Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘And what details would you need me to add?’ he was saying now.

  ‘A motive for one thing,’ said Penny.

  ‘And the reason behind the note and trinkets in the rocking horse,’ I said.

  ‘The truth about the burglaries that plagued the castle,’ Grant added.

  ‘A clue about why she destroyed the letters before we could see them would be nice,’ Alec put in.

  Gunn looked around us with a kind of amused twist to his mouth. ‘She was such a clever woman,’ he said. ‘The cleverest I’ve ever known. And she wore it so lightly. Even I can’t pick apart the threads she wove. I don’t suppose anyone ever will.’

  ‘Start with the Cut Throat,’ I said. ‘The Judas Jewel.’

  Now Gunn actually laughed. ‘Oh, if only it was a little later in the day. I want to raise a glass to her, really I do. “The Judas Jewel” was one of her early triumphs. A smidgen of fact – it came from the Annandales right enough – mixed in with such clever lies – Anne and Dorothy and the dark secret behind the so-called jilting – and all stirred up until there’s no way to tell what the truth is.’

  I remembered the conversations I had had with Ottoline about Dorothy and Anne and Richard’s father and I knew exactly what Gunn meant. She changed her stories so gradually and with such deftness that one never quite knew where one stood.

  ‘But now she is gone,’ I said, ‘if we give you our word, will you tell us, at least? What the truth is.’

  Gunn laughed again. ‘I’m trying to tell you, I don’t know!’

  ‘Tell us everything you do know,’ I said. ‘Let us find that smidgen of fact in the midst of the lies.’

  ‘She had wheels within wheels,’ Gunn said, his voice still filled with awe as he remembered. ‘Fail-safes all over the place in case this or that happened, you know. She hid the note in the rocking horse so that it could one day be “found” – evidence, you see, that Richard planned to leave under his own steam. She put the trinkets in there – and trinkets is the word for them – to make it look as if the necklace had been there a while and then been taken away.’

  ‘It’s a bit elaborate,’ Alec said, rather grudgingly considering he had drawn exactly those conclusions, just as Otto had planned.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Gunn. ‘Who would do such a thing? And then she sent the letters to herself – I helped her – but it was her idea. Those letters did two things, two birds she caught with that wee stone. They sowed the idea of Richard travelling and the writing on them matched the writing on the note. And she got rid of every other piece of Richard’s writing from dungeon to chimneys.’

  ‘Except in the Bible,’ I said. ‘The family dates in the Bible flyleaf.’

  ‘Ha! I forgot about the Bible,’ said Gunn, with his eyes dancing. ‘She wrote Bluey into the Bible. Oh, she was a marvel.’

  ‘She wrote that?’ I said. ‘How can that be?’

  But Alec spoke across me before Gunn could answer. ‘Why did she destroy the letters the other night?’

  ‘Well, there was nothing to be gained by you looking at them, was there?’ Gunn said. ‘Back in the early days, it was worth the chance of a bright bobby seeing the letters and smelling a rat. The other alternative, after all, was him smelling a bigger one. But what makes you think she destroyed them “the other night”?’

  ‘She said she had them and then she said they’d gone. Blamed a burglar. And she’d burned something in her fire and made the room smoky.’

  Gunn laughed. ‘And you believed her? Those letters could have been gone for decades. The smoke could have been anything. Wheels within wheels, you see.’

  ‘And what about the other burglaries?’ said Grant. ‘The earlier ones?’

  ‘Did she make them up?’ Penny said. ‘Or did you help out there too?’

  ‘I did, Miss Penny,’ he said. I was glad to hear he had some respect left in him, even if he spoke of ‘Richard’ in that impertinent way. ‘That was more dust she kicked up. More shadows where the truth could hide. She could have written Gothic novels if she’d a mind to. What better way to make it seem that Richard was alive and well and wanted his ruby necklace back than to have a whole staff of servants swearing to the fact of burglars? So she paid me and a couple of my most discreet pals to black our faces and creep in around the castle, making sure to leave tracks behind us. The last one – the one that was caught at the gate – was my cousin up from Devon for my auntie’s funeral. No one knew him and his voice has a twang it’s hard to place if you don’t know that part of the world.’

