Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘But – once again, forgive me, Lady Lawson,’ I said, ‘but Mary makes no secret of her humble beginnings. Why should you call all that “knowing more than you want to”?’

  ‘It’s not her beginnings, Mrs Gilver,’ Lady Lawson said. ‘It was her route out of them. Such scheming, such naked ambition – most unseemly. She snared poor Mr Aitken like a rabbit in a trap, you know. And he wasn’t the first one she had set her sights on either.’

  ‘Dear me,’ I said, thinking I could easily believe it of Mary.

  ‘And then marrying off Abigail to her cousin that way? Too dreadful. I couldn’t understand it. There was no reason for it. Abby was a lively pretty girl and could have had her pick of the young men. She had a fortune, you know.’

  ‘It certainly does seem a little . . . careless,’ I said.

  ‘And then so scrupulous about a match with the Hepburn boy for Mirren.’ Lady Lawson lowered her voice. ‘You know about the Hepburn girls, I suppose?’ Alec’s shoes squeaked as he writhed in discomfort.

  ‘A little. You think that was Mary’s objection? I thought it was business rivalry.’

  ‘Oh well, yes, that too. She certainly resented them. But if she ever got on to the subject of the sisters she was quite frightening. And to think I was going to marry my son into such a family. Cousin marriage, and suicide, and spite so bitter that it twisted her up into knots sometimes. What kind of mother must I be? Oh, my poor boy.’

  And so on and so forth for quite some time, while Alec and I sat squirming. When at last she ran out of exclamations, or perhaps breath, she left us with a faint allusion to a headache and an ethereal farewell. We stayed behind in the little sitting room, puffed out a few good breaths between us and reviewed the interview.

  ‘That’s how I was supposed to be brought up,’ I said. ‘It’s exhausting, isn’t it?’

  ‘Damned irritating,’ said Alec. ‘Makes me feel like Professor Higgins. Makes me want to throw things. How did you escape it, darling? Not that you never make me want to throw things, but not in the same way.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ I said. I was always wont to sum up my mother as a dreamer, slightly to despise her aesthetic bent and her enthralment when it came to nature and freedom and even less slightly to scorn her passionate declarations on them, but when faced with the kind of fluttering she had despised I did begin to see how stoutly she had held against her mother’s expectations and how valiant she been in her way. Then I remembered that the fresh air she so loved was the air of spring and that she kept to the fireside in her shawls at the slightest drizzle and disappeared under a parasol in the summer sun; that the nature she adored was the nature of rose petals and bluebell woods not the nature which will swell a turnip and feed a family on it; that a beautiful death had had so much more allure than precious life got by sullying herself with the ugly words doctors use and the ugly things they do. Besides, it should not be forgotten that my mother had produced my sister Mavis as well as me.

  ‘Nanny Palmer,’ I said to Alec, realising that of course this was the key. ‘Nanny Palmer never would have any truck with the vapours – everything from squealing at mice to getting seasick was “the vapours” to her, you know – and then of course it would have been wasted on Hugh all these years anyway, and no daughters, and now the casework . . . who knows where it will end.’

  A memory came back to me unbidden of Mavis, on her wedding day, sitting at her looking glass as my mother lowered the coronet of flowers onto her hair. They looked at one another in the glass and exchanged misty smiles. Then Mavis caught my eye and the smile died. ‘What is it?’ she had said. I replied truthfully that it was nothing, but she was not to be denied, not on her wedding day. ‘Go on,’ she had said. ‘Tell me what you were thinking. I insist that you tell me.’ I had assured her that I was thinking nothing at all, only how pretty she looked in her frock, which was very drooping and medieval with long points to the bell-sleeves and a low girdle of plaited silks with ends as long as her train, but the truth was that I had looked at those pointed sleeves and wondered if at the wedding breakfast she would be able to help them going in her soup.

  ‘Alec,’ I said, ‘tell me something – and I’m serious, I assure you. Would you describe me as “hearty”?’

  ‘Hearty?’ said Alec. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Because that’s what lies at the other end of the line from Lady Lawson and the likes of her and much as I loathe one, I do dread the other. My sister called me hearty once and it still pricks me.’

