Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble Read online

  ‘Right-oh,’ I said and took my foot off the brake. I saw Alec stiffen beside me as though trying to levitate and save the rickety little bridge the weight of his body. I would have laughed but I was doing exactly the same myself, holding my legs off the seat and stretching up out of my collar like a hungry chick when its mother returns to the nest with a worm.

  ‘I could have walked,’ muttered Grant and she sounded tense from clenching too.

  The gusts of the three of us breathing out fogged the windscreen when my front wheels rolled across the cobbles of the gatehouse passage and I laughed as I leaned forward and cleared a patch with my sleeve.

  There was a horseshoe of windows curving out from behind us to either side, reaching three and four storeys high above the gate but stepping down to just two, and then dribbling on to low sheds and outhouses at the ends of the horseshoe arms. Directly before us lay a long wide courtyard, open to the moat at the far end and flanked at either corner by the remaining two castle towers. The Bewers had evidently let one wing of the castle fall into ruins, perhaps for the view, but what remained was still a house of generous proportions.

  The figure with the lantern was standing, arm aloft, about halfway down the courtyard, in an empty space between an elderly Crossley and a pair of rusted bicycles, and I deduced that I was expected to park there. I frowned. There was no nearby door and such was the aspect of the castle keep that it seemed to be raining even harder here than out in the field, great gouts of water splashing down and heavy curtains of drips falling from every overhang.

  Still, it is well-nigh impossible to ignore a wet stranger swinging a lantern at one, and so I rumbled over and parked as indicated. Anyway, it was not as bad as I had feared, for leaning against the wall beside the Crossley were two enormous umbrellas and the caped figure held one out above my head as I stepped down.

  With much shuffling and the inevitable fuss of sharing two umbrellas among three individuals, we struggled across the cobbles and in at an open door, twice my height and wide enough for a carriage. On the other side of it was a stone-floored, stone-walled, arch-ceilinged passageway that stretched without relief into darkness in both directions.

  The lantern carrier pushed back his mackintosh hood once we were under cover and regarded us out of a lugubrious face with pouched cheeks and red-rimmed eyes. I had never seen a human face more like that of a bloodhound. He sniffed.

  ‘Tea,’ he said. ‘Drawing room.’

  Then he turned on his heel and left, taking the light with him. We made to follow, but he stopped, rather as though he had been shot, and without turning his head repeated: ‘Drawing room!’ very definitely before starting up again and beetling off out of sight.

  ‘Ah,’ said Alec. ‘Drawing room. I see.’

  ‘And what about me?’ said Grant. ‘Is that the butler? Am I to go with him? Who’s getting the bags?’

  ‘I think we should stick together,’ I said. ‘If we find this drawing room, Minnie can ring and get him back again.’

  We looked along the passageway to the other end. There was not what one would call a glimmer of light in any definite sense, but we could tell where the end of the passageway was so at least we knew we were not about to step off into an oubliette without warning. Alec struck a match and by its glow we advanced. The stones were gritty underfoot and the walls were damp where they were not truly slimy. I breathed in deeply, hoping to catch a whiff of toast or muffins, or wood smoke or even floor soap; something that hinted at human habitation. All I smelled was cold stone. And all I could hear were drips, within and without. Alec’s match burned down and he dropped it. It sizzled without being stepped on as he lit another.

  At the end of the passageway, matters improved. Round a corner, we met with the cheerful sight – comparatively speaking – of an unlit candle sconce in the wall, a threadbare runner on the floor and, halfway along, a door.

  When we reached it, I seized the iron ring that did service as a handle and wrenched it round, drawing back as the door fell open towards us and grabbing Grant before it squashed her.

  Matters, on this peculiar’s door’s other side, improved again. Here was a room. It had no furniture and few features beyond a dark fireplace at either end, and its single window was shuttered, but it had a second door and around this door there was a faint yellow seam. We trooped across another threadbare carpet, which gave up coughs of mousy dust at every step. Alec, pinching out the latest match, lifted the latch and shouldered the door open.

  ‘Dandy!’ The woman who was sitting by the fireside leapt up and came forward, beaming, to hug me. She had iron-grey curls set in tight rows all over her head and was dressed in bagged tweeds, darned stockings and scuffed shoes of such remarkable dowdiness that for once I felt like a fashion plate. ‘And you must be Alec,’ the woman went on. ‘Minnie. Welcome, welcome. Is Puff at your back?’

