‘Of course,’ said Bluey, getting a nod of approval from Grant.
‘We can’t change once the company gets here, Daddy,’ Penny said. ‘None of them will have a dinner jacket to his name.’
‘Take Granny up with you if you’re going, dearest,’ Minnie said and while her husband and daughter were busy winkling the old lady out of her armchair and yelling into her ear that it was time for a rest before dressing, she added to me, ‘I can’t believe my girl might marry a man who hasn’t the means to dress for dinner.’
‘Marry?’ said Alec. Minnie shushed him.
Grant had somehow got herself inveigled into the exodus, murmuring that she would help Mrs Bewer. I knew her game; she reckoned there was a headful of long hair under that lacy cap and she meant to have her way with it. Grant abhors my boyish shingle; thwarted by it and feeling her talents wither from lack of use. She avoided my eye as she swept out, even though all she would have seen was me shaking my head fondly.
When it was down to the three of us, Minnie took the matter up again. ‘That’s the bit we didn’t tell you,’ she said. ‘Not only did Cousin Leonard not turn Penny away from theatre life with its cold realities but he actually stole her heart too. They are now betrothed, if you please.’
‘But if he’s a distant cousin,’ I said. ‘He can’t be too beyond the pale, surely.’
‘A second son generations back,’ Minnie said. ‘His father works for the railway. In the offices. But for the railway. It really is all quite over, isn’t it? Our world, our ways.’
‘But we shall do our best to save a corner of it,’ Alec said. I looked at him speculatively. Was he thinking only of our brief here at Castle Bewer or was he thinking that Penny’s heart so recently given could still be snatched back again. ‘For instance,’ he said, ‘if you’ve got an eye on the accounting book, shouldn’t you be keeping costs down? Why do you think it’s worth a pair of detectives, or even just guards, on the pay roll?’
‘And forgive me,’ I added, ‘but am I not right in thinking that Penny is your only child?’ Minnie nodded. ‘Then why don’t you sell up and go to a villa in Spain? Is Bluey determined to see life out where he was born? Hugh’s as bad but, Minnie my dear, if he didn’t have Donald to add weight to his claim I’d be able to swat it all away for the nonsense it would be. And Bluey’s a poppet compared with Hugh, isn’t he?’
Minnie gave us each a grave look and then glanced at her wristwatch. ‘Oh, close enough!’ she said. ‘Who’s for a drink?’
There was a sideboard roughly the size and shape of a pharaoh’s tomb sitting against the wall and upon it grew a forest of dusty bottles, half-empty and re-corked, sticking up from an undergrowth of mismatched glasses. Minnie selected one of the fuller ones, which happened to be sherry, and poured three healthy measures.
‘In note form,’ she said, ‘Bluey can’t sell up because he doesn’t own the place.’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Who owns it?’
‘His father,’ said Minnie. I frowned at her. Minnie was forty-eight like me and, as far as I could recall from that London season, Bluey was the perfect number of years older than her, making him in his late fifties today. His father, in turn, had to be well into his eighties or even nineties given the sorts of ages gentlemen settled down to filling cradles in those days.
‘Why does the old boy want to hang on?’ said Alec. ‘Does he live here? Shall we be meeting him?’
‘Heavens, no,’ Minnie said. ‘He died years ago.’ Alec and I shared a glance. ‘That is,’ Minnie went on, ‘I expect he died years ago. He’d be ninety-nine now if he was still on the go. But the thing is, you see, he left. He abandoned his wife when Bluey was quite a young man. Actually, at the time of our wedding. He hightailed it off to Beirut or some such outlandish place and he’s never been back.’
The question that jostled its way to the front of my brain was why on earth I did not know the story. Gossip made the world go round and this was delicious gossip. It ought to have been the talk of the town when Minnie and I were girls; it ought to have hung around Bluey like a bad smell. Certainly, it ought to have stopped that darling Minerva Roll from getting mixed up with him.
Thankfully, I bit my tongue and it was Alec who spoke, choosing a much more diplomatic and professional question.
‘But can’t you have him declared dead?’ he said. ‘Seven years, isn’t it?’
