Unsuitable Day for a Murder

7

I departed Roseville in a daze. I am no prude, but she had been so blatant about it, so unrepentant, caring only about what was known and not a jot about what was done. I tried and failed to imagine the scene where Fiona had told her daughter about the planned elopement and Hilda had revealed to her mother what an abomination it would have been. Then with a shiver I put it out of my mind and turned instead to the question of what it meant for Mirren’s death and Dugald’s too, what light it cast on the mystery.

It all depended, I told myself, on who knew. Hilda had been sure that her secret was hers alone, hers and Jack’s; but if Mirren knew, then she had a motive for suicide. And then any of her family had a motive for killing Dugald – if blind rage and senseless revenge could be said to be a motive anyway. But Jack Aitken had said Mirren was sweet and fond to him in her last weeks. Would she have been so to a father she had just found out was an adulterer? She would not. I let my motorcar slow down, struck by a sudden thought. If Robin knew, might he not kill the child of the man who had cuckolded him? Might he not kill either child, or both even? I had to find whoever had seen a Mr Hepburn in the Emporium that day.

A tooting horn behind me jolted me to sentient life again and I pressed my foot down as hard as it would go. Today, I told myself, was the perfect day to go searching for her. The Aitken family would no doubt be back at the store sometime or other, but on the day after the funeral I could be sure of a clear run.

I left my motorcar in a little parking yard behind the Kirkgate and walked towards Aitkens’, planning my assault on its various members. As well as the elusive witness from Household, there was Miss Hutton to try to interview; I could not for the moment quite remember what it was she had said to me, or even when, which had led me mentally to turn down the corner of her card in this way, but I knew there was something I wanted to ask her. Then there was the doorman, the only individual, so far as I knew, who was inside Aitkens’ when Dugald Hepburn died.

I was loitering now, pacing up and down outside the plate-glass windows. The bolts of black velvet were gone again, the riotous urns from the jubilee day too, and in each window was a large spray of lilies and narcissus. I kept squinting at the doorman, waiting for a moment when he was free to speak to me, but there was a steady stream of traffic out and in and he was much taken up with receiving condolences from the customers entering and saying a few respectful words of gratitude to those leaving. I had turned for the third time and paced all the way to the end window again, looking in most studiously – as though there were anything to see – when a pair of shopgirls emerging from a side alley saw me, took pity and stopped to explain.

‘The store is open, madam,’ said the younger of them; a pert little individual dressed in a black skirt and white shirt with a cardigan thrown over it and over the strap of a satchel. ‘It’s only that the displays aren’t up because we’re in the deepest mourning.’ Her companion nodded, plucked at the armband on the coat she wore over her black serge dress and then folded her hands as though in prayer. ‘On account of how Miss Aitken has just passed away.’ She could not have spoken with more relish if she had been recounting victory in a sea battle and I wanted nothing more than to quell them with my severest nod, a talent closely related to that of cowing strange butlers which had worked so well on Trusslove a week ago. (Although I comfort myself that I have no effect at all on the servants at home. My goodness, the day I cow Grant will be the day I give up all pretence of youth and if I ever make a dent in Pallister I shall order my ear trumpet and bath chair.)

But the quashing down of my finer feelings is only one of the habits I have had to inculcate in the name of detection and one of these girls at least was clearly a gossip, and might be the very one I was seeking. I could not let either of them slip away.

‘I heard,’ I said. ‘Well, actually I was here, you know, on the day of the jubilee. A dreadful thing.’

‘Poor Mirren,’ said the girl. ‘Mr Jack’s only child.’

‘Twenty years old and all her life ahead of her.’ The companion spoke up at last.

‘Dear me,’ I supplied, to keep things going. It was as though I had shovelled coke into a roaring boiler.

‘Here today and gone tomorrow.’

‘Snuffed out like a little candle in a storm.’

‘Broken-hearted and couldn’t go on.’

‘Alone and unloved-’

‘Well, Mima, not exactly unloved,’ said the younger girl. Her friend caught her bottom lip in her teeth and blushed a little. ‘She was engaged, you see, madam.’ The girl hitched up the bulky satchel; she was wearing it across her body like a conductress’s ticket machine and the strap was causing her some discomfort. ‘To a lovely boy.’

‘Lovely boy,’ Mima echoed.

‘Dugald Randall Hepburn. Doesn’t he sound like a film star? Well, he looks like one too and-’

‘Looked, Elsie,’ her friend reminded her. Elsie shut her eyes as though a spasm of pain were sweeping over her and then went on in a voice even quieter and flushed with even more glee.

