The Warrielaw Jewel, page 12
John’s face confirmed the view when he joined us. We had persuaded Bob to dine with us, and Dennis and I sat on over the dessert plates and glasses, waiting interminably for news from the other room. That it was as bad as possible was clear when at last the front door slammed behind Charles and John joined us. Cora was ill, dangerously ill. That at least was the report to be spread in Edinburgh. She had spent the day driving out alone, no one knew whither, and returned at five o’clock. On her way upstairs she met the housemaid, Annie, who was just starting out in her best clothes for her afternoon out. Suddenly and inexplicably she lost her temper utterly with the girl. The other maids heard her voice raised in passion, and the butler was called upon to produce Annie’s wages, with which she was turned out of the house at once by Cora herself. Then Cora had locked herself into her room, and Charles had got back from the office to find his household debating whether they should break in her door and try to stop her terrible moans and cries. Charles made his entry and sent for the doctor: the doctor rang up Lisle, the famous nerve specialist, at once, and now Cora was lying in charge of two nurses, shut off from all communication with the outside world, by Mr. Lisle’s most stringent orders.
“And of course Charles is knocked out by this,” added John. “She’s been in this man’s charge before, you see. She went absolutely out of her mind both before and after she had her one child, which was born dead. They’ve always warned Charles that he must guard her from any shock. As he says, it’s the devil’s own luck that she should just have got back here when this discovery was made. She wouldn’t have felt it so much if she’d been at a distance.”
“Then the police can’t get at her for her evidence?”
John shook his head.
“Charles brought me a certificate from Lisle that she could only be approached at the gravest risk to her reason, if not to her life, for the present. Poor old Miss Jessica would boast that there really was something in the curse of the fairy jewel as far as you are concerned, Bob. You can’t get hold of Miss Mary or of Mrs. Murray for the moment!”
“I must get hold of this queer maid of theirs some time,” said Bob thoughtfully. “We must get her address at Warrielaw to-morrow. But her alibi on the 13th is too sound for us to expect anything much from that. Well, well, something may turn up at Warrielaw to-morrow and Ard may lay his hands on a suitable burglar after all. That scare of a burglary in February seems more significant to him than it does to me at present, but I may be in the wrong.”
Dennis was so far recovered from the first shock of the discovery that he spent the rest of the evening in searching the history of our favourite detective hero, to discover if he had ever made a similar admission.
CHAPTER VIII
A BOX OF CHOCOLATES
It was by Bob’s urgent request that I shut my eyes as we approached Warrielaw next morning, and turned my thoughts resolutely from any agonising comparison between the beauty of the beech trees in their early radiance, or the smiling serenity of the old house in the spring sunshine, and the ghastly circumstances of Miss Jessica’s death. Bob was insistent that I must live over again the thoughts and events of the 13th of April, in the hope that some forgotten detail might come back to my mind. But I fear that all his good advice was forgotten as we drew up to the house, for at the open door stood Effie, engaged in conversation with Rhoda Macpherson.
I had not seen Rhoda since the news of the tragedy, and I was shocked though hardly surprised to realise that it had not changed her appearance in the least. She was prim and neat and composed as usual, but from the glare of those Warrielaw eyes set so strangely in her commonplace, pale little face, she was evidently very angry.
“Mr. Stuart!” she said abruptly, with sublime indifference to the terms on which they had parted, “I’m glad to see you. I really think you, as John’s representative, should put Effie in her proper place. She not only refuses to let me go up to see my aunt or even consult with the nurses. She has the impertinence to refuse to admit me to my own grandfather’s house.”
“That’s no fair, Miss Rhoda!” Poor Effie did not share the Warrielaw heartlessness. Her face was drawn in sharp, new lines, her colour faded, and every word and movement showed her age for the first time. “I’d no let you up to your Auntie for the doctors and nurses said she mustn’t be disturbed, and she’s been so worried of late when she heard you below at all. But I’ve let Miss Alison upstairs to see the nurses for you; she’s aye so douce and soft-spoken that she can do no harm. And I’m no denying you the house, but the police themselves was saying last night that no one was to go into Miss Jessica’s room for the present. They’d have locked it if there had been a key and they’re sending a man to sort it this morning.”
