Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble

by Catriona McPherson

  She was snoring now. I pulled a rug up over her shoulders and left quietly.

  17

  The book room had been turned into quite an organised headquarters and the four ladies – Mrs Rynsburger, Mrs Westhousen, Mrs Cornelius and Mrs Schichtler – looked like four generals planning to take a city. They had cleared Bluey’s desk of all his possessions and spread there the architect’s drawings of the house, held down at the corners by inkpots and the like. Besides, they were almost in uniform, each of them in a long sturdy skirt and a crisp white shirt of plain design. Mrs Cornelius even had her cuffs unbuttoned and her sleeves folded back to the elbow.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Gilver,’ Mrs Rynsburger said. ‘Are you here to help? We’re not to be disturbed otherwise. We only have tonight to find the prize before everyone else gets here.’

  ‘I’d rather watch the dress rehearsal,’ said Mrs Westhousen, patting her golden curls. ‘Rubies don’t suit my complexion.’

  ‘I thought you were attending the first lecture this afternoon,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, we came to an agreement,’ said Mrs Cornelius, sounding more hard-bitten than ever. ‘We’re happy to hunt treasure and Penny and Mr Bewer are needed for last-minute panics. They don’t have nearly enough servants to run this place, in my opinion.’

  She spoke as though budgetary concerns were quite unknown to her and it was simply some quaint quirk of Minnie and Bluey’s that they were rushing about with piles of cushions and fistfuls of lockets.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I must disturb you for just a minute,’ I said. ‘I want to use the telephone.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Mrs Schichtler, waving at where it was holding down one of the curlier plans at the far end of the table.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, I have something rather private to say.’

  ‘You’ve found it!’ said Mrs Rynsburger. ‘Oh, phooey! You’ve found it, haven’t you?’

  ‘I have not found it, I assure you. It’s my husband I’m ringing and …’ I ran dry. What could I say to them that would explain my bundling them out of their base camp?

  To my surprise, I did not need to say anything.

  ‘Well, of course,’ said Mrs Westhousen. ‘You’ve been here for days now. You must be missing him.’

  It seemed utterly preposterous to me, but the other three all put their heads on one side and grew misty-eyed.

  ‘Of course we’ll clear off while you talk sweet nothings to your dear one,’ said Mrs Rynsburger. Even that did not cause a single one of them to curl a lip, although I had to concentrate hard on mine. They stood and gathered a few pens and sheets of scrap and then, with more fond smiles, they left me. I listened for the sound of guffaws when they were outside, for I was sure it must be a tease, but there was nothing but the sound of their sensible shoes on the stone floor as they marched off in pursuit of the ruby.

  When Pallister answered the telephone a devil on my shoulder told me to ask for my dear one, but reason prevailed. ‘Is Mr Gilver at home, Pallister?’ I said instead.

  ‘Of course, madam,’ Pallister said, managing to wedge in a little disapproval of my wanderings in comparison to Hugh’s quiet ways.

  ‘Please fetch him.’

  There followed a long stretch of silence and then the sound of Hugh’s pack of terriers and hounds approaching, heralding Hugh himself.

  ‘Dandy,’ he said, his usual greeting.

  ‘Hugh,’ I agreed. ‘Is Bunty there with the others?’

  ‘She is,’ said Hugh and I took the earpiece away from my head and stared at it. That had sounded awfully like affection. I surmised that, with my absence, Bunty’s own sweet nature had got round Hugh at last. I decided not to spoil it by letting him know it was showing.

  ‘Very well,’ I said, with not a scrap of interest. ‘Hugh, I’m ringing up to ask you a favour.’

  ‘There already, eh?’ Hugh said. He harbours a belief that when a case really hots up Alec and I have to call him in to do some essential piece of reasoning. I see no downside to letting him think that way.

  ‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’ve made much headway at all, but there’s a particular task I need you to carry out for me if it’s not too much of a bore. Do you know anyone in Lisbon?’

  ‘Lisbon?’ said Hugh. ‘Portugal?’

  ‘Exactly. Do you know anyone who lives there or anyone at the consulate? Embassy? I never know the difference.’

  ‘A consulate,’ Hugh began, inevitably, ‘is a—’

  ‘Yes, but do you? Or can you think of any other way to find out about something that happened there thirty years ago? Wasn’t one of the Carnegie boys there for a while?’

