The Pearl Thief

‘He says he’s not a killer. I rather believe him. He’s too scared to say anything else. We had to bully him a bit so he’d help us stamp out the fire though. He didn’t want to ruin his shoes.’


The man they’d caught was cowering in a corner of the empty room with Euan standing casual guard nearby, and oh, this was surely Euan McEwen’s finest hour: he stood straight and impassive, making use of his full six-foot-two-inches or whatever it is, holding Ellen’s knife half-raised as if he were ready to toss it like a dart straight between the creeping villain’s eyes the second he made a false move.

‘Who is he?’ Ellen asked.

‘He won’t say.’

‘Oh, will he not?’ she murmured in her best Lady Macbeth.

He was the very model of a tramp, with a full but badly barbered beard, wearing an unravelling tweed jacket, a stained shirt and an ill-fitting faded kilt with half the pleats let out of it to make it bigger.

It was Sandy’s kilt; my kilt.

It was the kilt that had disappeared from the Magnette the night they found Housman’s legs.

‘He’s the one who’s been nicking everything,’ I said.

‘He nicked Housman’s spectacles,’ Jamie told us. ‘Remember the broken spectacles? He had the rest. We nicked them back.’

Jamie patted his cartridge bag, and the craven person in the corner suddenly protested, ‘Do be careful with those specs – I’m blind as a bat without them.’

His voice was cultured and English.

‘Jamie,’ I said, ‘Give him back his specs.’

‘It’s quite useful keeping him blind as a bat,’ Jamie said. ‘He stopped fighting when we got them off him.’

‘Give them back. I want to see what he looks like when he has them on.’

Jamie opened his bag and gracelessly passed the broken wire-rimmed glasses back to the prisoner, who sulkingly put them on.

‘Look down,’ I told him.

Very cowed by whatever his encounter with Jamie and Euan had been, he obeyed.

I took a step towards him.

‘Bend over.’

With a frightened little gulp, again he obeyed.

‘Now look up. Look at me.’

He raised his head, blinking at me over the top of the battered gold spectacles, and met my eyes.

‘You’re Hugh Housman.’

Not dead.

Not a ghost.

Alive and cringing and criminal and bewildered.

‘Solange! What about Solange?’ I cried out in fury. ‘Waiting for trial like Mary Queen of Scots! You weasel! All those professions of love and you skulk here hiding while she’s been accused of your murder?’

I could see by his expression that he wasn’t aware of this turn of events, but I couldn’t stop – the accusations and outrage came pouring out of me.

‘Someone’s dead! My God, who in blazes is that poor man they fished out of the river? Solange didn’t kill him – did you? Did Angus Henderson have anything to do with it?’ I stopped to breathe. ‘I say, did you see Henderson? Did you see Henderson hit me?’ Then I began to cough again.

The man was now nodding his head tremulously, but it was impossible to know to which of my battery of questions he was responding.

Euan had backed away, gaping.

None of the rest of us would have known Housman – I was the only one who’d seen him before.

I turned to Jamie, who was also gaping. ‘Can he walk?’ I demanded.

‘Aye.’

‘Let’s take him to the Big House and call the police.’

The miserable Dr Housman suddenly leaped into life.

‘I’ve done nothing – at least I don’t think I have –’

‘Well, we have to call the police, because Solange is in prison,’ I snarled.

‘Because of me? But all I did was leave my post,’ he said plaintively. ‘I-I needed some time alone. I knew she’d be upset, but I thought she’d understand my message … I never thought …’

Now we all gaped at him. I realised he was taking a gamble, guessing we didn’t know about the stolen pearls.

‘I left my post,’ he admitted again. ‘I’ve lost my position. I beg your pardon, young lady, but I think I did witness your … your accident last month.’

‘You saw the Water Bailiff hit me! You actually saw him hit me? You know! What happened? You know!’

I’d advanced on Housman, which scared him back into confused and sullen silence. Jamie was right: the man was far too much of a coward to have killed anyone. Not on purpose, anyway. My God, I was ready to twist the details out of him with a corkscrew.

But no – I could see that wouldn’t work. He’d been lurking here for over a month waiting for the dust to clear and a quiet opportunity to get those pearls back, and hadn’t once been brazen enough or devious enough to manage it.

Maybe he hadn’t even thought it was possible to change his original plan to collect them at the end of the summer. There’d been too many builders and newspapermen and us coming and going, and the river watcher patrolling the path, and Sandy camped at the Inverfearnie Library and the McEwens camped in Inchfort Field, and the high water in the Fearn after all that rain.

Hugh Housman was a scholar. He wasn’t a natural thug and he wasn’t naturally bold. He needed babying. I wouldn’t get anything out of him if the police whisked him away.

‘Och, Euan, give Ellen back her knife,’ I said. ‘What this Sassenach needs is a cup of tea. Let’s take him to the Big House and turn him over to Francis Dunbar.’

‘Aye, maybe it’ll give Dunbar a chance to do something right for a change,’ Jamie said.

‘Oh, yes, Dunbar!’ Dr Housman agreed with hangdog haste. ‘I expect he’s had a rough time of it. My fault as well – he never should have had to answer for me –’ He shut up guiltily.

Ellen put her knife back in her creel.

Mild-mannered Euan, enjoying his first taste of authority, told Dr Housman, ‘Stop quaking, man. The daft dog’s more likely to hurt you than I am. Come away.’

‘I can’t wait to see the headline in the Mercury,’ Jamie said cruelly. ‘“Narrow Escape for Drowned Man.”’

I chummed Dr Housman along as we made our way back to the Big House, with Pinkie at our heels being very forgiving now that we were all heading in the same direction.

‘Lovely creature,’ Housman said. ‘Tan Border collie? What’s she called?’

‘Pinkie. She’s not mine. She belongs to her.’ I pointed towards Ellen. ‘A gift from the late Earl of Strathfearn.’

‘Oh,’ he said, surprised at the combination of tinker lass and purebred hound.

‘Perhaps you’d prefer brandy to tea!’ I suggested winningly, at my most devious. ‘You must have had a rough time of it too. I don’t understand why you’ve been hiding! If you saw the Water Bailiff knock me out, why didn’t you just tell someone right away? Francis Dunbar, or Mary Kinnaird, for example? I was off my head for three days and nobody knew who I was!’

‘I … well … I was fishing for pearls when the – what did you call him?’

‘The Water Bailiff.’