Unsuitable Day for a Murder

4

One could hardly believe it was the same town. The sun was shining as it had a week before and there was nothing the park-keepers could do about the beds of tulips and pansies but otherwise, when I emerged from the station on the day of Mirren Aitken’s funeral, it was into a very different Dunfermline. Black ribbon wreaths were pinned to the doors of the Carnegie Library and, as far as I could tell all the civic buildings with which this tiny city is so lavishly endowed. All the shops in the High Street had their shades half-lowered and were displaying in their windows only the soberest and most blameless of wares: dark clothes, tartan carriage rugs and luggage; for some reason every shop which could muster it had filled its windows with luggage. The protocols and etiquettes of the merchant trade, I thought (not for the first time), were a mystery to me.

Needless to say, Aitkens’ long row of plate glass was covered completely over with what looked like best black velvet. It must have cost them a pretty penny and I wondered idly if the bolts would be rewound and go back on the shelves to be sold afterwards or if the sunshine would have streaked it to uselessness. It was slightly out of my way but I could not resist walking down as far as Hepburns’ to see how their window trimmers had responded to the tragedy. With a dignified restraint which was somehow more excruciating than respectful, was the answer: the sporting young couple and the backdrops of their leisured life had been removed and in their place was set a single dark hat on a milliner’s stand just off centre in each window.

The investigation had been completed within days, the inquiry satisfied in a few days more and, although the procurator fiscal had mouthed familiar words about the balance of her mind, he had also taken his chance of a swipe at her family for their part in the sad affair and thus had appeared to align himself with the newspapers and the gossips in the streets, where revulsion at the families’ behaviour was the dominant note in the chord.

It was reported with the most bitter relish of all in the News of the World from which Grant had read it out to me. To be fair, though, the Scotsman had also let out quite a bit of line in its editorial, judging the rivalry of the Aitkens and Hepburns an indulgence for which the life of a pretty young girl was far too high a price to pay. The Times meanwhile had reported the matter with a disdainful loftiness which must have hurt more than the gossip in its way, and I hoped the families had not seen it and did not have the sorts of friends who would summarise the articles at future meetings, or indeed clip them and read them out, or even – as one of my great aunts used to do in the name of helpfulness, but really out of devilry – clip them and actually post them to the parties in question with biblical verses printed out on little cards.

All that was left now was the funeral and it was set for two o’clock in the afternoon. Yet here I was at just gone eleven in the morning, retracing my steps of a week before. I had an address written on a card in my hand (although it was my butler’s own clear writing, since the message had come by telephone) and had been engaged by a lady I did not know to discuss the matter of Miss Aitken in a professional capacity.

I found the end of Pilmuir Street after a little effort and toiled up it, realising too late – once I had deserted the busy part of town where there might be taxis – that number one hundred and twenty could be a stiff hike away. Sure enough I was puffing like a tugboat by the time I arrived.

So perhaps it was shortness of breath that was making me dizzy and perhaps that contributed to the nasty prickling I could feel, but at least some of it was owing to the nightmarish sense that I was reliving a dark reflection of that cheerful day a week before. Once again the house for which I was bound surprised me; Roseville was Georgian grey just like Abbey Park, but was very wide and low, and set back from the pavement behind white railings with two patches of tumbling cottage garden on either side of a flagged path. It had a coach house at one flank and a high orchard wall at the other and was as charming as it was unexpected: a village house, my mother would have called it (never suspecting that when she did so in those ringing tones of hers she always offended the owners, who heard the echo of ‘a village child’ for which read apple thief, ‘a village family’ where laundrymaids and jobbing gardeners might be found, and ‘a village affair’ by which she meant any feud or scandal she deemed beneath her notice which was nonetheless too significant to be ignored).

A maid who had clearly been told to expect me – ‘advised of my arrival’ as she put it – let me in and showed me into a morning room at the back of the house with a french window open onto the garden. I just had time to note the pale carpet and silk-covered walls, the elegant gilded furniture and delicate watercolours, but I had no chance for my customary snooping before the door opened again and someone strode into the room. A young woman, a woman, an elderly woman, I thought in quick succession as she came towards me and held out her hand, for the initial impression of vigour was seen off by the matronly cut of her coat and skirt and the confident rake of her hat (an angle like that only comes, if it comes at all, with maturity), and the coat and skirt and hat (and brooch and pearls) in their turn could not disguise the iron grey hair, lined skin and thickened wrists of quite advanced age. She wore startlingly red lipstick and had painted very thick black eyebrows onto her head; her nails too were red and black – red from paint and black from gardening. I knew the type. She was not, after all, an elderly woman: she was a game old girl.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, giving me a wide grin and showing strong yellow teeth which were not flattered by the lipstick, neither the shade of it nor the fact that a great deal of it was on them. ‘Fiona Haddo. Bella Aitken told me about you. Thank you for coming and do sit down.’

She rang for coffee and then eased herself into an armchair and regarded me.

‘It’s about Mirren.’

I nodded. The nightmare was going strong.

‘I’m Googie’s grandmother, you see.’ I said nothing and my face must have been blank because she hurried to explain. ‘Dugald. Googie was his little sister’s best attempt and it stuck. Hilda – my daughter – hates it.’

I could not help my eyebrow rising at her daughter’s name. Hilda Haddo was a dreadful curse to visit upon a child.

‘Oh, I know,’ said her mother, getting the point of the raised brow. She was clearly an old girl of great perception and I would need to disport myself more cautiously. ‘But she was a Hilda. If you’d only seen her the day she was born – glaring up at me with that look on her face telling me the whole thing was an outrage. A Teutonic battle-maid if ever I’d seen one. Anyway, she’s Hilda Hepburn now which isn’t so bad. Unless one counts it as bad that I married off my daughter to a draper’s boy. Sounds like a music-hall song, doesn’t it?’ She laughed again. ‘But Robert Junior – Robin, as the family have always called him – is a dear man, with pots of money, and Hilda has been very happy. Until now, of course. Until now.’

‘The boy must be distraught,’ I said. ‘I can quite imagine his mother suffering along with him.’

‘Hm,’ said Fiona Haddo, but did not elaborate.

‘Was he terribly fond of her?’

‘Googie adored her,’ said Mrs Haddo. ‘To see them together was almost enough to make one believe in love’s young dream again. Even a cynical old trout like me could grow quite misty. So it’s almost beyond belief that…’ She gave me a shrewd look. ‘How much do you know?’

