‘Someone else then,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps they always stuff things up here and then take the tickets off when they get around to tidying.’ I nodded. There was something moving in the back of my mind. These quilts and Mary tidying the pile and the nurse in the side-room. I shook my head and turned away.
‘Gloves!’ I said and strode off, hoping that an air of purpose would bring the room to me like Mohammed’s mountain. Sure enough, not much later we found it.
‘I’ll bet they’ve gone,’ I said from the door. ‘They were in that top box here.’ I walked towards it. ‘This one. And it wasn’t properly closed.’ I unwound the little string from the cleat and prised off the shoebox lid. Inside were the two chamois bags and no sign of the gloves at all. ‘Better check a few more but I’m sure it was this one.’
As Alec fiddled with the lids I stood thinking, chasing that wisp of an idea round the back regions of my memory like a housewife going after a mouse with her broom.
‘Shame about these shoes,’ Alec said. He was holding one up – a high-heeled evening slipper of plum-coloured kid with a glittering gilt buckle. The buckle was rusty and there was bloom of mould on the kid too. ‘Shame the boxes aren’t sturdier, I mean. There’s water been getting in here. Or damp, anyway.’
‘Water,’ I said.
‘Or damp.’
‘Water bottles. Hot water bottles, Alec, let’s find them.’
I could not remember where in the exuberant chaos of Aitkens’ attics the hot water bottles had been and so we just circled around, opening door after door until my head at least – Alec kept his own counsel – was whirling.
‘Ah!’ I said, when we opened a door and saw a profusion of plaster limbs. ‘I think they might be near here. With marmalade.’ Alec had gone on ahead.
‘Twenty-five tins, dangerously blown, masochists, for the use of,’ he called back. ‘Here’s marmalade anyway. And, yes – eureka! – water bottles. Quite a lot of them.’
‘With the price tickets gone,’ I said, joining him and crouching down beside the heap of India-rubber water bags. Their stoppers were in now, but I unscrewed one and tipped it up. Some drops of brownish water fell out onto the floor.
‘Something wrong with their insides to turn the water that colour,’ Alec said. I sniffed the open neck of the bottle and then gave it to him to do the same.
‘It’s not water,’ I said. ‘It’s tea.’
Alec stared, sniffed again, and nodded.
‘India tea,’ I said. ‘If you don’t interrupt me and I concentrate very hard I think I might be able to explain everything.’ I sat back on my heels, took a deep breath and began. ‘On the day of Mirren’s funeral but well before it, when the store was empty, Dugald Hepburn came here to meet someone, to see the place where Mirren died. And that someone took gloves from the shop floor to guard against fingerprints and shoved him down the lift shaft. Then that same someone took a whole display of eiderdowns from the Household Department and covered the body. Then took a load of bottles and filled them with the only ready supply of hot liquid – the contents of the tea urn – draining it to the bottom and burning the element. The bottles were put around the body too so that after the funeral it was still nice and warm for the doctor coming.’
‘Mary after all,’ Alec said. ‘You said she was in a spin about the lift man coming.’
‘No, Alec, you’ve got it completely upside down,’ I said. ‘The lift man had to come and find the body quickly so that the doctor could be here before it had cooled down. Mary was the one being normal. Mary thought it was hideous to have the lift mended on such a day. And besides, Mary complained about the sheets being where the eiderdowns belonged, with not a thought about drawing my attention that way. And Mary is competent to the core. The person who did this is clumsy and haphazard and was very keen to get the lift man here.’
‘Bella,’ Alec said.
‘Bella,’ I agreed. ‘I remember thinking at the time how odd it was that they seemed to have swapped roles. One sister-in-law all gone to pieces and the other suddenly taking charge and getting things done. She said she’d get the lift up to the top floor and jam it there. She was the one who had the chance to take the quilts and hot bottles off and get them away out of sight.’ Alec was beginning to nod. ‘And she did a pretty shoddy job of it. Spilled tea all over the labels and stuffed the quilts away in a mess. Even when she came to tidy up, she couldn’t make the neat job of it that Mary would have. And Mary wouldn’t have burnt out the urn.’
‘That woman downstairs just said as much, didn’t she? There’s no one to take the place of Mrs Ninian.’
