‘It does. At first I kept hoping they wouldn’t find any of him – that he was still alive. Now I keep hoping they’ll find all of him and lay the poor fellow to rest.’ He laughed nervously and dragged at the cigarette again.
‘I’m sorry,’ he continued. ‘What a bloody awful thing to say. His sister’s had to come up on the train from somewhere in the Home Counties to identify him, and of course there isn’t anything that helps. Apparently she did though – told the doctor, “Well, he always did have spindly legs, which is a poor excuse for not being able to swim!” She wouldn’t stay in Perth but one night. “Please do send him south so I can bury him.” Damned unfeeling woman, if you ask me – though I suppose it’s hard on her having to wait for the Procurator Fiscal to make up his mind about an inquiry.’
That Francis Dunbar should feel intimate enough with me to share such obscenities and confidences was almost as intoxicating as sharing a cigarette, and we stood for a moment side by side with our hands not quite touching, both of us gazing down over the birch wood in the direction of the river. The ruined tower of Aberfearn Castle just cleared the treetops, looking ominous against a drab grey sky.
‘Hullo, there’s your foreman Mr Munro hailing you,’ I said.
The engineering manager was stumping up the path at a purposeful pace with a large canvas parcel under his arm. There was a wooden rod awkwardly sticking up out of it over Mr Munro’s shoulder, so that he looked almost as if he were carrying a bagpipe, and I stifled a snort of laughter.
Shaness, Julie! God pity you!
Oh heavens, it couldn’t be more pieces of Hugh Housman, could it? I decided it couldn’t possibly be or Mr Munro would have looked queasier. He didn’t look happy though.
Frank Dunbar had gone white as a sheet.
‘You’ve found something?’ Dunbar asked shakily. ‘Not another damned Bronze Age spear point.’
‘Not this time.’ Mr Munro nodded at me again. ‘Perhaps it’s not fit talk for the wee lassie.’
I deemed it best to say nothing. I took a step backward, affecting cool containment (when in reality I was burning with curiosity and already planning how to spy on them if they insisted on getting rid of me). I raised one hand in valedictory, as if requesting a dismissal.
‘Please don’t go,’ Frank said to me. And to Mr Munro, ‘It’s all right. Miss Beaufort-Stuart is very sensible about this business.’
‘What is it?’ I prompted. ‘If it’s horrible I don’t want to see. But I want to know.’
‘We’ve found the chap’s trousers,’ said Mr Munro, offering the folded bundle up to Frank.
‘Found his trousers?’ Frank repeated in what sounded like sheer baffled disbelief.
‘Aye, all folded tidy doon by the stone river gate to Aberfearn Castle. And his tangs and glass for pearl-fishing. It doesnae look like suicide to me though; it looks like he went for a swim and maybe got into difficulty with the tide. Why would you fold up your clothes like that if you were going to drown yourself?’
‘The bloody idiot!’ Frank burst out incredulously, and he backed away from the pathetic bundle Mr Munro was holding out to him.
I suddenly put my finger on what it was Frank kept refusing to accept: any of it. He was completely incapable of getting it into his head that Housman was actually dead. Every piece of proof hit him as though he were hearing the news for the first time.
‘Let’s see, shall we?’ I offered, and took the parcel from the foreman with firm hands. I put the canvas down at our feet and unfurled it carefully.
Beneath the bulky glass-bottomed jug and the pronged stick for pearl fishing, Housman’s tweed plus fours were still folded neatly, but after a month of sitting out on the riverbank they looked as though they’d just come out of a very muddy tub-load of washing without being rinsed. I didn’t want to touch them. Frank, the moment he clapped eyes on them, swooped down to check the pockets. Mr Munro crouched along with us to get a better view.
Frank gingerly produced ten shillings in change, a sodden box of matches, a chewed-looking fountain pen and a silver card case which he pried open with shaking fingers. It contained no calling cards, but there was a reader’s ticket to the British Library with Hugh Housman’s name on it, smeared but still perfectly legible.
‘The bloody idiot,’ Frank Dunbar repeated softly. ‘The bloody, blithering idiot.’ He dropped the case back on to the muddy, sodden cloth.
I stood up because I was tired of crouching and I didn’t want to get my knees wet with kneeling.
Frank stayed hunched over Housman’s abandoned things, shaking his head in outraged disbelief, while the foreman grimaced at the grubby collection.
‘Well, there’s nae doubt that’s your man,’ said Mr Munro, and Frank glanced up at him angrily. He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyebrows and looked back down.
‘No, it doesn’t really look like suicide,’ he said at last, finally agreeing with Munro’s prosaic deduction. ‘But …’
He didn’t say it, but I knew he was thinking about the letter to Solange. One of these jigsaw pieces really did not fit properly.
I stood with my hands on my hips, gazing down at the disarray we’d made of this potential evidence, considering that Frank was already in trouble over the poor horrid man’s body not being treated with any kind of respect either.
‘Hadn’t we best take better care of this stuff?’ I suggested. ‘Won’t the police want to look at it too?’
That made Frank back away as if he was sorry he’d touched any of it.
‘Is this all you found?’ I said. ‘No shirt, no tie, no shoes, no socks, no jacket?’
‘Perhaps the rest of it is with the rest of him,’ Munro suggested morbidly.
Frank began to wrap the canvas folds closed again, more carefully this time.
I thought that he and Munro were both right: it was a most bizarre and haphazard way to prepare to drown yourself. It rather looked to me as though Dr Housman had been fishing for a peace offering for Solange, in haste and passion. He’d given her pearls before. Maybe what Frank said the other day was right, and Housman had taken his clothes off to keep them dry, planning to put them back on.
The two men were still on their knees by the canvas bundle, but they were both looking up at me. I suddenly felt very vulnerable. What if they asked me to describe the scene for them? After all, it was me who’d seen Housman in the nude, but oh, mercy, I couldn’t imagine telling Mr Munro – still less Frank Dunbar – about that. There were limits to my impudence. After all, I was certifiably intact.