Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Private detectives?’ said Sergeant Turner and, if I had to supply another phrase to suit the tone this time, ‘amoebic dysentery’ would be near the head of the queue.

  ‘Two things, Sergeant,’ I said, sailing on. ‘Miss Lipscott did not take her bags with her when she left. They were packed and yet she didn’t pick them up. If she left of her own accord and under her own steam it’s safer to say that she fled than simply moved on.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sergeant Turner and did not utter another syllable.

  ‘Also,’ I said, ‘I can tell you now with complete certainty that the body at the cable station – or wherever she is now – is not Jeanne Beauclerc.’

  He dearly wanted to issue another bland thank you such as the police give to the general public who offer information, but he also wanted to disparage my contribution and after a struggle that urge won.

  ‘We knew that,’ he said. ‘Two mistresses from the school said it wasn’t her.’

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘a faceless handless corpse . . . whereas I can confirm it for sure.’

  ‘How?’ said Sergeant Turner, after another brief struggle.

  ‘Oh good, let’s share our information after all,’ I said. ‘Good show.’

  What, I wondered, was wrong with me this morning? I had gone after the poisonous widow like a Jack Russell terrier and now here I was antagonising the police sergeant too.

  ‘It’s not a question of sharing, Mrs Gilver,’ said the sergeant. ‘It’s a question of withholding – unless you answer my question. And withholding desired information from the police is a very serious matter.’

  ‘And is it desired, Sergeant?’ I said. I could not seem to help myself. ‘I thought you knew already that the body wasn’t Miss Beauclerc. What information do I have, to withhold or not?’

  He glared at me for a moment and then looked over his shoulder and barked for the constable. Reid popped his head out of a door.

  ‘Deal with this, laddie,’ said Turner. ‘I’ve got more to be doing than wasting time with a lot of . . .’ He waved a hand and withdrew into the back premises well away from my nonsense. I turned down the corners of my mouth and flashed my eyes at Reid but he regarded me with a very stony expression.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘What’s what?’ said Reid.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ I said.

  ‘Nowt wrong wi’ me,’ said Reid, but like his sergeant he lost the struggle with his better self. ‘What did you say to—’ He looked over his shoulder and dropped his voice. ‘What did you say to Cissie on Sunday?’

  ‘Many things,’ I replied. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s sent me a wee note this mornin’ wi’ Tam Ramsay the baker, sayin’ she won’t see me tonight.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘It’s Tuesday, isn’t it? Your night for walking and – em – sitting. Well, possibly Cissie doesn’t feel the same about the Dunskey Castle cliffs since she had to think about someone plunging off them.’

  ‘Aye but it’s no’ just that she doesn’t want to go a walk,’ said Reid. ‘We sometimes go to the Empire in Stranraer. She disnae want to see me at all. What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I thought hard about our conversation. ‘I swear to you, William. Absolutely nothing. I’m sure all that’s wrong is that she’s unnerved by the talk of bodies and strangers and people watching. She’ll come round again. But listen, I’ve come to ask how the search is going for Miss Lipscott and also to tell you something.’

  Quickly, I rehashed the tale of Fleur being packed and ready to go and yet leaving her bags behind her. He stared at me for a moment and I thought he might say another quelling thank you just as the sergeant had done, but he was made of finer stuff and had a sharper wit any day.

  ‘Why were her bags packed?’ he asked.

  ‘Because she had been planning to go already,’ I said. ‘Quite elaborately planning. She and Miss Beauclerc were going to go together. Only Beauclerc fled too. A few days before the plan was ready to be executed.’

  ‘And how did you find all this out?’

  ‘I found her,’ I told him.

  ‘You just asked me how the search was going—’

  ‘I found Miss Beauclerc,’ I said. ‘She was hiding at P— Well, in a local guesthouse, waiting for Miss Lipscott to send word to her.’

  ‘Paterson’s farm!’ said Reid. ‘I chapped their door on Saturday asking all about did they see the corpse go in and did they ken where Miss Lipscott was.’

  ‘They didn’t, to be fair,’ I said.

  ‘Splittin’ hairs, that! Right, well, I’d better get round there and talk to her. There’s somethin’ gey queer about all this runnin’ away.’

