Unsuitable Day for a Murder

5

Between the rise in spirits which Bella and Mary’s departure could not help but cause, cats and mice being what they are, and the introduction into the party of two bottles of cream sherry and one of whisky, I was not lamented as I slipped away to the back stairs and crept up to the attics to search for clues.

I was hoping for gloves, even though gloves would suggest that Abigail Aitken had killed her child and had thought up a fiendishly devious way to get away with it, but the longer I considered of such a woman hatching such a plot the more convinced I was that it could not be. It would have taken such pluck to sit there, gun in hand, waiting for the police to come and see past the surface, as far as the trick beneath it but no further. Such a strong will would be required and I just did not believe that Abigail Aitken possessed one.

Still, I would search since here I was with a chance to do so and if I found nothing I would tell the police, better trained at such things than I, to search again.

The landing seemed darker today with the large hanging lights in the atrium unlit and those dark clouds massing, so I felt around the top of the stair head for a light switch. There did not seem to be one, however, and so I began to make my way along the wall towards the switch by the lift which Bella Aitken had used that earlier day.

Halfway there though I stopped. I had suddenly remembered what had been upon this wall I was touching; the stain bright and shocking, the thin trails of blood running down to the skirting and pooling there, the slight but unignorable texture to the stain because it was not blood alone that clung there to the brown distemper. Shuddering, I scuttled sideways to the middle of the floor and walked forward blindly with my hands out in front to feel the far wall when I got there. How could it be so dark up here? Clouds or no, how could it be that I needed to feel my way?

My breath was quickening and it seemed that I could hear it inside my head, louder than it should be, as though the air around me had changed. It was thick and muffled and I could not understand, began to think that I was not where I had thought to be, that somehow I had come to a different place from that landing where Mirren died, because where was the ledge to the atrium and why could I hear my own breathing so loud and how could it be so dark at this time of day?

When my fingers touched something cold in front of me I squealed – that is the only word for it – but the darkness swallowed the sound at a gulp. Then, almost whimpering, I began to run my hands around the edge of the cold slab – it was the metal frame of the lift shaft, of course – looking for the light switch I knew was there. But where? I felt to my full arm’s reach on both sides, higher than any switch could ever be, lower too, and could not find it, and all the while the darkness was pressing against my back and the sound of my ragged breathing was growing louder, joined now by the pounding beat of blood in my ears and throat, and over and over again I felt the edge of the lift-shaft door and the raised plate of the call-button panel; I even pushed it and heard the faint ping of the call inside the lift carriage. When the sound had faded I felt around again, the edge of the shaft door and the round polished handle there and nothing else. And now I could not imagine ever finding the light switch and I could not imagine letting go and walking back through that blackness behind me to find the stairs and then, just as I let that panicky thought engulf me, just as I began to see that the only way out was to give in to terror and scream for help, sweet reason returned and half-laughing from the flood of relief through my body I grabbed the lift-shaft door handle and opened it and wrenched the door of the carriage open too and light from the lift poured out onto the landing.

I turned and rested my back against the wall, heaving deep wonderful breaths down into my lungs and panting them out again. I looked to the one side and saw the light switch, right there, blamelessly there, as why would it not be, just beyond where my frantic hands had been scrabbling. I looked to the other side and laughed at myself in earnest now. The opening onto the atrium was gone indeed; it was covered over with Aitkens’ best black velvet curtaining, tacked along the top and long enough to pool on the floor below. Of course, this dreadful place was blocked off from view – of course it was – or gawping ghouls would stand at the balcony one floor below and stare up here and point and wonder. I looked over to where Mirren had been. This time, I did not laugh and I was glad that I had stopped feeling my way along the wall before I got there. A wreath the size of a barrel was on the floor – I do not know how I missed the scent of it; lilies pumping out that choking reek like so many factory chimneys – and above, on the wall, where the stain had darkened the drab, was a patch of shining white paint, shaped like an arch so it almost looked as though a little shrine had been made there.