  ‘I see,’ Alec said. ‘The same again. So madly elaborate it must be true?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Gunn again. ‘There. I’ve answered all your questions.’ He shook his head and laughed softly. ‘But you haven’t asked the biggest question of all.’ He laughed louder at our blank faces. ‘The biggest question of all is: where’s the ruby?’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘You brought it back, didn’t you? You bought your way back into Mespring and assured your rise through the household by returning the lost treasure. Didn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Gunn. ‘That ruby is lost. The mistress turned the castle upside down and inside out, looking for it. It’s gone.’

  ‘But then how did you get your job here?’ I asked. ‘Unless you brought something along with you?’

  ‘Oh I brought something all right, but not a necklace. I brought a secret. And I kept it too.’

  ‘What secret?’ Alec said.

  ‘Didn’t you see the portrait?’ said Gunn. ‘I mean, didn’t you look at it?’

  ‘Which portrait?’ I asked, looking at Alec and Grant to see if they understood. Mystified looks came back at me from both of them.

  ‘The painting of Beulah in the velvet gown?’ said Grant.

  ‘Or Ottoline in her satin?’ Alec added.

  ‘Or,’ said Penny, ‘do you mean the portrait of Anne and Dorothy. I’ve always wanted to see that one.’

  ‘I think a good look at all three would be worth your while,’ said Gunn.

  ‘But you’re wrong about what’s the biggest question,’ Penny said. ‘The only question that really matters at all is “why?” Why did she do it? Why did Granny kill him?’

  ‘She didn’t mean to,’ said Gunn. ‘She only meant to stop him. He had just told her he was marching off along here to bring her life tumbling about her ears. She went for him, right enough. She was in a rage. She shoved him. But she didn’t mean to kill him. She mourned, you know. Even while she kicked over her traces and laid her false scents, she was grieving.’

  ‘That’s all lovely, I’m sure,’ said Penny and there was a steely sound to her voice. ‘But why did she shove him? What enraged her?’

  ‘The portrait’ll tell you that too,’ said Gunn. ‘But you didn’t hear it from me.’

  It was a new experience for me to begin a visit to comparative strangers by coming in at the servants’ part of the house and then simply passing through the green baize door to the grand hall. That is what the four of us did that morning.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Alec, as we emerged into the marble and gilt, the naked hordes frolicking in oil paint far above us.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Now then, the portrait gallery is this way.’

  ‘It’s not exactly …’ said Penny as we trooped through the rooms. ‘I mean, it’s certainly … But it’s not …’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I agreed. ‘Now then, here they are.’

  We stood in front of the portrait of the two girls and stared.

  ‘What did he mean?’ said Alec. ‘What is there in this portrait that will help us unravel Ottoline’s web?’

  ‘And whatever it is, how does Gunn know about it?’ I added.

  We stood in silence like a row of dunces for a few minutes more, without answers to any of the questions arising in our feeble minds, and then were interrupted by a polite cough.

  Billy Annandale was standing behind us, wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown as well as the carpet slipp
ers which accounted for his silent approach.

  ‘Not that it’s not lovely to see you again, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, ‘but might one just casually enquire …?’

  ‘We honestly wouldn’t know where to start,’ said Penny. Billy gave her a mildly curious look, then he blinked and looked up at the picture and back to Penny again.

  ‘I don’t believe we’ve met,’ he said.

  ‘Penny Bewer.’

  Billy looked up at the canvas and down into Penny’s eyes one more time.

  ‘Oh Lord!’ I said. ‘Billy, the last time I was here, the first time I saw the portrait of Anne and Dorothy, I said Penny bore an extraordinary resemblance to her great-aunt. But I think I made a mistake.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Alec. ‘That explains why “Anne Annandale” was at Otto and Richard’s wedding but “Aunt Dorothy” wasn’t.’

  ‘What is everyone talking about?’ said Penny.

  ‘The Great Scandal of 1834, you called it,’ I said to Billy. ‘And you very politely didn’t say any more. But perhaps you’d say a little more now.’

