Unsuitable Day for a Murder

6

Hugh had never seemed so much like Nanny Palmer in all the years I had known him, but he was right. I was taken home, only very blearily aware of having dropped Alec off at Dunelgar on the way, and was deposited straight into bed without so much as my face being washed, since the bathrooms at Gilverton are amongst the chilliest bits of that chilly house and June is always the coldest month of all; we give up on the groaning, clanking radiators after Easter whenever it falls and the servants have an unshakeable penchant for throwing windows wide as part of their big spring cleaning. I sometimes think, in a spirit of mutiny, that if we hoarded the hard-won warmth of the winter fires a little more jealously we might, in those odd years when the weather is kind, float all the way to summertime with the house snug about us like a tippet, instead of spending May and June noting that every day a little more comfort seeps out of the old stone walls until at last it is colder inside than out in the garden.

Mrs Tilling, briefed by Hugh one assumes although I cannot imagine the scene, sent up supper in the shape of egg and bread in a cup and a flask of cocoa and Grant, heaven be praised, left my clothes overnight on a chair. All in all, I do not think I have been so comprehensively coddled by the members of my household in the entire course of my life, and as the dire warnings always have it, it very quickly spoiled me: the next morning, lying stretching deliciously in my warm bed with Bunty rolling and moaning just as deliciously beside me, the thought crossed my mind that if only I had a telephone in my bedroom as they do in pictures from Hollywood I could ring Alec and begin to chew things over without the nasty preliminaries of cold floor, uncertain bath water, wet neck and draughty corridors. In my imagination, my bedroom was flooded with light, my bed jacket trimmed with swansdown and my bed itself was oval in shape and raised up on a platform like a sacrificial altar in a jungle clearing. I looked around and sighed. My bedroom faced due west and was as gloomy as a cave in the morning, my dressing gown hanging on the back of the door was best tartan felt with buttons from neck to ankle and my bed was one I rather suspected Hugh might have been born in; I had always been very careful not to find out for sure.

‘Anyway,’ I said to Bunty, who recognised my tone of voice and slithered onto the floor, stretched and shook herself all over, ‘what possesses a person to sleep on a platform? And how does one tuck in the sheets on an oval bed?’

At my desk, after breakfast, safely back on the solid ground of real life – for Hugh had skipped off early to some distant part of the new estate which was his current pleasure ground, thus avoiding any unseemly affectionate gratitude the way that a small boy will avoid a grandmother’s kiss or a mother’s scrub with a wetted hanky, and Mrs Tilling had sent up only porridge because ‘I wouldn’t want another egg so soon after my late supper, surely’ – I noticed two telegrams amongst my morning’s budget and fell on them.

I read one – Appreciate no mention of visit yesterday. No case now. Fiona Haddo – and then the other – Send bill at convenience. No further need for services. Mrs N.L. Aitken, laid them side by side and stared hard at both for so long that Bunty had time to fall into the deep, snoring sleep for which she needs perfect silence. When finally I stirred myself to reach for the telephone, it rang just as my hand touched it, and I smiled.

‘You woke Bunty,’ I said.

‘I left it until now so as not to wake you,’ said Alec. ‘How are you this morning, darling?’

‘Itching,’ I said. ‘Listen to these telegrams and see if you don’t start itching too.’

He was silent for a moment after I read them.

‘Who’s N.L. Aitken?’ he asked at last.

‘Mary. Mrs Ninian. Is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘Sorry. I can’t see whatever you’re seeing, I’m afraid. Lay it out for me.’

Now this gave me a moment’s pause, for it is more usually the case that Alec’s thoughts and mine march in step, or at least stagger along in a three-legged race together. If he had not leapt to the same conclusion as had I, perhaps I had been wrong to.

‘Very well,’ I began. ‘All right. Yesterday Fiona Haddo thought that Mirren had been murdered. Now that murder has cost her beloved Googie his life, wouldn’t she be more keen than ever to get to the bottom of things?’

‘No,’ said Alec. ‘She was spurred into action by worry about Googie – do we really have to call him that? – when he disappeared, in case harm came to him. Well, now harm has come and there’s nothing to fight for.’

‘What about justice?’ I said. ‘And why would she say there was no case? That’s very different from saying she wanted the case dropped, isn’t it?’

‘It was a telegram, Dandy. She was trying to save words.’

‘And as for the other one,’ I went on, ‘could anything read more like a satisfied customer whose object has been achieved?’

‘Eh?’

‘No further need for your services, please send your bill? Sounds like job well done, thank you and goodnight, to me.’

‘What are you talking about, Dandy?’ Alec said. ‘You can’t subject telegrams to literary criticism and hang people for them. I can easily imagine that both families want only to close the shutters and never speak to another soul about any of it ever again.’

