Arrest the Bishop?
Page 26
“But do Mary and Jessica dislike each other?”
“Not fundamentally, I imagine, perhaps not! But they’re always quarrelling.”
“Why do they live together if they fight with each other?”
“Of course they do,” said my Scottish husband, puzzled. “They’re sisters. And as a matter of fact they’d have to, in this case, as Mary is absolutely dependent on Jessica.”
“But why doesn’t she set Mary up on her own?”
“Mary wouldn’t leave Warrielaw,” said John. “She adores it, and she’s the next to inherit it. It’s a tangled story.”
“But I’d like it,” I said eagerly.
Two generations previously, it appeared, the entail had been broken to exclude a tiresome elder son. To dispose of his property had been a task beyond Jessica’s father. He had considered the claims of his wife and five daughters helplessly, and solved the matter by leaving everything to his wife. She in her turn waited till death claimed her some twenty years before, and then made a hurried will without legal advice, bequeathing the estate and house “to my daughter Jessica and to my daughter Mary on her death”, leaving the survivor to dispose of her property as she pleased. The three other daughters had married, and all three were now dead. The eldest left one daughter, Cora, who married Charles Murray, the richest lawyer in Edinburgh (“though not”, added John, “till she and her cousin Neil had got themselves talked about everywhere”). It was she who had outraged Jessica by questioning the terms of the very unbusinesslike will, and persuading her husband at last to go to law about it. For Jessica claimed that, while the estate was hers, everything in the house was at her disposal, and for years had been selling off family jewels and pictures and some wonderful furniture. Most of the proceeds went, everyone imagined, to Neil Logan, and only when Cora married did she begin to object to this leakage. Hundreds of pounds were spent on the lawsuit as to the exact meaning of the legacy, and in the end it was decided in Jessica’s favour. So the steady sale of family treasures proceeded and Neil’s exchequer was kept filled.
“What’s Neil Logan like then?”
“Oh, he’s a queer fish. His mother was clever and rather mad, and married a parson who lives now in the South of France. I’ve never liked him and I don’t trust him, and he’s always behaved pretty brutally to Jessica who adores him. He’s an artist, and quite a success here: it’s rather fun to go in for new art in Edinburgh! He holds little exhibitions and wears a black hat with a wide brim and a long cape and side-whiskers, like some of the people in your father’s house. You’ll swallow him, I expect, but Edinburgh gapes at him. He talks like someone out of Oscar Wilde.”
“And behaves like someone out of Jane Austen?”
“Lord, no, though I sometimes fancy he’s not as hot stuff as he makes out. Still, he’s very bitter about Philistines, like me, and has run through lots of Jessica’s money with little to show for it.”
“He doesn’t sound much like Rhoda!”
“No indeed. Rhoda’s mother married first of the five sisters, an odd literary fellow called Macpherson who died, leaving her with Rhoda and very little else. Years later she married a second cousin of her own and died with him in a boating accident. Rhoda, who was only just grown up, took charge of the little girl they left, and has been a mother to her. She defied all the Edinburgh conventions and got a job as bookkeeper in a smart little dressmaker’s near the West End. The shop’s done well and she’s done well. She’s practically manager now and comes and goes as she likes. She’s a little house in Comely Bank and the stepsister looks after it for her. You must have Alison to meet your brother when he comes to stay in April. She’s rather a dear and extraordinarily pretty.”
“How do you know them all so well?”
“Well of course my people were hand in glove with the old Warrielaws over the estate, and as long as they lived all the sisters used to dump their families on them for months on end. I used to go out there for tea perpetually, and heavens! how they quarrelled! Neil and Cora were friends always, but Miss Jessica hated Cora, and Neil was always rude and unkind to Miss Jessica, who adored him. Everyone but Miss Mary hated Rhoda, and Cora, after she married, had a quarrel with Rhoda over a frock she ordered from her shop, which almost led to another lawsuit. They hated each other and worshipped Warrielaw and always called it home.”
“I see,” I said. “Neil the Rip and Cora the Siren and Rhoda the Business Woman and Alison the little Beauty. Shall I see them all?”
“You’re sure to, pretty soon. Everyone knows everyone in Edinburgh.”
My husband’s prophecy was only too correct. The door opened once more and Christina announced, in a voice which marked her disapproval of so late a visit, yet condoned it in view of the visitor’s social standing:
“Mr. and Mrs. Charles Murray.”
John jumped up and made for the door in the other half of our big drawing-room, but he was too late. Mrs. Murray swerved from her polite advance towards me and ran to John, catching him by both hands.
“John my dear! What fun! We hoped you’d both be in if we came late! Please forgive me for being so long in calling on you, Mrs. Morrison, but I’ve been in town since Christmas. I can’t stand Edinburgh when it’s festive in January! Ever since I got back I’ve been longing to meet John’s English wife. I’m sure my Warrielaw aunts call you that! No Charles! You’re not to try to get John to sneak off to the library with you for a drink. I must see him.”
