Alec only shook his head.
‘It’s not a new set of Meccano, Dan; it’s a boxful.’ Then seeing that I did not understand, he went on. ‘There are bits left over even once we’ve built the best model we can.’
Reluctantly, I nodded.
‘Come on then, darling girl,’ I said to Bunty. ‘I’m going to take you a nice walk up the High Street and find you a big juicy butcher’s bone.’
Bunty, despite the fact that I had used two of her favourite words in the same sentence, ignored me. She had her head cocked to one side, with her brow wrinkling.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ said Alec.
‘Ssh,’ I said. I cocked my head up too and, from what seemed like a great distance, I heard a voice bellowing. Alec and I raced out into the hall. It was upstairs somewhere. It was a woman’s voice and she was begging for help. We wheeled into the stairwell and took the steps three at a time with Bunty streaming up ahead of us. We paused on the first-floor landing but the sound was still above us, and so again up we surged to the second floor and out onto the gallery under the cupola where the voice boomed around the empty space above and all around.
‘Help! Help! Help me!’
Bunty, scared now she was so close to the noise, whined and pressed herself into the wall behind her, but Alec and I charged around the gallery to an open door on the other side and burst in.
Abigail Aitken was kneeling on the floor, still bellowing, holding her mother’s face to her bosom, shaking the woman like a rag doll. Mary’s hands lay limp at her sides and her legs were splayed out, her stiff black bombazine skirts twisted up and one seam split open. Abigail turned to face us, her mouth gaping open and an ugly raw sob coming out of it, her hair hanging down in tangled oily clumps around her shoulders and one cheek bright pink and shining.
‘Help me!’ she wailed.
I rushed over and knelt down beside them, taking Abigail’s hands and prising them gently away from Mary’s shoulders. Mary’s body slumped back into my grasp and with a great rush of relief I heard a low groan and saw an eyelid flickering. Very carefully I laid her down flat on the floor and then grabbed Abigail’s shawl from where it sat in a heap and bundled it into a pillow. I lifted Mary’s neck and set the bundle underneath her.
‘What happened?’ said Alec. Abigail did not answer but only stared down at Mary’s grey face. I stared too, horrified to see how it had slipped downwards at one side, her eye, cheek and mouth melting into a doughy and expressionless travesty.
‘Something dreadful,’ I said. ‘We’d better get a doctor. Or an ambulance if there is one. Tell Trusslove. He’ll know what to do.’ Alec nodded and left. I pulled down one of my cuffs and wiped Mary’s mouth. Abigail was rocking back and forward, whimpering. I looked around myself for the first time and saw bedroom furniture. I wondered if we could, between the two of us, lift Mary onto the bed and wished I’d sent Abigail to the telephone and kept Alec with me. I put my hands under her shoulders and lifted them. She was a small woman but I felt numb and she was all but unconscious, a dead weight in my arms. I laid her back down and wiped her mouth again.
‘Get a pillow and blanket from the bed,’ I said to Abigail. ‘And a handkerchief for her.’ Abigail shook her head.
‘It’s Mirren’s room,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to move her things.’
‘Get a blanket!’ I shouted at her. ‘Mirren is dead and your mother is alive. Help her.’ Abigail stumbled to her feet and dragged the coverlet off the bed, dropping it on top of Mary. I tucked it in around her, my heart sinking to feel the leaden slump of her body on the hard floor. Her breathing was growing laboured and once or twice there came a choking sound from her throat. I remembered a snippet of my training from the early months of volunteer work when it was thought that I might make a nurse one day, and steadying her with my knee I hauled her onto her side and bent one of her legs up in front of her. It was like moving a sack of grain, like setting sandbags in place.
‘Pillows!’ I said to Abigail and as she threw them down to me I used them to prop Mary, front and back, until she was balanced and I could take my knee away.
Again I wiped her mouth and then for a moment just watched her and listened. Abigail went over to a chest of drawers and opened the top one. She gazed into it and put her hand to her mouth, shaking her head, then she rummaged inside her own sleeve, drew out a handkerchief and came back to kneel beside her mother, holding it out to me. I stared at her and she bowed her head and began dabbing at her mother’s mouth herself. Her cheek was still glowing and was beginning to swell.
