Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘I should say you do,’ said Hugh very drily. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand but I could still hear him talking to Donald. ‘Could you run along and fetch my diary from my business room desk, old chap? Thank you.’ I rolled my eyes; Hugh only old chaps the boys when he is trying (sometimes quite ostentatiously) to look like the perfect parent in comparison with me. ‘I’ve had the most extraordinary letter, Dandy.’

  ‘Who from?’ I asked.

  ‘From whom is a question I cannot answer,’ Hugh said. I did not miss the little dig at my grammar, but I rose above it.

  ‘Illegible signature?’

  ‘Anonymous,’ said Hugh. ‘Asked me to reply by return to a poste restante. Like a penny dreadful.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It tells me nothing I did not already know,’ he replied. ‘That you are living there (Portpatrick, one surmises) with a man who is not me and passing yourself off as—’

  ‘I am not!’ I said. ‘We stayed in the same pub in separate rooms for one night and since then I’ve been living at the girls’ school.’

  ‘Passing yourself off as a schoolmistress,’ he finished. ‘Miss Gilver.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ I said. ‘I know exactly who sent it. “Here” is the Crown and it was written by a very nosy and thoroughly unpleasant woman who’s holidaying there also with her companion. She witnessed Alec and me doing such shocking things as eating breakfast and standing on the street talking. Throw it on the fire, Hugh, and forget about it.’

  ‘I threw it on the fire within a minute of opening it,’ Hugh said. ‘Revolting thing.’

  ‘And it’s nothing to do with what I have to tell you anyway. The thing is, you see, that someone is coming to stay. At Gilverton. Probably tomorrow.’

  ‘Someone we know?’ said Hugh. There was an ominous note in his voice which I ignored.

  ‘No, a stranger,’ I said. ‘A Frenchwoman by the name of Mademoiselle Beauclerc. One of the Dauphiné Beauclercs.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘She’s actually been working as a French mistress here at St Columba’s.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh Hugh – the school where I’m working on the case. You never listen.’

  ‘Convent school, is it?’ said Hugh, the mention of a saint clearly setting all sorts of alarm bells ringing.

  ‘Perfectly ordinary girls’ school, chapel is the local kirk,’ I said. ‘In fact Basil Rowe-Issing’s girl is here. And one of the Norton daughters too. I had her reading Macbeth this morning. Anyway, I had thought Mademoiselle Beauclerc could have a bed in the servants’ wing and help Grant but those attic rooms are horribly draughty. She could always go to Dunelgar instead. Or she could go to Benachally and look at the hangings. She said she could embroider like anything.’

  ‘And is she in hiding from the police, might one ask?’ said Hugh. ‘Or is there more likely to be a ne’er-do-well hot-footing it after her?’

  ‘Neither,’ I said. ‘She needs somewhere to be, out of the way, while matters settle.’

  ‘While matters settle,’ he repeated. ‘Very well, Dandy. Tell me when she’s arriving and I’ll send the car. If some old French nun can fix those hangings without it costing us, I should be perfectly happy to put her up for a while.’

  ‘It’s not a convent,’ I said again. ‘And I’ve never asked but judging by appearance I’d say Mademoiselle was about twenty-five.’

  There was a short silence, whose source and whose journey I could not fathom.

  ‘She’ll be able to walk from the station then,’ said Hugh.

  I did not answer for I was thinking not about Jeanne Beauclerc walking from the station but about me trying to find the farm track again; thick clouds had turned this May evening as dark as December and the wind was blowing hard. On the other hand, I could hardly leave her thinking she had been abandoned a second time. On a third hand, my luck in being left alone to make these telephone calls was surely running out by now. ‘Can I ask you a favour, Hugh?’ I said at last.

  ‘You may,’ Hugh said, annoyingly.

  ‘Could you ring her up and tell her she can’t have her luggage tonight? It’s the wilds of nowhere where she’s staying, and Alec’s away. If you could just ring up Paterson of Low Merrick Farm, Portpatrick and tell Mademoiselle Beauclerc that I’ll bring her bags before breakfast tomorrow and that she should get herself to the station and take the train to Dunkeld—’

  ‘Why don’t you just take her stuff to the station?’ interrupted Hugh.

  ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘Thank you, dear.’

  ‘Seems like the obvious thing to me,’ he said, milking his little triumph now. ‘My goodness, Dandy, if that’s an example of your canny detective’s brain at work! I daresay the whole puzzle isn’t really all that puzzling at all if you had a methodical mind tackling it.’

  ‘You don’t know the first thing about the case!’ I said.

  ‘Precisely my point,’ said Hugh.

  ‘There have been five murders,’ I said.

  ‘Since Friday?’ He sounded suitably astonished.

  ‘No, one last Tuesday or Wednesday and two more in the preceding decade.’

  ‘That’s not five, my dear Dandy,’ he said.

  ‘And there are five missing persons,’ I said, flushing but ignoring him. ‘Well, actually we’ve found two. But lost another one. And actually another. Yes, five.’

  ‘Perhaps I should come down there and sort it all out for you,’ he said, in a condescending tone that made me wish he were there so I could kick him.

  Finally, I settled the telephone back in its cradle for the night and rubbed my ear hard with the heel of my hand. Then I twirled Miss Shanks’s chair back around to its usual setting and stood to leave.

  Coming round the desk, though, I spied something upon the carpet just inside the door which certainly had not been there when I had entered and sat down.

  A note, a folded piece of lined paper torn from a jotter. Written in pencil on its outside: Miss. Now, obviously Miss was Miss Shanks, for this was her office; and just as obviously there was no justification in the world for looking at a letter – even one not inside an envelope – addressed, however cryptically, to another person. (Indeed it had been one of the lessons most fiercely drummed into me by my mother and Nanny Palmer, working for once in tandem, that personal letters never were sealed into their envelopes. I had thought as a child that that was to show how much one trusted one’s servants and the Post Office employees and the servants of whoever one was writing to. It was only later that I twigged: one never sealed a letter for to do so was to imply that there were matters in one’s life unsuitable to be known by all.)

  Be that as it may, I unfolded the sheet and read it quickly. Ivy Shanks’s life certainly had matters unsuitable to know and that was precisely the reason I wanted to know them.

  Of course, it was a bitter disappointment.

  I would like leave to go home tomorrow on a visit, please, it said. I am very unhappy and need to see my father. Poor little mite, I thought as I read the signature. Betty Alder.

  A poor little mite indeed. I refolded the paper and let it fall for Miss Shanks to find when she returned.

  Walking along the passages to the staffroom, though, I could not get the girl out of my mind. Part of it was worry about Donald, I supposed, in a funny sort of way, for there was something behind his sudden decision to trawl all the way home and all the way back again. I only hoped that he had not made the journey hoping for my ear and shoulder only to find himself stuck with Hugh and unable to get away again. Donald was never one to hurt our feelings and was always confident that we both – even Hugh – had them.

  There was so much sorrow in that little letter. I could not leave the child to the sympathy of Miss Shanks, who had been cold even in referring to her and could not be expected to be warm when faced with her asking for dispensation. I put my head around the staffroom door, meaning to tell Miss Shanks that her room was her own a
gain. She was not there and that decided me. Sabbatina Aldo needed comfort and needed it now. If Miss Shanks had gone to bed she would not see the note until the morning.

  But how to find her?

  ‘Mrs Brown?’ I said. That lady was sitting planted four square in her tub chair by the sideboard. She looked up from her knitting and regarded me with some surprise. ‘Do you have a room list of the girls?’ She frowned. ‘At least that’s what they called it when I was at school. A chart of who’s where with all their names. It’s the names I want really, not the places, but I thought that would be where they were all written.’

  ‘Don’t you have class lists?’ said Mrs Brown. She, Miss Barclay and Miss Christopher were all looking at me very oddly now.

  ‘I haven’t come across any,’ I said. ‘Perhaps Miss Lipscott put them in an out of the way corner and I haven’t turned them up yet.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t been taking the register?’ said Miss Christopher.

