“I’ve just been to see old Betsy Mullen,” announced Vera to her aunt,
Mrs. Bebberly Cumble; “she seems in rather a bad way about her rent. She
owes about fifteen weeks of it, and says she doesn’t know where any of it
is to come from.”
“Betsy Mullen always is in difficulties with her rent, and the more
people help her with it the less she troubles about it,” said the aunt.
“I certainly am not going to assist her any more. The fact is, she will
have to go into a smaller and cheaper cottage; there are several to be
had at the other end of the village for half the rent that she is paying,
or supposed to be paying, now. I told her a year ago that she ought to
move.”
“But she wouldn’t get such a nice garden anywhere else,” protested Vera,
“and there’s such a jolly quince tree in the corner. I don’t suppose
there’s another quince tree in the whole parish. And she never makes any
quince jam; I think to have a quince tree and not to make quince jam
shows such strength of character. Oh, she can’t possibly move away from
that garden.”
“When one is sixteen,” said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble severely, “one talks of
things being impossible which are merely uncongenial. It is not only
possible but it is desirable that Betsy Mullen should move into smaller
quarters; she has scarcely enough furniture to fill that big cottage.”
“As far as value goes,” said Vera after a short pause, “there is more in
Betsy’s cottage than in any other house for miles round.”
“Nonsense,” said the aunt; “she parted with whatever old china ware she
had long ago.”
“I’m not talking about anything that belongs to Betsy herself,” said Vera
darkly; “but, of course, you don’t know what I know, and I don’t suppose
I ought to tell you.”
“You must tell me at once,” exclaimed the aunt, her senses leaping into
alertness like those of a terrier suddenly exchanging a bored drowsiness
for the lively anticipation of an immediate rat hunt.
“I’m perfectly certain that I oughtn’t to tell you anything about it,”
said Vera, “but, then, I often do things that I oughtn’t to do.”
“I should be the last person to suggest that you should do anything that
you ought not to do to—” began Mrs. Bebberly Cumble impressively.
“And I am always swayed by the last person who speaks to me,” admitted
Vera, “so I’ll do what I ought not to do and tell you.”
Mrs. Bebberley Cumble thrust a very pardonable sense of exasperation into
the background of her mind and demanded impatiently:
“What is there in Betsy Mullen’s cottage that you are making such a fuss
about?”
“It’s hardly fair to say that _I’ve_ made a fuss about it,” said Vera;
“this is the first time I’ve mentioned the matter, but there’s been no
end of trouble and mystery and newspaper speculation about it. It’s
rather amusing to think of the columns of conjecture in the Press and the
police and detectives hunting about everywhere at home and abroad, and
all the while that innocent-looking little cottage has held the secret.”
“You don’t mean to say it’s the Louvre picture, La Something or other,
the woman with the smile, that disappeared about two years ago?”
exclaimed the aunt with rising excitement.
“Oh no, not that,” said Vera, “but something quite as important and just
as mysterious—if anything, rather more scandalous.”
“Not the Dublin—?”
Vera nodded.
“The whole jolly lot of them.”
“In Betsy’s cottage? Incredible!”
“Of course Betsy hasn’t an idea as to what they are,” said Vera; “she
just knows that they are something valuable and that she must keep quiet
about them. I found out quite by accident what they were and how they
came to be there. You see, the people who had them were at their wits’
end to know where to stow them away for safe keeping, and some one who
was motoring through the village was struck by the snug loneliness of the
cottage and thought it would be just the thing. Mrs. Lamper arranged the
matter with Betsy and smuggled the things in.”
“Mrs. Lamper?”
“Yes; she does a lot of district visiting, you know.”
“I am quite aware that she takes soup and flannel and improving
literature to the poorer cottagers,” said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble, “but that
is hardly the same sort of thing as disposing of stolen goods, and she
must have known something about their history; anyone who reads the
papers, even casually, must have been aware of the theft, and I should
think the things were not hard to recognise. Mrs. Lamper has always had
the reputation of being a very conscientious woman.”
“Of course she was screening some one else,” said Vera. “A remarkable
feature of the affair is the extraordinary number of quite respectable
people who have involved themselves in its meshes by trying to shield
others. You would be really astonished if you knew some of the names of
the individuals mixed up in it, and I don’t suppose a tithe of them know
who the original culprits were; and now I’ve got you entangled in the
mess by letting you into the secret of the cottage.”
“You most certainly have not entangled me,” said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble
indignantly. “I have no intention of shielding anybody. The police must
know about it at once; a theft is a theft, whoever is involved. If
respectable people choose to turn themselves into receivers and disposers
of stolen goods, well, they’ve ceased to be respectable, that’s all. I
shall telephone immediately—”
“Oh, aunt,” said Vera reproachfully, “it would break the poor Canon’s
heart if Cuthbert were to be involved in a scandal of this sort. You
know it would.”
“Cuthbert involved! How can you say such things when you know how much
we all think of him?”
“Of course I know you think a lot of him, and that he’s engaged to marry
Beatrice, and that it will be a frightfully good match, and that he’s
your ideal of what a son-in-law ought to be. All the same, it was
Cuthbert’s idea to stow the things away in the cottage, and it was his
motor that brought them. He was only doing it to help his friend
Pegginson, you know—the Quaker man, who is always agitating for a smaller
Navy. I forget how he got involved in it. I warned you that there were
lots of quite respectable people mixed up in it, didn’t I? That’s what I
meant when I said it would be impossible for old Betsy to leave the
cottage; the things take up a good bit of room, and she couldn’t go
carrying them about with her other goods and chattels without attracting
notice. Of course if she were to fall ill and die it would be equally
unfortunate. Her mother lived to be over ninety, she tells me, so with
due care and an absence of worry she ought to last for another dozen
years at least. By that time perhaps some other arrangements will have
been made for disposing of the wretched things.”
“I shall speak to Cuthbert about it—after the wedding,” said Mrs.
Bebberly Cumble.
“The wedding isn’t till next year,” said Vera, in recounting the story to
her best girl friend, “and meanwhile old Betsy is living rent free, with
soup twice a week and my aunt’s doctor to see her whenever she has a
finger ache.”
“But how on earth did you get to know about it all?” asked her friend, in
admiring wonder.
“It was a mystery—” said Vera.
“Of course it was a mystery, a mystery that baffled everybody. What
beats me is how you found out—”
“Oh, about the jewels? I invented that part,” explained Vera; “I mean
the mystery was where old Betsy’s arrears of rent were to come from; and
she would have hated leaving that jolly quince tree.”