‘These are from the upper River Fearn. Right up at the foot of the Trossachs. I ken Daddy showed me the like in MacGregor’s last year, this same fawn yellow. But did you ever see any such a size!’
‘And these Tay pearls, so close to white! And the big grey ones, all matched – how old can they be? There’s never so many this big. It would take years to match this many.’
‘It would take a lifetime.’
They touched the pearls lovingly without picking them up, rolling them against the blue cloth of Jamie’s shirt beneath gentle fingertips, turning them over to see their whole shapes. Many of the pearls had tiny imperfections: a funny little bump on one end, a peculiar shape, uneven hues. But they were each individually beautiful. And there were so many of them.
It was like finding pirate treasure.
Of course after our first initial wonder and delight, it occurred to us that this was actually treasure.
‘How much do you reckon they’re worth?’ Jamie asked shrewdly.
Euan shrugged and faltered, ‘I dinnae ken. I truly dinnae ken. I’ve never seen so many.’
Ellen said, ‘It’s like trying to count the stars.’
‘Oh come now, there’s only a couple hundred,’ said Jamie. ‘Say five pounds apiece?’
‘You cannae say that,’ Euan answered. ‘Because –’
Ellen held up one of the big grey ones, the size of a healthy pea. ‘See the hole through it? Some of these are sets. Likely off a necklace, or more than one. It makes them more valuable.’
She gave the grey pearl to me to look at.
‘Thousands,’ she said. ‘Thousands of pounds.’
‘How in blazes did they get in that jam jar in the middle of the Fearn?’ Jamie exclaimed.
I thought the answer to that was most obvious.
‘Hugh Housman put them there.’
‘Oh now, Julie –!’
‘I saw him do it,’ I said.
I didn’t remember seeing him do it. But it was like a jigsaw in my head, and now I had all the pieces: Hugh Housman bending over in the middle of the river, the light off his glasses reflecting in the water, the jar I’d sketched, the missing pearls from Grandad’s cup, the last forgotten pearl hiding unnoticed in the empty envelope. Grandad must have shifted them out of the cup and perhaps into the envelope, probably just because it was convenient – nothing to do with the original letter it had held. Then he’d added a hundred others from somewhere else – maybe some he’d found himself – and they’d gone unremembered, unnumbered, without any recorded value, until Hugh Housman found them among the intellectually valuable antiquities of the Murray Hoard.
And Hugh Housman had taken them, unnoticed, and hidden them. Presumably he’d meant to come back for them, maybe at the end of the summer when his work was finished and the Murray Collection was long gone. Then he could have gone away and sold the pearls without anyone knowing where they’d come from.
Only he’d never be able to come back for them now.
Those are pearls that were his eyes …
Euan suddenly snatched his hand back as though the pearls beneath his fingertips had burned him. He and I had the same thought at the exact same moment: dead man’s hidden treasure, and stolen too. It was stained.
‘Put them all back,’ said Euan.
‘Dinnae be daft,’ said his sister.
‘I’ll not touch them.’
‘They need loving,’ Ellen repeated. ‘They’re … they’re like the spearheads. Someone cared about them. They need proper looking after.’
‘Who’s going to buy them?’
Ellen leaned back, sitting up on her heels. ‘Well, nae doubt MacGregor’s in Perth would, for a start. Who’s going to sell them though? There’s a question.’
We’d all backed off a little.
‘I suppose they ought to go to the police,’ Jamie said dubiously. He’d tentatively let go of Pinkie, who was sitting with pricked-up ears and watching with interest, completely baffled by our excitement over something that smelled not interesting in the least.
‘Are you going to take ’em in?’ I asked scornfully. ‘I’m not.’
Because truly … Why did the flipping police need to know? The pearls were unremarked in the Murray Estate by everyone but me.
‘And they’re ours,’ I said fiercely. ‘They’re all of ours. The McEwens used them to buy the Strathfearn willow beds from the Murrays.’
There was a little awkward silence. Of course they weren’t ours.
‘I expect they’re part of the Murray Estate along with everything else that’s having to be sold to clear the debt,’ Jamie said, puzzling over what to do with them. ‘If we took them to Mémère she’d have to turn them over for auction –’
I said hotly, ‘Bother the Murray Estate. They belong here. Like Mary Queen of Scots’ bracelet. Let’s hide them again. I mean, not put them back in the burn, but let’s hide them like proper treasure. In Aberfearn Castle –’
‘Up the Laird’s chimney,’ said Euan.
‘The tower room at the top!’ Jamie agreed.
‘In one of the dove holes,’ I finished triumphantly.
Ellen said, ‘I want to polish them first.’
We were … My goodness, it was like being enchanted. We were bewitched.
‘Come on, Euan, if we take the horses back up we can get the baby oil and come back quick. Dinnae go anywhere, Julie!’ Ellen jumped to her feet and whistled to the dog.
Pinkie sat giving her mistress a very silly grin. As long as I was sitting on the rock by the burn Pinkie wasn’t leaving except by force.
‘Oh, all reet, I’m coming back in a wee minute anyway.’
Euan was already away up the path to Inchfort with the horses. Ellen followed with the ponies, and Jamie and I waited.
After a moment I couldn’t resist playing a little with the pearls – beautiful miniature marbles – running my fingers over their silky surfaces.
‘That must have looked like the perfect crime to him,’ Jamie said softly, coming to join me on the rock.
‘He couldn’t have sold them all at MacGregor’s. Can you imagine going in there with this lot? They’d want to know where they came from. They would have suspected something. I’ll bet the pearls Housman gave to Nanny were from here. He never found them himself. But I’ll bet he had those earrings set at MacGregor’s to see what they were worth.’
‘Clever,’ said Jamie. ‘And careful too.’
I exclaimed suddenly, ‘What was that he said in his letter to Solange – all that guff about how he couldn’t give her any answers, no measure of his worth, only his promise? I’ll bet that wasn’t a suicide note at all! He was asking Solange to run away with him!’
Jamie’s mouth fell open.
‘All that rot about returning to the river! He wasn’t exactly lying – he had to code it, in case she didn’t come with him and she showed it to Mother, or in case someone else found it. He didn’t want to tell her how he was going to get rich, but he wanted her to come along when he did! Only, if she didn’t, it wasn’t going to stop him – that’s what he meant about the river’s gifts being more eternal than flesh.’