The Pearl Thief

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  I was ashamed of being so callow and thoughtless. I looked over at my grandmother, sitting frail and unhappy and bravely elegant in her slim Murray tartan skirt, with her white hair coiled so that not a strand was out of place, and I wanted to be like her, moving into a terrible unknown future without showing any fear; also I wanted to leap up and run to her to take her in my arms, but I still wasn’t able to make any sudden moves, and I was too craven to displace my equilibrium.

  I bit my lip. ‘Mémère. I do understand. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not a game,’ said my mother. ‘If you ever remember anything that happened to you that day, you might really be a witness.’

  She added as she got to the door, ‘Do try to be kind to your grandmother, Julia, darling. And to Solange. And don’t toy with those pearls!’

  I could see why Mémère would have put Grandad’s pearls out of her head – out of sight, out of mind – but it irritated me that Mother didn’t remember them. Grandad had said they were his ‘mother’s mother’s mother’s’. How could everyone have just forgotten about them like this?

  I tried to rationalise it. My mother grew up in Strathfearn House: perhaps she wasn’t fascinated by the little tower room museum the way my brothers and I were. It had been her father’s private place and she wasn’t allowed in on her own. I, on the other hand, had been his spoilt only granddaughter. How strange it is that everybody remembers things so differently.

  I wondered what had happened to those pearls.

  On the third day after my release I was able to make it down the stairs to the little morning room. This cheered everybody up very much, so much so that they finally dared press on cautiously with their administrative tasks. Solange was hopelessly gloomy, which was having its effect on me as well, so Mother insisted that Solange come out with her and Mémère, and they left me alone with Colette while the rest of them visited the offices of Sweet’s in Perth with an eye to arranging the auction of the Strathfearn House furnishings. The Murray Hoard was to be auctioned separately by one of the big London houses. Mother said the most valuable pieces in it were potentially of National Interest.

  ‘Mary Queen of Scots’ bracelet?’ I asked.

  ‘The Glenfearn School trustees are going to allow that to stay in the Inverfearnie Library.’

  I was glad of that, even if it wasn’t ours any more.

  Clad in a blue serge skirt belonging to my mother, wearing the remaining wisps of hair teased back over my forehead with a steel hairgrip (put there by Solange trying to work a miracle, probably with more success than I credited her for – she is a creature of taste and elegance), I sat in the morning room with the doors to the terrace open because the air was nice, trying to pull my brain back together. I felt a great deal better. But I couldn’t manage words on a page yet. I couldn’t read. I thought maybe I could write. I ended up doodling.

  I wasn’t happy about the lid of my jam jar – I couldn’t decide what I wanted it to look like. The picture in my head was fuzzy. And I stared at the specs for the longest time, trying to work out what was wrong with them.

  Someone knocked at the door to the passage, and I jumped and dropped my pen. I was the only one in the room, as a few minutes before I’d managed to convince Colette that it would be all right to put down her endless knitting of winter stockings and leave me alone for the time it took to go and prepare some tea and sandwiches for lunch. Colette is fully ten years younger than my recently widowed grandmother, so only sixty-nine, but she is much more of an old woman, all timid fuss and flutter. No matter how strenuous the task, Mémère usually insists, ‘I could if I had to.’ But it always takes a firm hand to stop Colette fretting, and she was reluctant to leave me alone.

  Now her worst fears were realised, ha-hah! At the sound of the knock, a false feeling of wild freedom swept over me. I realised it could be the first time since the day of my injury that I’d had any whiff of contact with the outside world, and I got up to open the door full of eager anticipation, hoping vaguely it was going to be somebody I’d never seen before with a special problem that only I would be able to solve.

  Well, it was only a little problem, but such a somebody I’d never seen before.

