The Warrielaw Jewel, page 9
“Well, if I can get their consent, and I’m pretty sure of it,” said John, “will you take on the job for me, Bob?”
“I would if he won’t, you know,” said the irrepressible Dennis. “I’ve always wanted to be a detective!”
“Hmhm,” said Bob. “This is hardly the most exciting sort of detective work though, is it?”
“Well, it won’t exactly lead to the Riviera Express or International Plots, but there’s a Lost Jewel and a Missing Dowager.”
“Let’s hear all about them,” said Bob, taking an appalling pipe out of his pocket absent-mindedly, and then trying to hide it. When I implored him to smoke it I think he felt that John might have married happily after all.
One delightful attribute of Bob was that after every answer to any question he said “Hmhm,” and then had that fact securely fixed in his mind for ever. By the time John had told the story of the Warrielaws, and Dennis and I had answered every possible question about Jessica’s departure, he knew all there was to know about her up to the moment when she had disappeared from Edinburgh’s ken at Carstairs.
“I’ll take on the job,” he said slowly at last, after a long meditative silence in the room; “partly because I’d like to work with you, John, partly because I’ve had thoughts of starting an Enquiry business rather than any other routine life, and partly because I’ll enjoy working a bit with the Force again if I come across them—they’re the very best of men. Also I agree with you that it’s as likely as not something has happened to that poor old body. You say she hated most of her relations and wasn’t much of a letter-writer. That’s all very well, but I gather that she was fond of her garden, and I’m yet to meet the gardener who’d leave his seeds unpricked and his beds untouched in April without sending a card to give directions to somebody. So if the family will employ me, I’m on. Of course it won’t be a cheap job. As far as I can see, most of my enquiries must be in London, and if I draw blank there it might even mean America and the dealers there. With fifty pounds in her pocket she might have got across. I gather it’s her money that you’ll draw on, but I suppose we have the consent of her heirs?”
It was Rhoda who gained the day over the question. For once she and John were in agreement. Neil remained incurably casual, and Miss Mary wrote protesting against the whole affair, but Charles Murray for Cora, Alison under Rhoda’s orders, and Rhoda herself made a majority in favour of an enquiry. John sent off his instructions to Bob, and Bob disappeared on his quest, dressed, as Dennis said disappointedly, in no more interesting disguise than his own abominable ready-made suit of clothes.
It was a fortnight before we heard anything from him, and in the interval Rhoda rang up almost every day to ask if he had found the suitcase and why he was so long about it. She had the grace to sound slightly ashamed when John pointed out that it was Jessica’s fate rather than the suit-case which was the origin of the enquiry.
“But of course,” said Alison with large, innocent eyes, “she really didn’t get on with Aunt Jessica and she does believe, I think, that Aunt Jessica may be keeping quiet just to annoy Aunt Mary. And she says Aunt Jessica is so careless that she’d be likely to lose her luggage. She was always absent-minded, and she’s very unkind to Aunt Mary often, you know! And Rhoda can’t help caring about the jewel. Not for its value, of course” (I tried to look politely acquiescent) “but she has second sight from our Highland grandmother, and thinks that we should find such interesting things from it if we took it to an American Professor in that sort of thing.”
“But you don’t want to go to America?” said Dennis jealously.
“Oh, no,” said Alison, blushing very prettily. “I’d hate it, but of course I’ll have to do what Rhoda does.”
“Then I hope the suit-case and the jewel are lost,” muttered Dennis.
But the suit-case was not lost. A wire announced that Bob was returning with it, though without any news, and John summoned Rhoda, as Mary’s representative, to come to the office to go through its contents and hear the result of Bob’s enquiries. Neil refused to join us. “The sight of my aunt’s intimate toilet details would unnerve me,” he said firmly.
It was nearly seven before John returned that evening, and I ran down as the door opened to find him in the hall with Bob. Both men were looking angry, and I was about to fade away when John opened the library door for me. “No, come in, you and Dennis. You’ve been in it from the beginning. You may as well hear all about it now. And you’ll restrain our language a little, Betty! Bob and I have been saying exactly what we think about Rhoda all the way from Charlotte Square and we’d better get a little more temperate. Have a whisky, Bob?”
