‘And what brings you here, Renée?’ I asked, when she drew breath.
‘Oh yes, indeed,’ she roared. ‘You do both look rather startled to see me. But don’t worry. Allow me to have dragged myself into the twentieth century, please. Although, Alexander darling, with your wedding in three weeks’ time you have opened my eyes, I must say.’ Alec had turned the most peculiar colour; the few spaces there were between his tawny freckles had gone a pure, clear pink and the freckles themselves were liverish.
‘I was dropping off our Gainsborough for the summer,’ she went on, her voice rising to a bellow as she said the name. I quite believed this; Renée would always want any largesse she dispensed to meet with full and immediate gratitude and if it meant her driving from Perth to Edinburgh and back like a grocer on his round then that was what she would do.
‘And how is poor sweet Cara?’ she chortled.
‘Very well indeed,’ said Alec, rallying at last. ‘I’m tootling off to see her later today, as a matter of fact. Although, Dandy, if you did decide to go,’ he gave me a significant look, I could hold off till tomorrow and run you down there.’
Such openness was the perfect tactic to throw Renée off her stride, of course, but to my shame, between catching up with the idea that I should visit the Duffys, digesting the notion of driving ‘down there’ (wherever that might be) with Alec, and wondering how to serve this up to Hugh, I funked my cue and instead of answering in the same cool manner, I gulped. This sent Renée into peals of such loud laughter that the little curator rose from his chair by the door and got near enough coming to tick her off as to adjust his tie and polish his boots on the back of his trouser legs before sitting down again.
I had regained my composure by the time the train drew back into Perth station that evening, but I was exhausted. It had taken me until after luncheon to shake off Renée, although Alec had pressed his card into my palm and fled, as men can, within minutes of her landing on us.
Pallister met me in the hall.
‘Telegram came for you, madam,’ he murmured with some disdain. Receiving a telegram unless it was to announce a birth or a death was always taken by Pallister to be yet more proof of extravagance and general giddiness.
It was from Mrs Duffy, Reiver’s Rest, Kirkandrews, Galloway – the beach cottage, I assumed – and after apologizing for misleading me as to her whereabouts, it invited me to join them there for a day or two if I was free. I enjoyed a short period of wonderment that this invitation should fall into my lap, until I remembered that, of course, she must be as keen to see me as I was to see her. I had to remind myself that she was plotting Daisy and Silas’s ruination to prevent myself from feeling a twinge of guilt at leading her on.
So how was I to get there? Blushing furiously again, I drew Alec’s card from my bag, resisted the urge to look over my shoulder, and gave the number of his hotel to the operator in a loud, careless voice.
I telephoned to Daisy next and she gave me leave to incur what expense I might in the trip only begging me to ring her with news as soon as I could. Hugh, as I should have expected, barely registered the announcement that I was going away. He was closeted with his steward planning improvements to field drainage in some far-flung and, I must suppose, soggy corner of the estate and so, with the prospect of extra men and a great deal of muddle in view, he could be counted upon not to miss me.
Thus bidden on my way by both my master and my mistress, then, I summoned Grant to begin packing.
Alec had warned me that it would take a full day to reach the Solway coast, so I had Drysdale take me on the first leg after a very early breakfast and deposit me on to the Forth ferry like a parcel for Alec to meet at the other side. I quite saw that I should have to think about a little motor car of my own if this investigation were to run into weeks and months, something more reliable than the battered Austin in which I rumbled up and down to the village. I wondered whether Daisy’s fee would stretch to one of the new Wolseleys. That was something to be looked into, but for today I was very content to tuck myself into the passenger seat of Alec’s hired Bentley and be whisked away.
For much of the morning we drove in silence, a silence which deepened as we entered the pass at Dalveen heralding the beginning of Galloway, not for nothing known as the Highlands in miniature. The road plunges down between the glowering lumpen mountains, clinging to the side of the north slopes so that any little car daring to pitch itself in at the top positively hurtles to the bottom, like a child on a helter-skelter, making carefree drivers want to say ‘Wheee!’ and timid passengers clutch the door handle and shut their eyes.
Alec and I emerged from the bottom of the pass without incident, however, and pulled up at the inn at Thornhill for luncheon. Since the food at this inn was barely middling I am quite sure that the bustle in the dining room owed itself chiefly to customers coming from the north and celebrating after being so recently convinced that their days of eating and drinking were over; it was certainly busy enough to prevent us from much useful discussion while we ate.
At last though, as we pushed cheese around our plates and waited without much enthusiasm for coffee, the party at the next table rose to leave and I could abandon polite chat and ask the question which had been consuming me since the day before.
‘Who could it have been telling Cara to sell them?’
‘The obvious answer is that it was the owners, her parents,’ said Alec. ‘One or both.’
‘But why would one or both of the Duffys want to sell their jewels?’ I asked.
Alec shrugged.
‘Is there money trouble?’ I persisted. ‘Would you know if there were?’
‘Probably not,’ said Alec. ‘My prospective father-in-law is not open in his discussions with me; rather secretive and peculiar about Cara’s settlement in particular. But I think things are all right. I mean the Canada property isn’t what it was and he’s thinking of getting out of shipping, but I shouldn’t have thought selling the family treasures was on the cards just yet. What I’d like to know is why Cara went along with it if she knew they were fakes.’
‘Might it be a double bluff? Cara pretending to sell them to make it look as though she had nothing to do with stealing them?’
‘It’s a bit involved,’ said Alec. ‘And who was she bluffing? Who knew she stole them?’ I took a sip of coffee and then, realizing it was not hot enough to require sipping, a gulp.
‘Her mother, I suppose,’ I said. ‘After all, how could Mrs Duffy have enough evidence about the theft to use as a lever on Silas without her knowing of Cara’s involvement too?’
Alec clattered his coffee cup into its saucer, both of them thankfully too sturdy to be affected by such treatment, and stared at me.
‘A lever?’ he said. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
I stared back. Was it possible? Could it be possible that yesterday in the gallery, I had somehow managed not even to mention Mrs Duffy’s campaign? I hurriedly told him all that I knew of it.
He listened intently, but a moment after I had finished he sat back with arms folded and shook his head at me the way one would to a particularly stupid puppy.
‘And you just neglected to mention this before now?’ he said. I felt that any of the possible responses was beneath me. ‘But how on earth did you find it all out?’ There was no particular emphasis on the word ‘you’ but I felt his unspoken judgement all the same. I wanted very much to tell him that it was my job to find it out and only wished I had a letter of engagement from Daisy that I could show him, but I forced myself to stay quiet. He was after all to be Cara’s husband – neither one of us really believed the engagement would not be remade – and knowing that I was purposely investigating his soon to be mother-in-law might cool the air between us.