  ‘Ah, well, as to that,’ I said. ‘She’s not there now. She was only waiting for Fleur and when I told her Fleur was gone, there was no reason for her to hang around any more.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said Reid very sternly, quite obviously blaming me for her departure. (If he knew that I had fetched her bags, he would have a fit. If he knew where she was going, he would have a heart attack.)

  ‘But to be fair,’ I said, ‘she knew nothing of No. 5 or of Fleur’s change of plan or where Fleur might have gone.’

  ‘She must ken where they were both headed to begin wi’,’ he said.

  ‘Miss Lipscott’s family home,’ I said. ‘But unless her family is lying, Fleur’s not there now.’ I was determined not to tell him where Jeanne Beauclerc was off to; I had assured Hugh there would be no policemen following her there.

  ‘Aye, you’re doubtless right,’ said Reid. He reached under the counter and drew out his hat. ‘At least, I can come and get her bags. Eh? Might be something in them, like a wee clue.’

  ‘Ahhhhhh,’ I said. ‘Yes, Miss Lipscott’s bags, actually, are gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Yes, I um, yes.’

  ‘But you found them. Where did you put them?’

  ‘I left them where they were,’ I said. ‘Yes, I let it be known that I was sniffing around the luggage room where the bags were sitting and then I just left them there. Someone – Miss Shanks is my guess – must have spirited them away overnight. Not my finest hour, I’ll grant you.’

  ‘But why would anyone want to hide the bags except for to make it look like somebody left when really she’s—’

  ‘In a barrel of brine in the larder?’ I said. ‘Or hidden under a pile of coke in the boiler room?’

  ‘If I was a sergeant and had ma own say-so I’d be up there with a warrant. Ask that wee Shanks woman what the devil’s goin’ on.’

  ‘You couldn’t persuade Sergeant Turner?’

  The noise Reid made was expressive if rather sickening.

  ‘Him!’ he said. He took his hat off again and threw it under the counter. ‘He cannae see there’s anything to bother about. Even though I’ve never smelled a rat like it since the Pinminnoch Burn flooded and one the size o’ a dog washed in tae ma Auntie Margaret’s privy.’

  ‘You paint a vivid picture,’ I said, shuddering. ‘Cissie will return to you for your silver tongue if nothing else, I’m sure.’

  And so to Stranraer library, to sneeze and itch my way through a morning with the newspapers of nine years before looking for the death of ‘Charles’ who was auditioning for the part of No. 3.

  It was not one of Andrew Carnegie’s bequests, but was easily as solid and massive as if it had been, heavy with pillars and porticoes without and even heavier with marble and gilt banisters within, and I swept into the reference room blithely confident that they would have exactly what I was seeking.

  The woman behind the reference desk, however, soon took the wind out of my sails.

  ‘The Times, madam?’ she said. ‘The London Times? The English one? No, there’s no call for that here.’

  ‘But it’s . . .’ I said, and stopped myself before saying that it was the newspaper. A reference library not keeping The Times was like a cheese shop which did not sell cheddar.
‘Which national newspaper do you carry?’ I finished.

  ‘The Scotsman,’ said the librarian and dared me to comment on it.

  ‘Ah, excellent,’ I said, not convincing her for a second. ‘Could I see The Scotsman for 1919, please?’

  ‘Which month?’ she asked, drawing a slip towards her and raising her pencil.

  ‘All of them,’ I said, as she well knew.

  ‘Let’s start with Jan to Mar,’ she replied, scribbling, ‘and we shall see.’

  This remark, impertinently hinting that I had no sticking power, made me determined to read every issue of the damned thing from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve, even though I had been quietly wondering how newsworthy a motorcar crash (even one in which a fine young man was burned to a crisp) could possibly be. Would such an event in Dorset or London trouble the doughty Scotsman?

  As the porter was summoned and sent to fetch the first volumes, I turned back the cuffs of my coat and tied a silk scarf over my hair (I am without vanity when it comes to old newspapers these days, after many a mite and a ruined shingle) and when they were plonked down on the table in front of me with a puff of musty dust which would not have put a conjuror to shame, I was ready for them.