‘It’s not a telegram alone I’m hanging them from,’ I told him. ‘And anyway, it’s not both families; it’s two grandmothers. There are another two grandmothers in the case, not to mention all the parents.’

‘So what are the other strands in the rope then?’ Alec said.

‘Inspector Smellie is one.’ Alec snorted. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Why could he not change the pronunciation to Smiley and then change the spelling and save people a lifetime of trying not to giggle? It’s almost rude not to. But Inspector S. knows something. Something that made him haul me off to the clink. It took me a while to stop panicking and realise it was so, but I’m convinced now.’

‘Clink!’ said Alec.

‘Yes, but think about it, Alec dear. What in heaven’s name about the incidents of the last week would make the fragrant inspector decide that I had been engaged by the families to kill their little ones?’

‘What?’ said Alec, so loud that even Bunty raised her head and looked at me. ‘Shush, down, good girl,’ he went on, revealing that at the other end he had woken Millie too. ‘Hang on a minute, Dan, while I let her out.’ I waited, watching glumly as Bunty settled again. Alec’s spaniel is so well trained as to be rather sickening and I knew that there was only one way to explain her being let out to romp off her high spirits while Bunty simply yawned and turned her head away. The fact was that my darling was almost twelve years old. I could not help a quick glance towards the bookshelf where Merriman’s Care and Training of the Dalmatian sat as it had done since the day in 1915 when I had put it there after a quick read-through and an even quicker realisation that Colonel Merriman’s regime was not for me. I knew that the last chapter concerned itself with the long list of diseases to be expected in old age, the stark facts of average life length, and the brutal advice – this was what had finally caused me to slam the book shut and shelve it – that the next puppy should be acquired before the end, to give the old dog an interest and teach the new one its place in the pack and save it from spoiling. In other words, I had thought, to force the old dog to spend its last days having its ears chewed and make one resent the usurping puppy so much that any chance of its relieving one’s grief was dashed even in advance of the grieving. I roused myself as Alec returned to me.

‘Did he actually say that, Dandy? Engaged to kill them?’

‘Not in so many words,’ I admitted. ‘But he insinuated like anything. He said it was suspiciously “convenient” that I had been there.’

‘The man’s a fool,’ Alec said.

‘He would have to be,’ I agreed, ‘but since he’s probably not, he must know something we don’t in order for such a wicked thought even to occur. And I almost got it out of him, you know. He was just about ready to cough it up when the doctor nabbed him. Then he found out I was in the clear and he must have been so embarrassed about pinching me that he went to ground.’

‘How did the doctor put you in the clear then?’ said Alec.

‘Timing,’ I replied. ‘Dugald died about half past two.’

‘Ah, when you were in the Abbey with hundreds of witnesses.’

‘Exactly. And then came Hugh.’ I sighed a sigh that rattled and whistled and buzzed all the way down the many lines and exchanges. ‘I can’t exactly go back and resume the conversation now, can I?’

‘Come on, Dan,’ Alec said. ‘Be fair. I won’t listen to you moaning about what Hugh did yesterday.’

‘I suppose not,’ I said. ‘It was quite something.’

‘I’ll cherish the memory all my days.’

‘And he can’t have guessed in advance that he wouldn’t be had up for it.’

‘Not a bit,’ said Alec. ‘He leapt to defend you without a thought of himself.’ We were quiet for a minute. ‘I felt a bit of an idiot, to be frank. Sitting there for hours, waiting, and then Hugh rolls up and…’

‘Huffs and puffs and blows their house down.’

We were quiet again.

‘So given that,’ said Alec presently, ‘and given the fact that the families want it left alone… why exactly are you itching?’

‘Because something just doesn’t add up,’ I said. ‘The inspector knows it. Listen: most members of both families, Aitkens and Hepburns the same, think that Mirren and Dugald killed themselves for love.’

‘Right,’ Alec said. ‘I think I might too, actually. I know what we said about gloves and lurking strangers and everything, but after Dugald…’

‘But it makes even less sense now, after Dugald. Mirren knew about the elopement plan. Why would a girl engaged, in love, with a wedding planned and friends helping – Fiona and Bella, this is – shoot herself?’

‘The only engaged girls I’ve ever heard of harming themselves are jilted ones,’ said Alec. ‘He changed his mind?’

‘That’s all I can come up with.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Alec said. ‘So why would a boy kill himself because a girl he jilted died?’

‘Exactly. If he loved her he wouldn’t jilt her, if he didn’t love her he wouldn’t kill himself over her. Either Mirren or Dugald has to have been murdered. If jilted Mirren killed herself then heartless Dugald was pushed. If expectant Mirren was murdered, then lovelorn Dugald jumped. And we’d have to think that an Aitken killed jilting Dugald or a Hepburn killed hopeful Mirren.’

‘Unless he jilted her and then jumped out of guilt.’