  ‘Not thirty years ago,’ said Hugh. ‘What sort of something? A crime?’

  ‘Well, a death,’ I said. ‘The death of a man of seventy, unidentified I daresay. A stranger in the place.’

  ‘What on earth is this about?’ said Hugh. ‘I thought you were trying to find a diamond.’

  ‘Ruby. Yes. But we think it’s a wild goose chase. We rather think it was taken away thirty years ago by this chap who we rather think might have died in Lisbon. Do you know anyone there who could slip along to the police station after the siesta and pour a …? What do they drink in Lisbon? Pernod? Absinthe?’

  ‘Port, of course,’ said Hugh, ‘but not policemen in the middle of the afternoon on a working day with a British ambassador in the office.’

  ‘Well, a cup of tea then; it’s hardly the point. We need someone to go and ask about a sudden death where the chap couldn’t be identified, some time just short of thirty years ago. He would have been a well-to-do sort – a gentleman – passing through.’

  ‘And might I just ask, Dandy?’ said Hugh. ‘If no one in Lisbon knew who he was, how did someone in Scotland find out that he might have died there?’

  I drew breath to answer and then let it all go again. ‘That’s a very good point,’ I said. ‘That is an excellent point. It makes no sense, does it?’

  ‘I’m glad I could help after my usual fashion,’ said Hugh, unbearably smug. ‘If you get into any more tangles, do ring back.’

  I crashed the earpiece down and set the whole thing back on top of the curling floor plan, fuming, just as the four ladies reappeared, offering profuse apologies but quite firm that there was not another moment to lose. I turned to face them.

  ‘Why you’re quite flushed, Mrs Gilver,’ Mrs Cornelius said. ‘How charming.’

  ‘How long have you been married to your sweetheart?’ said Mrs Westhousen.

  ‘And they say the English are cold!’ said Mrs Schichtler.

  ‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘Good grief.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mrs Rynsburger. ‘What have you seen? You saw something on the plans, didn’t you? You’ve had an idea about where the Briar Rose is hidden.’

  ‘But you’ll tell us, won’t you?’ said Mrs Schichtler, coming close and looking up into my face. ‘I mean to say, you’ll be paid your wage no matter what. There’s no need for you to have all the fun as well, when you’re doing your job, no more and no less. But if we find it, it will be the crowning glory to our trip. We’ll dine out on it all winter.’

  There it was again: the disregard for money, the absolute lack of any sense that Bluey and Minnie would not want to give the Cut Throat away if they could help it. And there was something else bothering me too. I left as quickly as I could extricate myself, hoping that some solitary pondering might bring it into focus.

  Why, I asked myself as I stood looking out of the window in the passageway, did it bother me so much that they misread the flush in my cheeks? That they thought it was ardour when it was irritation? It was slightly embarrassing but only slightly after all. Did I really care so much about any emotion being witnessed? No, that was not it either. Maybe Alec could help me, I thought, and then with a guilty start I hurried off to the courtyard and the rehearsal hoping that I had not missed his scenes completely.

  I had missed his scenes completely. I sidled in beside hi
m on one of the lower wooden benches and mimed apology.

  Burly Roger was on the stage with a young man I was almost sure was called Julian, and was belting out a speech at the top of his capacious lungs and at top speed too. ‘Thy Royal father was a most sainted king,’ he said and the very walls of the castle echoed it back at him. ‘The queen that bore thee oftener upon her knees than on her feet.’

  ‘Is he hoping to catch last orders at the local pub?’ I asked Alec.

  ‘Sssh,’ Alec said, but his lips twitched. ‘I was just thinking that it was going to be jolly good actually, in the gloaming, with lights in the castle windows.’

  Leonard, who was a couple of rows in front, turned round and shushed us.

  Julian was speaking now. ‘This noble passion, child of integrity, hath from my soul wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts to thy good truth and honour.’

  ‘Hmph,’ I said. ‘I can’t agree with Mr Shakespeare there.’

  Leonard swung round again and actually shook his fist at me.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Alec breathed in my ear. ‘I’m not doing Birnam Wood anyway unless they get more branches.’

