‘Batty Aunt Lilah just told us something quite surprising,’ I said. Lilah dropped her fork with a clatter, but Mrs Lipscott leaned over and patted her arm, giving her a warm smile.
‘Don’t worry, Aunt,’ she said. ‘You could never say anything that would make me cross with you, my darling.’
‘Try this,’ said Alec, rather grimly. He had not even taken so much as a cup of coffee, I noticed. ‘She told us that Fleur killed the Major.’
‘I’m going to finish this in my room,’ said Lilah, picking up her plate and her cup of milk and beetling off at top speed.
‘I’m not angry with you, my batty old aunt,’ Mrs Lipscott shouted after her. Then she turned back to Alec and me. ‘And so now you see how I can be sure she didn’t kill Elf or Charles or Leigh or this new one either.’
‘I don’t know about you, Dandy,’ said Alec, ‘but I don’t see that at all. Perhaps, Mrs Lipscott, you would care to explain.’
‘You’re terribly earnest for an Osborne,’ she said. ‘I was at a hunt ball with your father once – before he married your mother – and he was much more fun.’ She gave her dimpled smile a good airing in Alec’s direction but, when it was met with a blank look, she sighed and held up her hands in a gesture of defeat.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Here’s what happened. When Aurora was due to be born in ’84 the Major was in India and he wanted to go to Egypt to join in the fun, but he came back for the birth of his son and organised bonfires on all the headlands and a huge party for the staff and the village, and of course no son came along. The bonfires were dismantled and the staff were told to go back to work and the Major returned to India. In ’87 when Pearl was born the whole thing happened again. He sailed home, built bonfires, organised parties and then took one look at her and went to Plymouth to get on a ship. Now in 1898 when I told him a third child was on its way, he refused to come back. He stayed put in East Africa where he was stationed, saying if it was the longed-for son at last he’d come home and if it was another benighted daughter he was off to fight the Boers in the South. He was long past the age where he had to keep his commission by this time, you understand, so it was his path to choose.’
She paused and looked at us as though expecting comments. Since the only one I could think of was that if he had not kept storming back off to the army in a huff at every daughter there would have been a higher count of babies in total and he would no doubt have got his son in the end, I said nothing.
‘So I sent word that it was another darling beautiful little baby girl and he promptly departed for the war and got himself killed there. After that the four of us and – and after Lilah came, the five of us – were just as snug as an infestation of bugs in a rug and all was delight and merriment.’
‘After your grief subsided, of course,’ said Alec, not liking – as a soldier himself – to hear that the Major was not mourned by the women he gave his life protecting.
‘Oh well, you know,’ said Mrs Lipscott. ‘Anyway, Fleur was always the most fanciful little thing in the world, wasn’t she, Dandy? And when she was getting quite big and almost finished with lessons she started thinking about coming out and getting engaged and getting married and all that and she became quite sorrowful at the thought of having no father to give her away. She started imagining it must have been dreadful for me to have no husband and I said that she shouldn’t think that for a moment and that I would rather have her than my silly husband and some silly son. I wasn’t thinking. She asked what I meant. And I told her. All I had in my mind was that if she heard what a ridiculous man her father was she would stop missing him and stop fancying that I missed him. Of course that’s not how she took it at all. I remember it as though it were yesterday: her standing poker-straight and as white as a sheet in my bedroom and staring at me with those beautiful eyes. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that I killed my father by being born?” “No!” I shouted. “An Orangeman with a bayonet killed your father by sticking him in the tummy.” But there was no consoling her.’
‘And that’s when she started her wild years?’ I said.
‘The Bugatti, Charles Leigh – who was very fast – frocks so short you’d think she’d forgotten to put one on. All those horrid parties with everyone smoking nasty things and being sick. She had decided she was a wicked girl and so she thought she’d jolly well behave like one.’
‘And why didn’t you just tell us this?’ said Alec.
Mrs Lipscott gave a carolling little laugh. ‘Oh, Mr Osborne, no one likes to say there’s that in the family.’
‘That what?’ I said.
