Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses

by Catriona McPherson

But about that I was wrong, quite wrong. Alec started off the call in businesslike fashion, introducing himself and asking Pearl if she was alone, since he had some upsetting news and she should prepare herself to receive it. A wail came out of the ear trumpet and Alec flinched before trying again.

  ‘Not so bad as all that, Mrs Tennant,’ he said hurriedly, ‘but I’m afraid I have to tell you that Miss Lipscott has gone away. She has left St Columba’s, clearly not meaning to return. Now, I take it you have had no word from her?’ There was a pause. ‘And would you know if Mrs Forrester had heard from your sister?’ Another pause. ‘In that case, Mrs Tennant, I hope you’ll oblige me by answering a few quest—’ Here Pearl obviously cut him off again and during this pause, he blushed. ‘Osborne, yes,’ he said. ‘Dorset. No, in Perthshire these days.’ Then he blushed even harder, turning quite purple and making his freckles appear yellow. ‘She is indeed. Yes, we do. I most certainly am— Mrs Tennant, if I can just— A splendid chap. Most helpful to me in the matter of the farm. Mrs Tennant’ – his voice rose – ‘can I start by asking you this: as far as you know, has your sister ever committed any cri—’ I could hear Pearl squawking into the telephone from where I sat across the room (I had chosen a fireside chair as one does even when the grate is empty). ‘No I don’t mean the high-spirits of youth, my dear Mrs Te— Yes, indeed, I’ve snatched many a police helmet on treasure hunt nights myself, but that’s not what—’ Alec shook his head at me in dumb disbelief. It was his first exposure to a Lipscott outpouring and I took it that Dismay was just as profuse as Delight. ‘She hinted – no, she more than hinted – that she might have killed some—’ This time Alec tucked the earpiece into the crook of his neck and refilled his pipe while Pearl’s voice squeaked on and on. ‘Well, yes, we did wonder. Hm? Dandy and me. Yes, she is. Yes, I’m sure she would.’ I was signalling madly but he ignored me.

  ‘Hello, Pearl darling,’ I said, taking over and watching Alec go to flop in a chair.

  ‘Dandy, honestly!’ said Pearl down the line. She sounded tearful. ‘I asked you to take care of her and I told you to be gentle with her and it sounds absolutely as though you’ve trampled in in hobnailed boots like some beastly policeman.’

  ‘No need, dear,’ I said. ‘There is a real beastly policeman with perfectly good hobnailed boots of his own. And I should think he’ll be in touch very soon to ask you just what we’re asking you. There’s been a murder.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense!’ said Pearl, rather surprisingly.

  ‘Or a death anyway,’ I said.

  ‘See? Don’t make such a melodrama, Dandy, you’re hardly helping.’

  ‘I had to go and look at the corpse, Pearl. It was melodramatic enough without anyone making it so. And Fleur as good as confessed that she—’ Pearl interrupted again.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Dandy, if I had thought for a moment you’d take this line . . . You know Fleur. She’s a darling, an angel, a cherub on a white clou—’

  ‘She was,’ I said, interrupting back. ‘She’s changed. I would like to know what changed her.’

  ‘I can’t listen to this,’ said Pearl. ‘From you of all people.’ I heard an ominous fumbling sound.

  ‘Don’t you dare hang up!’ I said and before I knew it Alec had taken the instrument back out of my hand.

  ‘Mrs Tennant,’ he said. ‘I’m well aware that Mrs Gilver is an old friend of your family but she is also a professional detective of the utmost integrity and moral scrupulousness. She cannot – we neither of us can – condone any—’ His voice was getting louder and lower and Pearl’s voice was getting higher and faster and they went on in this fashion for another good minute and then very abruptly Alec hung up the telephone.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘The pips went,’ he said. ‘But she got a good one in just before. We’ve been sacked, Dandy darling.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘Not again.’

  After which it seemed immediately necessary to take a walk down the cliff steps to the lounge bar of the Crown and a restorative glass of brandy. It was rather shudder-making, as even the best brandy in a small village inn is wont to be, but all the more invigorating for that.

  ‘Ugh, a little more soda, please,’ I said, after the first sip.

  ‘You should really develop your palate for whisky,’ Alec said, which suggestion made me shudder even more. ‘It’s a safer bet in these parts. This’ – he swirled his glass – ‘is delightful.’