  I smiled what I hoped was an ingratiating smile, secretly thinking that I had done rather well getting to Monday evening before my first big gaffe came to light.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the other girls would have mentioned it if one of them were missing,’ I said. ‘But that’s even more reason to get my hand on these room lists, Mrs Brown. I’ll make up a register for tomorrow.’

  She shared another look with Miss Christopher and Miss Barclay and then jammed her knitting needles into her ball of wool and hauled herself to her feet. As I followed her to the housekeeper’s room I wondered again about Hugh’s jibe. Was there an easier way around this too? Should I have been able to find out where Sabbatina Aldo might be without these convolutions?

  Convoluted or not, though, my method worked. Mrs Brown handed over a paper ledger of reddish brown, stuffed with health certificates, notes of doctors’ visits and a plan of the house with the girls’ names printed out in pencil against their dorms.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I shall take very great care of it and return it to you as soon as I can.’ Then I hurried off, already flipping through its pages, and had found ALDER clearly marked against a dorm on the west side of the house before I had turned the first corner.

  It was a pleasant enough room. The afternoon sun had warmed it, and with the four bedside lamps lit and a large white radiator emanating more heat it almost managed – linoleum floor and metal bedsteads notwithstanding – not to seem too much like a hospital or (I imagined) a prison. The girls had covered their dresser tops with pictures of their families and pets and on three of the beds there were brightly patterned quilts and coverlets over the brown school blankets. The fourth was covered with a white bedspread of fine pulled stitching, edged with crocheted scallops in wool as light as spiders’ webs; and on it Sabbatina was sitting, the very picture of woe.

  ‘I came to see if you’re all right,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Sabbatina. ‘I’m not.’ And then the tears began to pour out of her, as though pulsing from some internal pump of efficient design, as she hugged herself and rocked back and forth. I sat down beside her and stretched out one hand to rub her back, half-expecting a rebuff. Instead she turned, threw both her arms around my middle, buried her head in my breast and sobbed as though her heart would break, gulping and sniffing and simply howling, on and on.

  I had no daughters and my only sister did not particularly like me, so it had been years since someone had engulfed me in a hug and bawled, and Sabbatina Aldo was much bigger than the boys had been the last time they had broken down over the death of a pony or a whipping from Hugh. This was very different and I felt rather panicked as I patted and shushed and smoothed back her masses of hair (this last was not exactly comfort, but more to get it out of my face and stop it tickling me).

  ‘I know I’ve got to go and live at home now,’ she said eventually, in a voice muffled by being buried against my shirt and made nasal by the inevitable accompaniment to all those tears. ‘But I don’t want to leave St Columba’s. And I don’t want to stay either. I don’t fit anywhere and there’s no one to help me.’ She was seized by another storm of weeping and by the time this one had passed her breath was coming in hiccups.

  ‘What about your father?’ I said, trying to set her back from me a little without seeming as if I were doing so. Her note had pleaded for permission to visit him. ‘Can’t you and he help one another?’

  She did sit up a bit then, and she blinked and sniffed and went searching for a handkerchief to begin to mop herself up.

  ‘I don’t want to see him,’ she said. ‘Everything’s changed.’

  ‘Oh, Sabbatina,’ I said. ‘There are always two sides. At least two.’

  ‘I know I shall have to forgive him in the end but I just can’t imagine it now.’

  Which I thought was a bit thick. Joe Aldo was quite the most loving, affectionate and proud husband and father I had ever encountered (certainly I had never seen his like in my own family) and if anyone were to be shunned and then grudgingly forgiven it should be the minx of a wife who had abandoned him and left this poor wretched child to cry herself hoarse with a stranger. Very probably the psychologists could explain the muddle, but it was beyond me.

  ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘I think the best thing for you to do is work hard at your lessons and visit on Saturday as usual. I mean, not as usual, obviously, but . . .’

  ‘It’s the Saturday after Parents’ Day,’ Sabbatina said, and she started to sniff again. ‘Parents’ Day! They’ll all be here taking the girls out for tea. I wish I could just run away and never come back.’

