Bothersome Number of Corpses

11

We did not, however, get off at the next station and try to tell all of that to Sergeant Turner on the telephone. Even if he had let us speak to Constable Reid we might have been struggling to unwind the plaited threads of poor Fleur’s history and convince him. Instead we spent the rest of the journey devising the plainest, clearest report into which such a twisty tale could be straightened out and when we finally fell out of the little train at Portpatrick again some thirty-six hours after we had left we went straight to the police station.

Constable Reid was on the back shift and we found him in the office all trussed up with his tunic closed and his hat on, ready to go out and make one of his rounds. Since the weather was so filthy, though – it had started raining almost precisely at the border on our journey north and sheets of water were coursing down over the sea, turning even this summer evening as black as January – he took little persuasion to abandon the plan and give us his ear.

‘Nobody’ll be out causin’ bother on a night like this,’ he said. After that his contributions dwindled.

‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,’ was all he offered as we laid it out for him, and he stopped taking notes a little way in. By the end, he had his hat off and his head in his hands.

‘So…’ I finished, ‘if you can at least find the boat you’ll know which way she went and then you’ll know which police force to ask to look for her. Or however you do it. Obviously you know best.’

‘The boat,’ said Reid. ‘That you knew about on Monday afternoon, and here we are on Thursday night.’

‘Yes, sorry about that,’ I said. ‘But you know now and so you can get started.’

‘I cannae start somethin’ like that,’ said Reid. ‘It’ll need to be the sarge and he’ll need to ask the inspector and even he’ll mebbes need to go right to the top.’

‘I see,’ said Alec.

‘And that’s fine by me,’ said Reid. ‘I’ll go straight up to his house right now and tell ’im.’

‘Won’t he be angry if you bother him at home?’ I asked. ‘I’d rather wait until the morning and have it done than antagonise the sergeant tonight and get nowhere.’

‘I’m no’ carin’,’ said Reid. ‘I want to see Cissie. She answers their door, you know.’

‘She still hasn’t forgiven you?’

‘Not a word since she said she didn’t want to see me Tuesday afternoon,’ Reid said. ‘I’ve left two notes in our wee place and she’s taken them out but no’ answered.’

‘Well, she can hardly avoid you if you turn up on the doorstep,’ I said. ‘Shall we come too?’

‘I’ll manage fine myself,’ said Reid and he shooed us out of the little police station so that he could lock it behind him.

Portpatrick was battened down, either for the rainstorm or just for the night, with windows and doors closed, no washing left out to catch the warmth of the fading day and no one leaning on the harbour wall or sitting on the bollards outside Aldo’s. In fact, Aldo’s was in darkness.

‘Joe must have given up on any custom tonight in this dreadful weather,’ I said.

Alec shook his head.

‘It’s hard to believe you live in Scotland sometimes, Dandy,’ he said. ‘No purveyor of fried fish would ever close before the pub, you know.’

‘Well, maybe Thursday is his half-day,’ I said. ‘The man must rest sometimes.’

‘Thursday?’ said Alec. ‘Pay-day? Never.’

‘I bow to your greater knowledge,’ I said. ‘I hope he’s all right.’

We stood looking across the harbour to the little shack for a moment, but the rain was coming down in drilling icy rods and my hat brim was beginning to droop.

‘I’ll go and see him tomorrow,’ Alec said. ‘Come inside, Dandy, before you catch a chill.’ Thus cloaking his sloth in chivalry, he held open the door of the Crown and, shaking ourselves like dogs, we entered.

‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’ he said as we waited for the landlady to respond to our ringing. ‘The police will take over looking for Fleur and Fleur, when she’s found, will tell us at last who No. 5 is. What’s left for you? A day of rest?’

‘I think I’ll go to Parents’ Day,’ I said. ‘Gatecrash it, I mean. I’d dearly love to work out what’s going on up there and I’ve got some examination papers and a letter to return to Miss Shanks. That will be my protection if she calls Sergeant Turner on me. And as for a day of rest: I’m certainly not sticking around the Crown. The convalescent widow and I have had a falling out, you know, and I can’t face another round of hostilities.’

The rain had let up by the morning, but it did not leave the world new-washed and sparkling the way English rain does. Instead, the stone of the houses, harbour and cobbles was soaked and dark and the sky was a kind of exhausted grey. I looked across to Joe Aldo’s shack from my window as I dressed and felt again a small flare of worry.

There was a knock at my door and I opened it, expecting Alec, but found Constable Reid standing there.

‘Good morning,’ I said and leaned out to call along the passageway. ‘Alec? Reid’s here. Come in, Constable. What news?’

‘Aye, I thought ye’d like to know,’ said Reid, entering and looking round with a true policeman’s eye, not at all the bashful gaze of a young man in a strange woman’s hotel bedroom. He would go far if his luck fell that way. ‘The sarge took some convincin’ and I kind of had to make your friend sound a wee bit dangerous and no’ just soft, but he’s agreed she might ken who our corpse is and there’s no denyin’ she’s pinched the boat, so he’s away gettin’ the coastguard and them sorted out.’

