Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses

by Catriona McPherson

  10

  When I stuck my head out of the window at York where we had a half-hour break for tea, Alec hailed me in great high spirits, waving a brown paper bag at me like a backbencher with his ballot papers.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked him. ‘Hello, darling.’

  ‘It’s for you,’ he said. ‘Toothbrush, toothpaste and a few delicate garments I got in a ladies’ outfitters.’

  ‘You went into a ladies’ outfitters and rifled through—’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I just murmured to the girl in the shop – something about my wife’s lost luggage, you know – and she picked everything for you. No idea what size, though. I said you were “average”.’

  ‘How flattering,’ I said. ‘Hairbrush?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Alec. ‘Well, you can borrow one of mine.’

  ‘And Nanny Palmer turns in her grave once again. But thank you, thank you and a thousand times thank you. Now we can use our teatime to have some tea.’

  ‘Better tea on the train,’ said Alec, displaying yet again the new concern with his own stomach which had been so very much to the fore in Joe Aldo’s and at the Horseshoe.

  ‘But at such close quarters one can’t talk freely,’ I said. ‘Come on, to the platform buffet with you and then we can go straight to the smoking lounge when the train sets off.’

  We found a quiet table (or what passes for one amidst the hiss and clatter of the tea-making and plate-clearing which always go on apace in these settings) and over strong Indian and a plate of buns, I tried to explain to him what had come over me.

  ‘Demob fever after being sacked, perhaps. It’s lucky I’m not sitting on a sailor’s lap drinking stout from the bottle. No, in all seriousness, I think Pearl is too much of a hard nut for us ever to crack her. You possibly went a little tiny bit too far the other way with Aurora. So like Goldilocks we need to try the third one and steer a middle course. And I need to go back to Pereford where it all began. Something happened there, Alec, to turn Fleur from the child she was into the girl who became the woman she is now. And Mamma— Mrs Lipscott doesn’t know she’s missing. Pearl and Aurora are protecting her from the pain of it.’

  ‘But you think the pain might be useful if it joggles her into an explanation?’

  ‘Rather a brutal way to put it but . . . yes. Now, tell me about Taylor and Bell. I didn’t catch more than one word in ten on that nasty trunk line.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Alec. ‘Well, I’m more than happy to have done with the dread contraption for a while myself, actually, because I was fairly finely grated by various parties this morning.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I tried Lambourne first. Charming enough to bring the birds down out of the trees, if I say so myself, and got short shrift. I reminded the girl who answered the telephone that she had helped me earlier with Miss Blair and I asked – all chummy: I even remembered her name, which was Beverley – if she could work her magic again and put me in touch with the other two. She instructed me to wait and the next thing I knew some dragon was breathing fire down the line, demanding to know who I was and what I was up to and whether I wanted the police after me.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, arrested with a bite of bun halfway to my mouth. It fell off my fork and landed icing side down on the doily. ‘Why the dramatic change?’

  ‘I think Beverley must have casually mentioned my first enquiry and the dragon knows more about what’s going on at St Columba’s than she wants anyone else to find out.’

  ‘You could be right, you know,’ I said. ‘Miss Glennie did say that Lambourne positively courted her. That’s not how scholastic agencies usually go on.’

  ‘I suppose not. So Beverley must have been well warned what to do if I ever rang again and she did it.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Well, in for a penny in for a pound. I just plunged on and asked the dragon about Taylor and Bell anyway – hoping she’d say something useful if I rattled her – and I told her I didn’t mind if she called the police. In fact, maybe I’d call them to see if they could help me. And guess what?’

  ‘I give up.’

  ‘She slammed the telephone down. And when I got the girl to try the number again it was engaged and it stayed engaged from then until I left the Horseshoe.’

  ‘Hmph. So Taylor and Bell remain a mystery. Oh well.’

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ Alec said. ‘I did as you suggested, Dan, and got on to Somerville College. Stirred up a secretary.’

  ‘In a falsetto voice?’ I asked. ‘Pretending to be an old girl? I wish I’d been there to hear it.’

