Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘She went somewhere we don’t know,’ Alec said. ‘Not back to her family – that didn’t work last time. And presumably not to another girls’ school since it didn’t break the curse either. And she’s hardly likely to go on another bender like a flapper girl. Not at thirty. By golly, Dan, I think I’m beginning to see the point of this. It does help one . . .’

  ‘Organise?’ I said, trying to make my smile not too smug.

  ‘So where would she go to be even more safe and cloistered than she was at St Columba’s?’

  ‘Cloistered. Hm,’ I said. ‘An out-and-out nunnery? More Ophelia than Juliet, after all?’

  ‘I wonder which heartbreak it was that earned her the nickname,’ Alec said. ‘Charles or Elf?’

  ‘Sorry?’ I said. ‘Listen, darling, I’m thinking. I know I was very offhand about suicide – God, I’ll never forgive myself for Mamma-dearest hearing me! – but something’s occurred to me. She fled.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alec said.

  ‘She took flight. She’s never done that before. I mean, removing herself from her family’s care and starting her wild time must have been a gradual thing, mustn’t it? She didn’t go to bed a good girl the night she found out about the Major and wake up a bad girl in the morning. And she went to a sanatorium after Charles and after Elf. Presumably she took a bit of time deciding to be a schoolmistress too and did some rudimentary preparation for it. This time, though, new future planned, all set to take Jeanne Beauclerc home to Pereford (I wonder why she didn’t tell her mother?), she abandoned everything and simply fled. That can’t have been guilt.’

  ‘Fear of discovery?’ said Alec.

  ‘What discovery?’ I said. ‘No one knows who No. 5 is and we haven’t been able to come up with a single scrap of evidence that Fleur had anything to do with her murder. She can’t have felt the noose tightening.’

  ‘But scarpering like that and leaving Jeanne Beauclerc in the lurch does look like fear,’ Alec said. ‘So if not fear of discovery, arrest, conviction and hanging, because she didn’t really kill No. 5 in the legal sense, then what?’

  ‘Not in the legal sense, no,’ I said slowly. ‘But if she felt that she killed her father purely by being born, she might have felt that she killed No. 5 because she put the woman in harm’s way quite inadvertently.’

  ‘Yes, of course!’ said Alec. ‘Which makes perfect sense of her saying “Five” like that when she saw the corpse!’

  ‘Oh, hallelujah! At last!’ I said. ‘She already felt she was putting this person at risk of harm and when she saw the corpse she knew that the harm had come.’

  We beamed at one another.

  ‘But we’ve got side-tracked. What did she fear? Why did she run away?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Alec with a quiet thrill of triumph in his voice, ‘because she knew where the harm had come from. She didn’t kill No. 5 any more than she killed No. 1, but—’

  I joined him and we spoke in chorus.

  ‘She knows who did.’

  ‘And,’ continued Alec, ‘she thinks she’s next.’

  ‘So she didn’t dare take Jeanne Beauclerc along.’

  ‘We have to find her,’ Alec said. ‘And it is pretty urgent, after all.’

  11

  We did not, however, get off at the next station and try to tell all of that to Sergeant Turner on the telephone. Even if he had let us speak to Constable Reid we might have been struggling to unwind the plaited threads of poor Fleur’s history and convince him. Instead we spent the rest of the journey devising the plainest, clearest report into which such a twisty tale could be straightened out and when we finally fell out of the little train at Portpatrick again some thirty-six hours after we had left we went straight to the police station.

  Constable Reid was on the back shift and we found him in the office all trussed up with his tunic closed and his hat on, ready to go out and make one of his rounds. Since the weather was so filthy, though – it had started raining almost precisely at the border on our journey north and sheets of water were coursing down over the sea, turning even this summer evening as black as January – he took little persuasion to abandon the plan and give us his ear.

  ‘Nobody’ll be out causin’ bother on a night like this,’ he said. After that his contributions dwindled.

  ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,’ was all he offered as we laid it out for him, and he stopped taking notes a little way in. By the end, he had his hat off and his head in his hands.

  ‘So . . .’ I finished, ‘if you can at least find the boat you’ll know which way she went and then you’ll know which police force to ask to look for her. Or however you do it. Obviously you know best.’