‘Well,’ I said, carefully, ‘I’ve heard a great deal but all from one source. Another perspective would perhaps be illuminating.’ Fiona Haddo gave a twisted smile in acknowledgement of my carefully chosen words.

‘I’ll start at the beginning,’ she said. ‘Mirren and Googie had many friends in common as you can imagine – Dunfermline is a small town – but they were never particular friends of one another. So it was a surprise to us all when Googie told us he was engaged. Just after St Valentine’s Day. He must have proposed then – such a sweet boy. Twenty years old and he informed his father and mother about it as though he were the headmaster giving out extra prep.’

‘Mirren wasn’t quite so forceful with her parents,’ I said.

‘And the Aitkens were adamant in their refusal. Beyond adamant.’

‘Not all of the Aitkens, surely. I can’t imagine Abigail…’

She grinned at me. ‘No, not all. Perhaps just one. But that one is very forceful indeed. You know, of course, that she was a shopgirl when Ninian married her?’ I nodded. ‘And of course, Aitkens’ is the older of the two firms and they view the Hepburns as fearful usurpers. But it was her mother and father that Mirren spoke of when she came to me. Abigail and Jack had forbidden it too. Well, who can guess at that – they’re an odd pair from all I hear. But what did seem odd was that Googie’s parents thought the same. And actually, I suppose if one’s being fair they were pretty adamant too. Especially Robin. “No son of mine” and all that.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘He talked about “poor stock” and “weak blood” which was ridiculous.’

‘Well, Mirren’s mother and father are cousins,’ I said. Fiona Haddo shuddered.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it ghastly? When I think of my boy cousins, I could almost retch! But people in glass houses…’

I looked inquiringly at her.

‘The Hepburns themselves are not exactly sturdy stock,’ she said. ‘Thank God Hilda seems to have brought a bit of vigour back to the line.’ Then she moved on very crisply and in a manner which prevented any wheeling back again. ‘So. Robin put his foot down about the marriage. Hilda put hers down like Rumpelstiltskin, which isn’t like her. Robert Senior – he who established House of Hepburn – was no keener and he’s a shrewd businessman that I’d have expected to be all for a merger. Dulcie, Robin’s mother, was vehemently against the thing too. Most odd, because Dulcie – perfectly pleasant little woman as I’m always the first to say -’ poor Dulcie, I thought – ‘is very… Home Chat, don’t you know. Knitting and recipes and what have you, and one would have thought that Mirren Aitken would be her dream of a daughter-in-law. Only I was in favour. And on the other side, as I say, Jack and Abby said no, ghastly Mary did the same and only good old Bella couldn’t see the difficulty. We talked about it on the telephone, she and I. You’ve met Bella, of course?’ I acknowledged that I had. ‘She’s splendid. Another old trout and one of the highest order. We’re a force to be reckoned with, you know.’ I smiled and waited.

‘Anyway,’ she said, resuming after stopping to give me a cigarette and light one for herself. I noticed that her hand shook slightly as she held it to her lips and I surmised that we were coming to the crux of the matter. ‘The thing is, I wasn’t prepared to sit idly by and let young love be snuffed out for no reason. I live here – have done for years – but I still have a dower house of my own. My husband left it to me and I kept it to annoy my daughter-in-law. I also kept a tiara and a couple more pieces I should really have sold if I wasn’t going to pass them on. But it’s always irked me the way that we old girls are expected to relinquish our jewels – we need them more than pretty young faces, don’t we? Also – here’s the nub of it – I have shares in House Of. Robin gave them to me in a fit of… something or other, when he and Hilda were married. Sort of welcoming me to the clan kind of thing, I suppose. So all in all, I was just about able to toddle on and do my fairy godmother routine. They were going to elope and stay in the dower house – poor things: it’s pretty crumbly – living off the proceeds of the tiara until I had used my shares like a mallet to din some sense into everyone.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said Mrs Haddo, ‘but I’ll spell it out anyway.’ She stubbed out her cigarette, grinding it away to fragments in the ashtray. ‘Mirren Aitken didn’t kill herself. She had no reason to.’

I watched her through the ribbon of smoke which was drifting upwards from my own cigarette. She was very sure and very angry but I wondered if she had followed those angry thoughts through to their ends.

‘Yes,’ she said. The way she read my mind was beginning to unnerve me. ‘I think someone killed her. And I didn’t tell the police at any point during the last week because it was obvious who the suspects would be. The family of the boy.’

‘So what’s changed?’ I asked her. ‘Why are you speaking up now?’

She tried to light another cigarette, but her hands shook so much that she could not get the match to strike against the side of the box. When she had missed it three times I half-stood to help her, but she waved me away.

‘I thought I’d be able to pull this off,’ she said. ‘Almost made it, eh?’ She grinned again but there was no humour in it now. Her eyes were large and stark in her face. ‘A week past Monday-’

‘You mean after Mirren had run away?’ The Scotch, with their next Friday and last Tuesday there, were always confusing me.

‘Was it? Well around then anyway, it was suddenly decided to pack Googie off to our friends at Kelso – as though a few days’ fishing were going to cheer him up again like a lollipop for skinned knees used to – and the thing is, they telephoned this morning. Googie disappeared from his room last night.’

‘You think he might turn up at the funeral and make a scene?’

She shook her head. She was looking down at the floor, digging one elegant heel into the pile of the carpet.

‘Well, do you think he might suspect someone in particular? That he might be intent on revenge?’

‘That’s the least of my worries,’ she said. Her eyes filled and, compared to their shining, all of a sudden her face looked grey and papery, terribly old. ‘The thing is, Googie is absolutely hopeless at keeping secrets. Always has been. So when it came to the elopement, I cooked it all up with Mirren behind his back, Bella helping. We were going to spring it on him.’

‘And since Mirren died?’ I said, very quietly.

‘I didn’t tell him. I thought it would be best if he could think of Mirren as… well, as not the sort to make a good wife, even if she did love him… doing that to herself. I thought I was helping him get over her.’ Then she sniffed and put a tight, brave smile – terrible to behold – upon her face. ‘And now he’s gone missing – not angry and vengeful, Mrs Gilver, but wretched. And no one knows where he is and I keep thinking of Romeo and Juliet. Because I didn’t tell him. He still doesn’t know.’

