Women of the Dunes Read online

  “Almost certainly.”

  He nodded. “Then best kept for later. Come on.”

  She followed him down the rest of the shrubbery and they emerged into the courtyard. “What will the police want to know?” she asked him.

  “Everything, Libby. Tell them everything.”

  Chapter 33

   Libby

  It took some time for Libby to give her statement, and the police went over the details many times. They were in the library, sat opposite each other at Rodri’s desk. Fergus was there, which helped, but this was not the easygoing Fergus who had accepted a nip from the bottle in his tea, this was a different man, deeply shocked by what he had heard. The police had spoken first to Angus and David, and briefly to Rodri’s boys, and she saw from their expressions that all the stories were hanging together.

  The officer with Fergus was not a local man, and he made her repeat her testimony, coming at it from all angles. “Could she not simply have been holding the paddle up above the waves?” he asked for the third time.

  “It didn’t look like that, and David was warding her off, I’m certain.”

  Eventually they gathered up their paperwork and prepared to leave. They went back into the kitchen, but she stayed where she was to allow Rodri space to speak to them. A few moments later, he came through to her. “Alright?” he asked, and she nodded. “Then come and meet Hector.”

  “How did he take it?” she asked, as they crossed the hall.

  “He was quiet for a while, then said: ‘Well, that simplifies things.’ And that was all, just that.”

  A bed had been squeezed into one end of the dining room beside a clutter of medical-looking equipment, but Hector was not in it. He was sat, an emaciated figure in a silk dressing gown, in a winged chair in front of the window, facing the garden. He was calmly smoking and turned his head as she came into the room, and Rodri introduced them.

  “I owe you my son, Rodri tells me, and my nephews.”

  “It was Angus who—”

  He swept her words aside. “Nothing can repay that. I’ve been an absent father, a very bad father, but enough of one to know what their loss would have meant, to us both.” He looked across at his brother. “No words can express . . .” His eyes filled, and he turned his head, pulling on his cigarette, his hand shaking. She searched for something to say, but he turned back, in control again. “And you’ve been finding various Sturrock skeletons, I hear,” he said, considering her, “and rattling them.”

  Rodri pulled forward two more chairs and she sat. “I’d no idea there were so many.”

  He laughed. Hector Sturrock looked ill and tired, and distressingly like his brother. He’d once had a larger, broader frame than Rodri, but it was now wasted, and although he was a sickly colour he still managed to convey an air of decadence. It was the silk dressing gown with its Liberty print, perhaps, or the lazy way he contemplated her from under drooping eyelids as he drew on his cigarette. “Best that they’re all out in the open, don’t you think?” An answer didn’t seem to be expected, so she said nothing. And then Rodri told him about the skull they’d just examined, and the cut mark to the skull, and Hector lifted an eyebrow. “Another one! And so they’re true then, the old stories.”

  “Perhaps.”

  He coughed and spat discreetly into a tissue. “And Rodri tells me there’s some connection between you and us, through some black sheep who rogered the kitchen maid and ran off with her.”

  Perhaps he wasn’t so very like Rodri. “Yes,” she said.

  “So he was in Newfoundland after all.”

  Libby stared at him. Had he known all along? “What do you mean?”

  He gestured vaguely to the papers still on the dining table. “Somewhere amongst all that stuff there was something, a letter . . .”

  But she was no longer listening. Her eye had fallen on an object which had been placed beside a medicine bottle on the small table next to the chair, and she stared at it in disbelief. Hector stopped talking and his gaze followed hers. “Ah yes—” he said. “There is that.”

  She lifted her eyes and looked from one brother to the other in silence. Both were smiling slightly, the same quizzical smile. “The chalice—”

  “The same,” said Hector.

  So had he had it in Oslo, after all, secreted away? But how had it got here?

  Hector seemed to pick up on the thought and shook his head at her. “Don’t look at me, m’dear,” he said, and made a languid gesture towards Rodri. “There’s your thief. ’Fessed up this morning, while you were talking to the police. It was in the manse for a while, I gather, up the chimney, and latterly in the potting shed.”

