Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘I’m sorry, madam,’ said Miss Torrance in low tones. ‘But Aitkens’ Emporium does not stock anything of that kind. We have a rose beige that is most becoming.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ I said cheerfully, standing up again. ‘I’ll keep looking.’

  Miss Torrance hesitated and then lowered her voice even further before saying more.

  ‘You might be able to find what you’re looking for . . . down the street,’ she finished, so quietly I was almost lip-reading.

  ‘House of Hepburn?’ I said, guessing. Miss Torrance made a hissing noise and looked around to see if anyone had heard me, but the gloves were modestly situated in a spot where no casual gentlemen passing by would be inflamed by the sight of a lady with her wrist buttons in disarray and there was no one near us except for two girls in day-school uniforms giggling as they tried on the ready-to-wear hats at the next counter. Miss Torrance frowned at them and I decided to take myself off and let her go and intimidate them out of their fun.

  ‘Miss Armstrong?’ I said, back at the stationery desk moments later.

  ‘Madam,’ she replied, bobbing. ‘How can I help you?’ I noticed with amusement that already another ‘slip’ had found its way into her waistband.

  ‘Is it just personal writing paper you provide?’ I asked. ‘Or do you do business cards too?’

  ‘Oh no, we do gentlemen’s business cards, madam, certainly,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘There’s a stationery counter up on first, beside Gents’ Tailoring.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And what about ladies’ business cards?’

  Miss Armstrong blinked.

  ‘What kind of . . . ladies’ business would you be referring to?’ she asked.

  Her suspicions were so transparent and so outrageous that I burst out laughing.

  ‘Miss Armstrong, really!’ I said. ‘It could be any number of things. A little dress shop, a little tearoom.’ She was laughing too now, and blushing a bit.

  ‘But they don’t need cards, madam, do they?’ she said.

  ‘Actually . . .’ I sidled closer and dropped my voice. ‘It’s a detective agency.’

  She gave a very gratifying reaction, eyes wide, mouth open.

  ‘Are you a detective?’ she said. ‘Truly?’ Then she gave an out and out gasp. ‘Here!’ she said. ‘You’re not that “Mrs Gilver”, are you?’ I nodded. ‘I wasn’t here on jubilee day, madam. I was off sick. Well, I took a day’s sick leave anyway. And then yesterday I just couldn’t stomach it. But I’m glad to get a chance to meet you at long last, madam. And I’ll do anything in my power to help you.’

  I had, in a phrase Alec sometimes uses, struck oil.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, meaning it to encompass everything: the sick leave, the absence from the funeral and the willingness – nay, eagerness – to help. ‘I should warn you that I’m not working for Mrs Ninian any more. I’m snooping now, not sleuthing. I’m doing what my fellow detective, Mr Osborne, calls my “servant of truth” turn.’

  ‘Gilver and Osborne: servants of truth,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘I can see the card now. Well, Mrs Gilver, madam, Mrs Gilver—’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s a puzzler but either is fine by me.’

  ‘Well, madam,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe they were going ahead with it. That’s all. With Miss Mirren missing.’

  ‘So you all knew?’

  ‘Well, those of a certain vintage,’ Miss Armstrong said. ‘Mrs John told Mrs Lumsden on the Saturday morning. And Miss Hutton knew. But the girls didn’t and none of the menfolk – dear me no. No, no. But it wasn’t just that, madam. It was all that trouble about the engagement too. There’s always rivalry in business but Dugald was a lovely boy and he loved Miss Mirren and she him and if it hadn’t been for Certain People, they could both have been happy. Everyone could have been happy. But then . . .’ Miss Armstrong rubbed her thumb and fingers together in the age-old gesture. ‘Miss Mirren was an only child of only children,’ she said, ‘seeing as how Master Lennox and young Master died in the war without so much as a sweetheart between them. Everything was to come to her. The whole of Aitkens’. If you ask me, Certain People couldn’t stand to see the Hepburns walking into it all.’

  ‘Well, Certain People must certainly be ruing their intransigence now,’ I said.

  ‘Her?’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘If she has a heart at all it’s a cold black thing, Mrs Gilver.’

  I thought about the searing words Mary Aitken had spoken about her own damnation on the day of the funeral.