‘Star-crossed they were, madam.’

‘Forbidden love.’

‘Struck asunder.’

‘By cruel cold hearts who’d forgotten what it means to love.’

‘If they ever knew.’

‘And look where it’s got th-’

‘Elsie Dunn,’ said a voice, making us all jump. Mary had done it again. There she was, tiny and furious, dressed in the same columnar black bombazine as the first two times I had met her, her widow’s mourning impossible to deepen even after the recent dreadful loss, but today the spectacles on their black ribbon were joined by a measuring tape which she wore around her neck like a stole and a number of long pins in a sunburst pattern which stretched from the middle of her ribs all the way to one shoulder, wherever she had jabbed them during some task or other. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ she spat at poor Elsie. ‘And you should know better too, Jemima. Get in there right now, the pair of you.’ She pointed up the alley with a stabbing finger.

‘Mrs Ninian,’ said Elsie in a tiny voice, all relish gone, ‘we can’t go in. We’re on our way to the bank with the deposit.’

‘On your way?’ The black column spoke in a tone which should have cracked the tiles beneath her feet and caused the plate glass to fall to the pavement in shards like icicles. ‘It would be bad enough loitering on the way back,’ she said, ‘but standing there goss-’ She looked at me again and swallowed her words. ‘Standing anywhere, doing anything with the deposit still on you.’ She snapped her head round and looked along the street to the tolbooth clock which was showing twenty minutes past three. ‘Get there now and get straight back again.’

Mima and Elsie bobbed and scuttled off like a pair of beetles, leaving Mary glaring after them.

‘And I’ll have their half-week’s pay-packet made up for them,’ she said, spitting the words through clenched teeth. I could not let this pass, in all conscience.

‘Please don’t blame the girls,’ I said. ‘I waylaid them. They were most anxious to be on their way but they could hardly cut and run, now could they?’

Mary said nothing.

‘They’ll make it,’ I went on. ‘How far away is the bank?’ I could not help glancing across the street to where there was a branch of the British Linen into which Aitkens’ cashiers could have shied their deposits from the Emporium windows. Mary caught my look and her eyes narrowed to slits.

‘We have nothing to do with that place,’ she hissed – I had never seen such a blameless institution engender such venom – then she blinked.

‘You waylaid them?’ she said. ‘Didn’t you receive my telegram?’

‘Certainly I did,’ I said, thinking furiously. ‘Yes, indeed.’ What excuse could I possibly come up with for being here? Then inspiration dawned upon me. ‘I’m here as a customer today, Mrs Aitken. I waylaid the girls, checking that the store was open.’

Her black eyes could narrow no further but her lips all but disappeared.

‘Really?’ she said.

‘Of course, I feel quite dreadful now,’ I said, truthfully enough as it happened. ‘I never would have dreamed that any of the family would be here.’ I was getting into my stride. ‘In fact, I didn’t suppose for the moment that any of the family actually worked in the store at all.’ I gave the tape measure a little glance and let my gaze travel up the long arc of pins on her bosom.

‘I only came in for Lady Lawson,’ she said, forced into explanation. ‘I take care of a very few, very special ladies myself.’

‘But Lady Lawson surely can’t have expected you to be here today,’ I said. All the wisps of suspicion I had felt about the pair of them on the day of the jubilee were back, thicker than wisps now.

‘I insisted,’ she said. Was it my imagination that she shifted her feet a little? ‘Lady Lawson herself has been nothing but gracious and kind.’ She spoke in definite, or one might almost say, defiant, tones.

‘Well, it’s very kind of you,’ I said, smiling.

‘Not really,’ Mary said. She turned and looked into the window behind her at the empty space and the wreath of flowers where the display of stock should be. ‘They say life goes on, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘And that time heals all ills. But I don’t agree. Time unfilled is a burden. Work is the thing. Work goes on and work fills up time. I am seventy-four years old and I have filled my life with work. It has never failed me. My daughter has never worked, nor Jack, although he is a director, of course. A businessman, like his father. The devil makes work for idle hands.’

I started at that and regarded her very closely. Did she know about Jack and Hilda Hepburn?

‘What I mean to say, Mrs Gilver, is that they have no duties to help them through difficult times. If they were kept busy in this place like I am…’ She gestured towards the window, looking pained as she did so. I thought the wreaths and black velvet had suddenly reminded her of her loss, but when she spoke again she revealed the true source of her distress; a most surprising one. ‘I let myself be talked into this but I’m not happy. They look too much like those clever-clever windows you see now.’

