‘Faint praise for you, Bunty,’ I muttered.
The walk along the cliff-tops was splendid although I made no further progress with the mystery man or his hideous little dog. None of the lounging youths or bustling old women I met was able to think of any such pair who walked along the coast, although I established that Sandy Marshall had a collie and that another branch of the seemingly endless Marshall family had a fearful mongrel; ‘mongrel’ excited me for a moment, since I could guess what Clemence would make of one, but it was clear from its description that it was far too big for the role. ‘Feet the size of your face, madam,’ said my informant, an image which made me hope I never encountered the thing. Eventually, I was persuaded by an aged worthy that I was wasting my time: ‘It could easily have been a tripper, a tourist, a visitor or even a hiker, madam, come to that.’ I agreed ruefully that it could be any one of these, whatever the differences were.
When the cliffs dipped into grassy hummocks, I scrambled down on to the beach, not wanting to walk through Kirkandrews and have to pass the burnt patch where the cottage used to be if I could help it. Presently, I identified the spot at which Clemence must have taken the photograph of Cara and Lena on the cliff-top; I remembered the jagged look of the rock, and that tortured little hawthorn clinging to the lower slopes had shown up clearly on the snap. One very interesting thing I noticed was that there was no easy path from the cliff just there, and so to set this picture up Clemence must have brought her camera and other accoutrements along the beach from the dip where I had joined it. Had she been photographing rock pools and happened to see her mother and sister above her, it might have made some sense, but trying to pass the scenario off as a plausible posed shot was ludicrous. I stood frowning up at the cliff, puzzled. Even once one knew what one knew, that is that the Duffys were constructing a record, it was still odd for part of that record to be this particular picture. What was gained by Clemence’s hauling her things along the shore and by Lena and Cara’s long wait at the top in that wind which whipped their clothes into a blur and must have chilled them? My imagined pretext, that Clemence was otherwise engaged and the others were caught impromptu, would only have gained merit if some of Clemence’s rock pool studies or whatever were in the album to support it. I wondered what she had done with them, then I shook my head to clear it – there were no rock pool studies. I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep a clear boundary between what I actually knew and what I surmised. Worse, conclusions based on my surmising threatened constantly to mix themselves in with known details and when that happened I should be lost.
On I trudged, leaving Bunty racketing about, snuffling in piles of damp seaweed and getting more and more excited by the unfamiliar slip and spray of sand under her paws. Each time I got further from her than she liked she gave a chorus of offended barks and raced to catch me up, overshooting and skidding to a halt in yet more of the enchanting sand and bladderwrack whereupon the whole performance started again. She was therefore quite exhausted by the time we had completed our loop, and she trotted quietly up the lane beside me, seeming – sand and scent apart – in a fit state to go visiting.
Still, I quailed at the thought of young Mrs Marshall’s reception – how I pitied Sandy, whom I had imbued with all of his mother’s good qualities – so I went straight to the old lady herself. From sitting slumped at the bench by her door after my labours I knew that she had a good view of the sea and I surmised that a cottager only has a bench by her door if it is her habit to sit there, so I felt some hope that she might be able to help me out in the matter of the boat, if indeed this romantic departure of Cara’s turned out to be true.
Old Mrs Marshall was ‘tickled’ to see me, as she put it, and took very readily to the unusually sedate Bunty, but she had no information to offer about any hideous little dog. What’s more she looked at me with piercing incredulity when I trotted out this excuse for my presence, and so for a while I sat quietly, looking out to sea – for we were indeed installed on the bench by her door – breathing in the scent of the new mint growing around our feet and enjoying the weak sunshine. I wished for a fishing boat or something to bob into view and help my next round of questions into being, but since nothing came I had to do what I could.
‘This is a very quiet spot,’ I said.
‘Aye, it is that,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘A tiny wee cottage in the middle of nowhere.’ I recognized the words I had used to Agnes and gave a snort of self-deprecating laughter, only blushing a little.
‘Yes, but I meant the sea, really. One expects there to be little boats and ferries and things and yet look at it – nothing. Is it always like that?’
‘The boats are out there right enough, off at six this morning and back at six tonight, if they’re spared.’
‘And are there ever pleasure boats?’ I asked. ‘Sailing boats? Is there anywhere for them to land hereabouts?’
‘Come the summer,’ said Mrs Marshall.
I paused again, planning my next enquiry, when she took me by surprise, saying: ‘Why don’t you just out and ask, madam, whatever it is?’ I looked at her from the corner of my eye and saw that although the twinkle was as ready as ever her face was serious, so I took a deep breath and decided to trust her and my instincts about her. I ignored the nagging voice in my head totting up the growing column of people I had either told outright about my theories or told such nonsense that they must suspect something worse.
‘I believe,’ I said, ‘and I am not alone, either – I firmly believe that the fire at the cottage was deliberate, but -’ I held up my hand as she started to babble – ‘but that no one died in it. We, Miss Duffy’s fiance and myself, both strongly suspect that Cara left the cottage long before the fire, and this is where I hope you can help me.’
‘Who would do sich a thing?’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘There’s never been anything like that here in all my days. I mind of a boy in Kirkcudbright years back but he went into a home.’ I saw that I should have to explain some more, but I did not even get to finish the first sentence before Mrs Marshall’s remonstrances broke out again.
‘Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,’ she said, shaking her apron smooth and glaring at me as though I was one of her own many children with a hole in its stocking for her to darn. ‘What for why would a woman do sich a thing? After getting the whole place newly painted and papered not a month before. It makes no sense.’
This, it was true, did make no sense that Alec and I had yet established. Why had Mrs Duffy had the cottage decorated when she meant to burn it down?
‘Unless it was to guard against these very suspicions,’ I said. ‘Because she thought that people would say exactly what you have.’
‘Och, that’s too clever for me,’ said Mrs Marshall, getting to her feet and stamping away inside as the kettle started to whistle. I followed after her and leaned against the doorway. She poured a little water into a fat brown teapot, swirled it around and then sloshed it out into the stone sink with a contemptuous gesture that could hardly have been more so had she actually spat. And I agreed. It was too clever a double bluff, but then so was the photograph album, and that was true.
‘Did the cottage need the redecoration?’ I said, thinking that perhaps if they had stayed a week in real squalor it would look as though they knew in advance that a fire was about to remove the need to do something about it.
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘But there! That’s “ladies” for you.’ I cringed, sure that I came within the sweep of this judgement.
‘Mrs Marshall,’ I said, summoning courage, ‘why not just humour me? What harm will it do at least to discuss it? And imagine if I were right, and poor Cara is not dead after all, only hiding somewhere in some kind of trouble and we find her.’ Thus, unscrupulously, I overcame her better judgement and wiping her eyes and sighing, she submitted to my questions at last.