Unsuitable Day for a Murder

2

‘Ah,’ I said, nodding. ‘A jubilee. I thought there was something in the air.’

‘Festivities begin at one o’clock,’ said Mrs Ninian. She threw a look towards her daughter. ‘One sharp, Abigail.’

Again it took a moment for young Mrs Jack to grasp the fact that she was being spoken to and then another to comprehend the words. Eventually, though, she shook her head.

‘I can’t, Mother,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you understand that? I can’t go.’

‘You must,’ said Mrs Ninian, her words more clipped than ever. ‘I will not thole this day being spoiled. We have gone to a great deal of trouble and expense, Abigail. The Provost is making a speech. Our very best customers have been invited. Lady Lawson is coming. And a photographer from the Herald- Oh, stop shaking your head that way, you stupid girl. And stop that idiotic moaning. You’re like a lowing cow!’

‘Mary!’ Bella had risen from her chair and stepped in between the two women with one hand out towards her sister-in-law in the manner of a policeman holding up traffic and one hand reaching back towards her daughter-in-law as though to cup her cheek or stroke her shoulder.

In times gone by, I should not have known – as my maid Grant says – ‘where to put myself’. Things being what they were these days, of course, I watched all three of them with my piercing detective’s eye, wondering how the disappearance of a girl could produce three such very different reactions amongst a mother and two grandmothers, one fondly exasperated, one faint with terror and one so angry that I almost expected steam to hiss from her ears.

‘Abby dear,’ Bella went on, turning her back on the black pillar of fury and kneeling in front of Abigail, with some effort and some cracking at the knees, ‘listen to me. Mirren will be fine. She’ll turn up again. All will be well.’

Abigail lifted her head at these soothing words.

‘There,’ said Bella. ‘That’s better. Now, come along and get ready like a good girl. Mirren wouldn’t want you to miss the frolics.’ She sat back on her heels and smiled. ‘We’ll laugh about all this one day, you’ll see. One of Mirren’s children will ask how Mummy and Daddy met and we’ll regale them with the scandalous tale. Abby!’

Abigail had surged to her feet and now pushed past her mother-in-law, knocking the old lady off balance and landing her on the hard floor with a thump. She stumbled towards the door and would have fled had not at that moment a man appeared there and gripped her firmly around the upper arms.

‘What the devil?’ he said.

‘I can’t do it,’ said Abigail, burying her face against his chest. ‘I can’t go. I can’t face everyone. Tell them. They can’t make me.’

‘This is my nephew, Jack,’ said Mrs Ninian. I nodded, having guessed as much, but could not help feeling some surprise at her choice of words. Surely it was unseemly to advertise the very close connection quite so baldly, especially when the cousins were, as at the present moment, in one another’s arms. Or perhaps it was unremarkable to the Aitkens by now.

Jack Aitken looked at me with some interest, clearly wondering who I was, pitched into the middle of the family drama this way, then turned his wife back towards the room and, with one arm around her shoulder and the other hand patting one of hers, brought her towards us again.

‘Silly!’ he said. ‘No one knows yet. Of course you can “face them”. We’ll say Mirren has a cold.’

‘I don’t know why you say no one knows “yet”, Jack,’ said Mrs Ninian. ‘There’s no reason for anyone to find out at all. Ever.’

‘We won’t be able to hide a marriage,’ said Bella. ‘It’ll get out in the end. And even if they never came back, people would put two and two together. Stands to reason.’

Mrs Ninian twitched her head at that, shaking off the notion as a horse would a fly, but it was Jack Aitken’s reaction which interested me. He spoke to his mother in a light voice and with another of the fond smiles he had been bestowing on his trembling wife.

‘You might have been that kind of girl in your day, Mother.’ Bella Aitken gave a bark of laughter. ‘But not my little Mirren. She would never do such a thing to her mother and me.’

And yet I found him not the least bit convincing. He sounded enough like the juvenile lead in a drawing-room comedy and, with his sleek hair and fine features, he even looked quite like one – a middle-aged sort of juvenile lead, as one finds in repertory companies of the second and third tier – but there was a slick of sweat on his upper lip and the hand gripping Abigail’s shoulder was as tense as a claw. Also, like a third-rate actor, he had made a mistake with his delivery.

‘But if you don’t think Mirren has eloped, Mr Aitken,’ I said, pouncing on the error, ‘what do you think she has done?’ He frowned. ‘Or do you agree with your wife? That something has been done to her?’

I had the gratification of seeing Jack Aitken freeze.

‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ I said. ‘My name is Dandy Gilver and I’m a private detective. Mrs Aitken engaged me but of course I shall be working on behalf of all of you who are hoping for Mirren’s safe return.’ Wicked of me – that ‘Mrs Aitken’. The poor man’s eyes rolled around the three women like billiard balls after a clumsy break.

At that moment, the butler, Trusslove, entered the room already drawing breath to speak. He hesitated upon seeing the tableau – the Jack Aitkens embracing, Mrs John still on the floor, Mrs Ninian glaring poison darts at me – but only for a second or two.

‘Light refreshments in the garden room, madam,’ he said. ‘As ordered. I’ve set a place for Mrs Gilver, naturally.’

