After the Armistice Ball

Chapter Four

Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I heard that the Duffys would be at their Edinburgh house until the wedding and not in London, where I had been looking forward to following them buoyed along on Daisy’s expenses. I wondered again if there could be money troubles greater than the depressing pinch we were all pretending not to feel. Severe money troubles after all might go some small way towards explaining Lena’s behaviour to Daisy and Silas but Mr Duffy, so far as anyone knew, was still comfortable enough. He had a great deal of his property in Canada of all places; and it was well-tended property, that I did know, because I remembered that he and his young wife had been obliged to go there and look after it for what must have been a few rather bleak years in their early marriage when forests in Canada were all the rage.

Hugh had tried to persuade his father to buy some of his own. I just remembered this, since he had not quite given up by the time of our wedding although his efforts were beginning to move from urgency towards a sulky despair as the march of the cross-Canada railway made the venture more and more alluring even as the price crept ever upwards out of his reach. In the first year of married life I had heard the words ‘Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad’ repeatedly until I was ready to scream and I could almost feel sorry for Lena Duffy when I thought about her ordeal and could believe that this period of exile was when she began to turn sour. Perhaps, though, one’s mental image of Canada is unfair; perhaps she did not actually live in a log cabin with teams of Chinamen clanging their mallets against the tracks right outside. On the other hand, sometimes cliches get to be cliches by being true, as is the case with the heather, whisky and tartan view of Scotland; these can be found, at least in Perthshire, in unfortunate abundance.

Even if Canada was civilized, however, all the evidence pointed towards a distinct lack of social whirl for Lena went a bride and returned a matron, her two girls born in quick succession out there, and one imagines (coarsely) that it was not only the desire for an heir which hastened their arrival since after the Duffys’ return home no heir, nor anyone else for that matter, had ever appeared.

I now understood from Hugh that the war had ‘done for’ the Canadian railway and the forests along with it, in a way I did not pretend to understand, that even the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad itself had had to call in the receivers, and that the Canadian Government was now running the show. Of course, Hugh took some bitter pleasure in that, reaching back twenty years and trying to recast his failures as foresight. Miles of Ontario pine trees were not Mr Duffy’s only nor even his chief concern, and so whatever the reason for poor Cara’s trousseau to be coming from worthy George Street (which had to be depressing) I could not believe it to be a matter of economy.

Still, a trip to Edinburgh although galaxies less fun was more easily managed without raising Hugh’s eyebrows than a trip to London would have been and, I supposed, I could combine it with some dreary Edinburgh shopping of my own. So I caught the train from Perth on Friday morning, telling Drysdale to meet me again off the 6.15, and two hours later I was turning into Drummond Place. I supposed the Duffys kept this townhouse to be handy for the port of Leith and yet more of the pies in which Mr Duffy had a finger, and while most of our set laughed at their stodginess, I was struck that day with an unaccountable feeling of envy. I should loathe to be here when I might be in London, of course, but so long as it was never used that way by an unscrupulous husband, I saw how a house in Edinburgh might make a welcome dent in the long months of country life up in Perthshire. And Drummond Place itself was rather fetching in that austere way that Edinburgh has, in parts, when the sun shines.

‘The ladies are away, madam,’ I was told by the equally austere butler who admitted me to the entrance hall. Now, ‘away’ in English, as we all know, suggests a trip far from home but for Scots, who can talk of going away to the shops or even away to their beds, it is always worth some careful checking.

‘Might I wait, then? Are they gone for long?’

‘The ladies are away to the cottage, madam,’ he explained, speaking rather more slowly to me, as though now unsure of my brainpower. ‘The master is at home however, if you care to wait.’

I began shaking my head before he was finished. I could not imagine grilling Mr Duffy for clues and to serve him up the confection of half-truths that was to be my report from Daisy was unthinkable.

‘I shall write to them, then,’ I said. ‘About the wedding. A letter to the cottage will be fine. I only wanted to ask them about bridesmaids’ – um – anyway.’ I did not know the address of the cottage, of course, but thinking I could get it from somewhere, I shrank from asking this terrifying individual to produce a card for me. He was already looking at me suspiciously, although that might have been my guilty conscience, or might have been caused by my peculiarness in offering him so much information (far from normal behaviour). I could feel a blush begin to engulf me and sticking my nose in the air I turned to sweep out.