“That would be the regular procedure,” said Bob, regarding Rhoda regretfully. “Though there’d be no harm, of course, if you cared to come up with me and just let me make a note of anything you wish to take away with you.”
Rhoda stood considering the question for a minute. “No,” she said without a word of thanks. “I don’t want to take anything, you see. I only wish to see that nothing is taken and everything is put away in order. If the police are to lock up the room it can be left as it is for the moment, I suppose.”
There was a step on the stair and Alison descended it, looking, as Dennis said afterwards, like a fairy who had been badly caught in a storm. She was pale and her eyes were still full of terror, but they brightened when she saw Dennis.
“The nurses have no better news than Effie,” she said to her sister. “But the day nurse does agree with the doctor that as she’s comparatively young and has such a wonderful constitution, she may pull through in the end.”
“Did you go and see her?” Rhoda’s voice was sharp.
“No, no, they wouldn’t let me in her room, Rhoda. You knew they wouldn’t let me. It wasn’t my fault.”
“I see.” Rhoda accepted the defeat with an effort at composure. “Well, I must go. Alison, why don’t you leave your bicycle here and let Dennis motor you home if Mrs. Morrison doesn’t mind? You look so tired and I must hurry because I’ve got to see the lawyers!”
“And that’s a good riddance,” grumbled Effie as she led Bob and myself up to Miss Jessica’s room. “Suspect here and suspect there! It’s those who aren’t to be trusted who’s always suspecting others, I say!”
“Miss Rhoda does her best to help her aunt though,” said Bob casually. He was at the writing-table in the window, looking absently through the drawers, his attention, apparently, far from the large, sombre room.
“That one!” said Effie contemptuously. “It’s little help she gives but ordering and managing the nose off a body’s face. But she’s not been into Miss Mary’s room alone since first Miss Mary took to her bed the night Miss Jessica—Miss Jessica went away. It wasn’t likely I’d let her when there wasn’t a thing safe from her and her mean ways.”
I sighed a little impatiently, but in a mirror I caught Bob’s warning glance. If Effie wished to talk now he was more than willing to hear her, I gathered, however little to the point her revelations might be.
“She’d an eye for her aunts’ jewels and bits of ornaments then?” asked Bob. He was gazing now at the safe in the wall.
“Ma certie, yes, and anything else she could pick up as well. Why, there wasn’t a pair of old gloves but she’d find some use for it! The very last present Miss Jessica ever made me she carried off with her. She’d given it to poor Annie, she told me, but it was for a poor woman Miss Jessica meant it, I told her, and that was myself. Every year when Miss Jessica got a new costume and took to her best for everyday she’d hand on her last year’s second-best costume to me, and that was how I could put by a bit wages for my old age, and help my niece Ellen now and again, and her all cluttered up with her weans. But that didna matter to Miss Rhoda; she didna heed that. She carried off the hat and coat Miss Jessica had laid out for me without a word good or bad for me.”
Bob was at the dressing-table now, looking through the small drawers, but he turned and put Effie through a long and, I felt, pointless catechism about the habits of the two sisters. Every spring, it appeared, the sisters went to their little dressmaker in Edinburgh and bought themselves new costumes. In solemn state Jessica would order a black skirt, blouse, coat, Inverness cloak and hat, while Mary bought herself the same articles in those unhappy shades of beige and grey which made the worst of her complexion. These were the state and Sunday garments of the ladies for the coming year, and they had only been purchased a week before the accident. On their arrival the best skirts and jumpers of last year were solemnly degraded to everyday wear, and the everyday clothes of the year before were passed on, by Jessica to Effie, by Mary to some poor retainer of Rhoda’s. In Jessica’s case they were a handsome gift, since for gardening she kept also a wonderful assortment of antique tweeds of every colour, and as nearly every day was devoted to her garden, her black second-bests were in excellent repair. Jessica had packed her braw new things, said Effie: she had travelled in her everyday outfit and left out the black hat and cloak she was discarding for Effie. And by the time Effie went to look for them, early on April 14th, when she had time to remember them, the day after the upset, Rhoda had spirited them away. “‘There’s many needing them more than you, Effie,’ says she to me, and I was fair put to it not to let her know what I thought of her.”