They could hardly get rid of me – they dared not even try – but their longing to and their hiding it hung over the garden room like a black rain cloud so that, of the four of them, only Bella, Mrs John, made a good meal, forking thick slices of ham onto her plate and demolishing ripe tomatoes in the most sensible way, by popping them whole into her mouth and munching. The other three picked and nibbled, sipped barley water and fiddled with their napkins. At least Mr and Mrs Jack did. Mary, Mrs Ninian, picked and nibbled and stared at me. For my part, I ate just enough to excite no attention (as Nanny Palmer had trained me to do) sitting in polite silence for just the proper length of time before I began speaking.

‘The obvious first question,’ I said, ‘is who it is you’re so sure she hasn’t eloped with.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Bella said. ‘I think she has.’ Abigail picked up her barley water glass and her hand shook so badly as she did so that a little of it spilled onto the tablecloth. She stared at the blot, watching it spreading. Her mother tutted and I saw her push a hand up under the cloth, checking that the table protector was there.

‘And who is the man?’ I persisted.

‘A mere boy,’ said Jack. ‘And Mirren such a child herself.’

‘A most unsuitable family,’ said Mary. ‘Really quite unthinkable.’

‘Oh?’ I said and turned. ‘You don’t agree, Mrs Aitken?’

‘I’ve nothing against any of them,’ Bella said. ‘And Dugald himself-’

‘They have a shameful secret,’ said Mary, drowning her out. ‘Bad blood, Mrs Gilver. Weak blood. Not suitable talk for the dinner table. Luncheon, either.’ She flushed and cleared her throat, hoping to hide the slip.

‘Oh Mary,’ said Bella again. ‘There’s nothing shameful about it. All families have their black sheep. Look at the Tsars of Russia! Look at Prince John! And you could say as much about the Aitkens if you had that turn of mind as you can about the Hepburns any day.’

‘Hepburns?’ I said. ‘Hepburn as in-?’

‘Drapers,’ said Mary, as though she were saying ‘vermin’. ‘They’ve opened up a little shop at the bottom of the High Street. Opposite the police station.’

I said nothing to that. House of Hepburn was perhaps more modest than Aitkens’ Emporium, but it was still a sizeable enterprise, and to my eyes it had looked as solidly established as the Emporium any day.

‘It was getting on for twenty years ago, Mary,’ Bella said, rolling her eyes at me and not troubling to hide the fact from her sister-in-law. ‘And as for “drapers”, let he who is without…’

‘Ninian was a tailor,’ said Mary. ‘John was a businessman as much as any banker. And Aitkens’ in case you have forgotten celebrates fifty years today.’ She snapped round to face me and gave me the old on-and-off-again smile. ‘I hope we can persuade you to join us for the celebrations, Mrs Gilver.’

‘Mother,’ said Abigail, speaking for the first time. ‘Mrs Gilver isn’t here to toast Aitkens’. The sooner she starts looking for Mirren…’ Then, saying her daughter’s name, she ran down like an unwound clock and returned to silence.

‘I’d be delighted to come,’ I said, for I had been plotting.

When we had finished our coffee I turned to Bella.

‘Can you direct me to a telephone, Mrs Aitken?’ I heard the creak of bombazine as Mrs Ninian stiffened beside me.

‘Certainly,’ Bella said. ‘Nearest one’s in the morning room.’ She clicked her tongue and then went on: ‘Easiest way is out into the garden, up to the drive, back in the front door and it’s first left.’

I rose and made my purposeful way to the open french windows. (We were down on the basement floor in a room I guessed to be directly below the library, and I was grateful for the directions; I should never have found my way back through the passages of the house and might have had trouble getting rid of whoever volunteered to guide me.)

Before I was quite out of the room, Mary cleared her throat.

‘Who are you-?’ she began. ‘That is, are you-? Are you going to ring the police?’

‘I wasn’t,’ I said, ‘but would you like me to?’

Various sounds emerged from all of them then and I made my escape.

You deserve to be spanked with your hairbrush, Dandelion, I told myself as I scrambled up the grassy slope to the gravel. The front door was open and I marched straight in.

Thankfully Alec was at home but I had a measure of listening to do before I got the chance to start talking.

‘Hah!’ he said. ‘Well, then. See? What did I tell you? And so here you are, a matter of hours later, cap in hand, humbly begging.’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I agreed. ‘Beg beg. But I couldn’t have brought you. She wrote to me, just to me, and it would have looked dreadful to have pitched up with a burly sidekick.’

The ‘burly’ mollified him a little.

‘Still, Dandy,’ he said, ‘we might like to put this thing on a proper footing someday. Or I’m always going to be ten steps behind you.’

‘Hm,’ I answered, thinking that if we did have cards made up or put ourselves in the Post Office Directory as Mrs Gilver and Mr Osborne, the world being what it was, Mr Osborne would have cases coming out of his pipe and Mrs Gilver would be reduced to making up invoices and filing. (Not that any of our cases had ever produced much to be filed. What is it that people who file file, I wonder?) ‘You’ll be ten steps ahead before today’s out if you’ll shut up and listen.’

‘I’m all ears,’ Alec said.

And so I told him about Mirren Aitken of Aitkens’ Emporium and how she had fallen in love with Dugald Hepburn of House of Hepburn and how the Aitkens had refused to countenance such miscegenation, such soiling of the good name of Aitken with such upstarts, and such poor stock, with such shameful secrets they could not be spoken of, and how the Aitken obduracy had driven Mirren away from her home into the cold, cruel world.

Alec was silent when I finished.

‘So she’s run off with him,’ he said. ‘What are we supposed to do about it? It’s her father’s job to stand over the boy with a shotgun.’

