Unsuitable Day for a Murder

9

It was easy enough to find our way to Lady Lawson; the first person I asked – a working man on his way home, overalls black and expression weary – looked past me where I was hanging out of the driver’s side window having hallooed to him and informed Alec that he should ‘gang straicht oot b’yonder, ken Auchterarder wey, no twae mile and richt aff whaur ye’re gaun. Their po-ists are crummelt awa’, mind, but ye’ll no miss it. Bu’ow, richt? Bu’ow. Aye, ye’re grand.’ He tipped his hat and resumed his journey.

‘Got that?’ I said, trying not to smile, as I got back into gear and pulled away.

‘I bow to your greater experience, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘I didn’t think anyone could have a thicker Scotch burr than my head groom but this one has defeated me.’

‘The house is called Buttell,’ I translated for him. ‘It lies two miles away, directly off the Auchterarder road, and we won’t miss it, although the gateposts are somewhat tumbledown. And I think, in your defence, there was some Glaswegian in there, which no one would expect you to rise to after only five years of Perthshire for training.’

The gateposts of Buttell House were indeed ‘crummelt awa’ as was the wall into which they were set, the stone rotting away from around the railings, and the drive beyond was deeply potholed, so that I was prepared for the forlorn aspect of the house itself when it came into view: the tussocky grass, the rusty stains which blocked guttering and leaky downpipes had caused to spread over the pale grey stucco, the cracks in that stucco and worse than cracks – patches of bare brick where great damp lumps had fallen clean away. The windows were small-paned and many and so were dusty with neglect (it takes a good many hours or a good many servants to keep dozens of fiddly-paned windows gleaming) and the roof showed more than a dozen crooked slates beginning to slip out of place. It was at the roof that Alec sucked his breath in over his teeth and shook his head slowly.

‘You’re as bad as Hugh these days,’ I told him.

‘Hugh is a very sound chap when it comes to roofs,’ said Alec.

‘Always has been,’ I said. ‘When my mother and I paid our one and only visit to Gilverton during my engagement, he took us up into the attics and showed us the sarking. It was an omen.’

‘He probably thought you’d be interested, coming from the Shires,’ Alec said. ‘Sarking is unknown in the south.’

‘That’s exactly what Hugh said,’ I replied. ‘As though he were showing off koala bears or something.’

‘Anyway,’ said Alec as we drew up close to the house, ‘the Lawsons are either utterly feckless or pretty near broke to have let their roof get this way.’

‘Broke,’ I said. ‘I thought so the day of the jubilee.’ We stepped down and mounted the short flight of stairs to the front door.

‘How do we play this then, Dandy?’ said Alec when we were installed in a small sitting room and the maid-of-all-work who had let us in had gone to fetch her mistress.

‘No idea,’ I said. ‘As it lies?’

Lady Lawson joined us in a matter of minutes and greeted us with that vague and fluttery manner of hers, no visible curiosity about what on earth we were doing there.

‘Tea?’ she said, sinking into a chair. ‘A little late, perhaps. And a little early for sherry, but welcome to Buttell all the same. How nice of you to come and see me.’

Thus she managed the problem of refreshments for two unexpected strangers; I would have taken a bet that if we had rolled up bang on four o’clock ‘tea’ would still have been prevented somehow and if we had waited until seven ‘sherry’ would likewise have met a handy obstacle. For the Lawsons were not just broke in the way that almost everyone is broke these days, I thought, looking round at the dark patches on the walls where pictures had been removed for sale – and not large patches either; not grand masterpieces gone to put a boy through Oxford or a girl through her season, but small patches of eighteen inches square, hinting that little prints and watercolours were being sold off now, for grocers’ bills and servants’ wages.

Lady Lawson was telling us that she had only a few minutes before the dressing bell and she hoped that we would forgive her, but she really could not ask us to stay for dinner because there was a small party of intimates gathering.

‘And one of my chums – my dear old chum – is in mourning, strictly speaking. Quite all right to come over to us, you see, but she’s not up to general company.’

Alec made a good selection of understanding noises and I let them go for both of us: I would have eaten my book and a half of pencilled notes if the Lawsons still dressed for dinner or invited friends to join them.

‘We won’t keep you long, Lady Lawson,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I have a question to ask you.’

‘Mrs Gilver, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘A friend of the Aitkens, like me.’ She simpered a little as she said this; as though she found it amusing that she chose such friends, as though it were a sign of her modernity instead of her desperation. But what was she getting out of it? I asked myself. There had to be something.

‘Indeed,’ I replied. ‘Well, I’m more of an agent of the Aitkens, rather than a friend.’ Lady Lawson would never do anything so vulgar as scowl, but her vague, amused expression grew a little pinched at this.

‘An agent?’ she said.

‘I know you went to see Mary Aitken this morning,’ I began, feeling my way.

‘I kept my appointment,’ said Lady Lawson. She rearranged the pleats of her tweed skirt over her knees in a gesture that was almost fidgety. ‘I should not have dreamed of its standing but Mary bade me go and so I went.’ Then she looked over my shoulder and spoke the next part very fast and high. ‘I left her in no doubt as to my thoughts on her proposal and I cannot see why she has sent you. I must beg you to return to her and reiterate my refusal, my most definite refusal, in the firmest terms.’

I was quite at sea now and I could see from the way Alec was frowning that he was even more lost than I.

‘Her proposal?’ I said, and in repeating the word at last a faint idea began to stir in me.

‘I am very sorry about what happened but it did happen and there is an end to our plans and nothing to be done about it.’ Lady Lawson sat back in her chair.

