Bothersome Number of Corpses

4

The word seemed to echo throughout the dank dimness of the cable station, until it and the walls around me and the low ceiling above my head were all pressing closer than I could bear and I stumbled out into the sunshine.

Fleur had walked down to the water’s edge – even though the tide was low and the going must have been unpleasant with such a great deal of seaweed lying in bands across the beach – whither the constable looked on the point of following her. At least he was standing shifting from enormous foot to enormous foot, working himself into a little hollow in the shingle, and was twisting his cap in his hands with a rhythmic efficiency which promised to ruin it for ever.

‘Where’s Sergeant…?’ I said, looking around.

‘Turner,’ said the constable. ‘Away to get a wee drink from the burn. His wame’s no’ fit for thon.’ He jerked his head back towards the cable station.

‘It didn’t do my tummy much good either,’ I said, swallowing hard. (I am a past master at Scotch after all my years immersed in it.) ‘She, I mean. Not it. She.’

‘Aye, well,’ said the constable, and he gave me a kindly look. ‘She’s long gone and past carin’, missus.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘How long would you say, Constable…?’

‘Reid,’ he replied. ‘A wee while, anyway.’

I sighed. Even a past master cannot distinguish the Scotch whiles – a wee while, a fair while and a good while – without some reference point at which to start.

‘Not today then?’ I said, employing imbecility to shake him into further detail.

‘The day?’ he said, with ready scorn. ‘Naw, never. Three, four days easy. No’ a week. I’m sayin’ three days, missus.’

‘You can really be that precise?’ I said, wondering at how much practice a village constable could have had in this grisly specialism. Reid swept his arm across the view before us.

‘Fishin’,’ he said and did not need to say more.

‘Right,’ I replied, and then we both stood and watched Fleur in silence.

‘I tell you what else, missus,’ Reid said at last, when the three of us had held our tableau long enough for seagulls to alight on the bands of seaweed and start their scavenging, ‘I bet I can tell you where she went in too. If she went in off the cliffs and no’ out a boat, anyway.’

‘That would be handy,’ I said.

‘Likes of if she left anythin’ behind with her name on,’ said Reid. ‘Find out who she was.’

‘Hm,’ I said. I was thinking how best to suggest that they should ask someone else from the school to confirm it was not Miss Beauclerc lying there (without absolutely dropping Fleur in it) since clearly if Fleur had added this latest body to her growing collection she would not be above lying. I stole a glance at Reid wondering how to broach it.

As a rule I am beyond scrupulous. I break no laws and I do not collude to help others break them, and if I had known there was a body in the offing I would have made sure and said all that to Pearl on the telephone. As matters stood, however, I was hogtied. I had promised Pearl to help her sister; telling a police constable she was a self-confessed murderer did not fall comfortably within the bounds of helpfulness as Pearl would understand it, I was sure. On the other hand, how could I get a second opinion organised without explaining my doubts about the first?

All in all then, Reid’s hope for a tidy parcel of belongings left on a cliff top was mine too.

‘So where would that be?’ I said.

‘Down Dunskey Castle way,’ said Reid.

‘Isn’t this Dunskey Castle?’ I asked him. He gave me a pitying look.

‘This is Dunskey House,’ he said. ‘The castle’s away the other side o’ the town. And I’m thinking maybe if we go and have a wee scout round down there, we’ll find a clue. Otherwise…’

‘Quite,’ I said. ‘I suppose there aren’t name tags sewn into her clothes, are there? Her underclothes?’

‘No’ checked yet,’ said Reid, and who could blame him? ‘The police surgeon’s the man for that.’ He paused. ‘Or a mutch-wife.’ He sighed. ‘Or maybe somebody’ll report a woman missin’, and we can leave the poor soul be.’

How to explain that it took so long for the notion to strike me? Rosa Aldo had disappeared and here was a body, yet I had made no connection between the two. I put a hand to my mouth, picturing Giuseppe’s grief if that was his adored and beloved wife lying in there.

‘Missus?’ said Reid.

But why would Fleur Lipscott kill a washerwoman?

‘You all right?’

But might not the killer of five people be indiscriminate in exactly that way?

‘You feelin’ sick?’

I took my hand away from my mouth again.

‘I think I know who it is,’ I said.

‘Good grief!’ said the harsh voice of the sergeant behind me. ‘You might have spoken up before now, madam.’ I turned to see him glaring at me out of a pale face. ‘This is a serious business, you know.’

‘I didn’t recognise the woman,’ I said, drawing myself up and glaring back, out of a face as pale as his I am sure. ‘I just remembered something. Mrs Aldo from the village is missing.’

‘Who?’ said Reid.

‘Mrs Giuseppe Aldo. I don’t know her address.’

‘The Eye-tie’s wife?’ said Sergeant Turner. He wheeled around and stared at the cable station door. ‘Aye, it could be, it could be. All dressed in black that way. And more like a foreigner to go flinging herself in the water than one of our own.’

Reid’s eyes narrowed and his head shook a little, too small a movement for his boss to see. I noticed it, though, and I knew we were in accord. The man was a fool.

‘So, shall we fetch Mr Aldo?’ I said.

‘We?’ said the sergeant, staring coldly.

‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘He’s a… friend of a friend of mine. In fact, this friend of mine – a Mr Osborne – will probably want to come with him, as I came with Miss Lipscott, don’t you know.’ Which was stating it rather strongly; the truth was I wanted Alec to come along with Joe Aldo. If there was a body in his case he should see it.

‘Are we talking about the same folk?’ said the sergeant. ‘Black-haired Eye-tie that fries fish at the end of the harbour?’

‘Giuseppe Aldo,’ I said. ‘That’s the chap.’

‘Funny friend for you, madam,’ he replied.