Suddenly I did not want to be here, grubbing around for clues on the strength of an invitation I knew I had imagined, while downstairs the girl was toasted and mourned. I stood up straight and had put one foot into the lift – I would take my chances with it on a downward journey – when I felt it start to rumble. I leapt backward, but my first panicked thought was wrong. It did not plummet; I had not witnessed its end. It was gathering itself with all its usual effort to descend with all its usual stately torpor. Mr Laming, the mending man, must be on the ground floor, and must have summoned it to him in some mysterious mechanic’s way.

Realising that when it did leave me I should be in darkness again, I stepped over and threw the light switch and when I stepped back the carriage was just beginning to move. Its floor dropped away from the landing and its ceiling began to drop down towards me. I looked away; it is most disconcerting when a part of one’s surroundings suddenly begins to sink like that, and it had given me a mild swirl of vertigo.

When I looked back again, the carriage was halfway down the opening and for a moment I had a plain view of the top of it: the heavy bolts like great steel knuckles bent against the roof of the thing, holding fast the enormous plates as thick as the palm of my hand, through which the cables groaned and thrummed.

All of that and the boy, dead and broken, lying with his legs folded under him and his head twisted round, one cheek dark and raw where it had scraped against the ropes, one hand even now dragging against the side of the shaft, making his arm jolt as the lift moved him towards my feet, carrying him away from me.

I crouched, reached out and managed just to grasp that arm. He shifted slightly, but I could not lift him clear; I could not hope to stop him dropping away. For a moment, I was almost decided to step onto the roof of the lift beside him, because I was sure I could feel a faint warmth through his sleeve and his arm moved so freely that I tried to believe it was not too late for me to help him. But then, as my hold slipped and I felt his cold hand and his icy fingers, stiffened like twigs and cracking as I clutched at them, of course I let him go.

Instead, I pulled hard on one of the ropes, trying to bring the lift back up again, but I do not even know if it was the right one and however these matters were decided, wherever they were decided inside the machine, Mr Laming on the ground floor took precedence over me. I could only stand and watch the boy getting smaller, the outlines of his broken body hidden as the dark throat of the lift shaft swallowed him, even the knocking of his hand against the wall growing indistinct until I could no longer see the movement and could not pick out the sound of it from all the other notes in the tired old song of the lift on what must surely be its last journey now.

I swung so fast down the six flights of stairs, hanging on to the banisters and wheeling past the landings, that I was dizzy by the bottom and staggering a bit as I burst out into the back of the Haberdashery Department. Over at the lift shaft, a middle-aged man in overalls under his coat looked up from where he was kneeling at an impressive toolbox and lifted his cap to me. A gormless-looking boy stood by him, who too doffed his cap. I noticed that both men wore black armbands.

‘Mr Laming?’ I said, trying not to gasp but still far from having enough breath to speak clearly. ‘Don’t touch the lift. Don’t do anything to it.’

Mr Laming had got to his feet and was scratching the dome of his head, his cap pushed back as he stared at me.

‘Are you…?’ he said but came up short of sensible suggestions.

I took a good deep breath and spoke very calmly.

‘There has been a terrible accident,’ I said.

‘Poor Miss Mirren,’ said the gormless boy.

‘Today,’ I went on. ‘Someone has fallen down the lift shaft and I’m sure he’s dead.’

Mr Laming and the boy both turned to look at the floor of the lift and then back at me.

‘Doon there?’ said the elder man. ‘For sure?’

‘Onto the top of the carriage,’ I said. ‘I just saw him. He’s on the roof. We need to get the police. I’ll ring them if you stand guard here.’

His eyes narrowed a little at that.

‘Madam, pardon me, but-’ he said.

‘My name is Mrs Gilver and I’m a private detective,’ I said. ‘I was trying to find Mirren when she died and just this morning I was given the job of finding Dugald Hepburn too. I hope to God I haven’t.’

But of course there was not a particle of me that doubted it. Mr Laming rubbed his face hard with one large and oily hand, rasping his stubble and leaving a dark streak across one cheek.

‘There’s a hatch,’ he said, pointing up at the roof of the lift carriage. ‘I’ll just take a wee keek.’