Alec gave a quick rap at the door and entered. ‘Reid,’ he said.

‘The search is on,’ I told him. ‘Go on, Constable.’

‘Aye, right, so,’ said Reid. ‘That’s all.’

‘And how did it go with Cissie?’ I asked.

He shot me a piercing look. ‘She never came to the door. She sent the cook. An’ I’m askin’ you again: what did you say to her?’

‘Oh Dandy, for heaven’s sake,’ said Alec. ‘What did you say to her? It was really none of your business, darling.’

‘Nothing!’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it. I think it’s a bit much getting her to caddy for you but I didn’t say a syllable about that. And I wonder what her mother would think of these moonlight walks of yours, but I said nothing about that either. Look, if I get a chance later, I’ll go to the Turners’ house on some pretext or other and I’ll ask Cissie, when she answers the door, what the matter is. All right? But I’m busy today. I’m hoping to crack the nut of St Columba’s, and if it turns out to be a police matter, Constable, I’ll give it into your hands and yours shall be the glory and the promotion; and then shall come the engagement and the orange blossom and the cottage with the roses round the door, and then maybe you’ll stop accusing me.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about half the time, missus,’ said Reid.

‘You follow as much as half?’ said Alec. ‘Good for you.’

I waited until I could be sure that Parents’ Day was in full swing before I climbed the cliff path for what I expected would be the final time. Splashes of yellow had swarmed over the terrace and headland all morning, clearly visible from the village below, as the girls prepared the grounds for the visitors. Bunting was strung around poles and cracked smartly in the sea breeze and a flag of indeterminate design (it might have been St Columba himself) was run up the pole. From eleven o’clock onwards motorcars began to arrive, an endless rumble quite audible down the hill, and also there was the odd pair of lost parents driving along the sea front and pointing upwards to the school before executing an awkward turn at the harbour head and retracing their steps to try again. When the strains of a small pipe band (although not small enough for my liking) began to be heard drifting down from the terrace, I put the examination papers in my bag, settled my hat firmly against the gusts and ventured forth.

It was a scene of some gaiety despite the chilly greyness of the day. Long tables with coffee and cakes had been set out along the terraces and little round tables with posies of roses on them were dotted here and there on the damp grass. The hardier parents were seated, the mothers eating cakes with one hand and holding their hats on with the other, while fathers hunched against the wind and tried to light cigarettes inside their lapels. The more tender parents were forced to shelter on the terrace itself in the lee of the building, even though that kept them in full blasting proximity to the band.

‘I hope to God luncheon is inside at least,’ said a skinny mother, shivering like a greyhound, as I passed her. ‘Darling, couldn’t you go and petition?’

‘Not my idea to come, if you remember, Ursie,’ said the man she was with, who was standing poker-straight and scowling at the nearest bagpiper. I decide to attach myself to them, since I could tell from the woman’s shoes, the man’s tie and the drawling voices of them both that these were what Hugh calls ‘our sort’. In other words, these parents were some of those I could not quite believe had a girl at Miss Shanks’s peculiar little school. Perhaps if I got them talking they could explain it to me.

‘One’s only hope,’ I said, turning towards them, ‘is for a downpour proper. It would get us inside and stop that dreadful din.’

In their eyes was the flash as they recognised their sort and they did a bit of polite tittering.

‘Do you have a girl here?’ said the father. ‘Excuse me! Magnus Duncan and this is my wife, Ursula.’

‘Dandy Gilver,’ I said. ‘How do you do. I think we both know the Esslemonts, don’t we?’

‘Oh, how do you do,’ said Mrs Duncan. ‘Yes, dear Daisy.’

‘I don’t have a girl here,’ I said. ‘Yet. I’m thinking about it, though.’ I crossed my fingers in hope that our acquaintance was too slight for them to remember that I had only sons. They exchanged a quick look, as husbands and wives will, but it was impenetrable to me.

‘Well, St Columba’s has been very good for our girl, hasn’t it, Ursie?’ said Mr Duncan.

‘Oh, quite,’ said his wife. ‘Thoroughly to be recommended.’ Then both of them looked down into their coffee cups and took up what promised to be a lasting silence.

‘Well, that’s very good to…’ I said, staring at their partings. ‘Excuse me, won’t you. I see someone I have to…’

I did, as a matter of fact. I saw the unmistakable back view of Candide Rowe-Issing, in a lavender linen frock and an outrageous yellow hat which clashed painfully with the yellow of the St Columba’s uniform. I made a bee-line for her but was waylaid before I was halfway there.

‘Miss Gilver!’ It was Eileen Rendall, as pretty as a picture with a yellow rose tucked behind one ear, one of the few girls not washed out by the uniform.

‘Goody Goody Gilver,’ said Spring, coming up behind her. ‘I thought you’d gone. We were admiring ourselves for our quickest work yet, weren’t we, girls?’

‘Oh, I was only ever a stop-gap,’ I said. ‘How are you getting on with Miss Glennie?’

‘Well, on the bright side,’ said Spring, ‘she hasn’t snatched the sonnets back from us.’

‘We’ll always have you to thank for the sonnets, Miss Gilver,’ said Katie, joining them and slinging an arm around the neck of each.