‘My acquaintance is wide and varied, Sergeant,’ I assured him. ‘And speaking of friends…’ I jerked my head towards the shoreline. ‘I’d better get Miss Lipscott home, hadn’t I?’

‘Where is she?’ the sergeant said.

I wheeled round to look at where Fleur had been. There was no sign of her.

‘Where’s she gone?’ I said, stupidly, and exchanged a glance with Reid.

‘She’ll have walked round the head to the other wee beach there,’ he said, pointing. I set off after her, trying to hurry in the deep shingle which only produced the mired feeling of a nightmare, when one surges and struggles and gets precisely nowhere. At last, however, I gained the hard, wet grit below the tide line and could break into a trot as I rounded the promontory dividing the cable station cove from the next one down. This was a sandy, sheltered spot with a deep swathe of meadow grass at its back stretching up to the lane. There were no rocks; nowhere to hide. And there was no Fleur.

Constable Reid came puffing up behind me.

‘Did she have time to come round here and go up the path?’ I asked him.

‘Must’ve had,’ he replied.

‘But weren’t we more or less watching her the whole time?’

‘Cannae have been,’ said Reid. ‘Else where is she?’

I could not fault his reasoning and so I set off up the path, which meandered back past the cottage with its party of peeping children and on to where the motorcar awaited our return. The sergeant was there, sitting stiffly in the passenger seat, displeased to have been abandoned by his underling, but of Fleur there was not a sign.

‘I’ll ask at the cottage,’ I said, turning back, but the sergeant stopped me with a throat-clearing sound that was almost a growl.

‘You’ll both have to walk home if you don’t come now, madam,’ he said. ‘We’re not a taxi.’

‘Likely we’ll pass her on the road,’ said Reid, stooping to the starter. ‘Maybe she just set off on her own for a wee breath of fresh air after yon.’

I nodded and climbed into the back seat, still craning around, expecting Fleur to appear from amongst the trees. It was not until later that I realised the absurdity of what he had said; one does not leave a seashore in search of fresh air. As it was, the motorcar bore me away while I sat on the edge of my seat, peering into the hedgerows and scanning the road ahead for a figure and ignoring the sick cold feeling inside me.

And since a sick feeling inside is not something one can tell of to a rather stupid police sergeant – or even a tolerably bright constable – I kept my worries to myself as the little motorcar descended to Portpatrick’s harbour and trundled around towards Joe Aldo’s shack there. Also, like a child at the approach of its bedtime, I was hoping that if I kept quiet the men would forget I was there. I wanted to soften the blow of what was sure to be a bald announcement from the horrid sergeant that a body had appeared and would Joe come and see it, please.

The little shack on the harbour was a very different place this Saturday luncheon time, thronged with people: a long queue of men and women snaking out of the door and coiling around the side, and on the bollards and lobster pots and the harbour wall itself there were gangs of little boys and girls, rabblesome families and courting couples all intent on the fragrant contents of the newspaper nests they held open in their laps. As we stepped down from the motorcar a gaggle of well-dressed but rather grubby little boys came tumbling out of the open doorway, holding folded newspaper cones of fried potato and stone bottles of ginger beer, and in spite of the recent sights in the cable station my stomach gave a slow, luxurious rumble.

‘That’s Mr Tweedie’s son!’ said the sergeant in tones of high astonishment. ‘The bank manager,’ he explained to me. ‘I don’t know what this place is coming to.’

‘Sodom and Gomorrah, Italian-style,’ I murmured. He did not hear me but Constable Reid gave an explosive snort which he turned into a cough with the skill of long practice.

‘You’re not a patron of Aldo’s then, Sergeant Turner?’ I said.

‘I most certainly am not,’ he said. ‘Mrs Turner won’t hear of it.’

The families and couples who had boggled to see the arrival of a police motorcar were now openly listening, all conversation stilled, only the rustle of newspaper and the crunch of batter disturbing the quiet around us (that and the hopeful screeching of a perfect battalion of seagulls with designs on the crumbs).

‘Take him through the back, Reid,’ said the sergeant, returning to his seat in the motorcar, ‘and I’ll come round and speak to him there, away from the frying pans.’ But I do not believe it was the cooking smells which troubled him. The sergeant simply did not care to jostle into the shack with the hoi-polloi, which gave no quarter to the comings and goings of anyone not in the queue for luncheon. Even as we watched, an emerging figure had to turn sideways to squeeze through in the small space left by a stout man in brown overalls with his eyes fixed on the counter.

This figure, once outside, revealed itself to be Alec. He was wiping his lips with his handkerchief and breathing hard, but when he saw me he broke into a jog.

‘Marvellous news, Dandy!’ he said. ‘Guess what?’

‘Alec, have you really just eaten fried haddock and chips?’ I said.

‘Certainly not,’ said Alec. ‘It was cod. The man is an artist.’

‘I’ve got news too, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘This is Constable Reid, Alec. Reid, this is my associate, Mr Osborne.’

‘Associate?’ said Reid.

‘Glad to make your acquaintance,’ Alec said, holding out a greasy hand. He says he can always tell by my introductions of policemen and the like whether I have filed the man under ‘idiot’ or have turned down the corner of his card as a possible ally. I am not sure I believe him; more like lucky guesses on his part, I should imagine (for one would rather not be so transparent when one is bent on detecting). ‘But my news first,’ Alec went on. ‘She was seen.’

‘Fleur?’ I said.

He gave me an odd look. ‘Mrs Aldo.’

‘Thank God,’ I said. ‘When and where?

‘Tuesday night,’ said Alec. ‘On the cliff path, heading for Dunskey Castle.’

‘Ah,’ I said. Reid and I exchanged a glance.

‘And…’ Alec began.

