Too Soon a Death: A Scottish mystery where cosy crime meets tartan noir: Borders Mysteries Book 2 (12 page)

Unable to bend down far enough to read any prone on the ground, Zoe nevertheless threw herself into a task which was far harder than she expected. Most of the inscriptions had lost their sharpness as the stones were eroded by rain and frost, and patches of green and yellow lichen also served to make them indistinct. She gently swept the brush Kate had given her over one of the larger headstones and managed to read the dates but the words on it still evaded her. She sighed and moved on to the next one.

Gradually, she started to make sense of what she saw, her eyes and brain adjusting to the faint, archaic lettering. Still no Lily or small child, though.

Sooner than she expected, she heard Kate call to her. ‘Half-hour’s up. Do you want to stop or carry on?’

‘I’m happy to carry on if you are.’

‘Excellent.’

Twenty minutes later, her back starting to ache, she had just decided to ask Kate if they could try again another day when she heard a shout.

‘Come and see what I’ve found!’

Zoe spun round to see Kate waving frantically, brush in hand. She waved back and made her way between the gravestones to her.

‘Ta-da!’ Kate gestured at a flat-topped gravestone standing at a worrying angle next to her. ‘Look at this.’

Zoe stared at the stone but couldn’t make out the writing on it. Kate lifted something out of the hessian sack she had carried from the car. ‘This might help.’ It was a plastic mirror, and Zoe watched, fascinated, as Kate held it at an angle, directing the bright sunlight across the gravestone and casting shadows in the indentations. All of a sudden, Zoe was able to read the inscription.

Lily Douglas
Beloved wife, mother and sister
Died December 1845 aged 31

‘I’m pleased you’ve found her, although I still don’t understand why she’s so important.’

‘I’ll explain it all in a minute. But first, look at this one too.’ Kate moved sideways to reveal a much smaller stone leaning against Lily’s.

Zoe bent over as far as she could and squinted at it. ‘Can you do your magic with the mirror for me? I’m struggling with this one too.’

‘Even with the mirror I can’t make out all the words either. But I got the important stuff – “infant son” and “1845”.’

‘That’s the same year Lily died. So her son died too? How sad.’

‘I think it’s a wee bit more complicated than that. But I can see you rubbing your back, so let’s sit down. I’ll get the coffee out and explain.’

They walked over to a pair of stones which had lain on top of each other for so long they were held together by moss and ivy. Kate checked the stones’ stability then motioned to Zoe to sit down. She pulled a flask and a small tin mug from her bag and while she concentrated on pouring their coffee, Zoe tried to work out how those two graves could help solve the puzzle she’d inadvertently set her friend.

Their eyes met as Kate passed Zoe the mug, filled to its brim with strong coffee, and a chocolate biscuit.

‘Are you comfortable?’

‘As much as I can be, sitting on a pile of gravestones.’

‘Will I hold off telling you my theory until we get back to the car?’

‘Certainly not. I’ve got this far. Tell away.’

‘Okay. There’s something you need to remember in all this.’

‘What?’

‘Adam appears to have been Grace and Archibald’s only child. There’s no record of him having any siblings, which was very unusual, given that people had nothing but the most rudimentary contraception back in the nineteenth century. And Grace was over forty when she gave birth to him.’

‘Okay. And what’s the significance of these facts?’

‘I’ll get to that. The reason I brought us here was I discovered Grace had a younger sister, Lily, who had also lived in Allankirk. I think that’s her grave over there. As we can see, she died in 1845, which according to parish records is the year Grace’s son Adam was born.’

Kate paused and looked at Zoe, who nodded to confirm she was with her so far. ‘Even though I can’t find a written record, we know Lily had a child, as her gravestone says
Beloved wife, mother and sister
. But if that child died at around the same time as she did, why wasn’t he or she buried in the same grave? That’s what usually happened. Her family was poor—they wouldn’t have gone to the expense of a separate gravestone.’

‘So you’re saying the dead child wasn’t Lily’s?’