  Alec blew a raspberry at me, attracting the glaring attention of a very respectable family at the next table who were eating ham and eggs as though stoking a boiler for a cold winter’s night.

  ‘No, I said I was writing an article on pioneering female scholars for a scientific journal and I particularly wished to speak to any of their early scientists.’

  ‘Which one was the science mistress?’

  ‘Tinker Bell,’ said Alec. ‘Do you know that was her nickname at Somerville too? So I was expecting some delicate little thing. Her voice down the line when I finally got through to her almost knocked me flat. I haven’t heard a pair of lungs like it since a fairground tout who made me drop my lolly when I was six.’

  ‘Down the line?’ I said. ‘You mean you actually spoke to her?’

  ‘And she’s still good pals with Miss Taylor too,’ said Alec, with a triumphant wiggle of his eyebrows. ‘But look, let’s powder our noses and get back on board, eh? I’ll tell you everything else on the way to London.’

  ‘Everything else’, though, did not get us much past the northern suburbs of Doncaster. We chose the smoking lounge in hopes of finding fewer ladies in there and in recognition of the shaming fact that gentlemen are less interested in others’ concerns and would not listen, and were so lucky as to find no ladies at all and only two gentlemen, both at one end of the car, both elderly, both reading, and both swaying with the movement of the train in a way that suggested they would soon be asleep. We settled ourselves into armchairs at the other end. Alec rummaged in his pocket and drew out not the usual equipment but a paper bag which he held out to me.

  ‘Pontefract cake?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve just eaten a bun,’ I replied. ‘And you ate two!’

  ‘They’re not really cakes,’ said Alec. ‘Pastilles, liquorice. A local delicacy. I got them while skulking outside your underclothes shop.’

  I glanced at the two gentlemen but they were paying no attention.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said, tentatively rolling a pastille around my mouth. ‘Now, Alec, what of your two mistresses?’

  At that, I rather thought one of the old gentlemen did stir. Laughing gently, Alec resumed his report.

  ‘Miss Bell is at St Leonards now,’ he said. ‘The secretary at Somerville was quite happy to tell me, and I caught her between breakfast and chapel which was handy.’

  ‘St Leonards, eh?’ I said. ‘Pretty hot stuff then, this Miss Bell. What was she doing in Portpatrick in the first place, one wonders?’

  ‘One wouldn’t have to if one would shut up and listen,’ said Alec. ‘She and Miss Fielding and Miss Taylor were at Somerville together.’

  ‘We knew that.’

  ‘And she and Miss Taylor agreed to join the staff of Miss Fielding’s new enterprise . . . not quite for old times’ sake, but certainly not for the advancement of their careers. The way she spoke made it sound like a kindness to an old friend.’

  ‘Quite a considerable kindness,’ I said. ‘How long would they have stuck it if Miss Fielding hadn’t died?’

  ‘Who can say, but Miss Taylor has returned to academia proper since she left St Columba’s. She’s currently in Greece getting excited about the deflation of the coinage in the ancient empire.’

  ‘Takes all kinds,’ I said. ‘So they what? They felt their loyalty was to Miss Fielding personally and dropped poor Ivy Shanks like a b
rick after the funeral tea?’

  ‘Again, if you would let me tell you,’ Alec said. ‘No. At least, they might have felt that way but they are both women of the stoutest ethical fibre and they would certainly have devoted as much more time as was wanted.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘It turned out that what was wanted was about six weeks. Six weeks after Miss Fielding died, they were both handed their pay packets and told to leave.’

  ‘Odd.’

  ‘Miss Bell said she assumed Ivy Shanks was in a fluster about money – she and Miss Taylor were on salaries commensurate with their great learning – and they offered to take a kind of furlough or whatever you would call it, while Miss Shanks got herself sorted out. Miss Taylor even offered to be a sort of acting headmistress and do the accounting. But no – they were thanked kindly and shown the door.’