  ‘Oh, I think she has a heart, Miss Armstrong,’ I said. ‘A very troubled one, maybe.’

  ‘Well, if a woman with a heart can care about slips the day after she’s buried her only grandchild,’ said Miss Armstrong, ‘then maybe.’

  ‘Is it difficult to work here when you hate her so?’ I asked. Really what interested me was how a woman of such spirit as Miss Armstrong could serve at a counter at all, bowing and scraping and agreeing with the customer about everything, but since Mary Aitken was the embodiment of the Emporium, it came to the same thing. ‘Wouldn’t you be happier down the street?’ I rather thought that the carefree mischievous Hepburns, light-hearted enough to seem callous to more sombre souls – and how on the button Abigail had been about that as it transpired! – would care less about a scrap of paper in the belt of a dress.

  ‘Och, better the devil you know,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘And I don’t hate her, madam. I just think she’s a silly old fool and she’s suffering for it. And I think she’s let this store take the place of her family, until she cares more about it than about them.’

  ‘Yes, the slips,’ I said, nodding. ‘It is unseemly.’

  ‘Well, that’s Mistress Mary,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘And it’s not just the slips today, madam. Can you believe that she could care about a bit of muddle in my stock book the day after her only grandchild had disappeared? Can you believe she was checking up on my work last Monday, with Miss Mirren just gone and Miss Abigail out of her mind? Well, she was. No word of a lie.’

  ‘Old habits,’ I said. ‘My father shocked the whole village by going off rabbit hunting the day my mother died. But it was Tuesday and it was November and he was a man with orderly ways.’ I smiled, remembering. My aunts were gathered at the bedroom windows, chattering with prim disapproval like a flock of budgerigars as they watched my father striding across the park with his gun open over his arm and his rabbit bag slapping against his thigh. Only I noticed, I think, that instead of hopping over the ha-ha as he always did – as he was proud of still being able to do at almost seventy – he lowered himself down carefully holding onto a tussock and as he arose at the other side his shoulders were heaving.

  ‘Dreadful man,’ said my Aunt Rosalind.

  ‘Oh, Rosa, stop clucking for heaven’s sake,’ I had said. We had been up all night around the deathbed and tempers were frayed to shreds now in the early morning. ‘He was never going to sit around here to do his sobbing. It’s not his way.’

  ‘How can you, Di-di?’ said my sister, lifting her head from where she had been resting it on my mother’s counterpane, soaking it with her tears. ‘How can you defend him?’

  I did better; I joined him. I fetched a gun and tramped through the woods to his favourite rabbiting spot. He was sitting on a mossy stump, getting his britches soaked through, with his gun loaded and resting on his knee and with tears coursing down his face.

  ‘I always said you were a witch,’ he greeted me. ‘Very well, then. I shall only shoot rabbits this morning after all.’

  Of course, I did not tell my sister; Mavis would never have recovered from such melodrama and would have made his life utter hell with her prying. I did mention it to my brother, however, and he – practical soul – hit on a wonderful solution: a soldier’s widow by the name of Gloria. My poor old father only survived his beloved wife by three years in the end, but I am sure that Gloria made them pleasant ones.

  Miss Armstrong was looking at me in an inquiring way and I sho
ok myself back to the present again.

  ‘Sorry? Did you say something?’

  ‘I was just asking about that card. Osborne and Gilver, or the other way?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said again. ‘Um . . . Gilver and Osborne is alphabetical. Now, Miss Armstrong, can I ask you about Miss Hutton? Would you say it’s safe to go and speak to her?’

  ‘Safe, madam? Well, Mrs Ninian is away home. I saw her go with her coat and hat on.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of,’ I said, blushing a little for myself, because of course I should have been. ‘I meant, really, could I speak to Miss Hutton as freely as I have done to you? I need to ask her something but I don’t know where her loyalties might lie.’

  ‘Miss Hutton,’ said Miss Armstrong, screwing up her face. ‘Hard to say. If it were Mrs Lumsden now I’d say you should tread very carefully. Very carefully indeed. But Miss Hutton is a sensible soul.’

  I thanked her and left her rummaging in her drawers for the stiffest possible vellum to guillotine down to size and fashion into a business card for me.