  I looked behind me.

  ‘Puff?’ I said.

  ‘Butler,’ said Minnie. ‘P-U-G-H “Puff”. Don’t call him “Pew” if you expect an answer. He was supposed to be watching out for you. But never mind. Here you are regardless. Come and sit down and warm up. It’s not much of a day.’

  She waved towards the fireplace where, in a pool of lamplight, tea was set out on a couple of low tables. For the first time I noticed that there were other people in the room. The chair pulled closest to the flames contained an elderly woman in a lace bonnet and a good number of shawls, sitting with her feet up on a little stool and blankets wrapped around her legs. She was holding a teacup close to her pursed lips and was firing a look of some malevolence at the three of us standing by the open door. Grant caught the look, deciphered it correctly and hastened to shut the door, kicking a straw-stuffed draught sausage back into place with an expert toe.

  The armchair on the other side of the fire was exerting its hold on a gentleman somewhat younger than the old lady in shawls but a good bit older than Minnie. At last he managed to clamber out of it and advanced on us all. I searched his face for the pale young man who had danced every dance with pretty Minerva Roll and had sat whispering with her over supper, but could not find any. He had spent every day since then out of doors, in wind and rain and occasional sun, and was now the colour and texture of an unpeeled beetroot, his few strands of hair flopping over his forehead like the beetroot’s wilted stalks. Not until he smiled could I see so much as a wisp of the man I knew.

  ‘Bluey?’ I said.

  ‘What’s left of him,’ said Bluey Bewer, giving me a grin full of gleaming white dentures. ‘And my dear mother. I expect you’ve been in the same room as her before now, Dandy, and might even have met, but all a thousand years ago, of course.’ He walked over to stand by the other armchair and shook the old lady gently by one shoulder. ‘Mama?’ he bellowed. I felt Grant start and noticed that a dog, dozing on the hearthrug, twitched in its sleep. ‘Let me present some friends of Minnie’s.’ The volume was impressive and his sustaining it even more so, for people usually drop their voices, even when yelling at the deaf. The old lady reached out to a side-table, put down her cup, and then with ponderous deliberation unfolded a pair of long-handled spectacles and held them to her face. Her eyes were greatly magnified by the lenses and between that and the lace round her cap she looked like a baby doll, peering up at us. ‘This is Mrs Gilver and Mr Osborne,’ Bluey thundered. ‘And …?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Grant, my maid and assistant. We weren’t sure of the floor plan. Could you ring for Pugh? Could he act as a guide?’

  ‘Hm,’ Minnie said, but did not elaborate.

  Then, after clearing her throat as deliberately as she had exchanged cup for lorgnette, Mrs Bewer spoke. ‘Are you front of house?’ she said, in tones rather cracked but still commanding. ‘You don’t look like players to me. And that’s not a trained voice you’re piping away in, girl.’

  ‘Don’t mind my mother-in-law,’ said Minnie. ‘Sit and eat and tell me your news, Dandy.’

  I sat, and I accepted a cup and
a little plate of toast, but as to condensing the news of decades into a bulletin, I did not even try. Alec saved me by swinging into step as the perfect house guest.

  ‘I’m Dorset,’ he said to Bluey. ‘And Cromwell pretty much did for the best of our houses. So this is all very thrilling. Exactly how old is the castle?’

  Bluey nodded, catching on to what was needed, and proceeded to regale Alec with tales of battle, siege and scotched invasion. I followed politely for a bit and then turned to Minnie.

  ‘Now then,’ I said, quietly enough not to disturb the men, ‘I am going to have to press you for quite a lot more details regarding what exactly Alec and I are doing here. Not – gosh, no – that it’s not bliss to see you.’

  ‘Very kind,’ Minnie said vaguely. She shot a look at her mother-in-law. ‘It’s as I said in my letter. You know how things are, Dandy. Well, I assume so.’

  ‘I’m working as a detective,’ I reminded her and she shouted with laughter, before heaving a sigh.

  ‘Can you believe it?’ she said. ‘We didn’t know we were the end of it all, did we?’