I nodded. I needed him as an ally and he would be the better for seeing it with his own eyes, for not half-wondering if this were some kind of madwoman he was humouring. He closed up the enormous toolbox and lugged it into the lift, positioning it under a small, brass-edged panel I had not noticed before. Then he stepped up onto it and, reaching above his head, slid open a latch and very cautiously raised the trap-door. I think the fact that it rose at all set up doubts in him and I too suffered a pang of confused panic. Was not the body lying on that side of the roof, slightly curled around the rope where his cheek had grazed? Should not the hatch be weighted down, immovable?

Mr Laming grabbed the edges of the hole and, with a little bounce, hoisted himself off the top of his toolbox and popped his head up into the darkness. He swore, just once, quite loud and echoing, and dropped back down again, stumbling to the floor and leaning back against the wall of the carriage. He took his cap off and stared at me.

‘Aye, that’s Dougie Hepburn, right enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll get this thing stopped and you away and ring the polis, hen.’

‘Again,’ I said, staring back at him. He bent and opened his toolbox once more.

‘Hector,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘You get away hame to your mammy. This is no place for you. Not today.’

After a few false starts into stock cupboards and one nasty moment at the head of a basement staircase which dropped down from right behind an inward opening door, at last I found the corridor into the back offices and, there, a telephone. Even then though I fumbled and wasted time, because it seemed that the instrument was attached to some internal exchange with more buttons and levers than an ordinary telephone. I pressed and pulled them all in turn, with mounting panic, and must at last have hit upon the right combination because eventually a voice came down the line asking me for the number.

‘Police,’ I said. ‘As quick as you can.’

‘Isn’t that Aitkens’?’ said the voice, with deep suspicion.

‘Yes,’ I said louder. ‘We need the police here. And an ambulance too.’

‘Aitkens’ is shut today,’ said the exchange. ‘To whom am I speaking?’

‘Put me through to the police station this instant,’ I said and by now I was almost shouting.

‘But who are you to be in there when it’s closed?’ the girl said, a plaintive and insistent note creeping into her voice. ‘What’s going on there?’

‘Yes, all right, if you prefer it that way,’ I said. ‘I’m a burglar and I’ve broken into Aitkens’ and that’s not all. There’s a dead body here too. Perhaps I murdered him. What do you say to that?’

‘If I hear reports of a crime being committed while I’m properly carrying out my duties,’ she said, with a kind of prim boastfulness which made me want to reach down the telephone line and shake her teeth from her head, ‘I’m supposed to report it to the police straight away.’

‘Hallelujah,’ I said, and hung up hoping that the way I banged down the earpiece might have deafened her.

There were no whistles this time; the first Mr Laming and I knew of the police arriving was when we heard the front door handle being rattled and fists pounding upon the glass. I hurried across the haberdashery floor and through the foyer towards the three large silhouettes waiting there and with some struggle threw back the bolts.

I had been hoping for Constable McCann and dreading the inspector but I did not recognise any of these men I was letting in.

‘Dugald Hepburn has thrown himself down the lift shaft,’ I said. ‘I think he’s dead.’

For just a moment they all stared at me and then the most senior of them, a sergeant I thought, stuttered into action.

‘Did you see it?’ he said, striding away from me. ‘This way, boys, back corner.’

‘No,’ I said, trotting after him. ‘I found him.’

‘Over here,’ called Mr Laming’s voice and, perhaps in response to some note they could hear in the way he said it or perhaps because they knew the man and knew he did not always sound that way, all three of them broke into a run. I sped up too but then from behind us I could hear thumping on the outside door again and I wheeled round.

It was Alec, standing peering in at the door with his hands around his eyes making a visor. When he saw me he mimed enormous relief, clapping his hand to his chest, but before I had got the door open he had had time to register my expression and was worried again.

‘Dandy, what the hell?’ he said. ‘I’ve just come from the police station. I went to meet you, like we said, and you weren’t there and hadn’t been there and then three of them went pounding off and wouldn’t say where they were going. I thought something had happened to you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I changed my mind. I came here – there’s a wake going on and- Oh Alec! It happened again.’