  ‘In the middle of term?’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘And they just left their budding scholars and university hopefuls in the lurch?’ I said. ‘They could at least have stayed on in the village and given some extra tuition.’

  ‘I never thought of that, and Miss Bell never mentioned any guilt about the girls, actually. That’s odd too. In fact, she went as far as to say that she and Taylor – that’s how she referred to them both: Taylor and Fielding, like the army! – anyway, she said that she and Taylor felt a measure of relief that they were no longer to be stuffing Newton’s apple and the House of Tudor into the heads of a lot of farmers’ daughters who forgot it all every day over tea.’

  ‘Academic snobs,’ I said. ‘Some of the St Columba’s girls are really quite bright indeed. Thank goodness, in a way, that I didn’t get a chance to ruin them.’

  ‘So I’d say that Miss Shanks made a blunder in offloading the two of them,’ Alec went on. ‘But it wasn’t the fevered and frantic business of running away and scrabbling for an agency stand-in that it’s since become.’

  ‘Odder than odd,’ I said.

  ‘Passing strange and far from wonderful,’ agreed Alec. ‘But here’s something Miss Bell did say that’s interesting, Dandy. When I told her about Miss Glennie – late of Balmoral, as you say – Miss Bell said something like “maybe Fielding’s ways had rubbed off on Shanks after all”.’

  ‘What did she mean? Did you ask?’

  ‘I did, but all she said was that they had never blamed Miss Fielding for wanting a nursing matron she knew right there on the spot but they had always thought it a great lapse of judgement to make Miss Shanks an equal partner.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said.

  Alec crossed his eyes and blew a big breath out of his puffed cheeks.

  ‘The more I hear the less I know,’ he said. ‘Anyway, the point of tracking them down was to make sure they’re not No. 5 and I’ve done that.’

  ‘Have you? Absolutely? Can we be sure Miss Taylor didn’t come back from Greece and drown?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alec said. ‘Miss Taylor apparently is fair-haired and five-foot-three. So No. 5 remains a mystery. How did you get on with No. 3?’

  I told him the brief facts: the proximity to the Major’s lodge and the boy being the right sort of age and class to have been Fleur’s lover, but I told him too of the complicating factor of Leigh Audubon, the dead fiancée.

  ‘But you think no one knew about the engagement until after the deaths?’ Alec said. ‘Well, then. The Audubons would be more than happy to have it put about that the girl was engaged to him, considering she was alone with him in a car at after midnight, especially if they weren’t heading towards her home. And you say it wasn’t Charles Leigh’s Bugatti? And presumably it wasn’t Miss Audubon’s either, or they’d have said so. If it turned out that this car belonged to someone who can connect them with Fleur . . . or if Fleur was at the party . . .’

  ‘Let’s hope Mamma-dearest is in the mood to talk,’ I said.

  ‘You sound very scathing when you call her that,’ Alec said.

  ‘I don’t mean to,’ I replied. ‘It’s what the girls always called her. Maybe I’m getting cynical about them all and a note is creeping in.’

  The steward came along just then, asking us if we would like the curtains drawn over since we were on the west side of the carriage and whether I would care for a foot-warmer and what we would each like by way of a drink before dinner?

  ‘We should do more of this, Dan,’ said Alec when the man had gone to fetch a whisky for Alec and a sherry for me. ‘Beats rocketing around in that little Cowley.’

  ‘Wait until we’ve got to Taunton,’ I said. ‘See if you still think so. One always forgets that the West Country isn’t just round the corner from London.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Alec. ‘I spent my childhood on the Cornwall sleeper getting to school and back again. It holds no secrets from me.’

  He was, however, looking shattered and grey (as one always does after a night on a train) rather than pink and refreshed (the way the people look on the railway posters) when we arrived, with the milk, in Somerset the next morning. I had already had more than enough by King’s Cross and would have welcomed a night in an hotel, but there was no stopping Alec: he had bundled me into a taxi and we were at Paddington before I could object, then there were two good first-class sleeper tickets still available, which made it seem meant, and now here we were, flat of hair and gritty of eye, standing in the yellow mist of an early summer morning, wondering how best to get to Pereford and beard Mamma-dearest in her den.