  The first few took an elephant’s age as ever, until my eyes adjusted to the type and I began to see the pattern in the pages, the classified advertisements giving way to the political news, the society pages, the sporting triumphs and tragedies. By the time I was halfway through February I was so adept at finding the pages where such human interest snippets as a motorcar crash might be that more than once the librarian looked across and lowered her spectacles at me, concerned for the paper as I whipped it through my fingers in a blur.

  And so, slowing down, I started to see the news I had been ignoring: the brand new National Socialist Party in Germany gathering steam even as the Treaty of Versailles lumbered towards its signing; the first reports of Herr Hitler’s Italian counterpart – the one whose name I always thought sounded like some new delicious pudding – joining him at his game. Hugh’s voice sounded in my memory again and, at least partly to silence it, the pages picked up speed once more. I turned aside a little to avoid the librarian’s eye.

  It was not until almost the end of March that I spotted something to arrest my progress and when I saw the headline – TWO KILLED AT LOCH BROOM – the faint bell which had rung when Aurora said the name ‘Charles’ clanged again, this time more clearly.

  I remembered that young man dying, although I could not have produced his name before the newspaper reminded me. As far as I could recall, he was a youngster who, after a riotous party, had attempted a Highland road in a borrowed and unfamiliar motorcar and had driven it into a forest of pine trees where it had burst into flames. The Scotsman said as much and not a great deal more, in its sober way.

  In the early hours of Sunday morning past on the road at Corrieshalloch Gorge, Charles Leigh, 23 yrs old, and his fiancée Leigh Audubon, 18 yrs old, were instantly killed when their borrowed motor collided with a tree trunk, which happening caused an engine fire. The victims were identified by means of their pocket watch and cigarette case respectively. The motorcar, a Bugatti of racing type, was destroyed. No one else was hurt.

  I shuddered, reading it, remembering the cigarette case and watch now that I had been nudged; everyone regaling everyone else with that detail in horrified delight or genuine horror according to disposition.

  So this could not be the Charles Aurora had meant. For one thing, his fiancée had not killed him and become a schoolmistress: she had died with him, leading some hard-hearted sorts to murmur that perhaps a lifetime of being called Leigh Leigh was worth escaping.

  On the other hand, Corrieshalloch Gorge was less than fifteen miles from Ullapool and across the sea loch from Ullapool was the Major’s hunting lodge. If Mamma-dearest had not sold it after his death (and why would she?) then that was a striking coincidence. Also, now that my memory was oiled and turning, I recalled a conversation with Hugh, relayed from George at the club, on the subject of this engagement which only came to light after the deaths. There had been some smirking, apparently – fiancée, indeed! – until the thought of the watch and cigarette case turned everyone solemn again.

  I stared at the page until the tiny print and the yellowed background began to dazzle and I had to blink several times to clear my eyes again. Was I really going to ask the librarian to ask the porter to bring me Apr to Jun, Jul to Sep and then Oct to Dec, in hopes of another Charles who better fit the bill? I closed the March volume, and left the library, wiping the book dust from my fingers with a handkerchief.

  There was no point in telephoning to Pearl again to find out any more, I considered, walking with measured pace along one of Stranraer’s main streets. Most assuredly there was no point in telephoning to Aurora. That left Mamma-dearest. Did I dare? She was a woman of fathomless tranquillity and the thought of disturbing it was unpleasant. Besides, if her other two daughters had managed to keep the news from her that Fleur was missing again, I did not relish being its bearer. There was also the consideration that even at my advanced middle age, Mamma-dearest Lipscott – being one of the most striking characters of my youth and never seen again since then – was still ‘one of the grown-ups’ to me. Quite simply, I shrank inside at the prospect of interrogating her, even gently quizzing her, as though she could still if she chose write to my mother to tell of my shortcomings so that the visit was spoiled with the dread of returning home.

  To be fair, though, that had never happened at Pereford. I had not given my poor mother a thought the whole summer long, beyond sending her a picture postcard from Watchet and choosing a hideous commemorative china basket of roses with Dorset written on it in loopy gold writing. I do not think that I picked it out deliberately to offend her taste but when I saw her open the tissue-paper package, in her own sitting room surrounded by her hand-hewn oak furniture and her verdigris obelisks, and saw too the sudden wince as though she had bitten down on a boiled sweet with a bad tooth, I knew my mistake. There was no sign of it anywhere when we tidied her things after her death, certainly.