‘Could still be her, missus,’ said Reid. ‘Looks more like it now, if aught.’

‘What’s this?’ Alec said.

‘I’ve just come from viewing a body,’ I told him. ‘A woman’s body. Three days in the sea, washed up this morning.’

‘Just where it would wash up if it went in at the castle too,’ said Reid.

‘We came to ask Joe to take a look at it,’ I said, and we all three turned and looked in at the door. Over the heads of the waiting crowd we could just see Joe Aldo in his white hat and capacious white apron, tipping a sizzling basket of fried potatoes into a trough behind his glass counter.

‘Did your witness say anything about Mrs Aldo’s demeanour?’ I asked. ‘If she was walking alone at night on a cliff top it begins to look like suicide.’

‘She wasn’t,’ Alec said. ‘Walking alone, that is. She was with a man. And Dunskey Castle is a well-known local trysting place, I believe.’ He raised his eyebrows at Reid, who nodded and blushed a little, as though his knowledge of the spot might have been gained in his off-duty hours.

‘What man?’ I asked Alec.

‘My witness didn’t know him but she did go as far as to say she’d recognise the chap if she saw him a second time. She did go that far.’ He heaved a heavy sigh. ‘This is going to kill Joe,’ he said. ‘Absolutely kill him. He’s already beside himself even just hearing that she was seen with her lover.’

‘But he knew she had one,’ I said.

Alec nodded. ‘It’s one thing to suspect one’s wife of a dalliance, but it’s quite another actually to hear proof.’ He shook his head. ‘It hit him like a brick.’

‘He’ll need a good hard nut on him now, then,’ said Reid, not quite unkindly. ‘Cos here’s what I’m thinking. Maybe she fell and her fancy man didnae tell a soul so’s nobody would know his wee secret. And maybe she flang herself down and he kept that quiet. But most likely of all, if ye’re askin’ me, if he was up there with her…’

‘Quite,’ I said.

‘I agree,’ said Alec.

‘Aye,’ said Reid, ‘he pushed her.’

‘But the witness was sure she’d know the chap again?’ I said.

‘Seemed to be,’ Alec said. ‘Although to be perfectly honest she scooted off again before I could grill her.’

‘Who was she?’ said Reid.

‘A little servant girl from one of those villas up there,’ said Alec, pointing. ‘I rather suspect she was out walking with her true love too and didn’t want it known that she had been.’

‘A wee servant girl?’ said Reid.

‘You’ll have to have another crack at her,’ I said.

‘Out walkin’ with her felly?’ He was frowning.

At that moment the motorcar door opened and the sergeant leaned out and barked (the only word for it) at the constable.

‘Reid!’

‘Aye, Sarge,’ said Reid. ‘We’re just away in the noo.’ He dropped his voice before he spoke again. ‘I tell you what, though. I’m no’ taking the poor man through and letting the sarge tell him. I’ll tell him myself and get Sergeant Turner after. He’s no’ got a good touch with folk tae my mind.’

But his concern was wasted, for when we entered the cafe it was to find Joe Aldo already in a state of shock so all-consuming that one wondered whether any fresh horrors could touch him. Even so, we shooed the hungry crowd out of the door (to gales of protest) and I scribbled a sign – 10 mins – and propped it up in the window. Then all four of us crushed into the back kitchen, Alec urged Joe into a chair and Constable Reid told him very gently that ‘a lady had passed away’ and would he ‘just glance at her to say it wasn’t his wife, please’ before leaving to fetch his sergeant for the rest of the interview.

‘Where?’ was the first word Joe uttered, when the two policemen had returned.

‘Up in the wee cove at Dunskey,’ said Reid. Joe’s face paled to an ugly cream colour and he rubbed his hand over it roughly.

‘From – from the water?’ he said.

Reid nodded.

‘Is Rosa?’ asked Joe.

‘I couldnae say,’ said Reid. ‘I’ve never met your wife, sir. Sarge?’

‘I didn’t know her,’ said the sergeant, his past tense making me wince.

Joe threaded a hand in under his apron and drew a wallet out of his waistcoat pocket. He flapped it open and held it out to us all, showing us a small photograph, rather dark, of a young woman in old-fashioned dress staring solemnly ahead. She might have been a great beauty; it was hard to say.

‘My Rosa,’ he said. ‘Is Rosa? In the cove?’

‘Can’t say,’ said the sergeant. Luckily, Joe Aldo was mystified by this response, blinking slowly and looking around us all. If he had realised why we could not say he might well have fainted.

‘So…’ said Reid.

Joe nodded, rummaged under his apron front again and pulled out a watch.

‘After the dinner time,’ he said. ‘One hour is the very most. Once my customers all are gone.’

‘Now hang on, pal,’ said the sergeant, causing a stir of protest from both Alec and me – he really was one of the most abrasive characters I have ever encountered and police sergeants are not known for being soothing. Constables and inspectors, in my experience, reflect the sweep of humanity but a sergeant always has something of the fox terrier about him. ‘We’re needing to crack on. We can’t hang about for you.’

‘Quite right, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘We’ll bring Mr Aldo to the cable station and you can, as you say, crack on. You’ve a case to solve and an obvious place to start from.’ I raised my eyebrows at Alec. He stared blankly back at me. I glanced at Reid. Both he and Alec continued to gaze back as though unable to guess at my allusion.

‘Taking statements from witnesses, for instance,’ I supplied, with another eyebrow wiggle at Alec and Constable Reid. They were two statues. It seemed ‘the sarge’ was not to be told of the servant girl and her observations.