  ‘It wouldn’t prick at you if you were hearty,’ said Alec with great kindness.

  ‘Thank you, darling.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. And let’s get back to the case, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Right. Lady Lawson has given us an embarrassment of reasons for Mary Aitken to deny Mirren the right to marry Dugald. Jack and Hilda we knew about anyway. And I suppose the business rivalry – feud, call it what you like – might just explain Robin and his father being against the match.’

  ‘We haven’t accounted for Abigail’s misgivings yet. And we haven’t got a motive for Mirren’s suicide except jilting, in which case we haven’t got a motive for Dugald’s.’

  ‘Mirren first,’ said Alec. ‘She didn’t know about Jack and Hilda. Did she know about Roger Lawson? Did she care about the Aitken–Hepburn feud? Would she have resisted eloping because of it? I wonder what caused the feud, by the way. Mrs Lumsden seemed to hint that it wasn’t always this way between them.’

  ‘I wish we could just barge in like the police and demand that everyone answer our questions,’ I said, dragging up another hefty sigh and letting it out. ‘We can’t even threaten them with the police!’

  ‘Why not?’ said Alec. He had been stretched out in his chair, practically horizontal in that way of his, but he hauled himself upright and his eyes were alight again. ‘Why can’t we?’

  ‘Because if I go back to Inspector Stinky, Hugh will be clapped in irons.’

  ‘But no one knows that,’ said Alec. ‘We can threaten ourselves blue, Dandy. Of course we can.’ I clapped my hands together with glee.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We really can! Of course we couldn’t actually carry out the threat if it doesn’t work, but let’s cross our fingers we don’t need to.’

  ‘Who do we start with?’ said Alec. ‘Bright and early tomorrow morning, I think. And bring an overnight bag along too. I don’t know about you but I’m getting heartily sick of that road here and back again.’

  ‘Abigail Aitken,’ I said. ‘If we find out that she knew about Jack and Hilda and told Mirren, then we have a motive for Mirren’s suicide and enough reasons for the marriage ban to go around everyone. Then we can assume Dugald killed himself out of grief and the case is closed. We won’t need the overnight bag after all.’

  ‘What about the inspector?’ said Alec. ‘Are we saying that he somehow knew about Jack and Hilda? Knew that Mirren and Dugald were siblings? How could he?’ I said nothing. ‘Put your toothbrush in a little bag and bring it with you, Dandy. We’re not done yet awhile, if you ask me.’

  It was bright and early indeed the following morning when Alec’s motorcar swung into the front drive at Abbey Park and rolled up to the house. We stepped down, two of us all swagger and determination and one of us all wagging tail and snuffling with excitement at the new scents in this new place. Alec had raised a sardonic eyebrow when he saw Bunty on the end of her lead, but I had insisted.

  ‘She can still put up a pretty chilling growl and quivering lip if someone shouts at me,’ I said. ‘And she’s a good intimidating size, especially in a drawing room, and don’t forget that time last year.’ That had been my darling Bunty’s finest hour; she had gone for a villain with her lips drawn back and her teeth gnashing, snarling like a wolf. If she did the same to Jack Aitken he would never chase me down the drive again.

  ‘Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,’ said Alec, but he had opened the door for her and whistled her in.

 
; Down at Dunfermline, Trusslove greeted me like an old friend.

  ‘Thank the Lord,’ he said. ‘Good news, is it? I’ve told all the staff you’re helping, dear, and we’re sending up prayers. I only wish we could do more, but nobody downstairs knows anything worth telling.’ He looked at Alec. ‘And are you another of them, my friend? Good. More power to your elbow.’ He beckoned us in and made off ahead of us to the library. ‘My friend?’ Alec mouthed to me, behind his back.

  ‘Right then,’ Trusslove said. ‘And who is it you’re after today?’

  ‘Mr Aitken,’ I replied. ‘Mr Jack, if he’s here, Trusslove, please.’

  For Alec and I had decided on the journey to give Jack Aitken a shot at chivalry, a chance to save his wife the humiliation of confirming to us that she knew of his affair.

