Housman and Dunbar were expected to plead guilty to try to mitigate the sentence; and Housman was also going to act as a witness to Angus Henderson trying to get the McEwens in trouble by dumping my senseless body on the path near Inchfort Field. A prank against Travellers wouldn’t be considered much of a crime, but accessory to an assault against the Earl of Strathfearn’s granddaughter was a serious accusation against the Water Bailiff. I like the idea that even unconscious I may have helped to put a stop to Angus Henderson ever again battering Euan McEwen.
In the meantime Francis Dunbar was still in hospital on his stomach, and there was a new project manager taking over for the final phase of the Glenfearn School renovation. This young man delivered a letter without an envelope to Mother as she passed him in the corridor on her way into the morning room.
‘For the Earl of Strathfearn, I believe,’ the man told her briefly. ‘I’m still sorting through Mr Dunbar’s desk drawers next door.’ He disappeared back into his own office.
Mother found herself looking down at yet another sheet of Housman’s engraved writing paper, frowning. I jumped up to read over her shoulder.
My dear Sandy, As you requested, I’m returning the samples you supplied …
Mother lowered her hand with the letter in it.
‘This isn’t for Sandy,’ she said. ‘It’s two years old. It’s from Dr Housman to my father. But why would it be among Francis Dunbar’s correspondence?’
‘It’s the letter that went in the empty envelope!’ I cried. ‘Dunbar must have got it out of Housman’s bedroom – he was up there right after Housman disappeared, before the police got to it. He said he was looking for Housman’s address! Don’t you see? Housman took it when he took the pearls. Maybe he even told Dunbar where to find it after he went into hiding! Oh, Mummy, it will explain why Grandad didn’t sell the pearls! Let me see!’
I couldn’t be good. I snatched it from her.
‘Julia!’
‘Let me read it!’
She let me.
My dear Sandy, As you requested, I’m returning the samples you supplied and am writing to confirm the values I suggested in our earlier discussion by telephone. As I said then, I do not feel you would benefit by selling these at this time …
I looked up. Suddenly my heart was breaking.
Mummy could see that in my face.
‘What’s wrong, darling?’
‘I don’t know why those snakes didn’t burn this piece of paper,’ I said furiously. ‘Or, I do – they kept it because there’s a little inventory list of pearls at the end of the letter. But –’
‘Julia, I will expire right on this spot if you don’t tell me what’s in it,’ Mother scolded. She sounded very much like me all of a sudden.
I wanted to cry.
‘Grandad tried to sell the pearls to save the Reliquary,’ I told her. ‘And Housman lied to him and said his museum didn’t want them.’
The pearls may be of historical significance but without proof the Ashmolean is not willing to make a financial offer.
Now I was crying. Tears dropped on to the page, smearing the treacherous ink.
‘I bet Housman never even showed them those pearls! They’re jolly well interested now, aren’t they? He was already scheming to get hold of them, even while Grandad was alive! And you know what else –?’
Mother prised the damp letter from my hand so she could read it herself.
‘You know what else? I’ll bet Grandad never opened this. Ellen said he never opened post after he’d asked someone to confirm a telephone call in writing.’ I had to stop and take a breath, choking on little sobs. ‘Except that this envelope had a few pearls in it that Housman was returning to him. I’ll bet Grandad just put the whole packet back with the rest of the Murray Collection pearls when it arrived. Housman probably opened it himself when he found it.’
Mother looked up at me, and now her face was tear-stained too.
‘I’m not crying over the pearls,’ I wept. ‘I’m not even sorry about them. Just – Grandad.’
I took another gasping breath.
‘Oh, Grandad.’
‘My dad,’ Mummy breathed. ‘Yes.’
She took me in her arms and we sobbed together.
The pearls would save the Reliquary. The necklace was so valuable that it would pay for the Reliquary to stay in the Inverfearnie Library, alongside Mary Stuart’s bracelet.
Feeling triumphant and proprietorial, Jamie and I managed to dig up a couple of the rose bushes to take with us, though most of them were too old to move.
Mémère was scornful of our efforts. ‘The same ones are already growing at Craig Castle. They all come from my sister’s garden in France.’
I wished I could be like that, and like the McEwens: able to let things go without looking back.
But I was determined to look forward too.
Jamie and I went to Inchfort Field for the last time early in the morning before we left Strathfearn.
‘It’s been almost like a Shakespearean comedy, hasn’t it?’ Jamie said as we crossed the iron footbridge. ‘One of the darker ones where someone has to be saved from execution or from being eaten by a bear. Everyone romping in the wood and bumping into the wrong people. You, for example, should have been wandering the bonny banks of the Fearn kissing Euan McEwen all summer, not throwing yourself at Francis Dunbar.’
‘Kissing Euan McEwen, gracious!’ I exclaimed. ‘I never even thought about kissing Euan.’
‘He thinks of you,’ Jamie said.
I caught Euan on the path from the field to the river, almost exactly where we’d met two months ago, though I do not remember that meeting. He was carrying a milk can down to the burn to fill with water for washing.
Jamie gave me a quiet wink as he went on past us up to Inchfort.
I took Euan by the arm and made him put down the can.
‘You’re up early, Davie Balfour,’ he said.
‘We’re away now,’ I answered. ‘I came to say goodbye.’
The melancholy of the end of the summer holidays, which I expect never goes away no matter how old you are, hit me suddenly in the chest.
‘I have to go back to school,’ I explained mournfully.
He laughed.
‘Also,’ I said, ‘I have never properly thanked you for picking me up off the path and taking me to the hospital, so …’
So I kissed him, in the dappled light of the birches by the running sunny waters of the River Fearn, full of peat and secrets, and he kissed me back very gently and easily, and we both meant it.
But –
But I thought of Ellen while I was doing it.
Was it better kissing Euan or Ellen? Euan’s kiss was honest; the only honest kiss I’ve helped myself to all summer. But Ellen – goodness …
I can’t decide.
I don’t understand the difference between my passion for Francis Dunbar and my passion for Ellen McEwen. They were both, in their way, impossible to act on, impossible for either one to end well. And that means I just have to live forever a little aching and incomplete. But – There’s something else.
It’s nothing to do with the kissing. Or – not just to do with the kissing. I could stay with Ellen for the rest of my life, kisses or no kisses. I could never put up with Francis Dunbar indefinitely. Even if he hadn’t nearly killed me, I’d have wanted to throttle him eventually for being so wet.
But Ellen McEwen, seeing through me and accepting what she finds – showing me myself …