‘If he had such capacity for guilt, how could he bring himself to spurn her and break her little heart in the first place? And I’ve been asking about both of them, Alec. They weren’t the type. Oh, I know Fiona Haddo was in a tizz about him – that was guilt, if you like, because she’d kept such secrets from the boy – but the way she described him to me… And no one who knew Mirren can credit it of her. Mrs Lumsden at the Emporium gave a very clear character reference and Mirren’s parents and grandmothers – in spite of everything that had happened, they were absolutely dumbfounded. Not a one of them could take it in.’

‘Of course they couldn’t. It’s horrible.’

‘But it shouldn’t have been a shock. Horrible, yes. But they shouldn’t have been so surprised by it, should they?’

‘I can’t say I’m convinced, Dandy,’ said Alec.

I could not help tutting again. ‘All right. You convince me then. If you think there are no puzzles here, you explain it so it all makes sense and stops worrying me.’

‘I’m not saying there are no puzzles. Of course there are. Muddles and trouble and everyone’s feelings all upside down. I’m just saying that’s inevitable in a mess like this one and I think you should leave it alone.’

‘Well, I’m not going to,’ I said. ‘Fiona Haddo maybe doesn’t want me any more and Mary Aitken was playing me like a trout from the off, if you ask me, but I’ll bet Bella would welcome me back. And I bet that nice Constable McCann would help me.’

‘No, Dandy, now I really must insist,’ said Alec. ‘I can’t stop you going to Dunfermline if you’re fixed on it, but stay away from the police. I mean it. You could get McCann into a great deal of trouble, not to mention that Hugh might end up breaking rocks in a striped suit.’

‘Hm,’ I said. ‘I daresay Hugh’s gallantry wouldn’t go as far as that. Not for a case with no pay anyway.’

‘Poor Hugh,’ Alec said and we made our goodbyes.

Poor Hugh indeed, I huffed to myself as I went to fetch my coat and hat and leave word of my departure. Perhaps it was crude to speak so plainly of it, but it was true: Hugh had deplored and despised my ‘racketing about’ until he saw my pay-packet, at which he executed a smart one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and started spending it. The recently purchased new estate, doubling the size of his property and solving the problem of Teddy, our younger son, was thanks to me, having been got at a snip out of a bonus from a satisfied customer, and at a recent dinner, when I had overheard Hugh’s gloss on it all, I had been sorely tempted to kick him. ‘Yes, I’ve been rather lucky with this and that despite the times,’ he said in an oleaginous drawl to his neighbour. ‘And the fellow was glad to be shot of it. He wasn’t a landowner – wasn’t the sort. Gave me a good price and off back to Glasgow with a sigh of relief. Dandy?’ I had leaned even further away from my own neighbour to make sure of hearing the next bit. ‘Oh, I’m more than happy for her to amuse herself when I’m so busy. My mother must be turning in her grave, of course, but Dandy has always been a free spirit, you know.’

So when I passed him in the back hall when I was on my way to the stable yard where the motorcars stayed and he was on his way to his business room with a roll of plans under his arm, he was quite safe from any displays.

‘Back already?’ I said. ‘Well, it’s not much of a day.’ Nothing annoys Hugh more than an accusation that he is an indoors sort, prone to the sucking of pipes and wearing of slippers, rather than a boots-until-bedtime countryman such as he most admires.

‘Getting a bit of fresh air at last?’ he countered, for my habit of answering letters and telephoning in the morning is taken by him to be tantamount to invalidism. He does not count my early walk with Bunty because we rarely go beyond the park these days and fresh air, for Hugh, starts at the railings.

‘I’m going back to Dunfermline,’ I said. His eyes flashed and I found that I had not quite recovered from my gratitude after all. ‘Thank you, Hugh,’ I said.

‘Nonsense,’ he replied.

We almost smiled at one another as we went our separate ways.

‘Mrs John, Trusslove,’ I said, when the Aitkens’ butler opened the door to me. He stared. I am sure he was no more acquainted than was I with the protocols of condolence after the funeral of a suicide when there has been another at the funeral tea, but he was as sure as I was that unannounced visits by near strangers to the family home were beyond the pale. Add to that the fact that I had left my Cowley on the street, had come up the side drive and had presented myself at the servants’ entrance and he was stumped beyond recovery. ‘And I’d be grateful,’ I went on, since he was standing there immobile and I had the chance to say it, ‘if you could keep it under your hat.’ He drew himself up a little; always a danger with butlers. Pallister is well short of six feet ordinarily, but can draw himself up, if affronted, to a veritable colossus. ‘That is, not trouble Mrs Ninian or the Mr Jacks with news of my visit.’ I had hoped that my easy use of the family names would help my cause, but they seemed to offend him. He narrowed his eyes slightly, and as he did so I noticed the red rims to them and the crumpled bags under them. He had been mourning his young mistress, it seemed, and I took a gamble that her loss would trump his other loyalties today. ‘You do know who I am, Trusslove, don’t you?’ I said. His eyes narrowed further. ‘I’m a sleuth.’ Recognition broke over him like a dropped egg.