  Billy shot an uncomfortable look at Penny and muttered: ‘I’d rather not, if it’s all the same.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But tell me this at least. The nature of the scandal. It wasn’t just the closeness of Anne and Dorothy, was it? Anne didn’t give the ruby out of spite. She wanted the girls in the Bewer family to wear it, didn’t she? The daughters, or even the granddaughters.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ came a voice so sharp it was almost a bark. I would never have imagined such a sound could come from Winifred Annandale’s lips. ‘How could a slip of a girl give away a chunk of the family’s wealth? Exactly what’s going on here? Gunn told me you’d practically broken in, Dandy. What’s happening?’

  ‘A great light is dawning,’ I said. ‘And a great many chickens are about to come home to roost.’

  ‘Not before time,’ said Lady Annandale, still sounding crisper than I had ever heard her. ‘It’s gone on long enough but it was hardly our place to end it. Penny my dear, it’s wonderful to meet you at long last. I’m glad Ottoline has come to her senses. I look forward to getting to know her better. Life is too short for these feuds, you know.’

  Penny tried to speak but the tears gathered in her eyes and she gave a sob instead, so it was up to me to break the news of Ottoline’s death and then, promising more later, to put an arm round Penny and take her home.

  ‘You had them the wrong way round,’ said Alec, when we were back in Bluey’s book room alone again. Minnie had taken a great deal of unwelcome and startling information on the chin, with no more than a nod to show that she had understood it all, and then had turned her mind from it and towards her child. Penny was now tucked up in bed and close to dozing.

  ‘I had a great many things the wrong way round,’ I said. ‘That was a very good point Lady Annandale made, you know. How could the unmarried daughter of a family have enough clout to give away a treasure like the Judas Jewel. We are allowed to wear them but they never actually belong to us.’

  ‘Ahh!’ Alec said. ‘The ruby came to the castle not as a wedding gift at all.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Do you know, Alec, Lady Annandale told me she had tried to mend fences before Bluey and Minnie’s wedding as her mother had before Otto and Richard’s wedding. If I had asked her what she meant I might have solved this days ago.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Alec. ‘She might call it mending fences, I’d call it dropping a bomb.’

  ‘Me too,’ I agreed. ‘It certainly landed like a bomb on Otto. But I think Winifred Annandale spoke honestly. The Annandales had no intention to strip the Bewers of everything and boot them out of the castle. It was the shame Ottoline couldn’t face. Nothing more than that. Just the shame.’

  ‘So,’ said Alec. ‘Just to be clear I’ve got this right. Anne Annandale, the jilted fianc—’

  ‘There was no jilting,’ I said. ‘Otto made that up. And there was no more between Anne and Dorothy than a friendship. Otto made that up too.’

  ‘So what …?’ Alec began. ‘What?’

  ‘Harold Bewer had a by-blow,’ I said. ‘By the Annandale girl. But for some reason we shall probably never know, he didn’t marry her. Perhaps he scorned her for her loose morals. It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘Don’t scowl at me,’ said Alec. ‘I’ve never done such a thing. Perhaps he simply preferred Beulah. Or perhaps she was rich. Perhaps he didn’t know about the baby until it was too late.’

  ‘For whatever reason,’ I said, ‘Harold married Beulah. When Beulah died without providing an heir, he was persuaded by the Annandales to take the child, Richard, and give it his name and his payment was in rubies.’

  ‘And that’s why Richard’s birth date wasn’t recorded!’ Alec exclaimed. ‘Harold took him in but he wouldn’t write a lie in a Bible.’

  ‘It also explains why Bluey wasn’t in there when Otto started her schemes. Why it was up to her to add him.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘If Richard wasn’t really a Bewer – not a legitimate Bewer, anyway – then neither is Bluey. I’ll bet Harold was still alive when Bluey was born and I’ll bet he said he’d make the entry of his grandson’s birth. Paterfamilias and all that.’

  ‘What a sorry mess,’ Alec said, then he sat up sharply. ‘Oh! This means that when Anne started saying she was Bluey’s grandmother, she was speaking the truth.’ He scratched his head. ‘Did she put the note in Stumpy for her granddaughter then?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Actually she might not have made the claims either. Otto might have made both little stories up for our benefit and woven them together to make them hold. An inch of fact and a yard of fantasy. No wonder we thought there were more wisps than usual!’