‘Exactly. What if the child whose tiny gravestone this is was actually Grace and Archibald’s son? That would have left Lily’s baby with no mother and Grace grieving for her only child and unlikely to be able to have more because of her age. What better solution than for Grace and Archibald to informally adopt their nephew and bring him up as their own? They wouldn’t have cared that he’d inherited his real father’s brown eyes while theirs were blue.’

Zoe gave this some thought, then said, ‘I can see your reasoning. But you mentioned the baby’s father. Would he really have given away his son?’

‘He probably looked upon it as a good thing. There was no way he could have cared for a young child and continued to work to keep a roof over their heads. Depending on when her own child died, Grace may even have still been lactating. Lily’s surviving baby probably hadn’t been weaned so she would have been able to take over feeding it.’

‘This all sounds very plausible, but what proof do you have? You’re making the limited facts at your disposal fit your theory, rather than vice versa.’

Kate ran a hand through her hair. ‘Fair comment. My problem is that it wasn’t compulsory in Scotland to register births, marriages and deaths until 1855. I’ve got a lot more work to do on this.’

‘What about names? You’re saying Grace and Archibald’s son called Adam died and was replaced by a boy with brown eyes who had the same name. How likely is that?’

‘Infant mortality was high back then. If a young child died, the next one born in that family would often be given the same name. So if Grace and Archibald adopted Lily’s son, they could’ve simply renamed him after their dead son.’

‘Oh.’ Despite the heat of the day, Zoe shivered. ‘Can we go now? I’m finding all this talk of dead babies a bit grim.’

Kate leapt to her feet. ‘I’m so sorry. What was I thinking?’

‘It’s okay, I’m not upset but that’s the problem. Because this all happened such a long time ago, we’re talking about it in a detached way. For Grace, losing a sister and a son around the same time must have been devastating. If what you suggest really did take place, I hope she drew comfort from bringing up her sister’s child.’

Zoe tried to rise from the gravestones she was sitting on but her legs were tired and her bump suddenly seemed far larger than ever before. She struggled to lift herself; Kate came over to help, chuckling. As she pulled Zoe to her feet she said, ‘You’d best not sit on anything that low again, at least until the baby’s here. My poorly back can’t take it.’

‘Luckily the only beanbag in Keeper’s Cottage belongs to Mac.’

While Kate gathered her kit together, Zoe walked to the edge of the graveyard where a patch of wild flowers was growing. She picked a few, then returned to Lily’s stone and laid the flowers in front of it. Leaning over, she touched the smaller, adjacent stone and whispered, ‘They’re for you as well, whoever you were.’

Shocked by how exhausted she felt by the time they got back to the car, she turned down Kate’s offer of lunch at Tolbyres. It was a relief to let herself back into the cottage, enjoy the usual ecstatic welcome from Mac, whose eye was already looking less swollen, then release herself from jeans into a loose, sleeveless dress. Her earlobe hurt a lot now, so she took out her gold studs and placed them on the bedside table before lying down to ease her back. The next time she glanced at the clock, nearly an hour had passed.

Her mobile rang as she was debating whether to get up and eat something or turn over and go back to sleep.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t called before.’ Andrew’s voice sounded impassive, which Zoe knew to be an act.

‘It’s alright.’ When her father stayed silent, she asked gently, ‘Has something happened?’

‘Helen’s still with us, if that’s what you mean. But I can’t leave her now until . . . it’s over.’

‘I know. Don’t worry about me. I just wish I could do something to help.’ Zoe had no personal experience of living through the final days of someone close with a terminal illness, although she had advised countless patients in the situation Andrew found himself. Today, though, she avoided giving out any of the advice she would normally offer; it felt banal and insincere.

‘There’s nothing anyone can do. I’m in the greenhouse, watering my tomatoes because it feels like that’s all I’m good for.’

‘Are you getting the practical help you need?’

‘Friends are in and out all the time, with food and offers to sit with Helen, but she can’t cope with visitors any more. She—’ Andrew’s voice broke. Zoe heard him take a deep breath. ‘She had me go through her jewellery box yesterday, telling me who should get the things she hasn’t already set aside for Nina. She even wants her favourite cousin to have the little watercolour she treated herself to when she sold her first book.’

