The Lammas Curse (20 page)

“You can have the extra
shilling because you were a brave lad to come into Jackdaw Wood but
first tell me who else might have seen the broom down the
well.”

“Anyone coulda but I reckon
they didna because none thought to look for it. You could just make
out the straw bobbing next to Mr Brown’s boots. It musta gone
handle-end first.”

“Yes, I see. When you get back
to the hotel you must tell Mrs Ardkinglas that the broom is down
the well. Now, off you go home for lunch. Hurry and don’t
stop.”

Heeding her own advice, the
Countess hurried home but unlike young Robbie she had no idea which
path to take. She stood still and took stock, and gradually from a
distance she could hear the sound of rushing water and knew she
couldn’t be too far from Fickle Beck. She followed the sound and a
short time later came into a clearing where the water burbled down
the stones. She had walked in a large arc and was downstream from
Graymalkin. All she had to do was follow the brook back upstream,
but no sooner had she started off than she spotted a large stag
with enormous antlers drinking at the river. And that’s when she
first heard the singing. A childish chant from somewhere close:

“Ding, dong, dell, pushed down
the well…”

The Countess knew at once who
the voice belonged to and braced herself for some unpleasantness
but when the third sister stepped out from behind a tree she felt
her breath catch. MacBee was back-bent and wizened, prematurely
aged from years spent foraging in the wilderness - her long, loose,
scraggly, white hair had the texture of bleached straw. She was
cloaked in black and green tartan, the sort known as Black Watch,
and it was easy to see how she might be mistaken for a giant
blackbird. Her scratchy voice sounded like rats’ feet on dry grass
and whenever she spoke she tilted her head to one side. It made her
appear slightly demented.

“Where hast thou been,
sister?”

“Killing swine,” replied the
Countess glibly, employing Shakespeare in order to sound more
confident than she felt.

Mad Mother MacBee threw back
her head and laughed at the unlikely response. The sound was
exaggerated and sounded like: Caw! Caw! Caw! “Ah! The rump-fed
ronyon speaks! Her master’s to Aleppo gone! In a sieve I’ll thither
sail! And like a rat… ” Theatrically, she plucked a large dead rat
out of a little hessian sack and dangled it by the tail.

The Countess forced herself not
to breathe deeply and slowly as she gave her concentration over to
the Bard. “I’ll give thee a wind, sister.”

MacBee tilted her head the way
a dog does when listening to its master, narrowed her gaze and
peered slyly through watery eyes. “Th’art a kind one.”

“And you another,” returned the
Countess in a level tone as MacBee dangled the dead rat in front of
her horrified face before dropping it back into her sack.

“You know me?”

“The three sisters go together
– I know the other two.”

MacBee caterwauled another
lunatic laugh and danced a jig, capering on the spot, kicking up
her heels, chanting:

“Thus we go in and out,

Once, twice, thrice, about,

All three go into the wood,

To make the charm firm and
good!”

An appearance of outward calm
was called for. “Hail thee – sister!”

“Hail to all! Hail Macbeth!
Murderer! Once, twice, thrice! Hail!”

“Murderer you say – from whence
owe you this strange intelligence?”

MacBee circled slowly and
seemed pleased when the Countess tensed under her watery scrutiny.
“Good sister, why do you start and seem to fear?”

“I fear not the truth - if you
can look back in the seeds of time – say it.”

MacBee leapt back as if taking
fright and vanished behind a tree.

The Countess whirled on the
spot, and whirled again, but there was no sign of the third sister.
“Speak - say more to the new sister who neither begs nor fears but
seeks the truth.”

“Hail Macbeth! Murderer!
Murderer! Murderer!”

MacBee sprang out from behind a
tree and danced another impromptu little jig on the spot, singing:
“Lesser than, yet greater - not happy, yet much happier.”

Perhaps MacBee was merely
ranting, spouting nonsense, mad as a March hare in November. “In
the name of truth. Sing what name you know.”

“The earth hath bubbles.”

“As the water has,” responded
the Countess, exercising infinite patience.

MacBee looked up to the grey
heavens. She appeared momentarily confused, as if she had lost her
train of thought in the ethers. “Wither are they vanished?”