‘Mrs Gilver?’ came a soft voice from the stairs. Mr Duffy was there, halfway up with his finger keeping his place in a book. I cringed for an instant, then realizing that I was being ridiculous – my fear that everyone around me could divine my purpose was on a par with a child’s belief that it becomes invisible by shutting its eyes – I shook off my silliness and called up to him.

‘I was hoping to find your wife and girls. But I won’t dream of asking you to relay a message. Unless you have a hidden interest in voile which you rarely get the chance to indulge?’

‘Voile?’ he echoed, frowning.

‘I see not,’ I said. ‘It’s a kind of silk.’

‘Ah yes. The wedding,’ he said, and again his face smoothed into a smile as it had at dinner at Croys, a droop of relief followed by a weightless rising in his shoulders, as though he had put down two heavy bags and straightened again. ‘Not long now,’ he said. Very curious, this beaming happiness at the thought of losing his favourite daughter. Offloading Clemence would be a relief to any parent (although Lena seemed to like her well enough) but fathers are usually more gloomy to see the backs of their darlings and I was puzzled. I looked at him for a moment then, seeing the speculation of my own regard begin to draw a matching look from him, I made my goodbyes and fled.

I was only minutes away from Abercromby Place but, unable to face the desolation of the ladies’ lounge at the Caledonian Club, I resolved to slog back up the hill to the National Gallery, there to sit and think until I could get myself some luncheon and begin my afternoon’s shopping.

I had been in a huff (if I am honest) over missing London this year, but I was now beginning to see that I still had to get some clothes for summer. I would give a wide berth to horrid Forsyth’s, sitting there on the corner like a skeletal wedding cake, where I had spent far too many hours of my life kitting out boys for school, and would go instead to dear Jenner’s. I could not quite agree with its besotted architects that it looked just like the Bodleian Library but it had always seemed especially welcoming to ladies, what with the Caryatides and now with the new extension too, where an even larger dress department was to be found. My step quickened, until I remembered: shopping after lunch, thinking and Improving Art first.

On the way, I set myself to come up with a list of innocent reasons why a bride, her mother and her sister might desert their obligations and remove to a country cottage three weeks before a wedding, but before I had entered anything on my list, I was distracted by the sound of someone saying my name.

Alec Osborne was standing ahead of me on the pavement, looking very different in grey town-suiting and rather wan despite the freckle. I stopped and was glad of the chance to catch my breath although I resisted the temptation to puff and put my hand to my ribs.

‘I’ve just come from where I suspect you’re going,’ I said, managing to make my breath last to the end of the speech with only a little rasping.

‘You’ve just seen Cara?’ he asked.

‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘They seem to have gone off to their cottage. Unaccountably,’ I added, for no reason I could have explained. Alec Osborne nodded and screwed up his face.

‘They’re still there?’ he said. ‘I assumed they’d have come home… I mean since something seems to have… She’s broken it off, you see.’ I blinked once before realizing what he meant.

‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘I just spoke to her father and he certainly didn’t seem to think so.’ Alec Osborne fished a rather crumpled letter out of his breast pocket and made as though to unfold it.

‘I assumed she’d written from town,’ he said. ‘But I suppose they would have stayed away, wouldn’t they?’

I could do no more than stare at him uselessly. One would expect a jilted lover to look puzzled and upset but the way he was casting his eyes around and shifting from foot to foot spoke of something else besides.

‘Are you busy, just at this minute?’ he said. I shook my head. ‘I wonder then if you would be so kind -’ He broke off. The expression on my face must have revealed the lurch of dismay I felt at the prospect of holding his hand and there-there-ing maternally while he wept for his lost love. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘At least, I think you think something, and I do too.’

I gaped. What did he know?

‘I saw you talking to Lena and to Cara,’ he said. ‘Don’t you feel…? I hardly know what to call it, but don’t you have a feeling…?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I do.’

