Bury Her Deep Read Online Free PDF

here I could not help a chirp of laughter and I longed to ask Mr Tait for chapter and verse – ‘and that seemed to do the trick, for a while. But now it’s started again. And it’s not silly girls any more, Mrs Gilver, anything but. Farmers’ wives, sensible married types with children of their own, women I’ve known for years to be steady and down-to-earth, women who would no more make mischief with a lot of silly tattle than they would  . . .’ He took a deep breath before starting again. ‘Now, as you can imagine there are all sorts of rumours and fantastical stories flying around and I’m afraid that it’s beginning to be spoken of outside the village. Lorna, my daughter, told me that it came back to her from a friend she has down in Earlsferry, five miles away. No details and Luckenlaw was not mentioned by name thankfully – that’s the last thing we need – just a tale that there was a “dark stranger” roaming the hills in Fife and grabbing girls who were out alone at night.’
    ‘Grabbing them?’ I asked.
    ‘You see!’ cried Mr Tait. ‘Already it’s getting worse in the telling. The girls – if there’s any truth to the tale at all – are certainly not being “grabbed”. They’re not really being harmed at all. Just waylaid. And frightened.’
    ‘I can imagine,’ I said.
    ‘And while it’s bad enough to think that a Luckenlaw man could be doing it,’ said Mr Tait, ‘someone I see from the pulpit every Sunday, someone perhaps that I’ve christened and married myself, at least that could happen anywhere. The alternative – that the women are making it up – is much worse.’
    ‘And so you would like me to speak to them?’ I said.
    ‘My dear, if you would,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I would hate to see Luckenlaw get a name for this kind of thing.’
    ‘You’ve grown fond of the place then?’ I said. ‘It always seems rather brutal to me the way a minister is just landed in a parish and must make a home there come what may. I’m glad you’ve been “lucky” at Luckenlaw.’
    ‘Oh no, Mrs Gilver,’ said Mr Tait. ‘You are quite wrong on both counts. At least, my dear late wife was a Luckenlaw girl – she grew up on a farm there – and the village took me quite to its heart because of that. And the name of the place has nothing to do with luck. But there, you’re English. You’d hardly know.’
    I tried to look interested in the history lesson I felt sure was on its way.
    ‘It’s a common mistake,’ he continued, ‘but actually the Lucken Law gets its name the same way as the old luckenbooths did.’
    ‘Luckenbooths?’ I echoed.
    ‘Silversmiths’ shops,’ said Mr Tait. ‘Literally locked booths. Locked up because of their precious contents. Likewise the Lucken Law: the locked hill. That is to say, containing a sealed chamber. You find them throughout Scotland. Hard to know what they were originally used for: hiding places; ancient ceremonies, perhaps. Certainly, there were burials for a time in the Luckenlaw chamber.’ And then, amazingly, he stopped as though the subject were at an end. It was the shortest lesson on the thrilling history of ancient Scotland I had ever encountered and surprised gratitude spurred me on to speak.
    ‘Very well then,’ I said to him, ‘I’ll do my best.’
    ‘And I hear that your best is very good indeed.’
    I should not say I was an excessively modest woman, and certainly not one who cannot bear to be complimented when compliments are due – I have always felt that to rebuff perfectly reasonable praise is churlish and, in its way, more demanding than simple thanks would be: one forces the giver into much greater efforts at subtlety and evidence than most casual admirers would care to take, for one thing. At the current moment, however, I felt I really had to speak. It would be better to set matters straight from the outset than to waft along on undeserved praise and disappoint him in the end.
    ‘I have to say, Mr Tait,’ I