The Pearl Thief

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  ‘Just a routine inspection. Once the pump room is finished we’ll enclose the pool, but I’m afraid the pipeline out to the River Tay will be delayed.’

  I didn’t ask why.

  But I did ask, ‘Is there a nightwatchman on the estate?’

  ‘There are several,’ he said. ‘There have to be, with so many workmen staying in the stable apartments and servants’ quarters. There’s also a guard in the gate lodge who makes regular rounds, and the Water Bailiff sometimes checks the river path late in the night as well.’

  ‘Does somebody check the doors of the Big House?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Frank responded vaguely. He took a drag on the cigarette, with that air of faint distraction which I found so inexplicably attractive. After a moment he added assertively, as if trying to excuse his initial lack of a definite answer, ‘Unless I draw up a schedule they don’t always coordinate their shifts.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve been scolded by the Procurator Fiscal for not having a better grip on the reins of this place.’

  He took another pull on his cigarette, then bit his lip, looking away when he finally spoke.

  ‘The doctor who examined Housman wasn’t able to determine the cause of his death – his body’s quite deteriorated. When we pulled the … pulled him out of the water we should have taken him straight to the mortuary that evening. But we waited till the next morning and apparently this … um, dried him out and … accelerated decay. And because of where the poor fellow got cut, without a proper post-mortem the examiner can’t actually tell if he drowned or –’

  ‘Good gracious, or what?’

  ‘Well, that was what I said,’ Frank huffed. ‘Or anything else. He might have had a heart attack, or choked on a sweet. Or poisoned himself, if it really was suicide. But it’s not obvious that he drowned and the doctor can’t issue a death certificate in case the Procurator Fiscal tells him to conduct a post-mortem.’

  ‘How it does drag on so horribly!’

  ‘It does. At first I kept hoping they wouldn’t find any of him – that he was still alive. Now I keep hoping they’ll find all of him and lay the poor fellow to rest.’ He laughed nervously and dragged at the cigarette again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he continued. ‘What a bloody awful thing to say. His sister’s had to come up on the train from somewhere in the Home Counties to identify him, and of course there isn’t anything that helps. Apparently she did though – told the doctor, “Well, he always did have spindly legs, which is a poor excuse for not being able to swim!” She wouldn’t stay in Perth but one night. “Please do send him south so I can bury him.” Damned unfeeling woman, if you ask me – though I suppose it’s hard on her having to wait for the Procurator Fiscal to make up his mind about an inquiry.’

  That Francis Dunbar should feel intimate enough with me to share such obscenities and confidences was almost as intoxicating as sharing a cigarette, and we stood for a moment side by side with our hands not quite touching, both of us gazing down over the birch wood in the direction of the river. The ruined tower of Aberfearn Castle just cleared the treetops, looking ominous against a drab grey sky.

  ‘Hullo, there’s your foreman Mr Munro hailing you,’ I said.

  The engineering manager was stumping up the path at a purposeful pace with a large canvas parcel under his arm. There was a wooden rod awkwardly sticking up out of it over Mr Munro’s shoulder, so that he looked almost as if he were carrying a bagpipe, and I stifled a snort of laughter.

  Shaness, Julie! God pity you!

  Oh heavens, it couldn’t be more pieces of Hugh Housman, could it? I decided it couldn’t possibly be or Mr Munro would have looked queasier. He didn’t look happy though.

  Frank Dunbar had gone white as a sheet.

  ‘You’ve found something?’ Dunbar asked shakily. ‘Not another damned Bronze Age spear point.’

  ‘Not this time.’ Mr Munro nodded at me again. ‘Perhaps it’s not fit talk for the wee lassie.’

  I deemed it best to say nothing. I took a step backward, affecting cool containment (when in reality I was burning with curiosity and already planning how to spy on them if they insisted on getting rid of me). I raised one hand in valedictory, as if requesting a dismissal.

  ‘Please don’t go,’ Frank said to me. And to Mr Munro, ‘It’s all right. Miss Beaufort-Stuart is very sensible about this business.’