Mary’s breathing was worse than ever and so I set to and began unfastening the scores of tiny hooks and eyes holding shut her bodice down her back. By the time I had them undone and had loosened the stays she wore underneath them, there were two servant girls in the room and I could see Trusslove and Alec hovering outside.
‘I’ve rung for help, Mrs Gilver,’ Trusslove called in to me. ‘Oh, my poor mistress. Is she holding on?’
I took Mary’s wrist and found her pulse, slow and sluggish, but steady enough. I looked at my wristwatch, but truth be told I had never known what it was one was supposed to tell from a pulse and watch together and so I just sat there feeling the steady beat, trying to tell if it were slowing, weakening or growing perhaps just a little bit stronger.
‘She’s still with us, Mr Trusslove,’ I said. ‘How far away is the doctor?’
‘It’s the ambulance men I’ve sent for,’ he said.
‘Not the fever wagon,’ said Abby, turning terrified eyes on him. ‘She’s not going to that place.’
‘No, no, the St Andrew’s men,’ said Trusslove. ‘The volunteers, Miss Abby. They’ll take her to the cottage hospital.’
‘And where is it?’ I asked.
‘Not even a mile,’ said one of the servant girls.
‘And is someone downstairs at the front door to tell the men where to come?’ I said. ‘Alec?’ But he was already gone.
Abigail was shivering now, rocking back and forwards and hugging herself and it was then that Bunty came into the room. She whined at me, gave Mary a long hard stare and then shuffled up beside Abigail again. Abby put one arm round her neck.
‘She’s warm,’ she said to me in a voice reduced to a croak from her yelling.
I frowned and felt Mary’s head. It was clammy, if anything.
‘The dog,’ Abigail said.
I reached over and put my hand on one of hers, feeling the icy chill of deep shock.
‘Hug her,’ I said. ‘She’ll warm you up. And you, girl?’ I looked at one of the servants. ‘Get a blanket for Mrs Jack, please. And a cup of tea if there’s a kettle hot. Plenty of sugar.’
‘Very good, madam,’ said one of the girls and they scattered.
‘What happened?’ I said to Abigail once they had gone. She was hanging onto Bunty’s neck like a drowning woman and Bunty was shifting a little, paddling her front paws in mild protest at being squeezed so. I clicked my tongue to placate her.
‘If she dies, I will have—’
‘Never mind that,’ I said, thinking that never was there such a family for claiming to have killed their loved ones. ‘She slapped you, didn’t she? Because of what you told her?’
Abigail put one hand up to her cheek and stroked it.
‘And pulled my hair too,’ she said. ‘Pulled me round the room by my hair, just as she used to do last time. When she wasn’t herself, before.’
Mary groaned, a dreadful aching sound, and shifted her body, hauling her shoulder over so that she could look up at us from one half-open eye.
‘Ssh,’ I said to her. ‘Shush now, Mrs Aitken. Rest. Lie still.’ I took one of her hands and held it. I flashed a look at Abigail and mouthed shushing her too. If Mary Aitken were conscious, and it seemed she was, we must not say anything to cause her further suffering as she lay there.
‘Where’s Bella?’ I said. ‘Has someone been to her?’
‘Out,’ said Abigail. ‘She we
nt to thank the staff for everything. The last week, you know, and the police questions. She said they should be rewarded for their conduct. A little something in their pay-packets. It’s pay-day today.’
‘And Jack?’ I said. In truth, I had no interest in his whereabouts, but talking had calmed Abigail down and so I thought I should encourage more.
‘Out too,’ said Trusslove, reappearing in the hallway. ‘He went off in one of the cars after he spoke to you. Ah, here’s some hot tea for you, Miss Abby. This’ll help you.’
As the servant girl aided Abigail up onto her feet and took her to sit on the dressing chair, sounds came to us of the front door far below, quick footsteps on the stairway and then two St Andrew’s ambulance men were in the room in their blessed smart dark uniforms, looking mercifully calm and competent as they eased me out of the way. They lifted Mary effortlessly onto a stretcher, one tucking a red blanket around her and one measuring her pulse against his fob watch, then the first deftly removing her shoes, chafing her feet and talking all the while to her in a bright, kindly voice.
