‘Drat,’ I said, the mention of cottages reminding me. ‘I meant to go back to see Nanny today. See if I could shake loose that little thing that’s bothering me. I could do it now and leave this to you.’
Alec groaned. ‘Dandy, by this time in a case there are so many little things bothering you, you might as well be lying on a bed of nails. Much better to stay here and finish what we started.’
Because he had annoyed me, I said something then that I otherwise might have bitten my lip upon. ‘So she’s not an heiress, whatever her other charms.’
Alec bent lower over his papers and continued reading.
Then, because I felt a bit of a rotter, I redoubled my efforts to find Richard’s writing. Therefore the question of what I wanted to ask Nanny, as well as all the other little worries, were set to one side and soon overwhelmed by the many events of the day.
And find Richard’s writing we did. In the very place we should have guessed it would be found: the official record of all the events that the engraved invitations, be-tasselled menu cards and, latterly, photographs unofficially commemorated too. Mrs Porteous had even spoken of it to us. We were caught between patting ourselves on the backs and kicking ourselves for fools.
The first I knew was Alec leaping to his feet and snatching up the scrap of paper we had found with the pearls and rings.
‘Aha!’ he said. ‘There’s no way Anne Annandale would be recording Bluey’s birth in the Bewer family Bible, now is there?’
‘Oh jolly good!’ I said, leaping to mine and joining him. ‘Is it definitely the same hand?’
‘No doubt about it,’ Alec said, putting our little note down on the other side of the open flyleaf. I studied the long list of names and dates and the few words we had come to know so well and nodded.
‘Not only the same hand,’ I said, ‘but the same ink. I’d bet it was the same pen.’
‘No question at all,’ said Alec. ‘Richard Bewer wrote his son’s birth into the Bible and Richard Bewer wrote a note to an unborn granddaughter and hid it in his old rocking horse, with a selection of his Aunt Dorothy’s trinkets.’
He grimaced.
‘Yes,’ I said, agreeing with the grimace. I daresay I wore one of my own. ‘That sounded more and more ridiculous as it went on. Why those trinkets, apart from anything else? Shouldn’t it have been the Cut Throat?’
A moment of perfect silence settled over us. I gazed into space. Alec trained his eyes upon the open Bible.
‘We’ve been fools,’ he said, breaking the silence.
‘Dolts,’ I agreed.
‘That note can’t have been meant to accompany two worn-out rings and an indifferent strand of pearls.’
‘It was madness to think so.’
‘That note would only make sense if Richard was hiding the Cut Throat.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So someone swapped them. But why not just destroy the note?’
Alec, though, was not listening. He did not even glance at me jabbing the note with my finger to emphasise my point. He was still peering at the list of dates in the flyleaf.
‘This isn’t right,’ he said. ‘Harold and Beulah were married on the twenty-first of November in 1834. But, if Richard’s hundred is coming on the thirty-first of October 1934, that means he was born before the wedding. That can’t be right, can it Dandy?’
‘It’s a fraction disorganised if so,’ I said. ‘Unless the wedding was all set, a race between the vicar and the stork, and he really did come early and confound them.’
‘But they were cutting it fine at that,’ Alec said. ‘If one’s planning a wedding where time is of the essence, one doesn’t leave it until the last minute, surely.’
‘Perhaps she didn’t let on,’ I said. ‘Perhaps she didn’t know.’
‘How could she not— No, don’t tell me,’ Alec said. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘What date’s in the Bible for Richard’s birth?’ I said. ‘Maybe they’re miscounting.’
‘None at all,’ said Alec. ‘They drew a veil.’
‘Let me have another look at the scrapbook,’ I said. ‘See if perhaps any light can be shed there, by way of a christening invitation.’ I turned a few of the heavy board pages and only then noticed something that had escaped me.
‘Hmph,’ I said. ‘Nothing. A thick veil, as you say, firmly drawn over Richard’s birth. Well, I suppose it would be, wouldn’t it? No invitation, no order of service.’
‘How strange,’ said Alec.