We walked to the gallery without speaking again, and only when we got there did it strike me how completely distracted he must be to trot along wordlessly beside me when only I knew where we were going. When we were climbing the steps, however, he raised his head, took in where we were, and nodded his approval.

Inside, it was more work than I had anticipated to find a suitable stopping place. The landscapes upon which we might have rested our eyes for refreshment without stimulation all had scribbling schoolchildren clustered before them, and the blood and swagger of the Biblical tableaux or the cavortings of various Venuses and Cupids (in those simpering pastel orgies fit only for cutting up and covering screens) were not at all appropriate. After all, however distracted Alec Osborne might be by suspicions akin to my own, he had still just been sacked with less than a month to go by a very pretty girl of whom I had no reason to believe he was not fond.

We trudged past a po-faced Madonna with one of those peculiar lanky babies on her lap then sank at last on to a rather collapsed circular velvet ottoman in front of a blameless view of Venice by Guardi. I waited for him to speak.

‘This came this morning,’ he said after a short silence, shoving the letter into my hands. I felt an equal pull towards devouring every word of it for clues and dropping it back into his lap in horror at the thought of reading it in front of him.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But describing it to you instead would only add furtiveness to the brew and how would that help?’ I could not suppress a quick smile. He was right. Sometimes a little coarseness is all that makes a thing endurable. Nothing, for instance, could be more excruciating than a bashful midwife. I resisted sharing this thought and began to read.

‘Dear Alec,’ it began and I was enough of a Victorian to be mildly surprised not to see ‘Dearest’. ‘I cannot marry you. I am very sorry for the hurt and trouble I know this will cause, but it is much better than what would come to pass if I were to keep quiet and go along with it. I cannot explain my reasons, except to say that I am convinced I could never make you happy, and that knowing that, I should be miserable myself.’ It finished with ‘Yours sincerely,’ which I quite saw was the only possible option, and was signed with a large, sweeping C.

‘Fanny Price,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Alec.

‘She’s quoting Jane Austen.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Alec. ‘“Soppy old rot”, she calls it.’

‘And it came completely out of the blue?’ I said after sitting a moment looking the letter over again. ‘Have you no idea what lies behind it?’

‘Only this,’ said Alec. ‘Which came earlier.’ He fished in his inside pocket again and drew out an envelope on which I could see more of the same large, looped writing in the same purplish blue ink. He took a single sheet of paper out of the envelope and handed it to me.

‘Dear Alec, Mummy, Clemence and I have come away to the beach cottage for a few days but I should like it so much if you were to come and visit us here. There is something momentous I need to tell you. Please, when you arrive if you could pretend to Mummy that you came in search of me off your own bat that would help enormously. I think she’s being perfectly ridiculous but I don’t want to make her any crosser than she already is. Sorry to be so mysterious, Alec dear, but I do think it would be best told not written. I trust completely in your affection for me and hope that I am right to do so. All my best love, Cara.’

‘And have you no idea what she was referring to?’ I said. ‘It’s all very vague.’

Alec took the letters back from me and studied them both, frowning.

‘She had something to tell me, which her mother believed would make me want to call off the wedding,’ he said. ‘Between the first letter and the second she clearly had a change of heart. I can only assume that her mother managed to talk her round.’

‘But why would Mrs Duffy go from trying to persuade Cara to keep the thing secret, to trying to make her break it off?’ I said. ‘I mean, surely the only reason for keeping quiet was to make sure that the wedding went ahead.’ Alec was nodding.

‘If we knew what it was,’ I said, glancing at him and catching him glancing at me.

Neither spoke for a while, each waiting for the other to take the first step. Alec Osborne gave in first, but he inched forward only very slightly.

‘What were you talking about while you walked by the river?’ he said.

‘The wedding a little,’ I said. Another glance and a deep breath and I gave in. ‘But the jewel theft, mostly.’ Alec relaxed with a puff of breath.

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘And did Cara seem to you to think the two were related?’

I nodded.