‘Bella stepping in was a special event,’ I said. ‘A one-day-only offer.’
‘When did she come back then?’ Alec said.
I thought for a minute or two. ‘The day Mary collapsed,’ I said. ‘She was out, remember. She was at the store, ostensibly thanking the staff, actually up here kicking over her traces.’
‘No wonder she’s gone so badly to pieces about Mary then,’ Alec said. ‘Guilt. Because of course she must think it’s the deaths that overwhelmed Mary. She can’t possibly know about the rest of it.’
I put the stopper back into the bottle I had been holding and placed it carefully on the top of the slippery pile of them.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t know about all the . . . bed-hopping, I suppose is the only word . . . the labyrinthine family trees of the Aitkens and Hepburns. Bella doesn’t know any of the secrets.’ We looked at one another, an uneasy glance.
‘So why did she do it?’ Alec said.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘And unless we come up with a motive, no one will believe she did. Who’s going to listen to hot water bottles and eiderdowns and gloves?’
‘But she did do it, didn’t she? She must have. She was the one who summoned the lift-mending man.’
‘But even that could be argued away,’ I said. ‘The lift was in a very bad state. Everyone agreed. No one was taking Bella’s word for it.’
‘Maybe she nobbled it then,’ Alec said. ‘Maybe she was surprised it was working at all. She meant it to be broken down completely when everyone got back. In fact, maybe she left it up at the attics and she was horrified to arrive and find it trundling up and down with the body all wrapped up in quilts and hot bottles just above people’s heads. Imagine if someone had opened the hatch to see what the funny noise was and found him there?’
‘If it was nobbled surely there would have been signs of mischief,’ I said
‘Let’s go and ask Mr Laming,’ said Alec. ‘See if he noticed anything strange.’
Laming’s Engineering: heavy machinery repair and maintenance and small engine specialists – which seemed to cover everything – was housed in a yard up a rough lane behind Mr Laming’s house, which was out of town beyond the linen works. Mr Laming and the gormless boy were both there, bending with great concentration over a large lump of oily black metal – an engine, I supposed – laid on their work bench like a patient on a surgeon’s table.
‘May we interrupt you?’ Alec said. ‘Just a question or two.’
‘Again!’ said Mr Laming, straightening up and resettling his cap. ‘I’ve just tellt the lad all I ken and I cannae do more.’
‘Which lad?’ I said. ‘All you know about what? It’s Aitkens’ we’re interested in.’
‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Mr Laming. ‘Hector, away you in and get a piece and cuppy. I’ll shout you back oot when I need you.’
‘I’ve had an extra piece already, Paw,’ said Hector, ‘when thon polis wis here. I’ll no be fit for ma dinner.’
‘Well, you can go and run aboot till yer appetite’s back after this yin,’ said his father. ‘Gawn!’
‘The police,’ I said when the boy was gone. ‘The lad? Let me guess: Constable McCann?’ Mr Laming nodded. ‘I knew he was a bright boy,’ I said. ‘Well, well. So he’s been digging around too.’
‘What did he ask you, Mr Laming?’ Alec said.
‘He tellt me to keep it to myself,’ said the man. ‘He was on his ain time.’
‘Let me put it another way,’ Alec said. ‘What we’d like to ask you is what was wrong with Aitkens’ lift. Did you ever get to find out? Did you go back to it once the police had been and gone?’
‘Because,’ I chipped in, ‘we suspect it might have been tampered with. Nobbled, you know.’ Mr Laming gave me a grin, his false teeth dazzling in his grimy face.
‘You’re no’ so dusty either, missus,’ he said. ‘The boy McCann was just asking; he’d not guessed it for himself.’ I kept my beam of pride down to a reasonable wattage, and he went on. ‘Porridge oats,’ he said. ‘Fine oatmeal in the pulley wheel. I’ve seen bran before now.’
‘Presumably,’ I said, ‘Aitkens’ food hall doesn’t carry bran.’
‘Bran would like have made a better job,’ said Mr Laming. ‘Stopped the pulley deid, or made the rope jump.’
