“Connie Baikie lived here then. Large, loud Connie. More like an actress than a scientist. A real drama queen. I don’t know what stories you’ve heard about her. They’ll all be true. She was famous, you know, at the time. As well known as Peter Scott. My father adored her. He was a naturalist too. Only an amateur but well respected. He was a schoolmaster by profession. I can’t think he was much good at it. I knew from experience that he found children tedious and his real love was always natural history.
“So. Picture the scene. Imagine the situation. A middle-aged man landed with a small child. A frail child who suffered from allergies: asthma, eczema. Psychosomatic, no doubt but real enough at the time.
Did he allow that to cramp his style? Of course not. He was an obsessive. Until I was old enough to be left alone I was dragged along too. I walked miles round here, many of them. I learnt to keep quiet and stand still.
“Then, occasionally, there were the wonderful weekends when we were invited to stay at Baikie’s. There was music and dancing on the lawn.
Chinese lanterns and big fires, sweets and biscuits and other grown-ups to make a fuss of me. Ladies in silk dresses and fur coats wearing exotic perfume. Even the talk of plants, butterflies and animals seemed more exciting here. Whatever Constance Baikie was, whatever she became, she could put on a good show… “
She stopped abruptly and looked up at them. Her tone and mood changed.
“I expect you think I’m odd,” she said. “Eccentric. Even that I’m dragging up my past for effect. That’s not the case, and if I do have a reputation for eccentricity, I have one too for getting results. You couldn’t have got anyone better.” She paused. “This isn’t my party piece, I don’t trot it out for everybody. I’m telling you, so you know I understand what goes on here. And I haven’t lost touch. You mustn’t think that. I lived with my father for forty-five years. Lived with the lists and the notes and the sketches. He died a year ago, but I’m in the same house. The scientific journals still drop on the doormat every month because I haven’t got round to cancelling them and sometimes I read them. Some of it must have rubbed off. I never shared his passion but at times I come close to understanding it.”
She leant back in her seat and closed her eyes. There was such a long silence that Rachael thought she had fallen asleep, imagined she and Anne sitting there for hours, too embarrassed to move. Then still with her eyes closed Vera said, “So explain what you’re doing here. I want to know all about the project and where Grace Fulwell fitted into it.
Tell me about the survey so far. What you expected to find and the results you’ve achieved. By the time we leave this room I’m going to know as much as you do about the lass. You’re going to pass on everything she told you. About her work, her friends, her family.
Everything.” There was a pause, then Anne said, with a brief return of the old spirit, “That’s all right then. That’ll not take us very long. And I thought we’d be here all day.”
Chapter Thirty.
That day Rachael and Anne came under varying pressure to move out of Baikie’s. First, in an unprecedented show of marital devotion, Jeremy arrived to fetch Anne home. That at least was what he said he was doing there.
It was late afternoon when he arrived but the rain and the low cloud made it feel like a winter’s evening. The fire had been lit all day and they had the lights on. Vera, exasperated, Rachael thought, by the paucity of the information she had gleaned, had passed them on to her sergeant. In one of the unnatural coincidences which marked the day Rachael recognized him as Joe Ashworth, the timid young man who had been sent to Black Law on the night of Bella’s suicide. As he talked to them he looked occasionally out of the uncurtained window. All he said was, “Strange, isn’t it, without street lights?” But she could tell the emptiness made him uneasy.
He had with him a copy of the notes which had been taken from Grace’s notebook. The notebook itself hadn’t been released.
“Inspector Stanhope thought they might mean something to you,” he said.
“It seems fairly obvious to us. The last count was taken between ten and twelve.”
“And those are grid references,” Rachael said, pointing over his shoulder. “If you check the map you’ll be able to find out where she was counting.”
They spread a large-scale ordnance survey over the floor. Anne followed the blue squiggle of the burn with her finger, stopped at the edge of a settlement marked by big black squares. “She must have walked as far as Langholme,” she said. “The Skirl runs right at the bottom of my garden there. Look, there’s the Priory. But there were no counts for the afternoon.”
And then, almost as if speaking of the Priory had conjured him up, Jeremy appeared in the room, shepherded by a constable in uniform. He stood just inside the door and Anne saw him as the others must have done. A small man, dapper and balding with the round, scrubbed face of a newly bathed baby. Although he wore jeans and a striped cotton shirt he gave the impression of smartness. To Anne and her friends he’d always been something of a joke but recently she’d sensed something else about him. A desperation which might have aroused her pity if she’d let it.
It was to fend off the possibility of pity that she mocked him now.
“My God. What on earth are you doing here? I wouldn’t have thought you’d know the way.”
He looked hurt, reminding her of some of the small boys in her father’s school, the ones who cried in secret and wet the bed. Then, to her relief, the moment passed and he camped up a show of righteous indignation, looking round slyly to check he had the others’ sympathy.
Actually, I have lived in Langholme longer than you. Just because I don’t feel the need for a daily romp over the hills doesn’t mean I don’t know my way about. And, if you must know, I came because I was worried.”
She responded with the same bantering tone. “That’s not like you, Jem.” Then added more seriously, “How did you find out what happened?”
“Because the phone’s been ringing every half hour with people offering condolences. It’s all over the village that you were the victim.”
She felt a terrible impulse to giggle, a hysteria which had been building up all day. “How did you know that I wasn’t?”
“I didn’t at first, did I? But at least I knew there were three of you. Apparently no one else did.” “Oh, Jem,” she said, “I am sorry.”
“The vicar’s wife brought a cake this afternoon. By that time I’d phoned the police and found out you were safe.” He paused. “She took the cake away.” Anne thought he would have enjoyed the role of bereaved widower. People coming around and making a fuss. He’d always loved funerals. And she was insured. Her death would have solved all his financial problems. Perhaps when he phoned the police to find out who the victim was he was disappointed to be given someone else’s name. Perhaps that explained the slight air of wistfulness, the edgy uncertainty.
“What are folks in the village saying now?” Joe Ashworth asked.
“What do you mean?”
“There must be some gossip. Do they know who the girl is?”
“Don’t be silly,” Anne interrupted. “That’s why he’s here, isn’t it, Jem? To find out those juicy details. He’s worse than an old woman at gossip. Who suggested it?
Ethel Siddon from the post office?” But even as she spoke she thought that for once gossip wasn’t uppermost in his mind.