‘Yes, but listen,’ I said. ‘Of the four Aitkens I’ve met this morning only her paternal grandmother agrees with you. Her mother – Abigail – seems convinced that the girl is in some kind of peril – no, not that kind; stop snorting – and her father is, I am sure, just as rattled but he’s trying to hide it and bungling the attempt so that nothing about his demeanour makes any sense at all.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘The other grandmother,’ I went on, ignoring him, ‘the one who sent me the card, is furious. White with suppressed rage. And – here’s the thing, Alec – she wanted me to come tomorrow. Not today. She was livid that I’d come today. Even livider that I spoke to her daughter and the other granny, as if some wonderful plan has got away from her and she can’t get it back again.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘So I think it’s pretty clear what we need to do. I’ll go along to the jubilee and keep an eye on them all, and you come and do what I’d have done tomorrow, today. See if you can work out why Grandmama didn’t want me to.’

‘And what would you have done tomorrow?’ said Alec. ‘Or today if she hadn’t stopped you.’

I noted that all thoughts of the equal partnership had withered and he was asking for instructions like an errand boy.

‘Find these Hepburns, find out if Dugald has taken off too. See if anyone has an idea where they might have gone to. You might even find her, if they’ve taken her in. If they’re all for it on his side.’

‘Hepburn,’ said Alec slowly, writing down the name. ‘Did the girl’s family say the boy’s lot were keen then?’

‘Well, Granny Mary hinted that they might be climbers,’ I said. ‘But apart from Granny Bella no one said much about them at all. They can hardly pronounce the name of Hepburn without choking.’ I would have said more but I could hear footsteps approaching and so we rang off, with a plan in place to meet for tea and share our afternoon’s gleanings.

‘Ready, Mrs Gilver?’ said Mary, stalking into the room and looking just a little disappointed not to overhear the end of my conversation. She glared at the instrument as though she hoped to discern some fading echo of what had been spoken into it. ‘You can come along in the first motor with Mrs John and myself.’

But Bella – Mrs John – coming in at her heels would have none of it.

‘Nonsense, Mary,’ she said. ‘You and I are going together and Jack and Abby were to follow on with Mirren. So it makes sense for Mrs Gilver to go in Mirren’s place.’

‘Oh, yes, please do, Mrs Gilver,’ said Abigail’s voice from the doorway where she was hovering. ‘Everyone will be expecting three of us, you see.’

I smiled uncertainly, not sure if she really meant to suggest that onlookers would mistake me for a twenty-year-old girl and let the awkward absence go unremarked.

‘And if anyone else is going to be in the first car it should be Jack,’ said Bella Aitken, sotto voce to her sister-in-law. She was not quite above all scrabbling for precedence then; she had an eye on her son’s deserts as the Aitken heir.

‘I’ll be very happy to,’ I said to Abigail, judging that more might be learned in a journey with her than with her mother. ‘Good to see you’ve decided to go after all.’ For she had substituted a short linen coat for the shawl and had most of the misrule which reigned in place of her crowning glory hidden with a straw hat, but it had to be admitted that these efforts seemed to have sapped her and she was paler than ever and wavering a little as she stood there.

‘Good,’ said Bella Aitken. ‘Right then, Mary.’ She too had tidied herself a little; the pins were gone, although the curls they had been holding were still in place in a row across her head under the brim of a hat which looked to be an old friend. The carpet slippers were gone too and she stumped away across the hall in a stout pair of gunmetal-grey shoes which managed to make her feet look bigger than ever.

A pair of liveried chauffeurs had brought around to the front door two large motorcars of some American provenance. They had their tops thrown back in that way that made me think of perambulators on a sunny day in the park and there were quantities of mauve and gold ribbon festooned around them in the manner of royal carriages. Mary Aitken gave another of her lizard smiles as she saw them and then she frowned.

‘Those rosettes,’ she said. ‘They’re covering the coats of arms. Couldn’t we tuck them up somehow?’ She began to shove some trailing ends of ribbon up away from the plaques on the motorcar doors – peacock feathers and shoals of little fishes, I saw.

‘For the Lord’s sake,’ said her sister-in-law. ‘You’ll have the whole lot undone if you’re not wary.’

‘I don’t think anyone will be wondering who we are, Aunt M,’ said Jack, who was standing on the steps with his hat on the back of his head staring rather aghast at the motorcars. His eyebrows rose even further as one of the chauffeurs climbed down and began fixing little purple flags to the wing mirrors. I cleared my throat and pulled my mouth down hard at the corners, trying not to smile.

‘And you’ll go the right way,’ said Mary Aitken to one of the chauffeurs. ‘The way I told you.’

‘Round and up the wynd, madam,’ said the man.

‘Nice and slow,’ said Mary and turned to let Trusslove hand her in. Bella opened the other door and climbed in herself. Jack handed Abigail in, then me and then let himself in beside me. I shuffled over to the middle of the seat, nudging up against Abigail, an old chagrin smouldering in my bosom. At home, going visiting or to church in our landau, my mother and father always faced forward and the three of us sat with our backs to the driver, my younger brother and sister each with a side seat and a good view of what was passing – for my mother was as sentimental about early childhood as she was practical about travel-sickness – and me stuck in the middle with not enough room for my feet and nothing to look at except my mother looking back at me. It cannot have been for long, despite the fierce impression of injustice it had left upon me, because I was eight by the time my brother was old enough to sit up on his own and he went off to school when I was thirteen. After that, even in the holidays, there was no jostling, because my parents gave up the tradition of taking a footman with them and Edward instantly promoted himself to the seat beside the driver and a chance of holding the reins.

