“Did you suspect Moira all along?”
“As soon as I heard of the whisky with morphine sediment at the bottom. I expect you know she really did try to persuade him first, and then only went back with the morphia because there wasn’t any other way.”
“Well, dear,” said Mrs. Broome miserably, “she always spoilt you and saw you got what you wanted, but I never thought she would go to such lengths as that!”
“She was glad about me all right. You know, Mummy, she had sort of delusions, hadn’t she? And I think she wasn’t quite sane really. She sometimes seemed to mix up Soames and my future family as Ulder’s victims, and I really couldn’t bear to have a baby like Soames!”
“Dear Judith!” protested Mrs. Broome.
“We didn’t talk obstetrics when the little stranger came,” quoted Sue, obviously a little vague about Mr. Kipling’s exact meaning.
“My dearest Sue, I am horrified!” With her own daughter Mrs. Broome could still make a stand.
“I say, may I come in?” said Bobs’ voice from the door. “We’ve got through chapel somehow, and there’s still half an hour before dinner. Are you all sitting round listening to the great sleuth explaining his methods?”
“I must say,” said Mrs. Broome, roused apparently after her former effort to reprove the rising generation, “that I do feel you all forget there have been two deaths in the house—well, practically in the house—since Thursday. Now in my young days—”
“I suppose it’s the War,” murmured Sue. “I mean death doesn’t seem so—so far away to us as it did to you.”
“And anyhow those two are better dead!” cried Judith. “I—I minded dreadfully when Moira was so ill, but I felt triumphant, yes really that, when death kept her from suffering any more. And it’s no good pretending that the world isn’t a better place without Ulder. I’m sorry for poor little Soames, though. Doris will never let you keep him now, Mummy. I wonder if Clive and I should take him as butler, and convert him!”
“How rude we all are,” said Dick at the shout of laughter which greeted this suggestion. “But don’t let him try any amateur carpentry for you, Judith.”
“But, Dick, tell us how you found out such a lot,” pleaded Sue. “I shall always think of you as Conan now, though I like Dick better!”
“Sherlock would think very poorly of me or of Mack! And rightly, because we did what none of the best detectives in books nor, I suppose, in real life, ever do—we each started with a prejudice. Mack had a strongly marked one against parsons and specially bishops. I simply felt that there wasn’t a soul in the Palace who could have committed a crime except Soames!”
“Not even me, Dick?” asked Judith, a little hurt.
“Not that crime, but any other. Mack said once you were the murderous type, though.”
“Like Mary, Queen of Scots, I suppose! How sweet of him,” said Judith, deeply gratified.
“Then,” continued Dick, “Soames did his best to oblige me in my suspicions by his extraordinary behaviour. He really is the clumsiest little plotter, only so clumsy that no intelligent person could make sense of it! If he’d made booby traps for Mack and Tonks and all, he might have got away with it, but by Thursday night it was quite clear that it was me he was afraid of. That could only be because I knew most about him through Herriot, and because, I imagine, he’d picked up enough with those keyhole ears of his to know that Mack was after bigger game, and that I was the danger. But though I fancy he’d planned out that stair dodge when first he was sent to open the summer parlour, he only brought it off after Herriot’s second telephone message. Why had that driven him into a panic? You remember it was after that message that I got my bump, and I’d hardly time to think of it. Then I began saying to myself Kilkelly, and it still didn’t mean anything much. But when I came round, the good old subconscious had been hard at work, and suddenly I saw Moira’s Bible again—you remember, Sue, how the light failed as we looked at it, and I wasn’t specially interested then in her maiden name. But I was afraid I was wishfully thinking it, till I got Sue to refer to the Bible and write the name for me, and there it was when I woke—Kilkelly, Soames’ name, changed to Kelly by Moira to wipe out her past rather than for convenience, I expect. So then I only had to pay those visits with Sue to make sure that Soames was the son of Moira. I found that at Dorbury—and that Ulder was his father—that’s in Ulder’s diary, Bobs, but the Church Register will confirm it, if it’s ever needed, I suppose.”
“But, Dick, that didn’t prove that Moira had murdered Ulder!”