‘On the other hand, she knows a choking amount of guff about Milton,’ Spring finished.

‘And she’s a dab hand with a grammar exercise too, more’s the pity,’ said Katie.

‘Who’s this?’ It was Sally Madden. ‘Our Latin, French and English are all grammar exercises now. And since chemistry and algebra are grammar too, to my mind anyway, it’s syntax as far as the eye can see. I love it.’

‘Oh, Sally, shut up, you can’t,’ said Spring. ‘And you don’t love Highland Glennie. No one could love that old-’

‘Girls,’ I said. ‘I might not be your mistress any more but that’s no reason to suspend all civility around me.’

‘Sorry, Miss Gilver,’ said Eileen.

‘Where’s Stella?’ I asked, accustomed to seeing them all together.

‘Why do you ask?’ said Stella’s voice behind me. As usual, the insolence was as pronounced as it was indefinable. ‘Did you want to ask-’ Then her attention was caught by something behind me. ‘There’s Mummy at last,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ I said, attempting the same languid tone. ‘I must slope over and say hello.’

But the terrace between the lemon-yellow hat and me was stuffed with parents, rather like a church-hall jumble sale. Actually, as I looked around, a great deal like a church-hall jumble sale. Fathers in shiny suits with braces showing and mothers in patterned frocks and unfortunate hats on the backs of their heads. A mother standing very near me gave a shy smile and sidled up like a little water buffalo.

‘You’re one of the teachers?’ she said. ‘I heard those girls talking to you.’

‘I’m…’ I said. ‘English mistress.’ It was perhaps just vague enough not to be an out and out lie. ‘Now, which girl is yours?’ Of course, the chances of me having met their daughter in my one day of active service were slim and the chances of remembering her name if I had were even slimmer.

‘Tilly,’ said the father, giving me a toothy smile.

I opened my eyes wide. ‘Tilly Simmons?’

‘That’s our little darling,’ said the mother. ‘She’s good at English, isn’t she?’ She sidled even closer and gave me a nudge in the ribs with her plump elbow. I thought back to Clothilde Simmons’s laboured and mediocre translation and gave a thin smile. I could feel the Simmons letter in my bag as though it were a hot coal.

‘And is this your first visit to the school?’ I said. ‘I must introduce you to dear Miss Shanks.’

‘Oh no, we know Miss Shanks,’ said Mr Simmons. ‘We’re very close to Miss Shanks, aren’t we, Mother?’

‘You see we’re not just parents,’ said his wife. ‘We’re benefactors.’

‘Or we will be soon.’ Mr Simmons put his thumbs under his braces and rocked on his heels with pride. ‘Just need to make up our minds between a yacht and some stables.’

‘I’m sorry?’ I said.

‘Don’t you know?’ said the man, looking rather crestfallen. ‘I’d have said it was worth talking about, me.’

‘Father and I are going to make a bequest to the school,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘Riding stables, we thought. But Miss Shanks is quite keen on a yacht to give the girls sailing lessons. Oh, Father! I hope she comes round to the stables. I’d never sleep thinking about Tilly out on them big waves.’

‘We’re not used to our kid being away from us yet,’ Mr Simmons said. ‘Never went away to school, didn’t Mother and me.’ I had guessed as much; everything from their hat and braces to their pancake-flat vowels announced that even though they might have a great deal of money (a very great deal if stables were on the cards) they had made it all themselves and were showering upon their daughter all the advantages they had missed. Since I am no snob (no matter what Alec says) my only concern was to help them shower it sensibly.

‘Can I just ask,’ I said, ‘what made you decide to send Tilly to St Columba’s instead of one of the bigger and better known schools?’

‘Oh, we had her down for Cheltenham,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘But friends of ours, well, neighbours, new neighbours, after we moved, said to us that St Columba’s was the place. And their girls are to be presented at court, you know. Real young ladies.’

‘I see,’ I said, which was a lie. ‘Well, simply lovely to have met you, Simmonses.’ I gave a little bow and was amused to see them giving a real bow and curtsey in return as I left them.

‘And where are all the mistresses?’ said a voice as I plunged into the crowd once again. Where indeed? I thought. I had expected to feel a hand on my collar a lot quicker than this, and while in one way it was splendid to have had such a run at the parents and girls (not to mention the fact that I felt I was hearing all sorts of useful stuff from their innocent lips), looked at another way I knew that I was only ever going to solve the puzzle of St Columba’s by skewering the Misses Christopher, Barclay and Shanks. Those three were at the root of it, whatever it was.

‘Which mistress would you like most to talk to?’ I said, turning with a smile. ‘Perhaps I can take you to her or fetch her for you?’

‘Miss Barclay,’ said a man in a brown suit with a pipe in his mouth. ‘Geography. Our Christine is going to Edinburgh University to do geography at the end of next year.’ His voice had grown louder, in the hope that the bystanders nearest him would hear him and marvel.

‘Up to Edinburgh to read geography, Rex,’ said his wife in far softer tones.

