In Orkney, folk memory is tenacious. For eight decades, nobody had bothered the police with persistent rumours about the polite prostitute and her granite-hard mother who lived at St Olaf's Cottage at the beginning of last century.
Such things were not freely discussed. But last December, when tiny human bones were found beneath the floorboards of the little stone dwelling, it seemed that everyone knew the truth. They were the remains of Violet Gray's illegitimate children. Her mother, the terrifying and socially ambitious Tamima, had drowned four of them before the poor devils had time to draw their first breath.
They had gone from womb to rusty iron bucket like the guts of the fish Orcadian women once filleted for a living, and with no more thought. Surviving descendants of the infanticidal Grays confirmed the tale. Officers of the Northern Constabulary disclosed their "strong suspicion" that folk memory was right. Gordon Gray, Violet's sole surviving child, had been spared because he had been a breach baby; a doctor had been required to deliver him.
Tamima could not risk murdering Gordon because his existence was known to officialdom, though the legend insists that she wanted to. Michael, son of the late Gordon, heard the story from his father. There are a few anomalies. The Gray family say Tamima murdered four of her daughter's offspring. The police have found the remains of only three. Hushed gossip insists that there are really 11 little corpses, all killed by Tamima, though surely not all products of Violet's occasional pursuit of the oldest profession.
Tamima Gray wanted both wealth and status. She married a gold prospector and condoned her daughter's immoral earnings, but she would not nurture illegitimate progeny.
