Unsuitable Day for a Murder

14

It was some months later – almost a year – when I stopped off at Dunfermline on my way to pay a visit, long arranged and impossible to postpone any more. Alec refused point-blank to go with me but I could not rest until the trip was made. They had all been in my mind again, the Aitkens and the Hepburns, the House and the Emporium, the two dead children and the adults left behind them, all hiding something and all mourning.

Bella had been tried and convicted but thankfully the sentence passed down to her was a clement one. The jury had not pressed for hanging and the judge had no desire to send a woman in her seventies to the gallows for a crime – as he called it – of grief and of love. I had held my breath opening the newspapers every morning, expecting any day to see that some of the family secrets had started to seep out from around the edges of the ordered testimony; one drop of the poison would have led to a trickle and a torrent and a great thundering deluge – like Niagara – as everyone told the other’s sins, and all were swept away.

As it happened, though, Bella knew none of it and no one else uttered a word. Of course, what that did mean was that when the shuffling began it hit Dunfermline like a tidal wave and the scandal was still rippling now. First up, Hilda Haddo had left her husband’s protection and had gone to live with Jack Aitken at Abbey Park, whereupon Robin had promptly divorced her for desertion. He had not, however, to the bewilderment of the horrified onlookers, tried to prevent her continuing to have close motherly relations with the three surviving children, the girls. If anything, he was happy to see them living with Jack and Hilda, and Fiona Haddo of course, who had joined them in that great empty house and started making her mark there.

‘His mother killed her son,’ a fellow passenger on the train explained to me as we rattled down through Fife. It had only taken my saying I was going to Dunfermline to do a little shopping and there was no stopping her. ‘Do you understand? His mother murdered her son and should have hanged for it if there were any backbone left in this country at all, and yet now she has gone to live in his house – she dropped her voice – ‘as man and wife, one can only presume’ – and returned to normal volume – ‘and they say that his sisters spent their Easter holiday there.’ She sat back, absolutely thrilled; nothing would have given her more pleasure if she could have ordered off a menu.

I could not see the attraction of Jack Aitken, speaking personally, but I would have felt sorry for him, rattling around that house all alone. Mary and Abigail, of course, were long gone even before the trial. Dulcie was gone too (I felt a flip of anxiety about the afternoon, like a seal turning over in deep water) but it was not until news washed back to Dunfermline’s shore about where they were all gone that the second explosion of gossip occurred. Thankfully, my carriage companion did not seem to know about this part of the story, or did want to dwell upon it anyway.

As to the third revelation: I was reminded again of my father and Gloria and how he did not care what the world had to say, or rather what the world whispered behind its hand as he passed with Gloria’s arm tucked under his in the village or up in town. Mrs Lumsden, little Mrs Lumsden, Mary’s loyal friend, had spotted an opening, taken a running jump and landed with both her dainty feet firmly planted in the Hepburn home. The flat above the Linen Bank, that is to say; Robin remained at Roseville quite alone. So, I thought, little Mrs Lumsden all those years ago was pining for Bob, while Bob pined for Mary and Mary set her sights at Ninian Lennox Aitken and his lavish plans. Now, fifty years later, at least one of them was happy.

I disembarked and strolled the familiar way through the town to the tolbooth. The House of Hepburn was open for business and customers entered it and left again. It was only April and far too early for a beach scene with real sand; in its place were stiff fans of handkerchiefs hanging from wires and pyramids of painted tea trays with, here and there, a small card announcing easy terms, ten weeks, nothing to pay until August. I looked in at the door. It was dove grey and lilac still (as how could it not be?) and the assistants drifted about in their matching frocks but there was a stand of leather belts in the middle of the floor. Black belts and brown ones, navy and racing green, like a solitary toad on a pool of water lilies, and I knew that someone without Fiona Haddo’s eye was at the helm here now. Mrs Lumsden perhaps, after years of Household, and one could only imagine what she would wreak if it were true.

Along the street again my steps faltered. Aitkens’ Emporium was no more. The plate glass and revolving door were the same but the mauve and gold livery was gone, the paintwork now picked out in smart black, white and scarlet, with lettering between the ground- and first-floor windows that read: Fair Ladies. The doorman was my friend of old, and he tipped his hat to me: a new, pale grey top hat, to match his morning coat, all very natty with the red and black striped waistcoat and the bright red spats over his black patent shoes.

