The Pearl Thief

I stood staring after it, raging with impotent anger, one hand pressed to my burning cheek.

  ‘This is how it always goes,’ Ellen said. ‘You have to play-act. You have to bite your tongue and pretend you dinnae care. If you’d hit her back you’d have had the bus driver jump out and knock you silly. And if you ever tell my mammy or daddy I let you kiss another girl while I watched, I’ll knock you silly myself.’

  She gave her characteristic snort of disgust, and added, ‘You should have let her gasp.’

  From somewhere in her skirt Ellen pulled her tobacco pouch, the exact shape and colour of a river mussel, and her little clay pipe.

  ‘Have a draw. Witless scaldies. Forget about them.’

  She got the pipe alight and handed it to me.

  She’d smoked her pipe in front of me more than once before, but she’d never let me share it.

  Something had changed between us. I wasn’t sure what had made it happen. The car ride, the song on the moor? Or me having to take a slap in the face as if I really were one of her kind?

  Whatever it was, I thought, she had finally called me Julie and offered me a smoke. I thought it was probably worth it.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling dragon-like, my face still burning with the sting of Florrie’s slap, my mouth full of smoke.

  ‘All right?’ Ellen asked me.

  ‘Nae bother,’ I answered, trying to be stoically Euan-like, and got a sardonic snorted laugh out of her.

  We set off towards the car. I gave Ellen back her pipe.

  We didn’t say anything else for a while, but as we came to the wonderful view of the Tay Valley, Ellen observed in the neutral tone of a policeman making an accusation, ‘You just take anything you want when you want it, aye, Lady Julia? Just take and take. Born to it. You need a gift for my mam so you pick your gran’s roses. You want a motor car so you help yourself to your mother’s. You were raging at those scaldy lassies and you just thought you could play them for fools.’

  I didn’t answer. What was I supposed to answer? Because, uncomfortably, I thought Ellen was right. I thought of how I’d tried on Solange’s pearls, and that kiss I helped myself to from Frank Dunbar, and the pearl in the envelope. Even the way I’d so blithely put my taxi fare to Strathfearn on my mother’s account. And I’d very gladly taken Ellen away for the morning to have her to myself when I knew she and Jamie were … Well, I didn’t know what they were. If anything. But I was childishly unwilling to share her.

  Ellen swept her arm towards the river and forest and fields that lay at our feet. ‘You think this all belongs to you just because you’re in it.’

  ‘So do you! You agreed!’

  ‘I don’t just take what I want. My folk don’t steal things. We don’t keep things.’

  ‘It’s not the value of a thing that’s important,’ I said, trying to defend myself. ‘I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it’s worth. You know the pearl bracelet in the Inverfearnie Library, the one that belonged to Mary Queen of Scots when she was a child? I don’t give a toss what that’s worth. But Mary Queen of Scots’ own bracelet! And the Reliquary – what about that? The price you paid for your willow bank, four hundred years ago? It’s hard to have your happiness tangled up in things you can’t keep.’

  ‘We don’t mind about keeping things,’ Ellen said. ‘If you give a Traveller girl a ring, she’ll wear it until some other girl admires it, then like as not she’ll give it to her friend. For love. For the pleasure of giving. Because what’s the point in just having? If I give a thing, I’ll remember how happy we both were when I made the gift.’

  She handed me her pipe.

  ‘Here, it’s yours. Keep it. It’s more blessed to give than to receive.’

  She never dropped her superior air of queenly command, but suddenly she was warm and fond too.

  I took it. I had to.

  Then she smiled at me sunnily. ‘And aren’t you happy, now I’ve given you something you wanted badly – something of mine?’

  And I was. I really was.

  She is wonderful.

  9

  THE APPEARANCE OF LEGS

  After the thrilling excursion up Pitbroomie Hill with Ellen, the Big House felt empty without my family in it that afternoon, even though it was full of builders and painters. Feeling abandoned, I let my natural vanity take control of me, and I spent a long time in front of Mémère’s dressing-table mirror checking my face for damage (there wasn’t any) and trying to make my hair look a bit more feminine (impossible). Finally I took a bath and got dressed in my own frock, the rose-coloured Parisian georgette with the silver zigzags down the bodice that Jamie brought from Craig Castle, utterly useless for doing anything sensible in, BUT. But very much what I needed to make me feel myself again, cool and stylishly sophisticated. (Is that myself? I don’t know if I am, but I like to feel that I am.)

