O Caledonia

Lila had ignored everyone when she arrived. Her cat now rested in a deep drawer lined with blue velvet which she had removed from the Sheraton sideboard in Maisie’s dining room, fancying that an indigo background would show Mouflon to advantage. No one had noticed when she carried it out, draped in black lace, to the policeman’s car. No one noticed at all until it was too late. At Auchnasaugh, Lila went straight down to the terrace garden, where animals were buried; erect and queenly, she glided over the hard-packed snow; she scarcely left a footprint. The policeman followed her, bearing the shrouded coffin. He laid it carefully on the frozen ground. Vera sent Francis down to help. “Be quick. Otherwise goodness knows what she’ll make that policeman do next. And if she makes the grave herself she’s certain to dig up one of the dogs.” Francis appeared reluctantly, with a spade. The policeman departed. Lila and Francis chipped hopelessly at the unyielding snow. It was almost dusk and the crows and rooks were calling harshly as they drifted over a leaden sky, towards the woods. A cold wind stirred the ivy on the terrace wall. “Maybe we could leave him until tomorrow?” suggested Francis. “You can do what you please,” said Lila, giving him a long look of fathomless scorn. “I know, I’ll fetch Jim.” Francis and Jim brought the huge Aga kettles, full of boiling water. For an hour they clambered and slithered up and down the frozen path, filling and re-filling. Darkness fell. The snow melted away, hissing and steaming; at last the ground softened; they could begin to dig. Layer upon layer, the earth yielded to them. Now under the wavering beam of the torch, incompetently held by Lila, a capacious burial chamber lay ready. They had not disturbed the dogs’ eternal sleep, but they had brought to the surface the skeleton of a goldfish; within its delicate structure lay the unmistakable spine of a smaller fish. “Aha!” said Francis. “One of life’s mysteries is solved.” He turned chattily to his companions. “I always thought there was something odd, fishy even, if I may so put it, in Hannibal dying on the day that Marius disappeared.” He laughed as a new thought came to him. “Hannibal, posthumously known as Cannibal!” There was stony silence from Jim and Lila. Then, “You can both go now,” said Lila. “Not a word of thanks, of course,” Francis told Janet later. “And we missed the only good bit. I was hoping for some serious liturgy. Or at least some keening and wailing.” “You have no heart, Francis,” said Janet. “That’s as may be. Have you?”

April was a winter month at Auchnasaugh. The snow on the ground was dispersing, but all along the sides of the roads great frozen ramparts of it jutted out, discoloured and splattered with mud. It was an ugly, bitter time of year. Some days the windows were still blotted by whirling snowflakes, the glen muted. “The last throes of winter,” they said, each time this happened. It was harder than usual to keep warm. The damp of the thaw crept through the stone floors, up the stone walls. They shivered by the fire, made endless cups of tea to warm their hands. The Aga sulked and fumed: Miss Wales emerged choking and spluttering from the kitchen and handed in her notice. No longer could she cope; her chest couldn’t take it. Hector consoled Vera by reminding her that Miss Wales did this every year: “As soon as she sees some blue sky, she’ll be all right.” The bath water, never more than tepid, was now constantly cold, and flooding burns and reservoirs seeped rich red mud into the pipes so that the taps seemed to pour forth blood. A mean whipping wind whined and skirmished about the castle, now this way, now that, slamming doors, tearing at hats and scarves, whisking the dogs’ ears inside out. The cats refused to go outside at all. It was a prime time for Jeyes Fluid. Only the wild ducks enjoyed themselves, swimming ostentatiously across the lawn or sporting upside down in the lagoons of the drive. Jim was deprived of his usual pursuits, both murderous and horticultural, for the tractor foundered in the deep mud and the earth lay waterlogged or snowbound; he gratified himself by laying poison for the rats. Their distended, bloated corpses began to appear in the puddles. You had to watch where you stepped in your wellingtons. One day a battlement, freighted with melting snow, fell off and nearly hit him as he spread dried blood on the grass.