‘Well, yes but Richard was there. No one doubted it. It’s not like all those terrible stillbirths in some family Bibles. Screeds of them sometimes all with the same name until one of them survives the cradle and the name sticks.’ I shuddered.
‘As you say,’ said Alec, in a musing sort of voice. ‘The record matters most if the child itself is gone. Without the child or the record then it’s as if it never happened.’
I remained quiet, letting him think, for I knew he was thinking furiously. I could practically hear the cogs turning and see the thoughts spinning off the machinery to float free.
‘We agree the note in the rocking horse was too portentous for Aunt Dorothy’s rings,’ he said at last. ‘But don’t you think it’s odd that whoever found the hidey-hole swapped the trinkets instead of just getting rid of the note?’
‘You know I do!’ I said. ‘I just said so.’
Alec blinked. ‘Really? I wasn’t listening. This is important, Dandy. If someone found the stash, why would not that someone simply rip the note up while taking the Cut Throat away?’
‘I’ve just said all this!’
‘Good,’ said Alec. ‘Because I think you’re right. A birth recorded in a Bible is all the more essential if there’s no lusty baby as independent evidence. In just the same way, the note was left as evidence … of something that would be less convincing in the note’s absence. But what?’
‘Depends on who,’ I said.
‘Not Ottoline,’ said Alec. ‘Unless you think she was acting when we showed her the granddaughter note.’
I cast my mind back and tried to think about exactly how Otto had reacted. ‘She was surprised to be reminded about the hollow place in the rocking horse,’ I said. ‘I think she knew once but had genuinely forgotten about it. Which she would not have done if she’d made the switch.’
‘And then afterwards,’ Alec said, ‘seeing the velvet box, she was truly astonished. She really thought we’d found the Cut Throat, didn’t she?’
‘So it can’t have been Ottoline.’
‘But why did she lie and say it wasn’t Richard’s writing?’ said Alec.
‘Protective habit? She’s still fond of him after all these years. Perhaps she thought – since the note seemed so dotty – better lay it at the door of a dotty old lady whose reputation doesn’t matter.’
‘Not that Richard is exactly an advertisement for steadiness,’ Alec said. ‘So Bluey alone or Bluey and Minnie together?’
‘Doing what?’ I said.
‘Making the swap, of course. I reckon they found the Cut Throat years ago, sold it and spent the proceeds and are trying to stop Ottoline finding out, with all this nonsense about a treasure hunt.’
I shook my head. ‘She’s been pretending to be deaf for years so she can keep herself apprised of all the goings on,’ I said. ‘They’d have let something slip if they had secrets. And anyway, Bluey and Minnie had no reason I can imagine to leave the note and swap the trinkets. They’d have emptied the hollow and called it a day.’
‘Are you sure?’ Alec said. ‘If Bluey was forging letters to soothe his mother perhaps, in the same vein of kindness, they left it as a treat for Penny.’
‘And then forgot?’ I countered. ‘No. When we reminded Bluey about the rocking horse, he showed only a sort of nostalgic surprise.’
‘As he would if he were trying to cover up his … Ach,’ Alec said. ‘I give up. I’m ready to go back to thinking Aunt Dorothy did it.’
‘Or Anne Annan
dale,’ I said.
‘Or Mrs Porteous! Or Pugh!’ said Alec.
‘They weren’t here when—’
‘Dandy, for heaven’s sake!’ said Alec. ‘Leonard’s first drama master, Gilly’s young man from the petrol garage. I’m trying to tell you I don’t care and I want to stop talking about it before I run mad.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Let’s stick to what we know. Richard left the Cut Throat behind for a future granddaughter. Bluey sent forged letters, as though from overseas, with Gunn’s assistance, to help his mother find the abandonment a blessing. Someone found the ruby in Stumpy’s back and put trinkets in its place. And the burglars … Are they real or are they fakes too?’
Alec groaned a groan so long I wondered if one of the actors had given him breathing lessons.
‘Let’s concentrate on the play until after tonight,’ I said. ‘Or see if we can offer any practical help to Minnie and Bluey. Sit in on Penny’s lecture and make admiring noises. Eat the teas and call them delicious in ringing tones.’