‘I’m the best judge of my business, madam,’ said the sergeant, rather primly. He stood, straightened his suit coat and walked away. Joe shook himself, gave one last miserable look at Rosa’s photograph and went to reopen the shop. The three of us remaining – Reid, Alec and me – kept our seats in the back kitchen and as soon as the crowd had re-entered and their clamour would cover our voices I charged them with it directly.

‘Why on earth not tell Turner about the witness on Tuesday night?’ I said.

‘I found her,’ Alec said. ‘I’m not going to hand her over to him.’

‘Quite right, sir,’ said Reid. ‘I agree.’

I turned on him.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘She’s as timid as a little rabbit,’ Alec said. ‘Sergeant Turner would terrify her.’

‘Sergeant Turner does terrify her,’ said Reid. ‘The both o’ them do.’ To our puzzled looks he offered an explanation. ‘It’s the Turners she works tae, see?’

‘She’s Sergeant Turner’s very own servant?’ I said. ‘How do you know?’

‘Well, Mrs Turner’s really,’ Alec said.

‘Well, then of course you should have-’ I began, but Reid cut me off.

‘Can I just ask, sir? How did you track her down?’

‘Well, I didn’t so much track her down as run into her,’ Alec said. ‘She came down here to the shack at the same time as me this morning.’

‘To buy an early luncheon?’ I asked.

‘Never,’ said Reid. ‘Cissie Gilhooley hates thon greasy muck.’

‘How on earth do you know that?’ I asked.

‘It’s not the least bit greas-’ Alec began, but then shook himself. ‘Cissie came down because Mrs Aldo was supposed to go and collect the washing yesterday and she didn’t show up. So the lady of the house sent the girl to see what was wrong.’

‘And you pounced on her?’ I asked.

Reid shifted in his seat.

‘I asked when she’d last seen the woman,’ Alec said, ‘and she blurted out “Tuesday night” and blushed to the roots of her hair. It was then that I pounced on her. And she’s obviously going to get into considerable trouble if her mistress gets wind of her wanderings, so I’ll have to get even firmer with her if I’m to learn any more.’

‘Naw, no’ really,’ said Reid. ‘It’s right enough the wee lassie would get her papers if she got found out and we’ll can get it out of her without any o’ that anyway.’

‘You’re sure?’ I said.

‘Fine an’ sure,’ said Reid, shifting in his seat again. ‘It was me she was comin’ to meet.’ He turned as red as the big glass bottle of tomato ketchup on the table between us.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I see. You’d get into more trouble with your sergeant than she would with her mistress? Not that a little chivalry isn’t a welcome sight in these discourteous days. At least…’ I lowered my head and looked at him from under my brows. I have rather suitable eyebrows for the gesture, black and straight and formed for knitting. ‘… I hope it’s chivalry. I’m assuming your intentions are-’

‘She’s got a diamond ring on a chain round her neck, till we’ve a bit more saved and she can put it on her finger.’

‘Jolly good,’ I said. ‘And I suppose you didn’t see the mysterious stranger?’ He was shaking his head before the words were out of my mouth.

‘I did not. Cissie said she wanted to go a walk instead of sittin’’ – the blush deepened until he was almost purple from collar to hairline – ‘’cos of there bein’ other folk about and, to be straight wi’ youse, I didn’t really believe her.’ I pulled my eyebrows down again, not liking the sound of this at all. ‘Sitting’, as Reid called it, had to be at the lady’s discretion, surely. I could not think how to put this into words, however, without killing him off from embarrassment and quite possibly sending Alec with him. Besides, my eyebrows seemed to be doing the job on their own. He hung his head and scraped his boots against the floor and we left it there.

Outside in the cafe the luncheon trade had picked up again to full strength after the break in service. Orders were being shouted, the bell on the till was dinging, the rush and sizzle of hot fat as cold chips poured into it broke out over and over again. All that was missing was Joe’s voice, describing his wonders and urging the crowd to ‘eat, eat, eat, eat’ as he had with Alec and me at breakfast time.

‘Quiet the day, Gee-seppy,’ one wag called over the counter.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve dropped yer tongue in the batter there,’ said another and a chorus of laughter rang out all around. Not quite friendly laughter. Perhaps these villagers, more than happy to eat his food and give him their money, had not yet welcomed him in as one of their own. Joe nodded, unsmiling, and carried on plunging, shaking, wrapping, telling the price and counting out the change until at last the crowd thinned to a stream, broke into dribs and drabs and finally stuttered out, just one or two stragglers looking for bargains. Then, at last, silence and emptiness and Joe turned the sign on the door.

‘Right then,’ said Alec. ‘To Dunskey Cove with us all.’ Joe was out in the privy in the yard washing the luncheon-time lard from his hands and face.

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Not twice in one day.’ Alec nodded as though only just remembering.

‘In all the commotion I never asked you, Dan,’ he said. ‘Why were you there? How did that come to be?’

‘The police thought it might be a mistress from the school,’ I said, turning to Reid. ‘You heard that Mademoiselle Beauclerc was missing?’

‘Who?’ said Reid. ‘No.’

‘Well, not to say missing, but gone anyway,’ I said. ‘Like so many before her.’

‘But how could you help?’ Alec said. ‘You never met the woman.’

‘Fleur volunteered and I tagged along,’ I said. I turned to Reid again. ‘You must have heard about all the departures.’ Reid pushed out his lips and shook his head.

‘Don’t have much to do wi’ them up there,’ he said. ‘Gey queer set-up havin’ a bunch of women all doing science and geography and out on the cliff in their semmets at dawn.’

‘Really?’ said Alec.

‘Gymnastics,’ said Reid.

‘Ah,’ Alec said. Then to me: ‘Fleur volunteered?’ I nodded.

‘And if you don’t mind me askin’, missus,’ said Reid, ‘what did she mean by what she said when she was in there?’ I stared at him.