  And all the while my hands were occupied fussing with my face and my hair and my clothes, my mind was turning over and over again the multitude of disconnected events of the past month. My injured head. The naked man in the river. Mary’s betrayal of Euan. The scholar’s farewell slipped under the door. And pearls.

  Scottish river pearls … there they were, like beads torn from a necklace: in Solange’s jewellery box, seen through the lens of Hugh Housman’s jug, lying on Jean and Ellen McEwen’s palms, under glass beneath Mary Kinnaird’s watchful eye in the Inverfearnie Library, hidden in a brown envelope on Francis Dunbar’s desk, fixed forever in the floorboards of the tower room of Strathfearn House.

  Pearls.

  I thought there must be a way to string everything together. Only I couldn’t see it yet.

  It was frustrating. I didn’t know what I was looking for. And the night-time intruder – Mother seemed sure it had been a legitimate estate watchman, but I wasn’t convinced. I began another unproductive search, this time looking at the French doors of the morning room. I didn’t have long till I was supposed to go and collect Euan to drive him back to Inchfort.

  I was peering intently at the door handles, wishing I knew something about fingerprinting, when instinct caused me to straighten quickly. Someone was coming up the terrace stairs from the lawn with heavy footfalls. I turned around.

  It was Francis Dunbar. I had about one second in which to straighten myself out before presenting myself as the presiding lady of the house – thank God I’d changed out of Sandy’s moth-eaten kilt.

  Frank Dunbar looked pale and grim. He did that same little leap backward when he saw me as he’d done on the day we met.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Beaufort-Stuart.’ He frowned, wondering if he’d got it right, and obviously decided that it didn’t matter. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m looking for your mother. Or your grandmother, I suppose.’

  ‘They’re in Edinburgh,’ I said. ‘Is it urgent? I’m about to go out myself.’ I didn’t want to let Euan down. ‘I won’t be long – I could come back in an hour or so. The others won’t be back till about eight.’

  He hesitated, standing one step below the level of the terrace, as if he couldn’t decide whether to come up or not. He swallowed, making a conscious effort to soften his expression.

  ‘I’ve had some bad news.’ He bit the single-syllable words off in the back of his throat as if each one were choking him and he could hardly get them out. He swallowed again.

  ‘Oh.’ I did so like Frank Dunbar, and felt sorry for him. ‘Would I do, in place of my mother?’

  I could see him swithering.

  ‘I don’t think …’ he began.

  Instead of trying to persuade him with words, I held up a formal arm for him to take.

  I read him right: he couldn’t refuse the polite, wordless request for physical support. I saw his face change when he made his decision.

  We met halfway across the terrace. He took my arm, very politely, and escorted me through the French doors of his own side of the double room and into his private office.

&n
bsp; He offered me a chair, but didn’t sit himself. It felt very like our first meeting, except he looked so beaten. He paced back to his open terrace doors and stood staring out over the hive of activity across the grounds.

  ‘You’ve had bad news,’ I reminded him.

  He turned around to face me, still not quite willing that I should be the one with whom he’d share whatever it was.

  He winced, looking at me. It was something he thought I’d find unpleasant, something inappropriate for a young lady’s sensibilities.

  I guessed.

  ‘Your men working along the river have found Hugh Housman?’

  He blinked in surprise. He opened his mouth and shut it again, then nodded. ‘My God. You’re a mind reader.’

  ‘You wanted to speak to my mother. We’ve all been looking for him for a month. People hardly ever just vanish. He was bound to turn up eventually, wasn’t he?’

  I didn’t dare ask the obvious question: alive or dead? Nothing in Dunbar’s manner suggested the former, but I didn’t want it to look like I expected the latter, even if I did.

  I waited.

  He didn’t elaborate, so finally I found a neutral way to get him to go on.