I questioned her very closely, asking about Dugald’s friends and habits and favourite places, and left her eventually well after one o’clock (when I was beginning to feel some concern about the length of Pilmuir Street and the nearness of the funeral hour) with a long list of telephoning to do. Quietly to myself, I remained convinced that the funeral was where Dugald would be bound after bunking off from Kelso and I was glad that Alec was going to be with me; between us we would be able to keep a sharp eye on all corners of the Abbey and might even be able to bundle the young man away before he caused a scene.

At least the return journey was downhill but even so I became rather flushed on the way and much more dishevelled than one ought to be when presenting oneself as a mourner, my hair flying out at the sides from under my hat, my coat unbuttoned and silk scarf flapping, gloves off and jammed in my bag which had seemed a good idea for a brisk trot on a warm day but now left me with the task of getting them back again onto hands swollen with heat and hurry. I was wrestling with them as I turned down the Kirkgate, assuring myself that at least I would be able to dodge into the Abbey at the other end from where the family party would be arriving, for Abbey Park lay beyond the far side of the church grounds with a gate very handy, when to my horror in the distance I saw the unmistakable sight of four nodding black plumes which could only be the head ornaments of horses pulling a hearse. They had gone right around the Abbey to arrive at the most impressive entrance – of course, they had! Had I forgotten the winding procession on the jubilee day? – and we were set to meet on the very steps unless I swerved and found another route quickly.

I swerved. Thankfully Dunfermline Abbey Church, plonked in the middle of the city that way, is well served with gates and I darted unseen into the nearest one.

I should have known really that the funeral arrangements for Mirren would be lavish to the last degree. Peeping between the gravestones I could see not only the four plumed horses pulling a glass-sided hearse carriage but feathermen too, pages with batons, and what might even be mutes, if such things really still existed. Behind all of that came the same two motorcars from last week, their hoods up and their side windows shaded with black netting. The strain of moving so slowly could be heard in the rumble of their engines, and the chauffeurs’ faces were grim with tension as they tried to avoid the ignominy of stalling.

Alec was waving at me from the Abbey doors, hopping from foot to foot, and we slipped without a moment to spare into the great stone ante-room which leads on to the church proper. Hidden from view behind one of the mighty pillars there, I grabbed both his arms in mine and started talking very fast and low.

‘Dugald’s granny and Bella Aitken were hatching an elopement for them,’ I said. ‘Mirren knew. She had no reason to kill herself, Alec. It was murder. It had to be.’

‘But what about the swabs?’ Alec said. ‘The police were sure.’

I had been thinking about the swabs and I had an answer. I folded one of my hands around one of his, guided it to his temple and squeezed his fingers.

After a moment, he nodded.

‘But not Abigail,’ he said. ‘Unless she wore gloves.’

‘Which she’d either have had on her or would have hidden somewhere,’ I said.

‘Did the police search the attics?’

‘I don’t know.’

Alec glanced round to the front doors where the sound of heavy tramping feet on the gravel announced the arrival of the coffin at the door.

‘Should we try to stop this?’ he asked. ‘Make them take her body back to the doctor?’ I am sure my face fell at the prospect and Alec was no keener.

‘It’s not a cremation,’ I began and that was all he needed. He nodded energetically and together we hurried on tiptoe across the vast darkness and into the lighted nave.

We shuffled ourselves into a back pew, prayed briefly to avoid shocking our neighbours and then sat up and surveyed the sea of hatted heads stretching away in front of us to the distant altar. The Abbey was stuffed to bursting, even the side chapels filled with tight ranks of glum-faced townspeople. And I had forgotten, after years of village churches and house chapels, just how enormous Dunfermline Abbey was; my confidence that Alec and I could subdue Dugald Hepburn, should he suddenly appear, seemed like hollow hubris now.

‘It would help if we knew what he looked like,’ Alec whispered, clearly having similar thoughts to mine.

‘He’ll look like a twenty-year-old boy rushing up to hug the coffin,’ I replied out of one corner of my mouth. The elderly couple who had squashed up to make room for us both swivelled their eyes and glared. They could not possibly hear what we were saying, but we were whispering in church and that was enough to earn black looks from them. I lowered my voice even further before I spoke again.

‘Straight to the police after this?’ The female half of the elderly couple gave a ringing tut which drew attention from all around, from members of the congregation who had not been troubled by Alec’s and my soft whispering. He mouthed to me that we would talk later.

The organist was already in his seat and at that moment he pumped his feet up and down on the pedals and laid his hands against the keys, sending a miasma of doleful chords rolling over the bowed heads of the waiting mourners. I could hear muffled knocks and thumps from behind as the coffin was manhandled, and I shivered.

Perhaps it was just the cold, the chill of damp air pressing down and the chill of old stone creeping up, so cold that even though every side-table and pillar at the altar and every niche and alcove up the sides was filled with flowers none of their scent could reach us. That was possibly a blessing, for the arrangements – three feet across and cascading to the floor – were made up of enormous rhododendron heads in the palest pink and masses of white narcissus as well as the usual lilies; in a warm room they would have been suffocating.

Here came the coffin, white and glittering, with another heap of flowers resting on it. These narcissi were trembling, showing us that the pall-bearers, although they looked steady and strong, were not unaffected by the burden on their shoulders. Jack Aitken was one of them, Mr Muir the manager of the gentlemen’s side another; I did not recognise the other four and saw no family resemblance although I was sure they were not professionals, being too individually dressed in their best dark suits and black shoes, not decked out with the uniformity of undertakers’ men.

Behind the coffin the Aitken women made their way up the aisle as though it were a cliff-face and there were a howling gale blowing hard against them. Bella, towering over Mary and Abigail, spread her arms protectively behind them and ploughed unsteadily on, while the two smaller women tottered one faltering step and then with effort another and swaying a little yet another and the congregation held its breath, men in the aisle seats shifting, ready to help should the pitiful threesome flounder.

When they had made it to the front pew and sunk down out of view, the rest of us sat back and the gust of our collective sigh drowned out the low notes of the organ as it began an even more sepulchral lament than before.

Then the minister and two session clerks emerged from the vestry, bowed to the coffin, bowed to the family, and the minister mounted the altar to begin. I swept the edges of the pews with a gaze, checking the sides of every pillar to see if there were any trace of someone hiding there. I could see Alec doing the same. The minister was speaking, intoning, more mournful than the organ even, and he finished with the words: let us pray. I crossed my fingers and bent my head.