  I glanced at Grant, who was taking dainty bites of toast and prim sips of tea and looking around with her face like a mask. Knowing her as well as I did, I was not fooled by the mask. I knew she was listening to every word and I should send her away if Minnie was about to get down to business. But I also knew I would have to prise her off the chair with my fingernails and frogmarch her.

  ‘Tell me all,’ I said to Minnie and settled back to hear the sad tale of the Bewers that had brought us here.

  3

  ‘Have you heard about Mespring?’ Minnie began. As I shook my head, she went on: ‘It’s opening to day-trippers.’

  ‘Mespring House?’ I said.

  Grant forgot herself so far as to gasp. Mespring House was a Palladian marvel of unrivalled splendour, full of the fabulous collections gathered by generations on end of rich marquises.

  Minnie nodded, enjoying our surprise. ‘First Chatsworth, then Hopetoun, now Mespring. Open Tuesday to Saturday, charabancs welcome. And at first we were filled with envy. We got quite sour. “Just our luck!” we told ourselves. “Two miles along the road, putting us and our ancient towers in the deepest, darkest shade”.’ She dropped her voice a little further. ‘I’m glad Bluey can’t hear me. He’s terribly proud of the old dump. But it’s not even as if Mespring doesn’t have towers of its own. The old keep over there is older than our curtain wall by fifty years. Or at least, their librarian is well paid enough to say so.’

  I tutted sympathetically.

  ‘No, no, Dandy,’ Minnie said, sitting forward with her eyes shining. ‘No need to commiserate. Because you see, in the midst of our gloom, we saw the light. We needn’t carp and sulk about Mespring! We should thank our lucky stars! It’s a few miles along the road and the only way to get to it is right past our door.’

  Hugh is a great one for maps and our library is littered with them, so it was easy to bring the topography of the county to mind and confirm what she was telling me. The route to the Mespring House and its Italian Masters was indeed along the little road that abutted Minnie and Bluey’s puddled field.

  ‘But would people stop off, even at that?’ Minnie went on. ‘How could we make them? That’s when we hit on our marvellous idea. The gaping hordes are only allowed into Mespring on an afternoon tour and then they’re kicked out. We are putting on much more of a show. Literally, ha-ha! Every afternoon and evening except Sunday. We’ve got carpenters coming to knock up seats in the courtyard and the company arrive from Edinburgh tomorrow.’

  ‘And you’ll make enough on ticket sales?’ I said. ‘To cover the carpenters?’

  ‘Not just ticket sales, Dandy.’ Minnie put her empty teacup down and wriggled up out of the depths of the armchair to perch on its edge and regale me. ‘We can charge the company rent. We can charge the actors for their digs in the West Lodging. We’re going to have talks in the mornings – Shakespeare scholars and all that, you know. We’ll serve tea after the matinee and late suppers too. We’re going to let audience members, who’re so moved, stay the night in the Bower Lodging and charge them a shilling for bacon and eggs in the morning. We’re going to offer lifts from the station at sixpence a pop and if anyone brings his own motorcar, well then we ask sixpence for parking.’

  Bluey, who had started listening somewhere in the middle of all this, now rumbled irritably.

  ‘Talks, teas and tickets, yes,’ he said. ‘But my dear Minnie, if you think you can get a chap to hand over sixpence to leave a car in a muddy field you are on a flight of fancy.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Minnie said. ‘Of course, what we’ve been hoping for – what we’ve all been praying for – is Americans. Pots of money and so avid. We’ve hooked a first catch of them, actually, and if these send picture postcards home to their friends, that could really put us on the map. What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s brilliant,’ Alec said. ‘I think I shall neglect my duties here completely and go home to Dunelgar in the morning to start up in competition. How did you ever come up with it?’

  ‘It started as a favour to our daughter,’ Minnie said. ‘Our darling child. The company are friends of hers and she’s going to be one of our scholarly lecturers as well as taking a small part in the play. Did you know Penelope was stage-struck, Dandy? Lord, it’s been the same since her first Christmas treat. Ballet, pantomime, dreadful dreary plays that make me want to scream. She nagged us into letting her go to drama school in London instead of finishing – can you imagine? We thought that would get it all out of her system, but it only made her keener than ever.’