All of a sudden it was clear to me. I had been unable to account for Lady Lawson’s presence that day of the jubilee and I had certainly failed to see why the policeman who had grilled us all in the back offices at the store had leaned so heavily on the oldest Lawson son – what was his name? – Roger. And throughout the whole affair I had been lost as to why the Hepburn boy was not welcomed as a suitor for the Aitkens’ heiress, why Mary Aitken felt she had scope to despise him so. Now, I saw that Mary Aitken had her sights set on a greater prize. Now, sagging wallpaper and threadbare rugs before my eyes, I knew the nature of the understanding between the mother of one and the grandmother of the other. Mary Aitken’s aspirations had reached as high as this and impoverished Lady Lawson had stooped that low – rank given and a load of roof tiles got, along with a roll of banknotes to pay a man to fit them. And the police had guessed or had heard about the trading of the Lawson name for the Aitken money and asked themselves what the boy – one of the parcels of goods in the transaction – might do to break the deal.

‘Roger was supposed to marry Mirren,’ I said.

Never in Lady Lawson’s long life of decorum must she have had to reach so deep inside herself to summon the light smile and airy wave of a hand that she bestowed upon us now. She shook as she did so.

‘He was,’ she said. ‘Are you shocked, Mrs Gilver? My late husband would have been horrified.’

‘But – forgive me, Lady Lawson.’ Alec was speaking now, sliding forward in his seat and staring at her. ‘What proposal of Mary Aitken’s were you refusing just now? What new proposal, I mean. Now that poor Mirren is gone.’

‘I thought she sent you here to press it upon me,’ Lady Lawson said.

‘Press what?’ said Alec. ‘The girl’s dead.’

‘She asked me this morning,’ said Lady Lawson, ‘and I was shaken to my core. She wanted Roger to say he hadn’t thought much of the idea and that he probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. She wants my son to accuse himself – in the eyes of the world – of breach of promise and – in the eyes of God – of ending the poor girl’s life.’ She sat back in her chair as though exhausted. ‘I was not brought up to games of intrigue and I have no skill at them.’ She sighed and there was a tuneful note in it which turned the sigh into a snatch of song. She had been brought up to games of flirtation, I thought to myself, and she was a master of them.

‘Why would she think you’d go along with it?’ I said.

‘Well, the absolute plain bald fact of the matter,’ said Lady Lawson, ‘was that Roger wasn’t terribly keen. And who could blame my poor boy? What man would want to marry such a shrinking, quaking girl? If she had smiled and batted her eyes a little he’d have been pleased enough to put her on his arm and show her off to people, department store or no.’ Alec was looking quite revolted, but not me; I knew of old what underlay the wan and flowery surface of women like Lady Lawson and it was always pretty steely, every time. ‘A courtship, a marriage, a son of his own, a bit of help for his brothers and then a pleasant life filled with his choice of pleasant things. It wasn’t much to ask of him, was it? No more than we all owe our parents and our family name.’ By now, Alec was far beyond revolted, a little sick in fact, and I hid my smiles.

‘So Mary only wants Roger to be honest really,’ I said. Lady Lawson sat bolt upright in her chair.

‘Not a bit of it,’ she said. ‘Mirren Aitken didn’t kill herself because Roger let her down. Oh, he groaned and grumbled, but he would have gone through with it in the end.’

‘Even still,’ I said, ‘wouldn’t you rather have him known as a heartbreaker than as…’ She waited, giving me no choice but to go on: ‘… as a man a girl would kill herself to escape from?’

At this Lady Lawson burst out in an incoherent stream of denial, but then just as suddenly she stopped again. ‘I never thought of it that way,’ she said. ‘Oh my goodness, you’re right. But it’s nonsense. Everyone knows Mirren wanted to marry the Hepburn boy and Mary wouldn’t let her. No one will believe that her heart broke because of poor Roger. Oh, my poor boy! He’ll be a laughing stock. What was it you said? A man a girl would kill herself to escape from? Poor Roger! Oh, I’m a such a silly woman to have got mixed up in the grubby business in the first place.’

‘Why did you, if you don’t mind my asking?’ said Alec.

‘Well…’ Lady Lawson, I assumed, was seeking a euphemism for ‘hard cash’. I thought I would help her by suggesting something even worse, which she could vigorously deny.

‘She wasn’t in a position to put any pressure on you, was she?’

‘Hardly!’ said Lady Lawson. ‘It’s I who know more than I ever wanted to about her, not she me.’ This was interesting and both Alec and I tried to look alert but not so vulturous that we scared her. ‘Mary Aitken has been my personal dressmaker since I was a girl. She knows all my numbers off by heart, carries them in her head, isn’t that touching? We come from the same village, you know, on the other side of the river.’ She waved a hand towards the windows, indicating the Forth, Edinburghshire and the Border country. ‘My mother gave her work when she was trying to eke out her wages from her first job in town and stuck with her when she went to Aitkens’ and so Mary stuck with my mother and me when she married and here we both are. My patronage of her has slowly become hers of me over the years until we found ourselves at the point when she could feel bold enough to look up, with a mouthful of pins, and put such a notion to me, woman to woman, like some kind of business dealing.’ Lady Lawson blinked her pretty eyes very slowly two or three times to show us how overwhelming the thought of business dealings was to a flower of femininity such as she.

‘But – once again, forgive me, Lady Lawson,’ I said, ‘but Mary makes no secret of her humble beginnings. Why should you call all that “knowing more than you want to”?’

‘It’s not her beginnings, Mrs Gilver,’ Lady Lawson said. ‘It was her route out of them. Such scheming, such naked ambition – most unseemly. She snared poor Mr Aitken like a rabbit in a trap, you know. And he wasn’t the first one she had set her sights on either.’

‘Dear me,’ I said, thinking I could easily believe it of Mary.

‘And then marrying off Abigail to her cousin that way? Too dreadful. I couldn’t understand it. There was no reason for it. Abby was a lively pretty girl and could have had her pick of the young men. She had a fortune, you know.’

‘It certainly does seem a little… careless,’ I said.

‘And then so scrupulous about a match with the Hepburn boy for Mirren.’ Lady Lawson lowered her voice. ‘You know about the Hepburn girls, I suppose?’ Alec’s shoes squeaked as he writhed in discomfort.

