Now there she was, erstwhile chatelaine of Benachally, sitting on a bus in a gabardine mackintosh that was green with age and thin with washing, her woollen stockings drooping at her ankles, her shoes scuffed pale and snub-nosed from wear. She was poor-looking even for a piano teacher and she was still weeping when Miss Grant pulled the cord and climbed down.
Drysdale the chauffeur had the dog cart waiting at Gilverton’s gates and had brought a hot bottle for Miss Grant to hug while he trundled her up the drive. As she tucked the blanket more cozily about her knees, she thought what a long cold walk it would be from the bus stop to the sandstone villa in that thin mackintosh, and how the chill of the road would seep through those worn-down shoes. How shameful then that, although her heart sank as the cart slowed by the back door, it did not sink for poor Mrs. Coulter but for poor Miss Grant, who could ape the great detective with her skills of observation but would surely never get the chance to try the rest of it: investigation, revelation, and glory.
Her sinking heart would have soared had she known how soon that chance would come.
Young Lorna was at Gilverton for tea, installed in the kitchen, sighing fit to blow out the fire and complaining. Miss Grant tutted. Lorna was a head housemaid at the age of twenty, in a household with no butler, no housekeeper, no children, and not even a mistress yet. In other words, Liberty Hall.
“It’s as dull as church,” she was saying. “There’s nothing to do.”
“You said he had you clearing the attics,” said Miss Grant. He was Donald Gilver, elder son of her own mistress, Benachally’s third owner in ten years, lately set up there to grow barley and kill pheasants and generally stay out of trouble until it was time to marry.
“The attics are clear!” said Lorna. “All except some filthy dirty trunks from ages back that I’m not touching.”
“Send them on to the Wilsons,” said Miss Grant. She was beginning to drowse, what with the fire, the tea, and the two warm scones she had eaten.
“They’re from long before the Wilsons!” said Lorna. “Ancient old things. E. E. C. are the initials on them.”
Miss Grant snapped awake. “They must be the Coulters’,” she said. “Trunks? Clothes, you mean? Any jewel cases? Strongboxes? Anything of that kind?”
“Why would you care?” said Lorna, in her pert way. Ordinarily Miss Grant would have drawn herself up at such cheek but right at that moment she barely heard the girl. She was plotting.
Friday found her first in the library, looking up COULTER in the Post Office Directory, and then in Pitlochry on a trim enough street of nice enough houses—unless you had been used to a castle, anyway—lifting a glistening brass knocker and rehearsing her spiel.
The maid who answered was neat and smart in a blue serge day-dress with shoes mystifyingly better-heeled and polished than Mrs. Coulter’s own. The explanation was not long in coming.
“Bonnethill,” said the maid. “Behind the wee barber.”
“Ah,” said Miss Grant. “I see.”
For while Pitlochry is too small a town to have an unsavory district, at a push Bonnethill would do. Certainly coats would grow thin there and soles wear through. Miss Grant rang the bell at a faded blue door up a narrow stairway and it opened to reveal Mrs. Coulter, the Hon. Miss Elizabeth Larbert as was, standing there.
“Can I help you?” the woman said, with no spark of recognition in her tired eyes, either from the bus or from the Benachally years. She was wiping reddened hands on the front of her apron.
“I’m hoping I can help you, Mrs. Coulter.”
“I’m not interested.” She began to close the door.
“I’m not selling things,” said Miss Grant quickly. “I’m from Gilverton. I think I’ve found something that belongs to you. Or to your husband anyway.”
“Something?” said Mrs. Coulter.
“At Benachally,” said Miss Grant.
“Not someone?” said Mrs. Coulter. She slumped a little against the jamb, saying: “No of course not. That would be far too good to be true.”
“Possessions of your husband’s, in the attics,” Miss Grant went on, puzzling away all the while at the other woman’s curious words. “Trunks they are. I wondered if I might have them delivered to you. There could be something in them of some . . . interest to the family.”
Mrs. Coulter saw through the nicety and gave a single huff of unhappy laughter.
“They are nothing to do with the family,” she said. She gave a look over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “Just burn them or do what you will.”
“And if what I decide to do is sort through them and sell what I can? Can I bring you the money?”
Mrs. Coulter gazed at her for the time it took to breathe in and out twice without hurrying. Then she blinked.
“From Gilverton?” she said. “Are you one of the servants?” There was a little tremor in her voice as the ghost of her old self looked at her current self and wondered whether to laugh or cry.
“What happened?” said Miss Grant. “What on earth happened to you?”