‘What-?’ he said and then we both turned towards the door as the light darkened. The inspector was standing there flanked by a pair of constables. He moved forward very deliberately, nodding to one of the men to lock the door behind him.

‘Your pal here was at the station looking for you,’ he said to me.

‘Inspector,’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry – I don’t know your name. There’s been a horrible accident. Another one.’

‘Aye, and you reported it,’ he said.

‘Dugald Hepburn has thrown himself down the lift shaft. I saw him.’

‘Good God,’ said Alec. ‘Are you all right?’

‘No, no, I don’t mean I saw him fall,’ I said. ‘I mean I found him.’

‘Again,’ said the inspector. ‘And what are you doing here?’

‘There’s a reception going on upstairs,’ I said. ‘For Miss Aitken. Just the staff.’

The inspector nodded to his men and, apparently understanding, they made for the stairs.

‘Just the staff and yet you were invited?’ he said, returning his attention to me.

‘Now steady on,’ said Alec. I could tell that he was troubled but I could not follow what it was that was troubling him.

‘Is there a doctor coming?’ I said. ‘I think he’s dead, but I can’t be sure.’

‘You said you didn’t see him fall,’ said the inspector.

‘I didn’t see him fall, but I touched him and he was warm. I’m sure of it. Well, not cold.’

‘And were you invited?’ the inspector said.

‘Don’t answer, Dandy,’ Alec said. I blinked at him. Suddenly he seemed to be very far away and rather smaller than he should be.

‘Not exactly invited, Inspector,’ I said.

‘Mrs Aitken told me you weren’t invited last week either. To the jubilee.’

‘Again, not exactly,’ I said, nodding.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Alec’s voice, sounding to me as though it were at the bottom of a well.

‘But along you came and “found” Mirren Aitken. Then along you came again today and now you tell me you’ve “found” Dougie Hepburn.’ He turned sharply away as someone came towards us through the archway.

‘It’s him all right, sir.’ It was one of the first three constables, looking rather green and with his voice wobbling. I gave him an encouraging smile; I was feeling rather green and wobbly too. ‘Dead as dead can be. About two hours I’d say, from the state of him.’

‘And when did you slip off to take your medical degree?’ said the inspector, spitting the words out. ‘Get Dr Stott. And escort this gentleman back to the station. I’ll want to speak to him.’

‘I’ll come with you, Alec,’ I said, and I was aware that my lips felt rather peculiar as I formed the words.

‘Don’t you move, lady,’ the inspector said, and with those brutal words, so harshly fired at me, finally I began to make sense of what he was saying and Alec’s protests and the strange sensation of my lips and legs knowing better than my brain what was happening to me.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said, faintly. Alec put out a hand of restraint, because of course this was no way to be speaking to the man. ‘You can’t seriously… what are you…’

As I saw the dim foyer grow even dimmer and felt the air around me begin to roll past with a rushing sound, the last thing I heard was that ugly voice, uglier than ever.

‘Oh, that’s right! Treat yourself to a wee swoon, why don’t you?’

I came round with a dull headache and a feeling of nausea just short of making me check my surroundings for suitable containers. Then memory flooded in and I sat bolt upright, headache sharper, nausea gone. I was still in Aitkens’ foyer, sitting on one of the taxi chairs just inside the door. Alec and the inspector were gone and one of the second lot of constables, the ones I had thought of as the inspector’s henchmen, was standing firmly planted in front of me, his face quite impassive under his hat.

I made as if to stand but he stopped me with a practised gesture, formed I suppose to keep motorists out of busy street junctions but just as effective at keeping me in my chair.

‘You’re to stay put till the doctor gets here and has a wee look at you,’ he informed me.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘It’s perhaps not a bad idea. I don’t make a habit of fainting, you know.’ At that I remembered the inspector’s last words and a surge of fury gave me back every bit of the vigour which had temporarily deserted me.

