Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘No one,’ said Bluey. ‘It’s out of the question. I think we’ve finally agreed on that score. And I don’t mind losing this place. Not really. Different if we’d had a son, but Penny will settle … I would have said at her husband’s place, but I suppose I must face the possibility that she’ll be in an Edinburgh tenement with Leonard, making supper for all the touring players who’re put up on pallets in her sitting room.’ He sighed and shook the thought away. ‘And of course, I would have liked Mama to end her days here, but it’s only the fact of her days being so many that put the kibosh on that. Looking on the bright side.’ He gave us a brave grin.

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ I said, ‘where and when do you think it went? Your mother seems quite adamant that none of the burglaries was successful.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Bluey. ‘The burglaries. My father’s repeated attempts to snatch the ruby.’

  I could not quite decide what his tone was supposed to convey.

  ‘The thing is,’ he went on, ‘that none of the burglars knew where to look. If my father sent them he’d have sent them to the exact spot, wouldn’t he? And if some rascal killed him for—’

  ‘Killed him?’ I said. ‘You think someone killed your father, Bluey?’

  ‘Well, I believe he’s dead,’ Bluey said, ‘and people have killed for less, haven’t they? I can imagine a disreputable gin-joint somewhere and some even more disreputable blackguard holding a knife to my father’s throat. His letters certainly made it sound as though he had fallen in with some scoundrels.’ He blinked. ‘But where was I?’

  ‘Surmising that if someone killed your father he’d get a proper treasure map out of his victim first,’ said Alec.

  ‘Exactly,’ Bluey agreed. ‘So I’ve always thought that if my father had a hand in it at all, it was only that he told the story – in a club in some far-flung enclave, over one too many brandies, or perhaps he muttered it in delirium from under his mosquito net as he lay dying.’

  ‘Were the burglars foreign?’ I asked, the question occurring to me suddenly.

  Bluey twinkled at me. ‘I had no idea you were such a clever girl,’ he said.

  ‘We had gormlessness dinned into us,’ I said. ‘But many have shaken it off since.’

  ‘They were not foreign,’ Bluey said. ‘Nor even sunburned. So, all in all, I don’t think my father had anything to do with it. But then I should remind myself he had certainly changed a great deal by then.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Alec. ‘Changed how?’

  ‘Well, this very mania about the Cut Throat,’ Bluey said. ‘He was never peculiar about it when I was a child. Or at least not out loud. It stayed locked in its cupboard and my mother wore it from time to time but I had no idea there was such dread festering in him. As long as my mother played along, he seemed quite sane about it. But by golly when she mentioned giving it to Minnie, he blew up like a barrel of dynamite.’

  ‘Were you there?’ I asked. ‘Was poor Minnie there, hoping the floor would open up and swallow her?’

  ‘Thankfully not,’ Bluey said. ‘Mama told me in a letter and warned me not to breathe a word when I brought Minnie to visit.’

  ‘And did you?’ said Alec.

  ‘We were too late,’ Bluey said. ‘He took off before we arrived. The place was in uproar. Poor Minnie must have thought it was a madhouse! No father, no servants, my mother at her wits’ end. I shouldn’t have blamed her if she’d turned tail and run.’ He took a deep gathering breath and smiled as he let it go. ‘But she stayed and we have been happy.’

  ‘And about those burglaries?’ I said. ‘Sorry to harp on them but if your father wasn’t behind them, who was?’

  ‘I did wonder,’ said Bluey, ‘if perhaps … but it’s the purest speculation and probably slanderous.’ Nothing could sound more enthralling; Alec and I waited hardly daring to breathe, and eventually Bluey went on. ‘One of the sacked servants went to Mespring.’ He stopped again.

  ‘You suspect he – it was a footman, wasn’t it? – sent pals back along to pinch it?’ I said. ‘That makes quite a lot of sense, actually. A servant might well know where your father had stashed the thing.’

  ‘And if this footman nabbed it soon after his dismissal,’ said Alec, ‘that explains why none of the later burglars could ever find it.’

  Bluey was looking most uncomfortable now.

  ‘Forgive us,’ I said. ‘Conjecture is a large portion of detecting. I didn’t mean to traduce the man.’