  I opened the door and found myself facing the most splendidly attractive man I had ever met. It is true I am not terribly experienced, but he had all the devil-may-care athleticism of a certain ski instructor my school chums swooned over last winter, coupled with considerably more age and sense, which I liked. Clean-shaven, in smart office clothes but without his jacket and with his tie and collar loose, he looked as if he’d spent the morning trying to work and had been constantly interrupted. His hair was brown and wavy and threaded with silver, as if someone had lightly sprinkled Christmas tinsel over it. He was so much taller than me I had to tilt my head back a little to look at his face, and that made me feel rather childish, so I stepped away from him.

  He stepped away from me as well, backing a foot or two into the corridor. He opened his mouth as if he’d been about to say something and made a mistake, then shut it. For a moment I thought he was going to dash off in the other direction.

  I made a guess about who he might be.

  ‘Dr Housman?’

  ‘I … no!’ he said explosively. Then pulling himself together very suddenly, he offered a hand for me to shake. ‘Miss Murray?’ he addressed me.

  Unfortunately this made me laugh. I am acquiring aliases by the barrow-load! Alexander Murray is my maternal grandfather, so even though I consider myself a Murray, it is not my name.

  Unoffended by my laughter, he still held out the offered hand, and I took it. His clasp was firm and warm and strong. He held on a moment longer than I expected him to, gazing down at me assessingly, and I waited for him to let go first, not wanting to show any signs of backing away again. His eyes were the grey-green of a winter sea.

  ‘Is it Miss Murray?’ he asked, and then, without waiting for an answer, he introduced himself, a bit nervously. ‘I’m Francis Dunbar. I’m the chief contractor for the building work that’s to be done to Strathfearn House on behalf of the Glenfearn School.’ He let go of me and quickly put his hands in his pockets, as if he were banishing them in disgrace for being so forward. ‘I organised the recent alterations to this house, the ramps and handrails, for the late Earl of Strathfearn, and his widow …’ He hesitated, and added, ‘That’s your grandmother, I believe? She recommended me to the Glenfearn School trustees to manage the current renovation.’

  I should have corrected my name straight away, but no, I was so smitten with his physical beauty and his communist approach to speaking to me as his equal that I just launched into conversation with him. He appeared to have forgotten why he was here, and seemed to need prodding.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ I enquired politely.

  ‘Oh! Yes. I’ve been trying for weeks to get the terrace doors in my office to open. The heat is asphyxiating in the morning when the sun’s shining in. It’s the room adjoining this one. I … I hoped that someone who knows the house better than I do might help. Is there a trick?’

  ‘Probably!’ I said cheerfully, hoping he’d let me do it myself rather than change his mind and wait for one of the adults to come back. ‘Shall I come through and see?’ I was charmed by the vulnerability of a ‘chief contractor’ who couldn’t work out how to open his office windows.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He gestured me politely ahead of him down the passage with an open hand. His office was a twin to the morning room, a mirror image, the two being divided by a partition of oak panels that folded up like an accordion to make it into one large reception space opening on to the terrace above the lawn. Francis Dunbar crossed to the French doors of his half of the twin rooms and twitched back the heavy curtains in irritation, trying to let in more light through smudged glass panes that hadn’t been opened or cleaned for a good long while.

  ‘Sorry about the dust in here,’ he said. ‘This room was closed off for some time
when I took it over in May.’

  That must have been barely a month after my grandfather’s funeral. I didn’t want to create more awkwardness by mentioning how quickly the property had been sold; I just launched into an attack on the doors.

  ‘There’s a third catch – bolts at top and bottom and then others there between the panels.’ I pointed; I couldn’t reach the upper catch. In the morning room next door we never bothered to fasten it. I stood back so Mr Dunbar could get at the high bolts himself, again self-consciously aware of the difference in our height and how young it could make me look if I drew attention to it.

  ‘Ah!’ He threw the hidden bolt. Light and air flooded into the room, as next door.

  Francis Dunbar put his hands in his pockets again, gazing out over the disrupted and busy lawn for a moment, then turned to look at me standing there, frail and boyish with my chopped hair, wearing my mother’s serge. His face was a little shadowed; mine was in the light. I considered how to prolong the moment. He did it for me, taking a hand out of a pocket and holding out his cigarette case to me.