‘A little. You think that was Mary’s objection? I thought it was business rivalry.’

‘Oh well, yes, that too. She certainly resented them. But if she ever got on to the subject of the sisters she was quite frightening. And to think I was going to marry my son into such a family. Cousin marriage, and suicide, and spite so bitter that it twisted her up into knots sometimes. What kind of mother must I be? Oh, my poor boy.’

And so on and so forth for quite some time, while Alec and I sat squirming. When at last she ran out of exclamations, or perhaps breath, she left us with a faint allusion to a headache and an ethereal farewell. We stayed behind in the little sitting room, puffed out a few good breaths between us and reviewed the interview.

‘That’s how I was supposed to be brought up,’ I said. ‘It’s exhausting, isn’t it?’

‘Damned irritating,’ said Alec. ‘Makes me feel like Professor Higgins. Makes me want to throw things. How did you escape it, darling? Not that you never make me want to throw things, but not in the same way.’

‘I’m not quite sure,’ I said. I was always wont to sum up my mother as a dreamer, slightly to despise her aesthetic bent and her enthralment when it came to nature and freedom and even less slightly to scorn her passionate declarations on them, but when faced with the kind of fluttering she had despised I did begin to see how stoutly she had held against her mother’s expectations and how valiant she been in her way. Then I remembered that the fresh air she so loved was the air of spring and that she kept to the fireside in her shawls at the slightest drizzle and disappeared under a parasol in the summer sun; that the nature she adored was the nature of rose petals and bluebell woods not the nature which will swell a turnip and feed a family on it; that a beautiful death had had so much more allure than precious life got by sullying herself with the ugly words doctors use and the ugly things they do. Besides, it should not be forgotten that my mother had produced my sister Mavis as well as me.

‘Nanny Palmer,’ I said to Alec, realising that of course this was the key. ‘Nanny Palmer never would have any truck with the vapours – everything from squealing at mice to getting seasick was “the vapours” to her, you know – and then of course it would have been wasted on Hugh all these years anyway, and no daughters, and now the casework… who knows where it will end.’

A memory came back to me unbidden of Mavis, on her wedding day, sitting at her looking glass as my mother lowered the coronet of flowers onto her hair. They looked at one another in the glass and exchanged misty smiles. Then Mavis caught my eye and the smile died. ‘What is it?’ she had said. I replied truthfully that it was nothing, but she was not to be denied, not on her wedding day. ‘Go on,’ she had said. ‘Tell me what you were thinking. I insist that you tell me.’ I had assured her that I was thinking nothing at all, only how pretty she looked in her frock, which was very drooping and medieval with long points to the bell-sleeves and a low girdle of plaited silks with ends as long as her train, but the truth was that I had looked at those pointed sleeves and wondered if at the wedding breakfast she would be able to help them going in her soup.

‘Alec,’ I said, ‘tell me something – and I’m serious, I assure you. Would you describe me as “hearty”?’

‘Hearty?’ said Alec. ‘No. Why?’

‘Because that’s what lies at the other end of the line from Lady Lawson and the likes of her and much as I loathe one, I do dread the other. My sister called me hearty once and it still pricks me.’

‘It wouldn’t prick at you if you were hearty,’ said Alec with great kindness.

‘Thank you, darling.’

‘Don’t mention it. And let’s get back to the case, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Right. Lady Lawson has given us an embarrassment of reasons for Mary Aitken to deny Mirren the right to marry Dugald. Jack and Hilda we knew about anyway. And I suppose the business rivalry – feud, call it what you like – might just explain Robin and his father being against the match.’

‘We haven’t accounted for Abigail’s misgivings yet. And we haven’t got a motive for Mirren’s suicide except jilting, in which case we haven’t got a motive for Dugald’s.’

‘Mirren first,’ said Alec. ‘She didn’t know about Jack and Hilda. Did she know about Roger Lawson? Did she care about the Aitken-Hepburn feud? Would she have resisted eloping because of it? I wonder what caused the feud, by the way. Mrs Lumsden seemed to hint that it wasn’t always this way between them.’

‘I wish we could just barge in like the police and demand that everyone answer our questions,’ I said, dragging up another hefty sigh and letting it out. ‘We can’t even threaten them with the police!’

‘Why not?’ said Alec. He had been stretched out in his chair, practically horizontal in that way of his, but he hauled himself upright and his eyes were alight again. ‘Why can’t we?’

‘Because if I go back to Inspector Stinky, Hugh will be clapped in irons.’

‘But no one knows that,’ said Alec. ‘We can threaten ourselves blue, Dandy. Of course we can.’ I clapped my hands together with glee.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We really can! Of course we couldn’t actually carry out the threat if it doesn’t work, but let’s cross our fingers we don’t need to.’

‘Who do we start with?’ said Alec. ‘Bright and early tomorrow morning, I think. And bring an overnight bag along too. I don’t know about you but I’m getting heartily sick of that road here and back again.’

‘Abigail Aitken,’ I said. ‘If we find out that she knew about Jack and Hilda and told Mirren, then we have a motive for Mirren’s suicide and enough reasons for the marriage ban to go around everyone. Then we can assume Dugald killed himself out of grief and the case is closed. We won’t need the overnight bag after all.’

‘What about the inspector?’ said Alec. ‘Are we saying that he somehow knew about Jack and Hilda? Knew that Mirren and Dugald were siblings? How could he?’ I said nothing. ‘Put your toothbrush in a little bag and bring it with you, Dandy. We’re not done yet awhile, if you ask me.’

It was bright and early indeed the following morning when Alec’s motorcar swung into the front drive at Abbey Park and rolled up to the house. We stepped down, two of us all swagger and determination and one of us all wagging tail and snuffling with excitement at the new scents in this new place. Alec had raised a sardonic eyebrow when he saw Bunty on the end of her lead, but I had insisted.

‘She can still put up a pretty chilling growl and quivering lip if someone shouts at me,’ I said. ‘And she’s a good intimidating size, especially in a drawing room, and don’t forget that time last year.’ That had been my darling Bunty’s finest hour; she had gone for a villain with her lips drawn back and her teeth gnashing, snarling like a wolf. If she did the same to Jack Aitken he would never chase me down the drive again.

‘Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,’ said Alec, but he had opened the door for her and whistled her in.

Down at Dunfermline, Trusslove greeted me like an old friend.

‘Thank the Lord,’ he said. ‘Good news, is it? I’ve told all the staff you’re helping, dear, and we’re sending up prayers. I only wish we could do more, but nobody downstairs knows anything worth telling.’ He looked at Alec. ‘And are you another of them, my friend? Good. More power to your elbow.’ He beckoned us in and made off ahead of us to the library. ‘My friend?’ Alec mouthed to me, behind his back.

‘Right then,’ Trusslove said. ‘And who is it you’re after today?’

‘Mr Aitken,’ I replied. ‘Mr Jack, if he’s here, Trusslove, please.’

For Alec and I had decided on the journey to give Jack Aitken a shot at chivalry, a chance to save his wife the humiliation of confirming to us that she knew of his affair.

Less than a minute after Trusslove left us we heard Jack Aitken coming from the other side of the marble hallway and he entered the room like a rocket, ready for a fight, fists bunched and chin stuck forward, but evidently Trusslove had announced only me because when Aitken caught sight of Alec he stopped so abruptly that he had to take a step to the side to get his balance back again.

‘Mr Aitken,’ said Alec smoothly. ‘Let me introduce myself. My name is Osborne, I’m an associate of Mrs Gilver, and I’ve come along this morning to see if I can’t help matters run a little more easily than I heard they did yesterday.’ He had not rehearsed this speech in my hearing and I tried very hard to take it in my stride, but I was most deeply impressed and gratified by it and in danger of beaming, because I could not imagine anything more subtly menacing if I tried. ‘First of all, though,’ Alec was saying, ‘I must give you my most heartfelt condolences on the death of your daughter, sir. I am very sorry to have heard of such a loss.’ This only bewildered Jack Aitken even more. He came over to where we were at a much reduced pace and sat down in the chair Alec had placed for him, giving Bunty a perplexed look as he did so. ‘Mrs Gilver?’ Alec said, opening a courteous hand to me. ‘If you would care to continue.’

‘As I was saying yesterday, Mr Aitken,’ I said, taking up – I hoped – Alec’s smooth and unsettling tone, ‘I have strong reason to doubt that Mirren took her own life. I have some reason too to doubt that Dugald Hepburn did so. I intend to get to the bottom of it. If I am wrong, all well and good. I’m no busybody, no gossip. But if I am thwarted, Mr Aitken, if I am denied answers and threatened the way I was yesterday, I shall go to the police and hand the case to them. And they – as I am sure you will agree – are considerably less discreet than Mr Osborne and me.’

‘We were your clients,’ Jack Aitken said, staring horrified at me. ‘If this is how you treat your clients I’m surprised you ever have any.’ I tried not to let my face show that his words had hit home. Indeed, if anyone were ever to find out that Alec and I had come along like a pair of gangsters’ heavies and intimidated a grieving family this way after being told to leave them alone several times now, we would never work again and Gilver and Osborne’s business cards would go straight from the printers to the fire.

‘Now, when we spoke before, Mr Aitken,’ I said, ignoring him, ‘you told me your only misgiving about Mirren and Dugald marrying’ – there was the look again, as though he had bitten down on a bad tooth – ‘was that she was too young to marry at all. At twenty. You said you felt remorseful that your decision to forbid the match had led to Mirren’s suicide. And of course you would; how could you not? But you see, what puzzled me was that when I suggested it could be murder you… took against me, shall we say? Almost it seemed you would rather have your daughter’s death on your hands than on any other’s.’

Jack Aitken made a valiant effort to look composed, but most unfortunately for him he had taken a seat in the window and was sitting in a patch of golden sunlight so that his tie pin twinkled as his chest rose and fell with a series of quickened, panicky breaths he could not control. His voice though, when he finally spoke, was the same old repertory company routine as ever; the juvenile lead lightly tossing off his lines with half a mind on supper after the show.

‘I do apologise for yesterday, Mrs Gilver, I must ask you to forgive me.’ He put a hand to his brow and pressed it there. ‘I have never lost my temper that way in my life.’ Alec and I exchanged a glance. He had come into the room like a bull into the ring not three minutes ago. ‘I thought you were accusing me of killing her. My little Mirren. I saw red, I’m afraid.’

‘Why would you think such a thing?’ I asked him.

‘Because it was me you were telling,’ Jack Aitken said, with a sheepish shrug. ‘I thought to myself, why else would you seek me out and tell me unless it’s me you think did it?’

‘But I was only talking to you because you happened to come looking for your wife,’ I said. ‘And I was only talking to her because she happened to meet me. It was your mother I came to see.’ Before he could compose his next speech I came back at him. ‘And, actually, Mr Aitken, after you had railed at me for the accusation you say you thought I made against you, you railed even more about the idea that – here I quote you – “she would kill a child”.’

‘Once again, Mrs Gilver, I apologise. Such strain, such unbearable strain and I have not held up under it at all well.’ He paused as though for sympathy; receiving none, he continued. ‘Well, it was just that my poor dear Abby was there, with the gun, and was questioned and so of course I did think for a moment it was her you suspected. Gosh, I feel wretched that I might have implicated my dear wife in some way.’

‘You didn’t,’ I said. ‘Not until just now, I mean. Reminding us about the gun that way. “She would never kill a child” doesn’t sound at all like an accusation of a mother. Does it, Mr Osborne?’ Jack turned as Alec shook his head. ‘A child?’ I said. Jack’s head whipped back so he was once more facing me. ‘One doesn’t usually refer to a woman’s own daughter that way.’