‘I thought you hadn’t heard,’ I said. ‘You asked her to repeat it.’

‘I thought maybe I hadn’t heard right,’ said Reid. ‘I asked to make sure.’ He turned to Alec. ‘Five, she said, sir. She looked at the corpse and said the word “five”.’

‘No!’ said Alec.

‘So what I was wondering,’ said Reid, ‘was five what?’

‘Bodies,’ said Alec.

‘Alec!’ I said, putting up my hand in front of his face and startling him.

‘Murders,’ said Alec.

‘Stop it,’ I said, almost loud enough to call it shouting. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘What’s goin’ on?’ said Reid.

‘You refused to tell the sergeant about your witness just because you wanted to keep her to yourself!’ I said. I was glaring at him and I knew my cheeks were reddening with anger. ‘And then you blurt that out before I’ve even had a chance to talk to Fleur!’

‘What do you mean?’ Alec said. ‘Why didn’t you talk to her right away?’

‘What five murders?’ said Reid.

‘She was upset,’ I said. ‘I was upset. Wait till you’ve been and looked at it and then carp at me.’

‘What five murders?’ said Reid even louder. I rounded on him.

‘Constable,’ I said, ‘unless you want me to march right up the hill and tell Mrs Turner that you and her maid are in the habit of “sitting” on the cliff at Dunskey Castle on your free evenings, you’ll forget all about Mr Osborne’s indelicate outburst until I’m ready to discuss it with you. After I’ve discussed it with Miss Lipscott.’ I ignored the whispering little voice inside me.

‘Five mistresses have gone missing from St Columba’s,’ said Alec.

‘Aye?’ said Reid, his interest in the ‘bunch of women’ piqued at last.

‘And Miss Lipscott…’ said Alec.

‘Miss Lipscott said an unguarded word in a moment of great strain,’ I finished for him. ‘She is clearly… troubled. Perhaps ill. But her story is too preposterous to be true.’

‘Why not tell me what her story is and if ye’re right I’ll no’ believe it,’ said Reid. ‘Five mistresses missing and Miss Lipscott…?’

I glared a little more at Alec and then let my breath go and sat back in my chair.

‘All right, I give up,’ I said. ‘Miss Lipscott said last evening that she had killed four times.’

‘And then today…’ said Reid. ‘She saw that poor corpse and said, “That makes it five”?’

‘She said “Five”, as you well know,’ I reminded him. ‘Why, it might not even have been connected to the four from yesterday.’

‘Oh, come off it, Dandy,’ said Alec.

‘You should have told me there and then,’ Reid said.

‘I ready as ever I be.’ Joe Aldo was standing in the kitchen door. His hair was slicked flat and his face was scrubbed red and raw. His shirt cuffs were rolled down and his cuff-links fastened. He took a coat from the back of a kitchen chair and shrugged into it.

‘Right you are, Mr Aldo,’ said Reid. He stood and gave rather a withering look to be coming from a boy in his twenties to a great grand lady like me. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘since you’re all ready to go an’ that. It would be a shame to keep you hangin’ around while I just run and arrest somebody.’ Joe Aldo was blinking in some confusion.

‘I’ll fetch the sergeant if you like and tell him everything,’ I said. ‘Everything.’ Reid blushed again.

‘But look on the bright side,’ he said to Aldo. ‘From what I’ve just heard, chances are, it’s no’ your wife at all. Chances are, your wife’ll be back here wonderin’ where you’ve got to before we’re halfway home.’

Alec nodded but I could not bring myself to agree. Rosa Aldo had been on the cliff top on Tuesday evening and now was gone. A woman’s body had washed up at the cliff foot on Saturday after three days or so in the sea. I did not see why Fleur Lipscott would have killed her and I agreed that the five mistresses gone and five murders claimed was a neat little balance, but I would not have raised Joe’s hopes that way.

I waved them off in the motorcar – the sergeant was nowhere to be seen and one could only conclude that he had walked back to the station or perhaps climbed the hill to his wife and home. Reid drove and Alec and Joe sat in the back. I watched after them until the little car had disappeared from view at the top of the hill and even then I followed them in my imaginings, along the road and onto the lane, down the track and onto the path, across the shingle and into the building there. I remembered all I could of the woman I had seen. Were her clothes and her stockings French like Mademoiselle Beauclerc’s would be? Were they Italian? Would Rosa Aldo have Italian clothes or would she be dressed like every other washerwoman in Portpatrick, in clothes made up to Woolworth’s patterns in cloth from the local Co-operative store? I tried to think of the look of her dress and the scrap of lace at her neck. But it had been soaked and clumped with water and the frill at her neck was rusty with blood and brine mixed. For just a moment I wished I had returned in the motorcar. I could have looked at her clothes and tried not to see the rest of her. I could have surely found something to tell me something. I leaned over the harbour wall and looked down into the water, just beginning to slosh against the stones. If I fell in there when it was deep and was fished out after three days, what could they tell about me? Good underclothes made of decent silk and fine wool, skilfully mended here and there. A rather flashy shirt that Grant had got from London on postal order and Jenner’s Ladies’ best tweeds in greenish grey. I would look – on a slab in the cable station – like a Scotch matron of exactly my type and exactly my years, and I determined there and then to let Grant buy me some flashy skirts and coats to go with the shirt next time she was ordering.

Then I remembered Miss Lovage from the evening before – and Miss Shanks with her cloaks – and I shuddered. I had been inoculated against theatricality in dress by my mother’s trailing sleeves and by her penchant for the sort of embroidery that belonged on the back of a kimono, if anywhere. Perhaps Fleur in her beige had it right after all, dressing like the schoolmistress she had become, with not a scrap left about her of the child I remembered so well.