‘Rex?’ said her husband. ‘Who’s Rex, when he’s at home? I’m Reg and I always have been.’ He winked at me. ‘She only started the Rex lark when Christine got interviewed at the university and they said she was in!’

‘You must be very proud of her,’ I said, smiling with genuine pleasure for them.

‘Oh well, how else would it be?’ he said. ‘My wife chose the school and took care of all that. I’m a plain man and happy to see the girls take after their mother.’

‘You’ve chosen very well for your daughter, Mrs…’ I said. ‘Edinburgh University, eh?’

‘She was worth it,’ said the woman, curiously tight-lipped beside her beaming husband.

‘And you have another daughter too?’ I said.

‘She’s not coming here,’ said the woman. She stared me straight in the eye. ‘You can tell Miss Shanks that from me, whoever you are.’

At last the pipe band gave a long discordant groan and an exhausted wheeze and were silent. A gong was struck and a voice – I thought it was Mrs Brown – announced that luncheon was served in the refectory. I turned back to the quiet woman and took hold of her arm as discreetly as I could do it.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Or rather I think you need to talk to me.’

But she brushed me off quite roughly and backed away, shaking her head.

‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Not any more, not again. You can forget it.’ And with that she turned and vanished into the crowd.

‘My wife,’ said her husband, looking after her. ‘Nerves, you know. Been that way a few years now. You’ll have to forgive her.’

‘Of course,’ I said, with a distracted smile. ‘Don’t mention it. I hope she’s soon feeling better and please tell her I apologise if I upset her in any way.’

‘Dandy?’ The voice was not loud but it cut through the hubbub of jostling parents like a shard of glass. I turned and smiled.

‘Candide,’ I said. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

‘But you have sons!’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me Shanks is taking boys now.’

‘Not as far as I know,’ I said, ducking under the hat brim and clashing my cheeks against hers. ‘I’ve just seen Stella. She’s your absolute twin these days.’

‘Only to look at,’ said Candide in a cool murmur. ‘How are your boys getting on, then? Not turning your hair white, I trust?’

‘Oh well, Donald is a bit of a handful,’ I said. ‘Teddy hasn’t set into shape yet, so who knows?’ But she was not really listening and I changed the subject. ‘I’ve seen your bathing pool,’ I said. Candide’s face, always quite foxy, grew positively pinched at the mention of it.

‘Blasted thing,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that they’d put our names on it.’

‘Very good of you, still,’ I said. ‘Given the times, especially.’

‘Hah!’ said Candide. ‘Well, yes, that bloody pond used to be a Canaletto. There’s a pale patch on the landing wall.’ I stared at her and she looked off to one side, took a short sharp nip at her cigarette, almost like a little kiss, and then blew the smoke out in a long stream. ‘One does what one can,’ she said. ‘And better a simple bequest than a lifetime’s obligation worked off in testimonials.’

‘Well, Stella is a fortunate girl,’ I said, ‘and Miss Shanks a very fortunate woman.’ I knew I was staring harder than ever but in truth my mind was far away, sorting through all that I had heard: from the Simmonses and the Duncans, from Mr and Mrs Reg to Candide’s few cryptic offerings.

‘Stella,’ said her mother, ‘is a disappointment and a pest. I only hope she makes it all worthwhile in the end by marrying someone half-decent, that’s all.’ Then she threw down her cigarette, flashed me a quick smile, clashed cheeks again and swept towards the open dining-room doors, the lesser parents (and that was more or less all of them) parting like the Red Sea at her coming.

‘Oh no,’ I groaned for, in the space where she had been standing, there now stood Stella herself, and for once her brow was not arched and her lip not curled. She was white-faced with shock and her mouth trembled.

‘What did Mummy just say?’ she said, not drawling at all now.

‘I didn’t catch it,’ I answered. Feigning unlikely deafness is such a help at so many awkward moments.

‘A disappointment?’ Stella said. ‘A pest?’

‘Have you quarrelled?’ I asked. She had been badly enough crumpled by the unfortunate overhearing that I did not shrink from putting a friendly arm around her, as one would any child. And crumpled as she was, she submitted to it.

‘No,’ she said. ‘The last time we quarrelled was when they said I had to come here to school instead of where I wanted.’

‘Why was that, do you know?

‘Friends said it was marvellous,’ she replied. ‘And they got a bargain, they said.’

‘Well, Stella,’ I said. ‘You know what to do when you overhear ill of yourself, don’t you?’ She rallied a little.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I shall put it out of my mind.’

‘Or hoard it in secret until your mother is old and infirm and then cast it up endlessly,’ I whispered. ‘Ask her who’s a pest now, when you’re wheeling her round in her bath chair. Bellow it down her ear-trumpet in revenge.’

This recovered her completely and she gave a rich chuckle and tossed her hair.

‘You have a better wit than any other mistress around here,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you stay?’

I leaned towards her.

‘I’m not a mistress,’ I said. ‘Remember Donald Gilver who chased you out into the snow at that Christmas party at Cawdor, trying to kiss you?’

‘How do you know about that?’ said Stella.

‘I’m his mother,’ I said. I saw her eyes narrow and then widen as she recognised me. ‘I spanked him with a hairbrush for frightening you and spoiling your pretty shoes.’