  ‘So she didn’t take too kindly to the suggestion that Fleur is a killer, it’s safe to say.’ I was resuming the conversation which had begun as we picked our way down by the path.

  ‘Ah yes, but it wasn’t the outrage you’d feel were I to accuse Donald, Teddy or Hugh. It was a much more well-honed rejection.’

  ‘She’d heard it oft before?’

  ‘And she wasn’t having any of it.’ Alec nodded. ‘She didn’t actually put up any counter-arguments, you understand. Just poor little Fleurikins and how dare I. Poor sweet pixie and poppet and dear little elf, their poor darling mamma and sorry old pa and it was all extremely sickening, I must say.’

  ‘It seemed adorable when we were girls,’ I said, not liking to hear the familiar pet names repeated in quite that sneering way, no matter how nauseating I might find them myself on occasion.

  ‘But she was genuinely rattled,’ Alec went on, with a relish which was worse than the sneering. ‘Doing her best to pooh-pooh any notion of a murder but stammering with the strain. Poor little elf-f-f-f-f.’

  I set my brandy glass down hard and stared at him.

  ‘That wasn’t stammering,’ I said. ‘Elf-f-f-f? Apart from anything else, no one stammers at the ends of words, do they?’

  Alec, like most men, does not welcome criticism. Unlike most men, however, he sets that aside without a care when more important matters are in hand. At that moment, he barely noticed the criticism at all, but only sat forward in his chair as eager as a puppy and stared back at me.

  ‘You’ve got that look, Dan,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Elf-f-f-f,’ I said, ‘and I can’t believe you don’t know this but I suppose you’re rather young and from darkest Dorset, but Elf-f-f-f is the rather silly nickname of Edward Lionel Frederick Forrester-Franklin. Some sort of cousin of Aurora’s husband’s family.’

  ‘And?’ said Alec.

  ‘He died,’ I said. ‘In ’19 or possibly ’20.’

  ‘Eight years ago,’ Alec said. ‘And didn’t Pearl tell you . . .’

  ‘She did. That Fleur had got over the old bad time and been fine for eight years.’

  ‘Dear God, Dandy. What did he die of? Not old age, I take it.’

  ‘He was twenty-five,’ I said. ‘Suicide was the whisper, accident was what they put in The Times, but here’s the thing, darling. He died at Pereford. He died at Fleur’s family home.’

  6

  I slept more soundly that night than I had any right to expect I would after the horrors of the day and I dreamed, blamelessly, of Hugh and the boys and some task unknown and undone, very glad upon waking that the poor ravaged corpse and the ghost of Edward Franklin had not visited me. I stretched out in my narrow bed feeling the sheets, which were adrift under my body, twist and wrinkle with my movements. (I had never perfected the art of bed-making even after some very fierce lessons from Matron at the convalescent home and had never imagined that I might feel the want of it, but those same maids who carted dirty supper plates around for the girls of St Columba’s really did leave tender new mistresses to struggle with their own linens.) My pillow was bursting out of the end of its case too, giving it an uncomfortable sort of waist and ruining any chance of a snooze.

  With a sigh, I swung my legs down and felt for my slippers on the cold linoleum floor. If moved to thank heaven for small mercies, I could always be glad that the Crown’s brandy was too unpleasant to tempt me to a second and my head was clear this morning. I wondered how Alec, so delighted by the quality of the whisky, was faring;
and I hoped that, at least, he remembered the rather detailed plan of attack we had formed the evening before.

  I set the first part of the plan in motion over breakfast with the girls, choosing again the gaggle of sixth formers I had met at supper on Friday.

  ‘With a one and a two and one two three and!’ Miss Shanks shouted from the end of the room, the girls rose to their feet and the slow chorus began.

  ‘Dear Lord, thank you for this new day and this good food and all our friends. Amen.’

  I mumbled along, unfamiliar with the wording, and then sat and spread my napkin as the girls flopped down all around me.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ said Katie as she did so, ‘thank you for the fact that Hammy doesn’t make us do that music-hall routine at breakfast at least.’

  ‘I thought the dinner grace was rather sweet!’ I said.

  ‘So did we for the first year or so,’ said Stella, breaking into a roll and craning her neck for the maid. ‘Ah, good,’ she said, when the child arrived at her elbow. I was astonished to see and smell a stream of dark steaming coffee pouring into Stella’s breakfast cup.