‘I was very angry,’ Jack said. ‘Grief takes many forms.’

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘So you’re sticking to your story, Mr Aitken, that you wouldn’t have minded Dugald Hepburn as a son-in-law a year or two hence and you think Mirren killed herself because she wouldn’t wait for him.’

He nodded, swallowing hard.

‘And what did you make of your mother-in-law’s hopes regarding Roger Lawson?’

Jack Aitken blinked and said nothing.

‘You did know, I assume, that Mary and Lady Lawson were hoping for an engagement?’

‘Roger Lawson?’ said Jack Aitken, then he nodded. ‘I see. Yes, I see. Well, that would have been a very satisfactory arrangement, I imagine.’ Alec and I could not help turning a little towards another to exchange another glance then.

‘Forgive me, Mr Aitken,’ I said, ‘but Mirren would have been the same age marrying Roger Lawson as marrying Dugald, wouldn’t she?’

‘Oh, yes, I suppose, in a sense,’ Jack said. I could see Alec frowning deeper still. Jack Aitken saw it too and from deep within himself he dug out another of his endless little sketch routines. He threw one leg over the other – most unnaturally since his fists were still in his pockets – and chuckled. ‘But you see if Mary organised it, the terms would be very different.’

‘A long engagement, you mean?’ Alec asked.

‘Not a doubt,’ Aiken said. ‘She’s a formidable woman of business as I’m sure you’ve noticed already. The financial arrangements would have been very secure.’

I could not begin to see what he meant; the financial repercussions of Mirren entering the Lawson family would have weighed very heavily on the Aitkens, surely.

‘Mirren was only twenty,’ Jack Aitken said. ‘At twenty-one she was to come into her share of Aitkens’. And because of the fact that Abby and I are cousins and neither of us have siblings surviving, quite a lot of Aitkens’ was coming to Mirren down a funnel, as it were. She would have had a controlling interest. Yes, after her birthday, she would have had outright control of us all. And if she were married her husband might have tried to influence her, but if she stayed unmarried until after she was twenty-one, she could dispose of her shares as she saw fit and then she could have married without her new husband…’ He took one of his hands out of his pocket and waved it in the air.

‘Scooping the lot,’ I finished and something in my tone brought the wary look back into Jack Aitken’s eyes. ‘So really,’ I said, ‘when you talked about your poor little Mirren being too young for marriage and not wanting to lose her, what you really meant was something quite different.’

‘Aitkens’ was built up out of nothing by the sweat of my father’s brow,’ said Jack. ‘And my uncle’s too. We owed it to their hard work and dedication. Our stewardship. Our honouring of their vision.’

‘Mirren did not owe it her life,’ I said. ‘No girl owes any institution that.’

Unbelievably, Jack Aitken gave Alec a man-to-man look then, as though to say that they two understood all about laying down one’s life for glory but that a mere woman could not be expected to feel the swell of pride. Alec returned a blank, dead gaze which made me want to hug him.

‘And besides,’ I said, ‘we know that wasn’t what troubled you about Mirren and Dugald. That was a remarkable tale you dreamed up, Mr Aitken, and you told it well, but we know exactly why you were against the marriage.’

He stared hard at me, without answering, probably trying to work out if I were bluffing.

‘Mrs Hepburn told us yesterday,’ said Alec. Jack Aitken did not turn to him and did not answer. He simply deflated and his eyes dropped until he was staring at the floor.

‘What we want to know, really, is if your wife found out.’ Again there was no answer. ‘If perhaps she told Mirren.’ Yet more silence. ‘If that perhaps was why Mirren-’

‘No!’ said Jack, his head jerking back up. ‘Abby doesn’t know. And Mirren certainly didn’t know. I told you, she was so kind to me the last weeks, she can’t have known about my… lapse.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten. Well, in that case, can you explain why Abby was against the marriage?’

‘She’s a dutiful daughter.’

‘And why she was so sure Mirren wouldn’t elope?’

‘So was Mirren,’ he said. The look that crossed his face was the genuine one I had seen once or twice before. When all was said and done, he was not a monster and his child had died. Not his only child, since he had at least one (and possibly four) with Hilda, but his child, all the same.

‘We won’t detain you any longer,’ I said, trying to speak kindly.

‘Let me see you out,’ Jack said, standing.

‘Oh, we’re not finished,’ said Alec, who had clearly not been entertaining any such sentimental thoughts as mine. ‘We’ll ring the bell for Trusslove when we’re ready to speak to your wife.’

‘You won’t tell her, will you?’ said Aitken.

‘Not if we can avoid it,’ I said. ‘I’m not in the business of doling out gratuitous pain.’

Jack Aitken crumpled at that – sagged anyway – he was no match for Alec and me. He nodded his head wearily and went on his way.

‘Well,’ I said when he was gone. ‘He is the worst and yet the most dedicated liar I have ever seen. One almost wants to laugh. Does he think we can’t see the joins, between one posture and the next? Are we supposed to forget the last mood when he clicks his fingers and moves on to the next one? Grieving father, man of the world, fierce protecting husband, loyal son…’

‘You can’t see whatever it is that Hilda Hepburn sees in him then?’

‘Not a bit,’ I said. ‘She called him as tricky as a bag of monkeys. She finds it entertaining but it makes me sick.’

‘I especially didn’t swallow the act of protective husband,’ said Alec. ‘Well done, Dandy, spotting the flaw. You’re right of course. He would have said “her child” or “her own child”. It was Hilda who was making him so fierce, not his poor wife.’

‘And speaking of his poor wife,’ I said, ‘shall I ring for Trusslove to fetch her? I have to know why she banned the marriage. I’ll never sleep again otherwise. And, besides, I’d like to ask her about what happened up on that landing. She was right there. If there’s any chance a murderer was there too, surely she’d know.’