  Less than a minute after Trusslove left us we heard Jack Aitken coming from the other side of the marble hallway and he entered the room like a rocket, ready for a fight, fists bunched and chin stuck forward, but evidently Trusslove had announced only me because when Aitken caught sight of Alec he stopped so abruptly that he had to take a step to the side to get his balance back again.

  ‘Mr Aitken,’ said Alec smoothly. ‘Let me introduce myself. My name is Osborne, I’m an associate of Mrs Gilver, and I’ve come along this morning to see if I can’t help matters run a little more easily than I heard they did yesterday.’ He had not rehearsed this speech in my hearing and I tried very hard to take it in my stride, but I was most deeply impressed and gratified by it and in danger of beaming, because I could not imagine anything more subtly menacing if I tried. ‘First of all, though,’ Alec was saying, ‘I must give you my most heartfelt condolences on the death of your daughter, sir. I am very sorry to have heard of such a loss.’ This only bewildered Jack Aitken even more. He came over to where we were at a much reduced pace and sat down in the chair Alec had placed for him, giving Bunty a perplexed look as he did so. ‘Mrs Gilver?’ Alec said, opening a courteous hand to me. ‘If you would care to continue.’

  ‘As I was saying yesterday, Mr Aitken,’ I said, taking up – I hoped – Alec’s smooth and unsettling tone, ‘I have strong reason to doubt that Mirren took her own life. I have some reason too to doubt that Dugald Hepburn did so. I intend to get to the bottom of it. If I am wrong, all well and good. I’m no busybody, no gossip. But if I am thwarted, Mr Aitken, if I am denied answers and threatened the way I was yesterday, I shall go to the police and hand the case to them. And they – as I am sure you will agree – are considerably less discreet than Mr Osborne and me.’

  ‘We were your clients,’ Jack Aitken said, staring horrified at me. ‘If this is how you treat your clients I’m surprised you ever have any.’ I tried not to let my face show that his words had hit home. Indeed, if anyone were ever to find out that Alec and I had come along like a pair of gangsters’ heavies and intimidated a grieving family this way after being told to leave them alone several times now, we would never work again and Gilver and Osborne’s business cards would go straight from the printers to the fire.

  ‘Now, when we spoke before, Mr Aitken,’ I said, ignoring him, ‘you told me your only misgiving about Mirren and Dugald marrying’ – there was the look again, as though he had bitten down on a bad tooth – ‘was that she was too young to marry at all. At twenty. You said you felt remorseful that your decision to forbid the match had led to Mirren’s suicide. And of course you would; how could you not? But you see, what puzzled me was that when I suggested it could be murder you . . . took against me, shall we say? Almost it seemed you would rather have your daughter’s death on your hands than on any other’s.’

  Jack Aitken made a valiant effort to look composed, but most unfortunately for him he had taken a seat in the window and was sitting in a patch of golden sunlight so that his tie pin twinkled as his chest rose and fell with a series of quickened, panicky breaths he could not control. His voice though, when he finally spoke, was the same old repertory company routine as ever; the juvenile lead lightly tossing off his lines with half a mind on supper after the show.

  ‘I do apologise for yesterday, Mrs Gilver, I must ask you to forgive me.’ He put a hand to his brow and pressed it there. ‘I have never lost my temper that way in my life.’ Alec and I exchanged a glance. He had come into the room like a bull into the ring not three minutes ago. ‘I thought you were accusing me of killing her. My little Mirren. I saw red, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why would you think such a thing?’ I asked him.

  ‘Because it was me you were telling,’ Jack Aitken said, with a sheepish shrug. ‘I thought to myself, why else would you seek me out and tell me unless it’s me you think did it?’

  ‘But I was only talking to you because you happened to come looking for your wife,’ I said. ‘And I was only talking to her because she happened to meet me. It was your mother I came to see.’ Before he could compose his next speech I came back at him. ‘And, actually, Mr Aitken, after you had railed at me for the accusation you say you thought I made against you, you railed even more about the idea that – here I quote you – “she would kill a child”.’