‘So what were you doing here?’ Stella said.

‘I’m a private detective,’ I told her and had the satisfaction of seeing her sharp little face register utter amazement. ‘And I’m just about at the bottom of what’s happening here. At least I might be if I could have ten minutes’ solitude to think it through.’

‘Can I tell the others?’ she said. And a little of my short career as an English mistress was in me when I echoed Hugh and answered:

‘You may.’

Where, though, was solitude to be found in St Columba’s on this day of all days? I did not want to run into any of the mistresses now. After luncheon no doubt all of the dorms and classrooms would be swarming with little girls showing their beds and desks to mummies and daddies, and from the rows of seats arranged in the flat part of the grounds north of the school there was clearly some outdoor entertainment planned too. I slipped into the building by a garden door and seeing the little flower room where the mistresses’ bags were stored reminded me that one room of all would be sure to be empty today. And I knew the way, thankfully. It took me only a moment to find Fleur’s door, try the handle, send up a silent prayer and slip inside.

As the door closed softly, though, I got and gave the most tremendous shock, for Fleur’s little room, cold and bare, was not empty. Betty Alder, Sabbatina Aldo, was lying full-length on the narrow bed, sobbing her heart out into the pillow, and she leapt to her feet with a shriek (matching my own) when she saw me.

‘Sabbatina?’ I said, recovering first. ‘What’s the matter, and what are you doing in here?’

She had clearly been crying for quite some time: her eyes were swollen half-shut and her nose was swollen too and reddened from blowing. Her beautiful olive skin was blotchy and her raven curls were plastered damply to her forehead and neck.

‘I can’t bear to be with the others today,’ she said. ‘My mother and father didn’t come. I saw my father yesterday and I… told him things. I think I drove him away.’

‘But you didn’t want to see your father,’ I reminded her. A fresh course of tears slid down her cheeks and she scrubbed at them.

‘I wanted to see my mother,’ she said. ‘Father didn’t tell me she wasn’t coming. I waited and waited in the front hall until everyone else was gone and there was just me standing there.’

‘But Sabbatina, my dear,’ I said, sitting down beside her and rubbing her back (it seemed to be my day for comforting the daughters of uncaring mothers, today). ‘Of course she didn’t come. She’s gone, dear. Oh, poor you! Were you pinning your hopes on her coming back?’ The girl sniffed and blinked.

‘Gone?’ she said. ‘Gone where? Coming back from where?’ I think I might have blinked at that.

‘But you knew she was gone,’ I said. ‘We spoke of it.’

‘I didn’t- Gone where, Miss Gilver? My mother? Gone where?’

I stopped rubbing her back and began instead rubbing the bridge of my own nose.

‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘We had at least one conversation about this. And you said to me that you were going to see your father – not your mother – last Saturday.’

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘I never see my mother on a Saturday. She goes to Dunskey House on that day. You know. Washing.’

‘But who is it you’re missing then?’ I said. ‘Who is it that’s gone and left you? I feel as if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.’

‘Miss Lipscott,’ the child said, and her voice broke. ‘Miss Lipscott, of course. She’s gone. And I can’t bear it.’ She threw herself back down onto the bed, buried her head in the pillow and howled. I felt quite safe rolling my eyes since she could not see me, but I managed to make my voice kind and calm.

‘My dear girl,’ I said, ‘it’s quite normal to have these overwhelming feelings about one’s mistresses, you know. But you shouldn’t give in to them. Now, sit up and dry your eyes.’

She did sit up then.

‘It’s not a pash, Miss Gilver,’ she said. ‘It’s not a crush. Miss Lipscott took care of me. I thought she was like a sister.’

‘Well, that’s very nice,’ I said, ‘but you really should-’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Sabbatina. ‘Miss Lipscott was my patron. She paid for me to be here. She even said that maybe after I was finished with school I could live with her.’

I stared at her, feeling things shift but still not knowing where they were off to.

‘I was at the village school when I met her,’ she said. ‘She used to walk and I used to walk – on my own, because of all the teasing – and then we walked together and she brought me books and then she started coming down to the house and giving me lessons and she was like one of the family. And then I came here and she said maybe we could all live together. Only, she stopped saying that after a while. And now I don’t know what to think. I don’t know if she ever cared for me at all. But she said I could go up and spend the summer with her. And now she’s gone, Miss Gilver, and I can’t stay at St Columba’s and go to university and I shall be a washerwoman like my mother and-’ She stopped dead. ‘My mother’s gone?’

Inside, I groaned to have let it slip out like that.

‘What am I going to do?’ Sabbatina said. ‘How could she go off and leave me?’ And since I quite honestly did not know which one of the two women she meant, I said nothing. Anyway, I was thinking hard. She had just said something that had struck me. ‘What am I going to do, Miss Gilver?’ the girl whispered again. ‘I did something silly and I’m sorry.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘I took her bags. I hid them under my bed, but it’s sheets change day tomorrow and I don’t know what to do.’

‘You sto- You took Miss Lipscott’s bags from the flower room?’ I said.

