‘Go on,’ I said quietly.
‘The poor devil – he’s been … well, quartered by one of the dredgers somehow. Terribly mutilated. We think the spade of the digger caught him across the chest.’ Frank paused and looked up at me. I returned his gaze unflinchingly. He reached for my hand and held it tightly, clenching and unclenching his fingers as he continued speaking. ‘The water level’s been a serious difficulty for us in digging the pipeline for the swimming pool. There’s a tidal change of over a metre, twice a day, where the Fearn meets the Tay, and we can’t dredge at low tide because the water isn’t deep enough for the barge that holds the digger. But we haven’t been able to work at all because of the high flow that came with the rain. The body must have tumbled into the trench while the water was deep.’
‘Goodness!’ I exclaimed. ‘If the McEwens had been looking for pearls further downstream they might have found him two weeks ago, when the water was so low because of the spring tide!’
‘But if he hadn’t got trapped in the trench we might not have found him till the next spring tide, which isn’t till the end of July.’
‘Oh! It’s perfectly morbid to think about.’
I said this because I felt that I ought to sound more sympathetic towards the decapitated man on the riverbed. But I couldn’t think of anything other than how upset Solange was going to be, and it made me angry with poor Dr Housman on her account.
‘Did they find his clothes?’ I asked.
Frank knocked back a gulp of whisky.
‘No. But … the river’s been so high … they may have long washed away. The workmen trawled the ditch when they found his body, and that’s when they picked up his arm. And two beautiful bronze spearheads, of all things; they must have been buried in the peat. But not his clothes.’ Frank emptied his glass. ‘I don’t understand why he took off his clothes if he was planning to drown himself … You’d think he’d have been trying to keep them dry so he could get dressed again.’
Regardless of that letter to Solange, which neither Frank nor I had seen (Mummy sent it off to the police before I could get hold of it – sometimes she is wise to me), I didn’t think Frank believed Housman drowned himself on purpose. I felt that he was focusing on the drink to cover up his doubt. Did he think someone else did it? That someone – me? Solange? – pushed him in?
‘What about the … the hands and feet?’ I asked. ‘Did they all get cut off by the digger?’
‘The doctor who’s going to examine him said they often detach after a body’s been in water a few weeks.’ Frank sounded defeated. ‘The doctor’s not seen the damage yet though.’
Ugh.
Frank didn’t voice any of his own doubts. Maybe I was imagining doubt in him, but I didn’t think so. Well, it wasn’t up to me – the Procurator Fiscal, who deals with accidental deaths, would decide whether there needed to be an inquiry. Fair enough Frank keeping quiet.
I didn’t have any idea how close Frank Dunbar and Hugh Housman might have been – it sounded as though they’d only just met this summer and shared a few meals. But I felt Frank needed a little compassion. I picked up his glass, added a dollop of water to it from the jug by the whisky decanter and passed it back to him.
‘Julie, you’re marvellous,’ he said.
‘I do try to be marvellous.’
He gazed at me as if it rested his eyes to do it, as if he were appreciating the view from a mountaintop. I let him look. I stood still in the rose silk Vionnet dress, with my face turned away a little so I didn’t seem to be self-aware. When I turned back to him he gave me the ghost of a smile.
‘I said I was going to drive Euan McEwen over to Inchfort,’ I reminded him. ‘Is it all right if I go and do that now?’
‘Yes, of course. I – I’m sorry I told you any of this. I should have waited for your mother.’
‘I’m not sorry at all,’ I said with feeling.
Indeed, when I met poor Euan McEwen by the garages, I sent up a little private prayer of thanks that I already knew what was going on.
He was soaked and shaking. We looked each other up and down without speaking for a moment or two.
Euan broke the silence first. ‘That’s a bonny frock.’
My face flamed. My God, it was like being slapped again, and I don’t even know why. As if I were mocking him on purpose with wealth and elegance and – yes, and my beauty. And he knew it. But I wasn’t – I wasn’t. At least, I didn’t mean to.
‘Whisht.’ I drew a sharp breath. ‘I didn’t realise the work was going to be so wet.’
‘I was shifting barrow-loads of peat this morning,’ Euan said. ‘That wasnae so bad. But this afternoon –’ He stopped abruptly.
‘I ken,’ I told him in a low voice, so he knew he didn’t have to explain to me about what the pipeline diggers had found in the trench that day.
‘They asked me and the other lads who work the spades and barrows to hunt for the missing parts. They added fourpence the hour to our pay for doing it. But you had to get into the ditch.’ He paused, steadying himself. ‘I’d have done it for nothing … But I’m glad it wasnae me who found the arm.’
He counts his working hours in pennies. I don’t think I’d realised that. I felt so stupid.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘Aye, nae bother.’
I should have known I’d get ‘Aye, nae bother’ for an answer.
‘I really can’t take you in Mother’s car as wet as that,’ I said. ‘Let me get a mackintosh or something for you to sit on. There used to be car coats in the garages here – buckets of blood.’ There wasn’t anything but paint cans and builders’ ironmongery now. Everything belonging to the Murrays had been cleared out.
‘Never mind,’ Euan said. ‘I’ll walk round by Brig O’Fearn.’
‘No, you will not walk. We’ll find something in the house. They haven’t finished painting and the whole place is covered in sheets.’
‘No.’
He spoke quite firmly, quiet as always, but with the determination of a soldier.
‘I walked across Perthshire and Angus on my own feet when I was seven. It’s summer and I like walking. I’ll take nothing from the Big House. I’ll take nothing that belongs to the Glenfearn School, not even to borrow.’ He paused for breath.
‘Why is that?’ I asked sharply. ‘That foreman Robbie Munro doesn’t trust you?’
‘Not just him. All the lads on the site. I’d only been there an hour before I had to turn my pockets out and prove it wasnae me who’d lifted some gadgie’s packet o’ fags he thinks he left in a digger overnight!’
‘Huh,’ I said, narrowing my eyes. ‘I bet one of them is pinching cigarettes, or they wouldn’t be trying to blame it on you.’
‘They likely would. They’d leave it on the train by accident and blame me.’
‘Well, I’m not letting you walk ten miles in those wet trousers.’