‘We should have stayed standing up at the back,’ Alec whispered.

‘Well, we can’t go skipping off now,’ I whispered back.

‘Ssh!’ hissed our neighbour, managing to imbue the sound with all the indignation we deserved. I bent my head even further and tried to block out the words of the prayer, listening hard for movements where they should not be.

As it turned out, our vigilance was unneeded. The service wore on, ended, and the coffin and woebegone trio of Aitken ladies left again without any interruptions beyond the odd moment when one of the congregation, trying to weep silently, momentarily failed and had to apply a handkerchief to smother a sob or one of those great wuthering sighs. Alec and I had slipped out in advance of the family party of course, to keep an eye on potential trouble in the kirkyard, but the coffin was deposited back into the hearse, surrounded by wreaths, and the family deposited back into the motorcars, without incident. As the congregation filed out a procession formed behind the second motorcar and then at a snail’s pace and with the engines growling, the chauffeurs as tense as before, they drew away from the Abbey doors and began the dreadful journey through the streets to the cemetery. (The Abbey kirkyard had long been full, I concluded, looking around at the mossy old gravestones with their epitaphs worn away, and even if there were a plot remaining here and there into which a town worthy or church official might be squeezed, a suicide was never going to have rules bent and space found for her.)

Alec stood watching the procession snaking away. ‘Police now or graveside first?’ he said. He shivered slightly as he spoke, although one could not tell whether to blame the prospect facing him on the sudden chill in the air – the sun had retreated behind a bank of dark, determined-looking clouds as though it meant to stay there.

‘Police for me and graveside for you,’ I said. ‘I’d stick out like a sore thumb anyway.’ The old Scotch tradition of women staying away from the burial held strong in Dunfermline, it seemed. The procession was made up of men alone, and their wives idled at the Abbey door and among the graves, wiping their eyes and shaking their heads and beginning to talk of Mirren and the shame of it all and then slowly but inevitably of other things.

I kissed Alec’s cheek and was watching him edge up the side of the procession with a perfect mixture of purpose and decorum so that he could be close to the hearse, when someone sidled up to me and passed me a folded note.

‘From Mrs Ninian, dear,’ she said. I recognised Aitkens’ institution, Mrs…

‘Mrs Lumsden,’ she said, seeing me searching for her name. ‘Mrs Ninian asked me to make sure you got this if you were here.’

I opened the note and began to read it.

Dear Mrs Gilver, it said.

‘This isn’t Mrs Ninian’s writing,’ I said to myself, frowning.

‘No,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘She was very upset. She dictated to me.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, how kind you are. You must be such a help.’ Mrs Lumsden looked a little uncomfortable, which was puzzling. I gave her an uncertain smile and returned to the note again.

I must beg your patience with regards to a meeting to settle your account. I will be detained at the funeral tea for Mirren today.

I stared, disbelieving, then, aware of Mrs Lumsden waiting for me to answer, I roused myself.

‘There’s a reception?’ I said faintly. Her homely face puckered as she tried to combine her natural loyalty with her equally natural good common sense.

‘At the Emporium. Just for the staff,’ she said, at last. ‘There are a hundred of us and we all loved the lass. Loved her dearly. We want to give her a send-off no matter what the rights and wrongs of what she did to herself, the poor love.’

‘You knew her well, then?’ I said. Mrs Lumsden’s face was formed for cheerfulness and it took some effort for her mouth to turn down and stay there, but she managed it.

‘From as soon as she could walk, she toddled about the store,’ she said. ‘Up and down on that lift like it was a see-saw. The hours she spent sitting on the counters and she never once fell off. Well, it’s every wee girl’s dream, isn’t it? Playing at shops in a real shop. Yes, we all loved her.’

‘And did it seem… that is, were you surprised at what she did?’

‘Surprised is hardly the word,’ said Mrs Lumsden. She looked startled at my understatement and I tried to explain.

‘Of course, I do beg your pardon. Of course, it was a horrid shock. It must always be so. But surely, I mean to say, I imagine there are people one could always see taking that way out of life’s difficulties and then there are people one couldn’t believe would ever do it, no matter what the provocations.’

Mrs Lumsden was frowning at me.

‘Take my two-’ I was going to say sons, but a flash of white panic at the thought stopped me from going further. ‘Take my brother and sister,’ I said instead. ‘Mavis is a gloomy sort of girl, always was so. She used to have funerals for her dolls and she has a dreadful habit of adopting three-legged horses and one-eared mongrels and then weeping over them. I’ve told her time and again to get a healthy puppy from good stock and a clean home and she won’t spend such hours nursing and mourning. But she’s half in love with easeful death, Mrs Lumsden. I wouldn’t drop from shock to hear that Mavis had killed herself, so long as it were beautiful enough. Floating off like Ophelia, you know, or something.’

Mrs Lumsden was staring aghast at me and just too late I remembered that Mirren’s death had been anything but beautiful, slumped against brown distemper with blood matting her hair. I pressed on.

‘Whereas my brother, Edward, is quite the opposite. He left his right hand and his right eye at the Somme and all he ever said about it was that it got him a prettier wife than he deserved because she felt the patriotic echo of Lord Nelson.’

Mrs Lumsden was blinking rather, but she did answer.

‘Hard to say, Mrs Gilver, about our Mirren. Very hard to say. She was a cheery, sunny wee thing, right enough. More like Mr Jack than Miss Abigail in that respect although she doesn’t favour either of them in looks. Didn’t, I mean. Didn’t favour. Oh my!’ I patted her hand. ‘And she wasn’t a girl ever to make a fuss or throw a tantrum. She had wanted to go to school, you know, and then to college – she was as sharp as a tack, for all her sweet ways – but she didn’t sulk and huff when her grandmother said no. Now you’re asking about it, in fact, Mrs Gilver, it is out of character. Not that she didn’t love the boy.’

‘Her grandmother,’ I said.

Mrs Lumsden started and put one of her plump little hands over her mouth. ‘Her family, I should have said. I spoke quite out of turn. Mrs Ninian has been a good friend to me.’

The females left behind by the procession were beginning to disperse now and despite the many gates in and out of the Abbey grounds it seemed to me that it was the narrow way by the old Abbot House, past the library and on towards the Emporium, where Mrs Lumsden kept glancing.

‘Does the reception begin soon?’ I asked.

She nodded, shifting from foot to foot.

