The Mysteries (17 page)

“But of course you know Polly!”

“Nope.”

She frowned. “You must. Maybe not from Texas. You did some work for her?”

I redirected my thoughts to access old cases, but I have a good memory for names and was already as certain as I could be that I'd never encountered anyone in any context named Polly Fruell.

“Would she have used another name?”

“No, she's always been Polly Fruell.” She frowned thoughtfully. “That's really strange. She certainly made it sound like she knew you—but I don't think she ever actually said how or why.”

“How did the subject come up?” I was more interested in the pizza I was cramming into my mouth than in this curiously abstract conversation. I couldn't see what difference it made to anything whether or not I'd ever encountered some old friend of hers from Texas.

“In an e-mail. That's how we keep in touch. I haven't seen her in years—not since Peri . . . Anyway, she knows better than anyone—except maybe Hugh—what I went through at the time, and how hard it still is . . . It's not like I ever got over it, but life
did
go on, after the phone call, and even though I still don't understand what happened, at least I know she's alive, and out there somewhere, and I could hope that someday she'd decide to get back in touch . . . but now that I'm about to leave London, well, I could lose her forever.” She gazed sadly down at her plate. She'd taken no more than a bite or two of a single slice.

She took a deep breath. “Polly's like a sister to me—much closer than either of my
real
sisters—and she was like Peri's second mother for a while. I didn't know where to go—I mean, where do you start, when you want to hire a detective? Look in the Yellow Pages? Polly gave me your name.”

“And said she knew me?”

“I don't remember exactly. I could look up the old e-mails to find out. She definitely knew about your work. She said you were uniquely qualified—I remember that. She said you specialized in this kind of thing, and that you'd managed to find another young woman who'd disappeared in almost the same way as Peri.”

There was a strange prickling sensation at the roots of my hair. “I don't gossip about my cases,” I said. “I protect client confidentiality.”

Laura looked startled. “Oh, I'm sure! Actually, it should have occurred to me before—she wouldn't have to know you, just somebody else you'd worked for.”

“Nell Schneider?” I suggested, although I was as sure as I could be that Amy's mother still had no idea of what really happened to her, and wouldn't talk about it if she did.

Laura shrugged. “I don't think she mentioned any names. But she was right? I mean, that you have had a case like this before?” Her eyes were full of a desperate hope. It was not just that she wanted me to be able to help her, but that she longed for her daughter's disappearance to be explicable, more ordinary than it seemed.

“Maybe. I've been getting a feeling about it.”

“Can you tell me anything? I mean, I don't want you to break confidentiality, but—anything?”

I wished I could. It was an experience I'd often longed to share. But I knew she wouldn't believe me.

15. Fred

The woman I'd met on Doon Hill told me to call her Fred.

“What's that short for?”

“It's not short for anything. It's what I like to be called. If you don't like it, too bad. I don't have to show you an ID card.”

“No, I guess not,” I said calmly, trying to keep the peace. “You look like you're old enough to drink.”

We were in one of the hotel bars, Fred having said she preferred a bar meal to the formality of a restaurant, and I was having my first good look at her in the light. I immediately revised my estimate of her age. At first I'd thought she was just a kid, but now I saw she was nearer my own age, in her late twenties, at least. Her eyes were greenish grey, her eyebrows and lashes sandy-colored. She had the pale, freckled complexion of a redhead, at odds with her brilliant gold hair, which had to be a wig.

“Definitely old enough!” She took a healthy swig of cider.

The bar was doing a brisk business in both food and drink, and we'd been lucky to snag a table at all. It was small and round, made for drinkers rather than diners, and instead of chairs there were low stools.

I sipped my beer, resisting the temptation to drink it too quickly. I was very hungry, and the smell of freshly cooked food wafting through the air made my mouth water. “This seems like a good place. Do you eat here often?”

“Are you kidding? Never. I'm on a very tight budget. I can't afford to eat out. I wasn't expecting to stay so long, and now it looks like I'll be here for another six weeks. I have to make my money last.” She drank some more cider with obvious pleasure.

“So, what brought you to Aberfoyle?”

“A bus.” She grinned. “Ah, go on, you don't want to hear about me. Show me a picture of your girl; I'll tell you if I know her.”

I got out the picture of Amy. She inspected it briefly, then looked at me. “Would she have been wearing a green-and-purple woolly jumper?”

“I think so.”

She nodded. “I saw her on the hill.”

“When?”

“Oh, lots of times. In the evenings.”

“You never talked to her?”

She scowled. “Of course not. I never talk to any of them.”

“What do you mean, ‘them'?”