‘I agree,’ said Alec. ‘She hinted the same to me but as to exactly what’s up… Let’s try to work it out, Dandy. If you don’t mind, that is. I mean, it’s my problem really, mine and Cara’s, but if you don’t mind.’ I was shaking my head vigorously and he looked pleased, but neither of us had a clue where to start. I decided to try one of my two previously successful tactics: the one where I start to talk and listen for what comes out.

‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘Cara was mixed up in the theft.’ I bit my lip and waited for him to leap to his feet and shout slander, but he only nodded, so I carried on. ‘That might easily be what she trusts will make no difference to your feelings, and what Mrs Duffy assumes will send you fleeing.’

‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But what would suddenly make Cara go from being sure I wouldn’t mind, to being so sure that I should mind that she doesn’t even give me a chance, but breaks it off herself? And if Cara was tied up in the theft, why on earth would she have willingly taken the fakes to the jewellers?’

I was suddenly aware of a well-upholstered woman in an elaborate hat, and her droopy daughter, both leaning precariously towards us from the far edge of the ottoman, clearly agog.

‘Let’s walk around a little,’ I said in a loud voice and I was vindicated by seeing the stout woman sit up sharply and fix her gaze at a painting opposite.

‘Any number of reasons,’ I went on in a suitably hushed voice as we moved at the required reverent pace past some portraits of scowling Puritans. ‘Perhaps she wanted to find out the value of the pastes. Perhaps she needed money and that would be enough. Perhaps not all the jewels were meant to be replaced in the first place, but her accomplice “double-crossed” her.’ Alec’s mouth twitched. ‘I have two little boys,’ I said, with an attempt at dignity. ‘And their taste in reading matter is not what it might be.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Just that I can’t quite take it seriously – Cara with an accomplice!’

We passed one of those nasty Flemish paintings of greasy goblets and overgrown vegetables – barely still although only too life-like.

‘But the undeniable truth is that she did try to sell them,’ I said, ‘and it’s not really such a step from that to stealing them, is it? They do actually belong to her father, after all. Anyway, the real mystery as far as I’m concerned is why on earth she came clean about it. Surely she could have hushed the little jeweller man?’

Alec had stopped and was staring at me, reminding me unpleasantly of Daisy. I decided to keep talking.

‘Unless – and don’t laugh at this – unless she just wanted the whole thing out in the open to be off her conscience before the wedding. Perhaps she couldn’t face going through the sacrament of marriage with such a stain on her – You are laughing.’

‘Yes,’ he said with a lift of one eyebrow that threatened to tug an answering laugh from me, even though it also made me want to box his ears. ‘The sacrament of marriage, quite. But never mind that. Did you say that Cara tried to sell the jewels?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ In my surprise, I spoke much, much too loudly for the gallery and we were both startled to hear my words echo around the high room. ‘Really, didn’t you?’ I whispered. ‘That’s why she had them at the jeweller’s. To sell them.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Alec. ‘Cara would never take it into her head to do such a thing.’

‘It’s true,’ I began. ‘She told me so herself.’ But even as I said this, I felt the facts begin to shift and resettle. Cara had said to me that she was a good girl who did what she was told and I had not known what, if anything, she meant by it and so I had dismissed it. I should add this, in thick black letters, to my growing list of Very Important Facts: people always mean something whenever they speak; if they appear not to, the fault is my own.

‘That is,’ I went on, ‘it’s true that she did it, but it might not have been her own idea. In fact, she gave me the clear impression that she was doing someone else’s bidding.’

We lapsed again each into our own silent thoughts. Why would anyone want Cara to sell the jewels? And why would she allow herself to be forced into it if she had been mixed up in the theft? And most of all, who might it be? The obvious person to sell a thing is the thing’s owner, but why would her father sell his diamonds?

‘Utterly enthralled!’ The voice cut into my thoughts no less because of its acoustics – it was a just suppressed shriek – than because of its undoubted and unwelcome familiarity. ‘Two circuits of the room, with not a glance at the pictures, really!’

Renée Gordon-Strathmurdle, the last person on earth I should wish to see at such an awkward moment as this, was bearing down on us flapping her gloves and pursing her lips coquettishly.