‘I heard you on the telephone when I came to give Miss Shanks a note,’ said Sabbatina. ‘You said where they were and I – I just wanted something of hers to keep. And there was a letter in her bag and I opened it – even though it wasn’t for me – and now everything’s spoiled. And my mother’s gone too?’

‘Quick,’ I said, ‘while they’re still at luncheon. Let’s go and get the bags and bring them here. I want to read this letter, to see if there’s anything to tell us where she might be.’

‘There isn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s just a horrible, sordid letter that spoiled everything.’ She sniffed. ‘Are you sure she didn’t go home?’ I nodded. ‘Do you think she’s all right? I still care, even after everything.’ I gave a firm nod with nothing behind it except wishful thinking, and then together we slipped out of the room to flit up the stairs and along the passages to Sabbatina’s little dorm.

‘Of course, this is very wrong,’ I said, somewhat belatedly, when we had got the bags back to Fleur’s room again and Sabbatina had put the letter in its envelope into my hands, ‘but sometimes we have to do things of which we’d ordinarily be ashamed.’

‘I’m not ashamed,’ she said. ‘At least, I’m only ashamed for Miss Lipscott and I’m ashamed of thinking she loved me.’

‘I’m sure she did,’ I said. Sabbatina nodded to the envelope.

‘Read it, Miss Gilver, and then tell me.’ I looked down and my eyes widened. It was addressed to Sr Giuseppe Aldo. ‘Miss Lipscott wrote a letter to my father every week,’ said Sabbatina. ‘I usually took it to him. I thought she was letting him know how I was getting on and all that. I put it right into his hands. Every Saturday.’

‘Not to your mother and father together?’ I said.

‘Mother doesn’t read English,’ she said. ‘I want to teach her but she never has time until it’s late and she’s tired. Maybe if I had taught her to read… I keep forgetting that you told me she’s gone.’

I frowned a bit then, for how could any upset over a lost English mistress drown out the news that one’s mother had left one? I opened the envelope and drew out the single sheet inside.

Dear Joe, it began (rather chummily, I thought, but then Joe Aldo did seem to have the knack for making chums. I was sure I had called him that myself in the course of our few short meetings). First things first, the letter went on. Sabbatina’s essay this week was first-rate and her grammar work is coming along wonderfully too. The other mistresses are not fulsome in their praise but I have seen her exercise books and she is near the top of the form in almost everything. I say again, as I have before, that to have such a daughter must be a great blessing and could be the foundation of a very happy life for Rosa and you if you would give up these silly notions of yours.

Rather peppery, I thought, and read on to see to what silly notions she might be alluding. I cannot pretend that I do not share your feelings, because you know I do and the few times you overcame my better principles were some of the sweetest moments of my life. I looked up at Sabbatina, but she had looked away. But I will never be responsible for coming between a husband and wife. I would not marry you if you divorced Rosa and I will not live in sin. My head was beginning to reel. Joe Aldo the fish fryer? I did not seek your affections and I regret not being firmer in my resistance to them in the early days when we were first friends. I am going away from St Columba’s very soon, Joe. I shall continue to pay for Sabbatina’s education and I shall always think fondly of you, her and Rosa and pray for your future happiness as the family, blessed by God and joined in His name, that you are. Goodbye, Fleur Lipscott.

‘He drove her away, Miss Gilver,’ Sabbatina said. ‘He loved her – not me – and she loved him – not me – but she wouldn’t do wrong and he drove her away. And he drove my mother away too. She must have found out.’

‘Sh, Sabbatina,’ I said, for I was trying to think. ‘Hush, now.’

Fleur was planning to run away from Joe Aldo, who would not stop pursuing her. What had happened to make her abandon the plan and flee, leaving Jeanne Beauclerc behind? I glanced down at the letter again. I would not marry you if you divorced Rosa and I will not live in sin.

‘Oh my God,’ I said. If living in sin was out and divorce was out that left only one option. And in my memory I saw Fleur bending over the faceless corpse and whispering ‘Five’. ‘Oh my God,’ I said again. We were sure that No. 5 was not Rosa Aldo, because her own husband had told us so. But if her husband had killed her, then of course he would deny recognising the poor broken thing that his murder had made of her.

‘Sabbatina,’ I said, ‘what “things” did you tell your father when you spoke to him yesterday? Did you tell him you’d read this letter?’

‘No,’ the girl said, ‘but I think he guessed I had, or he guessed that I had found out about him and Miss Lipscott anyway. I told him I blamed him for making her run away.’

‘Did he ask you where she had gone?’ I said.

‘Yes, and I told him I thought she had gone home,’ Sabbatina said. ‘But you told me she hasn’t.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t. Wherever she is, she’s safe. But you said something…’ I was searching her face. ‘You said something to me that I didn’t catch hold of but I know it’s important.’

‘What, Miss Gilver?’ she said, looking back at me with equal earnestness.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. Then I took hold of both of her arms. Could a man who had killed his wife kill his child? If Sabbatina had told her father she knew about him and Fleur was she herself in danger now? ‘I’ve got to go, dear,’ I said. ‘And I want you to lock yourself in here and wait until I or the police or… someone comes back before you open up.’