‘Like Hep-’ I bit it off just in time.

‘One glove and a scrap of chiffon,’ said Mary, with icy scorn. ‘Frenchified. Aitkens’ goes in for a good, honest, selling window, always has done. I like to see them decked out properly, not done up in that wheedling, arty way.’

I recalled the mannequins standing in the sand and although I could not agree with Mary, I did loathe Hilda Hepburn – if it were she behind them – for such teasing of a family she had secretly wronged.

‘And speaking of good honest selling, madam,’ she said, ‘what is it you’re looking for?’ She folded her hands together at one side of her waist and inclined her head, looking every bit the perfect assistant, but the way her eyes glinted showed me that she did not believe for one minute that a shopping list had brought me here today.

I smiled confidently back at her; for I was getting good at this. Then my smile faltered. Actually I was hopeless at it. That is, I was very proud of having hit upon the strategy, thinking it a perfect way to start conversations in quiet shops and tearooms, but the only time I had put it into practice I had asked an antiques dealer if he had such a thing as a tip-top tea-table, while actually resting my elbow on one. I had to pretend I wanted it in oak and Alec had to walk out of the shop to hide his smirking. Surely, though, I could think of something beyond Aitkens’.

‘Opera gloves,’ I said, trying not to show too much of my triumph.

‘Certainly,’ said Mary, not bothering to hide any of hers. ‘Let me show you to our glove department. Miss Torrance will be delighted to take care of you.’ Who would have thought, I asked myself, following her, that one could buy opera gloves in Dunfermline?

I have always had a great affection and affinity for a gloves counter, from the days when I was taken to Liberty’s twice a year to try on white kid and cotton in spring, brown leather and fur-lined velvet in autumn (gloves being the one garment which even my mother conceded could not be run up in the village or by nursemaids at home). I thrilled when the ‘old lady’ as I called her to myself, although she could not have been thirty-five in reality, stepped into the backroom and brought out the high chair for me to sit on during my fitting, and even though it was a sign of approaching maturity and these were usually welcome I was sorry the year I grew tall enough to sit on the ordinary chair like all the grown-up ladies. Only having had two sons of my own, of course, I could not say whether the chair still existed, with its dark green paint, its green and purple striped cushion and the scuff marks on the spars where generations of little girls had wound their feet for purchase as they struggled with those tiny pearl buttons, but I like to think so.

As we swept beyond the haberdashery, through one of the arches, I noticed a stout individual busy at the stationery drawers who had no fewer than three pencils sticking out of her bun and who had tucked a great many paper chits of some kind into the belt of her serge dress in the way a bookie’s runner will stuff tickets into his hatband.

‘Slips, Miss Armstrong,’ Mary snapped as we drew close to her. The woman started, letting a handful of card samples burst out of her grasp and clatter to the floor. They must, I had time to think, be very good quality card to make that sound instead of fluttering. ‘Slips belong in the order book,’ Mary went on to the top of Miss Armstrong’s head as she bent to retrieve them. ‘Not about the person.’

‘Of course, Mrs Ninian,’ said the woman from her position on the floor. ‘Sorry, Mrs Ninian.’ Mary swept past and the woman shot her a look of such dislike that I was startled. I would make sure to talk to Miss Armstrong in the course of my day, I thought, as I hurried on.

‘Madam requires mousquetaires, Miss Torrance,’ Mary announced as she arrived at the gloves counter and ushered me into the chair beside the stretcher. Miss Torrance was a woman in her late forties with a pale oval face and a steel-grey bob which hung in long points almost meeting under her chin so that she looked a little like a crusading knight in his chain mail headgear. She looked very surprised to see Mary and glanced between her and me a few times, saying nothing. ‘I’ll leave you in Miss Torrance’s capable hands,’ Mary said. Then, very firmly: ‘Goodbye, Mrs Gilver.’

‘Now then,’ said Miss Torrance. She took hold of my upper arm in both hands and gave it a squeeze as though she were wringing out a flannel. ‘Yes, you have a very slender arm, madam.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied.

‘A wise choice to start covering it now, though,’ she went on, spoiling the compliment completely.

‘Wasn’t it kind of Mrs Ninian to take me under her wing like that,’ I said, getting down to business. ‘I mean, I can understand her not wanting to let Lady Lawson down even today, but she had no need to concern herself with me.’