I blinked. It had been years since I had thought about that old feud over the carriage seats; these Aitkens, these fifty-year-old Aitkens still under their mothers’ rule, were a bad influence on me.

‘Clearly,’ I began, as soon as we were under way, pulling out of the drive onto the shady quiet of Abbey Park Place, ‘you have reservations about the alliance with the Hepburn family, but might I just ask, is the boy – this Dugald – is he himself unsatisfactory? Some kind of a wrong ’un?’

Abigail continued to stare glumly over the side of the motorcar door, as though she hadn’t heard me, but Jack himself shook his head. He also recrossed his legs and wiped his hands one against the other and in all could hardly have done any more to shake my words away from him.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Not so far as I know.’

His tone did not invite further questioning and so I was quiet for a while. We were taking a most senseless route to the High Street, setting off in quite the wrong direction, and I had already toured Dunfermline once today. Still, it gave me some thinking time and this tour had been planned by one who knew the town’s best side; the low, looping road which meandered past portions of ruined palace or cloister was extremely scenic, even with the Abbey glowering down from our other side as we skirted it, much to be preferred to the narrow streets of hat shops and cigar merchants I had found. All too soon, though, we turned and began to make our way hat-shop-ward once more. I tried again with Jack Aitken.

‘The objections to his family must be weighty ones indeed, then,’ I said. ‘If it’s not the boy himself.’ I could not imagine the objections, truth be told. The hints at luncheon had been lurid but unhelpful and the couple seemed beautifully matched to me: the son of a merchant and the daughter of a merchant, of the same class, from the same town.

‘Ha ha ha,’ said Jack, although I had said nothing very clever or witty. ‘My mother and aunt are pretty fierce about Aitkens’. Well, I mean, look at all this.’ He flicked at a piece of the mauve and gold ribbon and shook his head again. ‘Comes from being left to run it on their own, I suppose you’d say.’

We were turning into the High Street now and I could see that there were people collected along the pavement’s edge. More of the mauve and gold flags had been handed out and the onlookers were waving them and cheering us as we swept by.

‘And here we are,’ I said, spying once more the frolicking mannequins in the shop window. ‘Those tableaux are quite something, I must say. Your mother and aunt have excelled themselves.’ I had gathered myself to alight but the motorcar slid past the last of the windows without stopping.

‘That’s Hepburns’,’ Jack Aitken said.

‘Gosh,’ I replied, craning back to look at the sand and hampers. ‘Sorry.’

‘Talk about upstaging,’ he went on. ‘Aunt Mary must be spitting if she noticed them, but no doubt she was looking the other way.’

‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘Very provoking. So, is it professional rivalry that’s the trouble?’ I hoped that he would not suddenly shut like a clam under my probing. A bad liar who thinks he is a good one is treasure trove to an investigator and Jack Aitken had more baseless belief in the misleading power of his own charm than anyone I had met in recent memory.

‘For my part, I just don’t want my little girl to grow up so fast,’ he said. He was wiping his hands on his trouser legs now. ‘She’s not ready for marriage. And marriage to a boy of just twenty who’s no more ready for it than she…’ He shook his head again, more slowly, and made a fond sort of laughing noise by breathing down his nose in short bursts. ‘I was twenty-two and that was young enough.’

‘When she comes home, then,’ I said, ‘when I find her, perhaps you could persuade them into a long engagement. A twenty-year-old boy is far too young, I agree.’

‘No.’ Abigail had spoken without turning, but she turned now. ‘Mirren doesn’t want to marry Dugald Hepburn any more. She changed her mind.’

‘She told you that?’ I said. Jack Aitken had craned forward to look past me at his wife.

‘She doesn’t want to marry him,’ Abigail said again. ‘She wouldn’t marry him for a king’s fortune. She’d rather-’ She bit off her words, turned away and shifted even further round in her seat so that her husband and I could not see so much as the curve of her cheek.

Matters took on a positively surreal tinge halfway up the High Street (and, incidentally, about two minutes’ drive from Abbey Park) when we pulled up at Aitkens’. The flag-wavers were four and five deep here and were held back by more gold rope, of which the Emporium seemed to have an endless supply. A pair of… one can only call them nymphs… in mauve togas with gold leaves in their hair were handing out sweets to children and paper tickets to adults, and a doorman whose finery would not have shamed the Dorchester stood ready to open the motorcar doors and help us down.

‘God in heaven,’ said Jack Aitken and, although I did not answer, privately I agreed.

Mary and Bella stood waiting on a piece of carpet which had been laid down beside the revolving door, Mary looking around the gathered crowd with fierce triumph in her eyes and Bella dealing with the horror of it all by gazing into the middle distance and pretending she was not really there. I stood watching the crowds clamouring for the paper tickets, waving them in triumph once they had secured one.

‘They are fifty-shilling notes, Mrs Gilver,’ Mary said, drawing up to me. I glanced sharply at the nearer of the two nymphs. ‘Let Mrs Gilver see, Lynne.’ The girl handed me one of the slips, on which had been embossed a large gilt 50 over a ground of the inevitable mauve feathers and little fish.

‘And these are…?’ I said, turning the ticket over in my hands. ‘These are currency?’

‘Just for the day,’ said Mary.