  ‘Better to hire a motorcar here,’ I said, ‘than get to the nearest station and then find out they haven’t got one.’

  ‘We’re not in Scotland now, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘We’re back in the civilised world. Of course they will.’ It should have been touching to see how he drew down deep lungfuls of the air, as though it were his first proper breath since last he was this near home, but after my short and dreadful night’s sleep it was only irritating and I took a mean pleasure in hearing the porter tell him that there were no trains north for a good hour or more and Sir would be better in a motorcar if there were any kind of hurry about it.

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Alec. ‘Just the kind of cheerful helpfulness I’ve been missing. Not like that old misery on the Portpatrick dog-cart, eh?’

  I decided not to tell him that a porter at Stranraer carried the whole timetable of his beloved railway in his head, but only nodded and followed him meekly to the hiring garage to let him pick.

  Pereford. I had expected to find it changed; smaller-seeming, perhaps, or even run to seed in some way. I had fully anticipated that I would be forced to smile at my eighteen-year-old self and her besottedness with the place as the humdrum reality quenched the golden remembering. So when we turned off the Dunster road and swept between the gateposts, I steeled myself for disappointment. The avenue was the same, the branches just meeting over our heads and the new leaves exactly the yellow-green of the shoemakers’ elves’ little caps in the book I had read to Fleur at bedtime.

  ‘It’s just round this corner,’ I said to Alec and then as we turned it I gave a cry.

  The roses were blooming, tumbling and scrambling all over the pillars of the verandah, and the path was carpeted with their petals. The lawns, their nap like velvet, rolled away to the edge of the trees and the marks from the gardener’s broom brushing off the dew could be seen in swathes. The pink-painted stone of the house was, as it had always been in early-morning sun, like the inside cheek of a seashell, blushed with peach; and at the windows, already open for the day, cream linen billowed out like the train of a wedding gown so that it seemed the house was waving a welcome at us as we slowed and stopped at the front door.

  Our pull of the bell was answered by an elderly and rather stooping butler, who smiled with kindly enquiry.

  ‘We’ve come to see Mrs Lipscott, with apologies for the hour,’ I said. ‘But if you tell her it’s Mrs Gilver – I’m an old family friend.’

  ‘Of course you are, Mrs Gilver,’ said the butler. ‘Or Miss Leston,
as you’ll always be to me.’ I squinted at him, felt the flicker of recognition and quarried deep and long for his name.

  ‘Higson?’ I said, at last.

  ‘Hinckley, madam,’ he replied, ‘but well done after all these years for getting that close! So Mrs Gilver and who shall I say, sir?’

  ‘Mr Osborne,’ said Alec.

  ‘Of Dorset?’ said Hinckley.

  ‘Bill Osborne is my brother,’ Alec said, visibly impressed.

  ‘If you would care to come into the morning room,’ Hinckley said, ‘I’ll tell Mrs Lipscott you are here.’

  We followed him across the marble of the hall where more of the pink and yellow roses from outside were gathered together in bowls and in pots on pillars. Their scent – warmed by the light from the cupola floors above – was as sweet as honeysuckle already. I gazed about myself with growing rapture. There was the Fragonard (disputed) which we had all loved with girlish devotion. There was the Staffordshire pig with her ten little pink piglets which stood on the round table in the middle of the hall and under which we used to tuck the edges of notes to stop them blowing away. There were the three sketches of the house done by the three daughters the summer before I came to stay and framed as a triptych to stand on top of the library door.

  Alec was in the morning room and had turned to face me.

  ‘You have a very misty look on your face, Dandy,’ he said.

  ‘The chairs!’ I cried. ‘The same chairs!’ I rushed over to the ring of armchairs grouped around the fireplace – four of them – where Lilah, Mamma-dearest, Pearl and I would sit, with Fleur on someone’s lap and Aurora, as she preferred it, sprawled on the rug waiting for the carriage to be brought when we were going out for the day.