It was extraordinarily difficult at first to see why Rhoda should be angry. Bob seemed, to Dennis and me, to have worked miracles. It is not easy to set off on a quest six weeks old for a perfectly normal, middle-aged lady, in a black hat and cloak, who disappeared, presumably in London, of her free will. There had been no information of any sort after Jessica’s start from any railway official. Small’s office recollected her ordering the cab on April 13th, and their man remembered perfectly driving down to Warrielaw and taking her up to the station next day. He remembered that she was carrying a suit-case and a parcel, and that she had tipped him threepence for a six miles’ drive. Miss Wise had caught a glimpse of her, and I myself had certainly seen her in the London train at the Caledonian; Dennis and Peter Carruthers had seen her at Carstairs. After that all was a blank, yet Bob, by systematic enquiries, had found from a cheap hotel near Euston that Jessica had, in a letter dated April 10th, ordered bed and breakfast for the night of April 13th. The room had been reserved, and Jessica had never come. He had set off on a tour of the best-known private jewel dealers in London, and discovered, in the hands of one of them, a letter from Jessica making an appointment for an important transaction on April 14th. She had failed to keep it. The probability seemed to be that she had not reached London at all, but Bob set out to track the suit-case. That at last he identified, unlabelled (“No Warrielaws use labels,” I could hear Jessica say), in the lost property office at Euston Station. It had been handed in from the train which arrived on April 13th, but no one remembered if it had arrived in the van or in a carriage. Miss Jessica might have arrived with it and forgotten it, or she might never have arrived at all: that defied discovery. There was no trace of any parcel accompanying it, but Rhoda declared that her Aunt took with her a parcel of sandwiches and fruit, of which naturally no traces would be left. She had, however, paid little attention to the story of Bob’s activities: her eyes were glued to the suit-case.
It was horrible, John told me later, to see it unpacked. Apart from the fact that Jessica was not distinguished for personal daintiness, there was something very dismal and sinister in watching her little odds and ends turned out for public inspection. Rhoda fell upon them like a fury. Jessica had a passion for little, rather grubby bags. Rhoda shook out a brush-bag, messy with odd yellow-grey combings, tore open a sponge-bag with a slimy sponge, a tooth-brush case, a bag containing a Bible, two shoe-bags and a work-bag. She shook each garment viciously as it came out, a best black blouse and skirt, black petticoats and mysterious, strangely-shaped woollen garments from which John looked modestly away. She tore at the case as if it were a rat, she rustled through everything again and again, she snatched open the bags in a fury, but at length the truth was undeniable. The suit-case was found, but the jewel, like Jessica, had vanished.
At that Rhoda broke into a passion. She practically accused Bob of theft, and in the next breath asked if he had put the police on to the guardian of the lost property office. She raged at John for putting off the enquiry so long: she declared that he knew nothing of his business, and that she would ask her aunt to put her affairs into other hands. She disgraced herself, in short, utterly and finally, and then cooled down and asked Bob for a probable estimate of his expenses if he followed the jewel to America. No wonder Bob and John found a good use for their time and language on their way back from the office.
“But, of course,” said John, “Rhoda’s of no more real importance than a yapping pom. What really concerns us is, what has happened to Jessica?”
“I don’t gather that my licence is renewed,” said Bob drily.
“Nonsense. As Jessica’s lawyer I’m determined to get to the bottom of this. Mary and Rhoda can make arrangements for their share of the Warrielaw trust with a new firm, but Jessica’s my affair. What do you make of it all, Bob? Did she ever get to London?”
Bob was quite candidly at a dead end for the moment. He would, of course, pursue again his enquiries at Carstairs; it seemed to him just possible that Jessica, anxious to escape altogether from her family, had always meant to go to America. Against that theory was her correspondence with London, but it remained possible that she might have been suddenly inspired to get out at Carstairs, and get into the Liverpool train, to sail thence to New York or Montreal. Her haste and confusion in such a case might well account for her forgetting the suit-case till it was too late to retrieve it. “But above all,” said Bob, “I must go down to Warrielaw and have a good look round there. I want to know more about her, and I’d like to question her sister and the old maid. You see there’s whiles when I wonder if she didn’t just get out of the train and take the next train home after all?”