‘Here he’s now,’ said the constable as a man let himself in the front door. ‘Doctor!’ The doctor hurried towards us, frowning. ‘This… witness fainted and the boss wants you to give her the all-clear before we shift her.’ I blinked at his choice of words but before I could answer the doctor was upon us. He was a harried-looking sort who held himself at a forty-five-degree forward angle as though using gravity to keep himself moving at the pace he had set. He peered at me.

‘Fainted, eh?’ he said. ‘You saw the body?’ I resented the implication but it seemed easier than trying to explain and so I nodded. ‘And how are you feeling now?’ he said.

‘Quite well, thank you,’ I said. This was the answer I had been brought up to give and it came out of me without prompting.

‘Fine, then,’ said the doctor and he turned and propelled himself towards his real business at the back of the store. The constable and I watched him go and then caught one another’s eye.

‘Right,’ I said, tucking my feet under me in preparation to stand. ‘Thank you for waiting with me, young man. And do pass on my thanks to the inspector. It was most thoughtful of him to ask the doctor to have a word. Now, can you tell me where Mr Osborne went when he left us so that I can… What is it?’ The constable had begun shifting his feet and was darting glances at me as though not quite able to look me straight in the eye.

‘I’m sorry about this, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, fumbling at his pocket or his tunic belt; I could not quite see. ‘But it’s my orders and I cannae help it.’

‘Help what?’ I said, but then I saw what he had been fumbling for; they glinted as they swung free, the two solid rings bright with polish and the chain between them sparkling. I stood up and looked him straight in the eye, pleased to see that he cringed a little under my gaze. ‘Your inspector,’ I said, in a voice I will never cease to be proud of summoning at such a moment, ‘is an oaf and a bully and since you choose to emulate him, I expect you will go far. But your mother will be ashamed of you for this and rightly so.’ Then I turned, very slowly, and keeping my eyes locked on his as long as I could.

‘It disnae have to be behind you,’ he said, in a mournful voice.

‘No, no!’ I said, rubbing it in hard. ‘I would hate the inspector to suspect you of chivalry.’ And I thrust my hands upwards, wrenching my shoulders horribly. Silently, he clicked the handcuffs closed about my wrists and then guided me to the door and out onto the street, where a small knot of onlookers, attracted by the commotion, were well rewarded for their wait; a thrill which was almost a shriek ran through them at the sight of me. I kept my chin very level, resisting the temptation either to bow my head or to stick my nose in the air, and stepped into a waiting motorcar. It was no mean achievement, what with having no hands to help and with my legs weak from rage and fear, but I made it and I slid onto the seat, crossing my legs at the ankles and letting my shoulders rest lightly against the seatback as the driver started the motor and we pulled away.

At the police station, minutes away down the High Street, I began to shake and I had to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering for I half-suspected that I would be thrown into a cell and, trying to picture it, I could not decide which would be worse between the prospect of being all alone behind bars in a little cell of my own or of being cast into a crowd of the sort of women I thought might be there already.

In the end it was not so bad as all that; perhaps Dunfermline did not possess those sorts of women anyway. I was taken straight from the motorcar into the type of little room I had seen before in my few visits to police stations; a bleak enough place, furnished with three hard chairs, one very plain table and an empty waste basket, but at least it had an ordinary door with a handle, no bars, no shackles and no grilled window to the street through which my loved ones would have to feed me titbits to keep me alive. (My imagination had soared away from all controls during the short trip and had left me somewhere between Marie-Antoinette and the Pankhursts for pathos and hopeless damnation.)

I was given a disgusting cup of dark brown tea and was left alone to stare at it for almost an hour until the inspector opened the door, entered and sat down opposite me.

I pushed the cup towards him.

‘I’m finished with this, thank you, Mr…?’ I said, but I did not succeed in making him angry. He was used to insolence from his captives, I supposed. ‘Now,’ I went on. ‘You’ve been very clever and if this is the sort of nonsense the Fife Constabulary go in for, I’m sure you’ll be due a medal at the end-of-year party, but it’s gone on long enough. Ask me what you would like to know and then be kind enough to telephone a taxicab for me. I don’t feel up to walking to the station, as I’m sure you can appreciate.’