  ‘But if Otto was weaving tales,’ Alec said, ‘why didn’t she weave better ones? If Beulah didn’t walk down the aisle weeks after a confinement, why didn’t Otto put a more believable date in the Bible?’

  I laughed. ‘Exactly. If you make up a date, you make up a good one, don’t you? We questioned many things, after we found the Bible: why didn’t they shift the wedding; did the poor girl even know the baby was coming … But we didn’t doubt the date for a minute, did we?’

  ‘I bet it was Richard’s birthdate Otto made up,’ Alec said. ‘Halloween. Just for sheer mischief. Oh, how I wish we had worked all of this out while she was alive. There’s so much only she could tell us. For instance, I still don’t think I see why she was angry enough to shove Richard down the stairs. Gunn’s so-called explanation doesn’t actually explain much. He was “going to Mespring to bring her world down around her ears”? Does that make sense to you, Dandy?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ I said. ‘We can talk it over with Winifred to make doubly sure, but I imagine that, when she tried to untangle it all before Bluey and Minnie’s wedding, she met with a measure of success. She persuaded Richard that it was time to stop the nonsense and admit that the Bewers had died out. I think he was probably going to Mespring to begin to put matters straight and end the secrecy. Names would be changed, for one thing. Richard was the son of a Mespring spinster. His name would be Annandale. And his son might not be an acceptable match for Minnie any more. Certainly his wife …’

  ‘Ah,’ Alec said. ‘Otto couldn’t bear the world at large knowing she had married into cousins on the wrong side of the blanket.’

  ‘To put it bluntly,’ I said.

  ‘Although, given what she did afterwards, it is odd. Rolling his body into the moat, paying off an accomplice and living in the castle for fifty years while it mouldered feet from her bedroom window? Couldn’t the woman who did that manage the shame of a story two generations old? You said yourself the Annandales had no plans to turn her out.’

  ‘Winifred would never do anything so unseemly,’ I said. ‘Not that it was up to Winifred alone.’ Then a terrible thought struck me. ‘Oh Lord, Alec, that’s the whole point! It wasn’t up to Winifred. It’s not “up to” anyone. And it’s
not about “shame”. If Richard wasn’t a Bewer then Bluey isn’t a Bewer and Castle Bewer doesn’t belong to them. Legitimate male issue! You read it with your own eyes.’

  Alec whistled. ‘The entail,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the same as a spinster not being able to give away a necklace. The Annandales can’t decree that they don’t mind the Bewers staying on! Somewhere out there is the legitimate male heir to all of this – the castle and the almshouses and the family portraits – even if the ownership of the ruby is hard to determine, should it ever actually turn up.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s Leonard, do you?’ Alec said. ‘I do hope so. He’ll have about three months to swank about and get even more insufferable before he gets his tax bill. Ha!’

  ‘You’ve recovered from your love affair with the theatre, then?’

  ‘I don’t imagine I’m alone in that,’ Alec said. ‘Minnie and Bluey are no doubt very sad that Otto died, but they must be relieved to shut the doors and have done with it.’

  ‘And do you really think they mean not to tell the authorities about Richard’s resting place?’ I said. Then I turned my head at a distant sound. A police klaxon was coming along the lane.

  ‘There’s your answer, Dan,’ said Alec. ‘I expected as much. He’s been down there for thirty years, but it’s different once you know.’

  ‘Unless you’re Ottoline,’ I said. ‘What an interesting character she was. I’m sorry she died before we ever got the chance to talk honestly.’

  Unbeknownst to me, Bluey had put his head round the door as I was speaking. Alec flashed his eyes and I turned. ‘Thank you for those few kind words, Dandy,’ he said. ‘I think we shall be needing that kind of sanguinity for a while. Gosh, my mother dead and my father in the moat for decades? The newspapers are going to have a field day.’

  He did not know the half of it, I thought, and with a deep breath I began to tell him.

  Postscript

  The newspapers had not just a field day, but a festival that lasted for months on end. Every morning, and especially on Sundays, there seemed to be more to say about the long and tortured history of the Annandales and Bewers.