‘My God,’ I said. ‘The rope might have jumped?’ I remembered Lynne and me going up in the lift that day, listening to the creaks, and how it lurched an inch down once she had stopped it.
‘And she left it in that state when all the staff were coming along to the party.’ Alec’s face was pale
‘Aye, but there’s clamps that stop it dropping if the ropes go,’ Laming said. ‘It’s a grand bit o’ engineering that lift, for all it’s an auld cuddy noo.’
He failed, though, to comfort us and a rising tide of anger helped to carry us back through the town to Abbey Park Place and would perhaps have seen us storm in, find Bella and shake her by the shoulders until she confessed, but on the pavement outside the garden wall, our onward charge was interrupted by young Constable McCann. He was in his uniform now, evidently working on his own time no more, but had none of his brother officers with him. His eyes opened very wide when he saw us and then his rather stricken-looking face broke into a grin.
‘Grand!’ he said. ‘I came on my own instead of tipping the wink to the boss cos I was thinkin’ how come should I hand it all over and watch him get the glory. But I’ll tell you this for nothin’, I’m glad to have a wee bit at my back just the same.’
‘You’re going to arrest her?’ said Alec.
‘My first arrest,’ said McCann, squaring his shoulders. ‘Unless you count market night drinkin’ and fightin’ after dances anyway.’
I felt rather splendid as we set off up the drive, Alec and I flanking young McCann, but had begun to feel ridiculous and more than a little twitchy before we had climbed the steps and pulled the doorbell, not to mention the mounting feeling of unease at what we were about to visit upon an elderly lady whom I had never seen being anything but amusing and friendly. I tried to remind myself of Dugald Hepburn’s face disappearing down into the darkness out of view that day.
Trusslove’s smile of welcome died on his face as he looked around the three of us.
‘Not suicide then,’ he said. I shook my head and he half-turned towards the interior of the house, his grip on the door tightening as though he meant to bar our way. Then he let go and pushed the door wide.
‘Who?’ he said. ‘Surely not Mrs Ninian. Not as she is now. You couldn’t.’
‘It’s Bella, Trusslove,’ said Alec. ‘Mrs John – if you wouldn’t mind fetching her.’
‘She’s sitting at the bedside,’ Trusslove said. ‘She’s never away from it.’
‘Tryin’ to atone,’ said McCann.
Trusslove shook his head and ushered us into the library to wait.
‘And are you quite sure?’ he said, as we walked. Alec and McCann had gone ahead and Trusslove and I fell in naturally together. ‘How could she do such a thing?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘And I don’t know why either. That’s one of the things I want to ask her. Trusslove, you will just tell her that someone wants to see her, won’t you? You’re not going to warn her?’
He certainly did not warn her; Bella Aitken, when she swept into the room minutes later to see the three of us standing there, was almost her old self again, shoulders back, arms swinging, large feet turned out. She stopped and put her hands on her hips, frowning. Trusslove slipped in behind her and closed the door.
‘I’m sorry aboot this, Mrs Aitken,’ said Constable McCann. ‘But I need to ask you to come along with me.’
Bella took a couple of deep breaths in and out, with her lips pressed hard together. Then she nodded.
‘It was always going to be a risk,’ she said. ‘I knew that. What was it that undid me?’
‘The oats,’ said Alec.
‘Oats?’ said Trusslove, wonderingly.
‘And the gloves,’ I said. ‘The hot bottles and quilts and the tea urn.’
‘Lord, you really have seen through me,’ Bella said. ‘I thought I was being so clever.’
‘What have quilts and tea got to do with shooting Miss Mirren?’ said Trusslove.
Bella rounded on him. ‘How dare you!’ she said. ‘How could you think such a thing? It was the boy, you fool. Only the boy. I could never have harmed a hair on Mirren’s head. She was my grandchild. What kind of monster do you think I am?’
Of course, Mirren was not Bella’s grandchild and she had indeed murdered her own flesh and blood when she pushed Dugald Hepburn down the lift shaft. But if she did not know that, then what part of the web of secrets was it that led her to murder at all?
‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said, ‘can I ask you why you did it?’
‘What?’ said Bella. ‘What do you mean, why?’
Constable McCann was frowning at me too. I glanced at Alec, but he only shrugged.