“No, of course not, but it proved there was someone almost as anxious to get him out of the way—someone with all the grievances of a lifetime to repay, and the future of her son and of Judith endangered. There were lots of side-lines, too. The Bishop said no one would look in his drawers, but I remember Moira was always noted for thoroughness. The Bishop said she had a horror of drugs, but she was said to collect medicine bottles of every kind and try them out. She knew something about morphia, too, and she had made Judith listen to and repeat all Dr. Lee said. I couldn’t see Soames carefully choosing out a suitable jorum or getting hold of the stuff that night without being suspected. But the chief point was one which Mack would only twist to his theories, that Staples insisted he heard a door open and a rustle like a skirt and a faint voice saying ‘Good night’ in the distance. Mack dismissed that at once as a rustling cassock or a man’s dressing-gown—the Canon or the Bishop, you see. He didn’t even think of yours, Judith, by the way!”
“Oh no, Clive frightened him, I’m sure,” said Judith complacently. “Darling Clive! I did adore him when he fell upon old Mack!”
“I’d have thought of you all right, Judith, but for your telephone chat at lunch on Friday! I simply didn’t believe you could have put up such a good act. You’d have been far more likely to say, ‘Oh, Clive sweet, I’ve poisoned someone. Do come and take me away!’ Well, the only other conceivable woman was old Moira, and when once I’d found out her connection with Ulder, it all seemed to fit in. She knew all the circumstances, she could get hold of morphia more easily than anyone else: she wouldn’t be suspected because it was only that day, when she was so restless with pain, that she got out of bed at all. But it couldn’t be proved. Nearly everything that incriminated her incriminated Soames as well. The only hope was to get her confession.”
“What if she hadn’t been dying?” asked Bobs.
“I just couldn’t say. I didn’t have to decide about that, because when I rang up the Hospital from the road yesterday they said she couldn’t last the night. No, I don’t think I’ve done anything to be proud of from first to last, except that I did keep Mack in check a bit. You see, I knew he had a vague dream—I’d almost say hope—of entering the Palace with a warrant and saying—” began Judith—“Oh no, that’s quite another form of prayer, isn’t it? Sue darling, why are you blushing? Darling Clive went off to buy a special licence yesterday from the Archbishop, so I’ll be first! I do hope the Archbishop isn’t a criminal too!”
“Judith!” Mrs. Broome raised her unheeded reproof. “I think it’s time we all got ready for supper as people are coming.”
“A party?” asked Dick in surprise.
“Well,” admitted Mrs. Broome a little shamefacedly, “I did feel it was the least I could do for that poor Major Mack after his having this special man down from Scotland Yard in vain, and after such an unpleasant time here, and Judith so rude to him, so I asked him and his Yard friend and Mrs. Mack to supper quietly here to-night, not dinner, and we wouldn’t dress, I said.”
“With two deaths in the house so recently too,” said Judith dreamily. “Now in my young days—!”
“Well, it isn’t as if we’d any of us enjoy ourselves very much,” said Mrs. Broome with cheerful candour. “And I thought I’d get over the invitation while your father was upstairs. I should have asked the Macks long ago, but I do feel your father won’t care to meet him for quite a long time—”
“
Mamma darling, you are the best joke in the world,” said Sue.
“Isn’t she?” agreed Judith. “I wish I’d got just a little arsenic to put in Mack’s port, because you see however much he suspected us he could really hardly come hanging round trying to arrest us again so soon.”
“Not port, darling,” said Mrs. Broome who was not attending, as Dick’s tray was at the door. “Never on Sunday night, so as to let the servants clear away early, you know—and Doris and Mrs. Briggs will be alone as poor Soames is out to-night.”
“That’s a pity! He’d have loved dropping plates of hot soup and carving knives on Mack’s head,” said Sue. “Have you got everything, Dick?”
Dick’s guests were leaving the room, but at Sue’s question he eagerly called her back.
“No, no, just one thing!” He waited till the voices died down the corridor. “Sue, you know what Judith was saying just now about arrest the Bishop. I wish you’d try it another way—just try it—I, Susan, take thee, Richard—just once!”
“Oh, Dick, to hang round your neck till you’re dead,” protested Sue, half laughing, half crying.
“No, to have and to hold! Sue, promise to think whether you can’t say it some day soon!”
“Oh, Dick, stop!” Sue was kneeling by the bedside when Judith’s step came lightly down the passage. “What—what is it, Ju?”
