Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘We’ve spoken to the Hepburns,’ I said. ‘They’re not going to tell anyone anything. You have no worries there. I don’t actually think that many of them, if any at all, know the thing that’s troubling you.’ She turned her head on the pillow and regarded me with a hunted look that made me want to take her in my arms and hug her. ‘We worked it out,’ I said and she closed her eyes and moaned. ‘The one person we think might know the whole story is Robert Hepburn himself.’ Another moan. ‘But he won’t speak up. How could he? He and his son would be as shamed in the eyes of the world as any shame he could hope to bring down upon you and your daughter.’ Mary Aitken gave a short, harsh sound that might have been a laugh and rolled her head from side to side upon the pillow. ‘Well, yes, probably not, the world being what it is,’ I conceded, ‘but there would still be enough opprobrium to make sure he never tells. So, there it is. You can put it out of your mind and direct all your efforts to getting better again.’

  Mary shook her head with her eyes closed.

  ‘But Mrs Aitken, you must,’ I said. ‘For Abigail. She blames herself for Mirren dying and she blames herself for you being ill now and if you don’t get better she will be wretched. She doesn’t deserve that. No matter what—’ I bit off the prim censure and started again. ‘And you don’t either. You didn’t know, Mrs Aitken. You knew half the story and Abigail knew the other half.’ Actually, they each knew one third; the last third was Jack and Hilda’s secret. Alec and I were the only ones who knew everything, except for a few very small little puzzles, one or two embers still glowing amongst the ashes.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ I said. Mary opened her eyes and looked at me, rather wary. ‘I know you didn’t read Mirren’s letter. Never mind how I know, I’m right, aren’t I? But you must have realised that a hand-delivered note meant she was hidden in the attics. What I still don’t really understand is why you didn’t just go and search for her? Why get me involved?’

  Mary had a most peculiar look in her eye now. She put the fingers of her one good hand up to her lips and rolled her eyes in a show of terror.

  ‘You were frightened to go?’ Alec said. Mary nodded and then she mimed a gesture that neither one of us needed to translate into words to make clear. She pointed one finger, cocked her thumb, put her hand to her head and made a popping sound with her lips.

  Alec and I stared at one another.

  ‘Did you know she had Jack’s gun?’ I said. I remembered the stock lists in the attic ante-room and what everyone had told me about Mary Aitken’s grasp on what was where, and I felt pretty sure that she would have known exactly where Jack Aitken’s old service revolver was kept and would have checked to see if it was missing. I felt a moment’s umbrage that she had been happy to send me off looking for a girl who had a revolver and was in a troubled state of mind, but there was no point in making a fuss about what might have been and so I said nothing.

  ‘You’d think if she was angry enough to shoot anyone, it would have been Hepburn,’ Alec said. ‘Old Mr Hepburn, I mean. She didn’t know him and she’d been brought up with you, by you, and loved you. I’d have thought she’d have gone after the old man.’

  ‘She did!’ I said. I sat up very straight and said it rather loudly, loud enough to attract the attention of the nurse in the room next door. She came stalking back and with one look at Mary’s pale and tear-stained face she bundled us unceremoniously out of the room, Dr Hill or no. Out on the landing, I grabbed Alec by the arm and hissed at him.

  ‘She did go after the grandfather, Alec,’ I said. ‘Oh, glory be! This is like finally getting rid of a raspberry seed that’s been stuck in one’s teeth for a month. She wrote to Mr Hepburn. She must have and that’s why he came to the store. On the Monday. To meet her.’

  ‘Old Mr Hepburn?’ said Alec. ‘Her grandfather?’

  ‘There’s no such person as old Mr Hepburn,’ I said. ‘This had been niggling at me like nothing on earth. “Mr Hepburn” is Robert. Robin is “young Mr Hepburn”. Dugald was “Master Hepburn”. That’s why the maid at Roseville sent us to the other house when we asked for Mr Hepburn. And I thought the Emporium girls were talking about Dugald when they mentioned young Mr Hepburn and accused them of changing their story when they denied it a moment later.’