  ‘Miss?’ said the maid.

  ‘Th-thank you,’ I managed, holding my cup up across the table to her.

  ‘Ugh!’ said Eileen. ‘I dread being grown-up and married and having to drink nasty coffee in the morning instead of delicious chocolate.’

  ‘Oh, that won’t be the worst of it,’ Stella said, drooping one lazy eyelid and making Spring and Katie giggle.

  ‘Now, now, girls,’ I said mildly, although privately just as startled by the talk as I was by the coffee. ‘Now, let me see . . . what did I mean to ask you . . .? Oh yes, what are you reading in English just now? I have a great deal of prep to do today.’

  ‘You mean French, Miss Gilver,’ said Sally, smiling rather shyly at her own temerity in correcting me.

  ‘Ah no, English,’ I said. ‘I thought perhaps you would have heard, but I suppose Miss Shanks will announce it at chapel. Miss Lipscott has been . . . called away and, since Miss Glennie came to help out with the French lessons, I’m taking over English.’

  ‘Juliet’s gone?’ said Spring. ‘Miss Lipscott, I mean? Not another one!’

  ‘She has been forced to take a leave of absence owing to a family emerg—’ I began before remembering that ‘family emergency’ was precisely the tale Miss Shanks had been spouting about them all.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Stella. ‘Escape! Relief! We can read anything you like, Miss Gilver, and we’ll be your devoted slaves if it’s not what we’ve been reading, I can tell you.’

  ‘Stella!’ This was in chorus from Eileen and Sally. ‘We can’t change books now. We’ve been studying all year for our Higher Cert.’

  ‘Speak for yourselves,’ said Spring. ‘I’ve been not studying all year and just hoping to be overtaken by a natural disaster before the exam!’

  ‘And the papers might be written already,’ said Katie.

  ‘Surely not,’ I said. ‘Examination papers can’t be written and lying around.’

  ‘Not lying around,’ said Spring. ‘Locked up in the safe until they go to the printers and then locked up again when they return. Miss Shanks is nuts on cheating.’

  ‘Well, I’m not about to change books this late in the term anyway,’ I said stoutly.

  ‘You know best, Miss Gilver,’ said Stella. She had a special way of being horribly insolent without saying anything on which one could lay one’s finger.

  ‘So what are you reading?’ I asked them.

  ‘Paradise Lost,’ said Eileen. ‘Miss Lipscott loves it.’

  ‘Juliet hates it as much as the rest of us!’ said Katie. ‘She just thinks that reading hateful boring tripe is good for the soul.’

  There was so much about this remark I should have pounced upon, from the casual use of the nickname, past the intemperate language, to the disparaging of the great John Milton, but so panicked was I by the thought of having to teach a single sensible thing about such a poem that I said nothing, instead shooting off to the sideboard, ostensibly to fetch some eggs and bacon, but really because Miss Shanks was standing there and I felt an urgent need to reassure myself. A bit of Scott and Shakespeare, she had said. Paradise Lost was far beyond both my brief and the pale.

  ‘Exams, Miss Shanks,’ I said. ‘The papers. The girls said they were written and that the upper sixth is studying Milton. I’m sure they’re just teasing the new girl?’ My voice went up at the end and sounded as unsure as could be.

  ‘Milton, eh?’ said Miss Shanks. She was stirring a pot of scrambled egg with a wooden spirtle and in her black church costume and already wearing a black church hat she looked rather witchy. ‘Well, Miss Lipscott was a one for that kind of thing.’

  ‘But the papers?’ I said. ‘Do I have to write an exam paper? On Paradise Lost?’

  ‘No, no, no, it’s written, Miss Gilver. The upper sixth and the fifth form are accounted for. School Certs, you know. It’s just the first to fourth forms and the lower sixth you need to take care of.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, standing with the chafing dish lid in my hand, letting the uncovered bacon get cold. ‘Is that all? And do you happen to know what sort of stuff . . .’

  ‘You’ve all day after chapel to prepare, Miss Gilver,’ said Miss Shanks. She had finally got the scrambled egg stirred up to her satisfaction and now she scraped a great heap of it onto her plate with the spirtle and left me there. As my eyes followed her back to her place I saw that our little interchange had not gone unnoticed. Miss Christopher was watching me. She glanced at Miss Shanks and at Miss Barclay and back to me, saw me looking at her and finally lowered her gaze as though to spread toast with butter took all the concentration with which she had learned to subject a frog to dissection.