  ‘Although,’ Alec said, ‘if he’s still there, we’d dearly like to speak to him, wouldn’t we Dandy.’

  ‘Well,’ Bluey said, ‘if you’re thinking of going along there, perhaps it’s better if I say what’s on my mind. By way of preparing you. For a start, I don’t think one of our servants would have tried breaking into the castle. Because of the drawbridge.’

  ‘But it’s permanently down,’ I said, remembering the rickety assemblage of pine planks we had driven over so tentatively the day before.

  ‘It is now,’ said Bluey. ‘But that was Mama’s doing. She thought it was the drawbridge – the fact of being able to shut oneself off from the world so effectively – that gave my father the start of his obsession. No more! she decreed. The drawbridge was dismantled and a permanent bridge put in its place. But you see the problem?’

  ‘The servants who’d left wouldn’t know that,’ I said. ‘Yes, I do see. But the one at Mespring would surely hear about it, wouldn’t he? The estate carpenter chatting over his glass of beer at the end of a busy day?’

  Once again, Bluey looked ill at ease. I rather thought it was whenever Mespring House came up that he turned shifty. I gazed at him out of guileless eyes and at last he seemed to crack.

  ‘Oh dash it all,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell you. I think the Annandales themselves sent burglars along from Mespring to take it back. It was something between a tease and an insult when they originally gave it to my grandmother. It’s hard to explain without being mean-spirited.’

  ‘Your mother managed the task nevertheless,’ I assured him. ‘And I told Alec.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Bluey. ‘Well, good. And, you see, the lady in question never married. She stayed at Mespring her whole life through and was still alive at the time we’re speaking of – just when my engagement to Minnie was announced. I think, if she got wind of my father leaving, she might have said to herself: they think my pretty necklace killed my usurper and now has ruined a marriage. Very well then, I shall have it back, for it never did me any harm. If you could … Oh, I don’t know … inveigle your way in there and persuade the family to come clean about it, I’d be awfully grateful. It’s not as if it’s doing them much good: they can’t sell it since they don’t own it and the women of the family can’t swank about in it for the same reason. If it’s only embarrassment over the behaviour of a dotty aunt who’s dead now … assure them we’ll overlook the indiscretion. The hope of that rapprochement at last after all these years is, frankly, the only reason I agreed to your coming. That seems like a job worth doing compared with all Minnie’s twaddle about some innocent American finding it under her mattress like the princess’s pea.’

  ‘Rather ticklish,’ Alec said. At Bluey’s frown he went on, ‘but not beyond us. Heavens, no. We are more than equal to our brief, aren’t we Dan?’

  I was beginning to lose track of some of the fluttering pages of our brief, truth be told. We had a castle to search, a scattered staff to track down and grill, a missing husband – or his grave, at least – to locate, some snooty neighbours to offend. Not to mention the small matter of the Cut Throat: to find for Bluey, guard from the guests, sell for Minnie, hide for Mrs Porteous, present to Penny, and deny all knowledge of for the benefit of the taxman. I groaned, but inwardly.

  7

  The castle plans were everything we had hoped and more: centuries of the things, from ink-blotted fantasies one step removed from ‘here be dragons’ to the most modern of architect’s sketches with ruled elevations and
measurements plotted to the quarter inch. Every cupboard, every crevice, every conceivable hidey-hole, was depicted there.

  It was rather heart-rending to see drawings of the castle’s middle years, after the current structure replaced an earlier tower house. Its four sides were complete then and all six turrets – the four corners and the gatehouse too – were five storeys high and topped with pennants. Then Castle Bewer, as was the way of it in those days, was more like a little town than a single home, with huts and cotts and cattle pens beyond the moat. I imagined all the peasants fleeing their humble dwellings and herding their animals into the castle keep when their watchmen told them marauders were on the way. I should like to say I felt a twinge of fellow-feeling for them, rushing terrified into the protection of the great family’s garrison, but really I thought how annoying to be one of the Bewers of the day and have frightened peasants and livestock packed into one’s courtyard whenever the border grew lively.