‘I’ll give you this,’ he said, ‘you didn’t go straight to the county.’ I frowned. ‘Your pal’s been dropping names like autumn leaves, threatening me with every top brass that ever walked a golf course.’

‘My good man,’ I said, ‘- since you won’t introduce yourself properly to me – you are being so ridiculous that I begin to suspect some political motivation. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve discovered rabble-rousers where I’d least suspect them. But let me say this as slowly and clearly as I can.’

‘I have a few questions for you, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, opening a notebook and unscrewing the cap on his pen.

‘I am a detective,’ I went on, ‘brought here last week by Mrs Ninian Aitken to help find her missing granddaughter. Your surgeon decided that the girl died by her own hand and I was in full view of the Provost, Lady Lawson, and Mrs Aitken herself when it happ-’

‘What is your full name and address, first of all?’

‘Today I was invited to an interview with Mrs Haddo-’

‘And your next of kin?’

‘-Dugald Hepburn’s grandmother-’

‘Or someone of good standing who might be persuaded to vouch for you?’

‘-who wanted my help in finding him.’

‘That’s right,’ said the inspector. ‘You were asked along by two families who were having trouble with their youngsters and now, it’s safe to say, their youngsters will trouble them no more.’

I gaped at him.

‘That’s an extraordinary insinuation,’ I said.

‘Two young people dead, the same stranger present both times, unexpected, uninvited. There’s extraordinary for you.’

It was ludicrous, preposterous, as impertinent as it was baseless and actually, surely, not even coherent on its own terms when one faced it squarely. What had he just said?

‘Uninvited,’ I repeated to him.

‘Mrs Aitken told me last week that she didn’t ask you to the jubilee. She didn’t know why you were there that day at all, she said to me.’

‘And today?’

‘Nobody up in that tearoom could tell me what you were doing there.’

I nodded. ‘Very well, let me see if I understand you, Inspector. After – one assumes – too many evenings in the cinema gallery, you are accusing me of killing two innocents and making it look like suicide?’ He said nothing. ‘And the central plank of my guilt is that I insinuated myself into the jubilee and the funeral tea without the families’ blessing and perhaps even against their wishes.’ Again he was silent. ‘So, tell me, am I supposed to have been hired specifically to kill the children? Are the Aitkens denying inviting me to cover their guilt? Wouldn’t they deny all knowledge of me in that case? Would they have invited me to the house, for luncheon?’ He frowned. ‘Or did they engage me in good faith to find Mirren and Dugald? Do I just happen – most unfortunately for them – to be some kind of homicidal maniac who killed them for reasons of my own?’

‘You were there,’ he said, in very firm tones although his expression was more troubled than I had yet seen it. ‘Both times. Right there. And it’s all just a bit too convenient for everybody, if you ask me.’

I took my time before answering. It was not clear to me whether this man were a fiend or a fool but I knew I had to tread carefully around him.

‘Very many people were there when Mirren died,’ I said at last. ‘Most of us in the presence of most others. And who can say who was there when Dugald met his end, Inspector? We don’t know when it- Hah! Your young constable said he thought an hour or two, didn’t he?’

‘He’d no business sticking his-’

‘And I expect the doctor is making the same calculation right now if he hasn’t already. Well, then, two hours before I found Dugald’s body I was…’ I looked at my wristwatch. ‘… I was at Roseville at number one hundred and twenty Pilmuir Street, talking to Mrs Haddo.’

‘I’ll be asking her about all of this too,’ he said.

‘Ah, back to your dramatic conspiracy again,’ I said. The look that flashed across his face then startled me and at last I stopped thinking about my own plight and my outrage over it and began to think of it from the inspector’s point of view. That is, I tried to do so, but there was a great gaping hole in the middle of his theory and I had nothing with which to fill it.

‘What do you know?’ I said. My tone must have been very different, all inquisitiveness and no annoyance now. Was I imagining that he shifted a little in his seat? Could that be a sheen of sweat suddenly on his brow? I sat forward and stared hard at him. ‘You do know something, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Two young lovers kept apart, both go missing, a detective is employed to find them, one kills herself – as far as we all know – and then the other, broken-hearted, does the same. That story sounds well rounded enough to me. What is it you know that’s making you baulk at it?’