‘That Gilver!’ he said.

‘That Gilver,’ I agreed, nodding. ‘And here’s the thing: I don’t believe Miss Mirren killed herself. Do you?’

He looked behind him before he answered, as cautious as could be, but when he spoke conviction rang out of him.

‘Never.’

‘I’m going to find out who killed her,’ I told him. ‘And whoever killed her is responsible, in my book anyway, for the boy too.’

He looked behind himself again then and a frown puckered at him.

‘Mrs John…?’ he said.

‘Not a suspect,’ I assured him. ‘Only a witness.’

At last he drew the door open wide and beckoned me in. At the first bend in the corridor, however, he stopped.

‘I don’t know just where to rightly put you, Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘Mrs Jack is walking the house like an unquiet spirit and she’d likely burst in on you wherever you go.’

‘I could go to Mrs John’s own room if there’s a back way,’ I said. He looked startled. ‘Or where is she now? Take me to her and we can both of us hide in a broom cupboard.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, does she ever come down here?’ I went on. ‘Perhaps, if you would be so kind, we could borrow your pantry?’ At this he positively took a step backwards. ‘It’s not a social call, Trusslove,’ I said. ‘I’m working. And I’m no stranger to a servants’ hall, I assure you.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘Well, I must say, my dear, you’ve got that toff’s way of speaking off to a tee. My little parlour – I prefer to call it a parlour, don’t you know – is this way.’

Bella Aitken was a faint ghost of herself. I had seen it once or twice and heard of it many more times than that: a person keeping going up to and through a funeral and unravelling like a picked seam thereafter. She was without even her carpet slippers today, but instead shuffled into Trusslove’s pantry in her stockinged soles, not a pair of stockings either: one pale silk one, rather gone at the heel, and one sturdy brown lisle article, which would never go at heel or toe but would live on and on, stretching and sagging and never giving one fair cause to chuck it. I counted it one of the blessings of adulthood that I could choose never to wear lisle stockings ever again, and Bella’s pitiful mismatched ankles brought a lump to my throat and turned me yet more gentle.

‘Mrs Gilver?’ she said, peering through the low light at me.

‘Mrs Aitken, please forgive me for this rather…’ I waved my hands around the little room. ‘And please sit down. You look…’ I left this sentence hanging too, since both ‘ten years older than yesterday’ and ‘about to fall over’ were best left unsaid.

‘Was it Mary you wanted?’ she said, nevertheless sitting down with a great exhalation of breath. She leaned back in the chair, even her head dropping back as though she could not support its weight. ‘Trusslove might be confused; he’s not himself either.’

‘No, no, it was you I asked him to fetch for me.’ I paused, wondering how to go on. ‘I went to see Fiona Haddo yesterday. She told me about your plan – yours and hers – for the young people.’ Bella nodded dully. ‘And it explained to me why you were so cheerful when I first came here and why you were so very shocked by Mirren dying.’ She closed her eyes and was so still that I wondered if she had slipped into sleep, sitting there. ‘Mrs Aitken, you know she had no reason to kill herself.’

‘And yet,’ she said, very quietly, ‘that’s just what she did.’ I could see her eyes moving under their closed lids but they did not open.

‘Your sister-in-law wants me to drop the case now,’ I said. At that she gripped the arms of her chair and hauled herself upright, but what she said was not what I had been expecting.

‘Yes. That’s what to do. Nothing will bring her back.’ Then she let go of the chair arms and dropped back again. ‘Mary is right. Leave it now.’

I sat looking at her, exceedingly puzzled.

‘But don’t you still wonder why Mirren would have done such a thing?’ I asked her.

She shook her head, or rather rolled it to one side and then the other along the back of the chair.

‘No point,’ she said. ‘I did everything I could for her. Nothing will bring her back again. Please just leave us now.’

I rose and tiptoed out of the room, to find Trusslove hovering in the passage. A nearby door was open and there was something about the quivering stillness that made me suspect that a good few more servants were listening in.

‘She’s very tired, Trusslove,’ I said. ‘Perhaps more than tired. Has she been seen by a doctor?’

Trusslove gave a short laugh.

‘Who’s going to get one?’ he said. ‘There’s nobody fit to look after anyone else in this house now. Walking wounded they are. The four of them.’

‘As bad as Mrs John?’ He hesitated then.

‘She’s maybe the worst, right enough,’ he said. ‘Surprised me, I’m telling you. She’s always been so…’ I nodded, remembering the loud laughter and the slightly coarse vitality of the woman I had met just over a week ago. ‘And she kept them all going up to yesterday,’ he went on, ‘then pfft! Out like a wee candle when they came home from the funeral tea.’