  If the early pictures of life at Castle Bewer were diverting, the plans and elevations of the lost drawbridge left me feeling irritated. Quite apart from the fact that it was a sturdy beast of oak and iron, with stout chains – far superior to what had replaced it, it also looked to be of an ingenious design I had not encountered elsewhere and I should have relished telling Hugh about it and having him envy me.

  ‘Very clever,’ Alec said, poring over the drawing of it.

  ‘What do you suppose all those extra wheels and cogs are for?’

  ‘To tip invaders into the moat should they be caught halfway across,’ Alec said. ‘If that’s a pivoting fulcrum.’

  ‘Perhaps that had something to do with Ottoline ripping it out, as well as her wanting to re-join the world. As Hugh always says: “the more there is to go right …” And anyway,’ I went on, ‘she didn’t re-join the world, did she? She put it about that Richard was gravely ill and kept the world at the gate.’

  ‘And the moat, therefore, is fathoms deep to allow for all the workings,’ Alec said, barely listening. ‘Aren’t they usually just deep enough to make a loud splash?’

  ‘It certainly must have taken some digging.’

  ‘We can’t roll these up and march about with them under our arms, you know,’ said Alec. ‘They’re far too fragile and the drawbridge plan is a rarity. We must make copies.’

  ‘If we’re to do as Minnie bid us,’ I said. ‘And ignore Bluey.’

  ‘Oh, I think we should, don’t you?’ Alec was trying to sound thorough and dutiful, for all the world as though permission to scamper about a castle was not a gift to the little boy still residing deep inside him. Were the castle empty, I thought, he might set out with a wooden sword in his belt and a dustbin lid over his arm, the way Donald and Teddy did when ‘playing at knights’. I remembered buttering Donald’s ears to prise off a fruit sieve he had decided made a perfect …

  ‘What’s the name of the face-covering on a suit of armour?’ I said.

  ‘A bascinet?’ said Alec. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just maternal wool-gathering.’

  ‘How should we proceed?’ Alec asked, rightly ignoring me. ‘Dungeons to attics? The other way?’

  ‘Neither,’ I said. ‘We should search the rooms the actors are to occupy now, before they’re here, then the rooms that are to be rented to guests; we certainly can’t go poking about once the budget of Americans arrives. And we need to make sure we’ve searched the rooms the company might be filling with all their junk: costumes and props and the like. The uninhabited areas – the attics and dungeons, as you say – can wait.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Alec. ‘Makes a lot of sense. In which case, I think today’s first job is to commune with one of the family and draw up search plans of the various areas on separate sheets. Keep things tidy. How about you?’

  ‘I can’t decide,’ I said. ‘I shall need to ask Ottoline to see those letters from Richard. I hope she’s kept them. And the visit to Mespring to ask if the mad aunt pinched the ruby looms. But for now I think I shall track down Nanny, if she’s still alive. Or see if her neighbours remember her saying anything enlightening. Shall I send Penny up here, if I run into her?’

  For I had not been misled by that airy ‘one of the family’; not in the least. And while I held no great hopes for the case as a whole, if I managed to detach Penny from Leonard and affix her to Alec, Bluey and Minnie would surely thank me. For myself, while Alec’s inevitable marriage to someone or other would deal a blow to our friendship, I was beginning to yearn for it as for the second boot dropping.

  Alec was right about being methodical. Nevertheless, as I passed through the castle’s corridors, I could not help looking closely at the stones of the walls around me. One in particular seemed to have no mortar at all, just dark crevices at its edges, and I went so far as to dig my fingers in and give it a tug. Nothing happened except for a broken nail. I rubbed the ragged edge and imagined Grant tutting. Still, I refused to feel foolish: Mrs Porteous in this enlightened age still wanted the cursed object bricked up or buried and so it seemed quite easy to imagine that thirty years ago someone might have taken matters into his – or her – own hands and actually done so. Who … was another question.

  ‘Bricked up or buried,’ I repeated to myself. I stopped walking and stamped a heel down hard on the floor beneath my feet. It was made of solid slabs of the same grey stone that formed the castle walls. There were no bricks to be seen. Scotland as a rule does not go in for them; the loftiest bank headquarters to the lowliest coal shed at the bottom of a cottage garden being built from stone, as though to last millennia. If the lumps of stone underfoot were as thick as those forming the walls, nothing could be buried there. I stepped over to a window and bent close to the tiny panes to judge the depth of the wall into which they were set.