‘Dandelion, my darling,’ she cooed as she bent her head – she is immensely tall – to kiss me. ‘And sweet Alexander, plucked from darkest Dorset to join the happy hielanders.’ Renée always talks like that, a mixture of hell and damnation preacher and circus barker. Loud with it.

‘Your dear sweet mother was worried, Alexander darling, that Perthshire for all its air and fish might prove too, too plain pudding for you. I’m simply thrilled to be the one who can write and tell her how marvellously you’re settling in.’

‘And what brings you here, Renée?’ I asked, when she drew breath.

‘Oh yes, indeed,’ she roared. ‘You do both look rather startled to see me. But don’t worry. Allow me to have dragged myself into the twentieth century, please. Although, Alexander darling, with your wedding in three weeks’ time you have opened my eyes, I must say.’ Alec had turned the most peculiar colour; the few spaces there were between his tawny freckles had gone a pure, clear pink and the freckles themselves were liverish.

‘I was dropping off our Gainsborough for the summer,’ she went on, her voice rising to a bellow as she said the name. I quite believed this; Renée would always want any largesse she dispensed to meet with full and immediate gratitude and if it meant her driving from Perth to Edinburgh and back like a grocer on his round then that was what she would do.

‘And how is poor sweet Cara?’ she chortled.

‘Very well indeed,’ said Alec, rallying at last. ‘I’m tootling off to see her later today, as a matter of fact. Although, Dandy, if you did decide to go,’ he gave me a significant look, I could hold off till tomorrow and run you down there.’

Such openness was the perfect tactic to throw Renée off her stride, of course, but to my shame, between catching up with the idea that I should visit the Duffys, digesting the notion of driving ‘down there’ (wherever that might be) with Alec, and wondering how to serve this up to Hugh, I funked my cue and instead of answering in the same cool manner, I gulped. This sent Renée into peals of such loud laughter that the little curator rose from his chair by the door and got near enough coming to tick her off as to adjust his tie and polish his boots on the back of his trouser legs before sitting down again.

I had regained my composure by the time the train drew back into Perth station that evening, but I was exhausted. It had taken me until after luncheon to shake off Renée, although Alec had pressed his card into my palm and fled, as men can, within minutes of her landing on us.

Pallister met me in the hall.

‘Telegram came for you, madam,’ he murmured with some disdain. Receiving a telegram unless it was to announce a birth or a death was always taken by Pallister to be yet more proof of extravagance and general giddiness.

It was from Mrs Duffy, Reiver’s Rest, Kirkandrews, Galloway – the beach cottage, I assumed – and after apologizing for misleading me as to her whereabouts, it invited me to join them there for a day or two if I was free. I enjoyed a short period of wonderment that this invitation should fall into my lap, until I remembered that, of course, she must be as keen to see me as I was to see her. I had to remind myself that she was plotting Daisy and Silas’s ruination to prevent myself from feeling a twinge of guilt at leading her on.

So how was I to get there? Blushing furiously again, I drew Alec’s card from my bag, resisted the urge to look over my shoulder, and gave the number of his hotel to the operator in a loud, careless voice.

I telephoned to Daisy next and she gave me leave to incur what expense I might in the trip only begging me to ring her with news as soon as I could. Hugh, as I should have expected, barely registered the announcement that I was going away. He was closeted with his steward planning improvements to field drainage in some far-flung and, I must suppose, soggy corner of the estate and so, with the prospect of extra men and a great deal of muddle in view, he could be counted upon not to miss me.

Thus bidden on my way by both my master and my mistress, then, I summoned Grant to begin packing.

Alec had warned me that it would take a full day to reach the Solway coast, so I had Drysdale take me on the first leg after a very early breakfast and deposit me on to the Forth ferry like a parcel for Alec to meet at the other side. I quite saw that I should have to think about a little motor car of my own if this investigation were to run into weeks and months, something more reliable than the battered Austin in which I rumbled up and down to the village. I wondered whether Daisy’s fee would stretch to one of the new Wolseleys. That was something to be looked into, but for today I was very content to tuck myself into the passenger seat of Alec’s hired Bentley and be whisked away.