  She looked at Rodri in disbelief.

  “True, I’m afraid,” he said.

  Hector was enjoying her reaction. “So another cupboard door opens, and out rolls the Ullaness chalice. Poof! As if by magic. Maybe Rodri should give it to you to bury, and you could find it and be amazed. Gets you out of a fix, eh, Roddy me boy? And you’d do that for him, wouldn’t you. It’s a small price to pay for coming here, disturbing things better forgotten, don’t you think?”

  “You broke into your own house, and stole it!” she said, staring at Rodri.

  He met her look evenly. “Strictly speaking, I broke into Hector’s house, but yes, and it took some doing I can tell you. Drove through the night to get here from the wedding and then back again in time for breakfast. I rather enjoyed the challenge, in fact, and it opens up new career prospects if Hector throws me out.”

  “There’s no if about it,” said his brother, and reached for a packet of cigarettes and lit another one, flicking a smile at him.

  “They’d have sold it, you see, once they knew its value.”

  Hector blew smoke up towards the ceiling. “He’s not wrong.”

  Libby was at a loss for words. First he’d admitted to shooting at the nighthawks, and now this! “Have you told him about the cross?” she asked, angry suddenly. Once and for all she wanted the matter settled, out in the open and sorted.

  “No.”

  “Where is it now?”

  He got up and went to the sideboard, retrieved the package she’d given him, and handed it to her. “It’s yours, Libby, not Hector’s,” he said. “Don’t let him have it.” But she ripped it across the top, tipped out the cross, and handed it to Hector.

  “That looks familiar— And so you’re a thief as well,” he remarked, examining it. “How very well suited the two of you are.”

  “Tell him how you got it, Libby.” And so she did, as succinctly as she could, and Hector listened to her with that same focussed look she associated with his brother and the ash grew long on the end of his cigarette.

  When she’d finished, he tapped it into an ashtray, then ground out the stub. “And you found a copy of it on the dead man! How extraordinary. But if the Sturrock man did end up in Newfoundland, who do you reckon is in the mound?” he said.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  He grew thoughtful. “And yet somewhere in those papers there was something. Something about a minister who left his position very suddenly, I seem to remember, it caused a vacancy which was never filled. There’s some correspondence about it, I think. He’d aroused some ill-feeling in the community, ran up against the family and so forth. I forget his name, but it’s in there, amongst those papers. But even this family would hardly shoot the poor bugger and stick him in a sand dune.”

  “Well, someone ended up there,” said Rodri. “Who was bart around then?”

  Hector calculated. “The fourth. Donald Sturrock, and then Mungo came in at number five. He was something of a bastard, I gather, drove the place under with massive debts, then died at a ripe, impotent old age without issue.” He glanced briefly towards Rodri. “Like me, I suppose, except for the ripe old age, and the impotence.”

  “And the issue,” said Rodri.

  Hector reached for another cigarette, taking his time to light it, then drew on it and exhaled slowly. “And
I’ve rather snookered young David’s chances, haven’t I? He’ll curse me to the end of his days, I expect, as will his mother. But they’ll get everything I can possibly leave to them. It’s not much—” A bleakness had entered his tone. “And maybe they’ll thank me for not saddling them with this place.” He turned to Libby. “Do you like cold, wet places, where the wind never ceases and the sun rarely shines? And where the past won’t let you go—?” Libby felt it unnecessary to reply, repelled a little by this man who was so like, and yet so unlike, his brother.

  Rodri deflected him. “I’d put my money on the minister, then,” he said, “since he’s unaccounted for. And he was holding that little cross.”

  Hector yawned, the talking seemed to be taking its toll. “Maybe so. The family done him in, shot him though rather than cleaving his skull like his monkish predecessor. We’re quite capable of that, you know,” he said, addressing Libby again. “Nasty bunch, the Sturrocks. And there’s a bit of a pattern emerging down the centuries, don’t you think? Fathering misbegotten lads, murdering churchmen, thievery”—he nodded towards Rodri—“and more recently, on the distaff side, drowning helpless children.” At that he put a hand over his eyes, and stopped on a sob. Libby glanced across at Rodri where he sat, contemplating his brother with a look of profound sadness.