‘Mania, madness, whatever they’re calling it now. I didn’t want anyone to know that one of my girls wasn’t right in the head.’ I frowned and shot a quick glance to the door where Batty Aunt Lilah had exited with her kedgeree.
‘Oh, but Lilah’s a connection by marriage,’ said Mrs Lipscott. ‘My uncle’s wife. No blood relation at all to me. I couldn’t bear the thought of Florrie-mittens being called nasty names and having to go to some dreary hospital somewhere.’
‘Although it came to that in the end,’ I reminded her gently. ‘More than once.’
‘She wanted to turn herself in, Dandy,’ said Mrs Lipscott, leaning forward in her chair to look pleadingly into my eyes. ‘After Charles, I mean. After Elf we couldn’t take the chance.’
‘So, she’s never run off exactly like this before then?’ I said. She sat up and opened her eyes very wide. ‘We slightly overstated it when we said she had gone to recuperate. We don’t actually know where she is. No one does.’
‘She’ll go to the police,’ said Mamma-dearest, standing up and letting her napkin fall to the floor. ‘She’ll give herself up and be put away.’
‘I don’t think so, Mrs Lipscott,’ said Alec. ‘The police were right there when she disappeared. Almost as though it was them she was running away from.’
Mamma-dearest was shaking her head in a distracted way, fast enough to make her pearls rattle together on her neck.
‘No, no, you don’t understand Fleur,’ she said. ‘If she thought she’d done it she’d never try to duck out of it. Her whole life since Charles and Elf has been one long act of atonement. Taking herself away from men and from her family and living like a nun in that dreadful school. She said she was trying to keep as many girls as possible on the straight and narrow path.’
She went towards the door and paused before going out of the room.
‘Aurora and Pearl know about this, you say? I’m going to telephone to them now. We must find her. I shall never forgive them for keeping all of this from me.’
‘We’re for it, when the other two find out we came down here,’ Alec said once we were alone.
‘Unless Mamma-dearest talks them round,’ I said. ‘What did you make of all that?’ Alec went to the sideboard and began heaping rashers of bacon onto a slice of toast. He squashed the heap down with another slice, picked up this ungainly sandwich in one hand and rejoined me.
‘I’m relieved to hear what counts as “murder” in Fleur’s book,’ he said.
‘Yes, she might well be no more responsible for bodies two to five than she was for the first one. She’s ill, not wicked.’
‘Although we can’t be sure,’ said Alec through a thick mouthful of bacon and bread. ‘Perhaps her being mad – and she does sound mad, doesn’t she? – makes her more likely to have killed, not less.’
‘Killed all of them?’ I asked him. ‘After her father, I mean.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Alec. ‘Or given that what she heard about the Major was no more than an upsetting revelation, and even if Charles and Leigh were an accident – if, mind you, if – by the time she was out walking on a cliff edge with Elf she already thought of herself as a murderess. And her mother just said it herself: she set out to be the wicked girl she believed she already was.’
‘If only we knew who No. 5 is,’ I said. ‘I mean, Fleur must have known her, agreed? How can no one have missed the
woman?’
‘We need to find Fleur and ask her,’ said Alec. ‘And here’s a thought, Dandy. Since the police know they’re looking for a particular boat now, they’ve probably found her, or traced part of her journey. Every harbour has a harbourmaster, after all. What is it?’
Clearly, my face was reflecting the sudden sick feeling I had inside.
‘I don’t think I told them,’ I said. ‘Sergeant Turner was being beastly and I know I didn’t tell him. Then Reid was flapping about Cissie and I told him about finding Fleur’s bags and losing them and about finding Jeanne Beauclerc and about them planning to run off and then Jeanne bolting too early and . . . that’s it. I didn’t tell them about the boat at all.’
‘But the chap who owns it . . .?’
‘No! That’s the thing. He’s got his eye on the endless mounting up of the late fees. He’ll never tell them. Oh God, what a chump I am.’
‘Do you think Mrs Lipscott would let us use her telephone if we say it’s to help Fleur be found?’
‘Not after she’s spoken to Pearl,’ I said. ‘And think of who we’d be asking to find her!’
‘Could we go to the local bobbies here? Or the coastguard? Nearest harbourmaster?’