  ‘What is it?’ I prompted. ‘If it’s horrible I don’t want to see. But I want to know.’

  ‘We’ve found the chap’s trousers,’ said Mr Munro, offering the folded bundle up to Frank.

  ‘Found his trousers?’ Frank repeated in what sounded like sheer baffled disbelief.

  ‘Aye, all folded tidy doon by the stone river gate to Aberfearn Castle. And his tangs and glass for pearl-fishing. It doesnae look like suicide to me though; it looks like he went for a swim and maybe got into difficulty with the tide. Why would you fold up your clothes like that if you were going to drown yourself?’

  ‘The bloody idiot!’ Frank burst out incredulously, and he backed away from the pathetic bundle Mr Munro was holding out to him.

  I suddenly put my finger on what it was Frank kept refusing to accept: any of it. He was completely incapable of getting it into his head that Housman was actually dead. Every piece of proof hit him as though he were hearing the news for the first time.

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ I offered, and took the parcel from the foreman with firm hands. I put the canvas down at our feet and unfurled it carefully.

  Beneath the bulky glass-bottomed jug and the pronged stick for pearl fishing, Housman’s tweed plus fours were still folded neatly, but after a month of sitting out on the riverbank they looked as though they’d just come out of a very muddy tub-load of washing without being rinsed. I didn’t want to touch them. Frank, the moment he clapped eyes on them, swooped down to check the pockets. Mr Munro crouched along with us to get a better view.

  Frank gingerly produced ten shillings in change, a sodden box of matches, a chewed-looking fountain pen and a silver card case which he pried open with shaking fingers. It contained no calling cards, but there was a reader’s ticket to the British Library with Hugh Housman’s name on it, smeared but still perfectly legible.

  ‘The bloody idiot,’ Frank Dunbar repeated softly. ‘The bloody, blithering idiot.’ He dropped the case back on to the muddy, sodden cloth.

  I stood up because I was tired of crouching and I didn’t want to get my knees wet with kneeling.

  Frank stayed hunched over Housman’s abandoned things, shaking his head in outraged disbelief, while the foreman grimaced at the grubby collection.

  ‘Well, there’s nae doubt that’s your man,’ said Mr Munro, and Frank glanced up at him angrily. He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyebrows and looked back down.

  ‘No, it doesn’t really look like suicide,’ he said at last, finally agreeing with Munro’s prosaic deduction. ‘But …’

  He didn’t say it, but I knew he was thinking about the letter to Solange. One of these jigsaw pieces really did not fit properly.

  I stood with my hands on my hips, gazing down at the disarray we’d made of this potential evidence, considering that Frank was already in trouble over the poor horrid man’s body not being treated with any kind of respect either.

  ‘Hadn’t we best take better care of this stuff?’ I suggested. ‘Won’t the police want to look at it too?’

  That made Frank back away as if he was sorry he’d touched any of it.

  ‘Is this all you found?’ I said. ‘No shirt, no tie, no shoes, no socks, no jacket?’

  ‘Perhaps the rest of it is with the rest of him,’ Munro suggested morbidly.

  Frank began to wrap the canvas folds closed again, more carefully this time.

  I thought that he and Munro were both right: it was a most bizarre and haphazard way to prepare to drown yourself. It rather looked to me as though Dr Housman had been fishing for a peace offering for Solange, in haste and passion. He’d given her
pearls before. Maybe what Frank said the other day was right, and Housman had taken his clothes off to keep them dry, planning to put them back on.

  The two men were still on their knees by the canvas bundle, but they were both looking up at me. I suddenly felt very vulnerable. What if they asked me to describe the scene for them? After all, it was me who’d seen Housman in the nude, but oh, mercy, I couldn’t imagine telling Mr Munro – still less Frank Dunbar – about that. There were limits to my impudence. After all, I was certifiably intact.

  I wished that did not make me feel so dirty every time I thought about it. The reality of having been examined was somehow much nastier, in my head, than the assault that didn’t happen and which I couldn’t really imagine. Almost as if people were trying to blame me for what wasn’t done. As if my body were rude and lewd just because it was a girl’s body.