‘Right away,’ she said. ‘Best way to keep the lads out of the public houses. Mrs Ninian isn’t coming along until later, when she’s got Miss Abigail home and settled, and I promised I’d keep an eye on everything.’

‘Don’t let me keep you,’ I said and it was as though I had cut the string of a balloon. She sped off, throwing apologies and explanations over her shoulder. I heard ‘temperamental tea urn’ and ‘far too much lipstick if I’m not there to stop them’ and she was gone.

I stared after her and then at the note again, and began to wonder. If I put on my most innocent face and roundest eyes, could I claim to think I had been invited? If, I debated to myself, I went straight to the police now as I had promised Alec I would, it would be cap in hand, knees knocking, to deliver a theory that would sound like criticism to the nasty inspector who already disliked me. If, on the other hand, I went to Aitkens’, found the girl from Household who had seen Mr Hepburn in the store, slipped away to the attic rooms and found a pair of ladies’ gloves hidden there, still bearing traces of cordite, I should be able to waft along to the police station trailing clouds of glory and a witness behind me. Besides, standing in the churchyard was getting too miserable to be borne.

So I hurried after Mrs Lumsden, with the note in my hand, threading my way through the narrow streets, watching the town come back to life again. The shops, which had closed while the funeral was going on, were beginning to raise their shutters and turn their signs back to Open ready to furnish all comers with luggage and rugs once more.

Aitkens’, of course, was closed for the day, a discreet card in the lower left corner of every window announcing that business would resume on the following Friday morning, and Ferguson the doorman in deepest black was letting in staff members while deftly turning customers away with ambassadorial ease. He hesitated when he saw me but I waved the note and so he opened the door and held it for me; the revolving door with its whirling gaiety was, I gathered, unsuitable for such a sombre day.

‘Welcome, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, bowing. ‘I hear the funeral passed off as well as could be expected.’

‘Weren’t you there?’ I said. A spasm crossed the man’s face.

‘Someone had to mind the shop,’ he answered. ‘And they tell me Mr Muir carried out his task most competently.’ His look discouraged further comment and so I contented myself with a sympathetic smile and made to move away.

‘It’s the second floor, madam,’ he said, ‘but the lift boy isnae on duty today. Do you think you could manage it?’

‘No, no,’ I said, remembering the slow creaking. ‘I’ll take the stairs, Ferguson, gladly.’

‘Aye but the staff’s all using the big stairs, today,’ he said, ‘since the store’s closed anyway.’ He frowned at me, calculating how the necessary distinctions might be maintained, how the prospect of a shopgirl sharing stair treads with me might best be avoided, until his attention was summoned by a banging on the door. He turned and his brow cleared at the sight of a young girl in a suit of rather flashy grey hound’s-tooth check and, as Mrs Lumsden had feared, a great deal of red lipstick.

‘Oh, here’s Miss McWilliam,’ he said, opening up again. ‘She’s a dab hand with that shipper rope, are you no’, hen? Goan take Mrs Gilver up, will you?’

‘Fine by me,’ said the girl. ‘Save my legs in these shoes.’ And with that she swished off on her high heels, leaving me to follow her.

The lift seemed wheezier and more arthritic than ever when we entered and the girl pulled the rope which was supposed to set it rising. It gave some very alarming clanks, moved a foot or so and stopped.

‘I don’t mind the stairs, actually,’ I said and the girl, heels or no heels, nodded in fervent agreement, but then before we could get out again the carriage started moving and we had missed our chance. I held my breath as it hauled us up two storeys and only let it go once we had arrived and the girl had jerked the rope to stop us and opened both doors. Even then, as though by way of farewell, it dropped an inch or so as I stepped forward and we both got out very hurriedly.

‘I’ll send it back for the missuses,’ said the girl, leaning in and tugging the rope again while beginning to close the carriage door with her other hand. ‘It’s a knack,’ she said, hauling shut the shaft doors too. ‘Takes years, but it’s Mrs Ninian’s rules. If staff must use the lift when the boy’s not on it – and only on urgent business for customers, mind – they send it back to wherever it was when they got on, so it’s like we never used it at all.’ She laughed and shook her head.

‘This is not the day to be speaking lightly of any of the family, Lynne,’ said a voice. The thin manageress of ‘the ladies’ side’, whose name I had forgotten, had emerged from behind a display of curtain fabrics with a deep frown upon her face.

‘I’m not, Miss Hutton,’ Lynne said. ‘I’m devoted to them all.’ She turned and gave me a wink which showed that her fabulous black lashes had been applied at the same time as her red lips.

‘Lynne?’ I said, remembering. ‘Were you one of the nymphs?’

Lynne laughed and Miss Hutton tried not to.

‘I was supposed to be a water kelpie, madam,’ Morna said. ‘If my old dad heard you calling me a nymph I’d be pitten oot the hoose.’

‘You’ll be pitten oot the shoap, if you don’t mend your ways, Lynne McWilliam,’ said Miss Hutton, but she was smiling.

‘Anyway,’ Lynne said, ‘I reckon the poor old lift wouldn’t be giving up the ghost like it is if it didn’t have to do so many double journeys, eh no, Miss Hutton?’

Miss Hutton only shook her head.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’m very glad to see you, Mrs Gilver. I advised against this party, you know. Most unseemly, but at least if there are guests as well as the staff it will keep the youngsters in some kind of order.’

‘I was touched to be asked,’ I replied, feeling rather uncomfortable. ‘I feel Mirren’s death most dreadfully.’ Miss Hutton raised a polite eyebrow. ‘Oh, not the loss of her – I wouldn’t presume to say so to those of you who’ve known her so long and loved her so well – but the sense of being asked to find her, bring her home safe and sound, and then such a thing happening before I had even got started. I wouldn’t blame her poor parents if they never wanted to lay eyes on me again.’

‘Her parents?’ said Miss Hutton, as though only just remembering that there were such people. ‘Oh well, I shouldn’t think Mr and Mrs Jack will be here. But – forgive me, madam – when you say you were asked to find her…?’

‘Mrs Ninian engaged me,’ I said. ‘I’m a private detective. A staff member, after all, in a way.’ I saw no reason to keep it from Miss Hutton now but she reared backwards as though I had said I was a dancing girl.

‘Mrs Ninian engaged you to find Miss Mirren?’