“What—what is it, Sue?” mimicked Judith. “Bless you, darlings, I guessed it from the first. But, Sue, you must come. Mack is here, saying he must see Dick for a talk after dinner, but we won’t let him. Mamma told him he couldn’t, and he was beginning to bristle, but I think I calmed him! I just said: ‘But, of course, darling’—you should have seen Mrs. Mack’s face—‘of course you shall come upstairs and arrest the Bishop’.”
THE END
About The Author
WINIFRED PECK (1882-1962) was born Winifred Frances Knox in Oxford, the daughter of the future Bishop of Manchester. Her mother Ellen was the daughter of the Bishop of Lahore.
A few years after her mother’s death, Winifred Peck became one of the first pupils at Wycombe Abbey School, and later studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Returning to Manchester, and under the influence of Christian Socialism, she acted as a social worker in her father’s diocese, as well as starting out as a professional writer.
After writing a biography of Louis IX, she turned to fiction in her thirties, writing over twenty novels, including two detective mysteries.
She married James Peck in 1911, and they had two sons together. James was knighted in 1938, and it was as Lady Peck that his wife was known to many contemporary reviewers.
Titles by Winifred Peck
FICTION
Twelve Birthdays (1918)
The Closing Gates (1922)
A Patchwork Tale (1925)
The King of Melido (1927)
A Change of Master (1928)
The Warrielaw Jewel (1933)
The Skirts of Time (1935)
The Skies Are Falling (1936)
Coming Out (1938)
Let Me Go Back (1939)
Bewildering Cares: A Week in the Life of a Clergyman’s Wife (1940)
A Garden Enclosed (1941)
House-Bound (1942)
Tranquillity (1944)
There Is a Fortress (1945)
Through Eastern Windows (1947)
Veiled Destinies (1948)
A Clear Dawn (1949)
Arrest the Bishop? (1949)
Facing South (1950)
Winding Ways (1951)
Unseen Array (1951)
MEMOIR
A Little Learning: A Victorian Childhood (1952)
Home for the Holidays (1955)
HISTORY
The Court of a Saint: Louis IX, King of France, 1226-70 (1909)
They Come, They Go: The Story of an English Rectory (1937)
Winifred Peck
The Warrielaw Jewel
‘Listen! I see I’d better take you into my confidence.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I said.
Betty Morrison, a lawyer’s wife, is flung into the society of an ancient Edinburgh family, the Warrielaws. There’s Neil the Rip, Cora the Siren, Rhoda the Business Woman, and Alison the little Beauty – not to mention the formidable, elderly Jessica and her meek sister Mary. The family all possess unusual gold-green eyes – and harbour a precious and historic jewel, a bauble under constant threat of theft. The alarmed Betty will become a crucial witness in a case that includes mysterious disappearances of gems and people, as well as wholesale murder.
The Warrielaw Jewel was originally published in 1933. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Martin Edwards.
The Warrielaw Jewel
CHAPTER I
THE JEWEL IS THREATENED
Twilight had fallen and only the wood-fire illuminated my drawing-room when the big door swung open. The light in the passage cast the shadow of two figures on the wall as my maid, Christina, announced:
“Miss Warrielaw and Miss Rhoda Macpherson.”
All newly-married people will admit that for a year at least their home has little personality of its own. A new house, newly furnished, has the insipidity of a baby; an old house newly furnished shows itself in queer unexpected lights when visitors appraise it.
It was in the year 1909 that I married John Morrison of Edinburgh, the younger partner of the well-known firm of Hay, Morrison and Fletcher, Writers to the Signet, and came to live in the monumental house vacated for us by his parents in Moray Place. Like everyone of my day who had been brought up in an artistic atmosphere in London, I had my drawing-room painted white, and replaced the stout, stuffy Victorian furniture and carpet by Persian rugs, antique chests and bureaux, blue and white china and gay cretonne-covered chairs and sofas. I was very proud of the result, but as the new guests entered and Christina switched on the lights, it looked suddenly bare and raw and lacking in solidity. When I asked John later if he had experienced the same sensation and, like myself, put it down to the Warrielaw personality, he merely replied that all he felt was his own folly in being caught in the tail of one of my At Home days. Brides had their Days in the Edinburgh of those far-off years, and John never ventured into the drawing-room till half-past five.
“Will I infuse some new tea, Madam?” asked Christina. Like all good Scottish servants she was a perfect register of social standing. Evidently she felt nothing but respect for the dowdy couple she had just ushered into the room.