I smiled. Even then, when every girl and boy was beribboned and befrilled to the point of immobility and forced to be good (given the effort required to be naughty when one had so many elaborate garments to haul around with one), Fleur Lipscott had been renowned in the family, the village and beyond for the costumes she concocted day by day. There was a foundation layer – what archaeologists, or quite possibly geologists, call a substratum – of woollen underclothes, linen and lace petticoats, muslin and lawn frocks: the stuff of Edwardian childhood, but to it Fleur added trimmings of her own devising, unearthed and scavenged from all around her domain. She wore camphorous stoles and tippets found in the attic trunks, voluminous plaids spun by the crofter women around the Highland hunting lodge, a cage of crinoline hoops embellished with rag ribbons so that she looked like an enormous birdcage full of fluttering budgerigars. She found amongst the Major’s uniforms more items of interest than might have seemed likely: epaulettes and medal ribbons, sashes and spurs, hat-bands and waistcoats, and a greatcoat of such length and girth and unyielding thickness that she rather inhabited it as a dwelling than wore it like clothes. When she walked in this last item it made one think of how the pyramid stones were moved, impossibly slowly, on rolling logs. She always emerged with hot cheeks and damp hair and to our laughter and quizzical looks she would say that it was indeed rather warm but good for thinking. Then she would resettle her Indian headdress or pirate’s tricorne and sweep grandly off to another adventure.

‘Darling little goose,’ I remember Pearl saying once, gazing after her.

‘And she slogs like a slave at it,’ Aurora had agreed. ‘That hat was miles too big until she put the rats in it.’

Batty Aunt Lilah let out a small shriek and shot to her feet, calling Fleur back and demanding explanations.

‘Not rats, Batty Aunt,’ said Fleur, bowing so that her hat fell off into her hand. ‘Not Rattus rattus, although I don’t hate them like you do.’ She rummaged inside the tricorne and extracted an object which looked distressingly like a member of the Rattus rattus family to me. Batty Aunt Lilah shrieked again and recoiled from it.

‘It’s my hair!’ said Fleur, holding the thing in the palm of her hand to show it clearly. ‘Stitched up in a net. You know I found that old ratter of Granny’s and couldn’t resist it? Still in its box, with instructions and everything. I made three of my own and now I’m doing Aurora and Pearl. Separately, for hygiene, but I must say, Pearl, either you’re not brushing properly or Rora’s going bald, because she’s surging ahead of you. Come to my room and I’ll show you.’

‘You horrid child!’ said Pearl, pretending to shiver although really she was laughing. ‘I knew you’d been skulking in the bathroom. I never dreamed why!’

‘You’ll thank me when fashions change back again and you’re all ready for them,’ said Fleur, carefully inserting the rat back into the crown of the tricorne. ‘It’s not everyone who can be out of fashion and look remarkable instead of just peculiar.’ Then – dressed, under the greatcoat, in pale grey patent skating boots with the blades removed and an old sari – she had gone about her day.

How I wished that little ribbon-ringleted Fleur was here today, prattling on without a care for who heard and what they made of it. Even the second Fleur, the painted and sequinned girl I had met only once and who had left such a searing impression upon me, would have been welcome; for although she was far from that innocent child who spoke without thinking, at least she spoke. She twittered and giggled and made spiked little jibes and, like any flirt, at times she gave away more than she meant to, reaching for a joke, playing out her line to its end to hook the laugh she had spotted there.

Still, I should go up and find her, even the silent self-possessed woman she was now. I turned and leaned my back against the harbour wall, staring up at the school. She must surely be back by now, no matter how rambling a path she had taken home from the cove. With the thought, that sick feeling returned to somewhere deep inside me, but once again I swallowed and let it pass, not giving it form in my mind, not even examining it to see what form it would take. Instead I pushed myself up off the wall and strolled around the arm of the harbour, just like the fisherwives, all of us waiting for our men to return.

Fisherwives, I soon concluded, were better at waiting than me. In less time than it would have taken one of them to retie her shawl, fill her pipe and enquire in that rolling Gallovidian drawl after the health of the next fisherwife along the wall, I had grown bored and was marching back into the heart of the town. I was bound for the kiosk to ring home and tell them all where I was if needed, thence to St Columba’s, but I had hardly begun the long haul up the Main Street when I saw the police motorcar trundling down. Alec’s arm appeared, waving madly, in the side window as he saw me too and he jumped out while Constable Reid was still in the early stages of braking.

‘It’s not her,’ he said, lolloping towards me in enormous strides. ‘It’s not Rosa. Joe was quite certain.’

The motorcar crossed the street and drew up beside us. Constable Reid was in the shadows, but I thought I could still discern a frosty look on his face as he nodded a greeting. I ignored him and leaned in at the back where Joe Aldo was sitting bolt upright with a fist clenched on each knee, staring straight ahead.

‘You’re sure, Mr Aldo?’ I said. He turned his head immeasurably slowly and showed me stricken eyes with black circles under them.

‘My head,’ he said, in a whisper. ‘My head is to break in pieces.’

‘Tension,’ I said. ‘You must go home and rest. It must have been horrid for you until you knew.’

Perhaps his headache was too severe to let him nod, but he squeezed his eyes shut and tilted his head just a fraction.

‘Is not Rosa,’ he said. ‘Dress, hair. I roll her sleeves and is not Rosa’s skin. Rosa has…’ He poked his finger here and there over his other forearm as if to dot it.

‘Freckles?’ I said.

‘From the soap.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘But might not the sea water have…?’

‘Sottoveste,’ said Joe, gesturing. ‘Under. Underneath.’

‘Petticoats?’ I said. He nodded. ‘But-’

‘Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘It’s not her. They were married for fifteen years.’