  ‘Where?’

  He hesitated unhappily.

  ‘Julie, this is so unpleasant. I don’t know where to begin.’

  It was like being a tennis ball getting thwacked back and forth, swapping between being Davie Balfour and Lady Julia. I needed to let Frank know I wasn’t made entirely of glass. I got up and crossed the room to stand beside him.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Well … yes. Well …’

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted.

  ‘Probably …’

  I narrowed my eyes, overwhelmed with the feeling that all adults are incompetent lunatics.

  ‘You found Dr Housman and he’s probably dead?’ I said sharply. ‘What on earth is that supposed to mean? Goodness, Mr Dunbar.’

  He looked stricken. ‘I’m telling this very badly. I said it was unpleasant.’

  ‘Please sit down,’ I told him. ‘Just here. Have you anything to drink about? Whisky – excellent. Just a moment and I’ll pour you a wee drop.’

  His housekeeping was chaotic, evidence of his lonely bachelor’s existence – a decanter sharing a bookshelf with half a loaf of bread and cheese wrapped in brown paper. I found a glass and wiped it with a leaf off the blotting pad.

  ‘There you are. I’m not going to faint.’ I pressed the glass into his hands and squeezed them lightly beneath my own. ‘Now, Frank, just tell me what happened.’

  ‘They found a body. They found … most of a body.’

  This time it was I who winced.

  I instantly regretted it. He tried to jump up and the dark gold liquid spilled over his fingers.

  I pressed my lips together and held up a warning hand.

  ‘What’s missing?’ I asked brazenly. Because truly, sickening though his news was, the man needed shaking. One of us was going to have to be brazen, or I’d never find out what had happened.

  Frank Dunbar drew a sharp breath but managed to get the words out. ‘The head and shoulders are missing. And one arm.’ He drew another breath. ‘There aren’t any hands or feet, either.’

  Very gently, I took the glass from him and set it on his desk.

  ‘Go on,’ I said quietly.

  ‘The poor devil – he’s been … well, quartered by one of the dredgers somehow. Terribly mutilated. We think the spade of the digger caught him across the chest.’ Frank paused and looked up at me. I returned his gaze unflinchingly. He reached for my hand and held it tightly, clenching and unclenching his fingers as he continued speaking. ‘The water level’s been a serious difficulty for us in digging the pipeline for the swimming pool. There’s a tidal change of over a metre, twice a day, where the Fearn meets the Tay, and we can’t dredge at low tide because the water isn’t deep enough for the barge that holds the digger. But we haven’t been able to work at all because of the high flow that came with the rain. The body must have tumbled into the trench while the water was deep.’

  ‘Goodness!’ I exclaimed. ‘If the McEwens had been looking for pearls further downstream they might have found him two weeks ago, when the water was so low because of the spring tide!’

  ‘But if he hadn’t got trapped in the trench we might not have found him till the next spring tide, which isn’t till the end of July.’

  ‘Oh! It’s perfectly morbid to think about.’

  I said this because I felt that I ought to sound more sympathetic towards the decapitated man on the riverbed. But I couldn’t think of anything other than how upset Solange was going to be, and it made me angry with poor Dr Housman on her account.

  ‘Did they find his clothes?’ I asked.

  Frank knocked back a gulp of whisky.

  ‘No. But … the river’s been so high … they may have long washed away. The workmen trawled the ditch when they found his body, and that’s when they picked up his arm. And two beautiful bronze spearheads, of all things; they must have been buried in the peat. But not his clothes.’ Frank emptied his glass. ‘I don’t understand why he took off his clothes if he was planning to drown himself … You’d think he’d have been trying to keep them dry so he could get dressed again.’

  Regardless of that letter to Solange, which neither Frank nor I had seen (Mummy sent it off to the police before I could get hold of it – sometimes she is wise to me), I didn’t think Frank believed Housman drowned himself on purpose. I felt that he was focusing on the drink to cover up his doubt. Did he think someone else did it? That someone – me? Solange? – pushed him in?

  ‘What about the … the hands and feet?’ I asked. ‘Did they all get cut off by the digger?’