Now why, I thought to myself, should that be puzzling? Before I could ask her we were distracted by the machinery of the lift starting up again beside us as it heaved another load up from the ground floor.

‘You’re right, Lynne,’ said Miss Hutton, absently. ‘It sounds worse than ever today.’

Indeed, I was almost at the stage of crossing my fingers and holding my breath as we waited for it to arrive. When the doors opened, Bella and Mary Aitken stood there looking very tense and flustered under their veiled mourning hats, their mouths dropping open at the sight of me. They stared and stared until, once again, the lift dropped a sudden lurching inch and they practically jostled one another getting out of the contraption onto solid ground.

‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said, addressing Mary, ‘thank you for asking me along. I’m very honoured to be included.’

‘What-?’ said Mary Aitken.

‘Mary?’ said Bella, turning to look at her. ‘I didn’t know you had invited other people.’

‘I-’ said Mary. For a long, skin-crawling moment we all stood there gawping at one another. My nerve cracked first. I fished in my pocket for the note and pretended to read it again.

‘I’m terribly sorry if I misunderstood,’ I said.

‘Perhaps Mrs Lumsden didn’t quite catch my drift,’ said Mary coldly. I held the note out towards her, but she snapped her eyes away from it and looked hard at me. ‘You are most welcome, of course,’ she said, about as convincingly as a prisoner greeting the hangman.

‘Did you come up on the lift?’ said Bella. I turned to her with gratitude for the change of subject and nodded, grimacing. She looked behind herself at it and then back at me. ‘And did you notice anything… odd about it?’

‘I… um, well, it was a little hair-raising, yes,’ I said.

Bella regarded me for a moment and then nodded. ‘You might help me talk sense into my sister-in-law, then. I think we should ring up the mending man and get him to see to it this afternoon while the store’s closed anyway.’

‘Bella, we can’t,’ said Mary. ‘What will people say?’

‘Mary, for the Lord’s sake,’ Bella answered. ‘No one will think ill of you. And how much worse if someone were to have a mishap.’

‘But we can’t order repairs and have men in overalls in the store today. What will Jack and Abby say?’

‘Come along, Lynne,’ said Miss Hutton, whisking the younger woman away from this scene of family discord. Lynne went with some reluctance and the tilt of her head suggested that she was listening all the way.

‘Jack and Abby?’ said Bella. ‘No need for them to know. And I’d rather offend sensibilities – even theirs – than have blood on my hands if someone ends up injured in that thing. What do you say, Mrs Gilver?’

‘Well,’ I answered, ‘no one need know if your repair man isn’t a talker.’

‘There you go, Mary,’ Bella said. ‘And I’ll take full responsibility if tongues start a-wagging.’

Mary Aitken shook her head again but the fight was out of her and Bella sensed it. It was remarkable the way that the power seemed to have shifted between the two of them. Or perhaps it was just that Bella’s stout practicality stood up better under strain than Mary’s rigid, watchful ways.

‘Right then,’ Bella said, evidently finding agreement in her sister-in-law’s silence. ‘I’ll take it upstairs out of harm’s way and telephone to the chap, then. He’ll be in our address book down in the office, is he?’ She stepped into the lift, shut the carriage door and the shaft door and left us listening to the groans and squeaks of the old lift’s uncertain ascension.

Presently, Mary turned to me and gave a ghost of the old on-and-off smile.

‘I haven’t had a chance yet to tell you how sorry I am,’ I said as we made our way through the Curtain Department towards the sound of conversation and clinking china. ‘Last week things were so very tumbled and confusing. But I truly am, Mrs Aitken, most sorry.’

‘You who have nothing to be sorry for,’ she said, looking straight ahead. ‘Imagine the sorrow I feel.’

I took pity on her then. If she really believed that forbidding Mirren’s engagement had led to the girl’s suicide, she must be wretched now.

‘You can’t possibly have foreseen it,’ I said. ‘We can’t shrink from guiding our children – and grandchildren – in case they…’ And besides, that is not what happened, I wanted to say. But if Mirren had been murdered, Mary Aitken was a suspect and I could not show her my hand. She stopped walking and faced me, then she seemed to lose some of her courage and turned away a little again, smoothing a shelf of folded flannel sheets, tweaking the corners straight and lining up the ribbons which bound each one so that the stripe of blue satin rose up, dead straight, through the pile.

‘I have done things in my life that make me scared of the day I’ll meet my maker,’ she said. I said nothing. ‘“And shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” I already know what damnation feels like, Mrs Gilver.’

Most assuredly, I said nothing in answer to that.

‘Do you believe what the Bible says about suicides?’ she went on.

‘I’m not sure I know what the Bible says, Mrs Aitken,’ I answered. ‘I know what the churches say, but that’s not the same thing at all.’

‘“Know ye not that ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price”,’ said Mary. ‘So perhaps I’ve got more chance now of seeing Mirren in the hereafter than I ever did before.’

My childhood inculcation was not notably thorough – my mother had been more interested in Art and Beauty and Nanny Palmer cared only for shining hair and clean fingernails – and my long years in the land of John Knox had left me somewhat between two stools when it came to the details, but I was pretty sure that one could not expect to meet lost loved ones come what may, only the venue undecided until Judgement Day had dawned. Thankfully, Mary Aitken did not seem to notice the lack of an answer. She subjected the stack of sheets she had been tidying to one of her fiercest stares.

‘Bella can say what she likes,’ she said. ‘I think it matters what folk think and it matters what folk say. And these sheets should have a pillowcase folded into a fan on top and a ribbon rosette too. Not just lying there in a heap like your linen press at home.’ She looked around herself, her neck elongating and her spine straightening as she did so. ‘In fact, this shouldn’t be sheets at all. This should be eiderdowns, here on the aisle where they’ll be seen by anyone going by. Sheets should be at the back. It’s the only decent way and it’s the Aitkens way. I’ll need to get this seen to.’ With that she stalked off leaving me to trot after her.

Aitkens’ tearoom when we finally arrived was found to be a large square room off the back of the food hall, with an endless brown horsehair banquette undulating around its walls and tables to seat six pushed up against it at intervals. The walls were adorned with prints of lochs and mountains and around the top ran a painted frieze of clan shields. In the middle of the floor was a high and forbidding counter where large platters of fruitcake and sandwiches were laid out and where an elaborate and well-polished electric samovar spat and grumbled, drawing uncertain looks from the members of staff closest to it and even causing those standing in groups further away to stop talking and look round as it let out a particularly vehement hiss and rocked on its little chromium-plated legs.

