Page 108 of The Midnight Secret

‘I never stole the bairn! She placed him in my arms.’

‘Only because you and Lorna told her that James was dead. You made Flora believe she was in a desperate position, with no way to support the child. Just as you now have no way to support him, without Lorna.’

Mary bristled with barely contained anger. ‘A solution has been reached which we all can live with, and that’s all I have to say on it. You don’t have to like it. It’s nothing to do with you.’

She turned to leave.

‘Isn’t it?’

Mary turned back. ‘And what does that mean?’

‘I’ve just told you that I know everything.’

‘So? Everyone knows and I don’t care if they all hate me!’

‘I’m not talking about the baby.’

Mary fell very still then, the hostility in her eyes beginning to give way to something else. Fear.

‘I know it was you.’ Jayne didn’t so much as blink, her gaze steady. ‘Norman didn’t kill Frank. You did.’

She wasn’t doing this for the sake of her late husband’s reputation. Norman had ruined that all by himself. History would not remember him kindly as the villagers’ stories were passed down through the generations, and it would serve no purpose to enlighten others about his innocence in one matter when he was guilty in so many others. But Jayne could still help those who would otherwise remain trapped by the false notion that he had killed the factor.

‘And how have y’ come to that conclusion?’ Mary’s voice was quieter now.

‘The same way I knew Norman wouldn’t be coming back here with us. I saw it before it happened – andasit happened. I was sleeping out in the burial ground that last night. You walked right past me, Mary.’

There was a pause. ‘I have multiple witnesses who say I was in bed that night – in no fit state to walk to the kitchen, much less all the way over there to kill a man!’

‘Do you really think those statements will stand? Do you think Christina MacQueen will support you, now she knows you stole Flora’s baby? Or Rachel, knowing you tried to take Mhairi’s? Annie’s more likely to kill you. Ma Peg, Effie – everyone hates you. And of course, Lorna, your lover, your witness, your ally and alibi, is dead.’

Mary’s breathing came hard, but she was a fighter. She knew how to come out swinging. ‘It’s about what can beproven! No one will believe you because of avision! They’ll think you a witch before they think me a killer!’

‘You may be right there,’ Jayne nodded. She knew people were either sceptical of her gift or superstitious about it. ‘And it’s true, the visions aren’t always clear. It can take me time to understand what I’m seeing. I don’t always see everything – or everyone – in the death scene. But in this instance, I had some help.’

Mary’s eyes narrowed. ‘Help?’

‘Were you aware that Lorna had written a confession before she died?’

‘...What?’ The word was a croak.

‘She sent me a letter the night she took the pills, saying that she had delivered Flora of a child and not you. She admitted to prematurely inducing the labour and then, after the child was born, carrying him all the way back here to place him in your arms. She wrote that she told you Frank had seen her as she passed by with the baby crying, that he already knew Flora and Mhairi were pregnant and that he was going to tell the world what you and she had done.’

Mary gasped, trying to keep pace with the revelations. ‘No – that’s not true...She would never betray me like that.’

‘She couldn’t live with what you’d done! To take a baby was one thing – but to crack a man’s skull, to stab him? She had never agreed to be part of a murder!’

Mary’s eyes were wide as she saw her future narrow to a small, black point.

‘You’re going to swing for this, Mary. You killed Frank Mathieson in cold blood. While he was half trussed up and drunk, unable to properly defend himself.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. The letter proves it. I’ve already told the police I wasout here that night, with David as my witness – but they don’t know yet what I saw: Lorna coming back with the baby; the shouts I heard first. Mathieson threatening to tell everyone the baby wasn’t yours!’

‘It must have been her that did it, then!’ Mary cried desperately. ‘...I was in bed! People saw me—’

‘You were in bed long enough for people to see you with the baby – as Mhairi helped Flora back home. She could barely walk, butyou, Mary, when you came out later, you were up and down the hill in no time. You could have run it. You silenced Mathieson before he was in any fit state to act and I saw it.’

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