“Did she take off Miss Mary’s old clothes too?” asked Bob.
“No fears! Ever since Miss Mary was took ill she’d told the nurse she wouldn’t have Miss Rhoda interfering with her room or hunting among her things. Miss Rhoda was always saying she must sort her cupboards and put her things in order, but then Nurse, who’s an awfu’ genteel sort of body, would just put her off and persuade her out of the room. Miss Rhoda’s so tidy and neat, you see, and Miss Mary keeps her things in a dreadful state, and Miss Rhoda’s always been at her about it. Dear, how she’s managed the poor lady since she was a bairn of seven! But she couldn’t get past Miss Jessica!”
“No, Miss Rhoda does not seem a lovable character,” said Bob absently. “What is it, Mrs. Morrison?”
I must have started violently, for, as I stood looking down on the drive, a sudden breeze blew my handkerchief out of the front of the car, where it lay forgotten, into the long grass and wild hemlock which grew, untouched by scythe or roller, up to the very edge of the gravel.
“Mr. Stuart!” I cried breathlessly. “I’ve just remembered something—something which might be really important!”
It was only at this moment that I recalled the scrap of paper which had blown from the car in the back drive on April 13th. Bob said afterwards that it must have been the first moment at which I had really set myself conscientiously to reconstruct the past, but I fear it was the accident to my handkerchief rather than deliberate concentration which suggested the incident to me. He listened to my story in silence and together we left Effie and hurried into the drive.
“It’s not likely that the paper’s still there, and it may be of no importance, remember,” said Bob.
But his eyes were keen and his step quick as we went round to the stable-yard. A policeman was called from the back gates to serve as witness if we found anything, but Bob’s warning had discouraged me so thoroughly that I felt it out of the question that the paper should still be there. Then, as Bob pushed back the broken lattice, and we saw a dusty envelope within, I imagined with a leaping heart that the Warrielaw mystery was solved outright. My hands trembled as Bob took up the paper carefully with gloved hands and we all peered over his shoulder. On the envelope was scrawled, in an uneducated hand, the words:
Miss McGully,
Rose Cottage,
by Harburn.
“Ever heard of that name?” Bob asked the policeman.
The man shook his head. He went off to the lodge to make enquiries if any tradesmen of the name were known there, and Bob went in at the kitchen door to ask Effie. We had no particular hope of any information, and Alison, whom Dennis had fetched from the gardens, had no suggestion to offer.
“Let’s all go and find Rose Cottage at once!” my brother cried joyfully. “We’ll get a spot of lunch on the way and have a day’s outing. Come on, Betty! Come on, Alison!”
A glance at Bob Stuart convinced me that he did not altogether favour the suggestion.
“Rather a large party,” he said drily. “However, if you and Miss Alison would like the drive, you could take a little walk on the hills when we find the place. Perhaps Mrs. Morrison will come and make the visit with me?”
Dennis the lover and Dennis the detective were evidently torn in two, but the lover triumphed. “Splendid!” he said. “And you can tell us about it afterwards!”
It was a long and cold drive south towards the Pentland Hills, and I grew sleepy after lunch in a wayside inn, but Bob’s attention never wandered as we drew near the moors which lie on the high land by Harburn Station.
“I’ve seen it,” he said quietly, “a wee way back. Mrs. Morrison, will you come with me? Mr. Dennis and Miss Alison, you should walk away up over yon hill. It’s a fine view.”
Bob and I walked back slowly along the road which stretches on one side of the wide rolling moors. The sun was shining, the air cold and fresh as the song of the larks rising from the tough tussocks of grass, and I asked him how he had noticed the cottage when none of the rest of us had even begun to look for it, a whole mile from Harburn.
“It was that ‘by’,” said he. “That showed me it was outside the place one side of the village or the other.”
“But why expect it on the main road?”
