‘This afternoon will be rather more tricky,’ he said, ‘because the best rooms – soon to be filled with Roosebilts and Vanderfeldts – were scraped back to the stone and titivated around the time of the putative stashing. And actually, it occurs to me now that that might explain the procession of bewildered burglars. If Richard put the thing in a cache that could only be found by looking for the join, as it were, and then the join was papered over with Morris’s best squashed frogs – that’s about the right vintage, isn’t it? – well then, poor puzzled burglars, trailing about hopelessly.’
‘Are there squashed frogs?’ I said, for the rooms I had seen so far had escaped that particular element of Victoriana.
‘I spoke generally,’ said Alec.
‘Anyway, Nanny reckons Richard didn’t have any caches,’ I said. ‘Not in what we’ve agreed to call “the fabric of the castle” itself anyway. There was a rocking horse with a hollow back, though. Let’s ask Minnie if it was dragged out and put in Penny’s nursery or if it’s languished in an attic all these years.’
‘Or if it was tossed on a bonfire, hollow back and all,’ said Alec.
‘That’s a nasty thought.’
‘One thing though, Dan. Would Nanny necessarily know about “the fabric”?’
‘This one would,’ I said. ‘She’s a tartar who knows everything. So there’s our afternoon. Search the attics for a rocking horse. And we might as well search them completely and only get filthy once, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Perhaps Grant can lift the cobwebs off us without breaking them and turn them to use,’ Alec said. ‘Did Nanny have anything else to add, since she’s so well informed?’
I shook my head. ‘A lot of gossip of the personal sort,’ I told him. ‘She took rather a starry-eyed view of Richard– ‘my sunny boy Bluey’s lovely daddy’ she said – and had trouble incorporating his latter behaviour into the picture. Oh, but she did say this: the Cut Throat wasn’t always called the Cut Throat. It’s first name was the Judas Jewel, apparently.’
‘It doesn’t get any more appealing the more we learn,’ said Alec and despite the warm sun and the sheltered courtyard both of us shivered briefly.
9
Luncheon crackled with tension. Leonard was mulish, despite Grant’s innovations, and Penny, it transpired, was one of those annoying individuals who becomes more and more cheerful and chatty when someone is cross with her. She prattled on about costumes and scenery, reminisced about earlier productions and kept putting a hand on Leonard’s arm to draw him into the conversation. Minnie was a-flutter because of a telegram that had just been delivered announcing the early arrival of one of the guests – the Vanderfeldts and Roosebilts, as Alec called them.
Moray Dunstane and Sarah Byrne were stony-faced. Perhaps they had seen their quarters and found them wanting, or perhaps they were unused to not being the centre of attention at every party. After Bluey had enquired about counties of birth, school and regiments and got nowhere, he retired to his inner thoughts and Sarah spent the rest of the meal looking as though she were sucking a lemon rather than consuming a well-cooked piece of white fish and some cold lamb with rice and mint jelly.
Ottoline did not help matters any when she suddenly asked in her ‘downstairs voice’, the foghorn blare of a deaf old lady: ‘How was Nanny?’
‘Oh, tremendous!’ I bellowed back at her. ‘Full of good ideas.’
Ottoline stared at me. ‘About Richard’s whereabouts?’ she said.
‘Hidey-holes,’ I yelled, feeling rather foolish, for it is not a word suited for yelling. ‘Which reminds me, Minnie. Did Penny have the family rocking horse in her nursery as a child?’
Moray frowned with a great show of puzzlement as well he might. Sarah was still too annoyed to pay attention.
‘Good Lord,’ said Bluey. ‘Stumpy? I had forgotten all about Stumpy. No, he went up into the farthest reaches when I went off to school and has been there ever since. Why?’
‘Ah,’ I said, with a single flicked glance at the actors. ‘No particular reason, just something Nanny said.’
‘About Stumpy?’ said Ottoline. ‘What were you asking? Oh! Oh my! The hollow—’
‘Mama,’ bellowed Bluey. ‘Pas devant.’
Sarah looked about her to left and right, and seeing no servants that Bluey might be referring to, correctly deduced his meaning. ‘Pas devant moi?’ she demanded. ‘Would you rather we took our meals in the kitchen? Or perhaps the carpenters could set up a trestle in the courtyard and we needn’t come inside at all.’
‘My dear lady,’ said Bluey, ‘I could cut out my tongue. I am writhing with misery to have upset you.’ Sarah inclined her head, mollified, but Bluey kept talking. ‘So they taught you French at … what was it? Bethnal Green Girls’, did they?’
‘Oh Bluey,’ said Minnie. ‘Dandy, do kick him if you can reach. Mrs Dunstane, ignore my goose of a husband, won’t you?’
‘Miss Byrne,’ Sarah hissed. ‘Since I’m not to be in on the “Dandys” and “Blueys” apparently.’ She stood and swept towards the door, then as she realised that she was sweeping alone she turned and skewered Moray with an evil glare. ‘Are you just going to sit there?’ she said.
‘Till I’ve finished my lamb, my lamb,’ Moray said. ‘Yes, I rather think so.’
‘Well!’ said Sarah and, as she flounced out, she somehow managed to give the impression of a great many bouncing petticoats and even nodding feathers, like something from the court of George III, even though she was dressed in tweed and jersey. It made me look forward to seeing her act, even while it made me determined to keep out of her way generally. I was glad Alec had searched her room already, for Lord knows what she would make of it if she were in residence while it happened. I would be interested to see her have the vapours but not if I had caused them.
‘I rather think we should get round the guest quarters first, darling,’ I said to Alec as we left the dining room at last. We had refused coffee and forgone our usual cigarettes to be away from the atmosphere that Moray, Ottoline and Penny had produced between them. ‘Before the paying guests pole up, you know.’
‘There’s plenty of time,’ said Alec. ‘Let’s do the rocking horse. Don’t say you’re as cold as all that? I mean I know little girls grow up to be women and little boys grow up to be bigger boys, but come on!’
‘Oh, very well, since you insist,’ I said. ‘I shall force myself.’ And we broke into quite a steady trot.
‘I can’t think why no one’s checked before,’ said Alec when we were round the first bend in the nearest stair.
‘I think Ottoline simply forgot about it,’ I said. ‘And judging by his puzzlement just now, Bluey too.’
In a house where the principal rooms were crooked and vaulted and reached by struggling through stone warrens and bobbing up and down pointless little stairways, it was to be expected that the path to the attics would be a torturous one. Even at that, Alec and I considered trails of breadcrumbs or at least chalked arrows on the floor as we passed. At long last, though, we came to the head of a particularly steep and uneven spiral with a stout arched door set across the top, quite without any kind of landing, and a lock which looked the equal of the key – as large as a pantomime prop – which Pugh had entrusted to us.
Alec fitted it, turned it with both hands and a grimace, and stumbled down a step as the door swung outwards, creaking so very ominously that both of us were nudged beyond what my sons call ‘the creeps’ and started to giggle.
‘Oh, let’s get it over with,’ Alec said. ‘This is ridiculous and highly unlikely to yield fruit.’
I turned up the flame on the lantern Pugh had unearthed for us and raised it above my head as we passed through the doorway into a long narrow attic populated by stacked trunks and shrouded lumps. There was a little scuttling, but no more than happens when one opens a boathouse in spring and, if anything, there was less dust here than in the attics at Gilverton, for there were no windows to let it in and no wood to be nibbled by
mice and moths and turned to gritty mounds. There were, on the other hand, more cobwebs of more distinct kinds than I had ever encountered. Swaying ropes of it eddied in the draught we made by opening the door, and trembling lacy spans of it stretched across every corner and joined each object to the next. Worst of all were the single invisible threads of it that caressed our faces every time we moved.
‘Ugh,’ Alec said. ‘And what on earth is that smell?’
‘Mushrooms of some kind, I expect,’ I said. ‘Hugh took me to a lecture in London once on the composition of mediaeval wattle – or do I mean daub? – and there is a great deal of flora and fauna in the recipe as well as clay. A perfect breeding ground for mushrooms, I daresay, once a few slates slip and let the rain in.’