‘Oh Mrs Ninian!’ said Mrs Lumsden, who had been peering at the samovar from a safe distance. ‘Somebody’s let this blessed urn empty to the very bottom and it’s not happy.’

‘I keep telling you, Mrs Lumsden,’ said a hefty female who, although she was in a cloth coat and black straw hat with a brooch pinned to her lapel and a handbag looped over one elbow, nevertheless screamed ‘cook’ louder than any striped frock and white apron ever could, ‘my girls would no more drain the water off the element than yours would…’

‘Put flannel sheets on an aisle stand?’ said Mary Aitken. Mrs Lumsden raised a hand to her mouth. ‘Just this side of the mercerised madras,’ she went on. ‘You’ll need to get it changed before tomorrow.’

‘Yes, Mrs Ninian,’ chorused a good few of the girls and women who were listening. The Household Department, one presumed.

‘And just go ahead and pour the tea,’ Mary said. ‘If it’s kippered it’ll teach you for next time.’

‘Yes, Mrs Ninian,’ chorused another section of the choir, but when their voices faded I could hear a few grumbles too.

‘Dinnae see how we should hae burnt tea. It wisnae us that drained the damn thing.’ This was from a young man dressed in spiffing style, although perfectly properly in mourning. I took him to be from Gents’ Tailoring and thought that he was an excellent advertisement for the store.

‘Jist tell yersel’ it’s Lapsang Souchong,’ said another young man.

‘Aye, or ask yersel’ whit’s the use of a tea kettle that can burn the tea. My Annie’s the worst cook that ever spiled a pun o’ mince and even she cannae burn tea.’ They all laughed at that and Mrs Ninian sent over one of her piercing glares.

‘Shotty, shotty!’ said the first young man. ‘She can hear ye.’

Trying to be very casual, I edged away from them and towards the nearest of the young women who had piped up in response to the news of the eiderdowns. She watched me approach with a shy look and she bobbed a curtsey when I got to her.

‘And where do you work, my dear?’ I said.

‘Here at Aitkens’,’ she answered. I looked sharply at her, suspecting cheek, but she returned a limpid blue gaze.

‘In the tearoom?’

‘Oh no, madam,’ she said. ‘I’m a sales assistant, not a waitress.’ She sounded very proud of the fact and another girl standing nearby – a waitress, I guessed – snorted and threw a look of disdain such as only pretty girls with slim ankles and waved hair can throw at shy girls in home-knitted jerseys and with hair scraped back into a ribbon.

‘In which department?’

‘Household, madam,’ she said. ‘Were you wanting something? Because we’re really closed but I could lay it aside for you until tomorrow.’

‘Here on the second floor?’ I asked her. I smiled. ‘I hope it wasn’t you mixing up sheets and eiderdowns.’

‘I never touched them!’ she said. ‘I work in the basement, in the bazaar.’

A pair of older girls, coming to stand close to us with cups of tea and plates of cake, giggled. One of them gave me a very pert look and joined in our conversation without invitation or apology.

‘You’d be surprised the way things flit about in a place like this, madam,’ she said. ‘Mrs Ninian was worried about it on the jubilee day – worried that with all the crowds, we’d have trinkets away under coats and up jumpers – she had us all stationed round the scarves and notions, all the wee things that would be easy swiped.’

‘But it’s never the stuff you’d think, madam,’ said her friend. ‘You’d laugh if we told you what goes missing, wouldn’t she, June?’

June nodded. ‘Like that time we left the cash tube with a ball in its mouth carrying thon cretonne curtainings to the lift for Mrs Taylor – they weighed a wet ton and she’s always the same – takes everything home in her wee car with her chauffeur no matter how much work it makes instead of getting a delivery like e’bdy else does.’

‘And guess what went, madam?’ said the other, dabbing up cake crumbs with her finger and licking them off. ‘You never will.’

‘I’d never leave my cash ball lying,’ said the girl from the bazaar.

‘You’ve no’ got a key to the chute, you wee besom,’ said June. ‘You’re only jist up to scuttles from buckets.’ Her friend laughed and the shy girl scowled at them.

‘But when I do get it, she said, ‘I would never.’

‘The bell,’ I said, taking a wild guess. They all frowned at me. ‘Scissors? Tape measure?’ I had named three items I always coveted from the cutting counters of shops when I was buying cretonnes of my own.

‘Stamps,’ said June. ‘A tube full of money, hanging wide open, and some funny wee buddy stole the stamps.’

I tried to look suitably diverted by this news but all I had really taken in was that these girls worked on the second floor, and I wanted to keep talking to them.

‘One wonders that anyone had the nerve,’ I said. ‘Don’t you girls have eyes in the back of your head for what’s going on around you?’ All three of them looked pleased with this compliment and ready to accept it as their due. ‘I mean to say,’ I went on, ‘the idea that anyone could come skulking round and not be noticed – it’s preposterous!’ They were less certain now and who can blame them, poor things. I was no good at Giant Steps and Baby Steps when I was a child, always swaying and staggering when Grandma wheeled round and always out first. It was no different now. Try as I might to learn that stealthy detective’s way of making conversations flow imperceptibly in my chosen direction, to lift my pet subject off the sand and carry it away, to insinuate all my little questions into the stream without a ripple, I did still tend to heave great lumps of suspicion into the middle of things like boulders into a pond, muddying the waters, killing little fish, and making everyone around back away, shaking themselves and planning, in future, to avoid me.

These three girls could not go that far; the boldest of them – June – spoke up gamely.

‘Likes of who, madam?’ she said.

‘Well,’ I said, nudging closer to them and dropping my voice, ‘I heard that Mr Hepburn tried to gatecrash the jubilee. I heard he was up here on the household floor, hiding.’

‘Mr Hepburn or young Mr Hepburn?’ said the shy girl from the basement.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘He was here when she-?’ She bit her lip and her eyes filled.

‘He was never,’ said June. ‘Was he, Poll?’ Her friend shook her head. Both of them were staring at me as though they had found me under a rock and wanted to drop it back on top of me. ‘I don’t know who’s been saying such things, madam, but you don’t want to listen.’

‘No one said which Mr Hepburn,’ I told them. ‘No one suggested for a minute that it was Dugald.’