  ‘Once again, Mrs Gilver, I apologise. Such strain, such unbearable strain and I have not held up under it at all well.’ He paused as though for sympathy; receiving none, he continued. ‘Well, it was just that my poor dear Abby was there, with the gun, and was questioned and so of course I did think for a moment it was her you suspected. Gosh, I feel wretched that I might have implicated my dear wife in some way.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ I said. ‘Not until just now, I mean. Reminding us about the gun that way. “She would never kill a child” doesn’t sound at all like an accusation of a mother. Does it, Mr Osborne?’ Jack turned as Alec shook his head. ‘A child?’ I said. Jack’s head whipped back so he was once more facing me. ‘One doesn’t usually refer to a woman’s own daughter that way.’

  ‘I was very angry,’ Jack said. ‘Grief takes many forms.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘So you’re sticking to your story, Mr Aitken, that you wouldn’t have minded Dugald Hepburn as a son-in-law a year or two hence and you think Mirren killed herself because she wouldn’t wait for him.’

  He nodded, swallowing hard.

  ‘And what did you make of your mother-in-law’s hopes regarding Roger Lawson?’

  Jack Aitken blinked and said nothing.

  ‘You did know, I assume, that Mary and Lady Lawson were hoping for an engagement?’

  ‘Roger Lawson?’ said Jack Aitken, then he nodded. ‘I see. Yes, I see. Well, that would have been a very satisfactory arrangement, I imagine.’ Alec and I could not help turning a little towards another to exchange another glance then.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Aitken,’ I said, ‘but Mirren would have been the same age marrying Roger Lawson as marrying Dugald, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I suppose, in a sense,’ Jack said. I could see Alec frowning deeper still. Jack Aitken saw it too and from deep within himself he dug out another of his endless little sketch routines. He threw one leg over the other – most unnaturally since his fists were still in his pockets – and chuckled. ‘But you see if Mary organised it, the terms would be very different.’

  ‘A long engagement, you mean?’ Alec asked.

  ‘Not a doubt,’ Aiken said. ‘She’s a formidable woman of business as I’m sure you’ve noticed already. The financial arrangements would have been very secure.’

  I could not begin to see what he meant; the financial repercussions of Mirren entering the Lawson family would have weighed very heavily on the Aitkens, surely.

  ‘Mirren was only twenty,’ Jack Aitken said. ‘At twenty-one she was to come into her share of Aitkens’. And because of the fact that Abby and I are cousins and neither of us have siblings surviving, quite a lot of Aitkens’ was coming to Mirren down a funnel, as it were. She would have had a controlling interest. Yes, after her birthday, she would have had outright control of us all. And if she were married her husband might have tried to
influence her, but if she stayed unmarried until after she was twenty-one, she could dispose of her shares as she saw fit and then she could have married without her new husband . . .’ He took one of his hands out of his pocket and waved it in the air.

  ‘Scooping the lot,’ I finished and something in my tone brought the wary look back into Jack Aitken’s eyes. ‘So really,’ I said, ‘when you talked about your poor little Mirren being too young for marriage and not wanting to lose her, what you really meant was something quite different.’

  ‘Aitkens’ was built up out of nothing by the sweat of my father’s brow,’ said Jack. ‘And my uncle’s too. We owed it to their hard work and dedication. Our stewardship. Our honouring of their vision.’

  ‘Mirren did not owe it her life,’ I said. ‘No girl owes any institution that.’

  Unbelievably, Jack Aitken gave Alec a man-to-man look then, as though to say that they two understood all about laying down one’s life for glory but that a mere woman could not be expected to feel the swell of pride. Alec returned a blank, dead gaze which made me want to hug him.

  ‘And besides,’ I said, ‘we know that wasn’t what troubled you about Mirren and Dugald. That was a remarkable tale you dreamed up, Mr Aitken, and you told it well, but we know exactly why you were against the marriage.’

  He stared hard at me, without answering, probably trying to work out if I were bluffing.

  ‘Mrs Hepburn told us yesterday,’ said Alec. Jack Aitken did not turn to him and did not answer. He simply deflated and his eyes dropped until he was staring at the floor.