There were a number of other people there, though, mostly housewives of the Mrs Fiona type, doing their daily shopping. They were garrulous and gossipy, and their solid, print-clad presences filled the shops with a cozy warmth; a buttress against the cold mist of the morning outdoors.
With as yet no house of my own to keep, I had little that needed buying, but enjoyed myself in browsing among the newly replenished shelves, for the pure joy of seeing lots of things for sale again.
It had been a long time of rationing, of doing without the simple things like soap and eggs, and even longer without the minor luxuries of life, like Bahamas Blue cologne.
My gaze lingered on a shop window filled with household goods—embroidered tea cloths and cozies, pitchers and glasses, a stack of quite homely pie tins, and a set of three vases.
I had never owned a vase in my life. During the war years, I had, of course, lived in the nurses' quarters, first at Pembroke Hospital, later at the field station in France.
But even before that, we had lived nowhere long enough to justify the purchase of such an item. Had I had such a thing, I reflected, Uncle Lamb would have filled it with potsherds long before I could have got near it with a bunch of daisies.
Quentin Lambert Beecham. "Q" to his archaeological students and his friends. "Dr. Beecham" to the scholarly circles in which he moved and lectured and had his being. But always Uncle Lamb to me.
My father's only brother, and my only living relative at the time, he had been landed with me, aged five, when my parents were killed in a car crash.
Poised for a trip to the Middle East at the time, he had paused in his preparations long enough to make the funeral arrangements, dispose of my parents' estates, and enroll me in a proper girls boarding school. Which I had flatly refused to attend.
Faced with the necessity of prying my chubby fingers off the car's door handle and dragging me by the heels up the steps of the school, Uncle Lamb, who hated personal conflict of any kind, had sighed in exasperation, then finally shrugged and tossed his better judgment out the window along with my newly purchased round straw boater.
"Ruddy thing," he muttered, seeing it rolling merrily away in the rearview mirror as we roared down the drive in high gear.
"Always loathed hats on women, anyway."
He had glanced down at me, fixing me with a fierce glare.
"One thing," he said, in awful tones.
"You are not to play dolls with my Persian grave figurines. Anything else, but not that. Got it?"
I had nodded, content. And had gone with him to the Middle East, to South America, to dozens of study sites throughout the world.
Had learned to read and write from the drafts of journal articles, to dig latrines and boil water, and to do a number of other things not suitable for a young lady of gentle birth, until I had met the handsome, dark-haired historian who came to consult Uncle Lamb on a point of French philosophy as it related to Egyptian religious practice.
Even after our marriage, Douglas and I led the nomadic life of junior faculty, divided between continental conferences and temporary flats, until the outbreak of war had sent him to Officers Training and the Intelligence Unit at MI6, and me to nurses training.
Though we had been married nearly eight years, the new house in Oxford would be our first real home.
Tucking my handbag firmly under my arm, I marched into the shop and bought the vases.
I met Douglas at the crossing of the High Street and the Gereside Road and we turned it up together. He raised his eyebrows at my purchases.
"Vases?" He smiled.
"Wonderful. Perhaps now you'll stop putting flowers in my books."
"They aren't flowers, they're specimens. And it was you who suggested I take up botany. To occupy my mind, now that I've not got nursing to do," I reminded him.
"True." He nodded good-humoredly.
"But I didn't realize I'd have bits of greenery dropping out into my lap every time I opened a reference. What was that horrible crumbly brown stuff you put in Tuscum and Banks?"
"Groutweed. Good for hemorrhoids."
"Preparing for my imminent old age, are you? Well, how very thoughtful of you, Elsie."
We pushed through the gate, laughing, and Douglas stood back to let me go first up the narrow front steps. Suddenly he caught my arm.
"Look out! You don't want to step in it."
I lifted my foot gingerly over a large brownish-red stain on the top step.
"How odd," I said.
"Mrs. Fiona scrubs the steps down every morning; I've seen her. What do you suppose that can be?"
Douglas leaned over the step, sniffing delicately. "Offhand, I should say that it's blood."
"Blood!" I took a step back into the entryway.
"Whose?" I glanced nervously into the house.
"Do you suppose Mrs. Fiona's had an accident of some kind?"
I couldn't imagine our immaculate landlady leaving bloodstains to dry on her doorstep unless some major catastrophe had occurred, and wondered just for a moment whether the parlor might be harboring a crazy ass-murderer, even now preparing to spring out on us with a spine-chilling shriek.
Douglas shook his head. He stood on tiptoe to peer over the hedge into the next garden.
"I shouldn't think so. There's a stain like it on the Collinses' doorstep as well."
"Really?" I drew closer to Douglas, both to see over the hedge and for moral support.
The Uplands hardly seemed a likely spot for a mass murderer, but then I doubted such persons used any sort of logical criteria when picking their sites.
"That's rather… disagreeable," I observed.
There was no sign of life from the next residence.
"What do you suppose has happened?" Douglas frowned, thinking, then slapped his hand briefly against his trouser leg in inspiration.
"I think I know! Wait here a moment."
He darted out to the gate and set off down the road at a trot, leaving me stranded on the edge of the doorstep.
He was back shortly, beaming with confirmation.
"Yes, that's it, it must be. Every house in the row has had it."
"Had what? A visit from a homicidal maniac?" I spoke a bit sharply, still nervous at having been abruptly abandoned with nothing but a large bloodstain for company.
Douglas laughed. "No, a ritual sacrifice. Fascinating!"
He was down on his hands and knees in the grass, peering interestedly at the stain.
This hardly sounded better than a homicidal maniac. I squatted beside him, wrinkling my nose at the smell. It was early for flies, but a couple of the big, slow-moving Upland midges circled the stain.
"What do you mean, ritual sacrifice'?" I demanded.
"Mrs. Fiona's a good church-goer, and so are all the neighbors. This isn't Druid's Hill or anything, you know."
He stood, brushing grass-ends from his trousers.
"That's all you know, my girl," he said.
"There's no place on earth with more of the old superstitions and magic mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Uplands. Church or no church, Mrs. Fiona believes in the Old Folk, and so do all the neighbours."
He pointed at the stain with one neatly polished toe.
"The blood of a black cock," he explained, looking pleased.
"The houses are new, you see." I looked at him coldly.
"If you are under the impression that explains everything, think again. What difference does it make how old the houses are? And where on earth is everybody?"
"Down the pub, I should expect.
Let's go along and see, shall we?". Taking my arm, he steered me out the gate and we set off down the Gereside Road.
"In the old days," he explained as we went, "and not so long ago, either, when a house was built, it was customary to kill something and bury it under the foundation, as a propitiation to the local earth spirits.
You know, He shall lay the foundations thereof in his firstborn and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.' Old as the hills."
I shuddered at the quotation.
"In that case, I suppose it's quite modern and enlightened of them to be using chickens instead. You mean, since the houses are fairly new, nothing was buried under them, and the inhabitants are now remedying the omission."
"Yes, exactly."
Douglas seemed pleased with my progress, and patted me on the back.
"According to the vicar, many of the local folk thought the War was due in part to people turning away from their roots and omitting to take proper precautions, such as burying a sacrifice under the foundation, that is, or burning fishes' bones on the hearth— except haddocks, of course," he added, happily distracted.
"You never burn a haddock's bones, did you know? or you'll never catch another. Always bury the bones of a haddock instead."
"I'll bear it in mind," I said.
"Tell me what you do in order never to see another herring, and I'll do it forthwith."