  Better that she left them now, she thought, and she rose to go, but Hector took his hand from his eyes. “Don’t go,” he said. “I like you. Rodri likes you, Alice likes you, and I’d like to know you better, you’re our deliverer, even if you’re also a harbinger of uncomfortable truths. Must be the name,” he continued, “Liberty Snow, Rodri tells me. I was thinking about it this morning. A mix of strong-minded independence and virtue, I decided. God help you, little brother.”

  Rodri’s expression didn’t change. “Ignore the man. Obnoxious when drunk, insufferable when sober.”

  Hector simply smiled back at him. “I jest, brother. But Laila liked being Lady Sturrock, you know, it was the one thing that really satisfied her. I didn’t. I know that much. And I wonder what she had planned for me? There always was something of the Medici about the lovely Laila. . . .” His voice trailed off, and again Libby prepared to leave, but Hector waved her back.

  “I should get back to the camp,” she said, looking across at Rodri, but Hector reached out and gripped her hand with surprising strength.

  “And now I’ve offended you.”

  “You haven’t. But I need to get back.”

  She tried to pull her hand away, but he held on. “Wouldn’t do that for the world. And not only because of the boys. Want to know why?”

  “Innate courtesy?” she asked, and he laughed, that same dry laugh which made him cough again.

  “I’ve rarely been accused of that, m’dear. No, but for the first time in years I’ve seen cracks in the shell my thieving brother has built around himself, and I think that might be down to you.” His tone was no longer bantering and she glimpsed charm in his smile, a younger Hector, before life had made a cynic of him. “I behaved very badly, but it turned out that I took a wrong’un off his hands. He found another for himself, the fool, but it seems to me the gods are giving him a third chance. And then maybe, just maybe, I too will be redeemed— Have this, Miss Snow-White, with my blessing.” And he handed her the cross and the envelope that it had been in, and as he did the sketchbook slipped out and fell open against his shoe.

  Chapter 34

   Ellen

  Something was changing. She felt it stirring deep inside her, overriding the grief and the shame, filling her with a strange new warmth, a sense of expectation—and she was bewildered by it.

  She felt light-headed, dizzy sometimes, and hardly dared to trust her feelings as they swung without warning from dark despair to an odd sort of euphoria. The minister was unfailingly kind, and would be kinder still if she allowed him, but she held him at arm’s length, wrapped up in this new, strange, turbulent wonder where only one thing mattered.

  Alick.

  He came more often now, and she knew that he looked at her differently. At first she had been unable to meet his eyes, seeing in his face too close a resemblance to the one which had looked down at her, red and panting as he heaved. But that image was beginning to fade.

  And Alick’s face was leaner, smoother, and kinder—and so beloved.

  It seemed now that he sought her out, joining her on the headland where they would sit, saying little but in a companionable silence as they watched the gannets diving far out at sea, the dark shags flying low and fast. There had been no more talk of spirits; he had told her she must not dwell on such matters, saying that he had been wrong to confuse her. He had been humble, contrite, and had taken her hand. “You dwell too much on the past,” he said. “But it’s the future that matters, Ellen, and what you make of it.”

  “I can’t imagine the future,” she said, and he had smiled.

  “Then be content with the present moment, Ellen, and let the future unfold.” And the look in his eyes had made her spirit soar, swept along, caught up in a story that was unfinished, a story which had emerged from the shadows of the past and now, if Alick was true, would shape her future.

   Oliver

  He had, he realised, been the author of his own misfortune. Warning Alick that Ellen, in her state of grief and upset, was casting him as Harald seemed to have sparked a change in his friend, igniting a latent realisation of his true feelings. He was forever at the manse and Oliver saw that his eyes followed Ellen, and he would hold her in conversation whenever she was in the room. And he sensed there was a warmth now of a different kind, a mutual warmth. Once he spotted Alick leaning against the peat stack, smoking a cigarette, watching her graceful form as she bent to fill the creels, before moving her gently aside to fill them himself. Later he saw him carrying them to the house, deep in conversation, and once he heard laughter. He had spied them out on the headland too.