  ‘The boat,’ said Reid. ‘That you knew about on Monday afternoon, and here we are on Thursday night.’

  ‘Yes, sorry about that,’ I said. ‘But you know now and so you can get started.’

  ‘I cannae start somethin’ like that,’ said Reid. ‘It’ll need to be the sarge and he’ll need to ask the inspector and even he’ll mebbes need to go right to the top.’

  ‘I see,’ said Alec.

  ‘And that’s fine by me,’ said Reid. ‘I’ll go straight up to his house right now and tell ’im.’

  ‘Won’t he be angry if you bother him at home?’ I asked. ‘I’d rather wait until the morning and have it done than antagonise the sergeant tonight and get nowhere.’

  ‘I’m no’ carin’,’ said Reid. ‘I want to see Cissie. She answers their door, you know.’

  ‘She still hasn’t forgiven you?’

  ‘Not a word since she said she didn’t want to see me Tuesday afternoon,’ Reid said. ‘I’ve left two notes in our wee place and she’s taken them out but no’ answered.’

  ‘Well, she can hardly avoid you if you turn up on the doorstep,’ I said. ‘Shall we come too?’

  ‘I’ll manage fine myself,’ said Reid and he shooed us out of the little police station so that he could lock it behind him.

  Portpatrick was battened down, either for the rainstorm or just for the night, with windows and doors closed, no washing left out to catch the warmth of the fading day and no one leaning on the harbour wall or sitting on the bollards outside Aldo’s. In fact, Aldo’s was in darkness.

  ‘Joe must have given up on any custom tonight in this dreadful weather,’ I said.

  Alec shook his head.

  ‘It’s hard to believe you live in Scotland sometimes, Dandy,’ he said. ‘No purveyor of fried fish would ever close before the pub, you know.’

  ‘Well, maybe Thursday is his half-day,’ I said. ‘The man must rest sometimes.’

  ‘Thursday?’ said Alec. ‘Pay-day? Never.’

  ‘I bow to your greater knowledge,’ I said. ‘I hope he’s all right.’

  We stood looking across the harbour to the little shack for a moment, but the rain was coming down in drilling icy rods and my hat brim was beginning to droop.

  ‘I’ll go and see him tomorrow,’ Alec said. ‘Come inside, Dandy, before you catch a chill.’ Thus cloaking his sloth in chivalry, he held open the door of the Crown and, shaking ourselves like dogs, we entered.

  ‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’ he said as we waited for the landlady to respond to our ringing. ‘The police will take over looking for Fleur and Fleur, when she’s found, will tell us at last who No. 5 is. What’s left for you? A day of rest?’

  ‘I think I’ll go to Parents’ Day,’ I said. ‘Gatecrash it, I mean. I’d dearly love to work out what’s going on up there and I’ve got some examination papers and a letter to return to Miss Shanks. That will be my protection if she calls Sergeant Turner on me. And as for a day of rest: I’m certainly not sticking around the Crown. The convalescent widow and I have had a falling out, you know, and I can’t face another round of hostilities.’

  The rain had let up by the morning, but it did not leave the world new-washed and sparkling the way English rain does. Instead, the stone of the houses, harbour and cobbles was soaked and dark and the sky
was a kind of exhausted grey. I looked across to Joe Aldo’s shack from my window as I dressed and felt again a small flare of worry.

  There was a knock at my door and I opened it, expecting Alec, but found Constable Reid standing there.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said and leaned out to call along the passageway. ‘Alec? Reid’s here. Come in, Constable. What news?’

  ‘Aye, I thought ye’d like to know,’ said Reid, entering and looking round with a true policeman’s eye, not at all the bashful gaze of a young man in a strange woman’s hotel bedroom. He would go far if his luck fell that way. ‘The sarge took some convincin’ and I kind of had to make your friend sound a wee bit dangerous and no’ just soft, but he’s agreed she might ken who our corpse is and there’s no denyin’ she’s pinched the boat, so he’s away gettin’ the coastguard and them sorted out.’

  Alec gave a quick rap at the door and entered. ‘Reid,’ he said.

  ‘The search is on,’ I told him. ‘Go on, Constable.’

  ‘Aye, right, so,’ said Reid. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘And how did it go with Cissie?’ I asked.