The butler’s good, kind face clouded a little at our request but he went just the same.

‘This is quite a place,’ Alec said, looking around himself as we waited.

‘The house, you mean? Or the library?’

‘Well, both,’ Alec said, ‘but especially the library. If we can call it that. Where are the books?’

‘In those glass cases,’ I said. ‘All five hundred years old and worth a fortune. They must keep the almanacs and three-volume novels elsewhere.’

The door opened and Abigail Aitken came in.

‘Again?’ she said. ‘More questions? I’ve told you everything I know.’

Alec stood and guided her to a chair. Dear man, he could not help it; she looked even more frail today and she looked, too, as unkempt as Bella, her great mane of hair dull and greasy at the roots and the shawl which once more she hugged about herself giving off the kind of stale, sour odour I had only ever smelled in two-room cottages before.

‘My dear Mrs Aitken,’ I said to her, ‘I am more sorry than I can tell you, but I have no choice but to come again. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t try to get to the bottom of what happened here.’

There was just one quick glint in her eyes then.

‘You would be surprised, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘You would be very surprised to find how able we are to live with ourselves. What choice do we have after all? Our eyes close at night and open the next day and we are still here. We breathe in and out and we drink water and eat food and our eyes blink and we shiver in the cold and squint in the sun and go on and on and on.’ Her head had fallen as she spoke but now she looked up at me again. ‘And after an eternity, we add up the days and it has been ten. Ten days since she died. Fifteen since I saw her alive. And we go on some more.’

I looked over at Alec. Despite everything I had said, I was willing to leave this house and this case and let this poor woman grieve in peace, if he gave me the slightest sign. He stared ahead stonily.

‘I made a mistake, you see,’ Abigail Aitken went on. ‘I thought if I could just get through the funeral, everything would be better then. If I could make it through until after the funeral and come home… you won’t believe what I thought if I could make it through the funeral and come home.’

‘You thought she’d come back again,’ Alec said.

‘Yes!’ said Abigail and it was almost a shout, she was so delighted that he had understood her. ‘How did you know? Oh! I’m sorry. Who have you lost? That you should know.’

‘My brother,’ Alec said. ‘It was his memorial, for me. If I got the memorial finished and installed in our little chapel at home, he’d come to see it and complain about the wording probably.’

‘Your brother,’ Abigail said. ‘Jack’s brothers died too, you know. But he doesn’t understand how I feel.’

I tried to stop shock showing on my face. And not only his brothers, I thought. His daughter too. Did his wife not see what a monster she made him sound? In case it should occur to her and pain her, I hurried to fill the silence in the room.

‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said, ‘I know the police have closed the case, but I also know that they have some misgivings. I would rather not go to them if I can avoid doing so. I would rather spare you all the pain.’

‘I think I must be immune to further pain, Mrs Gilver,’ said Abigail, ‘but if you could spare us disgrace – my mother and Bella too who have done nothing to merit it – I would be thankful. I don’t care what happens to me. Ask away.’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘First, if you can bear it, I’d like to ask about what happened up on the attic landing when Mirren died.’

Abigail nodded, but drew her shawl a little tighter around her.

‘There would be no point in my confessing again,’ she said. ‘It didn’t work the first time.’

‘Can you tell me why you went up there?’ I said.

‘The police asked me that,’ Abigail said. ‘I was downstairs with Jack and Mother – but of course you were there, weren’t you? – and then Jack went away – I don’t know why.’

‘He went to check that the doors were closed,’ I said. ‘Your mother was worried about gatecrashers.’

‘All I knew was that he was gone and I thought I might fall down. I felt faint and there were so many people all watching. I wanted to hide. I just wanted to curl up somewhere until it was over. I didn’t want to be there at all, really. But then I remembered Mirren’s special little place, up in the attics – like a little play house really except that it was a proper room. She had begged all sorts of things out of her granny to furnish it and so I went there. Or that’s where I was going. To curl up and put my hands over my head and feel close to her.’

‘You didn’t suspect that she was actually there, then?’ I said. ‘When you say you wanted to be close to her…’

‘No,’ said Abigail. ‘I had no idea where she was. I’d have gone to her otherwise. I’d have comforted her and brought her home.’ She fell silent.

Very gently, Alec tried to jog her into speech again. ‘So you went off to the back stairs?’

Abigail blinked. ‘Yes, I went up the back stairs and when I was near the top I heard a noise and I went out onto the landing and Mirren was there. On the floor. And her pretty hair.’ Abigail Aitken put her hands up and stuck her fingers into her own hair, pulling them through its tangles. I winced, hearing it snapping and watching her tug her hands free again. ‘She had the softest, most golden curls,’ she said. ‘As light as little feathers. When she was a baby she had a halo of gold all round her head and then little curls along her neck and then when she was three, finally enough curls to make a pigtail and she used to ask me “When will I have lady’s hair like you, Mama?” and I would think how I hoped she would never have anything but those thistledown curls.’

After a pause, I took a turn at nudging her.

‘And you took the gun out of her hand?’

‘Yes,’ said Abigail. ‘No. She wasn’t blinking, you see. So I put the lights out in case they were hurting her. Because she wasn’t blinking and she used to get sore eyes sometimes and I would put drops in for her. Then I took the gun. And I walked away, because I didn’t want to fall on top of her and hurt her, and I turned it on myself and shut my eyes and tried to squeeze the trigger but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make my finger move. And then I was sitting down and you came with Bella and then Bella went away and that’s when I saw how I could make it work. If I said I had squeezed the trigger and I had killed her then they would hang me. And do you know what I wish now?’

I shook my head.

‘I wish I hadn’t walked away to the other wall. And do you know why? Because then when I sat down I would have been beside her and maybe even touching her and I didn’t get to touch her after the police came. So that’s what I wish now.’