‘We could try,’ I said. ‘But would they care? Do you think Fleur’s description – her lines, Reid called it – was broadcast all the way down here?’
‘Doubtful,’ Alec said.
‘I think we need lay it all out for Constable Reid,’ I said.
‘Another trunk call?’ he asked. ‘Let’s hope for a better line.’
‘Perhaps we’d have more chance if we go back and tug his sleeve until he listens. And it’s not as though there’s any tearing rush, is there? She’s been gone since Saturday. If she were going to kill herself she’d have done it by now. If she went and holed up somewhere she’ll still be there for the police to find her.’
Just too late I saw Alec’s eyes flash and I turned around to see Mamma-dearest standing in the doorway. Her face was whiter than her pearls.
‘Have you any idea how you sound?’ she said to me.
‘Mamma—’ I began, but her eyes narrowed. ‘Mrs Lipscott,’ I said, ‘you weren’t supposed to hear that.’
‘I thought you were our friend,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been defending you to Pearl even though you tricked me into thinking she’d sent you.’
‘Not exactl—’ I said.
‘If she killed herself, or if she holed up and can be caught by policemen! As though it’s a game.’
‘We speak very matter-of-factly when we’re trying to get a hard job done well, Mrs Lipscott,’ said Alec. ‘It doesn’t mean that we’re not desperately concerned to see a just outcome.’
‘A just outcome!’ said Mamma-dearest. ‘No matter who gets swept away by it. I think you should leave now, both of you. Just leave us alone.’
As we hustled and jumbled ourselves out of the breakfast room, through the hall and onto the doorstep, and heard the front door slam firmly shut behind us, Alec was almost laughing; but I felt a bulge of misery inside me that I could not bear. To have been thrown out of Pereford and told never to return! To have been cast off by Mamma-dearest with such disgust for me in her face and voice!
‘Don’t look like that,’ Alec said. ‘It’s not the first time we’ve ruffled feathers, not by a long chalk.’
I nodded glumly, but he did not know what I had lost if I had lost the Lipscotts. I bowed my head as the hired motorcar wound down the drive past the roses and brushed lawns and into the avenue, fearing that if I looked I would see a bench or pond or summerhouse and remember a sunny hour spent there with the closest I had ever come to sisters (except my real sister, who fell far short of my imaginings), being told I was clever and beautiful and funny and that my life would be a happy charm. I dreaded the prospect of rewinding our yesterday’s journey all the way, Taunton to London, London to Scotland, those endless empty hours ahead of me for the miserable thoughts to outwit my attempts at control and send me into a fit of self-pity and weeping.
Thankfully, the after-effects of a night on the sleeper descended within minutes of the first train moving and it was not until we were slowing at Paddington that I lifted my head from Alec’s shoulder and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘My neck seized up at Frome but I didn’t like to disturb you. Are you feeling any better?’
‘No,’ I croaked. ‘Worse.’ I sat up and stretched. ‘And the only thing to be done about it is to solve the case and restore poor Fleur to her family.’
‘And if solving the case sends her to the gallows?’
‘Let’s cross our fingers that it won’t,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’
So on the Flying Scotsman, once the pudding plates were cleared after luncheon, I took out a notebook and spread it on the tablecloth beside my coffee. I ignored Alec’s groans of protest.
‘Yes, I know what you think,’ I said, ‘but it helps me organise things.’
‘No wonder you took to the classroom with such gusto,’ he said. ‘What things are you organising anyway? Nos. 1 to 5?’
‘You do the corpses,’ I said, opening the book to the middle and tearing out a double sheet from around the stitches. ‘I’m going to concentrate on the mistresses.’
‘What about them?’ Alec said. ‘Beauclerc, Blair, Taylor and Bell are accounted for. Do you mean Fleur?’
‘I don’t know what I mean,’ I said. ‘And I hate that. Now, keep quiet and let me think, please.’
‘I will in a minute,’ Alec said. ‘But when you say “do the corpses” what do you mean? Do what with the corpses?’
‘Tabulate,’ I said. ‘Cross-refer. You know . . . organise.’