  I had been in Aitkens’ three times now but this was my first visit to Ladies’ Gowns, usually an early stop in any department store. I took the wide sweeping staircase to the next floor and studied the large wooden plaque with the gilt names and arrows sending one to the various departments, Layette and Junior at the back, Gents’ Tailoring down the windowless side, Gowns and Bespoke Millinery taking up all of the front and stretching down the windowed side of the building which faced out onto the lane. A proper disposition of resources, I thought, nodding, and entered by the nearest archway.

  Grant would not have approved, I said to myself, as I looked around me – I usually hand down my judgements on frocks in Grant’s name; it stops me feeling shallow although I fear that in fact it proves me shallower still – for Aitkens’ ladies’ gowns were much of a muchness with the yellowed elbow-length gloves and indeed the jubilee notions. Sturdy mannequins stood about on stout plinths wearing sturdy tweeds and stout shoes and, as one penetrated the depths of the department – again, I supposed, away from masculine gaze – they wore evening gowns hardly less robust, with much brocade and boning, over dancing shoes one would think were meant for dancing girls – eight shows a week, and no time for bunions.

  ‘May I help, madam?’ said a rather beautiful young assistant, who had used her bolt of serge to make a uniform dress more flowing than anything for sale. ‘Mrs . . .’ She registered a level of professional shock that she could not bring forth a name for a face she clearly found familiar.

  ‘Gilver,’ I said. ‘I was here last week and yesterday.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the girl, relieved that she had not mislaid the name of a valued customer after all.

  ‘I’m looking for Miss Hutton,’ I said.

  ‘Certainly, madam,’ said the beautiful creature. ‘Please come with me.’ She turned and oozed across the floor, looking like something from a harem, and the swish of her slim hips triggered a memory in me.

  ‘Were you the other kelpie?’ I asked her. She looked at me and grinned.

  ‘Yes, madam,’ she said. ‘Lynne told me you thought we were nymphs!’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘And sorry about Miss Mirren too. Did you know her?’

  ‘A bit,’ said the nymph. ‘She was closer to my older colleagues, really. She’d known them since she was wee, of course. But she was very nice. Not at all snooty. Shy, really, if anything. Very shy around Lynne and me.’

  I could easily imagine that she had been rendered shy by this amazing creature, and she and Lynne together, if they were chums and went about in a twosome, would have flattened any ordinary girl to a wafer. I thought about Mirren Aitken’s heart-shaped face and soft brown hair; she had not been ordinary, exactly, but all that I had heard about her left me with the impression of something far from a siren.

  ‘If I’d had her pocket money and all her free time,’ said the girl, ‘I would have been like a star off the films. I used to feel jealous of her for that, Mrs Gilver.’ She gave a laugh. ‘And you should have heard Lynne when Miss Mirren got engaged. There was jealous for you!’

  ‘Oh?’ I said.

  ‘Away!’ said the girl. ‘I don’t mean like that. Only Lynne and her boy have got to wait till they’re at the head of the housing list. Either that or take a spare room and share the kitchen at his mother’s. But she wouldn’t swap with Miss Mirren now.’

  She had reached another of the many curtains with which Aitkens’ was so liberally festooned, this one hiding a shut door. She knocked on it and called out.

  ‘Visitor for you, Miss Hutton.’ Then she opened the door and left me there.

  Miss Hutton was sitting in a tiny office, a cubby-hole really, with just a desk and a rack stretching from floor to ceiling with quite a hundred little pigeonholes in it, all stuffed with bundles of yellowing tissue paper. She was opening letters and she looked up with great relief from them.

  ‘Oh! Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘I’m answering condolence cards. Is there anything more draining?’ She hauled herself to her feet and from behind the door she drew a folding chair, cracked it open and set it down at the side of the desk. There was just room to sweep the door closed again. I sat down – there was nowhere to stand – and Miss Hutton shoved the heap of unopened envelopes away from her.

  ‘Is it really your job?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t one of the family . . . ?’

