The Pearl Thief

‘Oh, Angus Henderson,’ I articulated carefully, getting to my feet. I licked my lips. ‘You want to dally with a lassie in the dark? Come kiss me. Come here …’

He was frozen in the beam of my torch like a hare, baffled by this turn of events. ‘Why –’

I stepped closer, bringing myself toe to toe with him. ‘Come along, big man.’

I hooked my hand around the base of his skull and pulled his face down to mine. My shoulder felt like it was in flames. I found his mouth and kissed him like I meant it, hard and deep.

And I did mean it – but not as a kiss. I meant it as a threat, and a warning, and a curse.

He pulled our mouths apart and backed away from me. I’d spooked him. Tangled up with the hysterical dog and the blinding beam of the light and the two conspiring girls, he was no longer so sure of either his strength or his authority.

‘Do I know you? You’re no’ one of them travelling folk.’

He could hear that in the dripping sarcasm of my exaggeratedly aristocratic voice.

‘You know me in the day,’ I said. I held up the torch and poured light down my body, over the borrowed gold velvet bolero jacket and the flimsy rose georgette and all the curves and corners that lay barely hidden beneath. ‘I’m Julia Beaufort-Stuart.’

‘Och, Lady Julia,’ he breathed, and took another step back.

‘You can kiss me if you like,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind. You can stand here and have me up against the stone like you were going to –’

‘You know I never would, Lady Julia!’

‘I don’t know that,’ I said. ‘You took me for a dirty tinker once before, didn’t you, when you thought you’d found me poaching Strathfearn’s trout by the Drookit Stane? What did you do then? Thumped me on the head for fun!’

‘I didnae! I didnae touch you!’

I didn’t believe a word of this denial.

‘You carried me up the path to Inchfort Field so you could make it look like some McEwen lad had done the damage,’ I accused.

‘Aye, I did that, but I didnae touch you,’ Henderson elaborated meaningfully – if you can call changing the meaning of your words by changing your tone ‘elaboration’.

‘You can now,’ I said. ‘Come on, big man, I’m gasping for you! Maybe I’ll like it and not tell anyone. But maybe I’ll say you forced me, here in the dark when I was bringing Ellen home from the theatre. And whose word will they take, Angus, yours or mine?’

He stood frozen and silent for a long moment.

‘Speak one false word against Euan McEwen,’ I warned coolly, ‘and I’ll tell my lady mother that you raped me.’

He dropped a few cold, angry words at my feet.

‘You filthy wee bitch.’

Then he picked up his own fallen torch, and took his cromach, and strode away down the field to wherever it was he’d left his bicycle.

We heard him rattling away and, for a few seconds, watched the light of his headlamp bobbing like a will-o’-the-wisp through the birch wood. Then he was gone.

Ellen gasped, ‘He could –’

‘He won’t dare.’

‘O, God pity me, Julie, I cannae stay here alone the night,’ she sobbed.

I was still trembling. I felt like I’d been dropped down one of the Aberfearn Castle chimneys.

‘Of course you can’t,’ I said. ‘Come back with me.’

There wasn’t any place to put Ellen in the Big House except in my narrow bed, so that’s where we both collapsed, with our arms tight around each other so we wouldn’t fall out. Ellen fell asleep almost straight away. But I lay awake with my heart full of hatred and love so evenly distributed I felt like my chest was going to explode, and my head full of the deathless, chill voice of the river and the living, volcanic voice of Le Sphinx, winding me in night and day and ‘Night and Day’.





16


AN’ WHA DARE MEDDLE WI’ ME?

Getting dressed the next morning I had a scrap with Mother, who grabbed me by the arm so suddenly it shocked me into a howl of pain.

‘Julia, how on earth did you get that black mark across your shoulder? You look as if you’ve been hit by a train! You can’t wear your birthday frock with that – it has no sleeves!’

‘That’s where Sergeant Henderson hit me with his cromach.’

I told her about what had happened at Inchfort Field last night.

‘Hanging’s too good for him. That man ought to be horsewhipped first,’ Mother said furiously.

‘Mary thinks he is a dear.’

Mother went raging down to the hall telephone to ring the police.

Ellen spent all of Sunday morning sulking and scaffing Mémère’s French coffee in a corner of the morning room, with Jamie waiting on her like a knight’s squire. Much the way he waits on me. Watching him sitting on the floor at her feet, pouring her another cup and stirring in sugar without even having to ask how many she wanted, I realised whom the river watcher had meant when he’d said he’d seen her with someone, bold as brass.

And why wouldn’t she and Jamie have kissed on the footbridge to the library as bold as brass, if they wanted to? They were the same age. They weren’t married to other people. No one told them not to. It wasn’t like me and Frank Dunbar.

Sly old Jamie! He didn’t kiss her any time I might have seen it.

He looked up at me just as I was putting this together, saw that I had twigged him and blushed.

I didn’t think Ellen could be any more serious with Jamie than she was with me. She was enjoying herself, testing the peaty water. Probably he was too.

But my heart twisted a little enviously that they could do it in daylight.

‘Are you thinking of challenging Angus Henderson to a duel?’ I asked. ‘Because don’t forget he strangled a German officer with his bare hands and you are not a lot bigger than me.’

‘What stupid sort of fox challenges a hound?’ Jamie parried. ‘I’ve a better idea. Let’s get Ellen out of the Strathfearn estate at night.’

He glanced up at her. ‘There’s a good train to Comrie from Brig O’Fearn every two hours. I’ll take you and Pinkie tomorrow and show you how to change at Perth. You can stay with your own folk and take the train to work, like a banker!’

That was Sunday; it was August bank holiday on Monday and the building works were quiet and the police did not get back to us.

Then while Mother and I were in Perth on Tuesday, having my fairy dress altered to be made more modest, representatives of the Perthshire and Kinross-shire Constabulary arrived at the Big House and arrested Solange on a charge of murder for the death of Dr Hugh Housman.