‘Right then,’ said the other, putting his fob away. ‘Who laid her down then and loosened her dress?’
‘That was me,’ I said, hunching a little in case he were about to scold me.
‘Well, there’s a good sensible girl,’ he said. ‘Well done. Are you coming in the ambulance with us or following on?’ He was looking at me, but I turned to Abigail. Unbelievably she was sipping at her cup of tea, staring straight ahead.
‘Mrs Jack?’ I said. ‘Abby? Are you going with your mother or would you rather the chauffeur drove you?’
‘Both cars are out, madam,’ said Trusslove.
‘Not in the ambulance,’ said Abigail, shrinking into the back of her chair. ‘What if she dies?’
‘Alone?’ I said.
The St Andrew’s men had Mary out of the room and halfway down the first flight of stairs, not waiting on our decisions.
‘I couldn’t,’ said Abigail.
‘You go, Dan,’ said Alec. ‘I’ll bring Mrs Jack along.’
I had never been terribly keen on hospitals even before the war years when day after day I willed myself to drive over to that godforsaken officers’ convalescent home for another seven hours of severed limbs, oozing stitches and shot nerves, but I sent up prayers of thankfulness when the ambulance stilled its siren and drew up beside the large double doors of the emergency entrance at the Dunfermline Cottage Hospital, not least because the name was a misnomer if ever there were one; the hospital was as grand and imposing as every other of Dunfermline’s many public buildings and it was a great comfort to be arriving there. Running like an automaton in Mirren’s bedroom, I had without thinking done the right things and had perhaps helped a little, even if I could wish to have been less harsh to poor Abigail about the blanket and pillows, but crouched in the ambulance all competence deserted me and I turned fluttery and tearful, dreading that indeed Mary Aitken would die as we swung around the roads at top speed, for she had sunk into a deep torpor and the ambulance man who sat beside her was frowning hard and had stopped all his kindly banter.
At the hospital doors, we were met by a nurse in a blue dress with a clean white apron pinned on top and white cuffs holding her sleeves up above her elbows. She was impossibly young but looked very strong and certain, with that extra-clean look of nurses as though they washed their faces with Lysol and a stiff brush instead of soap and a flannel.
‘Stroke,’ said the man who had made the journey in the back with Mary and me.
‘Name?’ said the nurse. She was looking at Mary as we trotted along in step with the men carrying the stretcher, but I guessed that she was talking to me.
‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said.
‘From Aitkens’?’ said the nurse, peering with greater interest at Mary. Then she remembered herself. ‘Age?’ she snapped.
‘Seventy . . . four . . . ish,’ I said, hoping that I had remembered accurately.
‘First stroke?’
‘I think so.’
‘And were you with her when it happened?’
‘I wasn’t, Sister,’ I said, thinking that even if she were only a staff nurse she would not mind a sudden promotion and better that than the other way. ‘Her daughter was though. She’s following along behind. She should soon be here.’
‘Her daughter?’ The nurse stopped. ‘Who are you?’
‘A friend,’ I began, but the nurse stopped me.
‘Back to the waiting room with you,’ she said. ‘You can’t be in here out of visiting time.’ I knew there was no point in arguing; everything about her tone, her looks and her firmly folded elbows as she turned, physically barring my way, said that she would win her point. The stretcher had arrived at a curtained cubicle and the ambulance men set it down with groans of relief.
‘I shall send Mrs Aitken back here when she comes, shall I?’ I said.
‘We’ll take care of things from here,’ said the nurse, not even willing to discuss that small matter with me now. She marched smartly up to the bedside, twitched the curtains shut behind her and left me standing there.
I took a deep breath to steady myself, and felt goose pimples spring up on my arms at the smell, that unforgettable cocktail of chlorine bleach, disinfectant and strong soap which is almost as much part of a hospital as the starched white sheets and starched blue nurses.