‘I’m not sitting on a straw-filled bolster, listening to a lecture,’ Alec said. ‘I shall go and see if Bess needs help with the swords and these cannon that there are somewhere apparently.’
‘Only if you’re willing to help lug them up on to the stage.’
‘She’s a big strong girl,’ said Alec. ‘Besides, they roll.’ And off he went to play at knights and soldiers.
21
There is a particular feel to the air, I learned that day at Castle Bewer, during the daylight hours preceding a first night. Although I have never been far enough up a mountainside to know the breathlessness of altitude, I imagine that is similar. And although I have never stood on a wooden floor with a wasps’ nest under it, feeling the throb and thrum through the soles of my feet, I imagine it to be much the same too. Everyone in the castle could feel it that long midsummer’s day. At first it lent a sense of cheerfulness and optimism to proceedings. Penny’s lecture, on the true history behind the story of the play, was well attended and well received and the first of the teas laid out in the gallery was met with smacked lips and hardly a grumble about the cost at all. Mrs Porteous’s scones were little clouds of buttery heaven – breaking open sweet and light – to murmurs of approval all round. And getting a Scotswoman to approve scones baked by another’s hand is a feat. The sandwiches were meat paste but the bread white and fresh and the crusts long gone. The tea was best black Indian but piping hot and plenty of it and the little cakes were topped with blood red icing, which entranced everyone and led to much quotation. Even the treasure hunt went off better than anyone could have hoped: everywhere one looked there was another band of strangers, one of them clutching the little notice handed over with the tickets. They scuttled around the corridors, gawping and giggling, and enjoying themselves tremendously, without ever actually looking too hard, since none of them was quite sure it was truly allowed.
I watched a family of five – a clerk sort of a father, his tidy wife, their grown son and daughter and a chap who was either the son’s friend or the daughter’s follower – standing in front of Beulah’s portrait in the great hall, studying the flyer and gazing at the painting.
‘The Briar Rose,’ read the father, ‘was given as a wedding present and has been missing in the castle since Beulah Bewer’s untimely death at Christmas in 1836.’
I stared along with them, wondering about this woman who had seduced Harold Bewer away from his intended bride, who had borne him a child mere weeks before she married him, who had died so wretchedly at the foot of a ditch, young and beautiful with all of her life ahead, leaving feuds and curses and heartbreak behind her.
‘She doesn’t look very happy,’ said the clerk’s daughter, and the young man who was not her brother put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze.
‘If I find the ruby for you,’ he said, ‘promise me you won’t wear it with that sulky look on your face!’
‘If we find the ruby, it’s a four-way split,’ said the girl’s father. They all laughed but the wife and daughter looked a little wistfully at the painted gems as they began to walk away.
‘Ahem,’ I said. I could not resist it. The mother, who was at the back of the group, turned with an enquiring glance. I raised my eyes and nodded at the top of the picture where one of the silver lockets hung, camouflaged against the ornate frame. She squinted then stood back, eyes wide and gasped.
‘Cissie!’ The daughter turned back. ‘Dad! Read that bit off of the bottom again.’
‘Several other necklaces are hidden around the house where a lucky treasure seeker might stumble across them, while on the trail of the Briar Rose,’ he read. ‘Happy hunting!’
‘There’s one right there,’ said the wife. ‘Look. Up there.’
Her daughter had both hands clasped under her chin and was bouncing up and down with glee.
‘Well, now, Em,’ said the man. ‘How do we know that’s one of the prizes and not someone’s private property. We don’t want to be thrown out before the play, do we? We don’t want to be arrested for theft and get our names in the paper.’
‘Oh, come on!’ his daughter exclaimed. ‘It’s a necklace and it’s hooked over the picture of the lady who owned the ruby. It couldn’t be more clear.’
‘Less of your cheek to your father,’ her mother said, but it was too late. One of the young men had leapt onto the back of the other and was reaching up. He unhooked the necklace, jumped down, and handed it to the girl.
