After the thrilling excursion up Pitbroomie Hill with Ellen, the Big House felt empty without my family in it that afternoon, even though it was full of builders and painters. Feeling abandoned, I let my natural vanity take control of me, and I spent a long time in front of Mémère’s dressing-table mirror checking my face for damage (there wasn’t any) and trying to make my hair look a bit more feminine (impossible). Finally I took a bath and got dressed in my own frock, the rose-coloured Parisian georgette with the silver zigzags down the bodice that Jamie brought from Craig Castle, utterly useless for doing anything sensible in, BUT. But very much what I needed to make me feel myself again, cool and stylishly sophisticated. (Is that myself? I don’t know if I am, but I like to feel that I am.)
And all the while my hands were occupied fussing with my face and my hair and my clothes, my mind was turning over and over again the multitude of disconnected events of the past month. My injured head. The naked man in the river. Mary’s betrayal of Euan. The scholar’s farewell slipped under the door. And pearls.
Scottish river pearls … there they were, like beads torn from a necklace: in Solange’s jewellery box, seen through the lens of Hugh Housman’s jug, lying on Jean and Ellen McEwen’s palms, under glass beneath Mary Kinnaird’s watchful eye in the Inverfearnie Library, hidden in a brown envelope on Francis Dunbar’s desk, fixed forever in the floorboards of the tower room of Strathfearn House.
Pearls.
I thought there must be a way to string everything together. Only I couldn’t see it yet.
It was frustrating. I didn’t know what I was looking for. And the night-time intruder – Mother seemed sure it had been a legitimate estate watchman, but I wasn’t convinced. I began another unproductive search, this time looking at the French doors of the morning room. I didn’t have long till I was supposed to go and collect Euan to drive him back to Inchfort.
I was peering intently at the door handles, wishing I knew something about fingerprinting, when instinct caused me to straighten quickly. Someone was coming up the terrace stairs from the lawn with heavy footfalls. I turned around.
It was Francis Dunbar. I had about one second in which to straighten myself out before presenting myself as the presiding lady of the house – thank God I’d changed out of Sandy’s moth-eaten kilt.
Frank Dunbar looked pale and grim. He did that same little leap backward when he saw me as he’d done on the day we met.
‘I’m so sorry, Miss Beaufort-Stuart.’ He frowned, wondering if he’d got it right, and obviously decided that it didn’t matter. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m looking for your mother. Or your grandmother, I suppose.’
‘They’re in Edinburgh,’ I said. ‘Is it urgent? I’m about to go out myself.’ I didn’t want to let Euan down. ‘I won’t be long – I could come back in an hour or so. The others won’t be back till about eight.’
He hesitated, standing one step below the level of the terrace, as if he couldn’t decide whether to come up or not. He swallowed, making a conscious effort to soften his expression.
‘I’ve had some bad news.’ He bit the single-syllable words off in the back of his throat as if each one were choking him and he could hardly get them out. He swallowed again.
‘Oh.’ I did so like Frank Dunbar, and felt sorry for him. ‘Would I do, in place of my mother?’
I could see him swithering.
‘I don’t think …’ he began.
Instead of trying to persuade him with words, I held up a formal arm for him to take.
I read him right: he couldn’t refuse the polite, wordless request for physical support. I saw his face change when he made his decision.
We met halfway across the terrace. He took my arm, very politely, and escorted me through the French doors of his own side of the double room and into his private office.
He offered me a chair, but didn’t sit himself. It felt very like our first meeting, except he looked so beaten. He paced back to his open terrace doors and stood staring out over the hive of activity across the grounds.
‘You’ve had bad news,’ I reminded him.
He turned around to face me, still not quite willing that I should be the one with whom he’d share whatever it was.
He winced, looking at me. It was something he thought I’d find unpleasant, something inappropriate for a young lady’s sensibilities.
I guessed.
‘Your men working along the river have found Hugh Housman?’
He blinked in surprise. He opened his mouth and shut it again, then nodded. ‘My God. You’re a mind reader.’
‘You wanted to speak to my mother. We’ve all been looking for him for a month. People hardly ever just vanish. He was bound to turn up eventually, wasn’t he?’
I didn’t dare ask the obvious question: alive or dead? Nothing in Dunbar’s manner suggested the former, but I didn’t want it to look like I expected the latter, even if I did.
I waited.
He didn’t elaborate, so finally I found a neutral way to get him to go on.
‘Where?’
He hesitated unhappily.
‘Julie, this is so unpleasant. I don’t know where to begin.’
It was like being a tennis ball getting thwacked back and forth, swapping between being Davie Balfour and Lady Julia. I needed to let Frank know I wasn’t made entirely of glass. I got up and crossed the room to stand beside him.
‘Is he dead?’
‘Well … yes. Well …’
‘Yes?’ I prompted.
‘Probably …’
I narrowed my eyes, overwhelmed with the feeling that all adults are incompetent lunatics.
‘You found Dr Housman and he’s probably dead?’ I said sharply. ‘What on earth is that supposed to mean? Goodness, Mr Dunbar.’
He looked stricken. ‘I’m telling this very badly. I said it was unpleasant.’
‘Please sit down,’ I told him. ‘Just here. Have you anything to drink about? Whisky – excellent. Just a moment and I’ll pour you a wee drop.’
His housekeeping was chaotic, evidence of his lonely bachelor’s existence – a decanter sharing a bookshelf with half a loaf of bread and cheese wrapped in brown paper. I found a glass and wiped it with a leaf off the blotting pad.
‘There you are. I’m not going to faint.’ I pressed the glass into his hands and squeezed them lightly beneath my own. ‘Now, Frank, just tell me what happened.’
‘They found a body. They found … most of a body.’
This time it was I who winced.
I instantly regretted it. He tried to jump up and the dark gold liquid spilled over his fingers.
I pressed my lips together and held up a warning hand.
‘What’s missing?’ I asked brazenly. Because truly, sickening though his news was, the man needed shaking. One of us was going to have to be brazen, or I’d never find out what had happened.
Frank Dunbar drew a sharp breath but managed to get the words out. ‘The head and shoulders are missing. And one arm.’ He drew another breath. ‘There aren’t any hands or feet, either.’
Very gently, I took the glass from him and set it on his desk.