Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble

by Catriona McPherson

  By the time Alec and I returned, it had begun to settle down a little, but the reason for our visit was sure to set it off again.

  No one could blame the press for their paroxysms when the frogmen brought Richard’s body up from its watery grave. It was indeed encased in armour. Inside the armour, his clothes had rotted away to no more than a few horn buttons from his tweed coat and a few rusty studs from his collar and links from his cuffs. His breast pocket had gone, of course. But the ruby necklace he had tucked in there before he set off to Mespring had survived, as sunken treasure will. The newspapermen even managed to spare a little pity for Ottoline, since it truly was pitiful to think of her ransacking the castle for the rubies she herself had just tipped into the moat.

  ‘To think of it,’ as Grant said. ‘All of that scheming and all those stories and yet she didn’t check his pockets. Easy to see she’d never done a day’s laundrywork.’

  The next chapter in the sordid history soon put the piteous Ottoline out of the minds of the great reading public anyway. The disinheritance of Bluey and the installation of Cousin Leonard, the rightful heir to the Bewer fortune, the very man who had brought the Tragedy of Macbeth inside the castle walls, just as all the heinous deeds came to light? It was too delicious for words.

  Francis Mowatt sold his story, of course. He was a nine-days wonder with his tale of falling down through the green water and seeing the knight’s helmet in its murky depths.

  Mrs Rynsburger chipped in with her tale of the ‘shining ghost’, although I remained convinced that Miles and Tansy, freshly costumed in Grant’s iridescent gauze, had been responsible for that particular piece of mischief.

  There was one more revelation still to come. As we were welcomed to the long gallery at Mespring and offered cocktails by a new and properly granite-faced butler, Billy Annandale waved at the far wall. ‘Did you notice our acquisitions? We bought them from Leonard.’

  I glanced over, behind the long sofa where Minnie, Bluey and Penny were all drinking their cocktails thirstily, and was astonished to see, hanging side by side, Ottoline and Beulah, each with the ruby around her neck.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ I said, putting my drink down and stepping closer.

  ‘I told you she’d see it, Mother,’ Billy said. ‘It’s unmissable when you put them side by side.’

  Indeed it was. These were not two portraits painted of two women who wore the same ruby for their sitting. The necklace in the picture of Ottoline had been copied, stroke for stroke, bead for bead of reflected light, and simply added to the portrait of Beulah. It was the same size in both pictures, even though the pictures themselves were not, and so it was much bigger on the neck of the one than of the other.

  ‘We think whoever added it used tracing paper,’ said Penny, ruefully.

  ‘And this was why Mama was always so careful to keep the two pictures apart,’ Bluey said. ‘Her own in her bedroom and Beulah sewn up in sacking and tucked away. All the talk of luck and curses!’

  ‘I had been wondering about that,’ said Alec. ‘Gunn told us there was something to learn from all three portraits, not just the picture of Anne and Dorothy. This is what he meant, is it?’

  ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘There couldn’t really have been a portrait of Beulah wearing the Cut Throat, because it wasn’t until after her death that it came into the family.’

  ‘And speaking of Gunn,’ said Alec. ‘What of him? That’s one angle the papers seem to have missed.’

  ‘When the docs said Richard’s death was probably an accident,’ said Billy, with a wary look at Penny, ‘we thought it best to let all that side of it die down. We’ve pensioned him off and he’s gone to live in Alnwick.’

  ‘He’s got off very lightly,’ I said.

  ‘Oh well, you know,’ said Lady Annandale. I was not sure I did.

  ‘And have the lawyers managed to work out who owns the Cut Throat?’ I said.

  ‘It’s ours, all right,’ said Billy. ‘Even Anne’s father didn’t have the right to give it away, actually. It was part of the entailment. So, I suppose you’d say it’s mine.’

  ‘But Minnie and I think – we really do,’ said Bluey, ‘that it should be in a case in front of the two portraits when the house opens up again next spring. When it’s not being worn to parties anyway.’

  I could not help raising my eyebrows at the interested way he spoke and in such detail.

  ‘Oh yes, indeed,’ said Lady Annandale to my eyebrows. ‘We’ve roped our cousins in. I have no talent for that sort of thing at all. We were hopeless at it all compared with Minnie and Bluey. Gosh, the very week we were supposed to open up last time we almost threw ourselves on their mercy and begged to pool resources.’

  ‘We got as far as the castle gate one night, before we funked it and slunk off home again,’ Billy said.

  ‘The lights in the lane!’ I exclaimed, sitting upright. ‘That was you?’

  ‘That was us,’ said Winifred. ‘I wanted to come clean, tell all, and beg for help.’

  ‘We got there in the end,’ said Bluey. ‘We are all aboard for the great adventure now.’

  ‘The great adventure?’ I said.

  ‘This pile of a place on the one hand and the Bewer way with talks and teas and plays on the other,’ said Billy. ‘We might just break even. Worth a try.’

  ‘And thanks to Cousin Winifred we’ve got rather a lovely dower house to live in, at least for a while,’ said Minnie. ‘Much more comfy than the castle any day.’

  ‘Yes, I hope Leonard gets consumption before he has to sell up,’ Penny said.

  I was glad to hear her speak of it so openly, for I had found it shocking. The loathsome Leonard, if you please, had decided that a man of his stature – the owner of a castle and the latest in a long and illustrious line that could trace its roots back to the Conqueror – needed a more respectable wife than Penny to support him in his new role. And a rich one too. I hoped against hope that he would not be able to cast this individual, but I could not be sorry that Penny had lost the part. I glanced at Alec to see if the news struck him as interesting. But I had missed a hint. Lady Annandale threw it again.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll be moving into the dower house, Minnie. Once this place is off my hands, I intend to do a great deal of travelling and in between times I shall take up residence in the north lodge and wave my walking stick at villagers who step on the grass.’

  ‘Off your hands?’ said Alec. He had missed the hint even at its second pitching, but I smiled at Penny who blushed and gave Billy a shy look.

  She had found herself another cousin, it seemed. And a considerably broader canvas than a shabby theatre in which to put on her next show.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘All’s well that ends well, wouldn’t you say?’

  Facts and Fictions

  Castle Bewer’s location and lay-out owes something to Caerlaverock Castle and anyone who makes an excursion to it will recognise some features. Mespring House does not exist, in Dumfriesshire or anywhere else, but some of its decorative excesses will be familiar to anyone who has visited enough major historic piles. The characters here are all fictitious, although Sarah Byrne is so named thanks to the real Sarah Byrne’s winning bid in an auction for a very good cause.