  He shot me a piercing look. ‘She never came to the door. She sent the cook. An’ I’m askin’ you again: what did you say to her?’

  ‘Oh Dandy, for heaven’s sake,’ said Alec. ‘What did you say to her? It was really none of your business, darling.’

  ‘Nothing!’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it. I think it’s a bit much getting her to caddy for you but I didn’t say a syllable about that. And I wonder what her mother would think of these moonlight walks of yours, but I said nothing about that either. Look, if I get a chance later, I’ll go to the Turners’ house on some pretext or other and I’ll ask Cissie, when she answers the door, what the matter is. All right? But I’m busy today. I’m hoping to crack the nut of St Columba’s, and if it turns out to be a police matter, Constable, I’ll give it into your hands and yours shall be the glory and the promotion; and then shall come the engagement and the orange blossom and the cottage with the roses round the door, and then maybe you’ll stop accusing me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about half the time, missus,’ said Reid.

  ‘You follow as much as half?’ said Alec. ‘Good for you.’

  I waited until I could be sure that Parents’ Day was in full swing before I climbed the cliff path for what I expected would be the final time. Splashes of yellow had swarmed over the terrace and headland all morning, clearly visible from the village below, as the girls prepared the grounds for the visitors. Bunting was strung around poles and cracked smartly in the sea breeze and a flag of indeterminate design (it might have been St Columba himself) was run up the pole. From eleven o’clock onwards motorcars began to arrive, an endless rumble quite audible down the hill, and also there was the odd pair of lost parents driving along the sea front and pointing upwards to the school before executing an awkward turn at the harbour head and retracing their steps to try again. When the strains of a small pipe band (although not small enough for my liking) began to be heard drifting down from the terrace, I put the examination papers in my bag, settled my hat firmly against the gusts and ventured forth.

  It was a scene of some gaiety despite the chilly greyness of the day. Long tables with coffee and cakes had been set out along the terraces and little round tables with posies of roses on them were dotted here and there on the damp grass. The hardier parents were seated, the mothers eating cakes with one hand and holding their hats on with the other, while fathers hunched against the wind and tried to light cigarettes inside their lapels. The more tender parents were forced to shelter on the terrace itself in the lee of the building, even though that kept them in full blasting proximity to the band.

  ‘I hope to God luncheon is inside at least,’ said a skinny mother, shivering like a greyhound, as I passed her. ‘Darling, couldn’t you go and petition?’

  ‘Not my idea to come, if you remember, Ursie,’ said the man she was with, who was standing poker-straight and scowling at the nearest bagpiper. I decide to attach myself to them, since I could tell from the woman’s shoes, the man’s tie and the drawling voices of them both that these were what Hugh calls ‘our sort’. In other words, these parents were some of those I could not quite believe had a girl at Miss Shanks’s peculiar little school. Perhaps if I got them talking they could explain it to me.

  ‘One’s only hope,’ I said, turning towards them, ‘is for a downpour proper. It would get us inside and stop that dreadful din.’

  In their eyes was the flash as they recognised their sort and they did a bit of polite tittering.

  ‘Do you have a girl here?’ said the father. ‘Excuse me! Magnus Duncan and this is my wife, Ursula.’

  ‘Dandy Gilver,’ I said. ‘How do you do. I think we both know the Esslemonts, don’t we?’

  ‘Oh, how do you do,’ said Mrs Duncan. ‘Yes, dear Daisy.’

  ‘I don’t have a girl here,’ I said. ‘Yet. I’m thinking about it, though.’ I crossed my fingers in hope that our acquaintance was too slight for them to remember that I had only sons. They exchanged a quick look, as husbands and wives will, but it was impenetrable to me.

  ‘Well, St Columba’s has been very good for our girl, hasn’t it, Ursie?’ said Mr Duncan.

  ‘Oh, quite,’ said his wife. ‘Thoroughly to be recommended.’ Then both of them looked down into their coffee cups and took up what promised to be a lasting silence.

  ‘Well, that’s very good to . . .’ I said, staring at their partings. ‘Excuse me, won’t you. I see someone I have to . . .’

  I did, as a matter of fact. I saw the unmistakable back view of Candide Rowe-Issing, in a lavender linen frock and an outrageous yellow hat which clashed painfully with the yellow of the St Columba’s uniform. I made a bee-line for her but was waylaid before I was halfway there.