‘Mrs Ninian has no swank to her,’ said Miss Torrance, ‘I’ll give her that. She runs a tight ship, and doesn’t suffer fools, but I’ve seen her pick up a duster and wipe a display, ring up a purchase and pack it to clear a queue. And I’ll tell you: there’s more than Lady Lawson would like to have Mrs Ninian doing their alterations – well, you only have to look at her own costumes, don’t you? She always says if it fits like a glove it looks like Paris couture.’

‘Mm,’ I said, thinking that Mary’s bombazine fitted like a sausage-skin and did not remind me of Paris at all.

‘And speaking of gloves,’ said Miss Torrance. ‘Do you know your size?’

‘Seven,’ I said. Miss Torrance, I thought to myself, was far too fond and loyal to be of use to me, and I put away all thoughts of detection until I could escape her for Miss Armstrong of the slips.

‘Seven,’ she repeated, pulling off one of my own gloves by pinching at the fingertips and tugging. She spread my hand on the counter and screwed up her nose. ‘I’m sure you were once,’ she said. ‘Are you a horseback rider or is it tennis?’ Thus having informed me that I had the thickened fingers of a hoyden to go with my scrawny arms she took a sizing board out of her counter drawer and got to work on me.

So it was with some satisfaction then that I found myself able to reject the gloves she showed me without a pang. They were elbow-length kid, had cuffs like gauntlets, and were rather yellowed along one edge; I supposed that there was not much turnover and this pair had been in their drawer for some years now with the light getting in through the glass front of it.

‘Besides,’ I said, ‘I was thinking of black satin, actually. Or mauve.’ Miss Torrance physically recoiled. Of course, I would no more wear black opera gloves than I would stick feathers in my hair and dance a can-can but Grant keeps me up to date with the fact that elsewhere, far from Dunfermline and even Perthshire, such shocking articles were being worn.

‘I’m sorry, madam,’ said Miss Torrance in low tones. ‘But Aitkens’ Emporium does not stock anything of that kind. We have a rose beige that is most becoming.’

‘Not to worry,’ I said cheerfully, standing up again. ‘I’ll keep looking.’

Miss Torrance hesitated and then lowered her voice even further before saying more.

‘You might be able to find what you’re looking for… down the street,’ she finished, so quietly I was almost lip-reading.

‘House of Hepburn?’ I said, guessing. Miss Torrance made a hissing noise and looked around to see if anyone had heard me, but the gloves were modestly situated in a spot where no casual gentlemen passing by would be inflamed by the sight of a lady with her wrist buttons in disarray and there was no one near us except for two girls in day-school uniforms giggling as they tried on the ready-to-wear hats at the next counter. Miss Torrance frowned at them and I decided to take myself off and let her go and intimidate them out of their fun.

‘Miss Armstrong?’ I said, back at the stationery desk moments later.

‘Madam,’ she replied, bobbing. ‘How can I help you?’ I noticed with amusement that already another ‘slip’ had found its way into her waistband.

‘Is it just personal writing paper you provide?’ I asked. ‘Or do you do business cards too?’

‘Oh no, we do gentlemen’s business cards, madam, certainly,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘There’s a stationery counter up on first, beside Gents’ Tailoring.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And what about ladies’ business cards?’

Miss Armstrong blinked.

‘What kind of… ladies’ business would you be referring to?’ she asked.

Her suspicions were so transparent and so outrageous that I burst out laughing.

‘Miss Armstrong, really!’ I said. ‘It could be any number of things. A little dress shop, a little tearoom.’ She was laughing too now, and blushing a bit.

‘But they don’t need cards, madam, do they?’ she said.

‘Actually…’ I sidled closer and dropped my voice. ‘It’s a detective agency.’

She gave a very gratifying reaction, eyes wide, mouth open.

‘Are you a detective?’ she said. ‘Truly?’ Then she gave an out and out gasp. ‘Here!’ she said. ‘You’re not that “Mrs Gilver”, are you?’ I nodded. ‘I wasn’t here on jubilee day, madam. I was off sick. Well, I took a day’s sick leave anyway. And then yesterday I just couldn’t stomach it. But I’m glad to get a chance to meet you at long last, madam. And I’ll do anything in my power to help you.’

I had, in a phrase Alec sometimes uses, struck oil.