  ‘So Robert came to Aitkens’ to see Mirren,’ said Alec.

  ‘Thinking he was coming to see the daughter of his daughter. And I’ll bet that’s when he recognised her. And that’s when he realised that she was also the daughter of his son. I’ll bet you something else too. I’ll bet you it was Robert who suddenly hustled Dugald off to Kelso. Once he had seen Mirren and realised what it meant. I wonder what he said to her while they were together. Rather, I wonder if what he said to her was what made her kill herself.’

  ‘You think she did kill herself then?’ Alec said.

  ‘Oh, she must have, poor little thing,’ I said. ‘And Dugald didn’t know about the planned elopement and he killed himself too. All alone, both of them. Dammit!’ I turned round and looked at the closed door of Mary’s sickroom. ‘I’m sure Dugald killed himself but I wish I had asked Mary while I had the chance if she knew anything about it. Remember I told you how agitated she was about the lift man coming.’ Alec nodded and then put his fingers to his lips and a hand behind his ear. I listened too and could hear water running in the little side-room. Very quietly, I opened the bedroom door again and crept back to Mary’s bedside. I could see the nurse’s back, as she filled a hot water bottle from a kettle and topped it up with cold water from the tap. I turned to Mary.

  ‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said in a low voice. ‘The day of Mirren’s funeral, did you know or even suspect that Dugald was in the store?’ She shook her head and looked so surprised at the question that I had no hesitation in believing her. ‘You didn’t guess what was wrong when the lift went wonky that way?’ Another shake of the head. I patted her hand and smiled, then glanced at the nurse again. Evidently she had made the bottle too hot or too cold and was emptying it out again to refill it. She had wrapped a cloth around its neck to catch the drips. What a fusspot, I thought, but however fussily she carried out the task, it was almost complete and I did not want to get caught by her. I bent and kissed Mary Aitken’s forehead, then stole out again and rejoined Alec on the landing.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘And I believe her.’

  ‘And so we leave them to what comfort they can bring one another,’ said Alec. I nodded slowly. ‘Bella seems to have come up trumps, doesn’t she?’ I nodded again and we descended the stairs in silence. ‘Come on then,’ he sighed when we got to the bottom and were standing in the hall. ‘Out with it, Dandy.’

  ‘Out with what?’

  ‘I know that faraway look. Something’s bothering you.’

  ‘But what could it be?’ I said. ‘Everything’s tied up. No loose ends at all. Unless it’s the gloves.’

  ‘Gloves?’ said Alec, rather blankly, racking his brain.

  ‘The one pair of gloves with the price ticket, slightly stained, in the shoebox.’

  ‘The price ticket slightly stained or the gloves?’ said Alec.

  ‘One glove,’ I said. ‘I only mentioned the price ticket because it made them unusual amongst all the stuff in the attic. Almost all. But stained price tickets . . . What am I remembering?’

  ‘Nothing much apparently,’ Alec said.

  ‘I wonder if they’re still there,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and see.’

  ‘What for?’ said Alec, like a whining child who does not want to go shopping.

  ‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ I said. ‘I know! It annoys me too, but I can’t help it. This case isn’t over yet, Alec. I feel it in my bones.’

  13

  Ferguson the doorman gave me his everyday cheerful smile but it died on his lips a bit when he fully recognised who I was and remembered all the matters he would rather forget that seeing me brought back to his mind.

  ‘I feel like the bad fairy at the christening in here
now,’ I said. ‘I’ve just ruined that poor man’s day.’

  ‘How?’ said Alec. ‘You passed him without a word.’

  ‘The very sight of me brings back painful memories,’ I said. ‘I quizzed him about what he might have heard during Mirren’s funeral when Dugald fell down the lift shaft and somehow made him feel that he should have stepped in and saved the boy.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Alec said. ‘He’d never have heard noises from the lift shaft from out on the street with the doors closed behind him.’

  ‘He wasn’t outside,’ I said. ‘The store was closed, remember. He was sitting in the foyer, on one of those seats where I sat down after almost swooning.’

  Alec stopped walking abruptly.