‘I’m the one asking the questions,’ he said, rather late in the day if anyone were keeping tally.

‘Do you have children?’ I said. ‘I have two. I cannot imagine a state of affairs where the death of my child could be – as you said – “convenient for everyone”.’

He hesitated, as though considering.

‘Tell me,’ I breathed. ‘Perhaps I could help if you tell me.’

He got as far as taking a breath, readying himself to begin speaking, and then we both jumped as a sharp rap sounded on the door. The inspector barked out a short word I did not understand – it sounded like the code a shepherd might use to keep his dogs in order – but it must have been an invitation to enter for the handle turned and the doctor stuck his head around the door. His eyes flared at the sight of me.

‘A minute of your time,’ he said to the inspector.

‘First reckonings?’ the inspector said. The doctor nodded.

‘You wait here, you,’ said the inspector to me as he rose. Perhaps I had been imagining the wavering towards sharing what he knew, then. Perhaps he had been gathering breath for a fresh onslaught of insults.

They went outside and pulled the door closed behind them, but I was very gratified to see that the handle, perhaps exhausted by years of being wrenched and rattled by angry prisoners, had failed to latch. Silently, the door swung open about three inches and I could see the dark line of the inspector’s shoulder in the gap.

‘Broken neck, broken vertebrae, one leg, a wrist and minor abrasions,’ the doctor said.

‘Any sign of struggle before the fall?’

‘If you’re asking about handprints on his back,’ said the doctor, ‘there’s nothing. I’d say he either fell or jumped, facing the way he was going, about sixty feet, which would easily take him from the top landing to the roof of the lift on the ground floor.’

‘And can you tell me when?’

‘From the temperature of the body, in that cold lift shaft, assuming he hadn’t been taking any strenuous exercise just before he died, and before I’ve had a chance to look at his medical records,’ said the doctor – the inspector gave an audible sigh – ‘about half past two o’clock, I’d say.’

I am sure I saw the inspector’s shoulder stiffen.

‘Half two?’

‘Between two and three, let’s say.’

‘Right,’ said the inspector. He glanced behind him, saw the door sitting ajar and closed it. I could just hear the sound of his footsteps and the doctor’s moving away.

I smoothed my hair and resettled my hat, jabbing the pin in very firmly. Then I opened my bag and took out my gloves. I was still working them on – Grant is very fussy about well-fitting gloves and it takes me an age when she is not there to help me – when a constable knocked and entered, looking up at me from under his brows.

‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ he said. I stared pointedly at the cup on the table in front of me, which now had a disc of congealed milk floating on top and a dark orange tidemark round the edge.

‘You can get me a taxi,’ I said. He gave me a pained look and left again. I waited. Various footsteps passed along the corridor outside in either direction. I took my gloves off again. I put my bag back on the floor. Presently I moved the teacup down onto the floor too; the sight of it was beginning to repulse me and I was getting thirsty enough to wish I had drunk it while it was warm.

I was starting to imagine that I could see a difference in the quality of the light, and to assure myself that I would not, could not possibly, be spending the night there when the same soft knock came again. The same constable, still looking at the ground, entered the room.

‘Inspector Smellie says you’re free to go, Mrs Gilver.’

I let my breath go, picked up my bag and, standing, set the chair back tidily under the table. Then his words sank in.

‘Smellie?’ I almost shouted it. ‘Oh, how splendid. How absolutely perfect for him. No wonder, then.’

Alec was waiting on the bench in the front office and he leapt to his feet when he saw me.

‘Where have you been?’ he said. ‘I was hustled away and no one would tell a thing except that you were “helping with the inquiry”. What happened to you?’

‘Same as you, darling,’ I said. ‘Hustled away and grilled. And something very-’

‘Until now?’ said Alec, turning and glaring at the blameless desk sergeant. ‘I only gave my name and address and they spat me out again. I’ve been going absolutely frantic with worry and…’ He gave me a sheepish look.

‘And what?’ I said.