She shrugged. “Trippers. Tourists. Local dog walkers. Whoever takes the circular walk, the fairy trail . . .” She said the last words with a sneer. “Anyway, she never said anything to me, either. We both wished the other wasn't there. It was obvious.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“I don't know. A week? Maybe a little more.”

“Did you ever see her meet or talk to anyone?”

“No.”

Our first course arrived—we'd both ordered the venison pâté. Once the plates and cutlery had been set down there was barely enough room for the waitress to balance a small basket of bread on top of the empty ashtray.

The pâté was delicious, rich and gamey, and there was a sour-sweet red jelly that was the perfect foil for its richness. For a little while I forgot everything else in the enjoyment of eating.

I felt like leaning back when I'd finished, but the backless stools didn't allow it. I gazed across at Fred, who was buttering the last little piece of bread. “Do you go up Doon Hill every day?”

“Yes.” She rubbed the bread against her plate, scouring up the last vestiges of meat and jelly, and popped it in her mouth.

“Why?”

“Same reason Amy did, I guess.”

The waitress came to take away our plates. Fred beamed up at her. “Thanks. That was lovely.” She held up her almost-empty glass. “Another Strongbow?”

The waitress looked at me. “I'm fine,” I said.

When she'd gone, I stared at Fred. “I have absolutely no idea what that reason might be.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She rolled her eyes in disbelief and smiled at me, much friendlier now she'd had something to eat and drink, and I had a glimpse of just how deprived and basic was the life she led. “Don't you know what Doon Hill is famous for?”

I shook my head.

“Who hasn't done his research?”

“For God's sake, I arrived in this country this morning. I never heard of Doon Hill before today. Give me a chance,” I said mildly.

“Fairies.”

“Oh, right, the Doon Hill Fairy Trail.” I remembered the sign, which I'd thought a piece of modern marketing whimsy. I stared. “You're saying Amy went to Doon Hill to look for fairies? You're saying that's why
you
were there?” I knew there were people who believed in fairies, just like there were people who believed they had their own personal guardian angel hovering invisibly over one shoulder; I'd even known a woman who believed in both, but Fred didn't strike me as that type.

The waitress came back with our main courses just then, which required a great deal of shifting and juggling to fit onto the tiny tabletop. I'd ordered the homemade steak pie, Fred the lasagne. Both came with separate plates of french fries, and they required the accompaniment of bottles of vinegar and ketchup, not to mention salt and pepper. Eventually everything was settled and the waitress took the condiments away, and Fred gave me her considered reply.

“Fairies are real. I'm not talking about gauzy little Tinker Bells who sit on toadstools. They're people, full-sized, and they live in their own world, which only sometimes crosses over into ours. They're another race, different from humans, but just as intelligent. We must seem as strange and exotic to them as they do to us; maybe some of them don't believe in
us
!” She beamed, obviously taken with this idea. “And others, well, others are scared of us and keep well away, while still others must be like me and Amy and feel drawn to us and want to know more.”

“Does this have anything to do with the ganconer?”

Her eyes went round. “Oh! You—! You
do
know something!”

“No I don't,” I said flatly. “I don't know anything. An old lady at the B&B where I'm staying thinks Amy met the ganconer and is going to dwindle away and die of unrequited love unless I can get her away. I think she was getting Amy confused with some girl who died when she was young, and mixing that up with stories from her childhood. She's very old.”

“That doesn't make her stupid.”

“I never said it did. But fairies, immortal, inhuman beings . . .” I shrugged uneasily. I didn't want to offend her. We still had dinner to get through, and it wasn't impossible that Fred might know something that would help me find Amy. “I don't want to argue about the supernatural. But Amy was a science student. To assume she believed in fairies is . . .”

“I know why people go to Doon Hill,” she interrupted, digging into her steaming lasagne. “There are other fairy hills in Scotland, but it's probably the most famous, thanks to Robert Kirk.”

“Who's he?” I took a cautious bite of my hot steak pie. It tasted as good as it smelled.

“Dear, dear, you haven't heard of the Reverend Robert Kirk? Aberfoyle's most famous son. You really must go into the tourist office. There's a brochure about him.”

“I'll look for it tomorrow,” I promised. But she proceeded to enlighten me while we ate.

Robert Kirk was born in Aberfoyle in 1644, the seventh son of the local minister. Traditionally, the seventh-born was gifted with the Second Sight, which offered glimpses into the future and also the ability to see fairies and other supernatural beings. Scots of the seventeenth century did not consider knowledge of the pagan supernatural to conflict with devout Christianity, and so, despite his “gift,” Kirk also went into the church and served for twenty-one years as the minister at nearby Balquidder. He was a very learned man, a Gaelic scholar who made his reputation with a metrical translation of the Psalms into Gaelic, and a student of folklore.