“But then we’d all know,” I said. “I was down there that afternoon, and so was John, and we were all over the place, and saw Mary come home from her lunch party. Ever so many people would have seen her!”
“Suppose she got back that night of the 13th? Mind you, I’ve no support for this theory, but I want to explore every possibility before we set out on this American quest. It’ll be long and costly.”
“But that evening Mary was ill in bed with a nurse in charge, and Effie there, Effie who adores Miss Jessica! No, she can’t have come on the 13th or later without our knowing about it.”
“Well, I’d like to get down to Warrielaw,” said Bob. “For one thing I’d like to get this garden clear in my mind, to see what she’s been in the habit of doing and so on. I could almost tell from the look of it if she’d planned a speedy return, or was meaning to vanish for a bit. She may be odd enough to go off and leave her property for weeks or months in John’s hands, but no one I ever knew would leave their garden without a thought to it.” For the moment it seemed as if difficulties would be put in the way of the visit. Next morning Rhoda arrived at John’s office with a letter from Miss Mary. In dejected and shaking writing Mary wrote that as she and Rhoda could not feel satisfied that John was administering the estate satisfactorily in Jessica’s absence, and as Mr. Stuart’s efforts had been so unsuccessful, Rhoda and she had decided to transfer all their legal affairs to the firm of May, Leigh and May for the future. “I am sorry indeed, dear John,” wrote Mary pathetically, “to part with you thus, but Rhoda is such an excellent business woman and feels we should have more modern and up-to-date advisers behind us. You know how it hurts me to make such a parting, but I do hope that your dear little wife will come down to see me, to show that this does not affect our old family friendship.”
The dear little wife was, conveyed down to Warrielaw in Dennis’s car that afternoon, not so much in token of an unbroken friendship, as in John’s desire to discover, unofficially, how far Mary was under Rhoda’s undue influence. This question of transferring either Mary’s claims to the estate, with the little money she possessed, or Rhoda’s tiny capital to another perfectly reputable firm of lawyers, was of no importance. But it was important, if Miss Mary made a new will, that John should know what the relations between the two women were, and give a hint to her new lawyers.
Miss Mary did not receive me. Effie refused me admission most reluctantly, but she could not help herself. “The poor body’s been so harried and worried by Miss Rhoda the last few days that Nurse and I just put our heads together and got the doctor to say no one was to see her at all. She was really getting up her strength a little till Miss Rhoda was at her the last few days. Nurse has never left them alone, but she says what she likes in front of Nurse now, forbye she’s always trying to get at the bed to whisper to Miss Mary and such havers. Miss Rhoda’s been set, as ye ken, on getting new lawyers instead of Master John, and him known from a child and his father before him, and she’s been at Miss Mary to get the whole place tidied up, as though my poor lady were dead and buried and the heir walking into the estate. Miss Mary hasna given in that way yet, I understand, and now Miss Rhoda shan’t get at her again, I promise you. But I don’t see how I can very well let you in, things being so, Ma’am, though I’m sure a sight of you would do her good and stop her worrying.”
“Well, give her these flowers and say Mr. John understands,” I said. “I expect he’ll ring up the doctor and see that Miss Mary isn’t bothered any more. Besides, perhaps we’ll soon hear from Miss Jessica!”
“Hoots and I wish we could,” said Effie, sighing. “It’s a’ very weel for Miss Rhoda to say she didna write when she was awa’, but she was always in the habit of sending me a picture postcard about the garden or the weeding now and again, and I’m just wearying for a word from her, Ma’am.”
With that sole contribution to what Dennis called already “the Warrielaw mystery”, I went home, to find, to my surprise, that Neil was waiting to see me in the drawing-room with John.
“This is a farewell visit before I go for my month in Paris, Mrs. Morrison,” said Neil. He was exquisite and debonair as usual, but his manner was a little different. It seemed to me that Neil, even Neil, had something on his mind.
“Perhaps you’ll find Jessica there,” I said.