‘And it’s been thirty,’ said Minnie nodding. ‘Of course we could. But Ottoline, my dearest mother-in-law, doesn’t want to. I think at first she was sure he’d come back. He wrote to her from all over the place, at least for a bit. Meanwhile she put about the story that he was at home in frail health and was living quietly. She was just cagey enough about what he’d come down with that no one visited in case they caught it. Rather clever, really. But that was the way of it with our parents’ generation, wasn’t it Dandy? An invalid not to be disturbed covered a great many sins.’ She frowned quickly and then mustered a brighter smile than ever. ‘Over the years, she got so good at the story I think it entered her soul. Do you know what I mean?’
Alec looked askance but I knew exactly what she was referring to. It was a feature of our mothers’ generation, that talent for not knowing anything shocking and not seeing anything nasty. It allowed them to live lives of such quiet contentment. It was watered down a little in girls like Minnie and me, bashed by modern novels and careless talk in intellectual circles, but we had vestiges sturdy enough to get us through the war. I called on the spirit of my mother as never before while I was trapped with horrors in the officers’ convalescent home those five long years. Nanny Palmer was quite done away with for a change. For, while she was starched to a crisp in day-to-day life, she had a sentimental streak and might ‘come over queer’ or be rendered ‘all of a doo-dah’ by extreme wretchedness. Holding a bowl while some poor chap emptied his gassed tummy into it would not have troubled her, but holding a bowl while a doctor filled it with the peeled-off bandages from another chap’s four stumps would have been beyond her. I had kept a smile on my face and chatted to him about plays and concerts. My mother would have been proud of me.
‘All passion’s spent now, of course,’ Minnie was saying, ‘Ottoline is past caring what anyone thinks of how he treated her those long years ago. A quiet notice in The Times and it could all be over, with no more of a ripple than a few old acquaintances saying “hmph” and turning the page to juicier items.’
‘But?’ said Alec. He is a wonderful sniffer-out of buts.
Minnie gave him a fond smile. ‘But now it’s a question of the death duties. We simply can’t afford to let Bluey’s father die just yet. And it’s bearing down on us like a charging bull. Hence this last ditch attempt to get in the black, once and for all. On his hundredth birthday this autumn he’ll be swept away and we shall have to sell up to pay our bills. So, much as I love my mother-in-law – and I truly do; she has had a splendid life despite what that rotter doled out to her – I find myself hoping that she doesn’t outlive Richard’s allotted century and gets to die in peace in her own little bed with Bluey holding one hand and I the other.’
Alec returned the fond smile, as who could not? It is not often one meets with such simple goodness as this. ‘And what about the other question?’ he said. ‘Why are we here? If you know the company through your daughter, can’t you trust them with the run of the house? And couldn’t you lock away all your loot while the audience is around? You’re not giving them silver spoons to stir their tea, are you?’
The word ‘loot’ jogged my memory. I had been so swept up in the story of the play that I had, unaccountably, forgotten.
‘Where does the treasure come in, Minnie? Have you made up your mind about whatever it was you were chewing over?’
Minnie shrank down into her collar and screwed up her pretty face as though to brace herself for a blow. She had always done it, despite our mothers’ warning that any extreme expressions would see off our looks and wrinkle us like prunes. ‘P
romise not to titter, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Castle Bewer, unlikely as it sounds, really does have a secret treasure. Richard, God rot him, blabbed about it on his travels. Perhaps he even sent emissaries back here to lay hands on it and deliver it to him. For whatever reason, we used to have a dreadful time with burglars breaking in. And we’re just a bit concerned that some ne’er-do-well might use the opening-up of the castle to come and have a rummage. Illicitly, as it were. Do you see?’
‘Um,’ I said, ‘not real— I mean, just about, I suppose. Can’t you put it in the bank?’
‘Or give it to a friend to look after,’ said Alec, with a pointed look at me. ‘You know, if you want to keep it quiet.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Minnie, ‘that we don’t know where it’s hidden. If it weren’t for the burglars that came a-hunting, I think we’d all have believed that the dastardly Richard took it with him. So, as I hinted in my letter, as well as lurking around being threatening and off-putting, I do also rather want you to find it. I’m almost sure that’s what we’ve decided anyway. Pretty well certain we shan’t go further than that. Because, you see, if we could convert it into hard cash before the day of reckoning, Bluey and I would be able to stretch to a little flat in Edinburgh and a cook-housekeeper, and give Penny a respectable pot as a dowry.’