For much of the morning we drove in silence, a silence which deepened as we entered the pass at Dalveen heralding the beginning of Galloway, not for nothing known as the Highlands in miniature. The road plunges down between the glowering lumpen mountains, clinging to the side of the north slopes so that any little car daring to pitch itself in at the top positively hurtles to the bottom, like a child on a helter-skelter, making carefree drivers want to say ‘Wheee!’ and timid passengers clutch the door handle and shut their eyes.

Alec and I emerged from the bottom of the pass without incident, however, and pulled up at the inn at Thornhill for luncheon. Since the food at this inn was barely middling I am quite sure that the bustle in the dining room owed itself chiefly to customers coming from the north and celebrating after being so recently convinced that their days of eating and drinking were over; it was certainly busy enough to prevent us from much useful discussion while we ate.

At last though, as we pushed cheese around our plates and waited without much enthusiasm for coffee, the party at the next table rose to leave and I could abandon polite chat and ask the question which had been consuming me since the day before.

‘Who could it have been telling Cara to sell them?’

‘The obvious answer is that it was the owners, her parents,’ said Alec. ‘One or both.’

‘But why would one or both of the Duffys want to sell their jewels?’ I asked.

Alec shrugged.

‘Is there money trouble?’ I persisted. ‘Would you know if there were?’

‘Probably not,’ said Alec. ‘My prospective father-in-law is not open in his discussions with me; rather secretive and peculiar about Cara’s settlement in particular. But I think things are all right. I mean the Canada property isn’t what it was and he’s thinking of getting out of shipping, but I shouldn’t have thought selling the family treasures was on the cards just yet. What I’d like to know is why Cara went along with it if she knew they were fakes.’

‘Might it be a double bluff? Cara pretending to sell them to make it look as though she had nothing to do with stealing them?’

‘It’s a bit involved,’ said Alec. ‘And who was she bluffing? Who knew she stole them?’ I took a sip of coffee and then, realizing it was not hot enough to require sipping, a gulp.

‘Her mother, I suppose,’ I said. ‘After all, how could Mrs Duffy have enough evidence about the theft to use as a lever on Silas without her knowing of Cara’s involvement too?’

Alec clattered his coffee cup into its saucer, both of them thankfully too sturdy to be affected by such treatment, and stared at me.

‘A lever?’ he said. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

I stared back. Was it possible? Could it be possible that yesterday in the gallery, I had somehow managed not even to mention Mrs Duffy’s campaign? I hurriedly told him all that I knew of it.

He listened intently, but a moment after I had finished he sat back with arms folded and shook his head at me the way one would to a particularly stupid puppy.

‘And you just neglected to mention this before now?’ he said. I felt that any of the possible responses was beneath me. ‘But how on earth did you find it all out?’ There was no particular emphasis on the word ‘you’ but I felt his unspoken judgement all the same. I wanted very much to tell him that it was my job to find it out and only wished I had a letter of engagement from Daisy that I could show him, but I forced myself to stay quiet. He was after all to be Cara’s husband – neither one of us really believed the engagement would not be remade – and knowing that I was purposely investigating his soon to be mother-in-law might cool the air between us.

‘Well, you said yourself you thought I knew something,’ I said, huffily. ‘This is what I knew. And you can see at once how it complicates matters, can’t you?’ I decided to focus my attention firmly back on the facts. ‘What Mrs Duffy is doing – for I’m sure it’s her doing it – does not make sense from start to finish. If she were ninety instead of fifty, one would think she was gaga. And Cara’s behaviour makes even less.’

‘But that’s a very good sign,’ said Alec. ‘There are so many inconsistencies already that there’s no way it can stay secret. I’ll bet as soon as we speak to Cara and her mother the whole thing will just dissolve.’

‘I have little hope of getting anything from Lena, although she may well let something slip that she doesn’t know is useful, as she has already,’ I said. ‘But Cara, yes. Cara is altogether different. Why, she said more to me at Croys than a child would, and she will surely yield to you under the slightest pressure.’ I did not trouble to keep the arch note out of my voice and was gratified to see him look discomfited.