  ‘I should have offered earlier,’ he said.

  My heart swooped. He hadn’t taken me for a child.

  Probably I ought to have refused, having only on one occasion let tobacco pass my lips, on that same highly educational skiing holiday last winter. But I’d learned to make smoking look natural by the end of that evening, and now I just couldn’t resist being treated with such sophistication. Also, Francis Dunbar was so very beautiful, and I liked him, and I wanted to see how much I could get away with. I was beginning to hate being treated like porcelain.

  I took a cigarette and let him light it.

  That is a terrifically intimate thing, you know? Letting a stranger light your cigarette. Leaning forward so he can hold a flame to your lips. Pausing to breathe in before you pull back again.

  It was so good to be flirting with someone a little, and to feel more like myself again.

  Thank goodness Colette wasn’t around. I wondered how much time I had.

  I stood back carefully, trying to keep the cigarette casual. Don’t think about it too hard, Julie.

  Francis Dunbar lit his own cigarette. He flicked the match into a curious carved soapstone ashtray on his desk, turning away from me. He drew a long, slow, contemplative breath on the cigarette before he turned to me and said, ‘Thanks for your help, Miss Murray – I’m sorry. You’re Strathfearn’s granddaughter – Julia? Should I be saying Lady Julia?’

  ‘Julie. Julie Beaufort-Stuart. Lady Julia is correct, or Miss Beaufort-Stuart, but my name’s not Murray. Murray is my mother’s maiden name – Beaufort-Murray, actually. We keep the Beaufort. That’s from my grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Strathfearn. She was Juliette Beaufort. She’s French.’

  He continued to gaze at me intently. I felt like a boring little animated edition of Debrett’s Peerage.

  I said, ‘It’s all right for you to call me Julie.’

  He shook his head – not saying no, exactly, but with an expression of bemusement, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. ‘Only in this office,’ he agreed. ‘And only if you’ll call me Frank.’

  ‘Oh. Should I?’ I nodded, thinking about it. Then I repeated it, trying it out. ‘Frank.’ I gave him a little crooked smile. It was like tasting an alcoholic drink – and more intimate than the lighting of a cigarette. I hadn’t realised that using his given name – his nickname, even – would be more daring than giving him mine.

  I probably didn’t have any longer with him than the time it took to smoke the illicit cigarette. I gazed at the disorder of his office, trying to discover a little more about him. There was the curious ashtray; and he’d got what looked like a miniature Ludo game board over on a back corner of his desk, shell playing pieces in place on dark and polished wood with intricate paisley designs set into it. Propped on the fixed shelves against the wall, along with piles of paper and bottles of ink, was a framed display of medals and service ribbons.

  He wouldn’t have those there unless he was proud of them. He’d had to bring them with him from wherever he normally worked.

  ‘You did your training in the military?’ I asked. ‘In India?’

  He stared at me, startled. I pointed at the souvenirs, and the medals behind him. ‘Good God, I took you for a clairvoyant!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Just nosy.’ I laughed.

  ‘Canny though! Yes, I was an officer and an engineer in India with the Black Watch all through my twenties. It’s only been three years since I’ve been back, but it feels very far away now.’

  ‘You weren’t in the Black Watch at the same time as Angus Henderson, were you? The Strathfearn Water Bailiff marched with them in the Great War.’

  ‘Have the tropics aged me so much?’ Frank Dunbar exclaimed, running a distraught hand through his silver-shot hair. ‘I was in primary school when the Great War started!’

  Now we both laughed. Oh, I loved this game. I was trying to make myself look older; he was trying to make himself look younger. I’d played this all the way across Europe and I’d got good at it. I felt it was safest to add only two years to my age instead of three this time.

  ‘Well, you have my sympathies. I won’t be eighteen until August, but it’s dreadful what they did to my hair in the hospital. It makes me look like I’ve only just finished primary school.’

  Take that.

  And then among the piles of paper on his desk I was startled to see something I recognised.