‘And the lady, poor lady, is too… Rosa is a little apple. My little peach, my little plum.’

But it was what Alec had said that convinced me. I can never understand it when one reads in the Sunday papers that a headless torso has been found sans legs, sans arms, in a suitcase, and no one can guess who it might be. If the torso were part of a husband then I should think the wife would know. I could tell any part of Hugh big enough to fill a suitcase, certainly.

Besides, this tussle between Alec and me was becoming ridiculous. He could carry on alone desiring my client’s sister to be a murderess; I was no longer going to desire his client’s wife to be drowned.

‘If you’re gettin’ out here, Mr Aldo,’ said Constable Reid, ‘I’ll swing round and get up by.’ He jerked his head in the direction of St Columba’s. ‘Are you comin’?’ he asked me. I was not, I noted, worthy of even a ‘missus’ now, never mind a ‘madam’. I hesitated; I did not want to consign Fleur to being arrested without an ally, but I could not promise to be a staunch one. I would not lie.

Before I had decided, we were interrupted by the sound of a bell being rung with great energy a little way up the street. I squinted, shading my eyes from the sun, and could see a large woman dressed in a shopkeeper’s overall pulling on a bell chain as though her life depended upon it. The bell itself was attached to a cottage wall, accompanied by no blue light or red plaque and quite a way from the harbour.

‘Is that the lifeboat bell?’ I said, nevertheless.

All around, street doors were opening but it was not burly lifeboat men who emerged. Instead, housewives in their aprons and old men in carpet slippers, holding their newspapers open at the racing news, stepped out and looked up the street.

‘Post office telephone,’ said Reid from inside the motorcar.

‘It’s for that Mr Al-do,’ cried out the bell-ringing woman. ‘Him fae the chip shop.’

A cluster of children had gathered around her, Pied-Piper-style, and were clamouring.

‘Me, me, Miss Broon.’

‘I’ll gan, Miss Broon.’

‘I’ve no’ been chose for donkey’s.’

The doors were closing on withdrawing villagers and, as the street cleared, Miss Brown (could it be another tentacle of that same family, I wondered) noticed us standing further down; noticed Joe Aldo, anyway.

‘Mr Al-do?’ she called, again managing to make two blameless little syllables sound as though they had taken a huge effort of concentration to pronounce. ‘There’s somebody asking for you on the telephone.’ She looked back at the post office door and deigned to walk a little way down the street towards us.

‘I’ll get ’im, Miss Broon,’ said the most tenacious of the children, the others having given up and begun a game of marbles in the gutter. ‘You cannae leave the desk and all the stamps and money. I’ll tell him. Save you shouting.’ But Joe was walking up towards her now. Alec and I trailed after him, and Constable Reid threw the police motorcar into its reversing gear and backed slowly up the hill too.

‘Me?’ said Joe as he drew near Miss Brown. ‘Inside?’

‘It was pure luck you were so close,’ she said, with a strong note of disapproval which I could not easily fathom. ‘By rights you should be tipping a message boy a penny.’

‘Aye!’ said the tenacious child.

‘Somebody on the telephone for me?’ said Joe again.

‘And she’ll no’ be best pleased if you keep her hangin’,’ Miss Brown told him. ‘Never mind me needin’ to get back to the counter. Are you comin’ or no’?’

‘She?’ said Alec. Joe had returned to his blank, dead state again. ‘It might be her,’ Alec prompted him. ‘It might be Rosa.’ Joe blinked and then started as if a shock had passed through him. He barrelled inside the post office, fairly shoving Miss Brown out of the way. Alec and I started after him but she stepped in front of the doorway.

‘Do youse two have Post Office business?’ she said. ‘For there’s no loitering.’ Then she turned on her heel and swept in, muttering about ‘you people’, whoever that might be. Of course, all that happened was that we loitered outside instead, and with us Constable Reid, his engine running. In under a minute, Joe was back, the circles under his eyes darker than ever and his face paler. His hand shook as he opened the door and his voice shook as he spoke.

‘Is Rosa,’ he said. ‘Rosa to say she is leave me. No say where she is.’

‘Excuse me, Mr Al-do?’ said Miss Brown, coming fussing out after him. ‘Do you know you’ve left my good telephone hanging down where it’ll scratch all my varnish?’

‘Talk to her!’ said Joe, taking hold of Alec’s lapels and clutching him until they were nose to nose.

‘If you’ve damaged Post Office property…’ said Miss Brown.

Joe swayed and his face turned a ghastly shade of grey. Alec reached out and put both arms around him. He threw me a desperate look. Quickly, I slipped into the post office to the kiosk in the back corner and caught the earpiece, which was indeed swinging at the end of its cord.

‘Mrs Aldo?’ I said. There was a sharp buzzing as she sobbed, or possibly gasped, at the other end of the line. ‘Mrs Aldo?’

‘Si,’ came a faint whisper. ‘Is me.’

‘Mrs Aldo, I know I’m a stranger but if you could see the state of your husband at this minute, you couldn’t, no matter what the temptations…’

Now she was sobbing for sure.

‘And think of your daughter,’ I said.

The sobs grew to wails. Behind me I was aware that Miss Brown had come back in from the street and was watching me, arms folded, eyebrows lost in her hair. I drew the door closed so that at least she could not hear me. In the new muffled air of the kiosk, Rosa Aldo’s sobs were louder than ever in my ear.

‘Come home,’ I said. ‘Just come home. This man, whoever he is, who has lured you away, he can’t possibly have honourable intentions. Or a good heart, I have to say. Your husband loves you. Not one woman in a hundred has a husband who loves her so.’ But the more I spoke the harder she cried, until it felt cruel to go on.

