The walls of Mrs Culduthel’s office were lined with bookcases. The only other furnishings consisted of a small desk and a pair of Windsor chairs. A smell of carbolic soap rose from the broad, wooden floorboards.
Mrs Culduthel sat at the desk and invited the Chief and me to take the chairs. Then the Chief told her how we had discovered the necklace in the Hudson Queen and our subsequent search for its rightful owner. Mrs Culduthel listened attentively and then sat for a while in silence. She seemed gripped by what she had heard.
“I take it that Rose Henderson lived at this orphanage before you took over,” the Chief said.
“That’s correct,” Mrs Culduthel said hesitantly. “But I know who she is and I know the sad story of her father.”
She thought a little before going on. “Those of us who work at the orphanage have a duty of silence. Some of the children who grow up here want it kept secret in later life. They don’t want people to find out that they came from poor circumstances.”
“I understand,” the Chief said.
“Rose Lafourcade isn’t one of those who is ashamed of her past,” Mrs Culduthel continued. “So I can certainly tell you what I know about her.”
“Rose Lafourcade?” the Chief said.
“Yes, that’s what Rose Henderson is called these days. She actually came here and visited the orphanage a few years ago. And she took the opportunity to tell me all about her life.”
Mrs Culduthel now proceeded to tell the Chief and me the story of Rose Henderson’s life. She began when Rose arrived at the children’s home as a four-year-old orphan. Eleven years later, when she reached the age of fifteen, she had to move out and start supporting herself. The intention was that she would work at the town woollen mill, but Rose didn’t want to be a mill worker, she wanted to see the world. So she slipped aboard a steamer that was passing through a canal lock in Inverness and, hidden in one of the lifeboats, she left Scotland. It would be more than twenty years before she returned. During those years the winds of fate had blown her from continent to continent and adventure to adventure.
At some point around the start of the new century, Rose arrived in Patagonia, right down at the southern tip of South America. Like many other people, she had been drawn there by the great gold rush, and in Punta Arenas she met a young Frenchman called George Lafourcade. They married in the local town hall. After a few years prospecting for gold on the inhospitable islands around the Straits of Magellan, George and Rose decided to move north because they wanted to see the rainforests of the Amazon. Once there, they decided to invest their gold in a rubber plantation deep in the Peruvian jungle.
Life in Amazonia was hard and dangerous and one day George fell sick with a feared jungle fever. Rose and some helpers from a local tribe managed to take him by canoe to the provincial doctor in Iquitos. But they were too late and George’s life was beyond saving.
Rose sold the rubber plantation and returned to Europe to bury George in his home town, Lodève in southern France. She immediately fell in love with the landscape and the people she met in Lodève, so she stayed there. The sale of the plantation in Peru had made her a very rich woman and she used some of her money to buy a vineyard just outside the town.
“And that’s where she has lived and worked ever since.” Mrs Culduthel concluded her account of Rose Henderson’s life. “I can give you the address of her vineyard if you like.”
“Thank you. We’d be glad of that,” the Chief said.
Then he became thoughtful.
“Jack Shaw tried to find Rose for many, many years,” he said. “Did she know that?”
Mrs Culduthel shook her head sadly.
“No,” she said. “At that time Rose knew nothing of her father. She hadn’t even been born when he disappeared to Australia. And he never got in contact in the years she was living here in the orphanage. By the time he returned to Scotland, Rose was already away. And no one could say where she had gone.”
Mrs Culduthel gave a gloomy sigh before continuing. “It wasn’t until much later when Rose made her visit here that she eventually heard the story of her father and of the pearl necklace he wanted to give her. But by then, Shetland Jack must have been dead for many years—or vanished, I should perhaps say. No one really knows what happened to him.”
She sighed again.
“Rose took it very hard. The whole business is awfully sad.”
Mrs Culduthel accompanied us to the front door to say goodbye. As we walked down the staircase from the upper floor, I stopped and looked around. Had it just been my imagination when I thought I recognized it all on arriving? The brain can sometimes play strange tricks.
But, but… there was still something very familiar about the beautifully carved handrail and the tall, narrow window beside it.
The night outside was pitch black, but we could see the faint glimmer of the lights of the town under the low, fast-moving clouds to the north of us. We’d have no problem finding our way back. The Glengarry was still moored alongside the steamer quay. We went on board and met some members of the crew who allowed us to bed down for the night in the aft saloon.
The wooden benches in the saloon were narrow and hard, but that wasn’t the only reason why I found it hard to get to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things we had learnt that evening. The Chief seemed to be having the same problem and after a while he went out onto the deck and smoked a cigar. I went and kept him company.
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to travel to France,” he said. “What do you think?”
I nodded.
The Chief puffed on his cigar for a time before saying in a concerned tone of voice, “I’m just wondering what’s to become of Bernie. Li Jing seems to be fond of him, but I doubt she’ll want him to move in for good.”
I’d been thinking the same thing.
“Does Bernie have any other friends in Glasgow?” the Chief asked. “Anyone who could help him find a job and somewhere to live?”
I shook my head.
“No friends at all?”
I shook my head once more. Everyone that Bernie knew was now in jail.
The Chief thought for a moment and then said, “In that case I think we should ask him if he’d like to come to Lisbon with us. We’ve got room for another member of the crew on the Hudson Queen, haven’t we?”
I looked at the Chief. Did he really want this? After all, he hardly knew Bernie.
The Chief smiled.
“Your friends are my friends, sailor,” he said. “And I do like Bernie. Besides, if he doesn’t settle on the Hudson Queen I’m sure we’d be able to find another job for him in Lisbon.”
I nodded and patted the Chief’s arm to show that his suggestion made me happy.
Once the Chief had finished his cigar we went back into the warm saloon. The Chief immediately fell asleep on his bench, whereas I lay awake for a while listening to his snores. My thoughts drifted this way and that, as they tend to when you are falling asleep. All of a sudden, though, I snapped awake. I sat up and stared out into the darkness. I knew now why I’d recognized that staircase in the orphanage! I really had seen it before! Not in reality, of course, but in that old picture that Bernie had hidden away in his red tin box! Bernie and Moira had been photographed on the staircase of the Highland Orphanage!