She’s a writer. With a jolt, Zoe realised she knew little about Helen beyond the fact she was Andrew’s wife. ‘I can see how upsetting this must be for you, but it means she’s accepted what’s happening to her.’

‘You’re right. I should be thankful, but all I feel is anger. She’s only sixty, for God’s sake. That’s no age at all.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Oh, Zoe, I get so much comfort from knowing you’re there and being able to talk to you.’

Before she could respond she heard another, muffled voice. Andrew spoke away from his phone. ‘Tell him I’ll be with him in a couple of minutes.’

‘You have to go?’ she asked when he said her name again.

‘Doctor’s here. I’m sorry. I was really calling to find out how you and the baby are.’

‘We’re both fine. Please, Andrew, ring me whenever you need to.’

‘You’ll have enough of listening to other people’s problems in your job.’

Zoe’s eyes prickled. ‘You’re not other people. You’re my father.’

After they said their goodbyes, she opened the bedroom door and let Mac in. He jumped up on the bed and she lay down next to him and stroked his head. Any idea of getting back to sleep had vanished.

You’re my father. Blurting this out to Andrew had taken her by surprise. Even as a young girl, she had never clung to a romantic notion of her absent parent, and growing older didn’t change this. Self-aware enough to know that while she might have developed into a different person if she’d been brought up by two parents instead of one, she also had the insight to recognise this wouldn’t necessarily have made her any happier. The sudden loss of her mother and moving away from everyone and everything she knew, to be brought up by her grandparents, had sown a seed of curiosity about the other side of her family but still hadn’t brought on a longing for her father to appear on the scene.

This indifference to exploring her roots had been brought to an end by Gran and Grandad dying within six months of each other. She was already married to Russell by that time but their ill-fated relationship hadn’t been enough to shield her from the realisation that she was alone. And so she had moved to the Borders a year ago, motivated in part by the opportunity this offered to search for her father. As it turned out, he had found her first.

Her stomach rumbled; she should have eaten lunch hours ago. As she got up, she knocked the bedside cabinet and winced at the pain which shot up her arm. That wrist would probably never totally recover from being fractured last November. Worse still, the jolt had caused one of her earrings to fall onto the carpet then bounce under the bed. She slowly lowered herself to her knees but couldn’t reach the earring until she lay flat out.

Head on his paws, Mac stared as his owner returned to a kneeling position then braced her arms against the bed and pushed herself up. She imagined Kate’s amused concern at this manoeuvre and how she would have rushed to help, despite the danger of hurting her own back. People are cumbersome things to lift.

About to return the earring to its mate, Zoe’s hand hovered above the bedside table. Pulling the boy out of the river must have been hard work. He wasn’t big but he literally would have been a dead weight, his wet clothes making him even heavier. The man who had retrieved him might have damaged himself doing it. Strained his back, maybe. Like that patient, what was his name? John Wilkie.

She dropped onto the bed, narrowly missing Mac’s head. It came to her now what John Wilkie had said which hadn’t felt right. He described the boy as having been beaten up before going into the water, but how could he possibly know this? The police were deliberately keeping all the boy’s injuries secret, except for the damage to his hands.

He had to have seen him.

It all fitted. The timing, his vagueness about how he’d hurt himself, his interest in more information about the boy (although she had to admit he shared this last detail with nearly all yesterday’s patients). Then again, wasn’t she making a huge assumption, something she’d earlier accused Kate of doing? John Wilkie couldn’t be a poacher, he seemed such a decent man. Poachers were thieves. And she’d heard it was big business these days, not an individual boosting his income with the occasional fish no one would miss.

‘What do I know about people?’ she asked Mac. He wagged his tail. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, but you’re impressed when I can open the fridge door. I don’t want to make yet another huge mistake.’

As if her mention of the fridge had reminded him his last meal was hours ago, Mac jumped off the bed and made for the kitchen. Zoe got up more slowly and followed him.

TWELVE

In anticipation of their long walk the following day with Patrick, Zoe decided to take it easy on Saturday and just stroll to the village and back. She had run out of milk and dog biscuits, so her destination was the shop, now reopened after several months’ hiatus.