‘Two pounds and ten shillings?’ I said. ‘That’s extremely generous of you.’

Bella at my side gave a snort of laughter. ‘Not currency exactly, Mrs Gilver. More like tokens. Redeemable against a-’

‘-select range of specially chosen jubilee notions,’ Mary finished in a hissing whisper. There was a very impressive closed motorcar drawing up now. Perhaps the Provost, I thought, or Lady Whatsername; in any case, Mary Aitken glided forward to offer a greeting. Bella leaned towards me.

‘-job lot of pre-war overstock we’d never shift any other way,’ she said. ‘Some of it might be fifty years old, I daresay. Lord, here’s the Provost too! Let’s go in now and dodge them. Mary won’t want me diluting her, anyway.’

Aitkens’ Emporium had an inside to match its parade of windows and all the more so for being still and empty, poised for the show about to begin. The floor of the foyer was marble, or at any rate good enough linoleum well-laid over stone to look and feel like marble as one crossed it; the counters when we reached them were mahogany – or oak perhaps, stained with something treacly – and, as well as the vastness and splendour of the Haberdashery Department where we were standing with its scores and hundreds of little drawers and slides everywhere, there were archways leading away in three directions hinting at even more. In one back corner there was a staircase of some width and grandeur and in the other was what I came to understand as Aitkens’ pride and joy, Aitkens’ unanswerable poke in the eye to Hepburns’: the lift.

It was a very impressive one. The metalwork of the shaft doors was as richly decorated and as glittering as a birdcage from a lady’s boudoir and the way the shining polished lift carriage itself could just be glimpsed, nestled inside, put me in mind for some reason of an eye twinkling behind lowered lashes, especially when the light shifted, as it was doing now.

I glanced upwards to discover how the light could shift inside a building and saw that there was no upper floor above us, here at the centre of the store; only galleries around an atrium. Over our heads, at least three floors up, glass panes formed a roof, but a cat’s cradle of ribbons and banners had been slung from gallery to gallery below, cutting out the sun which otherwise would have drenched us in warmth and light. It was, I supposed, these banners stirring in a draught which had sent shadows flitting and scattered the light.

As I brought my gaze back down again I saw that, despite the hush, Bella Aitken and I were no longer alone on the floor of the atrium. Behind each of the maybe mahogany counters, girls and women had come to stand silently to attention, as uniform as so many tin soldiers. That is, some of them were freshly minted and some battle-scarred but they were turned out of just one mould. They were dressed, encased is perhaps a better way of phrasing it, in the kind of simple black frocks easily run up at home from a paper pattern and I wondered if they were handed bolts of cloth and told to make their own uniforms like the housemaids in my mother’s day. If so, then for the jubilee they had evidently been given extra rations. Some of them had run up ruffled collars, some had fashioned corsages, the less adept had plumped for sashes and bows in their hair, but one and all had touches of mauve and gold. I felt that I would see mauve and gold in my sleep that night, swimming and fluttering before my eyes in fish and feather form.

Little did I know what sight would indeed flash behind my closed eyelids that night and for many nights to come. In the first of my detecting adventures, one which I would hardly call a case since I slipped into it and was bobbing out of my depth before I had realised it had begun, I remember that there was an air of dread hanging around like the pall from a snuffed tallow candle, and it began long before the events which should have instigated it. I was almost tempted to call it a premonition once it had come true, but I resisted. For surely it is the mark of a fool to trumpet premonitions once they have been fulfilled. Surely, unless one has taken out a half-page announcement in advance, one really does have to keep one’s lip firmly buttoned afterwards too.

I digress. Alec is wont to murmur, ‘Yes, darling, you do rather,’ in response to that comment and so I try not to give him an opening. My point is that while in the first case there was dread far in advance of anything dreadful, the beginning of the Aitken affair – a young girl missing, her mother awash with unspoken terrors and her father so well-hidden behind his own secrets that all one could really see was the hiding – found me no more than intrigued and diverted by the prospect before me. Mary and Bella Aitken were entertaining, the jubilee promised more entertainment still of one sort or another, Dunfermline’s holiday mood was catching (and I was glad to know that flags and bunting still stirred a small corner of my girlish soul; of course, one must put away childish things as one is bidden, but I would not like to be quite beyond the reach of bunting).

Nor was I quite past being seduced by a wrapped and beribboned parcel, and the ‘pre-war overstock’ – I had been impressed by the way the term slipped from Bella’s tongue – was heaped up in tantalising abundance like fruit outside a greengrocer’s, except that instead of being in chip baskets at hip height – at Dalmatian’s muzzle height as I had had brought home to me one day when Bunty snaffled a ripe pear in Dunkeld’s High Street – the boxes were set out upon high circular stands, something like roulette wheels.

‘Lord above us,’ said Bella, ‘where did she unearth these, I wonder.’

‘What are they?’ I asked.

‘From the old food hall, I think,’ Bella said. ‘Repainted for the day. They must have been mouldering away up in the attics for twenty years at least.’

I tipped my head back to look at the ceiling again. I had never thought of a department store as a place which would have attics.

‘From the old days when the clerks lived in,’ said Bella. ‘A warren of nasty little cells and now they’re stuffed to the rafters with whatever Mary thinks she’ll find a use for one day.’ She stirred the heap of boxes in the roulette wheel and shook her head, laughing. They were, to be frank, a little battered-looking, slightly worn on the corners and slightly warped with damp or age. The ribbons tied around them, needless to say, were new. ‘At a guess,’ said Bella, ‘I’d say these are probably braces, or collars, or possibly sock suspenders. Jubilee notions!’