Inside, the oak floor had been rubbed down to a golden gleam, the wood-panelling had been painted a rich cream colour like buttermilk and everything else of good solid oak which had stood in Aitkens’ Haberdashery for fifty years was gone. The counters were floating tablets of glass with chromium legs and there were no glove drawers, no scarf racks, no bulging shelves of trim anywhere.

‘Mrs Gilver!’ It was Miss Armstrong, in a dress she had clearly not run up herself in her free evenings, but I smiled to see that she still wore a corsage of paper chits in her belt.

‘Where is everything?’ I asked.

‘In the basement,’ she replied. ‘We’re all worn out with running up and down to fetch and carry, but Madam said nothing could be done with the basement to make it fit for our ladies so there you have it. No more Kitchenwares and all the assistants with legs like racehorses from the stairs.’ Miss Armstrong’s legs – I could not help glancing at them – rose from her sturdy brogues to the fashionably asymmetric hem of her frock like two oatmeal puddings.

‘Madam being Mrs Haddo, I presume.’

Miss Armstrong clicked her teeth and shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe what happened to us all since you were here before,’ she said. ‘Well, I know it started when you were here, but you know what I mean.’

‘I do. Is Mr Muir still here? Miss Hutton?’

‘Mr Muir couldn’t get his notice in quick enough but Miss Hutton’s here, still in charge upstairs. When Madam lets her be. You should go up and have a wee look, Mrs Gilver. It’s all change up there, I can tell you.’

‘But how can they afford to do it all?’ I said.

‘I cannot tell you for I do not know,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘There was no life insurance for Miss Mirren what with it being suicide. And although her shares came back to her father,’ Miss Armstrong’s voice faltered, and I could not help raising my eyebrows, ‘that is Mr Jack, I mean, and Mrs John signed hers away to him too, shares of nothing are nothing. And then it can’t be cheap to keep Mrs Ninian in that fancy place – Miss Hutton’s been to see her and says it’s very comfy.’

‘And how do you like the new regime?’ I said.

Miss Armstrong screwed up her nose. ‘Madam and Miss Hilda – that’s what we call her; it doesn’t seem right to say Mrs Hepburn now – are more fun to work for than Mrs Ninian ever was. And even Mr Jack’s more…’ She stopped and dropped her voice. ‘But can you believe it? How she can even look at him, knowing his mother, his own flesh and blood, did what she did to her own flesh and blood…’

So Miss Armstrong did not know everything. She did not know that the same blood ran in Bella Aitken’s and Hilda Hepburn’s son’s veins and she did not know what the Hepburn men had done to the Aitken women, that there was a great deal of forgetting required on both sides.

I did go upstairs and was unsurprised to see more pale paint, little tables, elegant gowns and pink light bulbs all over the first floor where Gents’ Tailoring, Layette and Junior used to be. I did not need to stop off on the second floor to know that there would be no more eiderdowns on the aisle shelves and flannel sheets behind. I could hear the hiss of a tea urn – a new tea urn, a very clean hiss and no clanking at all – and could smell frangipani as I passed on the stairs.

The attics were worse than ever, jammed to the door with discarded Aitkens’ stock so that one could no longer wander through the maze of little rooms and up and down the dark back corridors. I only really wanted to see the landing, but I could not find my way. I could have sworn that I was standing in the attic which had been the ante-room with the stock sheets and lanterns before – I recognised the shelves around the walls and the old ledgers mouldering there, but there was no sign of the door leading out to the top of the stairs and the lift. I played my electric torch all around (I had come prepared for this little pilgrimage) and that is when I saw that the door had been boarded up and the boards papered over. A shiver passed through me. I retraced my steps, descended to the first floor, skirted around the back of the Gowns Department and tried the other stair. It should have opened right onto the landing but at the top, above the tearoom, again it ended in a blank plastered wall. It was bricked up; the landing where Mirren had died and from where Dugald had fallen was simply gone.

From the first-floor balcony below looking up, there was no more to be seen. No ledge, no opening with black curtains, just blank wall painted in the same cream colour and dappled by the sun through the stained-glass window. An assistant, one I did not recognise, saw me standing there staring, and frowned at me. I flushed, dropped my head and left Aitkens’ – Fair Ladies, as it was now – knowing I would never return.

It took quite some time on the rattling little motorbus out from Waverley station into the rolling hills of East Lothian. I had never been here before, except for whisking past on a London-bound train, but at first glance it appealed to me. The sky was larger than in Perthshire, making me think of Suffolk and those roiling clouds which take up half Constable’s canvas sometimes. This spring day the sky was a gentle blue, almost white at the horizon but pale even high above my head, and the drive, long and straight, passed between two rows of birches, just putting on their fresh green coats for the year.