  At any rate the uncomfortable feeling with Dunbar and Munro was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but it had to do with being very attracted to one of them and having to hide it while we pawed over the dead man’s clothes like the witches in Macbeth.

  ‘I should go,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell my mother what you’ve found.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll meet her in my office whenever it’s convenient,’ Frank Dunbar agreed.

  And I fled up the ruined lawn and into the savaged house.

  11

  HOW A LAD GIVES A KISS WHEN HE MEANS IT

  Mémère insisted that we make the trip to her seamstress in Perth together. It was astonishing, and a lesson in dignity, how my grandmother managed to soldier on as though nothing were out of the ordinary in a house full of builders and the poisoned atmosphere of Hugh Housman’s ‘suicide’. I came away from the excursion to the dressmaker’s feeling that every critical thing Ellen McEwen had said about me was true. Even the blue silk I’d wanted for my party frock was too expensive and I was sorry now I’d asked for it.

  Mémère and I were both fingering it in rapt admiration when she muttered wistfully to herself, ‘I could if I had to’ – and I knew then that she could not afford it.

  Mummy took me aside very delicately and whispered in my ear, ‘Let her choose something she can pay for.’

  And I felt rotten.

  Mémère picked out a leaf-green chiffon with a gold sheen to it when it caught the light. It really was beautiful, but I was afraid it would make me look like a fairy – I could just imagine Jamie and Sandy teasing, ‘Happy birthday, Tinker Bell!’

  And then, my goodness, I’d never thought about that name being insulting. But it was. She is quite a common fairy … She is called Tinker Bell because she mends the pots and kettles. How much I did take everything for granted, even the storybooks I had thought were so harmless.

  Euan could have walked home the next evening, but I liked the excuse to take the car out, and I gave him a ride anyway. Euan laughed at me as I started to guide the Magnette up the drive.

  ‘What?’ I demanded.

  ‘I like the way you start the car.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘You always look as if you think it’s going to fight you. Your eyes go wee and narrow and you hunch your shoulders and lean in as if you’re going to give it what for.’

  ‘I do not hunch,’ I told him with dignity. ‘I have to sit right up on the edge of the seat so I can see out.’

  I became terribly self-conscious then. Because when I was starting the car, I was only thinking about the car. I was not thinking about my hair or ghosts or some stupid dead man’s trousers. And that was when Euan was watching. What could I possibly look like when I was just being me?

  ‘I’d no’ want you to look at me like that,’ Euan said.

  ‘I would never,’ I vowed. ‘I say, have the Perthshire and Kinross-shire Constabulary come out to visit you at Inchfort since they made their last find? Because Mother rang them and told them to go door to door through Brig O’Fearn asking folk if they saw you on the morning Dr Housman disappeared. And almost everybody did.’

  ‘Aye! That Inspector Milne, the wee man with the wee beard? He talked to everyone digging on the pipeline this noontime, him and the Water Bailiff.’

  ‘I hope he didn’t make another fuss over you in particular.’

  ‘Aye, nae bother. And we’re all away the morrow so it’s finished. There’s new tatties we help with every year out Comrie way and it’s time we were out of this mire for a bit. When the inquiry’s over we’ll maybe come back.’

  My heart fell. I hadn’t expected them to leave the second they found they were cleared of suspicion.

  I could understand getting itchy staying in one place. But I didn’t really understand the McEwens.

  ‘They found Dr Housman’s trousers yesterday,’ I told Euan. ‘Perhaps there won’t be an inquiry.’

  ‘Perhaps pigs might fly,’ he said with resignation. Then he offered suddenly: ‘Come in about and have a sup of tea with us. If we don’t see you for another fortnight Ellen will miss you.’

  And I could not resist even if there’d been reason to. I thought that the uncertainty of Ellen in my life must be a bit what it was like for Mémère in the months and weeks leading to Grandad’s death. Eventually, you know, you are going to have to go without. But until then …

  When we got to Inchfort, Euan hopped out over the side of the car (like my brothers) and opened the gate so I could pull safely into the field next to the wagons and horses and, that evening, also the van belonging to the Camerons, the McEwens’ motorised cousins who were going to help whisk them all away to the headwaters of the River Fearn or wherever it was they were going.

