Bury Her Deep Read Online Free PDF Page A

to live here,’ she went on. ‘It’s a great good fortune, these days, when so many people seem to lurch about from pillar to post, never settling, or live all cramped up together in bed-sitters. I count myself a very fortunate girl.’
    Oh dear, I thought. How sad and, if I am honest, how rather dreary too. Lorna then, like so many others, was fighting a desperate battle under that limpid façade. She was still mourning whoever it was whose death had put that rose and ribbon at her neck and half of her wanted no more than to call herself blessed to have loved at all, while the other half was beginning to panic at the passing years, to make sure and call herself a girl but wince each time she was reminded that she was fast becoming a Miss Tait like her Aunt Georgia before her.
    There were many in the same boat and by now, six years after the end of the war which put them there, one was beginning to see distinct patterns in how these poor girls responded to their fates. Some simply married the first male creature to come into view and so joined the rest of us in the great lottery of life. Others dedicated themselves to the memory of their lost loves and let the rest of the world grow indistinct. Yet others railed at their misfortune, turned bitter and sneered at anyone who had what they lacked, pretending not to care, not to grieve, hardly to feel, and I usually thought these the saddest of all. Lorna was threatening to make me change my mind, however, for her path it seemed to me now was even more painful to witness. She was one who would hope and hope and fade, quite out in the open for all to see, causing friends and kind strangers to plot matches for her and crueller types to pity and, in the end, despise her for her sadness and her helpless longing. Oh dear, I thought again, and I smiled at her father who smiled back and might well have been thinking ‘Oh dear’ himself.
    Then I told myself sternly that I was not here to comfort and befriend poor Lorna, and that, although I should certainly ask Hugh if there were any young men of good prospect lurking around Gilverton who seemed not to be finding our own collection of poor Lornas to their liking, this evening I had to harden my heart and not allow myself to be sidetracked, for there was still much to be learned.
    My introduction to the case, after all, that day in my sitting room at Gilverton had necessarily been rather short what with Hugh and the coffee tray waiting.
    ‘There is an unfortunate state of affairs developing at Luckenlaw, my dear Mrs Gilver,’ Mr Tait had begun, ‘and although it is too far advanced for it to be nipped in the bud exactly, I think we could still weed out the pest before it sets seed.’ Long years with Hugh had equipped me ably to handle any horticultural metaphor and I nodded, encouraging him to go on. ‘It started in the spring,’ he said, ‘and at first it was rather worrying. A dairy maid from a local farm arrived home one evening with a tale of being set upon in the lane. She wasn’t hurt, but she was very badly shaken. Naturally the police were summoned and they, along with the men of the village and the neighbouring farms, searched high and low for the rascal but found nothing. As the days and weeks passed, the girl put the nasty experience behind her like a good sensible lass and no more was thought of it until it happened again. A different girl, the same story, another search and no one to be found. The third time it happened the police went through the motions, as they must, but with no great hopes of catching him, and that’s when people started wondering aloud whether there was really anything in it. Some of the details of these attacks were extremely fanciful, you see, and the sergeant told me that it wasn’t the first time they had wasted a lot of effort on girls’ silly nonsense, nor would it be the last. I preached a good stiff sermon on as near a topic to wasting police time as I could find in scripture’ –