  I could not help but contrast Mamma-dearest’s placid adoration of her own children’s efforts; her almost voluptuous joy in the pipe-cleaner and pine-cone families Fleur made for her, the tears she shed over Aurora’s piano-playing, claiming that she had never heard the Lieder sound more lovely. When Pearl painted her a watercolour rendition of the Major’s last battle, Mamma-dearest shot to her feet and rang a framer in Weston to get it behind glass immediately for preservation. It was a pitifully amateurish picture too, the paper bubbled with too much water and the bloody battle so tastefully toned down that, if one did not know, one would imagine those men in their bright clothes to be having a round of golf on that green hill. Still, the painting hung in her bedroom, the pine-cone family sat on her writing table and Aurora was invited to play Schubert at every party, while Mamma-dearest sat misty-eyed and seemed not at all to notice the other guests squirming.

  I had walked as far as the station, and remembering Signora Aldo’s choice of kiosk from which to inform her husband she had left him, I thought I might as well make use of a telephone there. The privacy at the Crown was far from perfect, between the blackmailing widow, poor Enid at her elbow and the sisters Brown. I went to the newspaper-stand to buy a bar of chocolate and get some change (libraries, where even a peppermint is cardinal sin, always make me ravenously hungry) and then stood in one of the kiosks exhorting myself to courage, practising the opening line and casting around with mounting desperation for an excuse to abandon the plan. The tension was beginning to make my head ache (or perhaps I had tied the scarf over my hair too tightly) and when the operator demanded instructions I heard myself asking, instead, for a trunk call to the Horseshoe.

  In the five minutes I was told it would take to string together this inordinately long line of connections, I wandered the station, noting the travellers reeling out of the boat train, still rather gre
en about the gills, and the many passengers who seemed to be arriving with great heaps of luggage to cram onto a short train which sat pawing the ground and ready for the off.

  ‘You getting on the 10.15, madam?’ said a porter.

  ‘I’m not,’ I replied. ‘I’m in the minority, eh? Busy little train.’

  ‘Oh, she’s a wee beauty,’ said the porter. ‘Here to Glasgow for the Flying Scotsman.’

  ‘The Flying Scotsman starts at Edinburgh, doesn’t it?’ I said. This was one of things one knew about the railway even if one knew nothing else. The Flying Scotsman left King’s Cross at ten in the morning and left Edinburgh Waverley at one in the afternoon.

  ‘She does not!’ said the porter. ‘The Flying Scotsman starts in the fair city of Glasgow. Edinburgh is just one o’ the stops.’

  ‘Golly,’ I said. I had never known a porter so bursting with pride, and although I had no luggage and was not even boarding, I tipped him for his sheer joie de vivre. Then I checked the platform clock – it was just gone ten and my five minutes’ wait was up – and returned to the kiosk.

  ‘You sound as though you’re in a barrel of nails, Dandy,’ said Alec’s voice. ‘What a terrible line. Where are you?’

  ‘Stranraer station,’ I said. ‘Yes, you’re a bit gravelly too. How did it go?’

  Alec began a tale which reached my ears as a series of clicks and buzzes with the odd word sticking up out of the noise like church spires in a low fog.

  ‘No use, darling,’ I said. ‘I can’t hear you. I said, I can’t hear you!’

  There were more clicks and buzzes and all I heard was my name.

  ‘This is pointless,’ I bellowed into the mouthpiece and then some kind of madness came over me, I think. I slammed down the telephone (such an ungrateful wretch after the exchange had put the connection together for me so quickly), glanced at the clock – ten past ten – and went to seek my porter friend again.

  By fifteen minutes past ten, I had sent another telegram to the Horseshoe with detailed instructions of what I wanted Alec to do, purchased a ticket, asked the Crown to hold my room and was sitting in the last first-class seat in the only first-class carriage on the little train, with the fire dying down to grey embers in my belly and the list of essential items I did not have with me growing in my head. Hairbrush, toothbrush, underclothes, warm coat, the comfort of knowing that my husband knew where I was and what I was doing, the comfort of knowing myself why I was doing this . . . What I did have was an almost new notebook, a couple of sharp pencils and hours and hours of luxurious time to organise my thoughts and discoveries so that I could fathom out this maddening case before its waters met over my head and it drowned me.