‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but there’s a problem, Alec, don’t you see? Cara couldn’t possibly have arranged that and carried it out, could she?’
‘No indeed. Indeed she couldn’t.’ Alec’s voice was grim. ‘Our suicide theory begins to crumble. And anyway, didn’t you say that both the Mrs Marshalls remarked how happy Cara was?’
‘“A cheery wee thing”,’ I agreed. ‘Yet that second letter she sent you seemed anything but cheerful.’
I took a last puff at my cigarette and threw it into the fire. Alec was busy fiddling with his pipe. (Perhaps he was welcome to it; who could be bothered, after all?)
‘The second letter aside,’ I said, ‘if Cara didn’t kill herself, what did happen? Was it an accident after all?’ Alec resettled his pipe, raised his eyebrows and said nothing. I began to shake my head, horrified. ‘No, Alec, no, you can’t mean that. That Mrs Duffy or she and Clemence together… and then calmly went for a walk and left her there. And how on earth could Cara be made to stay in the house and let it happen?’ I asked.
‘We said ourselves that she must have hit her head and been unconscious,’ said Alec. ‘And we agreed that people don’t just hit their heads.’
‘But it’s impossible,’ I said. ‘Her mother? Her sister? It’s utterly preposterous. And why?’
‘It would explain their oddness, their watchfulness,’ said Alec. ‘Their peculiar reaction to seeing me. Mrs Duffy’s attempts to quash all hint of trouble at the inquiry.’ I was beginning to feel sick. To think of them (or just her?) banking up fires and stoking the range, the windows open and everyone still sweltering. Wait! No, it couldn’t be. Relief rolled over me like a wave of warm water.
‘It can’t have happened that way,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see? Because how could they have explained it to Cara? She wouldn’t have sat quietly while they made a tinderbox of the cottage around her, would she?’ Alec’s shoulders dropped and he smiled.
‘No, no, of course not.’ He gave a sigh that was almost a laugh. ‘I’m sure we’re right about what all the coal was used for, but it must have happened with the knowledge and acquiescence of everyone in the house. It must have.’
‘And since we can’t countenance the idea that Cara was a willing accomplice in her own death,’ I said, ‘where does that leave us?’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Alec, sitting suddenly upright from where he had slumped down in his chair with relief. ‘That’s exactly what must have happened. Cara, Clemence and their mother were all in it together. It was a deliberate scheme, what the Americans call a frame-up. And what it means – of course! – is that Cara is still alive.’
‘What?’ I said, but the sense of it hit me almost at once. ‘Oh, yes, I see! Oh thank God! She’s not dead. She’s disappeared somewhere and that’s why the house had to burn right to the ground – to make it plausible that nothing remained of her.’ I beamed.
‘And it all went according to plan,’ he said. ‘Including you turning up as a convenient witness, except that I was not supposed to turn up with you and that rattled them.’
‘And do you think that was the secret she wanted to tell you? And do you think that she and her mother couldn’t agree on whether you might be told? And she couldn’t bear you to think she was dead while you were still engaged and that’s why she wrote to break it off?’ Alec nodded faster and faster as I rattled through all this, and as his smile deepened I thought to myself that yes, it must have hurt him at some spot between his heart and his pride to have got that letter, despite how cool he had seemed, and that he was glad to have an explanation of the jilting that was nothing to do with his attractions as a husband, even if we now had more questions, and more puzzling ones, than ever.
‘So… why?’ I asked. ‘And how did she get away? And where is she? And how are we even going to start to find her?’
Chapter Nine
We could be sure of one thing: there was nothing more to be learned in Galloway. Clearly the Duffys had chosen the spot because they could go about their business unobserved there. So I telephoned to Gilverton, telling Hugh with a nice truthfulness that the Duffys had gone off to the mountains and that I should like Drysdale to fetch me from Edinburgh the following afternoon. I was glad; despite a growing fondness for the peace of my little room with its striped flannel sheets and its view of the barrels in the yard, my lack of success with the locals (around whom Alec seemed able to run the expected rings) was a constant thorn, and I was missing Bunty, growing tired of the clothes I had brought and, after this morning, I needed Grant to attend to my coat and gloves as a matter of urgency.
We spent the journey up to town dividing the tasks ahead. I was to tackle the jeweller who identified the pastes, since both Alec and I felt a lady could best achieve the right combination of tenacious interest and muddle-headedness to find out all there was to know while not putting the man on his guard. Besides, the jewels were my proper concern, being Daisy’s only one. I thought it rather unlikely that Cara would have said anything useful to a jeweller, but thoroughness is to be recommended in most arenas and, also, there was not much else for me to do.
Alec had rather wider scope. Under cover of unbearable grief, he was to make visits to Cara’s closest friends and beg them to talk about her. We both thought it certain that they would speak of the last time they had met, or the last letter they had had, and that something about the pickle she was in might be revealed. I secretly hoped, as I daresay did he, that he should actually discover much more than this; that is, that he should discover Cara herself holed up with a chum somewhere. We did not, however, give voice to this hope.
So, after a blissful night back in my own bed and having submitted myself to one of Grant’s most punitive toilettes – it always incensed her to have me go off on my own – I found myself in Edinburgh again, descending Frederick Street, approaching the jeweller’s with the reluctance of a dog being led to its bath water. Stopping at the corner of the street and pretending to look with interest at a suite of hideous mahogany bedroom furniture in the window of a shop, I ran through my plan once again. I hoped this plan was a wily testament to my growing skills as a detective, but I feared it was another rag-bag of unnecessary lies and pointless indiscretions. Briefly, it was this: I had decided to tell the jeweller that I suspected suicide and was convinced that Cara’s attempt to sell the jewels was connected. I should ask him not to tell the Duffys about my interest, and I felt sure that out of common decency, even if not out of any sense of obligation, he would agree. I should begin calmly but was ready to dissolve into tears if the occasion arose and a corner of my handkerchief was soaked in Thawpit to help with the dissolving.
An hour later I was striding out along the pavement again, with my head high and a bounce in my step like the first day of spring and I had swung around the corner past the mahogany furniture and begun the uphill climb before I began to falter. It was true that I had performed brilliantly. The jeweller was flattered by my confidences and only too eager to discuss every detail of his meeting with Miss Duffy. He hoped to be struck dead if he breathed a word of such a distressing thought to her family or anyone else and (my final triumph) he made a cup of tea and put my feet up on a stool when I broke down and ‘despite dabbing my eyes’ succumbed to a fit of weeping. However, the thought struck me only now that my visit had in fact been a complete failure. Put simply, I had not found anything out. Miss Duffy had said nothing at all about her reasons for selling up, and remarkably little about the jeweller’s discovery of the fakes. She had seemed neither very surprised nor suspiciously unsurprised but only rather distant, as though unconcerned in the transaction. This, he had assured me, was not uncommon. Ladies selling their jewels often masked the unpleasant feelings it aroused with haughty remoteness. She had not even reacted when told that, had the jewels been genuine, she would have needed to produce proof of ownership before a sale could go through, but the jeweller considered that this might be put down to, as he called it, breeding.