  It was the brown envelope on which I’d written my note to Mary. It was face down so that the engraved return address was showing, and I realised that of course Francis Dunbar couldn’t possibly have any reason to be interested in my note to Mary. It was the scholar at the Ashmolean Museum he must have been trying to track down.

  My rattled brain, focused on navigating stairs and the state of my hair, had shoved the missing Dr Hugh Housman aside. But Mother had started to say that ‘the contractor Mr Dunbar’ shared his meals with Dr Housman, so I did exactly what Frank had just done, and used a slow drag on the cigarette to give me time to think.

  I suddenly had a lot of questions I wanted to ask him and I’d already confessed I was nosy. Also, if Colette came back and I was sitting there in the sun, she might think I’d wandered in here out of boredom and be more forgiving of Frank Dunbar than if she thought he’d lured me into his office himself.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’ I said, waving my cigarette in the direction of his leather armchair.

  ‘Oh, please do. I should have offered.’ He scurried to pull the chair forward for me so I could sit in it and reach the ashtray on his desk. ‘I’m a terrible bachelor and I forget how to be polite sometimes. And you – you’re only just out of hospital. I’m so sorry.’

  The contrite sincerity in his voice made me a bit embarrassed. I really hadn’t been meaning to play the fragile convalescent. I arranged myself on the edge of the chair, knees and feet tucked together demurely. Better not give Colette anything to worry about if she did find me here. I thought I could get rid of the damning cigarette pretty quickly.

  ‘Are you actually living here?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye, in one of the guest rooms in the east wing.’

  ‘Is that where the visiting scholar stays too?’

  ‘Dr Housman? Yes. But you’ve … you’ve never met him yourself, have you? You called me Housman when you answered the door.’

  ‘No, I’ve never met him. But my mother is worried about him because no one’s seen him for the past week. She was going to ask you if you know where he’s been.’

  Frank shook his head. I didn’t know if he meant he didn’t know where Housman was, or if my mother hadn’t asked, or if he couldn’t say anything because his mouth was full of smoke.

  ‘I am just being nosy. I don’t know a thing about him except that he’s supposed to be cataloguing my grandfather’s archaeological collection,’ I confessed. ‘But look …’

  I reached across the desk and
picked up the envelope with Housman’s name engraved on the back, and flipped it over.

  ‘This is the note I left for Mary Kinnaird on the morning I arrived here,’ I said. ‘It startled me to see it on your desk.’

  ‘You are canny,’ he said again, breathing out. ‘That’s got Housman’s work address in Oxford on it. I couldn’t find anything in his room; all his paperwork is over at the library. Miss Kinnaird passed this on to me so I could write to his people at the museum where he’s employed. And they’ve given me the address of a sister, his … Well, this is unpleasant, but she’s his next of kin. Your mother and the police – at least, the Strathfearn Water Bailiff – came to see me, both hoping I might have seen Dr Housman this week. But his room and mine are at opposite ends of the east wing, so I rarely run into him coming and going. We do sometimes eat together in the evening. I have so much space in this office, and he likes to talk; he gets excited about things – he’s excited about –’

  Here Dunbar checked himself and took a drag on his cigarette. Then he laughed.

  ‘He thinks your grandfather’s Bronze and Iron Age assemblies of spear tips and arrowheads are exceptional – “of British Museum level importance to typological dating,” he said. He’s a man who loves his work. It made me a little envious, actually.’ He glanced away, suddenly boyishly and appealingly shy.

  ‘Haven’t you missed him?’ I asked. ‘If you’d become friends, and you haven’t seen him for nearly a week, aren’t you lonely?’

  The contractor laughed. ‘With this job?’ He waved an arm around him, taking in the pile of blueprints on his desk, the churning cement mixer and wheelbarrow-loads of stone which men were hauling up and down the garden, and distant hammering somewhere in the bowels of the house itself. ‘I’m too busy to get lonely. Sometimes I don’t go up to my own room until well past midnight, and Dr Housman isn’t even in this building most of the time.’ He paused. ‘He might have run into trouble with the Travellers, I suppose.’