I left by the servants’ entrance again and trudged back down the side drive to the street but did not get all the way, stopped by the sound of hurrying footsteps behind me while I was still in sight of the house windows. I guessed who it would be even before I turned; for had not Trusslove told me about the unquiet spirit wandering?

‘Mrs Gilver,’ said Abigail Aitken. ‘My mother isn’t here.’

She had caught up with me on a particularly gloomy patch, with a spreading beech tree on one side and an even more spreading chestnut on the other, so that she was cast into green shade and as a result looked utterly ghastly.

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘it was your mother-in-law I came to see but if I’m to be really thorough perhaps it’s best that I happened to chance upon you too, Mrs Aitken.’

‘Oh?’

‘Your mother told me she wanted no further investigation, but I’d like to be sure she spoke for all of you.’

‘More investigation?’ Abigail Aitken’s voice came out as a rough whisper, almost a croak. ‘Of what?’ She looked about herself in a distracted way and then seeing what she had sought she laid a hand on my arm and drew me off the drive towards a wire bench set up around the base of a large tree. ‘I knew nothing of any “investigation”,’ she said, when we were sitting. ‘I thought my mother had asked you simply to find Mirren.’

‘Yes, yes she did,’ I said.

‘And she was hiding at the store all the while.’

‘Yes,’ I repeated. ‘At least, we can assume so.’

‘So what investigation could there be?’

‘About what happened,’ I said. ‘The deaths. Whether we’ve got a clear picture.’

‘Oh,’ said Abigail and she sat back against the trunk of the tree. ‘Yes, I see. I see what you mean. In case it wasn’t suicide. Well, it was. My Mirren. It was.’

‘You’re very sure.’

‘Who could be surer?’ she said.

‘And Dugald too?’

‘Dear boy.’

I was intrigued to hear her say so since the family had spurned him as a suitor.

‘Did you know Dugald Hepburn then?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘Not at all. I only met him once and even that was not really a meeting. I just saw him with Mirren. They didn’t even know they had been seen. But he must be – must have been – a dear boy, mustn’t he? He couldn’t live without her. Didn’t want to. He must have been a very different sort from the rest of them.’

‘The Hepburns?’

She put her hand up to her mouth as if trying too late to stop the words she had already spoken.

‘I shouldn’t have said that. They are a cruel family. Heartlessly cruel – it’s easy to be heartless when you are so carefree – and I’m envious of them, but I shouldn’t let myself turn cruel too, in my envy.’

‘What is it you envy, Mrs Aitken?’ I said.

‘The children,’ said Abby simply. ‘Hilda Hepburn has three children. Three more, I mean; three still. And Mrs Hepburn had five when all’s said and done and she had the four grandchildren too. Dugald and the girls. But I only had Mirren and if I hadn’t had Mirren I would have had no one. And my mother as well, because I was an only child. Bella had two more sons – Lennox and Arthur – but they were killed in the war and so Mirren was all that any of us had.’ Then she caught her lip in her teeth. ‘I shouldn’t be saying this. You shouldn’t take any notice of what I’m saying, Mrs Gilver.’

With that she stood, picked her way over the roughish ground back to the drive and hurried away in the direction of the house. I followed her as far as the driveway and stood looking after her. She had her head down and her arms clutched about her body and was moving at a kind of harried trot – straight into the arms of her husband, who it seemed had come looking for her. As he had before, that day in the library, he caught her in a strong grip and pulled her close to him. I was too late to duck out of sight and he stood comforting his wife, staring at me with his head high like a sentry, a grim and unreadable look upon his face.

I could hardly wave goodbye and leave, nor could I approach the mournful little marital scene and join in, so I stood there, kicking at the beech cobs under my feet until, with a fond pat and a little pinch of the chin such as one would give to a child, Jack Aitken sent his wife back to the house and came to join me.

‘What have you been saying to her?’ he asked when he was close enough to talk without shouting. ‘She’s very, very upset about something.’

I stared at him. Of course a mother, a week after the death of her only child, was ‘upset’ and surely her husband, the child’s father, should not wonder what about, should he? As though he read my thoughts, Jack Aitken cleared his throat and rubbed at his face with the side of his hand.

‘I was just making quite sure that she didn’t want me to carry on trying to piece together exactly what happened with Dugald and Mirren,’ I said. His eyes flashed, black and sparkling, and for some reason the thought which popped into my head was that John Aitken must have been a handsome man, for Jack was quite unlike poor Bella. ‘Would you like me to carry on, Mr Aitken?’

‘I thought Mary…’

‘Called me off?’ I supplied. ‘Yes, she did. Twice. She most certainly doesn’t want any more meddling. But I thought it might be a comfort to a mother to know as much as possible. A father too.’

‘And what did Abby say?’ he asked, looking over his shoulder towards where she had gone.