Bunty stood up, took a few paces forward and looked up at Abigail’s face, her tail waving very slightly. Then she turned and shuffled herself as close as possible in towards Abigail’s legs, sat down and leaned. Abigail laid a hand on her broad smooth head and patted her.

‘Good girl,’ she said. ‘Good dog.’

‘Now, Mrs Aitken,’ I resumed, feeling quite a lot better about questioning her now that she had darling Bunty as solace, ‘in the time between hearing the shot and coming onto the landing, did you hear anything else? Footsteps, doors opening or closing, any kind of scuffling? Any indication that someone else might have been there?’

Abigail continued her steady stroking of Bunty’s head. Bunty’s eyes closed in bliss. Abigail was almost smiling.

‘There was no one else there,’ she said. ‘My poor Mirren shot herself, Mrs Gilver. I wish you would believe me.’

‘If you would tell me why you’re so sure perhaps I could,’ I said, but Abigail shook her head.

‘I promised to be as open as I could without hurting another person,’ she answered. ‘If I told you why I was so sure I would be hurting someone who has done nothing to deserve it.’

‘Then let us tell you something,’ Alec said. ‘It might change your mind about suicide. Your mother-in-law, Mrs John, along with Dugald’s grandmother had formed a plan for the young people.’

‘I know,’ said Abigail. ‘An elopement. Mirren told me.’

‘She did?’ This was surprising news. ‘When?’

‘The night before she ran away,’ said Abigail. She withdrew her hand from Bunty and, winding both fists into her shawl, she stretched it tight across her body. ‘The night before.’

‘She told you about a planned elopement and the next day she was gone and yet you were sure she hadn’t eloped?’ Alec said. Abigail nodded her head.

‘She would never have married him,’ she said. ‘Never.’

‘That brings us very neatly to the next question,’ I said. ‘Why not? What was wrong with Dugald Hepburn? Why was the marriage forbidden so vehemently?’

Abigail said nothing for a moment or two. Then she spoke up with a harder note in her voice.

‘You should ask my mother,’ she said. ‘She was the “vehement” one.’

‘But you were against the notion too, Mrs Aitken, and so we are asking you. You liked the boy and Mirren – no matter what you say – seemed to love the boy. So what was wrong?’

‘My mother didn’t want it,’ said Abigail. ‘Nor my husband.’

‘Yes, we’ve heard from your husband,’ I said. Alec started, but I wiggled my eyebrows at him and went on. ‘Do you know why he was against it? Is it the same reason for you?’

‘No,’ said Abby quietly. ‘It can’t be. He didn’t know… Mirren’s secret.’

‘He told us it was money,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Abigail.

‘Mirren’s shares,’ Alec said. ‘The future of Aitkens’.’

‘Oh, yes, that,’ she said, doing nothing to shore up any belief we might have had that the shares really were a part of the difficulty. ‘My mother didn’t want to see Aitkens’ being… what was the word she used… consumed by Hepburns’, you see.’

‘Subsumed, I think you mean,’ said Alec. ‘She would rather have seen the business bled white by the Lawson estates?’

‘What?’ said Abigail.

‘Your mother and Lady Lawson were hoping to broker an engagement between Mirren and Roger,’ I said.

Abigail considered this for a moment or two, then she nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That might have done very nicely. I wish my mother had told Mirren about it. It might have given her something to look forward to.’

‘You’d have gone along with it?’ I asked. ‘You’d have taken your mother’s side in it?’

Abigail nodded, smiling.

‘My mother likes to have the arrangement of things,’ she said. ‘She chose Jack for me, you know. My father was not in favour of it – Uncle John was already gone by then – but Mother won the day. My father never really forgave her, you know. And when he died, I think Mother berated herself. For displeasing him. Even though it was too late then to undo the harm. Poor Mother. She’s the same now. About Mirren.’

She gave me a quick look, to see – I think – if I understood and I nodded to show that I did.

‘She spoke most heartrendingly to me,’ I said. ‘She feels utterly wretched about Mirren. She blames herself.’ I sat forward and fixed Abigail with my most serious stare. ‘If you could take that burden off her shoulders, Mrs Aitken, you would be doing a very fine thing.’

Abigail stared back at me and then she flushed and tears sprang into her eyes.

‘You mean tell my mother someone killed our girl?’ she said. ‘That wasn’t what happened. Why don’t you believe me?’ Bunty, upset by her voice, turned round and put a paw up onto her lap. Abigail shook it and a ghost of a smile came back to her face. ‘Good girl,’ she said again. ‘Good dog, aren’t you? We should get a dog,’ she said, looking up again. ‘I might get a puppy for Mother. Anything to help her. Anything to stop her being ill.’ She bent down and kissed Bunty’s head. ‘After my father died,’ she said, sitting up again, ‘my mother had to go away for a while. That’s how bad it was. In her grief, she became quite… it sounds dreadful to say this, but quite peculiar. She spoke very oddly, saying some dreadful things. About Jack and me – our being cousins, you know. So long as she said them to me alone, I didn’t mind, although it was very upsetting, but I was concerned when she started talking to the staff, you know.’

‘The servants?’ said Alec.

‘No, at the store,’ said Abigail. ‘Mrs Lumsden, for one. Telling her things that no one should say outside the family and even inside the family really.’

‘Yes, Mrs Lumsden and Miss Hutton both hinted to me that your mother was not so strong as she looks,’ I said.

‘They didn’t tell you what she said, did they?’ said Abigail.

‘Do these secrets have any bearing on what’s happening now?’

I had never seen any family resemblance between Abigail and Mary before. Both were small, but Abigail was a plump, sweet, little dumpling of a woman still, at nearly fifty, with a round rosy cheek and a full curve to her shoulder and hip, while Mary was like an iron poker, a tiny rigid pillar of black, tight-lipped, straight-haired, the skin stretched across her jaw and her neck as though no flesh cushioned it from the bones beneath. Now, though, for the first time, I saw the mother in the daughter. Abigail’s eyes turned to chips of grey ice and her mouth was a lipless line.

