Read The Witch of Clatteringshaws for Free Online Page B

a million.… Now everybody going or coming this way is thought to be carrying precious stones.”
    “Oh?” said Dido. “Where is Gombeen Sands?”
    “Out beyond the mouth of Loch Grieve. There’s a whirlpool at the mouth of the loch when the tide is rising. Any ship not acquainted with the currents thereabouts is likely to be caught in the whirl, and then—anything up to a year later—the remains of the ship are washed up on the sands.”
    “Fine pickings for beachcombers,” said Dido.
    “Yes, but they have to watch their footing on the sands—some of them are quicksands.”
    “So who does the emerald belong to?” Dido asked.
    “Oh—probably to the Crown,” the woman said vaguely. “Now tell me—shall you stay long at Clatteringshaws?”
    “Can’t really tell about that.” Forestalling Piers, Didoechoed the woman’s vague tone. “We might have a great-aunt living up in those parts—have to see if we can find her. Is it a big place? Do you live there?”
    “No, hardly more than a village.” Dido noticed that the woman failed to answer her second question. Next minute she stood up.
    “Here’s where I leave you—Roman Wall. Thanks for your company—and the chicken leg.”
    She picked up the cane she had been carrying.
    Only, Dido noticed, it was not a cane but a golf club.
    Station signs saying ROMAN WALL were moving slowly past the windows. Then the train drew to a stop. The small station building, Dido noticed, was built of massive granite blocks.
    A melodious female voice chanted: “The train now approaching platform one is for Clatteringshaws. Clatteringshaws only. There it will terminate. Look out for the platform before you alight. Please be sure that you have all your baggage. At Clatteringshaws this train will terminate.”
    Dido chuckled. The announcer chanting her message recalled an old song of Dido’s father’s, which went, “I love you in the springtime and I love you in the fall,/To love you is my fate./But shall we ever meet?/For here my train will terminate.…”
    It had really been a sonata for hoboy and bassinet, but when she was younger Dido had set those words to it, and now, whenever she heard the tune, they always came to mind.
    She sang them without thinking as she opened the carriage door for Aldith Ironside.
    The woman stopped as if she had been stung by a wasp, and swung round.
    “That tune!”
she whispered. “What
was
it?”
    “Just an old song of my father’s—”
    Dido was embarrassed. In her opinion Abednego Twite was best forgotten—he had been a plotter, a swindler, bent as a paper clip, slippery as a salamander, and had behaved to all his family with heartless indifference.
    The only good thing about him was the tunes he made up.
    “A tune of your father’s? When? Who was he?”
    “Ten—twelve years ago—maybe more. I dunno.”
    Dido was puzzled. What could have put the woman into such a fuss? But now the announcer was chanting, “Close the doors, please. Mind the gap. Close the doors,” and the train let out a wail and a huge hiss of steam and started to move.
    The woman, looking utterly frustrated, was left standing on the station platform clutching her golf club.
    Was that all the luggage she had?
    I do wonder who has a ring like that? Dido thought, and she began to tidy up the picnic things.

FIVE
    Snow was falling when Dido and Piers left the train at the stop for Clatteringshaws.
    “Och, ’tis only the spring florrish,” said the stationmaster, who received their tickets.
    “Can we get a cab to take us to the town?” said Dido through chattering teeth. She glanced up and down the twilit platform. Very few passengers seemed to have got out.
    “Fergie McDune will take ye, time he’s dropped off the Mayor.”
    “How long will that take him?”
    “Nae mair than half an hour. Ye could walk into town, of course.”
    “How long would
that
take?”
    “An hour and a bittock,” said the stationmaster, looking at their knapsacks. (They had