‘So Mrs Cowell was fond of him, as you would be fond of a child?’
‘Just that. And, of course, they were at the school together as children.’
‘And what did Mr Cowell make of it?’
Her face darkened in an instant, as if a cloud had thrown her into shadow. ‘I’m a God-fearing woman, Mr Mackenzie. But I hope that man spends eternity in hell.’
The three men were startled by her sudden, vitriolic intensity.
‘Why?’ Sime said.
‘Because he brought two thugs to this island from across the water and had my boy beaten up.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because they told him to stay away from Mrs Cowell or he could expect much worse.’
‘He told you that?’
She nodded, her mouth drawn in a tight line to hold in her emotions. ‘He was in a terrible state when he came home that day. Bleeding and bruised and crying like a baby.’
‘How do you know it was Mr Cowell’s doing?’
‘Well, who else could it be?’
‘And this was when?’
‘Early spring this year. There was still snow on the ground.’
‘Did you report it?’
She almost laughed. ‘To whom? There is no law on this island, Mr Mackenzie. We settle things among ourselves here.’ Echoes of Owen Clarke.
Sime hesitated just briefly. ‘Why did the neighbours stop their children from playing with Norman, Mrs Morrison?’
Now her skin flushed red around her eyes and high on her cheeks. ‘You’ve been talking to the Patton woman.’
Sime inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement.
‘It was just lies, Mr Mackenzie.’ Her cold blue eyes were now filled with the fire of indignation. ‘And jealousy.’
‘Why would she be jealous?’
‘Because this was a house always filled with children, including hers. They loved Norman. They came from all over the island to play with him, to see his little universe on the ceiling. You see he was a grown man, but he was just like them. A child himself.’ For a moment her face was lit by the pleasure of recollection. A house full of children. An extended family. It had clearly been a joy for her. But the light went out and her face darkened again. ‘And then that woman started putting it about that my Norman was touching the children in a bad way. It was a lie, Mr Mackenzie. Plain and simple. My Norman was never like that. But lies can be contagious. Like germs. Once they’re out there people get infected.’
‘And the children stopped coming?’
She nodded. ‘It was awful the effect it had on poor Norman. Suddenly he had no friends. The house was empty. Silent, like the grave. And I missed them, too. All those bright little faces and happy voices. Life’s just not been the same since.’
‘And what did your husband have to say about all this?’
‘He didn’t have anything to say, Mr Mackenzie. He’s been dead almost twenty years. Lost at sea when his boat went down in a storm off Nova Scotia.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor Norman. He still misses his daddy. And after the children stopped coming, well … he just spent more and more time in his room. Expanding his little universe.’
‘His … universe on the ceiling?’
‘Yes.’
Sime glanced at Crozes and Blanc. ‘Could we see this little universe, Mrs Morrison?’
*
She led them up creaking stairs to the first floor. There were three bedrooms here, and a large bathroom. But Norman’s bedroom was in an attic room built into the roof space. His den, his mother called it as they followed her up steep steps and into the room. There were no windows up here and they emerged from the floor into darkness until Mrs Morrison flicked a switch and flooded the room with yellow electric light.
It was a claustrophobic space, large in floor area, but with low headroom and walls that took a shallow slope in from shoulder height to meet the ceiling. A single bed pushed against the far wall had several teddy bears and a thread-worn panda propped up on its pillows. Bedside tables stood cluttered with toy soldiers and pieces of Lego, crayons and tubes of paint. A dresser set against the right-hand wall was similarly lost beneath a chaos of plastic bricks and packs of Plasticine, a naked dolly with no arms, model cars, a railway engine. The floor itself was strewn with toys and books, and sheets of paper covered with scribbles.
But their eyes were drawn almost immediately to the ceiling, and Sime saw at once what his mother had meant by Norman’s little universe. Almost the entire ceiling space was glued with layers of different-coloured Plasticine that formed meadows and roads, ploughed fields, lakes and rivers. Mountains had been moulded out of papier mâché and coloured with paint. Green and brown and grey. There were railway lines and plastic houses, the figures of tiny people populating gardens and streets. Little cars and buses, woolly sheep and brown cows in the fields. There were forests and fences. All stuck into the Plasticine. And everything was upside down.