‘I go,’ she whispered. ‘Tell Giuseppe, mi dispiace tanto.’ And with that the line stopped all its buzzing and the soft, close quiet of the kiosk filled both my ears.

‘She hung up,’ I said, rejoining Alec and Joe on the pavement.

‘She say nothing?’ asked Joe, stricken all anew by this, it seemed. ‘Not one word?’

‘She said, um, “Me dispassy tanto”,’ I repeated, feeling foolish. Joe Aldo let all his breath go at once. ‘What does it mean?’

‘It mean – so very sorry,’ said Joe. ‘She is leave me, for true.’ At this he buried his head in Alec’s shoulder and began to weep, louder and more noisily than his wife even. Alec patted him awkwardly.

‘We’ll find her,’ he said. ‘I’ll get onto the exchange and ask them about the call and we’ll find her.’

I thanked all my stars I was English, turned to Constable Reid in the motorcar and nodded.

‘Let’s go,’ I said. Alec’s case had had its moment of excitement, but now the faceless corpse – Mademoiselle Beauclerc, in all likelihood – was mine again, her identification my problem and her possible murderess my particular responsibility.

Reid nodded back, but did not make any move to step down and open a door for me. Alec had his hands full supporting Joe and so I opened it myself and climbed in.

‘I can explain, Reid,’ I said as we drew away.

‘No need to explain it to me,’ said Reid, swinging the motorcar around and beginning to ascend the hill.

‘She’s an old friend. I’ve known her since she was a child. You understand a protective instinct. I know you do.’

‘Right,’ said Reid. My patience was exhausted.

‘Poor Cissie,’ I said. ‘No man is perfect but a man who pouts and sulks is a fearful drag. I shall tell her so in a spirit of warning when I meet her.’

‘Aye well,’ said Reid. ‘Fine enough. I’m just sayin’.’ Scotch has an inexhaustible supply of quite meaningless little bons mots with which to convey one’s determination to hang onto a huff; Reid seemed to know all of them.

Up at St Columba’s, Saturday afternoon was unfolding in leisurely fashion. The tennis courts were thronged, but for each foursome engaged in patting the ball back and forward, forward and back, sending it sailing over the net into the reach of the waiting racquet, there were at least a dozen lolling on mackintosh squares behind the service lines, chatting desultorily and sipping lemonade. In the rose garden, the girls were soaking up what watery sunshine there was by stretching out on their backs on the wide stone benches and even the narrower terrace balustrades. Their hair fanned out – St Columba’s seemed not to be the firm supporter of pigtails one might look for in a girls’ school – and their arms flopped down, letting their hands graze the ground at their sides. Just for a second that morning’s image swam before my eyes and I shuddered.

‘Aye,’ said Constable Reid. ‘We’ll no’ forget that yet awhile, eh no?’ And, sharing a look, we took the first steps towards cordiality again. ‘Here, youse!’ he said, clapping his hands. ‘Mind out and no’ fall off they banisters.’ It was hardly police business, but his hectoring did the trick, rousing all the girls until they were sitting or at least propped up on their elbows, blinking and scowling and no longer looking like corpses, which was fine by me.

‘And… put your hats on,’ I chipped in. ‘Or move into the shade before you all end up as brown as ploughmen.’ Reid nodded and we left the garden, to whispers of ‘Gilver’ and ‘French, I think’ and stifled laughter at how old-fashioned I had shown myself to be.

‘So where is she?’ said Reid, when we had slipped in through the open french windows to the empty dining room. He stood sniffing the air, which was still thick from the luncheon-time cabbage and gravy – the poor girls; small wonder they were drowsing like bumblebees – and looked so very efficient and eager that once again I felt an urge to shield Fleur and none at all to deliver her unto him.

‘I’ll take you to her rooms,’ I said, hardly knowing why I gave the little cell this lordly title – more shielding, probably.

The same cold feeling which had descended upon me at the cove was back again, stronger than ever. I wondered if Reid felt anything of the like and I stole glances at him as we crossed the hall and climbed the stairs. He seemed calm enough, grimly confident if anything, but he was a bright lad and surely he must be wondering if we would find her there. I was long past wondering myself; I was sure. We wended through the corridors, past rooms absolutely silent this sunny afternoon, and stopped at Fleur’s door. Constable Reid rapped on the wood with a firm authority that no one inside could have ignored, not for a pension. There was no answer. He tried the handle, found the door unlocked, glanced at me and just as firmly as he had knocked he swung it open.

The room, needless to say, was empty. Reid let his breath go – the first sign that he had been suffering even the smallest measure of tension.

‘Righty-ho,’ he said. ‘So where will she be if she’s no’ in here, then? Classroom? On a Saturday afternoon?’

I shook my head and gazed at the room that lay before me. It had been so bare before that it was hard to account for what made it barer now. Perhaps there had been a book on the beside table; certainly there was none today. And the water glass had been rinsed out and was resting upside down on a folded flannel facecloth by the washbasin. But perhaps Fleur rinsed her glass and moved her Bible every morning. What was it? Then my eye was caught by the dark lines along the front of the little chest and I bit down on my bottom lip. The drawers were not fully closed – the top one open half an inch, the next an inch and the third an inch and a half, so precise and so familiar. It was what Matron in the convalescent home in the war required us to do when one poor soldier had limped off home and the next had not arrived. The drawers were being aired. The drawers were empty.

And what had happened was my fault, entirely mine. I knew it had happened the moment I turned and saw the empty beach behind me, but I had done nothing. Later I would argue that I had tried and the stupid sergeant had stopped me. Later still, I would tell myself that if I knew the sergeant was stupid then it was up to me to ignore him. She could not have gone far; she had only had a five-minute start at most. I should have searched and listened and called her name and – surely – I would have found her. It was too late now.

Fleur was gone.