‘Oh!’ she said, with a soft cry of delight. It was a cheap little thing but even I had to admit that the moment had some charm. She opened the fastening and took out a tiny twist of rice paper which, when unfolded and held to the light, gave up the words: congratulations on your find, from the Bewers.
The note blew all their doubts away. No one, I thought to myself as I walked off to leave them to their wonderment, puts a note in a hidden place unless they want it to be found and read. No one forgets that they have planted such a thing. I did not know what any of it meant but I felt, somehow, that I was getting closer and closer to the moment when I would understand everything.
As I reached the head of the stairs, I could still hear the clerk’s family regaling another band of treasure seekers and, by the time I had been to find Minnie and tell her the news, it had spread like a plague throughout the castle, now like a dovecot with all the flitting and twittering in it, as quite forty people dashed around, newly enthused. Only the clerk’s family, whose day could not reach higher heights, sat relaxed in the gallery over cups of tea and told and retold their story to all comers, omitting – I was intrigued to hear – my part in the proceedings.
Things did not start to turn until the end of the afternoon, when the day should have been winding down into gentle evening: the last of the tea-takers not minding that Gilly was sweeping; the last of the lecture-attendees understanding that Penny had to leave the chapel and promising to send all remaining questions in a letter. The motors full of sightseers should have been pulling away across the field and leaving the Bewers to cocktails and ease. Instead, as the hour of the curtain approached, the thrum of the wasps under the floor and the crackle in the air around our heads became harder and harder to ignore and, by the time the first ticket-holders slid into the front row of wooden benches, the day had tipped from anticipation to something more like dread.
The weather was not helping. The clouds that had begun high and pale in the midsummer sky had lowered and darkened as the afternoon wore on and they trapped a close mugginess under them. There was not a breath of wind. The elms looked yellowish and unreal, paler than the clouds behind them, and the birds quieted hours early, taking shelter and leaving an uneasy silence.
‘This is the first time I’ve been glad it’s Macbeth and not the Dream,’ Minnie said. ‘This all helps rather and it would have been disastrous for the Athenian glade. Did you know we’re sold out? And Mespring isn’t even open yet. These are people who’ve come just for us alone. Now
come to the dressing room, Dandy, and get your costume on.’
I had never seen the backstage properly before. Sarah Byrne had her own dressing room somewhere and I daresay that the men, of whom there were so many, were hugger-mugger in the little rooms that lined the passageway, erstwhile still rooms and game stores and the like. We ladies, from Lady Macduff down to the lowliest of the non-speaking parts, had been given a chamber which started life as a dairy, to judge from its slate floor and its many shelves, but which had been kitted up with getting on for a dozen dressing tables, ready to receive the fairies and their queen, and was blindingly bright from an electric lamp which had somehow been rigged up high in the arch of the ceiling and was beating down mercilessly upon us all. The witches looked utterly ghastly in its draining glare and Penny and Grant were engaged in a heated dispute when I entered.
‘Leonard was quite clear about wanting subtle make-up, Delia!’ Penny said.
‘Leonard doesn’t know the first thing about stage make-up,’ Grant retorted.
‘Leonard has had his own company for the last seven years,’ Penny said.
‘With not a dresser nor a maker-upper to its name,’ Grant scoffed. ‘Hecate told me they all just slap on whatever panstick comes to hand in the dressing room and extra rouge if they’re playing a romantic lead. But when it comes to Shakespeare …’
‘You can’t seriously believe that you can teach Leonard anything about Shakespeare?’ said Penny. She was laughing, but then she had never locked horns with Grant before and did not know any better. I turned away and considered the dressing tables still available. The plums had been plucked of course, by Lady Macduff, Hecate and her sisters, and the gentlewoman, as was only fitting, but also by Mrs Cornelius, Mrs Westhousen and Mrs Rynsburger because they had turned up before me and nabbed them. I slid onto a three-legged stool before what I was sure was a washstand with the bowl-hole covered up and peered at myself in the rather spotted glass.
Lady Macduff was staring at herself too and muttering lines, ignoring Penny and Grant completely.
Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble Page 26