MY JANGLED BRAIN AND THE YELLOW DOG
Of course as soon as my returning memory offered up an actual picture of the missing Dr Hugh Housman, after he was last seen by anyone else, I was required to add an account of what I knew to the official police report that was being maintained by the Perthshire and Kinross-shire Constabulary.
They sent a person called Inspector Duncan Milne out to Strathfearn House to interview me. They made Frank Dunbar relinquish his office for an hour to accommodate the interview. My school uniform was still the most presentable thing I had to wear, and Mother was there to make sure I wore it properly, so it was jolly difficult to take on the persona of a grown and sensible woman. Mother was settled in the leather chair across from Frank’s desk when Colette ushered me in; she’d been speaking to Inspector Milne herself. There was another chair waiting for me.
Inspector Milne had a neat beard and thin salt-and-pepper hair cropped short beneath his peaked cap. He was scribbling away at his notes in a tiny cleared rectangle of space on Frank’s desk, looking down through reading glasses, and kept scribbling as I hesitated in the doorway. I wondered if it was correct to wait to be told to sit or if I could just do it without being told, or if being Strathfearn’s youngest grandchild put me too far down the pecking order to act so boldly in the presence of authority. I wouldn’t have dared sit in my headmistress’s office, or a solicitor’s or something like that, without being invited to. I glanced at Mother and she shook her head ever so slightly. So I waited.
Inspector Milne didn’t look up even when he became aware of me. He just said, at last, ‘You may sit.’
So I did, feeling a bit foolish, as if what I had to say couldn’t possibly be as important as I’d thought it was going to be.
I sat, and waited another while. I noticed that Francis Dunbar kept a pillow and blanket folded under the wing chair Mother was seated in. I thought, Poor Frank must nap here when he’s working late.
Eventually Inspector Milne did look up, presumably to make sure it really was me and not an impostor. He didn’t change his expression or say hello or ask me how I was getting on after my dunt to the head.
When he did speak, he plunged right in.
‘You observed Dr Housman fishing for pearls in the River Fearn at about midday on the fifteenth of June?’
I answered cautiously, ‘I don’t know if it was him. I don’t know him – I’d never seen him before. It could have been anybody.’
‘Your description does match.’
‘Oh – thank you,’ I said ridiculously, as if he’d complimented me.
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘I don’t know.’ Another ridiculous answer! How could I not know what had happened between us? I felt I had to do better.
‘I don’t think he knew I was there. He didn’t look angry or startled. He didn’t even look interested. I suppose he might be the one who hit me, but perhaps he saw me fall and hit my head and tried to help me, and got into trouble because he couldn’t swim, or slipped and drowned and …’
And then his death would be my fault.
I shut up quickly, appalled. Buckets of blood! I hadn’t considered that. If I was the last person to see him alive, I might also be the one who’d killed him.
‘I didn’t. I couldn’t! Could I? But …’
Of course I couldn’t remember anything that had happened. Could I have harmed him somehow? Maybe I could. What if he’d attacked me for some reason – perhaps he’d taken me for one of the Travellers that everyone was so suspicious of, and I’d fought back, hit him perhaps, tripped him, made him lose his balance in the river and … What if all this time he’d been dead and it was my fault?
‘What if you never find him? What if I have to go all my life wondering if I killed him? What if I remember that I did?’
‘Julia, darling, leave the what-if-ing to Inspector Milne.’ Mother suddenly spoke up. ‘Perhaps Dr Housman got into trouble himself and you tried to help him and then slipped and hit your head.’
Inspector Duncan Milne shuffled pages. ‘Those are considerations,’ he said. ‘But at the moment …’
He peered at his notes and then looked up at me over the top of his glasses.
‘There’s no need to jump to conclusions. We’ve no reason to believe the man is dead. In any case, as your mother Lady Craigie has suggested, we think it more likely that you were both assaulted by the same attacker. I’d like to ask you about the young man who brought you to the hospital.’ He changed tack abruptly. ‘You know Euan McEwen?’
It took me a moment to remember why I knew the name.
Of course, that was the Traveller lad who’d found me. The one who’d brought me to the hospital; who’d come back every day to see if I’d woken up yet; who’d quietly conjured me a glass of water.
A moment later, I remembered Ellen, and my heart surged with pleasure and anticipation at the thought that I might get to meet her again. How could my wandering thoughts have put aside the challenge and mystery that was Ellen McEwen? It made me a bit more sympathetic towards my mother for forgetting her ancestral pearls.
I wondered if the Travellers were back at Inchfort Field yet. I wondered if I was capable of walking there on my own.
‘Lady Julia?’ Inspector Milne prompted.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I met Euan when I was in hospital. He came to see me.’
‘Why did he visit you in hospital?’
I couldn’t imagine what Euan visiting me in hospital had to do with anything. I exclaimed, ‘You just said yourself you know he brought me there after I’d hit my head!’
Mother gave a short, sharp sniff, which I knew to be scolding.
The policeman glanced up at me over his glasses again. ‘Perhaps you’ve remembered something else about your time in the tinkers’ camp, as you were with them for nearly a full day? Young McEwen was known to be out and about on the river that morning. I believe the tinkers fish for pearls as well?’
I don’t know where this man’s suspicious mind was leading him, but I could see he was following a familiar map. Frank had suggested the same thing. Maybe the tinker lad had attacked the scholar. Or fought with him. Or surprised him. Maybe the boy was a thief, stealing shells or pearls from an amateur. Shiftless. Homeless. Penniless. Heartless; lawless.
Whatever had happened, it should be easy to pin the blame, if there was blame to be pinned, on a Traveller.
I wasn’t going to gratify Inspector Milne by even acknowledging that I understood what he was driving at.
‘Do you remember anything about your first meeting with Euan McEwen?’ Milne pressed.