  It really was only a sup of tea to start with. Ellen was away out with her mother doing one last round of the houses in Brig O’Fearn village selling their willow baskets and heather pot scrubbers and horn spoons, so I waited. Old Auntie Bessie started frying up a mess of skirly (oatmeal and onions together), which honestly smelled so good I started pestering her to show me how to make it, thinking we could easily do it on the portable gas ring in the morning room. The kiddies were shy with me, and Euan slipped away with them to the bottom of the field to organise a game of rounders which I didn’t quite dare join in.

  When Ellen and Jean McEwen got back they were carrying a great sack of new potatoes between them; Ellen dumped them off and hooked my arm through hers to drag me away up the lane to Boatman’s Well, taking with us a few big tin cans for water. Pinkie came prancing at our heels – she would desert Euan in favour of me any day of the week.

  ‘You’re away tomorrow,’ I accused Ellen. ‘And I thought things would be all right here for you now.’

  ‘Och, at it again!’ she warned. ‘Fixing and managing everything. The world’s supposed to stop just where you want it, aye?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I answered in irritation. ‘I meant I’d miss you. I’m not being selfish –’

  She gave her little snort of scorn.

  ‘Not only being selfish, at any rate! I’m trying to say something nice to you.’

  We reached the well, but Ellen kept on walking.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘The telephone by the Bridge Farm post office. Call your mammy and tell her you’re stopping for tea with us. I’ve pennies for the ’phone – we sold all those baskets.’

  We dropped the empty water cans outside, with Pinkie standing guard over them, and jammed ourselves into the old white concrete ’phone box so that Ellen could listen in on what I said and be in charge of making the call. Of all the people who could have picked up, I got Frank Dunbar on the other end, which flustered me. Ellen had her ear pressed against the other side of the receiver, ready to eavesdrop.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she whispered.

  I elbowed her in the ribs to shut her up. And made the error of saying aloud breezily, ‘Oh, hello, Frank.’

  Ellen leaned back against the glass and concrete frame of the telephone box, smirking, fanning herself mockingly with one hand. She mouthed at me, FRANK!
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br />   Bloody flipping hell, I thought, and there wasn’t anything I could do to take it back that I’d called him such a familiar name, or cover it up.

  ‘Julie?’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

  I tried frantically to beat Ellen away from the receiver and almost instantly gave up because it was too hard to maintain dignity in the tone of my voice while I was engaged in a brawl with Ellen at such close quarters.

  ‘I’m just up the road at the post office,’ I said evenly, taking deep breaths. ‘I wanted Mother to know I’ve been invited out to supper –’

  Ellen mouthed mockingly, Invited out to supper – oooooh!

  I paused, forcing myself to sound measured and cool. ‘Is my brother about? I mean Jamie, not Sandy. I’d like to talk to Jamie.’

  ‘I’ll get him, but, Julie, I’m so pleased I’ve got you on the ’phone. I just spoke to the Procurator Fiscal. He’d like to avoid a fatal accident inquiry in court, and there won’t be any further precognition. He told me he doesn’t want to know any more about the habits of travelling tinkers when it’s clear the unfortunate fellow couldn’t swim. He was very short-tempered about it. But he’s uncomfortable telling the doctor to issue a death certificate without the rest of the remains, so we’re to go on searching for another two weeks and then he’ll review the situation.’

  Ellen was grimacing hideously at everything he said, and at this point it was necessary to stuff another penny into the telephone, giving a sense of false urgency to my call.

  When he came back on the line, Frank added hastily, ‘I’ll just get your brother.’

  Ellen gave me a little space – not much – for the simple task of telling Jamie to let Mother know I was coming home late.

  When Ellen heard me insisting that the car was in a safe place she got annoyed with the waste of her pennies and snatched the receiver out of my hand. ‘You come too!’ she ordered Jamie. ‘Then you can be sure Lady Julia gets home safely.’

  ‘Tell him to bring me a sweater!’ I added.