  Movement below caught my eye. The company in its entirety had arrived. There were two carts and a motor van pulled up near my Cowley and swarms of young people were busily unpacking wicker trunks and cardboard suitcases and dumping them down on the cobbles with great thuds. The cobbles, I noted. There was no earth anywhere that would allow objects to be buried. At least, I concluded, that would make searching somewhat quicker. Then, as a dreadful thought occurred to me, I turned away from the windows and hurried towards the head of a nearby staircase, hoping to meet someone who could set my mind at rest.

  The welcome sight of Minnie with Ottoline on her arm met me as I burst out of a door into the sunshine of the courtyard. They were evidently on their way to survey the great arrival and Minnie hailed me with delight and bade me take Ottoline’s other arm to hasten their progress. Penny was standing up in one of the carts, dressed in breeches. She waved and hallooed as she caught sight of us advancing.

  ‘I have a question, Minnie dear,’ I said. There was plenty time to ask it for Ottoline’s progress was a kind of doddering shuffle and the bustle of unloading was still yards away. ‘About the curse. A technical question, I suppose one would say. What exactly counts as the castle, in your opinion? I was looking at some plans and saw that there was a village all around in what’s now the … park,’ I selected as a description, in case ‘field’ would hurt her feelings. ‘Does the site of all those former buildings constitute part of the homestead still? Or does the castle start once you cross the moat? Or even at some mid-riparian point of the moat? For, if we’re to dig up the fiel— park in case the Cut Throat is buried there, I don’t think we can do it discreetly and certainly not if the ground is covered in motorcars, dogcarts and charabancs.’

  Ottoline had ground to a halt completely and was staring aghast at me, breathless and pale. Had she forgotten that she was supposed to be as deaf as a post, I wondered. She ought not to have heard a word of what I had said so softly to Minnie.

  ‘Good grief, that’s a horrid thought,’ Minnie said, stretching up to look over the open end of the courtyard towards the field rolling away behind the castle to some quite distant bushes at its edge. ‘But put it from your mind. I am not well versed in the … migh
t one call it the theology of curses or is that blasphemous? … Well, anyway, I think it’s safe to say “the castle” means the walls. Starting on the inside edge of the moat. It was centuries before the ruby came to us that the field was covered in hovels and pigpens and—’ She broke off. ‘Mama,’ she yelled, close to Ottoline’s ear, ‘do you need to rest?’

  Ottoline was leaning heavily on me and, from the white marks on Minnie’s arm where her fingers were digging in, was leaning no less heavily on that side either. But at least she was breathing again and her cheeks had a little colour back in them. Perhaps a little too much colour, actually; two spots of deep pink. I squeezed her arm in an attempt at a friendly reminder of her deafness, even while I wondered which of my words had unnerved her so.

  Then as she pattered on a few more steps, all the glorious commotion surrounded us and distracted me.

  ‘Meet my mother and my grandmother, everyone!’ Penny shouted, still standing on the cart. ‘Mother, that’s Julian – Malcolm and second murderer – just squeezing past you there. Granny, those are Francis, who’s Angus and a doctor, and George, who’s Lennox and a king. And those are – Oh well, thanes and kings. You’ll get to know everyone soon.’

  She was wrong, of course. Most of the players remained a sea of names and a separate sea of faces throughout The Cut Throat Affair, only a few ever rising to prominence.

  Minnie was in mid-nod to the first of the young men, who was indeed sidling by with his arms full of bundles of velvet, when she froze. ‘Malcolm’s not the second murderer!’ she cried. ‘Now, Penny, I really must put my foot down. It’s bad enough that the play has changed but if Leonard’s going to turn all modern and peculiar—’

  There was a ripple of laughter among the gathered actors, but it was not unkind and a tiny little sprite of a woman trotted forward to explain.

  ‘Lady MacDuff,’ she said. ‘Or Pauline, if you’d rather.’

  ‘I’d rather Miss Something,’ said Minnie, prissily for her.