‘I shall steam my head over mentholated crystals later,’ Alec said. ‘The spores from any mushroom that raises that stink could surely carry one off. For now …’ He shook out his handkerchief and held it to his face. I sniffed, and decided to risk it. The air was close and foetid enough without trying to breathe it through a mask of cotton.
‘A rocking horse should be easy to spot,’ I said. ‘At least if it’s a decent size and isn’t draped in a dust shee— Oh!’
‘What?’ said Alec. I had stopped dead and he clutched at my shoulders to keep from toppling me.
‘Ssh!’ I hissed. ‘Alec, there’s someone up here.’
‘Where?’ he whispered back. ‘Who?’
I nodded over into the far corner where a man was standing stock-still, presumably hoping we would leave without seeing him.
‘Hie there!’ Alec said. ‘Who is it?’
The figure remained absolutely as still as a stone and I was aware of a crawling sensation climbing the back of my neck.
‘Don’t worry,’ I called. ‘We shan’t get you in trouble. Did you hear about the rocking horse and come to look for yourself?’
Again the figure did not speak or move.
‘Well, answer, can’t you?’ Alec said, seizing the lantern and beginning to pick his way towards the stranger. ‘What’s that you’re holding?’ He stopped short. ‘Dandy, stay back! He’s armed.’
My mind flooded with wild fears. Was it yet another burglar, come so many years after the last of his predecessors, meeting us here by the merest, blackest chance? Or was it— Alec laughing intruded upon my thoughts.
‘It’s a suit of armour!’ he cried. ‘What ninnies we are! It’s a suit of armour on a stand with a pair of lances.’
‘If you’d said he was armed with lances, I might have guessed as much,’ I said, the humiliation of having been so foolish making me grumble. I squeezed past a hillock of elderly suitcases and joined Alec at the knight’s side. ‘Nanny did say that they scrapped suits of armour and took down collections of swords to pretty up the castle for Minnie coming. My heart is still hammering.’ I took a deep breath. ‘What’s that he’s holding? Not the pair of jousting sticks. I mean what’s that bundle he’s got under his arm?’
It looked like a parcel of sacking and it smelled like a parcel of sacking that had been home to many mice over long, quiet years. Alec poked it gingerly and stepped back as it disintegrated into a shower of foul-smelling scraps.
‘I think that might have been the under-suit,’ Alec said. ‘The canvas long johns worn underneath the plate, you know.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s still wearing his “winter underclothes” – I refuse to use that expression. Or he was until they rotted away. Look at his knees and around his feet.’ Alec bent over and peered. More of the same mouse-nibbled and moth-eaten scraps had fallen out of the joints of the suit over the years so that the knight stood in a patch of sackcloth confetti.
‘The set under his arm must have been a spare,’ Alec said. ‘He seems very well-equipped, with a change of drawers and two javelins, doesn’t he?’
‘Poor old thing,’ I said. Alec was scrutinising the helmet and visor. He whistled softly.
‘Poor old thing indeed,’ he said. ‘One gets so used to seeing pairs of these things guarding staircases one forgets they were soldiers’ uniforms once. This one had a pretty rough time of it in some battle or other. Look at the dents in the back plate and look at that crushed place on the helmet where someone clonked him on the head. Those came from spikes, Dandy. Can you imagine it? Someone swung a mace and caught this chap right on the bean. I thought we had it bad in the trenches but this makes me shudder.’
‘Come away,’ I said gently. ‘Come and find a rocking horse. That’s much more pleasant work.’
It did not take much finding. Even with a dust sheet thrown over it, there is no mistaking the outline of a little horse and this one was not, in fact, all that little. I pulled the sheet off, holding my breath against yet more of the mice and mushrooms, and found myself face to face with a rather beautiful carving. It was not painted; instead the wood was varnished and made a good effort at looking like the burnished coat of a well-groomed chestnut pony. The mane was no more than a brush and the tail was close to gone, leaving only a sprout of stiff black hairs like a besom. I wondered if perhaps this was how ‘Stumpy’ had got his name.