‘Dugald?’ said Poll, her eyes just about popping out of their sockets. ‘That’s a story, madam, and a gey cruel one too.’

‘Because she only did what she did because they were kept apart,’ said June. ‘If he’d come to get her she’d still be here now.’

‘Stands to reason.’

‘If he knew she was here.’

‘And no one did.’

So whoever it was who had spied whichever Mr Hepburn it was, Poll and June it was not, but I could not stop them talking now. The ripples of my heaved boulder were sloshing around the banks as though they would never settle. Worse, Mary and Mrs Lumsden were walking towards us.

‘Sssh!’ I breathed, through still lips.

Thankfully, some sense of decorum or perhaps a healthy desire not to be sacked came to the fore and June piped up in quite a different voice:

‘Miss Shields says it used to be tallow candles, madam, when they came in farthing boxes. She says she couldn’t keep them on the shelves.’

‘But everyone in Dunfermline’s got the electric light now, so it’s bulbs these days,’ said Poll.

‘And Miss Shields always says it was a whatchoocallit that pinched everything,’ said the basement maiden.

‘Wheesht, Addie,’ hissed June.

‘Miss Shields,’ said Mary, drawing near, ‘has too much imagination for her own good.’ June and Poll dropped their eyes but poor Addie did not appear to have that talent which senses trouble and changes flight to dodge it.

‘Right, Mrs Ninian,’ she said. ‘Because why would a whatchoocallit need candles? What do you call it again? I cannae mind.’

‘Can’t remember, Adelaide,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘If you don’t speak nice you’ll be back in the stockroom.’

‘And if you don’t stop spreading tales you’ll wish you were back in the stockroom because you’ll be out on your stupid ear.’ Mary delivered this in a cold, low monotone which made me tremble in my shoes, let alone the shopgirls. Then she turned and stalked away, so stiffly that she made me think of a clockwork soldier.

Adelaide’s eyes were brimming.

‘I didnae mean no harm, Mrs Lumsden,’ she said. ‘We were all talking about it. The poultry ghost. That’s it! Poultry ghost. It was Miss Shields that told me.’

‘Poltergeist, ye wee daftie,’ said June. ‘And it was never, anyway. Eh no, Mrs Lumsden?’

‘It was donkey’s years ago,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘And it was tramps. And if you don’t have the sense to see that poor Mrs Ninian doesn’t want to be thinking about ghosts in the attics today of all days, Adelaide McVitie, then you’ve even less sense than I’ve seen in you and that’s saying something.’ She shook her head at the poor girl, almost really angry, perhaps as near it as she ever was. ‘Now get away into the kitchen and help the girls dry up the cake forks. Don’t touch anything china and stop that petted lip before I skelp you.’

Adelaide fled.

‘Mrs Ninian was just coming to speak to you, Mrs Gilver,’ Mrs Lumsden went on. She shooed away the other two girls, who looked glad enough to go. Once they were out of earshot Mrs Lumsden gave something between a laugh and a sigh. ‘I know I’m too soft with my girls. That Addie McVitie’ll never make a sales assistant if she lives to be a hundred, but her father has no work and her mother’s got a bad chest and five more of them at home.’

‘Stockroom?’ I said.

‘The lassie can’t add two and two and get four.’ This time the sigh was a sigh, nothing more. ‘Mrs Ninian has been good to me, keeping me on, and I try to do the same. Addie was getting a shilling a week in the council laundry when I found her.’ I gave an understanding nod, but in truth I thought that Adelaide would be happier in a laundry where she understood what was required of her and then perhaps some bright girl could leave the laundry behind and flourish at Aitkens’, rising from the basement buckets to the heights of the cutting counter on the curtain floor. And to be entirely honest, since sweet bright pretty Mirren Aitken had been snuffed out at twenty I had precious little sympathy left for laundry girls of any stamp who could still step out into the fresh air at the end of their shift and go dancing.

‘What did Mrs Ninian want me for, Mrs Lumsden?’ I asked ‘Should I go after her?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Lumsden, putting out a hand to stay me. ‘It was just to apologise, really. She meant to say a few words to the staff, you know. But she doesn’t think she’ll be able to, as it turns out. She’s taken this so hard, just gone to pieces really. So Mrs John’s going to take her home.’

‘She certainly doesn’t need to apologise to me,’ I said, feeling very uncomfortable. What Mrs Lumsden said next hardly helped.

‘Well, she knew you must be expecting an audience with her a wee bit later,’ she said. ‘You know – to settle up – but she’ll have to ask you to wait for another time.’ I could feel myself blushing. ‘And to be honest, Mrs Gilver, Mrs Ninian was surprised to see you here – they both were, her and Mrs John. She said to me she didn’t mean her note that way at all. And I can’t think what I wrote because my mind was on ten other things and I just scribbled it. But there’s proof of the state she’s in right there, not saying exactly what she means. Not like her. Not like her at all and I’ve known her woman and girl.’

I was squirming by now, as can well be imagined, with a horrible wriggling guilt which crept in at my collar and scuttled up and down my spine, even though I told myself that it was exactly like Mary, for had she not written the wrong date on her first postcard to me? To salve my conscience, I told myself that the least I could do was carry out the plan for which I had infiltrated this wake in the first place. I only hoped I had the chance before it ended.

‘Are you going to switch off the urn and send them all home?’ I asked.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘In fact between you, me and the gatepost, Mrs Gilver, I think I might just slip through to the food hall for a couple of bottles of sherry. They look like they need it.’ Indeed, the few dozen men and women, the handfuls of boys and girls were looking pretty woebegone, standing around with their cups of tea. ‘Anyway, we need to wait for Laming now.’

‘Who?’ I said.

‘Mr Laming, the lift fixer. Well, locksmith and small engine and anything else he can turn his hand to. Oh my goodness, but Mrs Ninian wasn’t pleased about that, madam, was she now? She’ll not be sorry to be away out of it and missing him.’ She nodded as she spoke and I turned to see Bella and Mary Aitken making a slow path to the head of the stairs which led out of the tearoom. When they had descended out of view, the first of the young men began to slide into seats on the long banquette and a few of the bolder girls – I noticed June and Poll among them – perched on the wooden chairs opposite and started giving out smiles.

‘I’ll need to judge this sherry carefully, eh?’ said Mrs Lumsden with raised eyebrows. ‘I don’t want to be ringing the polis to help me clear the place later.’

Her words were prophetic, as we were soon to know.