  ‘How unfortunate,’ I said. I have often wished that one of my sons was a daughter but when I considered the horrors of steering a modern girl safely to the altar, avoiding the kind of nonsense Minnie was describing, I was thankful for Donald and Teddy despite everything.

  ‘Then the tale takes a turn for the absurd!’ Bluey said. I shot him an enquiring glance but he had said all he was going to; the details were Minnie’s worry.

  ‘Ghastly,’ she agreed. ‘Of course, we couldn’t dream for a minute of letting her go traipsing around with a theatre company – all those “digs” and Sunday travel! But we knew a distant cousin of the Bewers happened to be theatrical. I thought he trod the boards in Glasgow which would have warned us, except that Glasgow has some fearfully proper merchants as well as everything else.’

  ‘Fearfully,’ I said. ‘Alec and I were employed by one not too long ago and his daughter was practically Rapunzel in her tower.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Minnie said. ‘It’s Edinburgh and no better for that. Cousin Leonard, we discovered, was the actor manager of a small theatre there. And so we thought no harm could come to Penny if she went along for a while. She’d learn what a comfortless, miserable life it was – this was the idea – and come home.’

  ‘I take it the plan didn’t work,’ said Alec.

  ‘It backfired more roundly than I could ever have feared,’ Minnie said. ‘And the mother of a girl is a fearful creature. Anyway, Leonard’s theatre is in a terrible district in the old town and he – or the backers or whoever it is who should have been paying attention – haven’t been. They neglected the upkeep so badly that they all had to turf out over a spot of dry rot in the spring.’

  ‘Bit more than a spot,’ said Bluey. ‘The place is falling down. Wet rot, dry rot, woodworm, slipped slates, pointing all gone to blazes, buckets everywhere. We mightn’t be the last word in home comforts, but at least the roof is sound. The roof must be kept sound!’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Alec and I am sure that, a hundred miles north in Perthshire, Hugh was nodding along in his business room. The soundness of the roof is a topic of which he never tires.

  ‘And so they needed a venue just when you needed an attraction?’ I said. ‘What’s that lovely word for things like this?’

  The door had opened without my hearing and the young woman upon the threshold
now spoke. ‘Serendipity,’ she said. ‘Is that the one you mean? It was the most marvellous serendipity, as it happens. After the shock, I mean to say.’

  She was not what my imagination had conjured at the mention of a stage-struck child, being quite twenty-five for one thing, and having a frank, open face with a friendly smile, and being sensibly dressed in a thick fisherman’s jersey, a pleated tartan skirt and gum boots. She did the rounds of parents and grandmother, dropping kisses on to each head and putting a smile on to each face as though her salutations were the touch of a fairy wand. Then she shook hands with Alec and me and dropped down onto the hearthrug beside the dog. One more kiss was planted on his head and then Penny Bewer set to removing her boots and socks, draping the latter over the fire rails where they steamed gently.

  ‘And it was a shock!’ she went on. ‘Caliban went right through the stage like something from a pantomime. He actually disappeared! The audience thought it was an avant garde decision on the part of the director. There was a rustle of approbation from the posh seats, or so I’m told.’

  I laughed and turned to Alec to share my delight in this pleasant girl and her story. Then I caught my lip. Alec, not for the first time, was dazzled. He was looking at young Penny Bewer, the way that Donald looked at picture papers, Teddy at bottles of wine, and Bunty at cold sausages left out on the kitchen table. The steaming socks and fisherman’s jersey did not appear to trouble him.

  ‘Did the show go on?’ he asked.

  ‘There was a wobbly moment,’ said Penny. ‘Miranda rushed on and bent over the hole, shouting “Are you all right, Davey, or do you need a doctor?”, which must have killed the mood a bit, but Bess, the ASM, brought the tab down and they handed out free ices whilst making hasty repairs. Still, it’s different once you know, isn’t it? And the chap they brought in to price up the repair and check the place over had to lie down on a couch and have a brandy. Apparently it was only the carpet holding the upper circle together. The whole tier was ready to plummet at any moment and since that’s where the school parties sit for matinees, the owner closed up and they’ve all been resting ever since. So this,’ she waved a hand at the room around her, ‘is most welcome.’ Then she leapt up, grabbed her gum boots but left the socks, and stepped back over towards the door. ‘Are we changing?’