‘Yes,’ he said, standing and coming to draw out my chair, talking in a mock grandiose style to meet my archness head-on. ‘By nightfall tonight, it will be laid plain before us.’ He went back to his normal voice. ‘We just need to speak to Cara.’

We were quiet again during the long afternoon’s drive through the forest and down, down towards the sea. I was engaged partly on digesting the weight of my luncheon, partly on planning approaches to Lena and Cara, but also on trying to sort what I knew in patterns, hoping to be the first one to pounce on the answer which had to, simply had to, be there.

By the time we were on the coast road, coming round the bay to Kirkandrews in the failing afternoon light, I was even looking forward to it. A few days spent in this soft, fresh breeze making all well for Alec and Cara, for Daisy and Silas, and even somehow I hoped for Mrs Duffy, was a pleasant prospect. My debut as an investigator was almost too easy to be called employment. A gentle word with Cara was all it was going to take, I was sure, to earn my fee.

Alec swung us off the road at the Kirkandrews fingerpost and I sat up in my seat, eager as one always is for one’s first glimpse of the sea. Someone was having a bonfire at the beach and the scent of wood smoke mingled with the salt tang which had just become discernible in the air. It was charming at first – I leaned my head out of the side window to sniff at the memories of Boxing Day picnics it carried – but it threatened to overpower us as we advanced. The smell of it rolled up in plumes, driven no doubt by the on-shore breeze, and soon we had to fasten the car windows against it. There was no visible smoke, just the engulfing smell of it, the stench of it now we were on the track which led right to the sand line. I began to think it could not be a bonfire after all, but something much bigger, out now although perhaps still smouldering. I looked towards Alec and saw that he was grim-faced and pale as he drove the car on, ignoring the bumps and hollows under the wheels and the reach of the gorse on either side of the narrow lane scratching at the paintwork. The growing acrid stink, the protesting rumble of the tyres and the ceaseless grinding of the engine all of a sudden seemed like an outside echo, horribly amplified, of the dread that had been threatening to consume me all week. Alec increased the speed again as we passed the sign for Reiver’s Rest and we jounced over the close-cropped turf faster and faster until the car rounded the last of the gorse into the open and skidded to a slithering halt.

In front of us, was a large plot of clipped grass ringed around with flower beds and edged with a white stick fence. A shell path started from a gate on the side nearest us and led halfway across the garden before it vanished abruptly, obscenely, to be replaced by a ring of scorched earth on which sat the blackened, reeking heap that was all there was left of the Duffys’ cottage. Such a tiny heap, almost all ash, with only a few withered sticks and splinters, unbelievable that it had ever been a building.

I stepped out of the car on shaky legs and had to hold my scarf across my mouth to save from retching at the stink of it. They must have doused the flames in sea-water – of course they had, the sea was a minute’s run from where we stood – and the smell of the wreckage still sizzling and settling now and then was unbearable. Even some of the men who sat slouched beside buckets in the long grass at the edge of the dunes still wore cloths covering their noses and mouths.

A constable in uniform and gumboots was picking his way towards us around the edge of the debris, poking at the settling ash with a charred stick, clearly waiting for someone of greater seniority to arrive. Every so often he looked at a small crowd of sightseers, gathered at a respectful distance, as though daring any of them to advance. When we approached him, he touched his helmet rim and threw the stick down.

‘Where are the ladies?’ Alec asked in a steady voice, showing the strain only in the lack of any words of greeting.

‘Away to the hotel at Gatehouse,’ said the man. I reached out and squeezed Alec’s arm. ‘The two of them,’ he added. ‘The mother and one o’ the lasses.’ He turned towards the remains of the fire and spoke softly. ‘The other lass was in there, God love her.’

Alec and I did not speak or even look at each other as we walked back to the car. There was nothing to say. It would have been ludicrous to voice the certainty that it was Clemence at Gatehouse with her mother, shameful to both of us to allude to the conviction – so strong we would have staked our lives on it – that now we should never be able to speak to Cara.