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 Highland midges circled the stain.

“What do you mean, ‘ritual sacrifice’?” I demanded. “Mrs. Baird’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 Highlands. Church or no church, Mrs. Baird believes in the Old Folk, and so do all the neighbors.” 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. Pre-fabs.”

I looked at him coldly. “If you are under the impression that 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.” Frank 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.”

He shook his head, absorbed in one of his feats of memory, those brief periods of scholastic rapture where he lost touch with the world around him, absorbed completely in conjuring up knowledge from all its sources.

“I don’t know about herring,” he said absently. “For mice, though, you hang bunches of Trembling Jock about – ‘Trembling Jock i’ the hoose, and ye’ll ne’er see a moose,’ you know. Bodies under the foundation, though – that’s where a lot of the local ghosts come from. You know Mountgerald, the big house at the end of the High Street? There’s a ghost there, a workman on the house who was killed as a sacrifice for the foundation. In the eighteenth century sometime; that’s really fairly recent,” he added thoughtfully.

“The story goes that by order of the house’s owner, one wall was built up first, then a stone block was dropped from the top of it onto one of the workmen – presumably a dislikable fellow was chosen for the sacrifice – and he was buried then in the cellar and the rest of the house built up over him. He haunts the cellar where he was killed, except on the anniversary of his death and the four Old Days.”

“Old Days?”

“The ancient feasts,” he explained, still lost in his mental notes. “Hogmanay, that’s New Year’s, Midsummer Day, Beltane and All Hallows’. Druids, Beaker Folk, early Picts, everybody kept the sun feasts and the fire feasts, so far as we know. Anyway, ghosts are freed on the holy days, and can wander about at will, to do harm or good as they please.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s getting on for Beltane – close to the spring equinox. Best keep an eye out, next time you pass the kirkyard.” His eyes twinkled, and I realized the trance had ended.

I laughed. “Are there a number of famous local ghosts, then?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. We’ll ask the Vicar, shall we, next time we see him?”

We saw the Vicar quite shortly, in fact. He, along with most of the other inhabitants of the village, was down in the pub, having a lager-and-light in celebration of the houses’ new sanctification.

He seemed rather embarrassed at being caught in the act of condoning acts of paganism, as it were, but brushed it off as merely a local observance with historical color, like the Wearing of the Green.

“Really rather fascinating, you know,” he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush. Harking to the call of a kindred spirit, Frank at once settled down to the mating dance of academe, and they were soon neck-deep in archetypes and the parallels between ancient superstitions and modern religions. I shrugged and made my own way through the crowd to the bar and back, a large brandy-and-splash in each hand.

Knowing from experience how difficult it was to distract Frank’s attention from this sort of discussion, I simply picked up his hand, wrapped his fingers about the stem of the glass and left him to his own devices.

I found Mrs. Baird on a deep bench near the window, sharing a companionable pint of bitter with an elderly man whom she introduced to me as Mr. Crook.

“This is the man I tell’t ye about, Mrs. Randall,” she said, eyes bright with the stimulation of alcohol and company. “The one as knows about plants of all sorts.

“Mrs. Randall’s verra much interested in the wee plants,” she confided to her companion, who inclined his head in a combination of politeness and deafness. “Presses them in books and such.”

“Do ye, indeed?” Mr. Crook asked, one tufted white brow raised in interest. “I’ve some presses – the real ones, mind – for plants and such. Had them from my nephew, when he come up from university over his holiday. He brought them for me, and I’d not the heart to tell him I never uses such things. Hangin’s what’s wanted for herbs, ye ken, or maybe to be dried on a frame and put in a bit o’ gauze bag or a jar, but whyever you’d be after squashing the wee things flat, I’ve no idea.”

“Well, to look at, maybe,” Mrs. Baird interjected kindly. “Mrs. Randall’s made some lovely bits out of mallow blossoms, and violets, same as you could put in a frame and hang on the wall, like.”

“Mmmphm.” Mr. Crook’s seamed face seemed to be admitting a dubious possibility to this suggestion. “Weel, if they’re of any use to ye, Missus, you can have the presses, and welcome. I didna wish to be throwing them awa’, but I must say I’ve no use for them.”

I assured Mr. Crook that I would be delighted to make use of the plant presses, and still more delighted if he would show me where some of the rarer plants in the area could be found. He eyed me sharply for a moment, head to one side like an elderly kestrel, but appeared finally to decide that my interest was genuine, and we fixed it up that I should meet him in the morning for a tour of the local shrubbery. Frank, I knew, meant to go into Inverness for the day to consult some records in the town hall there, and I was pleased to have an excuse not to accompany him. One record was much like another, so far as I was concerned.

Soon after this, Frank pried himself away from the Vicar, and we walked home in company with Mrs. Baird. I was reluctant to mention the cock’s blood on the doorstep, myself, but Frank suffered from no such reticence, and questioned her eagerly as to the background of the custom.

“I suppose it’s quite old, then?” he asked, swishing a stick along through the roadside weeds. Lamb’s-quarters and cinquefoil were already blooming, and I could see the buds of sweet broom swelling; another week and they’d be in flower.