“Hardly in the Salon!” Neil seemed to find his usual casual style an effort. “I may try to get on her tracks in the dens round Bloomsbury where she used to riot on poached eggs under the shadow of the British Museum. But I still feel that her doings are her own affair. She was kind enough to leave me handsomely provided for, and I should like to leave her in return her liberty of action. However, I have just been assuring John that I leave all my affairs and hers in his hands with full trust in his discretion before I, too, lose myself in Paris.” He rose to go, but he left John at the door and came back to me suddenly.
“Be nice to Cora on her return, will you, Betty?” he said in a low voice with more feeling in it than I imagined possible. “I have a feeling that when she returns she may need friends.”
His words brought back to my mind with a shock all Cora’s odd doings and behaviour on the afternoon of that 13th of April. Till then we had been concentrating so entirely on Jessica’s disappearance from Carstairs that my visit had faded from my mind. Now I was left to live the afternoon over again and puzzle over my duty in the affair. “Be kind to Cora!” Neil had said. It hardly seemed kind to interrupt her convalescence at Cannes with the news that she was suspected of theft! It is the penalty of being a lawyer’s wife that one can’t hand over such confidences with the proviso that they must lead to no further action. If I told John every sort of publicity must follow. As far as I could see, also, Cora’s actions could have no connection with Jessica’s disappearance and that was the crux of the situation at present to all save Rhoda. Once again I decided to say nothing till Cora’s return. Then I would screw up my courage and go to see her, and tell her outright that I must tell everything I had seen that afternoon.
But in the end my confidences were delayed again. Cora returned on May 31st, almost seven weeks after Jessica’s departure. It was on that afternoon that Bob Stuart went down to Warrielaw, persuading Alison and Dennis to accompany him as a blind, while he made his investigations in the garden and saw as much as he could of the house and its inhabitants. They motored to the front and strolled round to the back, and Alison pointed out to Bob a way through the stable-yard into the wall gardens. Half an hour later they heard an exclamation from Bob, and next minute he came out under the archway with a grey face, and told Alison curtly to go indoors and enquire after her aunt. Dennis was sent off, puzzled and frightened, to fetch a policeman, and on his return Bob led the two men across the yard, to one of the low row of tool-sheds close to a rotting heap of manure which had been ordered doubtless by Jessica before her departure, and had lain there since, untouched, contaminating the air. One low door stood wide open, and at first they could see nothing in the dark, messy interior, but a heap of sacks. Then, following Bob’s eyes, Dennis saw a ragged black ankle and the remains of a black shoe sticking stiffly out beneath one of them. Together Bob and the policeman had the courage to pull the heap of sacks carefully aside. There, in that miserable outhouse, within a stone’s-throw of her house and the garden she loved, was all that was left of the body of Jessica Warrielaw.
CHAPTER VII
MR. STUART’S DISCOVERY
It is perhaps a humiliating confession for one who had been addicted to “Betty Ramps”, that even after the lapse of so many years and all the horrors of the Great War, I cannot write down any description of what the three men found. I will simply copy a Press cutting:
“The deceased lady was recognised only by the clothing she wore, which was identified by her maid as that in which she set off on her fatal journey on April 13th. The Police Surgeon, who was called in at once by the officer in charge, examined the remains and summoned a famous specialist immediately. Dr. Hewetson, who was also present at the scene, offered his assistance. The doctors gave their opinion that Miss Warrielaw undoubtedly met with her death by violence. The upper part of the skull was almost shattered by a blow or blows from some blunt instrument, or, possibly, from some very violent fall: further the deceased had been stabbed to the heart with such violence that the weapon had broken upon the breast bone and was still actually embedded in the body. It is clear also that the corpse was conveyed, when already the stiffening of death had set in, to the shed in the grounds of her own house, where the gruesome discovery was made. From the fact that an unused ticket to London and a case containing a number of bank notes were found on her person, it seems clear that she met with her death on the day of her journey to the metropolis, and that the motive of the crime was not robbery. Inspector Ard, who is in charge of the case, is said to be already in possession of clues which should lead to remarkable discoveries. Miss Mary Warrielaw, sister to the deceased lady, is prostrated by the shock. The Warrielaw family is well known as of the most historic …