  He became consumed by a jealous, impotent anger. Alick Sturrock was every bit as dangerous as his brother, playing with Ellen’s affections, raising hopes that he could have no intention of fulfilling! And he observed despairingly that Ellen stepped more lightly after these encounters, her countenance brightened, her beauty beginning to shine through her grief.

  While for himself things grew blacker. The furore over the digging had died down, but Oliver knew that he had lost ground both amongst his congregation and at the big house. Invitations for dinner became less frequent, and although this did not trouble him, he sensed that his patrons believed he was supporting Alick’s rebellion against them.

  Matters between the young man and his father seemed to be coming to a head, and this was confirmed one day when Alick arrived with unexpected news.

  “Canada?” Oliver said, in response to his announcement.

  “Newfoundland, to be precise. St. John’s. Some cousin of my mother has business and banking interests there and is prepared to take me on. Imports and exports, I understand, salt cod out, machinery in. Not exactly what I had in mind as a career, but I’ve been told very firmly I have to make a living for myself, and so I might as well go somewhere interesting to do it. And frankly, I’ve had enough of my father’s tongue. If it hadn’t been for you being here, Oliver, I should have gone mad.”

  “I shall miss you.” It was true, but even as he said it Oliver felt a lifting of his spirits, a great joyous leap. As grief diminished and with Alick far away, perhaps, just perhaps, Ellen might come to see— And the church was not the right place for him, he knew that now. Despite his protestations, his conversations with Alick had set his mind to questioning again those aspects of belief that he had always found difficult to accept. Like Alick, he would start afresh, become his own man, and tread a different path.

  “And I shall miss you too, my dear fellow!” Alick replied.

  They discussed what they both knew, or imagined they knew, about Newfoundland, and there was a buoyancy to their conversation, a new optimism. “And we must decide wha
t to do with the chalice before you go,” Oliver said. It had remained since that day in Oliver’s desk drawer, where it troubled his conscience. “I imagine it’s valuable as well as being an important piece. I’m really not happy keeping it here. The difficulty, of course, is how to explain where it came from without re-igniting the whole wretched controversy.”

  “Yes. We’ll decide. But first there’s something else I want to discuss with you, Oliver, something much more important, and I’m going to need your support— But first let me show you these.” He dug his hand into his trouser pocket and pulled out a small package, which he unwrapped. “What do you think?” In his palm lay two small gold crosses. “Which is which?”

  Oliver bent over them and then looked up. “Why, they’re identical! Though I imagine that one is the copy.”

  “Quite right. Well done. But it is an excellent piece of workmanship, don’t you think?”

  “It is indeed, but why—?”

  He broke off as Mrs. Nichol tapped on the door and entered bearing a tray. Alick rose to clear a space for her. “No Ellen today?” he asked, as she set it down.

  Mrs. Nichol gave him a tight smile. “She is pegging out the washing, sir. Having a bit of fresh air.”

  Alick put the crosses on the desk and moved over to look out of the window, from which it was possible to glimpse the little rise beside the manse where the washing could catch the breeze. Oliver watched him jealously and saw him move the curtain aside to look out. Then he leaned forward. “Good heavens! Is she . . . is she quite well?” he said.

  Oliver went to join him and saw Ellen, sunk down on one of the boulders, bent double and retching horribly. Mrs. Nichol came to stand behind them, her mouth working.

  Alick swung round to her. “I asked if she was unwell, Mrs. Nichol!”

  “She’s not been good, sir, these last few mornings—” Alick stared at her in a way that Oliver found incomprehensible, and he saw that the housekeeper was unable to meet his eyes. Surely the influenza had passed. Why had he not seen for himself that poor Ellen was unwell!