“But of course it would be,” said Bob in surprise. “And then I noticed two or three big bushes of briar roses by the wall, and there was a bairn in the porch with her foot up. So I was just expecting to read ‘Rose Cottage’ on the gate.”
The shoots of the briar roses were fresh and green, and bees were humming in the wallflowers outside the little white cottage with its prim slate roof. In the porch, as Bob had observed, a child sat with her knitting, her foot up on the opposite bench. As Bob clicked the gate, a dog barked, and a broad, pleasant woman came to the door, wiping her hands and turning down the sleeves of her dress.
“And hoo’s the wean?” asked Bob pleasantly. “She’s been in the trouble on the road I jalouse?”
“Were ye enquiring about her accident?” asked Mrs. McGully suspiciously.
“Not so much that as about a driver who’s been making a nuisance of himself the last month,” said Bob. “There’s a lad with a motor lorry …”
“Ah weel, that’s no affair of mine,” said Mrs. McGully triumphantly. “It’s eight weeks come Thursday since my Jeanie hurt her foot. And the gentleman driving the car was no lad but a real gentleman, aye he was that. For after a’ it was the lassie’s ain fault and she’s had her lesson.”
“Was she playing in the road then?” asked Bob. “She was that indeed. There she was jerking up and down with her rope never heeding the car and the gentleman hooting like one dementit. I ca’d to her, ‘Get back, Jeanie,’ I called, but she just ran this way and that like a silly hen, and just as the gentleman stopped dead, down she fell into the ditch, screetching; she’d twisted her ankle right over and broken it with an awfu’ knock on a stone too, ye see, but, mercy me, it was a fair wonder she’d escaped alive. The car hadna touched her, but with the fricht and the pain she lay as if she were gone, and the gentleman jumps out and picks her up while I just stood staring, and he carried her ben the hoose as if she were a princess. Her father had come across frae the field by this time and he said straight out it was the bairn to blame, but not a bit of it, says the gentleman, and out he takes two five-pound notes. ‘I’m sair driven,’ says he, ‘for I’m hurrying to Carstairs, and dinna want to stop for any formalities, if ye’ll accept this as compensation. And I’ll ring up the doctor frae the station,’ says he, and he made me write down the address. And he didna forget the doctor for he was round within the half-hour, and sorted the bairn’s foot, and a week later what comes but a box of chocolates as big as that kist for the wean? Aye, and the postman was fair amused, for the gentleman hadna made much of my writing. ‘Mrs. McCully, Home Cottage’, he’d written on the wrapper and there it is yet on the shelf, for my wee Jeanie was quite taken up with it all.”
“Ah, the man I’d got my knife into was a dark little fellow with an Irish way of speaking, no what you’d call a gentleman,” said Bob, as Mrs. McGully hunted in a blue vase from Dundee on the dresser, to find the sacred relic among nails and pencils and bits of string.
“Ma certie, no. He was tall and broad and verra elegantly dressed, fair too, with a mincing English way of speaking. Noo where’s yon bit of paper gone? We’ve had it here for weeks, for as luck would have it the sweeties came on April 16th and that was her birthday. Aye, it was three days before that that she took her bad ankle.”
“Ye’ll be more careful anither evening, Jeanie,” said Bob genially, turning to the child.
“Na, na, it was the forenoon. The ither weans were awa’ to school, and it wis but half-past ten or a little past by the time the doctor came and wee Jeanie was to bed.”
“And he drove carefully enough on his way home past this house, I’m thinking, Mrs. McGully, after that fright in the morning?” said Bob.
“That I can’t tell, Sir, for we none of us saw him. He may have passed the cottage when we was to dinner, for before that the boys were wild to see his car—or when I took a wee rest wi’ Jeanie afterwards when the bairns were awa’ again. Aye, here we are! I knew it was some place!”
Bob took the paper wrapper and handed it to me. I gazed at it mechanically, for by this time I knew only too well what to expect. The address, with those errors which occurred so inevitably since the paper was blown out of the car and had lain useless in Warrielaw stable-yard, was written in the bold artistic hand of Neil Logan.