  ‘Now, now, don’t even talk about that,’ I said. ‘Gosh, the last thing anyone needs is you running away too. You know how awful it is for those left behind. Hm? Now, promise me?’

  She rubbed the tears which had just started to form and fall, and nodded.

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Good girl,’ I said. ‘Now you go and splash your face and clean your teeth and I’ll turn down your bed for you. An early night will do you a world of good.’

  ‘No!’ said Sabbatina, then she bit her lip. ‘Please don’t— I mean, please don’t take my cover off, Miss Gilver. I’d like to keep it on tonight.’ She had clutched a fold of it in her hand as she spoke but she smoothed it out again now. I smoothed my own hand over it too, studying the tiny stitches and the intricate knots and webs of the pattern, and decided to let her have her way, although it offended every nursery rule ever written not to take off a counterpane at bedtime.

  We parted company outside the bathroom door and I descended the nearest staircase, meaning to take the ledger back to Mrs Brown. Finding myself, however, at one end of the corridor leading to the flower room, I decided that instead of risking another trip to fetch Fleur’s bags tomorrow I would go now while the house was quiet. I took a look both ways and then set off on quick light feet with the ledger under my arm and my ear cocked for the sounds of unwanted company.

  I met no one on the way, however, and opened the door congratulating myself on the decision. Hugh was quite wrong: I did not make difficulties for myself at all. I closed the door softly, clicked on the electric light and turned around.

  The bottom shelf was clear. The bags were gone.

  I scanned the shelves and looked behind them, even shifting a few bulky items to make doubly, triply sure. There was no doubt of it, however. They had lain undisturbed since Saturday afternoon and I had had a fine chance to nab them. Stupidly, I had taken the bags which would tell me nothing (the bags of a woman already found) and left those which might yield some clue of the woman vanished. And who had taken them? I had been speaking on the telephone for quite a while, but the Misses Barclay and Christopher had had a very settled look in that staffroom of theirs. Mrs Brown, too: she had got up out of her armchair like the sword from the stone. Ivy Shanks! Of course. She had said she was going to the staffroom, but she was not there. And she had seen me with what she thought was my luggage searching for a place to store it. Perhaps she had only the
n thought to wonder what had become of Miss Lipscott’s things or the mademoiselle’s.

  Then another thought struck me. Had she really believed those bags were mine? Taking my own with me this time, I sped upstairs to my room and shot inside almost expecting that luggage to be gone too. There it was, though, shoved just inside the door where I had left it. I opened my large case – glad now that I could not lift the thing – stowed Jeanne’s more modest-sized one inside it and closed it tight, strapping it and locking it and putting the key in my pocket. I locked her overnight bag in my wardrobe. I smoothed my hair, tried in front of the glass to bring my face back to the look of serenity bordering on weariness that one would get from making up register lists, and headed back to the staffroom with Mrs Brown’s ledger.

  She was re-established in her tub chair and her knitting had grown another inch or so. Miss Barclay and Miss Christopher were as they had been too, at either end of their empire sofa, and Miss Shanks had reappeared. She was looking rather ruffled. From exertion, I wondered? From barrelling around the passageways with a heavy bag in each hand? She did not have the build for it. Actually, though, the dominant look about all of them was one of arrested movement; as though they had been stopped short in the midst of some animated exchange.

  ‘Your ledger, Mrs Brown,’ I said, setting it down again on the table at her elbow. ‘I’ve got my class lists all drawn up now. Thank you.’

  ‘Have you then?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Have you indeed?’ She gave quite the most horrible imaginable look out of the corner of her eye towards the other three, sliding her gaze right to the edge of her eye sockets so that only the white showed and not moving her head even an inch.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound offhand. I took a breath to say more.

  ‘That’s clever of you,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Seeing as how the forms aren’t listed here.’

  I recovered fairly quickly.

  ‘Well, there are only a hundred, aren’t there? I just made one big alphabetical list and I’ll do the rest with coloured pencil. A code, you know. Yes, a code.’