Upon his father's death, Kirk took up the post of minister in Kirkton, Aberfoyle, and finished writing the treatise he titled
The
Secret Commonwealth or an Essay on the Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and for the most part) Invisible People heretofore going under the names of Fauns and Fairies, or the like, among the Low Country Scots as described by those who have second sight, 1691.

This treatise, generally known as
The Secret Commonwealth,
was in manuscript form at his death and not published until 1815. It was the most authoritative study of the subject ever written and is still considered important by scholars of folklore. Yet for all its scholarly approach,
The Secret Commonwealth
was different from standard works of folklore, which tended to be written by outsiders curious about the beliefs of the “common people.” Kirk was seeking evidence and description of something he believed in himself, and made use of his own Second Sight to find out more. Almost every evening he could be seen climbing Doon Hill, which was shunned by most locals as a well-known abode of “the Good Neighbors.”

And it was finally his undoing, for, within a year after completing the manuscript, Kirk was found lying dead on the hill.

“He was only forty-eight and in perfect health. It was said that the fairies took him because he knew too much,” she said, pausing to eat.

“You mean they killed him?”

“No. They took him inside the hill and left behind a stock, something that looked like his body. So that's what they buried—either that, or an empty coffin. Word got around that Kirk wasn't really dead and, sure enough, after his funeral, Kirk appeared to one of his relatives and told him he was a prisoner in Fairyland.

“Kirk's wife—she was his second wife, actually—was pregnant when he died. Kirk said that when the child was christened, he would appear at the feast. As soon as his friend, Graham somebody, I forget the name, anyway, as soon as this Graham saw him, he was to throw his knife over Kirk's head, and that would break the spell that kept him in Fairyland.

“The christening happened, and Kirk did appear, just as he'd said he would, but his friend was so startled by the sight of him that he forgot to throw the knife, and Kirk disappeared and was never seen again.”

“So what does all this have to do with Amy?”

“Doon Hill has a reputation. It's a liminal place. People go there for a reason, and people have gone missing there before.”

“Like who?”

“Robert Kirk.”

“He didn't disappear, he
died
.”

She shrugged. “So they said.”

After that, the conversation dwindled. I didn't want to talk about fairies, and she stonewalled my halfhearted attempts to find out a little more about her background.

I had hoped we could skip dessert and cut the evening short, but Fred insisted on a full three-course meal. She ordered treacle tart with ice cream, and coffee to follow. I gave in and had another beer.

“So how did you get to be a private eye?” she asked. I didn't correct her assumption. After all, I was conducting a private investigation, and I didn't do anything else for a living. Maybe it was at that moment, letting her believe that's what I was, that I embarked on my career.

I told her about my father and my fascination with vanishings.

“You know,” I said, becoming expansive as the level of beer in my glass diminished. “People
don't
just disappear into thin air. There's always a rational explanation. They've gone somewhere, in a perfectly ordinary way—sometimes, of course, they're grabbed off the street and murdered—and only because nobody happened to be looking at just the right moment, only the guilty parties know what really happened, so we imagine something impossible, we say they
disappeared
. But there's always a rational explanation.”

She looked skeptical. “What would you say if you saw someone disappear, right in front of your eyes?”

“I'd figure I'd been tricked. I'd try to work out how.”

“What if it wasn't a trick? What if they'd gone out of this world?”

“Not possible.”

“How do you know? How can you be so certain that this is all there is? That there aren't other dimensions? Other worlds? Scientists say there might be; some say there
must
be more worlds than this.”

I, too, had read popular articles about theoretical physics. “Sure. There may be other worlds. But they're completely separate. You can't get there from here.”

“You can't know that.”

“Sure I can. It's common sense. If there was a way to travel between worlds, there would be evidence. It would happen. People would disappear, and someone would see it. By now, somebody would have it on videotape. Instead, people only
seem
to disappear: because there are no witnesses.”

“It does happen,” she insisted. “Just not very often. Maybe it's very, very rare because there are only a few places where the barrier between the worlds is thin enough, and even then it only opens for a little while, maybe only for a few minutes, once or twice a year.”

I shook my head. “No. I don't believe it. Those are fairy-tale laws. I don't think the universe operates like that. People like to make up stories. Just because we
like
miracles and mysteries doesn't make them real.”

She was looking edgy again. Even the treacle tart wasn't compensation enough for my determined rationalism. She pushed the plate aside and fixed her strange green-grey eyes on mine. “If you saw someone disappear, right before your eyes, you'd have to believe it then.”