“Into the air, melted, as
breath into the wind – speak!” prompted the Countess.

MacBee appeared to rouse
herself but her train of thought had veered abruptly. “Alack!
Alack! See what treasure is in my sack!”

The Countess decided to humour
the old woman. “Show me, show me.”

MacBee placed her little sack
carefully on a cushion of leaves and opened the drawstring with
bent and bony fingers:

“Fillet of a fenny snake, thumb
from dead-man in a lake,

eye of newt and leg of frog,
paw of cat and tongue of dog,

eyelash from a red-haired drab,
wart from Redbeard on a slab,

root of hemlock, slip of yew,
gore from fathead cleaved in two,

tooth plucked from a Roman jaw,
fingernail from Darkie’s claw,

blond hair from a Viking nob,
spittle from an old Salt’s gob,

sweltered venom sleeping got
from a posh lord in his cot,

but nowt as yet to see from
double-double Dee.”

Shock coursed through the
Countess. It was clear that many of the so-called treasures in
MacBee’s collection had been taken from the bodies of the deceased
– thumb, wart, tooth! But how, when, why? Did MacBee purloin them
after the men had been killed but before the bodies were
discovered? And if so, did she see who killed them? Or was she,
herself, the murderess? Mad in more than name! The Countess
tempered her revulsion though her heart was pounding like a war
drum and she felt physically sick.

“Oh, well done!” she managed
with outward calm. “I commend your pains!”

A rustling sound startled them
both and they turned their heads to the noise. MacBee stooped like
a pecking bird and quickly packed up her hessian sack, carefully
tightening the drawstring on her bower bag. The sound came again
but this time she recognized it and laughed softly, strangely.

“By the pricking of my
thumb,

Something wicked this way doth
come.”

Sensing the strange sister was
about to take flight, the Countess pressed her for more
information. “A deed without a name. Name the deed. Name the
name.”

“Harpier! Paddock! Grimalkin!
Hark! They sit in the foggy cloud and wait for me! Make haste! I
come!”

“Wait! When shall we two meet
again?”

MacBee turned back. “When the
hurly-burly’s done, when the game’s lost and won.”

“Name the place.”

MacBee cupped an ear. “The
brindled cat doth mew. Aroint thee, now!”

“Name the place,” repeated the
Countess a little more desperately.

“Upon the ruined heath.”

No sooner had Mother MacBee
vanished than the Countess angled for home and gasped with fright.
In the exact spot where the stag had been drinking now stood Mrs
Ross. Over her arm was a basket full of chanterelles and brown
caps. The Countess decided not to mention her encounter with the
third sister unless Mrs Ross brought it up, but as they walked back
together to Graymalkin, the latter dropped no hint that she was
cognisant of it.

Mrs Ross was the most stoic and
the most taciturn of the sisters. Apart from the fact that she was
the mother of Hamish and supplemented her income by basket weaving,
the Countess knew next to nothing about her. Over lunch the
Countess tried to remedy this by taking her meal in the kitchen.
She broached several topics ranging from the romance between Hamish
Ross and Miss Lambert to the Scottish play - to no avail. Finally
she resorted to the ins and outs of basket weaving as a way to
learn more about her housekeeper but all she learned was that the
new bodkins would come in handy and that the baskets were sold in
the market at Duns.

Mrs Ross was an exemplary
housekeeper and an excellent cook but she was also a woman who kept
her own counsel and never wore her heart on her sleeve.
Unsurprising, considering she had lived for many years on her own
in a lonely old castle, no husband, and her only child off at
boarding school in Edinburgh. It must have been a lonely life until
Colonel and Mrs Ardkinglas arrived at the hunting lodge. The third
sister was another puzzle. Was she always mad? How did she come to
make her home in the middle of Jackdaw Wood? And why, if she was a
triplet, did she
not
resemble her two siblings?

Dr Watson returned in time for
dinner, cold, exhausted, but rather pleased with himself. His
caddying skills were well received and he was able to make some
instructive suggestions that improved Mr Bancoe’s score. Mr Bancoe
and Mr Larsenssen played a very decent 3 under par – their best
score yet. Tomorrow he would return to the links, along with the
other three members of his group, to oversee the game of Miss Dee
and Mr Dee, who carry their own clubs and do the caddying for each
other.