‘We cannae really stand around chatting,’ said McCann. ‘Mrs Aitken, if you’ll come quietly I’d be greatly obliged. I dinnae want a scene and a load of trouble.’
‘Of course,’ Bella said. ‘I don’t want trouble either. Mary’s sleeping.’
Alec and I left quietly too, McCann asking us in a whisper if we would meet him after his shift so he could say a proper thank you. And so we were parked at the end of his street, at five o’clock as waves of men and boys in their overalls and caps, women and girls in their rough aprons and headscarves, returned soiled and weary from the works to the long rows of little terraced houses, their boots and clogs on the dry packed road making one think a beaten infantry was retreating. There was no sign of young McCann among them for the longest time, until at almost six, when I had sunk into a torporous near doze, Alec sat up suddenly waking both me and Bunty.
‘Hello, hello!’ he said. ‘Here he comes, Dandy.’
Down the street, still in his uniform, came Constable McCann, looking like a man who had just won fifty pounds on the derby. I leapt out of the motorcar and hurried to meet them.
‘All done and dusted,’ he said. ‘Away you come in and get some tea then, and I’ll tell you the finish o’ it.’
Mrs McCann, a born hostess, took only a minute to greet us, survey her pots and pans and quickly reconfigure tea into a meal for seven instead of five. There were ten sausages frying in a pan – three each for the men, two for mother and one apiece for the small sisters already at the table – which she quickly chopped into pieces with a bread knife. She added the boiled potatoes to them, turned up the gas to brown the edges, shredded a spare half-cabbage and started frying bread. By the time the constable had been upstairs to shed his tunic and returned again, seven brimming plates and seven brimming tea mugs were waiting. Mrs McCann banged a wooden spoon on the kitchen wall, which brought her husband from the parlour in his slippers with his newspaper tucked under one arm.
‘Company, Faither,’ she said and her husband discarded the newspaper and took off his cap before sitting.
The smaller sister said grace and all eight of us – I include Bunty, to whom I fed a piece of sausage until I had tasted another and found out how delicious they were (after which she had to get by with bread) – tucked in.
‘So what’s the occasion?’ said Mr McCann with a glance at Alec and m
e.
‘I’ve made an arrest,’ said his son. ‘A big one.’
‘What’s a rest?’ said the smaller of the two sisters. Her mother swiftly made two fried bread sandwiches out of her daughters’ remaining dinners, handed one to each of them and sent them outside.
‘And nae fightin’ and finish yer greens and I’ll check the midden,’ she called after them.
‘Bella Aitken,’ said McCann when his sisters were well gone. ‘For murder, Mammy. She killt the Hepburn boy.’
‘She nivver did,’ said his father, struck to stone with a forkful of potato halfway between plate and mouth.
‘She did,’ McCann said. ‘She got him on the phone and lured him back to toon here, said she had something to tell him. Oh, it all came pouring oot when I got her started. She met him in Aitkens’ the day o’ the lass’s funeral and she shoved him doon the lift shaft where they found him.’
‘That doctor one wants a skelp then,’ said Mrs McCann. ‘I thocht you said it all happened when folk were in the Abbey. How did she get away to do all that without anybody seeing?’
‘I can take up the tale for this bit, Mrs McCann,’ I said, and I recounted the details of the hot water bottles, the quilts, the tea, the gloves and the call to Laming.
‘Porridge oats, she had worked into the lift doings,’ McCann finished up.
‘In the pulley or in the engine?’ said his father. ‘I hope in the pulley just, or that’s a waste of a guid machine.’ I met his wife’s eye and we shared the same thought: with a boy dead the lift hardly mattered.
‘See that’s where you’ve got the spurt on me,’ said young McCann. ‘I couldnae go in and out of Aitkens’ Emporium and slip roond the back like that.’ I smiled and forbore to point out that he could, however, march into Abbey Park, arrest Bella Aitken and take her to jail.
‘But you did better than us with the motive,’ I said. ‘We know she did it but we haven’t been able to guess why.’
‘I couldnae credit you asking her why,’ said McCann, shaking his head. ‘Why wis the easy bit.’ Alec and I shared a glance.
Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder Page 29