“Not for us, please don’t trouble for us,” intervened the elder woman nervously. “I have had tea with Rhoda and we came late intentionally in the hope of catching dear John.”
If I could tell from dear John’s expression that the pleasure was not mutual, I was glad for Miss Warrielaw’s sake that her hopes were fulfilled. The lights revealed nothing to explain Christina’s respectful greeting in Miss Warrielaw’s appearance or dress, but they did make it clear that this elderly lady, in her queer, rather pathetic efforts at finery, was worried and upset. To John’s murmur of introduction to “My wife” she paid only the tribute of a watery smile before she sat down by him, on the edge of a big sofa, in a flurry of agitation.
“How you must hate coming to live in Edinburgh!” Miss Rhoda Macpherson took a chair beside me and spoke coldly and abruptly. “I felt very sorry for you when I heard John was marrying an English girl.”
“But it’s such a beautiful place!” I protested. Already I had discovered the fact that no one but Edinburgh people can ever safely abuse Edinburgh.
“Oh that!” said Rhoda contemptuously. It seemed to me rather hard that this prim, neat little spinster, sitting so severely upright in her grandfather chair, should meet my compliments so ungraciously. “The place is all right, but you’ll find the people impossible. When you get to know the wearisome cliques and sets we all live in you’ll wonder, as I do sometimes, if it’s possible for anyone who’s been born and brought up in a radius of twenty miles to have
a wholly reasonable attitude to life.”
Rhoda was, I felt, speaking with some justice for her aunt and herself. My eyes wandered to the sofa where Miss Warrielaw was pouring out an incoherent story to my husband, and Rhoda’s gaze followed me.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up suddenly, and for the first time I realized that her thin, pale little face, with its sharply pointed chin and tightly closed mouth, was redeemed from the commonplace by her eyes.
“I’m sorry if I’m too outspoken. The fact is that a rather curious, rather alarming thing happened in my aunt’s house yesterday and we’re all a little upset by it. They have such confidence in your husband—his family have looked after our affairs for generations—that Aunt Mary would come to him. We should really have gone to his office.”
“Do go and join them,” I said, moving a chair for Rhoda towards the sofa. “Don’t bother to talk to me till you’ve consulted my husband.”
My two guests, now that they were seated one each side of my husband on the sofa, leaving me to my observations, were much more interesting than they had appeared at first sight. They were queer and dowdy, but they represented some tradition or point of view intensified by the very narrowness of their outlook. Aunt and niece had, at first sight, little in common. Miss Warrielaw had clearly put on her Sunday dress to come to see me. To-day of course she would look a figure of fun, but twenty-four years ago she appeared only as one of a common type, the country lady who depended on the efforts of a little dressmaker. She wore a coat and skirt of that dismal fawn colour, so trying to an elderly, weather-beaten complexion; a small brown hat topped a fringe of fair hair streaked with grey; from her wrinkled forehead one of the thick brown spotted veils of the period entangled itself in her hair. On her forehead was a yellow mole which she rubbed so perpetually in any moment of agitation that a vague blackness over one eye was a characteristic of her appearance. A big Victorian locket of solid gold hung upon her fawn silk blouse and a variety of bracelets adorned her thin wrists. Those slender hands and wrists, and her long, beautifully shaped feet in their country brogues redeemed the heaviness of her stout shoulders and shapeless waist, and redeemed her appearance also from any impression of vulgarity. She was a country woman, one saw at once: one could imagine her best tramping across a field in tweeds followed by a string of dogs. Rhoda, in contrast, looked oddly urban. She was small and self-contained, and her neat, cheap, dark little coat and skirt and depressed little hat suggested only the efficient, dowdy little typist of that distant period. She was not in the least like her aunt, I decided, as I contrasted her narrow face, her pointed chin and air of cool competence with Miss Warrielaw’s long, broad face and agitated double chin. And then both looked up at once, and I saw that they had one feature in common. Both aunt and niece had wide, round eyes of that queer hazel shade which varies between yellow topaz in certain lights, and the dull green of old glass in others. The colour was not only odd in itself; the eyes were conspicuous because, owing I imagine to some curious defect of vision, they had very small pupils which, I was to learn, rarely contracted or expanded. Later I was to hear and see a good deal of the famous Warrielaw eyes, but from the first I subconsciously noted that peculiarity.
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