‘Plenty,’ I replied. ‘Mostly about the Hepburns.’ He tried to look interested and unconcerned but failed rather spectacularly, a muscle dancing in one cheek and those black eyes wide open again.

‘She barely knows them,’ he said. ‘Couple of committees, a few church bazaars, that kind of thing. We don’t fraternise.’ He bit this off rather and was right to do so, since the non-fraternising of the Aitkens and Hepburns intrigued me; birds of a feather being what they were when it came to flocking.

‘Yes, your rivalry looks almost like a feud sometimes,’ I said.

‘Is that what Abby told you?’

‘She said they were cruel people,’ I replied. ‘I think she meant callous. But that Dugald was a dear boy, quite unlike the rest of them. That he must have been to have loved her so.’

Jack Aitken smiled absently and then his face twisted into a sudden spasm of pain. I started forward, unable not to; no one would have been able not to, for at that moment there was no filmy curtain up between Jack Aitken and his audience, no performance going on. He was white with shock, as wretched as a man could be. He waved me away with one hand and put the other out to brace himself against the sturdy weight of the nearest tree.

‘I keep forgetting,’ he said. ‘With everything so topsy-turvy and everyone upset and angry. I keep forgetting what it’s all about and then I remember again. And it’s like a knife.’

‘I’m so very sorry,’ I said.

‘Mirren forgave me for forbidding the marriage, you know,’ he went on. ‘She was sweeter and more loving in the last two months than she had been since she was a child in ringlets. She seemed almost grateful to me – well, terribly kind and affectionate, anyway. That’s why I was so sure she wouldn’t elope. As for killing herself, I still can’t believe it.’

‘Nor can I,’ I said. ‘I’m so far from believing that she did it, Mr Aitken, that here I am, seeking permission to prove that she didn’t. Dugald too.’

‘What?’ he said. He was staring at me then he blinked twice in quick succession and swallowed very hard. ‘That’s what you meant?’ he said. ‘When you said “piece things together”? You meant how they died? Whether they killed themselves or…’

‘If someone murdered them.’

‘Who would… who would ever dream of… what would ever have made you imagine… What are you accusing her of? You think she would kill a child? You – you – witch. You – twisted… get away from here. Don’t you ever, ever, dare to show your face here again or I will strangle you with these two hands.’

I could only imagine the gesture that went along with the last words, for I was off, sprinting down the drive towards the gates and my motorcar with my heart hammering.

What the hangment is going on, I asked myself, driving off rather jerkily – for my hands were far from steady. I rattled up to top gear and threaded my way through the streets to the other side of the town trying to sort it all through: Bella’s collapse, Abigail’s odd hints and Jack’s extraordinary outburst. When at last I spotted a telephone kiosk at the side of the road I pulled over and hurried towards it, scrabbling for tuppences.

‘Alec, listen,’ I said. ‘First of all, here is the number of the kiosk. Ring me back when this three minutes is up if I haven’t convinced you by then. But listen. I’ve just been run off Abbey Park on pain of having my neck wrung for me.’

‘Dear me,’ said Alec. ‘Dunfermline has been no friend to you, Dandy.’

‘I wasn’t exaggerating, darling,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t a metaphor. I’ve collected the full set to go with Mary. Bella Aitken, who must know that Mirren had no motive for suicide, wants me to leave it alone. Abigail Aitken spoke a great deal about the Hepburns being callous and cruel but wants me to leave the whole thing alone. Jack Aitken was wringing his hands with guilt about having caused Mirren’s suicide yet when I suggested that it might not have been suicide he reacted, as I say, by charging at me with bloodcurdling threats and accompanying gestures, which I took to be an indication that he wanted me to leave matters well alone.’ I took a deep breath. ‘What do you say to that then?’

‘What do you think I say?’ said Alec. ‘Get back in that silly little car and come home. Get out of there, Dandy. You have been sacked by the entire family now, arrested, imprisoned, threatened and almost assaulted. Go for a nice quiet walk in the jungles of Borneo if you will, but for God’s sake get out of Dunfermline.’

‘But there’s something wrong,’ I said. ‘There must be. What kind of people would rather have the stain of suicide upon their family than try to uncover their daughter’s murderer and have him hanged?’

‘Dangerous people,’ Alec said. ‘Really, Dandy, come home. Probably they all know exactly what happened and they have closed ranks to protect someone and there’s an end of it.’

‘To protect whom?’ I said. ‘Who do you think is behind it? Why didn’t you tell me you had a suspect?’

‘I don’t,’ Alec said.

‘But if you had to make a guess?’

‘Mary Aitken,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what and why but she’s the one pulling all the strings, isn’t she?’

I was silent for a moment and then nodded, although he could not see me.

‘She practically had kittens yesterday when Bella took over for once and steamrollered her into getting that man to look at the lift,’ I said. Then I gasped. ‘Alec! You don’t think she knew about Dugald Hepburn too, do you? As well as Mirren. Knew he was there? His body. Killed him, even?’