  ‘The doctor who’s going to examine him said they often detach after a body’s been in water a few weeks.’ Frank sounded defeated. ‘The doctor’s not seen the damage yet though.’

  Ugh.

  Frank didn’t voice any of his own doubts. Maybe I was imagining doubt in him, but I didn’t think so. Well, it wasn’t up to me – the Procurator Fiscal, who deals with accidental deaths, would decide whether there needed to be an inquiry. Fair enough Frank keeping quiet.

  I didn’t have any idea how close Frank Dunbar and Hugh Housman might have been – it sounded as though they’d only just met this summer and shared a few meals. But I felt Frank needed a little compassion. I picked up his glass, added a dollop of water to it from the jug by the whisky decanter and passed it back to him.

  ‘Julie, you’re marvellous,’ he said.

  ‘I do try to be marvellous.’

  He gazed at me as if it rested his eyes to do it, as if he were appreciating the view from a mountaintop. I let him look. I stood still in the rose silk Vionnet dress, with my face turned away a little so I didn’t seem to be self-aware. When I turned back to him he gave me the ghost of a smile.

  ‘I said I was going to drive Euan McEwen over to Inchfort,’ I reminded him. ‘Is it all right if I go and do that now?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I – I’m sorry I told you any of this. I should have waited for your mother.’

  ‘I’m not sorry at all,’ I said with feeling.

  Indeed, when I met poor Euan McEwen by the garages, I sent up a little private prayer of thanks that I already knew what was going on.

  He was soaked and shaking. We looked each other up and down without speaking for a moment or two.

  Euan broke the silence first. ‘That’s a bonny frock.’

  My face flamed. My God, it was like being slapped again, and I don’t even know why. As if I were mocking him on purpose with wealth and elegance and – yes, and my beauty. And he knew it. But I wasn’t – I wasn’t. At least, I didn’t mean to.

  ‘Whisht.’ I drew a sharp breath. ‘I didn’t realise the work was going to be so wet.’

  ‘I was shifting barrow-loads of peat this morning,’ Euan said. ‘That wasnae so bad. But this afternoon –’ He stopped abrup
tly.

  ‘I ken,’ I told him in a low voice, so he knew he didn’t have to explain to me about what the pipeline diggers had found in the trench that day.

  ‘They asked me and the other lads who work the spades and barrows to hunt for the missing parts. They added fourpence the hour to our pay for doing it. But you had to get into the ditch.’ He paused, steadying himself. ‘I’d have done it for nothing … But I’m glad it wasnae me who found the arm.’

  He counts his working hours in pennies. I don’t think I’d realised that. I felt so stupid.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye, nae bother.’

  I should have known I’d get ‘Aye, nae bother’ for an answer.

  ‘I really can’t take you in Mother’s car as wet as that,’ I said. ‘Let me get a mackintosh or something for you to sit on. There used to be car coats in the garages here – buckets of blood.’ There wasn’t anything but paint cans and builders’ ironmongery now. Everything belonging to the Murrays had been cleared out.

  ‘Never mind,’ Euan said. ‘I’ll walk round by Brig O’Fearn.’

  ‘No, you will not walk. We’ll find something in the house. They haven’t finished painting and the whole place is covered in sheets.’

  ‘No.’

  He spoke quite firmly, quiet as always, but with the determination of a soldier.

  ‘I walked across Perthshire and Angus on my own feet when I was seven. It’s summer and I like walking. I’ll take nothing from the Big House. I’ll take nothing that belongs to the Glenfearn School, not even to borrow.’ He paused for breath.

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked sharply. ‘That foreman Robbie Munro doesn’t trust you?’

  ‘Not just him. All the lads on the site. I’d only been there an hour before I had to turn my pockets out and prove it wasnae me who’d lifted some gadgie’s packet o’ fags he thinks he left in a digger overnight!’

  ‘Huh,’ I said, narrowing my eyes. ‘I bet one of them is pinching cigarettes, or they wouldn’t be trying to blame it on you.’

  ‘They likely would. They’d leave it on the train by accident and blame me.’

  ‘Well, I’m not letting you walk ten miles in those wet trousers.’