  ‘You never told me that,’ he said. He looked back the way we had come and then moved around one of the Haberdashery counters so that both the front door with its row of seats and the lift, cordoned off with a black rope now, were in view.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘He was sitting there?’ Alec said, pointing. ‘And he didn’t hear a lad falling down the lift shaft there? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, but indeed standing here at the halfway point it did not seem like much of a distance at all. ‘He is slightly hard of hearing,’ I offered, looking over at the doorman who was ushering a customer out of the store with her parcels and tipping his hat at her.

  ‘You mean actually deaf or just “not so young as once he was”?’ asked Alec.

  ‘Well, certainly he didn’t have any difficulty hearing me when we spoke,’ I said. ‘Out on the street, with carts and trams going by. But there surely wouldn’t be much to hear so long as Dugald didn’t yell or make any loud noises of that sort—’

  ‘Didn’t yell?’ said Alec. ‘Are you mad, Dandy? He’d scream his lungs out of his chest. He’d howl like a banshee.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Alec gave me that very hard look that says I should not inquire any further. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Even if he had chosen to jump?’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t that be different from being shoved or falling?’ Alec was shaking his head as vehemently as he possibly could and his lips were pressed firmly together.

  ‘Makes not a blind bit of difference,’ he said. ‘It’s a reflex. It’s an animal instinct. Horses are just the same.’

  ‘So Dugald would definitely have been heard,’ I said. I looked back at the doorman again. ‘What does that mean? Is Ferguson lying?’

  ‘Either that or the time’s wrong, and the old boy wasn’t in the store when it happened after all.’

  ‘The doctor seemed pretty sure about the timing.’

  ‘It always bothered me, actually,’ Alec said. ‘It seemed off, somehow, that Dugald should jump during Mirren’s funeral. I’d have thought he’d either do it straight away, as soon as he knew she was dead, or he’d wait until afterwards, visit her grave, do it there, even. Why would he so conveniently jump during the ceremony and why here?’

  ‘Because she died here, obviously,’ I said.

  ‘And how did he get in?’

  ‘I don’t know. Actually, now that you mention it, that bothered me too. Off and on anyway. Only there was so much else to think about.’

  ‘Such as when was he told about Mirren’s death and who told him and where he went when he left Kelso and . . . we’ve rather neglected him, haven’t we?’ Alec was giving me one of his stern looks.

  ‘You thought the case was tied up in a bow half an hour ago,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Before I knew you’d let such a clanger of a discrepancy go past you,’ he retorted.

  ‘So let’s interview Ferguson again,’ I said, giving a sigh I hoped would express my admirable forbearance when he was being so tiresome. ‘See if perhaps he stepped away for a moment.’

  ‘Or the doctor,’ Alec said. ‘See if he worked backwards instead of forwards.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ask if he thought to himself: well, he died before everyone came back to the store and no one heard anything so it must have been when the store was empty. Quick look at the body; yes, that’ll do. Two thirty and Bob’s your uncle.’ I was shaking my head at him.

  ‘Granted, darling, I missed a tiny little trick about the doorman because I didn’t know that people instinctively shout out while they’re falling, but I’m sure the doctor is much more scrupulous than me. I overheard the first report, remember. He had done a proper examination, listed all the injuries, and he was working from the temperature of the body in its surroundings.’

  ‘Doorman it is then,’ Alec said.

  ‘Lying for someone?’ I asked. ‘Bought off by a murderer? Because if the doorman’s covering something up it’s got to be murder, hasn’t it? He’s hardly likely to have taken a fiver from Dugald to let him in and ignore his dying screams.’ I turned and looked at the revolving door. Only the man’s uniform sleeve was visible as he spun the contraption from outside on the pavement. I could not believe that that man, who turned down his wireless when his wife asked him to, could be party to a murder. ‘And I’m sure it’s not Mary he’s lying for. She was completely taken by surprise when I asked about Dugald. It was the furthest thing from her mind.’

  ‘It might take care of your gloves,’ said Alec. ‘We’re sure Mirren killed herself, aren’t we? So hidden gloves are nothing to do with her death. They might just have something to do with Dugald’s.’