‘Why?’ I asked, meaning it to encompass everything: the sick leave, the absence from the funeral and the willingness – nay, eagerness – to help. ‘I should warn you that I’m not working for Mrs Ninian any more. I’m snooping now, not sleuthing. I’m doing what my fellow detective, Mr Osborne, calls my “servant of truth” turn.’

‘Gilver and Osborne: servants of truth,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘I can see the card now. Well, Mrs Gilver, madam, Mrs Gilver-’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s a puzzler but either is fine by me.’

‘Well, madam,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe they were going ahead with it. That’s all. With Miss Mirren missing.’

‘So you all knew?’

‘Well, those of a certain vintage,’ Miss Armstrong said. ‘Mrs John told Mrs Lumsden on the Saturday morning. And Miss Hutton knew. But the girls didn’t and none of the menfolk – dear me no. No, no. But it wasn’t just that, madam. It was all that trouble about the engagement too. There’s always rivalry in business but Dugald was a lovely boy and he loved Miss Mirren and she him and if it hadn’t been for Certain People, they could both have been happy. Everyone could have been happy. But then…’ Miss Armstrong rubbed her thumb and fingers together in the age-old gesture. ‘Miss Mirren was an only child of only children,’ she said, ‘seeing as how Master Lennox and young Master died in the war without so much as a sweetheart between them. Everything was to come to her. The whole of Aitkens’. If you ask me, Certain People couldn’t stand to see the Hepburns walking into it all.’

‘Well, Certain People must certainly be ruing their intransigence now,’ I said.

‘Her?’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘If she has a heart at all it’s a cold black thing, Mrs Gilver.’

I thought about the searing words Mary Aitken had spoken about her own damnation on the day of the funeral.

‘Oh, I think she has a heart, Miss Armstrong,’ I said. ‘A very troubled one, maybe.’

‘Well, if a woman with a heart can care about slips the day after she’s buried her only grandchild,’ said Miss Armstrong, ‘then maybe.’

‘Is it difficult to work here when you hate her so?’ I asked. Really what interested me was how a woman of such spirit as Miss Armstrong could serve at a counter at all, bowing and scraping and agreeing with the customer about everything, but since Mary Aitken was the embodiment of the Emporium, it came to the same thing. ‘Wouldn’t you be happier down the street?’ I rather thought that the carefree mischievous Hepburns, light-hearted enough to seem callous to more sombre souls – and how on the button Abigail had been about that as it transpired! – would care less about a scrap of paper in the belt of a dress.

‘Och, better the devil you know,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘And I don’t hate her, madam. I just think she’s a silly old fool and she’s suffering for it. And I think she’s let this store take the place of her family, until she cares more about it than about them.’

‘Yes, the slips,’ I said, nodding. ‘It is unseemly.’

‘Well, that’s Mistress Mary,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘And it’s not just the slips today, madam. Can you believe that she could care about a bit of muddle in my stock book the day after her only grandchild had disappeared? Can you believe she was checking up on my work last Monday, with Miss Mirren just gone and Miss Abigail out of her mind? Well, she was. No word of a lie.’

‘Old habits,’ I said. ‘My father shocked the whole village by going off rabbit hunting the day my mother died. But it was Tuesday and it was November and he was a man with orderly ways.’ I smiled, remembering. My aunts were gathered at the bedroom windows, chattering with prim disapproval like a flock of budgerigars as they watched my father striding across the park with his gun open over his arm and his rabbit bag slapping against his thigh. Only I noticed, I think, that instead of hopping over the ha-ha as he always did – as he was proud of still being able to do at almost seventy – he lowered himself down carefully holding onto a tussock and as he arose at the other side his shoulders were heaving.

‘Dreadful man,’ said my Aunt Rosalind.

‘Oh, Rosa, stop clucking for heaven’s sake,’ I had said. We had been up all night around the deathbed and tempers were frayed to shreds now in the early morning. ‘He was never going to sit around here to do his sobbing. It’s not his way.’

‘How can you, Di-di?’ said my sister, lifting her head from where she had been resting it on my mother’s counterpane, soaking it with her tears. ‘How can you defend him?’

I did better; I joined him. I fetched a gun and tramped through the woods to his favourite rabbiting spot. He was sitting on a mossy stump, getting his britches soaked through, with his gun loaded and resting on his knee and with tears coursing down his face.

‘I always said you were a witch,’ he greeted me. ‘Very well, then. I shall only shoot rabbits this morning after all.’