‘Mrs Aitken does seem to have a great deal of… um… zeal for… um…’ I said, a new low even for me, who am often pressed into impromptu diplomacy and found wanting. Bella Aitken gave me a conspiratorial look and leaned in closer before speaking again.

‘Forty-eight years since her ascension and she still can’t believe her luck,’ she said, in a murmur. I felt my eyes widen, but did not have time to pursue the hint, because Mary Aitken was crossing the shop floor towards us – the very shop floor from which I inferred she had been elevated to her current reign. She brought with her two groups of honoured guests. One group consisted of the Provost, red-faced, beaming, barrel-chested and in all his robes and chains, his good lady wife, equally red-faced, equally barrel-chested, in a costume and wearing a smile which put her husband’s ceremonial garments and expression effortlessly in the shade, and two youths who must be their sons – plain, round, tricked out in boys’ brigade uniforms for reasons best understood by their mama, and both with the same black hair as the Provost, flattened to their heads with such quantities of pomade that they appeared to be wearing little Bakelite skullcaps, with not a suggestion of individual strands of hair.

The other party were of quite a different order but were no less exemplars of their type; Lady Lawson and her three sons were very tall, very thin and had that worn, straggly look which comes either from avoiding any appearance of effort or from real hardship, gently being borne. I guessed that the Lawson specimens were probably impoverished rather than too grand to be seen trying; for why else would they be here if not for the buns?

There was a flurry of introductions and then a repetition of them all as Jack and Abigail arrived with yet more favoured guests. I nodded and smiled and was aware that all around us the haberdashery floor and the galleries above were filling with onlookers. The flag-wavers, the bearers of fifty-shilling tokens, were jostling for a view with much respectful whispering and smothered giggles, but it was with some surprise I realised that what they were jostling for a view of was us, standing there in the middle of the floor. There did not seem to be any dais or other indication that this spot was one where a drama was to be played, or so I thought until I saw, wound around a brass hook screwed into the edge of one of the old food-hall wheels, the tasselled end of a cord. Its other end was lost amongst the banners high above us. Balloons, I thought, or possibly confetti; someone would pull it and the jubilee would begin.

As I stood there, squinting up, our number was swelled by two more; not exalted customers these but a middle-aged man of military bearing with a purple and gold handkerchief sprouting out of his breast pocket and a middle-aged woman dressed in Aitkens’ black, most of her narrow bosom covered by a corsage which could have served as a table centrepiece for a large banquet. Mary Aitken welcomed these – they had to be the highest-ranking employees, surely – into the enclosure and introduced them around.

‘Mr Muir is the manager of the gentlemen’s side,’ she said, ‘and Miss Hutton for the ladies’.’

‘Where’s Mrs Lumsden?’ said Bella. Mary Aitken treated Lady Lawson to one of her smiles before turning to her sister-in-law.

‘The rest of our employees are watching from the upper gallery,’ she said.

‘Mrs Lumsden is in charge of Household,’ Bella began to explain to me, but was interrupted.

‘And what with curtains and upholstery being on the second and linens and housewares in the basement, I’m kept on my toes, eh?’ She was a tiny woman, almost completely spherical, with her gold and mauve ribbon wrapped around her head and tied under her chin in a bow. ‘Mrs, Mrs, Abigail dear, Jack son. Hello there, Netta.’ This to the Provost’s wife who at Mrs Lumsden’s entrance had brightened back into smiles (the Lawsons had had a dampening effect upon her, as I imagine they had meant to).

‘Mrs Lumsden is an institution at Aitkens’,’ said Mary tightly and the little woman, far from being offended at an apology being offered for her presence, chuckled and added more.

‘In with the bricks, I am,’ she said. ‘And not a thing they can do about it.’

‘Although they try,’ Bella murmured, with a glance at Mary. ‘They certainly do try. Too close to home by half, Mrs Gilver, if you know what I mean.’

I did. Mrs Lumsden was Mary’s road not taken, by the grace of God, and she shuddered to be reminded of what might have been.

‘And we are grateful for all your years of loyal service, Mrs Lumsden,’ Mary was saying now, looking as though she had bitten down on a bad tooth. ‘What would a department store be without its domestic wares? Nothing but a glorified draper’s, no matter what they say.’

‘Not today, Mary,’ said Bella. ‘Forget them for one day, can’t you?’

‘Mrs Ninian, dear,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘Don’t upset yourself.’ She dropped her voice and spoke to Bella. ‘It’s not true then? About the hatchet. Olive branch, I should say.’

‘What’s this? What?’ said Mary Aitken.

‘Nothing at all,’ said Mrs Lumsden, but Mary was not to be fobbed off.

‘What was that about an olive branch, Mrs Lumsden?’ she said. ‘I’m surprised at you, whispering that way.’ The Provost’s wife was shifting uneasily from foot to foot trying not to overhear and Lady Lawson was looking fixedly up at the galleries.

‘It’s nothing, Mrs Ninian,’ Mrs Lumsden said again, but the drilling stare was too much for her. ‘I thought – that is, I hoped – I mean, my girls upstairs were talking about an entente cordiale.’

‘What?’ said Bella Aitken.