  ‘Well,’ I said, sitting back down. ‘Why ever Miss McLintock and Miss Stanley left, it wasn’t because of muddle in the organisation.’

  ‘What?’ said Spring.

  ‘Who?’ said Sally.

  ‘You were right, girls,’ I said. ‘The Higher Cert exam papers are written already and safely under lock and key.’

  ‘Who’s Miss Stanley?’ said Katie. ‘Was she before our time?’

  ‘Golly, how long have the mistresses being fleeing St Cucumber’s?’ said Eileen.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, mentally crossing my fingers, ‘I got the names wrong. Weren’t they the science and history mistresses?’ I looked around their faces. ‘No?’

  My ploy worked, as I had thought it would, for who can resist the chance to correct another’s mistakes, especially when that other is an elder and better? They filled the air with all the information I needed, babbling and chirruping over one another like a family of day-old chicks squabbling in their dust bath and, concentrating hard, I caught it all.

  The science mistress had been a Miss Bell (called Tinker, affectionately by the girls) who had departed two years ago. Miss Taylor the history mistress, mystifyingly referred to as The Maid, had gone with her; and a Miss Blair, who had taken the girls for gym and music, had left just before an important hockey match.

  ‘And of course, dear Fräulein Fielding, who died at Christmas time,’ said Sally, her eyes misting. ‘She was the most marvellous Latin scholar, Miss Gilver. Not like old Plumface who just translates battle after battle and makes us draw tables of verbs.’

  ‘Miss Fielding died just this last Christmas?’ I said.

  ‘Golly no, two years since,’ said Sally. ‘And a half. And no one left when she was here. Misses Taylor and Bell were pals of old.’

  I was rather disappointed in the selection of names – I had been hoping for something more prominent upon which to hang the next part of my ruse, but I did my best, walking to chapel alongside Miss Lovage, the art mistress.

  ‘The girls seem very fond of you all,’ I said, to start things off. Miss Lovage raised her striking profile to an even more glamorous angle, whether from pride in her girls’ fondness or the better to sniff the sea air I could not say
. ‘They seem terribly to miss Miss Fielding and Miss Blair.’ The imposing chin came down a bit at that and Miss Lovage turned to look at me.

  ‘Miss Blair?’ she said.

  ‘I wondered if it could possibly be the same Miss Blair I know from my own schooldays,’ I said. ‘At St Leonards. Over twenty years ago now. A little Irishwoman with flame-red hair?’ Of course I had not been to school at St Leonards or anywhere else for that matter and the flame-haired Irishwoman was my own invention, but once again it worked for me.

  ‘Can’t be,’ said Miss Lovage. ‘Emily Blair was Scotch and Amazonian and what hair she let grow on her head was mouse. Did you say the girls loved her? Who have you been talking to?’

  ‘Ohh . . .’ I said.

  ‘My girls – the painters and sculptors – hated all that. Endless hockey all winter and cricket, if you can believe it, in the summer term. Cricket!’

  ‘That does seem a little odd,’ I said. We were nearing the church now and I plunged on before we should arrive and have the conversation cut off by song and prayer. ‘Odd too to find a Scotswoman with a yen for cricket. I wonder if she gets the chance where she is now.’ I paused but nothing came out of Miss Lovage’s ruby-red painted lips. ‘Do you know where she moved on to?’ I said but, as usual, the direct question shut the conversation down like a slammed door. Miss Lovage merely stared at me down her dramatic nose and then threw her dramatic scarf back around her neck with a gesture (dramatic, of course) presumably meant to brush me and my question away. I was not, however, to be so easily brushed.

  ‘Or perhaps she didn’t take up another position?’ I said. ‘If she left in the rush she seems to have . . .’

  ‘You are remarkably inquisitive about your fellow man,’ said Miss Lovage.

  ‘Inquisitiveness is rather to be encouraged, though, wouldn’t you say?’ I replied. ‘As a schoolmistress and a shaper of young minds, one would expect you to be all for it.’

  ‘A mind which enquires into Life and celebrates Beauty,’ said Miss Lovage, ‘is greatly to be encouraged, of course. But the quotidian minutiae of strangers’ lives has never enthralled me.’