Charles Murray evidently knew his place and sat down beside me without a murmur. He was a tall, fair, baldish man with a nice twinkle in his eyes and a tolerant smile. Evidently he adored his wife, and at first sight I decided that the Warrielaw type was at its best in its sophisticated members. Cora, tall, slender, restless and exquisitely dressed, her hair beautifully coiffured, her complexion carefully made-up, showed little trace of her race save her eyes. These were frankly in contrast to her manner, her languid airs and graceful movement. Long eyelids emphasised the wide, staring yellow-green irises, and out of them looked a spirit not exactly wild or dangerous, but with a suggestion of an untamed will, of red-hot determination to get exactly what she wanted from life. I had detected something of that sudden, almost animal shyness and fierceness in Miss Mary Warrielaw, but it seemed akin to her eccentricity and lonely life. Cora’s eyes were as out of place in her exquisite modishness as a jungle tiger set down in Piccadilly. Certainly she was an arresting personality, and I watched her with pleasure, while Charles Murray congratulated me intelligently on my nice empty drawing-room and Chippendale bureau. All the time, however, he was watching his wife, and when I mentioned that Miss Mary had called that afternoon, he made some excuse of fetching a cigarette to go and stand by her chair.
“That’s an excellent bit of staff work, Cora,” he said. “How did you know the Warrielaws were here?”
Cora for a moment looked like a wild cat about to spring, and then like a small child detected in a falsehood. In an emergency, I judged, Charles Murray might have the upper hand.
“I saw Mary and Rhoda go past my window,” she said sullenly. “As it was so late I wondered what they were doing and watched them cross the street and come in here. That made me guess they wanted to see John as well as Mrs. Morrison, and I wondered if anything was wrong!”
“Now you know Edinburgh, Mrs. Morrison,” laughed Charles. “Cora, as you’ve betrayed your real reason for calling at this unholy hour, I think you may as well retire gracefully and come home.”
“No, no! I really wanted to see Betty—yes, I’m going to call you Betty!” Cora turned to me gracefully with outstretched hands. “After all it’s quite natural that I should like to know something about Warrielaw, now that I can’t go there and Neil’s away, and I’ve broken entirely with that dismal little Rhoda. Is anything the matter there? Do tell me, John.”
“Oh nothing, nothing out of the usual!” John gave me so portentous a wink that I felt Cora’s suspicions must be aroused at once, but her eyes were fixe
d on mine imploringly and I managed not to betray myself unduly.
“Is it the jewel, John, do tell me? Is Jessica trying to sell the jewel again? Betty, I’m sure you sympathise with me, don’t you? Obviously you love pretty things and old things. Isn’t it dreadful that Aunt Jessica should sell our family possessions right and left and that the law can’t stop her! She should be locked up, John, and you should see to it, if she really means to sell the fairy jewel!” John politely said nothing. He has a real talent for this.
“My dear, leave it alone,” said Charles impatiently. “If she doesn’t sell it she’ll leave it to Mary, and Mary will leave it to Rhoda.”
“Would she sell it to us?” pleaded Cora.
John exercised his talent again.
“Don’t be silly, Cora,” said Charles. “You know she refused you the Raeburn on any terms.”
“And then it went for a few hundreds,” cried Cora passionately. “And the jewel’s worse, far worse. Oh, I can’t bear it to go out of the family! You must stop her, John!”
I was almost as embarrassed as the two men when Cora began to cry. After all, there are certain things any woman may cry for legitimately, like losing a cook or some teeth or an engagement ring, but not in front of strangers, and not as if her heart was broken.
“My dear,” I said, wishing Cora wasn’t too old to be spanked, “I don’t believe there’s anything in the world I’d feel worth crying for like that!”
“You English have no family feeling,” said Cora, but to my relief she stopped crying and got out her powder-puff. “It’s so different for people like us who’ve inherited nothing but a few traditions and heirlooms! I don’t care about money, but this comes straight from my ancestors and I love it! It’s part of my old Home.”
“God preserve us from our ancestors,” said Charles, rising decidedly. “You must come now, Cora. I’m getting her to the Riviera soon,” he added in a lower voice to John as Cora went to look at herself in a long mirror. “Her nerves are going to pieces. She’s really unhinged by worry over this tiresome family junk.”
“Is there any question of an immediate sale, John?” she persisted.
“Miss Warrielaw has said nothing to me about it,” replied John stiffly. “I shall send Charles a bill every time you ask me that question, Cora!”
Published by Dean Street Press 2016
Copyright © 1949 Patricia Wentworth
Introduction copyright © 2016 Martin Edwards
All Rights Reserved
The right of Winifred Peck to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her estate in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 1949 by Faber & Faber
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 911413 92 9
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk