“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.”