The main house stood foursquare at the top of the drive but behind and around it I could see numerous little white bungalows with red roofs and blue paint. There were white fences around tiny gardens and only the slopes instead of steps at every door hinted that this village was unusual in any way.

The big front door stood open and I stepped in, quite diffidently but not wanting to take someone from a more important task to come and welcome me. A corridor led away towards sunlight at the back of the house and I ventured along it, coming out eventually into a kind of solarium or orangery. It was very warm, but still most of the ladies were tucked up under knee-blankets and with shawls around their shoulders. I looked around them, nodding in answer to their smiles and waves, for they were all pleased to see a visitor, even a strange one, and then at last I heard a cry of greeting.

Mary Aitken, sitting upright and smiling in her bath-chair, beckoned to me.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, and my heart leapt with pleasure. It was not distinct. ‘Mezzz Gilluh’ would be the best approximation, but she was speaking and my greeting to her was not diplomacy.

‘Mrs Aitken. My, you look well!’ I bent and kissed her cheek. ‘I didn’t expect to see you looking so well. How are you?’

‘Peace,’ she said and she breathed out, long and slow, smiling even wider. She had cut her hair, I saw, a remarkable development for any woman her age and especially so for the Mrs Aitken I remembered. It fell around her face in soft white waves and, as though it had been that scraped bun keeping all the tension there, her face seemed to have softened too. Of course on one side the muscles were almost dead, but that is not what one noticed about her. Rather one saw the clear eyes, and pink glow to her skin, and then noted too the way she sat with her hands folded calmly. I gathered that Mrs Ninian of Aitkens’ was pretty much gone.

‘Peace,’ I repeated, thinking that she had been due some, always worrying and scrabbling and fearful that the price she had paid was too high for whatever she had won.

‘Poor Bella,’ murmured Mary. ‘Prison.’ She looked around herself at the sunny room and the view of the gardens with the little white cottages dotted all around. Then she sat forward and gave me a closer look, a faint echo of Mrs Ninian from the old days. ‘Jack?’ I wondered what she knew and wondered even more what to tell her. As if reading my thoughts, she thumped herself on the chest. ‘Strong,’ she said. ‘Brave. Now.’

‘You always were brave,’ I answered. ‘And strong. Very well. Jack is living with Hilda Haddo at Abbey Park. And Fiona too. They seem to be running Aitkens’ together. Lots of changes.’

‘Pretty,’ said Mrs Aitken, and it was halfway to a question.

I nodded. ‘Pretty as a sugarplum,’ I said. ‘Does it upset you?’

‘A shop,’ she said. ‘Building. Money. Pff!’ She batted it away from herself with a backwards flap of her hand. Then she looked beyond me and her smile widened again. I turned. Abigail Aitken was there, dressed in starched blue cotton with her heavy hair plaited and pinned to her head.

‘Mrs-’ I bit my tongue. ‘Abby,’ I said and stood to embrace her. Then I held her at arm’s length. ‘You look like a nurse.’

‘I am a nurse,’ she said, laughing a little. ‘Well, a nurse’s help, anyway. I’ll never forget how hopeless I was that day when Mother was first ill and how splendid you were. I was determined to make improvements!’ She beamed at me. ‘Besides, it’s the only way we can afford to stay here.’

‘I don’t blame you for wanting to,’ I said, looking around again. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘The sisters,’ said Abigail and the seal flipped inside me again, but I had misunderstood her. ‘The sisters are very devout but really quite jolly. Most of them are a lot jollier than me!’

‘Get there,’ said Mary, and Abigail patted her shoulder and bestowed a smile on her that had as much devout devotion as filial devotion in it. I could see Abigail Aitken going from nurse’s help to nun, if Mary lived long enough to give her the chance of it.

‘So, Mrs Gilver,’ she said, ‘shall we go over now and then come back and have luncheon with Mother?’ I nodded and, although I had thought my steeling myself was subtly done, Mary leaned over and took my hand again.

‘All right,’ she told me and squeezed hard.

We made for a cottage quite a way from the main house beyond a stand of spreading oaks, in a little green dip of land with a view of a pond. Abigail opened the gate in the white fence and ushered me ahead of her.

‘Just go in,’ she said. ‘They’re expecting you.’

My heart was hammering as I lifted the latch and opened the front door into a tiny hallway.