Of course, I did not tell my sister; Mavis would never have recovered from such melodrama and would have made his life utter hell with her prying. I did mention it to my brother, however, and he – practical soul – hit on a wonderful solution: a soldier’s widow by the name of Gloria. My poor old father only survived his beloved wife by three years in the end, but I am sure that Gloria made them pleasant ones.

Miss Armstrong was looking at me in an inquiring way and I shook myself back to the present again.

‘Sorry? Did you say something?’

‘I was just asking about that card. Osborne and Gilver, or the other way?’

‘Sorry,’ I said again. ‘Um… Gilver and Osborne is alphabetical. Now, Miss Armstrong, can I ask you about Miss Hutton? Would you say it’s safe to go and speak to her?’

‘Safe, madam? Well, Mrs Ninian is away home. I saw her go with her coat and hat on.’

‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of,’ I said, blushing a little for myself, because of course I should have been. ‘I meant, really, could I speak to Miss Hutton as freely as I have done to you? I need to ask her something but I don’t know where her loyalties might lie.’

‘Miss Hutton,’ said Miss Armstrong, screwing up her face. ‘Hard to say. If it were Mrs Lumsden now I’d say you should tread very carefully. Very carefully indeed. But Miss Hutton is a sensible soul.’

I thanked her and left her rummaging in her drawers for the stiffest possible vellum to guillotine down to size and fashion into a business card for me.

I had been in Aitkens’ three times now but this was my first visit to Ladies’ Gowns, usually an early stop in any department store. I took the wide sweeping staircase to the next floor and studied the large wooden plaque with the gilt names and arrows sending one to the various departments, Layette and Junior at the back, Gents’ Tailoring down the windowless side, Gowns and Bespoke Millinery taking up all of the front and stretching down the windowed side of the building which faced out onto the lane. A proper disposition of resources, I thought, nodding, and entered by the nearest archway.

Grant would not have approved, I said to myself, as I looked around me – I usually hand down my judgements on frocks in Grant’s name; it stops me feeling shallow although I fear that in fact it proves me shallower still – for Aitkens’ ladies’ gowns were much of a muchness with the yellowed elbow-length gloves and indeed the jubilee notions. Sturdy mannequins stood about on stout plinths wearing sturdy tweeds and stout shoes and, as one penetrated the depths of the department – again, I supposed, away from masculine gaze – they wore evening gowns hardly less robust, with much brocade and boning, over dancing shoes one would think were meant for dancing girls – eight shows a week, and no time for bunions.

‘May I help, madam?’ said a rather beautiful young assistant, who had used her bolt of serge to make a uniform dress more flowing than anything for sale. ‘Mrs…’ She registered a level of professional shock that she could not bring forth a name for a face she clearly found familiar.

‘Gilver,’ I said. ‘I was here last week and yesterday.’

‘Oh,’ said the girl, relieved that she had not mislaid the name of a valued customer after all.

‘I’m looking for Miss Hutton,’ I said.

‘Certainly, madam,’ said the beautiful creature. ‘Please come with me.’ She turned and oozed across the floor, looking like something from a harem, and the swish of her slim hips triggered a memory in me.

‘Were you the other kelpie?’ I asked her. She looked at me and grinned.

‘Yes, madam,’ she said. ‘Lynne told me you thought we were nymphs!’

‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘And sorry about Miss Mirren too. Did you know her?’

‘A bit,’ said the nymph. ‘She was closer to my older colleagues, really. She’d known them since she was wee, of course. But she was very nice. Not at all snooty. Shy, really, if anything. Very shy around Lynne and me.’

I could easily imagine that she had been rendered shy by this amazing creature, and she and Lynne together, if they were chums and went about in a twosome, would have flattened any ordinary girl to a wafer. I thought about Mirren Aitken’s heart-shaped face and soft brown hair; she had not been ordinary, exactly, but all that I had heard about her left me with the impression of something far from a siren.

‘If I’d had her pocket money and all her free time,’ said the girl, ‘I would have been like a star off the films. I used to feel jealous of her for that, Mrs Gilver.’ She gave a laugh. ‘And you should have heard Lynne when Miss Mirren got engaged. There was jealous for you!’

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘Away!’ said the girl. ‘I don’t mean like that. Only Lynne and her boy have got to wait till they’re at the head of the housing list. Either that or take a spare room and share the kitchen at his mother’s. But she wouldn’t swap with Miss Mirren now.’

She had reached another of the many curtains with which Aitkens’ was so liberally festooned, this one hiding a shut door. She knocked on it and called out.