‘I apologise, Mrs Aitken,’ I said, ‘if I sounded flippant. I didn’t mean to be.’ The line softened and a little blood came back into her lips, although her eyes stayed just as hard when she answered me.

‘The two things are not connected,’ she said ‘My mother felt that she had been a poor wife to my father, giving him only one child and a girl at that. And she regretted pushing me into marriage with Jack. We had been five years married when my father died and there were no grandchildren.’ Alec was squirming so hard he might almost have worn his seat away. ‘My mother thought that all her life was coming to nothing. She felt she had displeased God and was being punished for it.’ I am sure that I boggled at that, and certainly my mouth dropped open. ‘But I don’t think she deserves scorn. I think she was right. About Jack and me.’ A small sound escaped Alec’s lips. Bunty wrinkled up her brows and gave him a puzzled look. ‘We weren’t blessed the way that other marriages had been. After five years we were still waiting and Mother became convinced that we weren’t really married in the eyes of God. That we were’ – she whispered – ‘fornicators. She read her Bible day and night. Scoured it for guidance, I suppose you would say.’

‘And then eventually she… went away?’

‘For a while and when she came back she was her old self again. And I-’ Abigail flicked a glance at Alec but went on, although her cheeks burned a little, ‘I had happy news for her. Then when Mirren was born, we all doted on her. It was a wonderful time for us Aitkens.’ There was a defiant note in her voice which I did not understand. ‘We needed no one and nothing except ourselves. Bella and Mary had their granddaughter and Jack and I our daughter and all was well at home and what matter anything else.’

‘Twenty years ago,’ I said, thinking that perhaps I could, after all, guess the reason for such emphasis on the family circle and the new baby and the rest of the world go hang. Twenty years ago was when House of Hepburn arrived to end Aitkens’ Emporium’s uncontested rule of Dunfermline town.

‘We had twenty very happy years,’ said Abigail. ‘Perhaps I should be grateful for that. It’s more than some people have in a lifetime. My husband has never done anything I can berate him for and I had my lovely girl, even if I was not allowed to keep her.’ Abigail pushed Bunty’s head off her lap and stood. ‘She was bought at a price,’ said Abigail. ‘That’s a saying of my mother’s.’

‘I’ve heard her say it.’ I spoke very gently. ‘The other day.’

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, Mrs Gilver. I can lift a burden from her, you know. I think I can. I can tell her it was not her fault that Mirren died. Shall I do that? Even if it hurts her in a new way she could not possibly be ready for. Should I?’

‘If you would tell me what you’re speaking about, Mrs Aitken,’ I said, ‘I could better advise you. Or I could go away and you could tell Mr Osborne here. He is, as you said, a very understanding man. He could help you.’ Waves of reluctance came off Alec like steam from a boiling kettle but he said nothing.

‘No,’ said Abigail. ‘I shall tell my mother – I’ve decided – that Mirren knew she wasn’t a fit wife for Dugald Hepburn, and why, and then my mother will know that she has nothing to be sorry for.’

‘You are a very good daughter,’ I said. ‘But can I give you a piece of advice, please?’ She said nothing, but waited. ‘Not today. You’re too tired today – for which I can only say sorry – and you will be better able to be kind and cushion bad news for your mother tomorrow.’

Abigail passed a hand over her brow, sweeping her hair back, and she let out a ragged sigh. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m in no state right now to help anyone.’

‘Rest, Mrs Aitken,’ said Alec. He had not spoken for a long time.

‘I shall rest, Mr Osborne,’ she said. ‘And perhaps I shall even sleep. And when I wake up she will still be dead. Every time I wake up, just the same.’ She nodded to both of us and left the room.

‘Well,’ said Alec. ‘That was fun, wasn’t it?’

Bunty stood up, stretched her front legs far out in front of her, leaned back and moaned. Then she stood up and shook herself all over, ears and jowls flapping.

‘Exactly, old girl,’ Alec said and he shook himself too, shuddering.

I nodded absently, for I was thinking.

‘Punishment from God,’ I said. ‘Not blessed. Not a fit wife for Dugald. Alec, I think I know what made Mirren kill herself. Roughly, anyway.’

‘I’m not sure I want to hear,’ said Alec.

‘Too bad,’ I retorted. ‘Listen: Mary shoved her daughter into a cousin marriage. No children – punishment from God. Ninian died – punishment from God. Mary cracks up. Then Abigail suddenly out of nowhere has happy news for her mother. Years later, when Mirren is grown up, Mary doesn’t want a connection with the hated Hepburns – because of the unfortunate sisters and the feud – but Mirren and Dugald are adamant. Then Abigail persuades Mirren she shouldn’t marry into a callous, thoughtless, cruel family where she would not be cherished. On the other hand, it would have been all right to marry into a family who would have cherished her for her dowry and… looked the other way with regards to other matters.’

‘What other matters?’ Alec said.

‘Children,’ I said. ‘Progeny. Roger Lawson has two younger brothers and Dugald Hepburn had only sisters. Dugald was the only hope of carrying on the Hepburn name and Mirren… I have an idea that Mirren wasn’t the girl to help him.’

‘Dandy, that is the most disgusting thing I’ve heard in my life. Where did you get such an idea?’

‘I’m sure I’m right,’ I said. ‘There was something wrong with Mirren. Something no one except her mother knew. Something Mirren couldn’t bear when she found it out.’

‘And now Abigail is going to tell her mother this monstrous thing?’ Alec said.

‘After the rest that you so sweetly advised her to take,’ I reminded him. ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’

‘What?’ said Alec. ‘I was only adding my voice to yours.’

‘Yes, but you meant it, didn’t you? I was only trying to stop her getting to Mary before we had a crack at her. Because if she’s really losing her marbles, one of them might just roll our way.’