‘In here, Mrs Gilver,’ a voice called. I turned to the left and entered the sitting room.

‘Oh my!’ I said and before I could stop them my eyes filled with tears and spilled over.

They must have been in their fifties by now, but their faces were unlined by any worries and unmarked by troubles overcome, so that they looked like children still. Soft brown hair growing in feathery wisps and bright eyes in their three little heart-shaped faces, soft, slight little figures in their cotton dresses.

‘This is Dora, my eldest,’ Dulcie said, resting a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘And Lucy. And this is Winifred. Smile for Mrs Gilver, girls.’ All three of them gave me wide smiles of utter innocence and the vision flashed before my eyes of that photograph of Mirren at the party in her lacy dress with orchids in her hair. Then one of them – Lucy – put up her arms to me and I stepped forward to hug her.

‘They don’t speak, Mrs Gilver,’ said Dulcie. ‘Ruth was the only one of my girls who ever spoke. Mama, she would say.’ Dulcie pointed to the chimneypiece where a photograph of another of these girls sat in a wooden frame.

‘She had a heart attack,’ Dulcie said. Absent-mindedly she lifted the little frame and polished it on her sleeve as I had seen her do with the arm of her chair at Roseville that day. ‘And please don’t look sideways at the frame. I would have solid gold and rubies, but someone’ – she turned back to the room and put her hands on her hips – ‘likes shiny things a little too much. Doesn’t she, Winifred Hepburn, eh?’ Winifred giggled but I rather thought she was responding to the smile and the sound of her name than the joke. She slipped down a bit in her chair with the laughing and Abigail hurried over to lift her up and pack her cushions around tightly again. Winifred, guilty as charged, it seemed, reached out and grasped the gold cross which swung free from Abby’s neck as she bent forward. With infinite patience, Abigail tickled the girl’s wrist until she let go again and then tucked the cross back inside her collar.

‘Abigail is a born nurse,’ said Dulcie, still smiling.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Abby. ‘I like taking care of my sisters,’ she said this a little shyly, ‘but as for some of the ladies who come to recuperate for a month! I smile and do as I’m bidden but I say plenty under my breath in the sluice room, I can tell you.’

‘I was a nurse in the war,’ I said. It seemed to be what was expected, to sit and talk as though in any sitting room, in any company, while the three Hepburn sisters looked around and smiled and slowly lost interest in the new arrivals and returned to their inner calm. ‘Soldiers. It was pretty horrid, sometimes.’

‘Yes,’ said Dulcie. ‘We do very well here without men.’

‘My sisters have hardly ever seen a man,’ Abigail said. She used the word more boldly this time. ‘I don’t pity them.’

‘They seem to be doing very nicely on it,’ I agreed. ‘And do you live here in the cottage as well, Mrs Hepburn?’

Dulcie nodded. ‘Every third night one of the sisters comes instead and I go and sleep in the main house. Night-times can be difficult, you see. I used to have my own room, for when I visited, but now I share with my…’ She stopped and both she and Abigail gave uneasy little laughs. ‘We’ve been trying to decide,’ she said. ‘Something to say to stop questions from new staff, you know. God-daughter, I think we settled on, didn’t we, Abby?’

I nodded, but inside I was beginning to shudder. Anything less godly than the relation between these two women was hard to imagine, one the by-blow of the other’s husband and her son’s mistress too. Thankfully I managed to think my thoughts while showing none of them. At least, perhaps Fiona Haddo would have said, ‘Oh, I know,’ and raised that arched eyebrow, but Dulcie and Abigail had half their attention on the three girls.

I left them soon afterwards, making my way alone back to Mary in the sunroom. Which path would I have taken if life had worked that way? If one could choose one’s fate from a display on a shop floor and had it made up to fit one? Would I be Hilda Haddo playing at shops again in another store with another man in charge of me, or would I be Abigail Aitken, back in her mother’s heart and with Dulcie as a second mother should Mary’s frail health fail, here playing at houses in that little white cottage with three rosy-cheeked dolls?

Neither, I decided, and I would not be Jack nor Robin nor Fiona nor Bob nor, God knows, Bella. I rummaged in my pocket. Miss Armstrong had been keeping these tucked away on her private shelf in the staff cloakroom all through the closing, refitting and reopening of the Emporium. I rubbed my thumb over the black letters, feeling the good deep engraving and reading the words again with a swell of pride. Gilver and Osborne. Servants of Truth.

I would not even swap places with Alec. I was very glad indeed that, out of everyone around, I was me.