‘A mistress?’ said Sabbatina.

‘If it’s Miss Glennie or Miss Lovage,’ I said, ‘then yes. Otherwise just keep quiet until they go away.’ I did not know why I did not trust the others. And I did not know whether the story of Joe and Fleur – a Juliet indeed! – was mixed up in the story of St Columba’s, but I needed Alec and all my wits and I could not have the worry of this child distracting me. ‘Will you be all right?’ I asked her, but she had already taken some article of Fleur’s clothing out of the suitcase and looked as though she were planning to curl up and mourn her lost beloved some more. ‘Good girl,’ I said. ‘Lock the door.’

My run of luck was over: as I left the building by the same side door, I was hailed from a distance and turned to see Miss Shanks pounding towards me.

‘Miss Gilver? Miss Gilver!’ she cried.

‘Can’t stop, Miss Shanks,’ I called back with a wave, and kept going. She could hardly run me down and tackle me in front of all the parents, so she slowed and stopped and I was away from her, pelting over the lawn and down the cliff steps with my mind racing faster than my feet.

Joe killed Rosa, because he thought that then Fleur would marry him. Fleur thought her refusal to marry him while his wife was alive meant that she had Rosa’s blood on her hands. That much made sense. But how could Joe have thought Fleur would marry a murderer? Did he mean to make everyone believe it was suicide? Or an accident? But then why did he not say he recognised his wife when he went to see her? What happened to change his plan that terrible day when I went to the cove with Fleur and Joe went with Alec? And what of the mysterious lover who had been seen with Rosa on the cliff path?

I stopped so suddenly that I nearly tripped and fell off the cliff myself. He was seen. That’s what changed. Alec said as much: Joe Aldo was numb with shock at the news that someone had seen his wife and ‘her lover’ and that the witness said she would know the man if she saw him again. After that Joe had to say the corpse was a stranger. And then there was the telephone call. I stopped again, but more gradually this time. How could No. 5 be Rosa Aldo when she had rung her husband on the telephone after No. 5’s body had been drowned and nibbled by fishes and washed ashore again?

I came down onto the harbourside and made my way towards the Crown, but was stopped by a piercing whistle from the far harbour wall. Alec waved both his arms at me and I motioned frantically for him to come. He set off towards me at a jog but I could not wait and I sprinted to meet him. He saw me sprint and put on some speed himself so that when we met we were both blowing hard and sweating.

I had brought the letter and I thrust it into his hands.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said when he had finished it.

‘No. 5,’ I panted. ‘Rosa Aldo. Fleur responsible. Joe – pass it off as suicide.’

‘Until little Cissie saw them!’ said Alec.

‘Yes, yes, that’s what I thought,’ I said, recovering my breath. ‘But Alec, Rosa Aldo called her husband on the telephone. I spoke to her myself. Remember?’

‘Nonsense,’ Alec said. ‘You had never met Rosa Aldo. It’s not as though you recognised her voice or anything. You spoke to someone who rang Joe. Someone who spoke a bit of Italian, such as a studious sort would pick up in a couple of years of visiting an Italian family.’

‘Fleur?’ I felt a tremor pass through me as though someone had hit an anvil with a hammer close by. ‘It couldn’t be.’

‘Why not?’ Alec said. ‘I never could understand why Joe was so floored by someone supposedly seeing Rosa with her boyfriend, but it makes sense if the boyfriend was him and he was just about to shove her off the cliff top. So it can’t have been Rosa on the telephone. If it wasn’t Rosa, who else?’

‘He must have nerves of steel,’ I said. ‘We were standing right there and Fleur was on the phone and he pretended it was his wife? And she pretended to be his wife? Why would she do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alec said. ‘But I’m sure she did. He told Fleur what to say and you obligingly relayed the message to him, not understanding what she said until he translated it for you.’

‘I got the gist,’ I said, and then another tremor made its way through my innards and this one left me cold.

‘Alec,’ I said. ‘Cissie said she didn’t understand what Rosa and the stranger were saying but she knew it was sweet-talk. I thought she didn’t hear the words themselves.’

‘But now you think maybe she did hear them but she didn’t understand them because they were in Italian?’

‘And she doesn’t like fish and chips,’ I said. ‘So she very likely had never seen Giuseppe Aldo even if his wife was familiar to her.’

‘More evidence,’ said Alec. ‘But Dan, what’s wrong?’

‘I told Joe the Turners’ maid was the one who saw Rosa and friend on the cliff top. And – oh Alec! – maybe Cissie isn’t sulking. Maybe she’s missing. Maybe he got her too.’

Alec was running already and reached the police station before I had made it a yard up the street. By the time I got to the door Reid and he were on their way out again. Reid wrenched open the door of the police motorcar and Alec shoved me in and then jammed in after me. As we began to climb the hill with the engine whining, Sergeant Turner came out onto the street and stood, hands dangling at his sides, watching the three of us speed away.