  ‘In a family business,’ Miss Hutton said, ‘things do get a wee bit mixed in together sometimes. I offered, anyway. Just a first pass through them. I’ll let Mrs Ninian see all the important ones.’ She nodded towards a small pile, mostly letters, and then gave a rueful look at the much larger piles of letter and cards at its side. ‘And don’t you think it shocking, Mrs Gilver,’ she said, her bony nose pinching with disapproval, ‘how many of them . . .’ She held up one card and another and a third, all of the same design – an improbable church on a hillside with an improbable sunset going on behind. ‘These are ours,’ she said. ‘We sell them downstairs. You’d think people would have bought a different one to send us, wouldn’t you?’

  I could not imagine anything more vulgar than a condolence card of any sort, to be honest, and I could not resist taking one and opening it.

  A golden Treasure in your heart

  The dear Lord loved it too

  And so has gathered it to Him,

  Sweet mem’ries left to you.

  I closed it again, thinking that I would have hit anyone who sent me such an article if a child of mine had died.

  ‘I wanted to speak to you today, Miss Hutton,’ I said, ‘because I find myself still with a few loose ends to tie in. For my own satisfaction, you understand. Mrs Ninian has made it very clear that my formal engagement in the matter is over now.’ I waited a bit, thinking that now was her chance to freeze me with a glare if she cared to.

  Far from it; she continued regarding me with a calm, expectant look.

  ‘Anything I can do to help,’ she said. A singularly unhelpful remark as it happened, since I still could not remember what it was that I wanted to ask her. Alec disparages what he calls my excessive note-taking – and to be frank, I have ended some cases with enough scribbled-over paper to support a bonfire while chestnuts are roasted upon it – but better that surely than this: sitting gazing blankly back at an important witness as she gazed at me. And looking at her, I remembered a very different expression of hers, puzzled and troubled, and that must have connected to the thing I wanted to ask her; it was tantalisingly close but still out of reach of me.

  ‘Would you mind, Miss Hutton,’ I said, ‘if I just sat here for a moment and gathered my thoughts?’ She glanced back at the piles of correspondence on her desk and I hurried to reassure her that I did not need her attention.

  ‘Please do carry on with your work. So long as I won’t distract you. I would even offer to help, but I wouldn’t like to . . .’ I made a fastidious expression and nodded to the letter she
was even now slitting open. It was addressed to Mr and Mrs J.B. Aitken. Miss Hutton scanned it quickly and set it upon the pile to be passed along. The next envelope she glanced at and added to the same pile without opening. Then came a card which she opened, frowned at – it was the church at sunset – and placed on top of her stack. Then another unopened envelope onto the family pile.

  ‘Do you recognise the handwriting?’ I asked. A pained expression flashed over her.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it’s just that I wouldn’t open anything addressed to Mrs Ninian herself, madam, until she’s seen it. She wouldn’t like that.’ She held up the last envelope and I nodded, reading the name there. Miss Hutton sighed. ‘I wish I’d broken my own rule last week, I can tell you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There was a letter for Mrs Ninian and it wasn’t even sealed, just tucked over, you know, and maybe if I’d opened it I could have helped in some way.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ I said.

  ‘But then again maybe not,’ said Miss Hutton. ‘Most certainly not. Because you said Mrs Ninian asked you to find Miss Mirren, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said, sitting upright in my chair. My voice had been far too loud for such a small room and Miss Hutton looked startled. ‘That’s what you said, that’s been niggling at me,’ I went on. ‘You seemed surprised, the day of the funeral, when I told you what I had been asked to do.’

  ‘I was surprised,’ Miss Hutton said.

  ‘Yes, but why?’ I asked her. She hesitated, turning an envelope over and over in her hands. It was another condolatory church – I was beginning to recognise them. Then she began speaking in a great rush, like a dam bursting.

  ‘I take Mrs Ninian’s appointment list into her office at the start of every week,’ she said. ‘Just to help her. Everyone thinks she’s such a tower of strength but I know what it takes out of her, what a toll. Anyway, when I went in on that Monday morning, I tripped over an envelope on the floor. It had been slipped under the door and it was addressed to Mrs Ninian and I was sure it was Miss Mirren’s handwriting. She used to play at shops here when she was a little girl, you know. Writing out orders and receipts – she had her own little set of books and stamps and everything – and I know her writing. She never went to school to learn that same hand they teach them all, so I’d know her own writing anywhere. I’m sure it was hers. I know it was.’