“So nothing untoward happened?”
remarked the Countess.

“There were no attempts on
anyone’s life, if that’s what you mean,” he returned lightly before
his brows pleated. “There was just one thing that seemed, well,
odd.”

“Odd?”

“Odd is probably not the right
word. I don’t mean strange or supernatural but it’s something that
struck me as, well, odd.”

“Your instinct noted something
at odds with your brain – is that what you are getting at?”

“Yes, that’s a good way of
putting it.”

“And what was this
oddness?”

“Mr MacDuff is the worst caddy
I have ever come across.”

She was expecting something a
little more significant and felt disappointed. But there was
nothing odd about male rivalry especially when it came to sport. No
doubt he had told himself all day that he was the better caddy.
“Oh,” she said.

“He couldn’t tell one club from
another.”

“Is that important?”

“Important! It is paramount! A
good caddy will advise on the best club to use and the wind
direction and the curve of the green and so on! It can mean the
difference between a good game and a great one!”

“Mmm, try to find out all you
can about him tomorrow. How long he has been caddying. How he came
to be caddying for Mr Larssensen. And anything else that comes to
mind.”

He nodded sagely, stewing over
the fact he had taken the man into his confidence regarding the
death of Mr Brown. “How was your day?” he asked to take his mind
off his blunder, and was surprised by what she had to say. Her day
was much more fruitful.

Firstly, she told him about the
besom broom down the well. He agreed with her conclusion that the
broom was probably the instrument that caused the mark to the back
of Mr Brown’s neck. He made a mental note to quiz Mr MacDuff about
it tomorrow morning as soon as he picked him up in the landau. Did
he notice it down the well before the body had been fished out? And
if he did, why didn’t he mention it when the injury to the back of
the neck came to light? Suddenly, the coincidence of the pale green
paper found in Mr Brown’s pocket and the colour of Mr MacDuff’s
scoring booklet came back to bite him. Did MacDuff slip a note
under Mr Brown’s door while he slept, arranging to meet him in the
kitchen courtyard where he killed him?

Secondly, she recounted meeting
Mother MacBee in Jackdaw Wood. He did not seem too perturbed as to
how the third sister did not resemble the other two and recalled a
colleague who once presided over the birth of triplets – two
identical girls and the third a boy! “It can happen,” was all he
said.

When she moved on to describe
the sack of treasures he was all ears.

“I wrote down the rhyme as best
as I could remember it as soon as I got home,” she said, extracting
a piece of paper from her pocket and handing it to him.
“Fortunately, I have an exceptional memory and it helped that each
line contained its own rhyme. Once I remembered the first word the
rest of the line followed quickly.

Ignoring the narcissism – he’d
had long practice with Sherlock - his eyes skimmed the paper then
went back to the beginning as he read out loud:

“Fillet of a fenny snake, thumb
from dead-man in a lake,

Root of hemlock, slip of yew,
gore from thickhead cleaved in two,

Eye of newt and leg of frog,
paw of cat and tongue of dog,

Eyelash from a redhead drab,
wart from Redbeard on a slab,

Tooth ripped from a Roman jaw,
fingernail from Darkie’s claw,

Blond hair from a Viking nob,
spittle from an old Salt’s gob,

Sweltered venom sleeping got
from a posh lord in his cot,

But nowt as yet to see from
double-double Dee.”

By the time he finished reading
his thoughts were tripping over themselves in the rush to find
coherence. “Do you realize what this means? Of course you do!
That’s why you went to the effort of remembering every detail and
writing it down!”

The Countess, having already
digested the contents of MacBee’s sack, was one step ahead of him.
“MacBee had access to the dead bodies – either just after they were
killed because she killed them or some time shortly afterwards. Did
Mycroft mention the missing thumb from the American’s hand?”

“No, and I don’t believe he
would have overlooked such an important detail.”

“That means the missing thumb
was overlooked and thus not reported – highly unlikely as a point
was made of the horned god pose – or it was chopped off later.
Logic says the latter – after the body was transferred to the ice
house.”