‘You know, “them down by”. I thought they might even come along.’ Mrs Lumsden lowered her voice but jerked her head so theatrically that she attracted more attention than if she had spoken out loud. Lady Lawson and the Provost’s wife had heard something to overcome any polite scruples and were listening hard. ‘All very ecumenical, I was thinking.’

‘Mrs Lumsden,’ said Mary, ‘you should know better than to listen to those silly girls at your age.’

‘But they said they saw Mr Hepburn right here in the-’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mary. And then under her breath: ‘They wouldn’t dare gatecrash. They wouldn’t dare.’

‘I don’t know, Mary,’ said Bella. ‘They might think it was a “wheeze”. You know what they’re like when they-’

‘Jack!’ Mary swung round and skewered her son-in-law with a gimlet glare, then she softened it and spoke with a lightness and ease which fooled no one. ‘Just you slip out and tell Ferguson to fasten the front doors. We’ve enough of a crowd to be going on with.’

Jack Aitken disentangled his arm from his wife’s – she had been clinging on to him like a creeping vine – and set off for the front door at some speed. Abigail reached out her hand for some support to replace him but found nothing and took an unsteady step to the side.

‘Need to sit, Mother,’ she said vaguely.

‘Not now,’ Mary muttered through her teeth.

‘Glass of water…’

‘I’ll fetch it. And a chair,’ said Bella Aitken and strode off towards the back of the store. The Provost’s boys stood as stolidly unremarking as ever, but every other one of the guests was showing signs of strain. The Provost himself made a great business of checking and winding a turnip-like pocket watch. The Lawson offspring were beginning to roll their eyes and murmur to one another, making my hand itch. They all looked to be in their twenties and therefore far too old for such rudeness. Lady Lawson, one of the old school, responded to the rising awkwardness as an engine responds to a crank handle: she turned to the Provost’s lady and started talking about gardens. Mrs Provost, well-trained in the same game, took the baton and ran, describing some elaborate new scheme for a rockery at home. They had got as far as promising to swap some treasured specimens when Mary gave a sigh which could have blown the crust off a sandwich (as Nanny Palmer used to say).

‘This is getting ridiculous,’ she announced and looked upwards. The crowds hanging over the balconies with flags in hand were quieter now, waiting for something to happen, hoping that it would happen soon. Looking around, I saw that not only had neither Bella nor Jack reappeared but Abigail had gone too.

Mary Aitken raised her hand and gave a signal to someone out of view and somewhere off to the side, but not far enough off for me, an uncertain bugler began a fanfare. A cheer went up from the balconies and Mary beamed and then nodded to the Provost.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,’ he said, sounding like a ringmaster. ‘Welcome to Aitkens’ Emporium. I know you are all aching to begin this afternoon of celebration and I hope you have made provision for plenty fun. We’ve all seen the advertisements in the Herald telling what’s in store for us so without further ado I will render the service I offered.’ Mary Aitken, still beaming despite the puns, pointed to the end of the cord wound round the little brass cleat. The Provost unwound it and stood holding the end of the rope in one hand.

‘Without further ado,’ he repeated, ‘it gives me great pleasure to say: happy fiftieth birthday, Aitkens’, and many happy returns.’

A cheer rose, the Provost tugged on the rope and everyone looked up. There was a moment when all I could see was a kind of shimmering high above the web of banners and then came a sudden loud bang, almost an explosion.

‘What-?’ said Mary Aitken’s voice.

The shimmering became clearer; a shower of little golden flakes drifting down through the ribbons.

‘What was that noise?’ said Mrs Lumsden.

The crowds on the balconies were silenced for a moment, waiting to see what had made the sound, but then a murmur started up again and they reached out to snatch at the specks of gold, whirling down like a shower of snow. I caught one in my palm and saw that it was a little 50, stamped out of gilt foil. They were settling on our heads now and the Provost’s boys began to chase them, holding out their caps.

‘What made that noise?’ said Bella. She had returned and was standing holding a glass of water, staring upwards. ‘Where’s Abby?’

‘Perhaps when I released the…’ said the Provost. ‘Something up there…’

‘What went wrong?’ said Jack Aitken, reappearing. ‘Oh! They’ve scattered all right, then.’ He brushed one of the spangles from his shoulder and grinned at the Provost’s boys. ‘What was that banging noise? I thought for a moment the whole bag had come plummeting down in one! Where’s Abby gone to?’

I sniffed the air, wondering if I were imagining it. I squinted up through the ribbons. They were swaying and rippling now as people on the balconies tried to shake free pieces of gold foil caught there. The noise had come from the back corner, I thought, but surely the gold 50s in their bag must have been in the middle of the roof; they had settled evenly all around the floor. I sniffed again.

‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said, turning to Mary, ‘what was the trick to getting those spangles to fall?’

Mary Aitken was staring up, just as I had been. It was the manager, Mr Muir, who answered.

‘Drawstrings,’ he said. ‘Just muslin bags, slung over the highest beams and drawstrings at the bottom.’

‘So, nothing… automotive, then?’ I said. ‘Nothing like fireworks or anything?’ I sniffed again and, because they saw me, the others began to sniff too. I took one last look at where I was sure the noise had come from and then made for the staircase in the corner. Halfway there, though, I caught sight of the lift again, winking from behind its golden grille. That might be quicker and I was sure the bang had come from that corner of the building.

‘Who knows how to work this thing?’ I called back to the little gathering in the middle of the floor. ‘Mr Aitken?’ Jack simply stared at me.

‘There’s a boy who works it,’ Mary said, frowning at me.