  We sidled out and away, tiptoeing so that our shoes would not ring out on the cobbles and give poor Leonard apoplexy. When we were inside the castle walls and could talk freely again I apologised properly for my absence, but Alec waved my regrets away. I was already forgiven.

  ‘Will the leaves dry out in time to be used in the dress rehearsal?’ I said.

  ‘The branch that went in is hanging on the clothes airer in Mrs Porteous’s kitchen,’ Alec said. ‘She is most displeased and one can hardly blame her. She’s trying to bake for the multitudes tomorrow and it’s dripping on her head. Is Otto recovered?’

  ‘She is,’ I said. ‘She’s sleeping. Aha!’ Alec started. ‘Sorry. But that’s what’s been troubling me. Mrs Rynsburger and the rest of them caught me red-faced and panting after a telephone conversation with Hugh.’

  ‘What did he say to incense you this time?’

  I laughed. ‘Exactly! Because you know us both you know what my red face meant. But those women seemed to think they had interrupted a tryst. They knew it was Hugh on the telephone and concluded that we were one of those sickening couples still cooing in our dotage. Ugh.’

  ‘But what did he say?’

  ‘I’ll get to that,’ I insisted. ‘The misunderstanding made me feel troubled and I think it’s because I had just done the same to Otto.’

  ‘The same in what way?’ said Alec. ‘Did you catch her fluttering her eyelashes at Pugh?’

  ‘Don’t be revolting,’ I said. ‘No, I assumed that her squealing like a kettle was because she feared Francis Whatsisname might drown. But she was already upset, don’t you see? She was yelling and weeping before they jumped in.’

  ‘She was making quite a racket,’ Alec agreed.

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘Because,’ Alec began slowly. ‘Hmm, yes. Why would that be? Where are we going by the way, Dandy?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, looking around. ‘Somewhere peaceful, please. The collective panic in this house is beginning to give me a headache. How about the chapel? We can sit side by side and stare into space without bothering anyone there. And I can explain about Lisbon too.’

  The white chapel, stripped of its altar cloths and candlesticks, was restful to the eye and the straw-filled ticking was remarkably comfortable, its only drawback being our conviction that we should not enjoy a pipe or even a cigarette while perched upon it.

  ‘Perhaps it was the trees,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps Otto is fond of them and didn’t like to see them hacked about by amateurs.’

  ‘Fond of an ordinary row of elms bordering a lane?’ I said. ‘Different if it was a grove of mighty oaks lining a drive, darling. And she wasn’t angry, she was rattled. Before the drowning, during the dragging.’

  ‘Why not just go back and ask her,’ said Alec, rather disagreeably. He does so hate to have his notions shot down.

  ‘Darling, if you’d seen her. She was yellow and purple in patches and clammy to the touch. Terribly distressed.’

  ‘A great perturbation, eh?’ said Alec.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lady Macbeth,’ he said. ‘But you could ask her gently.’

  ‘She’s asleep,’ I told him.

  ‘To her deaf pillow she will discharge her secrets.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lady Macbeth, I tell you.’

  ‘Shakespeare should make his mind up,’ I said. ‘Malcolm just told Macduff that his passion was proof of his integrity. But Lady Macbeth being all riled up is supposed to prove her guilt? That’s all very convenient, isn’t it?’

  Alec glared, but rather than argue he said, ‘Tell me about Lisbon.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Hugh, God rot him, pointed out that if people here knew that Richard died there then he can’t have died incognito. Makes perfect sense, more’s the pity.’

  ‘Unless,’ said Alec, ‘someone went from here to kill him.’

  ‘What motive?’

  ‘We already think he was on his way home,’ said Alec. ‘Well, if he was supposed to have taken the Cut Throat away with him, or stashed it in the castle, the last thing its thief would want would be his coming back and revealing he did neither!’

  ‘And who – in this outlandish theory of yours – is supposed to have killed him?’ I said. ‘Gunn might be the thief, but a footman can’t take off across the seas suddenly.’

  ‘One of the Annandales,’ Alec said. ‘I told you already.’

  ‘Doing murder to cover theft? It makes no sense. It’s easier to believe that Ottoline cares about a row of elm trees. And that makes no sense at all.’