‘But why on earth do you think that would be troubling news?’ I said. ‘Why not just tell us in the letter?’
‘Well there’s another half-baked sort of a plan, we’re probably not going to …’ Minnie said. She was still wriggling as though in some discomfort. ‘And I was afraid it would sound silly.’
‘It sounds thrilling, don’t you think, Alec?’
Alec’s eyes were shining. ‘Searching a castle for hidden treasure?’ he said. ‘Every little boy’s dream.’
‘And what is it?’ I asked. ‘This treasure?’
At that moment, with perfect timing, the door swung creakingly open and the sepulchral Pugh, now without his mackintosh cape, entered.
‘Your bags are in your rooms, Mrs Gilver, Mr Osborne,’ he said. ‘And your baths are drawn. Follow me.’
4
The best rooms lay in a wing of the castle known as the Bower Lodging and Minnie insisted that Alec and I were to be billeted there, despite the fact that two more wealthy and romantic Americans might be persuaded to pay handsomely. I had been quartered in what Pugh delighted to inform me was the ‘plague chamber’ and Alec was destined for what Pugh delighted even more to inform him was the top tower room, known to its friends as ‘Dead Man’s Drop’.
‘I’ll see you at dinner then, Dandy,’ Alec said, as Pugh pointed my door out to me before dragging him off up another round of the spiral staircase. ‘But if you hear a splash from the moat, do say a prayer.’
I tried to smile. But the long tramp from the drawing room, through a succession of cold dark passageways, and then the long climb up the slimy staircase-tower had depressed my spirits. I have never liked castles. When I stepped into the plague chamber, it would have taken thick carpets and bright lamps to hearten me. As it was, I met with narrow windows, smoky candles, and a copper bath sitting on the hearthrug before a fire. The fire was leaping merrily up the chimney, it was true, but I felt my jaw drop just the same.
‘Drawn!’ I exclaimed. ‘Pugh most definitely said my bath was “drawn”. That means taps and a bathroom by anyone’s reckoning, not … this.’
‘I’d hop in while it’s hot, madam, rather than argue,’ Grant said. ‘It’s a long way from the kitchen.’ She was busily laying out nightgown, cardigan jersey, bed socks and nightcap on the high mound of the bed. June or not, I agreed with her view of the temperature in here.
I shucked off my clothes rapidly and lowered myself into the water, which was not quite warm enough to feel pleasant and only minutes from actual discomfort. I slid down, nevertheless, searching for the angle that would get most of me underwater. I have never been able to decide whether shoulders or knees make one feel colder when they poke out, but I knew I had to get it right first time because any portion of the anatomy emerging wet into the air after a miscalculation would do away with all pleasure completely.
‘Don’t wet your hair yet,’ Grant said, without turning, and I froze. ‘There’s another kettle on the way. Gilly wants me to alter her Sunday coat for her.’
This apparent non-sequitur made perfect sense to me. Grant had, once again, inserted herself into the servants’ hall within minutes, making friends and trading favours. Gilly would go to church in a short coat with a low back-band made from the carved-off hem and a kick-pleat set into its newly-nipped silhouette and I would have warm bath water in return.
‘Thank you, Grant,’ I said. ‘Anything to report?’
‘You’ll have heard about the treasure?’ Grant said. ‘It’s hard to credit, isn’t it? He snatched it right off her neck, you know. He sounds like a bad lot. He sounds – now I come to think of it – like something out of a three-volume novel.’
‘A cad and a bounder,’ I agreed. ‘But no, I didn’t hear about the snatching.’
Grant thrilled to tell me. The Bewer family had a few decent oil paintings, the requisite scrap of tapestry said to have been stitched by the usual suspect, and just one true marvel. A ruby the size of a plum, flanked by a dozen more rubies each the size of a cherry. One of the last torrid intervals in the stormy marriage of Richard and Ottoline saw him swoop down on his wife one night and grab the necklace off her throat, like a madman.