‘Well, I’m afraid I rang Hugh. To see if you had rung him. See if he could tell me what was happening to you. He seemed a bit put out.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said and even as I said it, at that very moment, we heard the heavy front door of the police station being wrenched open and banging back on its hinges as it was flung wide. The same treatment was meted out to the inner door and Hugh, dressed in gumboots and britches, barrelled into the office as though he had been shot from a cannon. When he saw me he stopped dead. His nostrils were doing something I had never seen them do before today, turning white and thin as he dragged in every breath and flaring wide as he forced it out again.

‘It’s all right,’ I said to him, willing myself not to take a step backwards. ‘They’ve let me go.’

‘They’ve just let you go now?’ he said. He was wrestling with his coat buttons and trying to get shaking fingers into his watch pocket. ‘Osborne rang me almost three hours ago. What the dickens is this about?’

‘They wanted to ask me a few things,’ I said. ‘Really, Hugh, perhaps we should discuss this at home.’ I had though, as I was soon to see, quite misread the nostrils and shaking fingers.

‘They wanted? They who?’ said Hugh, looking wildly around him. ‘Who did this? What’s the man’s name and where is he?’

‘Inspector Smellie,’ I said.

‘And where’s he hiding himself?’ Hugh’s voice, naturally quite loud to begin with and then honed by years of bellowing across moorland to beaters and ghillies, not to mention years of bellowing up and down staircases to wife and servants, was shaking the very rafters of Dunfermline police station now.

In reply, a frosted glass door behind the counter opened and Inspector Smellie swept into the room, looking at Hugh with a measure of disdain similarly honed by the years he had spent despising ne’er-do-wells and cracking alibis.

‘Smellie?’ Hugh boomed. The inspector nodded. Then so fast that I hardly saw it happen, Hugh stepped up to the desk, drew back his right fist and drove it hard into the side of Inspector Smellie’s face. There was a sharp crack, a short silence and the inspector dropped out of view.

Alec stepped forward to look over the countertop, Hugh swung round and left the way he had come, but the sergeant and I simply stood staring at one another.

‘Aren’t you going to arrest my husband for that?’ I said.

A groan came from near the sergeant’s feet. He glanced down then looked back at me and mouthed his words almost without a sound.

‘Had it coming,’ he said.

The inspector rose, clambering up with both hands clutching the edge of the counter. He worked his jaw to one side and then the other. It gave a couple of blood-curdling clicks but came to rest somewhere near the middle. Now it was time for me to be brave.

‘I won’t make any formal complaints about my treatment this afternoon,’ I said, ‘if you agree to call that quits.’

‘Get out and don’t come back,’ the inspector said. ‘If I see you again or hear your name…’ Then he turned on his heel and disappeared once more into the back regions. Stumbling a little, for this day’s alarums were mounting up by now, I allowed Alec to usher me out onto the street.

Hugh was sitting bolt upright in the driving seat of his Rolls, staring straight ahead, looking like a chauffeur, but it was what I saw in the back seat that finally, after all that I had been through, brought tears to my eyes.

‘I brought your dog, Dandy,’ said Hugh. ‘Thought you might like its company on the way home.’

‘Oh Hugh!’ I said. ‘Oh Bunty! Oh!’

‘You tuck up in the back and Osborne can keep me company in the front here,’ Hugh said. ‘You came on the train, didn’t you, old man?’

I climbed in and put my arms around Bunty’s neck, letting my tears fall on her and not even trying to stop the howling sobs that holding her wrenched out of me. Bunty started howling too; she is always a very gratifying companion to misery.

By the time we had cleared the suburbs of the town, though, I was feeling rather better and I sat forward and slid open the little window.

‘Alec?’ I said. ‘I want to talk to you about a very strange hint I got from Smellie. Hugh, can you pull over and let Alec nip in the back, please?’

‘No,’ said Hugh. ‘Not tonight. You are going to rest and think pleasant thoughts after your ordeal, Dandy. And, besides, I believe I need Osborne to take over the wheel. It might be staved, but I don’t think so – I think that policeman’s jaw broke my finger for me.’