Outside the Turner villa, Reid screeched to a halt and jumped down. He leapt over the garden gate, rounded the side of the house and disappeared. Alec and I scrambled after him. In the yard, the kitchen door was banging back on its hinges and Reid was in the middle of the linoleum floor with his arms wrapped round an astonished Cissie like an octopus with its prey while a thin cook looked on, a baking bowl under one arm and a wooden spoon held up like a baton.

‘Cissie,’ I said. ‘Oh my dear girl, thank goodness!’

‘Who are you?’ said the cook.

‘I’m a chump and this is my idiot friend,’ I said to her. ‘Gilver and Osborne. They were speaking Italian, Cissie, weren’t they? That night on the cliff top. Rosa and the man who wasn’t her uncle?’

‘Lots of people speak Italian,’ she said. ‘Get off, Wullie.’

‘Has someone been speaking Italian to you?’ said Alec. Cissie blushed.

‘Writing it,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a friend and admirer, Wullie Reid, and he’s told me all about you!’

‘What’s going on?’ said the cook. ‘This is my kitchen, ye ken, and I’ll call the mistress if you don’t tell me what’s to do.’

‘All about me what?’ said Reid.

‘All lies,’ said Alec, ‘whatever it was. This secret admirer, Cissie – has he asked you to slip out and meet him yet?’

‘He said he had to go away a wee while,’ she said, ‘but maybe next week, he said he’d take me a hurl in his car and we’d get some dinner.’

‘Out for dinner!’ said Reid. ‘How am I supposed to compete wi’ that on ma wages?’

‘William,’ I said, ‘I think you’re losing sight of the main point here, aren’t you? Aldo only needed to keep Cissie apart from you until he was ready to shut up shop and disappear for good. He’s not coming back to take her for dinner or even for a bag of chips at the harbour.’

‘I don’t like chips,’ Cissie said. ‘He promised a proper dinner.’

‘Cissie, that man is a liar and a murderer,’ Alec said. ‘It was Giuseppe Aldo who wrote to you. He was the one you heard on the cliff path with his own wife and he killed her. He would have killed you if you had gone out to meet him too.’

‘He’s a very dangerous man,’ I said, ‘and he plays risky games. Do you realise, Reid, that he pretended his wife was on the telephone that day when really it was Fleur all the time who was in Glasgow station and…’ I stopped and let the silence fill me.

‘What is it, Dan?’ Alec said.

Finally, the little pip of information which had been tickling at me was in my grasp.

‘Up,’ I said. ‘Sabbatina Aldo said that Fleur had invited her “up” to stay for the holidays. She kept saying Fleur would go home. She couldn’t believe Fleur would go anywhere else except home. But Pereford – Somerset – isn’t up anywhere. Sabbatina meant Alt-na-harrie. The Major’s lodge. The place Fleur went to when her life at Pereford changed for ever all those years ago.’

‘But they sold it,’ Alec said.

‘To an anonymous buyer,’ I reminded him. ‘And Fleur came into a lot of money when she was eighteen. More than she could spend on a Bugatti.’ I turned to Reid.

‘Constable,’ I said, ‘Miss Lipscott is at home in a hunting lodge near Ullapool. I’m sure of it. If you go there, you’ll find her.’

‘I’ll never get let go all the way up there,’ said Reid. ‘The sarge’ll be after me wi’ a strap for takin’ his car this far.’

‘We’ll hire a motorcar and you can come with us,’ I said. ‘It’s pretty tricky to find, actually. You’d probably do better with a native guide. Meantime, Cissie, I’m sure Aldo is gone for good but until he’s caught – just to be on the safe side – perhaps you’d better stay in and don’t answer the door. No matter who it is calling.’

‘My God, Alec,’ I said as we made our way from the high road of villas to the back street where the car-hiring garage was to be found. ‘Do you realise how many young ladies there currently are stashed all over this fair land? Four counting Sabbatina, who’s in Fleur’s room at the school, breaking her poor heart over her mother and her patron. And her no-good father as well, probably.’

‘Why’s she stashed?’ Alec said.

‘Because I wasn’t thinking straight and I couldn’t tell if the school was mixed up in the Aldo mess.’

‘It’s not, is it?’ he asked, and then he rapped hard on the open garage doors at which we had arrived. ‘Me again, Mr Donaldson. I’m getting to be your best customer, eh?’

‘Aye, right, son,’ said the man in the dark-blue cambric overall straightening up from where he was bent over an open bonnet. ‘But ye’re no’ in luck today. The car’s away.’

‘Oh,’ said Alec. ‘Right.’

‘Aye, thon Eye-tie took it yesterday. Said he’d a wee trip to go on.’

I glanced at Alec to see what he made of this.

‘Has he cut and run?’ I asked.

‘Why on earth would he run in a hired car which would soon become a stolen car if he didn’t return it?’ Alec said to me.

‘Eh?’ said Mr Donaldson. ‘Who’s sayin’ he’s no’ returnin’ it? He said he had a wee bit business where there’s no trains.’

‘Alec!’ I said, clutching at him. ‘Sabbatina told me! She said she had spoken to Joe about Fleur running away. He knows where she’s gone. He’s gone after her to Ullapool. And he’s got a day’s head start on you and me.’