Alec and Abigail arrived just as I had got back to the large double doors and been told by a porter in a cubby-hole there that this was the emergency entrance and I should come and go – although it was not visiting time, not nearly – by the front door like everyone else managed to do.
‘How is she?’ said Abigail. ‘Where have they taken her?’
I turned an inquiring face to the porter.
‘Admissions,’ he said, ‘but you can’t come in through here. You’ll need to go round to the front.’
‘She was asleep when they took her out of the ambulance,’ I told Abigail, ‘but they whisked her straight in, a very competent nurse—’
‘No doctor?’
‘And I’m sure a doctor will be with her now. Let’s go round and see if we can’t get you to her, Mrs Aitken, shall we?’ I threw A Look at the porter who affected not to notice and we left, working our way around the complicated set of alleys and in-shoots to the front of the building where we mounted the stairs and entered the foyer.
It was quite impossible, it seemed, to add a bedside companion to an admission which was already under way; the uniformed volunteer who manned a desk at the door, a nurse we waylaid and any number of passing porters agreed. So the three of us milled around, wishing for a seat and some tea, but when I asked the volunteer if a folding chair might be found for Abigail, I was treated to Another Look which suggested that my effort to the emergency door porter would have made no impression (not if the current effort was hospital standard) and which told me that there was no point even mentioning the tea.
‘What happened, Mrs Aitken?’ I said, as I rejoined Alec and her. She was leaning up against the wall with her eyes closed.
‘She collapsed,’ said Abigail, without opening her eyes. ‘We were quarrelling.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She struck you.’
Abigail opened her mouth wide as though to test the feeling in her cheek, and nodded.
‘You had told her?’ I asked. ‘The thing you said you had decided to tell her?’
As I watched, the lines of Abigail’s lashes started to glitter and a second later two tears had formed, detached and rolled down her cheeks. She felt up her sleeve for her handkerchief and then, remembering that she had given it away, she lifted a hand and roughly wiped the tears away with her fingers.
‘I thought it would help,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand why it upset her so.’
‘If you would tell us what it was, Mrs Aitken,’ said Alec in his lowest, most gentle voice; trying, I think, to sound like a lullaby. I nodded at him, encouraging the effort, for I was beginning to wonder
why Mary would strike Abigail over such a thing.
‘Was it just the fact that you’d kept it quiet?’ I asked. ‘Or was it the secret itself that was so upsetting?’
Abigail shook her head so forcefully that the newest tears flew off to either side.
‘She wasn’t herself,’ she whispered. ‘Just like the last time. She wasn’t well. I should have known she couldn’t be expected to bear confidences.’
Alec and I were gazing helplessly at one another when the front door banged open and Bella Aitken came in at speed, one of the Aitken chauffeurs in his mauve and gold livery trotting behind her. She had made some effort with her appearance today, to visit the Emporium and hand out the staff’s favours, but she was still very dishevelled, coat buttoned crookedly and only one glove on, and her face was every bit as stricken as it had been during our interview in Trusslove’s pantry the day before. She saw us and bustled over, putting out her hands to clasp Abigail to her.
‘Is she dead?’ she said. ‘Please tell me she hasn’t died. Abigail? Trusslove rang me up at the store. They said she had been taken away in an ambulance. She isn’t dead, is she?’
‘She had a stroke, Mrs Aitken,’ I said. ‘She was alive but unconscious when I last saw her.’
‘You said asleep,’ said Abigail, struggling out of her mother-in-law’s embrace and turning fearful eyes to me.
‘Her breathing was very steady,’ I said. ‘And she’s in the best place, in very safe hands.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Bella Aitken, looking around, ‘None of us has ever been in this place before. Did someone ring up Dr Hill? Wasn’t he there?’
‘We thought it best to summon an ambulance,’ Alec said. ‘Get her here as soon as possible, you know.’
‘A stroke,’ said Bella Aitken, letting go of Abigail and rubbing her hands over her own face. ‘A stroke? Mary? She has always had the best of health. Healthier than me – physically anyway.’
‘She does live a little on her nerves, Aunt Bella,’ Abigail said. ‘It wouldn’t be wrong to say she was “highly strung”.’
Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder Page 22