Miss Fielding, I wrote in my book, Miss Taylor and Miss Bell. Three members of Somerville College. Miss Fielding and Miss Shanks, two friends who started a school. Miss Lipscott and Miss Beauclerc, whom Miss Fielding employed and who stayed for some time after her death. Miss Blair whom Miss Fielding employed and whom Miss Shanks sacked. Miss Barclay and Miss Christopher whom no one sacked. Miss Glennie whom Miss Shanks employed and had not sacked yet, unlike Miss Gilver who found favour and lost it again in a day. And Miss Lovage, with money invested. And Anderson the handyman, who wanted to keep his cottage. And Mrs Brown the housekeeper and cook, friend of Miss Shanks and known to Miss Fielding, who was very solidly still there and going nowhere.
I stared at the list of names.
Who employed Miss Barclay and Miss Christopher? I wrote. I did not know but I made a private bet with myself that it was Ivy Shanks who introduced them. They, like she, were comfortable and happy there. Mrs Brown was too. Miss Glennie was not and to say that Fleur and Jeanne had been uncomfortable was rather understating matters.
Waifs and strays, I wrote. Glennie, Beauclerc, Lipscott.
Independents, I wrote. Lovage, Taylor, Bell. Blair? Brown?
I turned to a fresh page and set down in thick capital letters the central puzzle of St Columba’s School. IVY SHANKS. And the floodgates were opened.
Why does IS keep letters in her safe?
Why did IS employ DG and then sack her?
Why is IS not suspicious of Miss Glennie’s supposed history?
Why was IS in a tizz about French and not about science or history (or English)?
For she had been. That first night I met Miss Shanks on the terrace she had been beside herself over the emergency of finding a new French mistress and there was Fleur Lipscott who spoke perfectly good French and knew how to teach. Why could she not take over ‘double duties’ as Miss Lovage called it, just as Barclay and Christopher had had to do?
Questions beginning with ‘why’, however, were not the sort which could be cracked on a train with paper and pencil. Organising was no good for why.
Order of departure, I tried next. Fielding, Blair, Taylor/Bell, Beauclerc/Lipscott (planned), Beauclerc, Lipscott (actual).
The order of arrival I did no
t know.
How about subjects? Latin was lost when Fielding died. Science and history and PE with the first round of sackings. French and English with the hasty departures. Geography and maths had suffered no interruptions at all. I put down my pen and stared out of the window at the rolling green hills sweeping by.
What had I seen and forgotten at St Columba’s? What had struck me in the subconscious when I was thinking of other things and was now lurking unobtainable in some dusty corner of my brain?
I picked up my pencil again and began a list of oddities, hoping that one of them would snag the memory and bring it to the surface again.
Grace, bathing pool, cocoa, late start, supper in dorms, loafing around in gardens, teachers making own beds. In fact, teachers appearing to work a great deal harder than any of the girls, as far as I could see.
‘Good grief, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘Do you know you’re huffing and puffing like a hippo in a mud wallow?’
‘How are you getting on?’ I asked him.
‘Dreadfully, I think,’ Alec replied. ‘Although since I don’t know what I’m supposed to be achieving, perhaps I’m getting on quite wonderfully.’
‘Well, what have you got?’
‘I’ve set out cause of death, characteristics of victim, relation to suspect and suspect’s reaction,’ he said. ‘For instance, battle, fire, fire, drowned, drowned. Man, man and woman, man, woman. Is this the sort of thing you mean? Father, lover and friend, lover, who knows.’
‘Suitor not lover,’ I said. ‘For Elf.’
‘Off the rails, threat to confess, claim of amnesia, flight. If there are patterns there I can’t find them.’
‘Africa, Highlands, Somerset, South of Scotland,’ I added.
‘Well, Irish Sea,’ said Alec. ‘There’s nothing there, is there?’
‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘Except you didn’t really go far enough with Fleur’s reaction to events. When she heard about the Major she went off the rails, that’s true. When Charles and Leigh died, drunk in a fast car after a fast party – a very off-the-rails death – she went back to her family. Elf died while she was with her family and she left them, went to where there were hardly any men at all and no chance of romantic entanglements, and when No. 5 happened there . . .’
Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses Page 28