‘She can’t have,’ Alec said. ‘She was in the Abbey with everyone else, remember. Dugald Hepburn killed himself in an empty building when anyone with reason to hate him was in view of a hundred strangers. And he killed himself because his sweetheart was dead. That seems very clear. But there is something rather fishy about how Mirren died. And why. That I’ll give you.’

‘I tell you what I’d dearly like to know,’ I said. ‘I’d dearly like to know whether there’s the same unanimity chez Hepburn as I found chez Aitken this morning. Because there shouldn’t be.’

‘Dandy, you can’t go barging in the day after the boy died when Mrs Haddo was so clear about not wanting you.’

‘I must do something,’ I said. ‘I can’t just leave things be. Alec, I’m more sure than I’ve ever been about anything that… Well, actually I’m not sure what I’m sure of but I am sure.’

‘I believe you,’ Alec said. ‘But you have no authority, Dan. We have no client and you have no evidence. Come home.’

Alec had often laughed at me for the way I could think of something while saying it, and I did wish that I had come up with a different summary of the process, but it was about to happen again. I started up a defence of my position with nothing behind its robustness except my own conviction but while I was speaking the sense appeared that supported it.

‘We have a huge heap of evidence,’ I began hotly. ‘We have a crowd of grieving relatives whose attitudes only make sense if we posit at least one murder if not two. Look at the facts. The Hepburns don’t want their son to marry the Aitken girl and she conveniently dies. Then the Hepburn boy follows her. Both families want nothing said and nothing done, even those – like Bella and Fiona – who must suspect the truth. It’s a stand-off, Alec. Tit-for-tat. An eye for an eye.’

‘One of the Hepburns killed Mirren?’

‘Fiona Haddo thought so. And one of them was seen in the store, remember?’

‘And one of the Aitkens killed Dugald?’

‘Mary, you said. She arranged it anyway.’

‘That’s monstrous.’

‘Well,’ I said slyly, ‘the inspector certainly thought so.’

I heard Alec take a sharp breath.

‘I’m going to Roseville to quiz the Hepburns,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to you later, Alec dear.’

Although the house was in the deepest mourning I gained entry without difficulty, recognised by the little maid from the day before. I asked for Mrs Haddo and was ushered into the same sitting room to wait for her there.

The woman who entered the room minutes later was quite simply Fiona Haddo thirty years ago. Hilda, Mrs Robin Hepburn, was her mother’s double; the elegant limbs, the fine long neck, the strong lean features which managed to be feminine without any weakness about them and managed, which was more remarkable, to be handsome even today, when she was stricken with grief and pale from weeping.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, sitting and taking a black-edged handkerchief from the belt of her black dress which she pressed against her eyes to soak up the tears that had sprung there. ‘I must try hard not to cry,’ she said. ‘The girls are coming home from school and I don’t want to upset them. Dulcie went to fetch them for me from the station. Wasn’t that kind? Would you like some coffee? The house is in disarray – the servants were all so very fond – but I’m sure some coffee could be had.’

‘Mrs Hepburn,’ I said. ‘It was your mother I asked for. Perhaps the servants- Oh, I feel wretched to be here on such a day.’

‘My mother has sent me in her place,’ said Mrs Hepburn, with a very odd note in her voice. ‘She won’t be joining us. She warned me that the telegram she sent this morning probably wouldn’t do the job. She said if you arrived here, asking questions, I would have to answer them.’

‘That seems very strange,’ I said. ‘One would have expected your mother to be sparing you all possible burdens.’ I frowned at her, very puzzled.

‘My mother and I had a talk last night, in the middle of the night,’ she said. ‘She told me about the plan for the elopement. And I told her why it couldn’t have happened.’

‘Are you going to tell me?’ I said. ‘Why you disapproved of Mirren Aitken so?’

Hilda blinked. ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Charming girl. Sweet little thing.’

‘Well, why you disapproved of the family then?’ I asked, trying to hide my exasperation.

‘I didn’t,’ she said again. ‘I don’t. I mean Abigail is hard work, by all accounts. She wasn’t always, you know, but she has turned heavy-hearted in her middle years, so they tell me. But I always liked Jack a great deal.’ My eyebrows rose and she saw them; she was as noticing as her mother. ‘Oh, I know. He’s as tricky as a bag of monkeys, but entertaining – sometimes even deliberately so. Mind you, perhaps a lifetime of that sort of entertainment has made Abigail turn into the lump she is today. And then poor Jack grumbles and Abigail sinks a little more.’

Abigail Aitken was right, I thought, regarding her. This was a callous and rather cruel woman to be speaking that way today.

‘Mrs Aitken is certainly heavy-hearted now,’ I said. ‘Her daughter gone. Her only child.’