‘Visitor for you, Miss Hutton.’ Then she opened the door and left me there.

Miss Hutton was sitting in a tiny office, a cubby-hole really, with just a desk and a rack stretching from floor to ceiling with quite a hundred little pigeonholes in it, all stuffed with bundles of yellowing tissue paper. She was opening letters and she looked up with great relief from them.

‘Oh! Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘I’m answering condolence cards. Is there anything more draining?’ She hauled herself to her feet and from behind the door she drew a folding chair, cracked it open and set it down at the side of the desk. There was just room to sweep the door closed again. I sat down – there was nowhere to stand – and Miss Hutton shoved the heap of unopened envelopes away from her.

‘Is it really your job?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t one of the family…?’

‘In a family business,’ Miss Hutton said, ‘things do get a wee bit mixed in together sometimes. I offered, anyway. Just a first pass through them. I’ll let Mrs Ninian see all the important ones.’ She nodded towards a small pile, mostly letters, and then gave a rueful look at the much larger piles of letter and cards at its side. ‘And don’t you think it shocking, Mrs Gilver,’ she said, her bony nose pinching with disapproval, ‘how many of them…’ She held up one card and another and a third, all of the same design – an improbable church on a hillside with an improbable sunset going on behind. ‘These are ours,’ she said. ‘We sell them downstairs. You’d think people would have bought a different one to send us, wouldn’t you?’

I could not imagine anything more vulgar than a condolence card of any sort, to be honest, and I could not resist taking one and opening it.

A golden Treasure in your heart

The dear Lord loved it too

And so has gathered it to Him,

Sweet mem’ries left to you.

I closed it again, thinking that I would have hit anyone who sent me such an article if a child of mine had died.

‘I wanted to speak to you today, Miss Hutton,’ I said, ‘because I find myself still with a few loose ends to tie in. For my own satisfaction, you understand. Mrs Ninian has made it very clear that my formal engagement in the matter is over now.’ I waited a bit, thinking that now was her chance to freeze me with a glare if she cared to.

Far from it; she continued regarding me with a calm, expectant look.

‘Anything I can do to help,’ she said. A singularly unhelpful remark as it happened, since I still could not remember what it was that I wanted to ask her. Alec disparages what he calls my excessive note-taking – and to be frank, I have ended some cases with enough scribbled-over paper to support a bonfire while chestnuts are roasted upon it – but better that surely than this: sitting gazing blankly back at an important witness as she gazed at me. And looking at her, I remembered a very different expression of hers, puzzled and troubled, and that must have connected to the thing I wanted to ask her; it was tantalisingly close but still out of reach of me.

‘Would you mind, Miss Hutton,’ I said, ‘if I just sat here for a moment and gathered my thoughts?’ She glanced back at the piles of correspondence on her desk and I hurried to reassure her that I did not need her attention.

‘Please do carry on with your work. So long as I won’t distract you. I would even offer to help, but I wouldn’t like to…’ I made a fastidious expression and nodded to the letter she was even now slitting open. It was addressed to Mr and Mrs J.B. Aitken. Miss Hutton scanned it quickly and set it upon the pile to be passed along. The next envelope she glanced at and added to the same pile without opening. Then came a card which she opened, frowned at – it was the church at sunset – and placed on top of her stack. Then another unopened envelope onto the family pile.

‘Do you recognise the handwriting?’ I asked. A pained expression flashed over her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it’s just that I wouldn’t open anything addressed to Mrs Ninian herself, madam, until she’s seen it. She wouldn’t like that.’ She held up the last envelope and I nodded, reading the name there. Miss Hutton sighed. ‘I wish I’d broken my own rule last week, I can tell you.’

‘Oh?’

‘There was a letter for Mrs Ninian and it wasn’t even sealed, just tucked over, you know, and maybe if I’d opened it I could have helped in some way.’

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ I said.

‘But then again maybe not,’ said Miss Hutton. ‘Most certainly not. Because you said Mrs Ninian asked you to find Miss Mirren, didn’t you?’

‘That’s it,’ I said, sitting upright in my chair. My voice had been far too loud for such a small room and Miss Hutton looked startled. ‘That’s what you said, that’s been niggling at me,’ I went on. ‘You seemed surprised, the day of the funeral, when I told you what I had been asked to do.’

‘I was surprised,’ Miss Hutton said.

‘Yes, but why?’ I asked her. She hesitated, turning an envelope over and over in her hands. It was another condolatory church – I was beginning to recognise them. Then she began speaking in a great rush, like a dam bursting.