I had heard the next chapter already from Minnie but Grant’s retelling still offered diversion. When Richard left at last – flouncing off into the night – the necklace was nowhere to be found. His wife heaved a sigh and called it a price worth paying to be rid of him.
‘Five bungled burglaries later,’ Grant concluded darkly, ‘she had changed her mind.’
‘But the burglaries stopped,’ I said. ‘So presumably the last burglar found it.’
‘The housekeeper doesn’t believe so,’ said Grant. There was swoop in her voice and a veiled look in her eye as she spoke.
‘Or, just possibly,’ I went on, ‘Richard died. Beirut was mentioned, after all. Hardly healthful. And once he was dead, he necessarily stopped sending thieves back to hunt for the ruby. I wonder if his letters dried up at the same time. That would be a good clue.’
‘The staff have all been here for years,’ said Grant. ‘Pugh and Mrs Ellen and the cook, anyway. They’ll know. After all, they know abou—’ she put a hand up to the side of her face as though overcome by some strong emotion. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I should let you hear it for yourself. And here comes Gilly now.’
I could hear it too, a heavy tread on the stone steps outside my door. Grant, sparing my modesty, held up a sheet as the door opened.
‘Hut watter for your mistress,’ came a gravelly voice, thick with the local brogue. It did not strike me as the voice of a girl who wanted a short coat with a kick-pleat.
‘Thank you, Mrs Ellen,’ Grant said. ‘And since you’ve done the great kindness of bringing the kettles up yourself instead of sending a maid, I wonder if you’d be so kind as to take a seat – over by the window there – and answer some questions.’
Mrs Ellen, well into her seventies and work-worn to an extraordinary degree for a housekeeper, even given the usual plight of a domestic servant in a shrinking staff, clearly had better things to do, but, after setting down the two enormous copper kettles she had lugged up from the kitchen, she rolled down her sleeves and buttoned her cuffs, then sank onto an uncomfortable-looking little three-legged stool that stood beside a rustic spinning wheel in the turret window. I would suggest to Minnie that they would do more good in the bedroom of one of the avid Americans and that I should rather like an armchair.
Once Mrs Ellen was settled, easing her swollen feet out of their clogs and rubbing them together with delight at the unexpected rest, I started the interview. I affected not to notice the easing and rubbing for I only caught a glimpse of either on
account of being crouched in a bath, at eye-level with the hem of her apron.
‘I heard about the ruby,’ I began, and she was off.
‘Oh, it was a sight,’ she said and laid one of her gnarled hands against her breast as though caressing it there. ‘A beautiful sight and a terrible sight. I feared to see the young mistress with all that on her neck, like drops of blood across her shoulders and a puddle of blood above her heart. Like a slit throat, it was. Even before you heard its name you could see it. An unlucky thing. An evil thing.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Grant smirking at me, watching me try to take this in my stride.
‘There’s a painting of the old mistress in it,’ Mrs Ellen went on. ‘But we don’t keep that unlucky lady on show. And there’s another of the young mistress in it too. She hangs it in her own room but she’ll show you. Then you’ll see what a terrible evil thing it is.’
‘I-I shall certainly make sure to,’ I said. Then I stalled. How could one follow that with plain questions about plain matters? Thankfully, Mrs Ellen went on.
‘A cursed thing too,’ she said. ‘Cursed by the one who gave it to the old mistress. It was a wedding present. And it killed her.’
‘I-I-I shall certainly be looking into all that very carefully,’ I said. I shot Grant a dagger of a look. She was biting her cheeks.
‘And if it’s found it’ll kill again.’
‘Well, that’s all very interesting and useful, Mrs Ellen,’ I said. ‘And thank you for the hot water. Now, I’ll let you go about your busy day. Such a terrific lot of work there must be in this old house, especially with guests arriving. Thank you very much for making my bed so prettily and be sure to thank the housemaid for that extremely generous scuttle of coal, won’t you? I’m quite modern, you should assure her. I shan’t be ringing for my fire to be fed. I’m very capable with the tongs and can look after it nicely.’
Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble Page 3