‘And she was lovely, wasn’t she?’ said Hilda. ‘Poor thing. Poor Aitkens. She was perfect really. I’d have liked such a daughter.’

‘So why not welcome her into your family?’ I said. ‘It seemed a perfect match to everyone looking on.’

‘A perfect match!’ said Hilda, and her eyebrows were as high as a clown’s painted arcs, her forehead rippled above them. ‘Well, not really. I liked the individual Aitkens, as I said, some more than others and I don’t include Mary, but it was the family as a whole.’ She dropped her voice and looked away to the side. ‘Cousins,’ she said. ‘Full cousins. And Mirren the only child, simply years into the marriage too. Weak blood.’

‘Ah, yes, weak blood,’ I said, remembering Mary Aitken saying the same about the Hepburns while we were having luncheon in the garden room on jubilee day. ‘On both sides?’

Hilda stared and a blot of colour somewhere between pink and purple – an angry, ugly colour – rose up out of her collar and crept over her jaw and her cheeks leaving just her eyes still pale.

‘You know about Robin’s sisters then?’ she said. I inclined my head as if to suggest that I knew everything. The ploy worked. The angry colour deepened. ‘I didn’t, when I married Robin. Mummy didn’t. If either of us had known there was such a stain on the family… but one didn’t expect it. Sturdy merchant stock, one would have thought. It’s supposed to be the Haddos and their like who have relations not to be spoken of in polite company.’ She was making an attempt at lightness but her voice was brittle.

‘Well,’ I said, rather at a loss and rather disgusted by the agricultural turn the conversation was taking, ‘I suppose I can understand your anxiety. But on the other hand… Mirren was a bonny healthy girl and your husband and children are all hale and hearty, aren’t they? I don’t quite see the need for such excessive scruples, if I’m honest.’

Hilda Haddo blew out hard and gave me a considering look.

‘Mother told me you wouldn’t be put off,’ she said. ‘Very well. My scruples, as you put it, my anxiety, got the better of me twenty years ago. I was angry when I found out about Robin’s sisters and I decided not to risk it.’ Mrs Hepburn stuck her elegant chin in the air and spoke as though to the back of the balcony. ‘Dugald was Jack Aitken’s son, Mrs Gilver. Mirren was his half-sister.’

Her words seemed to reverberate in the following silence. I felt myself flush and waited until my blood had subsided again before I spoke.

‘I didn’t think you even knew one another.’

‘Oh, we were very chummy for a while when Robert and Dulcie first dragged us all here,’ she said.

‘And does he know? Jack Aitken?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Hilda. ‘Apart from anything else, Dugald looked more and more like Bella with every passing year. Robin never noticed but when one was guiltily watching for it, it was plain enough to see.’

‘So your husband doesn’t know then?’ I said. It was not quite a question.

‘Good God, no!’ said Hilda. ‘Jack and I always kept scrupulously apart in public and, given the rift, there’s never been any danger of us all coming upon one another.’

‘So that’s not what caused the rift?’ I had thought at least to have got to the bottom of that little mystery.

‘Heavens, no. That’s ancient history. Shop business. Nothing to do with Jack and me, but it did mean that we couldn’t sneak off at parties like ordinary people.’ I raised my eyebrows, but Hilda sailed blithely on. ‘We met in Aitkens’. After hours. It was like a game. Pinching a bottle of this or that from the food hall and a couple of glasses. We made a sort of little hidey-hole. Goodness knows what the floor staff used to think the next day.’

‘They probably thought it was a poltergeist,’ I said, and Hilda Hepburn laughed, carelessly. ‘So if Mr Hepburn doesn’t know…?’

‘Robin?’ said Hilda.

‘Why was he so against the marriage?’

‘That probably was the thought of the cousins, as well as his sisters, you know.’

‘But surely having daughters of his own has stopped his worries about his sisters now?’

‘Exactly,’ said Hilda stoutly. ‘That’s what I tell myself. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him and as far as he does know I gave him four fine children.’

‘As far as he knows?’ I echoed.

‘They might all be Jack’s,’ she said. ‘Or a mixture. I could never decide about the girls since they take after me.’

‘And did Abigail know? Did she tell Mirren? Is that why she was so sure Mirren wouldn’t elope?’

‘Jack swears she knows nothing,’ Hilda Hepburn said. ‘Actually,’ – her voice shook – ‘I couldn’t bear it if Abby knew about Jack and me. The poor thing. Especially now.’ Again she rallied, with a sniff. ‘Not that I haven’t paid for my sins. My oldest, my darling, my boy.’ Her head had drooped but she lifted it again. ‘But I still have the girls at least. And as I say they’ll be here soon, so if you’ll excuse me.’ She stood and tucked her handkerchief back into her belt again. ‘There. I’ve told you. My mother needn’t send me to bed without supper.’ She gave me a nod and looking, at last and very late, quite shame-faced she left me sitting there.