
"I…" The old man opened his mouth and then shut it again.
His eyes met Archie's and veered away. "I… I was up at the loch… me and the dog… I…"
He stopped.
Archie waited. Willy put his hands in his pockets and took them out again. And then the dog, sensing something, began to whine. Willy swore at it and slapped its head, but a frisson ran down Archie's spine and he tensed, consumed by a dreadful apprehension.
"Well, what is it?" he demanded sharply.
"I was up at the loch…"
"You told me…"
"Just a wee troot or twa, ken…" But that wasn't what Willy had come to say. "Your Land Rover. It's there. And the lady's furry coat…"
And then Willy did a strange thing. He took off his cap, an instinctive and touching gesture of respect. He held it, twisted in his hands. Archie had never seen him bareheaded before. Willy's cap was part of his image, and rumour had it that he even slept in it. But now he saw that Willy's head was balding, and his sparse white hair lay thin over the defenceless scalp. Without the rakish slant of his bonnet it was as though the graceless poacher had been disarmed; no longer the well-kent villain, slouching about the place with his pockets full of ferrets, but simply an old countryman, uneducated and at a total loss, struggling to find the words to tell the untellable.
"Lucilla."
The voice came from a long way off. Lucilla decided to ignore it.
"Lucilla."
A hand on her shoulder, gently shaking. "Lucilla, darling."
Her mother. Lucilla groaned, buried her head in the pillow and slowly awoke. She lay for a moment and then rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. Isobel was sitting on the edge of her bed, her hand on Lucilla's T-shirted shoulder. "Darling. Wake up."
"I am awake," Lucilla mumbled. She yawned and stretched. Blinked once or twice. "Why did you wake me up?" she asked resentfully.
"I'm sorry."
"What time is it?"
"Ten o'clock."
"Ten o'clock. Oh, Mum, I wanted to sleep until lunch."
"I know. I'm sorry."
Lucilla slowly came to. The curtains had been drawn back, and morning sunlight slanted into the far corner of her room. She looked at her mother with sleepy eyes. Isobel was dressed, wearing a pullover and a husky, but her hair was untidy, as if she had not found time to do more than run a comb through it, and her expression seemed strained. But then, she would be tired. Lacking sleep. They had none of them got to bed before four o'clock.
But she was not smiling.
Lucilla frowned. "Is something wrong?"
"Darling, I had to wake you. And yes, something is wrong. Something's happened. It's very sad. I have to tell you. You've got to try to be brave." Lucilla's eyes widened in apprehension. "It's Pandora…" Her voice faltered. "Oh, Lucilla, Pandora is dead…"
Dead. Pandora dead? "No." The instinctive reaction was one of denial. "She can't be."
"Sweetheart, she is."
Lucilla was now awake, all trace of drowsiness shattered by shock. "But when?" Noel Keeling had driven Pandora home from the dance. "How?" She imagined Pandora, like a wraith, not breathing, still, on her bed. A heart attack, perhaps.
But not dead. Not Pandora.
"She drowned herself, Lucilla. We think she drowned herself…"
"Drowned herself?" The implications were too horrifying to take in.
"In the loch. She took Dad's Land Rover. She must have driven herself up the road. Right past Gordon Gillock's house, but the Gillocks never heard a thing. The gates of the deer-fence were bolted shut. She must have shut them behind her."
Pandora drowned. Lucilla thought of Pandora somewhere in France, skinny-dipping in a deep and fast-flowing river, swimming against the current, calling to Jeff and Lucilla that it was lovely, the water was lovely, why didn't they come in?
Pandora drowned. Bolting the heavy gates behind her. Surely that in itself was proof that she had not taken her own life? Surely no one, under such circumstances, would painstakingly trouble to close the deer gates.
No.
"It must have been an accident. She would never, never have killed herself. Oh, Mum, not Pandora…"
"It wasn't an accident. We hoped it was. That she'd come home from the dance, and taken it into her head to go for a swim. It was just the sort of dotty decision that she was quite capable of taking. An impulsive whim. But by the loch they found her mink coat and her sandals; and an empty sleeping-pill jar, and the last of a bottle of champagne."
And the last of a bottle of champagne. The last of the wine. Like a final, terrible celebration.
"… and when we went to her room, there was a letter for Dad."
Lucilla knew then that it was true. She was dead. Pandora had drowned herself. She shivered. An old cardigan lay on a chair beside her bed. She sat up, reached for it, wrapped it around her shoulders. She said, "Tell me what happened."
Isobel took Lucilla's hands in her own. "Willy Snoddy was up at the loch early, all set to lift a few trout out with the first rise. He'd walked up from the village with his dog. He saw the Land Rover parked by the boat-house. And then her coat, lying on the bank. He thought, like us, that perhaps someone had just gone for a midnight swim. And then he saw her body, washed up against the sluicegates. "
"I can't bear it for him. Poor old man."
"Yes. Poor Willy. But for once in his life he did the right thing, and came straight to Croy to find Archie. By then it was seven o'clock, and Dad was out with the dogs. He never went to bed after the dance. Just took a bath and dressed again. And he was out with the dogs, and he saw Willy coming, and Willy told him what he'd found."
Only too clearly, Lucilla could imagine the scene. She thought about her father, and then could not think about him, because Pandora was his sister, and he had loved her, and longed for her to come home to Croy. And she had come, and now she was gone for ever.