  ‘True,’ Alec said. ‘Unless, of course, the Cut Throat is buried in a casket at the foot of one of them.’

  ‘And Ottoline knows that, does she?’ I asked drily. Alec had the grace to look sheepish. ‘Although, Grant and I did see lights in the lane just about there on our first night here. They didn’t come any closer than those trees.’

  ‘A maid with her sweetheart,’ said Alec.

  ‘There’s only Gilly,’ I said. ‘Although I daresay Mrs Porteous would look at her best in a dark lane with only a match lit.’ I sat and mused upon it all for a minute. ‘There’s something about the servants,’ I said.

  ‘There certainly is,’ said Alec. ‘I shall give Barrow a raise when we get home in case he ever leaves me and I’m reduced to the likes of Pugh.’

  ‘No,’ I persisted, ‘there’s something about the servants who left. Not only Gunn, although certainly Gunn. But Nanny too. I must review my notes and see if I wrote down whatever it is that’s bothering me.’

  Alec reacted as predictably as a clock striking the hour. Exit Dandy pursued by snorts.

  When I emerged, blinking, from my room in time for the dress rehearsal at six, I did not have an answer but at least I thought I knew the question. It was the name of this bally jewel that was bothering me, I was almost sure. Why could no one agree what it was called or who had called it that or when they had started or why they had stopped?

  I sat myself down in the middle of a bench all alone, studiously ignoring the four American ladies who were in a state of great excitement three rows in front of me. The stage looked marvellous, even in the rather blank light of a dull afternoon becoming evening, and it would only look better tomorrow at eight when the first performance began to a packed house. Even Minnie, Bluey and Ottoline, who arrived and sat down at one side on the front row, looked quite perky as they drank in the sight of their courtyard transformed.

  ‘Are you sure you want to stay, Mama?’ bellowed Bluey into Ottoline’s ear. ‘It’ll be terribly dull for you not hearing anything.’

  ‘I have a copy of the play to read along and I can enjoy the spectacle,’ Ottoline retorted. ‘I hope there’s going to be a spectacle,’ she went on, turning to look Leonard straight in the eye. ‘For we shan’t fill these seats night after nig
ht without one.’

  ‘If everyone would do their jobs,’ Leonard said, ‘the spectacle would be beyond question already.’

  Bess appeared at one wing with her hands on her wide hips and her mop of hair wilder than ever, as though it was a hank of wool from some hardy breed of sheep, midway between the fleece and the spinning wheel. ‘I can’t be rummaging in attics for something that clearly doesn’t exist and be nailing swords to boards,’ she said.

  ‘Of course, it exists!’ said Leonard. ‘This is an ordered household.’

  ‘I shall have everything ready for tomorrow,’ Bess said. She spoke, like an actor, with heightened emphasis but with a restraint suggesting that she could speak even louder and with stronger words still should the scene continue. Leonard, recognising as much, subsided. ‘Once I’ve given up the wild goose chase and had time to attend to it,’ Bess finished. She turned on her heel and swept offstage.

  ‘Wild goose chase?’ said Mrs Cornelius, from the fourth row. ‘Mr Bewer, is that woman talking about our treasure? Why does she say it doesn’t exist?’

  ‘Not at all, Mrs umm … dear lady,’ said Bluey, twisting round and hailing her. ‘Quite another … Something to dress the set, was it, Leonard? Well, have at it. Anything you can find. Swords or whatever you think. Absolutely.’

  ‘But don’t take furnishings from out of the rooms themselves, will you?’ said Minnie. ‘I’ve counted chairs and tables most precisely for the teas and suppe—’

  ‘Quiet!’ Leonard shouted. ‘We are late. We have not yet begun and already we are late! Act I, scene one. Witches!’

  They advanced onto the stage from left and right and from the back middle where a card and wool tree offered a third entrance. I knew that they were Penny, Miss Tavelock and another girl by the name of Elizabeth, but with their cloak hoods up and their backs hunched they made me shiver as they began to speak the familiar lines.

  ‘They’re jolly good,’ I said to Grant, who was sliding into the seat beside me. She looked absolutely haggard with exhaustion and was wrapped in a blanket from neck to ankle. ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ I blurted out. ‘Are you ill? You can’t go on like that. Have you got the flu?’