  ‘They might be something to do with someone having to move a dead pigeon six months ago,’ I said. Alec said nothing. ‘How about this?’ I went on. ‘Let’s go up to the attics and if those gloves are gone, I’ll take that as evidence of someone mucking around up there and trying to hide the fact that they’d done so. And I’ll accept that it might have been when Dugald died and then I’ll consent to grilling the doorman.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Alec. ‘Lead the way.’

  We made for the back stairs, passing Miss Armstrong of Stationery on the way, who hallooed when she saw me and called out that she had a mock-up ready for my inspection.

  ‘Not today, Miss Armstrong,’ I said, sailing past.

  Miss Torrance of Gloves gave me a mournful wave; the news of Mary’s collapse must have gone around the staff already.

  ‘Aitkens’ will never survive without Mrs Ninian,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t say that, Miss Torrance,’ I protested – although, privately, I agreed. ‘There’s Mr Jack to take up the reins.’

  ‘We need a woman’s touch,’ Miss Torrance said. ‘Did you go “down the street” for your mousquetaires?’ She had lowered her voice. ‘Then you’d see what I mean. A woman’s touch.’

  ‘Well, perhaps Mrs Jack when she gets back on her feet again,’ I said with no conviction. ‘Or Mrs John even.’ This last suggestion met with a look of such frank incredulity that I felt a pang for poor Bella. Right enough, though, a woman who could not be sure of two matching stockings on her own legs could hardly arrange three floors of merchandise into a tempting array.

  We loitered at the back corner, pretending to inspect a coloured catalogue of headbands and tiaras which stood on an oak and brass lectern in a kind of little bower with a brown horsehair chair and a brass cheval-glass.

  ‘What is this?’ Alec said.

  ‘I think one’s supposed to choose a model and then sit here and admire it,’ I replied, thinking with fondness of the pink and white Millinery Department at Hepburns’.

  ‘You know what, Dandy,’ Alec said, looking around. ‘I do disapprove of the way they treat menfolk but otherwise I think House Of might have the edge.’

  ‘Just possibly,’ I said, drily. ‘Right, no one’s looking. Let’s go.’

  Inside the stairwell all was quiet, all was dim, and we crept right up to the attic floor without interruptions or meetings. It was not a good sign, to my mind. The lift was hors de combat and by rights this stairway should have been bustling. I did not give Aitkens’ much chance after all the sca
ndals and with its rightful queen laid low.

  ‘So which way are the shoeboxes?’ Alec said, when we were out on the landing. The lily wreath was gone and only the patch of new white paint marked the spot where Mirren had died now.

  ‘Let’s go and get a lantern,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I’ll find them quite easily.’

  My words jinxed our chances, of course, as they always do. Lantern in hand, I set off on a backwards route through the attics, expecting to find the room of shoeboxes right away, but somehow I came upon Mirren’s hidey-hole first. Alec looked around, shaking his head.

  ‘I wonder if this is the same room Jack and Hilda used to meet in,’ he said. ‘Come on, Dandy. It must be somewhere: concentrate, darling.’

  I opened another door, looked in and shook my head.

  ‘This is the wormy tables and— Hello! Someone’s been up and tidied the quilts.’

  ‘What?’ said Alec, distractedly. I had entered the room properly now. The heap of shiny eiderdowns which had been stuffed all anyhow in and around the card-wrapped table legs was now a neatish pile stacked in an orderly way with the corners of the quilts poking out from under the table-top.

  ‘And the price tickets are gone too,’ I said.

  ‘The stained ones you mentioned?’ said Alec. ‘Do you think that’s significant?’

  ‘No, these tickets weren’t stained,’ I said. I went over and traced my hand up and down the pile, feeling the slippery satin of the covers and the slightly damp and clumped feeling of the feathers inside. ‘Mary didn’t make this pile of quilts. I can tell you that much.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because if she had the edges would be facing the other way and the folds would be to the front. I watched her tidying sheets when she was upset and close to tears and the pile she produced was perfect. It was second nature.’