Both boys began to talk at once, Teddy’s voice, being the more piercing, winning through.
‘- just where you’re wrong. Because they are actually very skilful – better than blacksmiths and everything that we’ve got here – and not at all savage at all.’
‘Even scalping,’ Donald put in.
‘Scalping isn’t savage?’ I could hardly help laughing. Donald looked witheringly at me.
‘Yes, but it’s not just lunging at someone and ripping his hair off, Mother, there’s a lot to it and… Mother? Are you all right?’
‘Are you going to faint, Mummy?’
‘Are you going to be sick? Did you eat berries?’
‘Because you’re always telling us not to, and really after that huge lunch -’
‘Dandy?’
I could not answer.
‘Right, you two,’ said Alec, bundling them into the trap. ‘You set off now and we’ll give you three minutes and race you home.’
I sat numbly in the motor car while he started it, not quite believing where my thoughts were leading me.
‘What is it?’ he said, once we were under way, rolling along in the wake of the pony.
‘Simply this,’ I said. ‘When a person flies into a murderous rage and attacks someone, what one ends up with is a battered bloody corpse, not a girl lying in a bed who looks as though she has had an abortion. And if we hadn’t been so cowardly about making ourselves face it I should have seen that straight away.’
‘What made you think of it all of a sudden just now?’ said Alec.
‘Scalping,’ I said. ‘It’s brutal and nasty but not, as my charming children pointed out, just lunging at someone and ripping his hair off. And the same goes for what happened to Cara. There’s no way one thing could be mistaken for the other.’
‘But Dr Milne -’
‘Yes, but that’s what I’ve been thinking through. Dr Milne said precisely nothing. Simply that she had tried to miscarry in a very silly way that only an ignorant girl would think of. He supplied no details. I filled it all in, and in the most grisly way possible.’
‘And you told me no details and I did the same,’ said Alec. ‘You’re right. But Dr Milne did seem sure, Dandy.’
‘He also seemed sure that the girl was a servant, and we know she wasn’t. Besides, something about what he said has been bothering me all along in a way I can’t get a hold of. I almost got it at the memorial service, or I thought I did, but then I fell asleep. So maybe I was dreaming.’
‘Don’t drift, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘Concentrate. What can have happened? You’re right, of course. Any… direct method would have nothing in common with a sudden angry outburst, but what else is there?’
‘Hot baths? No. Gin? Clearly not.’
‘What about jumping?’
‘That’s an old wives’ tale,’ I said. ‘Complete nonsense – But oh! That’s exactly what Dr Milne said, isn’t it? That only a silly ignorant girl would believe it would work and that anyone with any sense would see that she’d be as likely to die as to miscarry.’
‘And jumping, jumping off something and landing badly, would look almost identical to being shoved and landing badly.’
‘And a shove is exactly the kind of thing one would do if one flew into a rage, isn’t it? I’m sure this is right, Alec. It must be.’
We rattled up the drive to the house. The boys, unable to stop the pony, who had got the bit well and truly between its teeth, swept away around the side to the stables. I gestured for Alec to pull up on the gravel then hurried inside and straight to my sitting room to the telephone.
‘Who are you calling?’ he said, arriving just as I lifted the earpiece.
‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Yes, it’s a Dr Milne in Gatehouse of Fleet, please. Kirkcudbright 59.’ I put my hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Before I lose my nerve,’ I whispered to Alec.
‘Well, be careful,’ he whispered back and sank into a chair to listen.
Chapter Seventeen
It took the usual aeons for the call to be put through, clickings and whirrings and sudden hollow silences. While I was waiting, Alec whispered at me again.
‘What are you going to say?’
‘No idea. But don’t worry – it’s a favoured ploy of mine.’
The telephone was ringing at last.
‘Yes, hello, what is it?’ said a clipped voice at the other end. If this was Mrs Milne, then I pitied the doctor.
‘Might I speak to Dr Milne?’ I said. ‘Or leave a message?’
‘Can you not come to the surgery?’ said the voice, surely a housekeeper.
‘Oh, no,’ I trilled. ‘This is not a professional call. I’m a friend. Mrs Gilver. But I’ll happily ring back if Dr Milne is busy.’
‘Oh, Mrs Gilver,’ said the voice with deep interest. I supposed I was famous in Gatehouse by now. The doctor was in for Mrs Gilver, no doubt about it, and the housekeeper, for such she must be (a wife would hardly be so accommodating in handing over even her husband’s ear to such a female), bustled off to fetch him.
‘My dear Dr Milne,’ I began, greetings over, ‘if you send me a bill this time it will be no more than I deserve, but please let me trespass for a moment. I’d like you to back me up in my efforts to get my boys to maturity in one piece. You didn’t meet my little boys, did you? Well, they are monkeys. I use the term advisedly. They’ve been learning mountaineering at school this year and I cannot keep them off the roofs. The stable roofs have always been a draw, but now they’re up on the house roofs day in and day out and will not listen to me telling them they could kill themselves. Now, here’s how you can help me. I told them a heavily edited version of what happened to that poor little kitchen maid of the Duffys’.’
‘You did what?’ He almost shouted, and Alec too was looking at me as though I was gaga.
‘What I mean is I told them that a girl I knew jumped from the tiniest height and ended up dead. She did jump, didn’t she? I’m almost sure you said she jumped, or that’s what I had understood you to mean.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Dr Milne. ‘She jumped.’ I wiggled my eyebrows at Alec.
‘And I’ve been telling them that jumping is safer than falling because you’ve planned for it and that this poor girl jumped off something miles lower than our roofs here – you remember the house, don’t you? Terrible Gothic additions, turrets everywhere – so then they said, What did she jump off, Mother? And I had to admit that I didn’t know. And now they think it was a cliff-top or something and they won’t heed my warnings the least bit. And to cut a long story short, we’ve got ourselves into a betting situation over it. There are scones at stake. Shocking when one thinks of the poor creature, I know, but there it is. Now, what did she jump off? Do you know?’
Alec’s face was caught midway between stunned admiration and disbelief, but I held out the earpiece towards him to let him hear Dr Milne laughing cosily at the other end and he mimed a salute to me. I smirked back, and put the earpiece to my ear again.
‘She jumped from the landing, my dear Mrs Gilver. Down the stairwell. Hit her head as she fell and snapped her neck when she landed.’ We both sighed.
‘Well, since there couldn’t have been more than a dozen steps in a cottage staircase, I should think that might sober my little demons no end. Thank you, Dr Milne.’
‘You’re very welcome, Mrs Gilver. But don’t dwell on it now, or you’ll give yourself nightmares again.’
‘You are very kind to think of that,’ I said. ‘Can I ask one more thing?’ I knew I was headed for thin ice now, but I could not help myself. ‘I suppose I’m right, saying to them that a fall is even worse than a jump? Even more dangerous, I mean.’
‘I would imagine so.’
‘And, I suppose, a shove is worst of all.’
There was silence at the other end.
‘But can one tell the difference?’