Chapter Sixteen #2
Grantham MacNiven had told me where to find him—both the schoolhouse and the home where he has lodgings. We head to the school first, which is held in a parish room at the kirk. As we approach, we can hear MacNiven teaching a lesson on sums.
McCreadie raps on the door, and MacNiven answers.
I don’t hear the conversation, but from where I’m standing, the young teacher looks confused at first and then hesitant, as if he’s not sure he should leave his pupils, even for a police officer.
But whatever McCreadie says, it gets MacNiven moving, and he pops back inside to tell the students to keep working and then joins McCreadie in the kirkyard, where I meet them as we head along a path into a field behind the kirk.
The schoolmaster greets me, his gaze uncertain now, and as we walk, McCreadie says, “You spoke to Miss Mitchell and Dr. Gray yesterday. About the student who drowned.”
“Yes. Is there a problem, Detective? If I should not have mentioned it…”
“That is fine. Helpful, in fact, so I thank you for it. You heard we had another drowned lass.”
“I did.”
“We have her name now. Nellie Carmichael.”
MacNiven stops short. “Did you say…?”
“Nellie Carmichael. We’ve heard she was a friend of the young woman who died.”
MacNiven doesn’t answer. He’s stopped, and he teeters, swallowing before saying, “This is my fault.”
McCreadie lets a few moments of silence pass. His gaze goes to mine, but I subtly shake my head. Say nothing. Wait for MacNiven to explain.
“The poem,” the young schoolmaster says. “That damn—” His gaze flies to me. “Forgive me, Miss Mitchell.”
“No need,” I say. “You mentioned a poem when we last spoke, one you believed responsible for Mary’s suicide.”
He nods, swallowing again, Adam’s apple bobbing.
“I should have stopped it. I was just…” He flails.
“They can be so difficult to engage. I do understand why. My father has a sheep farm, and he never attended school. Our neighbors did not send their children either. My parents insisted on it because my mother grew up in a family of clergymen. If not for them, I would be herding sheep. But when I was young, I wanted to do what my father did. It is the same with these children. They do not see the value in learning.” He inhales.
“I am babbling. My point is that I was overly desperate to engage them, and I was reckless.”
“By teaching them a poem they liked?”
“It entranced them, especially the girls. Mary and Nellie and Kate. I seized on that when I should have been wary.”
“Nellie was one of your students?” I ask.
“When she was younger. She had to go work in the factory last year, when her mother stopped working, but Nellie would still come by for evening classes sometimes. She was the most dedicated of my students.” A wry quirk of his lips.
“Isn’t that the way it always is? The keenest students are the ones who must leave first. I always hoped to entice her back.
She was so clever. I said she could become a schoolmistress herself and… ”
He falters and struggles for breath. “Excuse me. This is … hard news.”
We keep walking until we reach a fence at the back of the field. Then McCreadie says, “Nellie knew about the poem, I presume.”
He nods. “She brought it to me, with Mary and Kate. Mary had found it tucked inside an old book. They were so excited, and the other students were taken with the poem, and I … I did not see the danger.”
“The danger being…?” I prod.
“The romanticization of a young woman’s death.
It is such a common theme, one I greatly dislike myself.
I tried to include that in my teaching. How there is nothing romantic in death, how the Bible says death by suicide is a sin, but they clearly did not want to hear that, and I …
I could not bring myself to douse their enthusiasm.
I found other ways to use the poem as a teaching tool.
The imagery. The language. The history of such stories. ”
I could say Nellie wasn’t a suicide—I want to—but at this point, if McCreadie isn’t, then I can’t either. Not yet.
MacNiven plucks at his collar. “I indulged them when I should have been diverting them from what became an obsession. Teaching is about more than lessons in literacy and mathematics.”
McCreadie offers some soothing words. MacNiven mentioned his mother comes from a family of clergy, and I think that’s what he feels guilty about. Partly the romanticization of death, yes, but even more of it is what he said about the Christian faith and suicide.
The “other” lesson he feels he failed to impart was the moral one.
That wouldn’t be my angle, but on a more basic level, I understand.
I once did community work at a school where there had been three suicides, all connected.
Suicide contagion among adolescents is a terrifying thing, and a poem romanticizing it doesn’t help.
I also understand the dilemma MacNiven faced.
Older students would be the hardest to engage, and he finally had them hooked on something he could extrapolate from.
He tried to do that properly. Don’t fixate on the suicide.
Talk about the poem itself and how it fits into a broader narrative.
His passion for teaching overrode his concerns about the content.
Now two young women are dead. One seems to have been connected to that poem, but McCreadie will need to speak to Mary’s family to confirm that. As for Nellie …
Is this connected to her death? It seems like it should be. After all, her friend died the same way, in the same place. But Nellie wasn’t a suicide.
Is it possible that Mary wasn’t either?
Those are questions for later. What we need from MacNiven are two things. First, where do we find this “Kate” he mentioned. Second, where do we find this poem, so we can read the whole thing.
“Kate is no longer a student,” he says. “Shortly after Mary died, she decided she was done with school. You can find her family in the village, but I believe she is working in the city. As for the poem, I can provide you with a copy of it.”
“The title and author would be enough,” McCreadie says.
“I, er, do not know them. The copy Mary found was torn, with the top part missing. I had intended to take it to the city, see if I could learn who wrote it, but then Mary died, and after that, I had no intention of teaching it again.”
“We will take what you have,” McCreadie says. “The content of the poem is the important part.”