  ‘Miss Gilver!’ It was Eileen Rendall, as pretty as a picture with a yellow rose tucked behind one ear, one of the few girls not washed out by the uniform.

  ‘Goody Goody Gilver,’ said Spring, coming up behind her. ‘I thought you’d gone. We were admiring ourselves for our quickest work yet, weren’t we, girls?’

  ‘Oh, I was only ever a stop-gap,’ I said. ‘How are you getting on with Miss Glennie?’

  ‘Well, on the bright side,’ said Spring, ‘she hasn’t snatched the sonnets back from us.’

  ‘We’ll always have you to thank for the sonnets, Miss Gilver,’ said Katie, joining them and slinging an arm around the neck of each.

  ‘On the other hand, she knows a choking amount of guff about Milton,’ Spring finished.

  ‘And she’s a dab hand with a grammar exercise too, more’s the pity,’ said Katie.

  ‘Who’s this?’ It was Sally Madden. ‘Our Latin, French and English are all grammar exercises now. And since chemistry and algebra are grammar too, to my mind anyway, it’s syntax as far as the eye can see. I love it.’

  ‘Oh, Sally, shut up, you can’t,’ said Spring. ‘And you don’t love Highland Glennie. No one could love that old—’

  ‘Girls,’ I said. ‘I might not be your mistress any more but that’s no reason to suspend all civility around me.’

  ‘Sorry, Miss Gilver,’ said Eileen.

  ‘Where’s Stella?’ I asked, accustomed to seeing them all together.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said Stella’s voice behind me. As usual, the insolence was as pronounced as it was indefinable. ‘Did you want to ask—’ Then her attention was caught by something behind me. ‘There’s Mummy at last,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, attempting the same languid tone. ‘I must slope over and say hello.’

  But the terrace between the lemon-yellow hat and me was stuffed with parents, rather like a church-hall jumble sale. Actually, as I looked around, a great deal like a church-hall jumble sale. Fathers in shiny suits with braces showing and mothers in patterned frocks and unfortunate hats on the backs of their heads. A mother standing very near me gave a shy smile and si
dled up like a little water buffalo.

  ‘You’re one of the teachers?’ she said. ‘I heard those girls talking to you.’

  ‘I’m . . .’ I said. ‘English mistress.’ It was perhaps just vague enough not to be an out and out lie. ‘Now, which girl is yours?’ Of course, the chances of me having met their daughter in my one day of active service were slim and the chances of remembering her name if I had were even slimmer.

  ‘Tilly,’ said the father, giving me a toothy smile.

  I opened my eyes wide. ‘Tilly Simmons?’

  ‘That’s our little darling,’ said the mother. ‘She’s good at English, isn’t she?’ She sidled even closer and gave me a nudge in the ribs with her plump elbow. I thought back to Clothilde Simmons’s laboured and mediocre translation and gave a thin smile. I could feel the Simmons letter in my bag as though it were a hot coal.

  ‘And is this your first visit to the school?’ I said. ‘I must introduce you to dear Miss Shanks.’

  ‘Oh no, we know Miss Shanks,’ said Mr Simmons. ‘We’re very close to Miss Shanks, aren’t we, Mother?’

  ‘You see we’re not just parents,’ said his wife. ‘We’re benefactors.’

  ‘Or we will be soon.’ Mr Simmons put his thumbs under his braces and rocked on his heels with pride. ‘Just need to make up our minds between a yacht and some stables.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ said the man, looking rather crestfallen. ‘I’d have said it was worth talking about, me.’

  ‘Father and I are going to make a bequest to the school,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘Riding stables, we thought. But Miss Shanks is quite keen on a yacht to give the girls sailing lessons. Oh, Father! I hope she comes round to the stables. I’d never sleep thinking about Tilly out on them big waves.’

  ‘We’re not used to our kid being away from us yet,’ Mr Simmons said. ‘Never went away to school, didn’t Mother and me.’ I had guessed as much; everything from their hat and braces to their pancake-flat vowels announced that even though they might have a great deal of money (a very great deal if stables were on the cards) they had made it all themselves and were showering upon their daughter all the advantages they had missed. Since I am no snob (no matter what Alec says) my only concern was to help them shower it sensibly.