‘Good Lord, Mary, needs must,’ said Bella. ‘Jack, help Mrs Gilver, won’t you?’

But Mary put her hand on his arm and gripped it tightly.

‘Find Abigail,’ she said. ‘Keep her out of the way while we see what’s happened.’

‘Can you make it go?’ I asked Bella, thinking that I could have been halfway up the stairs by now. She nodded, strode over the floor towards me, rattled open the door of the lift shaft and the door of the carriage itself and slammed both shut again behind us.

‘It came from the top, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘Above the galleries?’

‘I think so,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said Bella. ‘I’m no expert with this contraption but the attics are as far as it can go.’ She tugged hard on the rope and the lift groaned, slowly starting to rise. I would most definitely have been better on the stairs, I thought, listening to the creaks of the pulley winding.

‘It was a gun, wasn’t it?’ said Bella. Her voice was under commendable control.

‘Yes, I think so,’ I said again. ‘The noise and the smell of cordite together. I’m almost sure it must have been.’

The lift wheezed and slowed, then shuddered to a halt. Bella tugged the rope again, securing us up there, then she hauled back the carriage door and reached across the gap to the door of the lift shaft. It was solid up here, not the glittering concertina of the public floors, and when she had got it open I saw that nothing up here was the same. We were on a sort of landing or lobby of some kind open to the atrium at one side, but there were no polished railings; instead I saw a safety wall made of crude board painted brown and a ledge jutting in at the top so that no one could approach the edge and be seen by the customers below. It was curiously dark too, but then the ceiling was very low, the walls distempered a dull drab, the floor dark red linoleum of great age, worn to the weave from scrubbing. There was even a trace in the air of the strong floor soap used to scrub it; just a trace, and under it even fainter still there was gunpowder, catching the back of my throat and making me swallow, so that I tasted it too.

Bella Aitken was running her hands over the walls, searching for a light switch.

‘I don’t even know if there is electric light,’ she said. ‘It’s been years since I was up here. Ah!’ There was a snap as she threw the switch and revealed the landing in the cold plain light of an unshaded bulb near the ceiling.

Someone – a woman – was lying crumpled on the floor at the base of the opposite wall, with her head propped up at an awkward angle on the skirting board. She was looking at the open lift door, or so it seemed until I stepped closer and saw that her eyes were dull and blank, and then I noticed that her head, one side of her head, was wrong in a way I did not want to look at after the glance that made me flick my eyes away. They took in a dark stain blooming on the brown distempered wall above her and running in trickles down towards the floor.

Stupidly I thought to myself, if she fell against the wall and cut her head, what was that noise? For some reason I was creeping up to her on tiptoe and I was right beside her before I took in what was on the other side of her face: a round dark hole in her temple, and some strands of hair had fallen against it and were clinging there.

‘Mirren,’ said Bella’s voice behind me, almost as quiet as breathing.

Both of the girl’s hands were empty, lying there flung out with the fingers curled up. I knelt and felt under her skirt at the right side but there was nothing there.

‘Is she… was she left-handed?’ I asked. Bella Aitken said nothing. So, holding my breath, I reached under her body at the left side trying not to look at where drops of blood had fallen. I could feel her warmth through her clothes as I scrabbled around under her. She shifted a little, slumping further towards the floor, and I drew my hand away, knowing that the police would not want to hear that I had moved her.

‘Mirren,’ said Bella, just as quiet but with a high, strained note as if she were very softly singing. I looked round at her and saw that she was swaying back and forward.

‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said, ‘please don’t faint. Please go back down and tell…’ I ran over them all in my mind. ‘… Tell Mr Muir to telephone to the police, and see if you can stop anyone else coming up here. Do you understand?’

The firm voice, or perhaps just being given a job to do, rallied her and she tottered back to the lift, hauled the door closed and took the groaning old carriage on its way.

In the silence I made myself look at Mirren Aitken’s face again. She was – or had been – very pretty, the sort of girl suited to the fashions of the day, with a heart-shaped face, softly waving hair and a slight, supple figure. Only now that figure was bent at ugly and impossible angles, the soft hair was matted with blood and worse than blood, and the face was a mask carved from bleached wood, unmoving.

‘You poor child,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said a voice, very quietly. I leapt backwards, only just managing not to fall, and peered at where it had come from: a dark corner beyond the reach of the feeble light bulb.

‘Mrs Jack?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said the voice again. I reached up to the bulb and swung it on its cord, trying to see her. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and her legs splayed out like those of a rag doll.

‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

Abigail Aitken lifted her hand and showed me a revolver, so heavy for her that it wagged from side to side in her grip. She looked at it as though seeing it for the first time.

‘It’s Jack’s,’ she said. ‘I shot Mirren and now she is dead and they’ll hang me and I shall be dead too.’

‘Put it down, Mrs Aitken,’ I said, concentrating on keeping my voice very gentle and steady. ‘Put the gun down on the floor.’

‘You don’t need to worry,’ she said, looking at the revolver again. ‘I can’t turn it on myself. I tried and I don’t have the courage.’

‘So can you put it down and just slide it away? I’ll take care of it for you.’

‘No, I want to hold on to it for now,’ she said, but at least she put her hand back down into her lap and I thought I could see that her grip loosened. ‘That would be the best thing.’

I kept my eyes on her, but I cocked my head up to the side and felt a warm rush of relief pass through me, leaving me tingling. Very faintly, in the distance, the piercing squeals of police whistles had begun.