‘I take Mrs Ninian’s appointment list into her office at the start of every week,’ she said. ‘Just to help her. Everyone thinks she’s such a tower of strength but I know what it takes out of her, what a toll. Anyway, when I went in on that Monday morning, I tripped over an envelope on the floor. It had been slipped under the door and it was addressed to Mrs Ninian and I was sure it was Miss Mirren’s handwriting. She used to play at shops here when she was a little girl, you know. Writing out orders and receipts – she had her own little set of books and stamps and everything – and I know her writing. She never went to school to learn that same hand they teach them all, so I’d know her own writing anywhere. I’m sure it was hers. I know it was.’

‘How did it get there?’ I said. ‘Surely the post isn’t generally slipped under doors.’

‘Oh no, madam, I don’t mean a posted letter,’ Miss Hutton said. ‘I mean hand-delivered. It just said Mrs N.L. Aitken.’

‘In Mirren’s writing?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Revealing that Mirren had been here, in the store?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Hutton, and she looked pained again. ‘I even smiled when I saw it. We had all heard on the Saturday that Miss Mirren had run off and we were worried about her. Well, those of us who weren’t cheering her on, you know. Quite a few of them thought she had eloped and all the best to her. But when I saw the letter, I thought: Ah! She’s here. Hiding out in the store. And then I thought: Well, of course she is. Where else? Because whenever she wasn’t playing at shops in the departments years ago, she was playing at houses up in those attics. So I put the letter on Mrs Ninian’s desk with her other papers and thought we would soon all be back to normal again. So I couldn’t understand why Mrs Ninian had engaged you. She knew where Miss Mirren was. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t just gone to get her. Unless Miss Mirren left again.’

Not a natural detective, our Miss Hutton; no nasty habit of suspicion to stop her taking the facts at face value and trusting everyone. I had quite a different view. I thought nothing more likely than that, on finding the letter, Mary Aitken deduced where Mirren was hiding, perhaps even went to check, then decided to leave her there stewing in her own juices until after the jubilee, whereupon a detective summoned for the purpose would ‘find’ her. That, finally, explained the day’s delay.

And certainly if Mary knew where the missing girl was and did nothing it would explain her self-flagellating guilt and her conviction that she was damned

‘Miss Hutton,’ I said, ‘did you mention finding the letter? To Mrs Ninian, I mean. Or, I suppose, anyone.’

‘No,’ Miss Hutton said.

‘Why not?’

Miss Hutton blinked again.

‘I suppose,’ she said slowly, ‘I just sort of naturally didn’t. I mean, I just sort of wouldn’t, in case it was awkward for her.’

‘Very discreet of you,’ I said. ‘Most admirable. I expect you must need a great deal of natural discretion to do what you do.’ Miss Hutton looked uncomprehending. ‘Madam looks lovely, and all that,’ I went on. Her rather prim face broke into an unexpected smirk.

‘Oh indeed,’ she said. ‘Ten years younger, perhaps even more slender without the stripes and we seem to have mislaid your measurements, madam, and beg your patience while we take them again.’

‘If she’s twice the size she was last time?’ I guessed. Miss Hutton nodded. ‘Well your discretion will stand you in good stead now.’ She looked puzzled and I saw I would have to spell it out to her. ‘About the letter: perhaps it would be best not to mention it to anyone.’ She nodded again, reassured as easily as that, her innocence making me worry about her more than ever. Did she really not have enough healthy regard for her own safety to see that I was warning her?

‘Do you think Mrs Ninian knows you found it and moved it?’ I asked. The spectre had raised itself in me that if Mary Aitken guessed as much and if Mary Aitken had killed Mirren, she might even now be plotting to tie up a loose end of her own. But did I still suspect Mary Aitken? Was I not leaning towards Robin Hepburn now; an enraged cuckold hitting out at his rival’s child? Miss Hutton was shaking her head.

‘She probably just assumes Miss Mirren put it there herself, if she’s thinking about it at all. And I hope she’s not – brooding about it, making herself ill.’

‘I wonder why Mirren didn’t,’ I said.

‘Well, Mrs Ninian’s door is kept locked usually. I have a key and a few other people too, but Miss Mirren wouldn’t have had one.’

‘A few others?’ I said, relieved. At least if Mary Aitken had worked out that Mirren’s letter had arrived on her desk via an intermediary, she would have a few from which to choose. She could not, surely, kill them all.