‘The buckles on the saddle have rusted to nothing,’ Alec said, handing me the lantern to begin attacking them. ‘I wonder if they’ll even open. Oh!’ At his touch, just as the knight’s underclothes had, the rotted saddle leathers on Stumpy’s back gave way and his stirrups dropped to the floor with a dull clank. Alec lifted the saddle clear and put it down on a nearby trunk top. I held the lantern over the broad brown back, seeing quite clearly the square shape of a lid set in there.
Alec’s eyes danced. In the light thrown upwards from the lantern he looked like a gleeful goblin.
‘What’s the bet?’ he said. ‘Cut Throat or no Cut Throat? For a fiver.’
‘No Cut Throat,’ I replied. ‘Something even better!’
Alec put his finger into the little scooped-out place that had been carved into Stumpy’s back to allow the lid to open and lifted it gently.
I gasped.
In the square hollow, there sat a velvet box, unmistakably a jewel-box, rounded and gilded and not even faded, so tightly had the wooden lid fitted over it all these years.
‘I’ll take a cheque but I prefer cash,’ Alec said, reaching in and drawing the box out. ‘Oh and there’s an envelope too! Sealed, no less. What a turn-up.’
He lifted the lid of the jewel box and held it out so that the lantern light could shine in.
‘Huh,’ he said.
Inside, resting upon the usual pleated satin, was a three-strand pearl choker with a diamond clasp. And in the cushioned-satin centre a pair of rings had been affixed with dressmaker’s pins. There was a diamond cluster in an old-fashioned and barnacle-like setting and a hoop of what might have been rubies in dire need of cleaning, but which I rather suspected were garnets.
‘I insist on cash, I’m afraid,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Alec. ‘How can you claim this is “better”?’
‘Oh now come on!’ I said. ‘Of course this is better. We knew there was a ruby necklace missing and finding it would have been lovely. But we didn’t even know about this lot! And we’ve found a hidden letter too. Who’s it from?’
‘Let’s take it downstairs,’ Alec said. ‘If it falls to bits when we try to open it – a hat-trick of disintegration – I don’t want to be grubbing about trying to pick it all up again.’
Alec spread a large handkerchief on a table under his bedroom window and set the jewel box and the envelope down in the middle of it. We both stared at the direction on the yellowed paper.
To my granddaughter
‘Who had a granddaughter who lived in this house?’ I said. ‘Bluey was an only son and Richard was an only son. But it’s modern writing and this paper is Victorian. No older, I’m sure. Open it Alec and see if there’s a letter.’
‘You seem more interested in the letter than the jewels,’ Alec grumbled, but he did as I bade him and even he looked avid when he d
rew out a single folded sheet and opened it. It crackled but did not break. Alec placed it carefully back on the handkerchief and we both bent to read the few words written there.
Precious Child, May trinkets decorate your life but never change it for good or ill.
I opened the velvet box and we both stared into it.
We were still staring when Grant, with a peremptory rap, strode in.
‘I thought I’d find you here, madam,’ she said, ‘when I couldn’t run you to ground anywhere else. And I needed Mr Osborne for a fitting. Mr Dunstane is twice his size and the third murderer’s leggings will sag if I don’t take them in. Are you still thinking of searching the best rooms? Could you manage it without us this afternoon? There’s a guest on her way from Carlisle in a taxi, by the way. Can you imagine? All the way from Carlisle in a taxi! If she keeps spending at that rate she’ll be an answer to everyone’s prayers.’
‘Grant,’ I said, as much to break into her bumptiousness as anything; she really was getting beyond belief. ‘Come over here and tell me what you make of these, please. First impression.’ I closed the sheet into its fold again but left the box open.
Grant joined us, pulled the table smartly away from the window, stepped behind it – the better to see in the stronger light – and bent close.
‘What about them, madam?’ she said.
‘Mid-Victorian?’
Grant shook her head. ‘Earlier than that. That clasp is a copy of the clasp on Her Majesty’s wedding choker from the King and Queen of Denmark. See how pretty it is, the way it looks like a tiny pair of hands folded in prayer?’
I had not noticed more than that the clasp was set with diamonds but she was right.
‘But doesn’t that mean simply that it was made after the wedding?’ I said.
Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble Page 10