Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder Read online

  ‘We think she’s eloped,’ the other went on. ‘I’m sure she has.’

  I felt a flush blooming in my cheeks now, but not a flush of embarrassment at the woman’s coarseness, rather one of anger.

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘In that case, I’m afraid I shan’t be able to help you, ladies. I’m not that sort of a detective.’

  Then all three of us jumped.

  ‘I don’t know what sort of detective you think you are,’ said a voice. Someone had entered the room and come right up beside us without being heard. ‘What are you doing here?’ She was a woman in her seventies, I guessed, very small and neat, encased from neck to knee in a column of the stiffest, tightest, blackest imaginable bombazine, which made her look like a downpipe. Her white hair was arranged on her head in up-to-the minute style – a spiral of flat coils like seaweed at low tide – and on her breast, heaving hard against the restrictions of her costume, was a pair of spectacles on a black ribbon.

  ‘Mother!’ said Abigail. ‘You asked Mrs Gilver to come. I saw the card you wrote out to her.’

  ‘I asked Mrs Gilver to come tomorrow,’ said the new arrival. ‘When I would have been looking out for her, to greet her and enter the private discussion to which I thought my invitation would entitle me.’ Her voice was icy, her vowels constricted by rage and refinement.

  I took the – by now rather battered – little postcard back out of my bag and held it out to her.

  ‘Eleven o’clock in the morning on the twenty-fifth of May,’ I said. She flicked it a glance and drew herself up to her insignificant but somehow still very impressive height. Or perhaps it was just the bombazine; her dress was quite ludicrously tight, like a horse bandage.

  ‘You’re a whole day early,’ she said.

  I looked at the card again.

  ‘It’s quite clear, Mrs . . .’

  ‘Aitken,’ she said. ‘Mrs Ninian Lennox Aitken.’ I frowned and turned to look at her daughter. ‘My husband was John Aitken’s elder brother.’ John Aitken’s widow rolled her eyes; at the ‘elder’, I guessed, and since it seemed that both men were dead it was rather pointless still to mark precedence between them. ‘I seem to have made a mistake with the date.’ She coloured and her hand rose to the collar of her dress and fluttered there. ‘Understandable at such an anxious time. I meant the twenty-sixth. And today is not suitable at all.’

  ‘Anyway, you just said you wouldn’t touch it with a pole,’ said her sister-in-law, stubbing out her cigarette on the sole of her slipper. ‘I don’t blame you. Anyone can see you weren’t brought up to go grubbing round guesthouses checking the register.’

  ‘Mirren did not elope,’ said the senior Mrs Aitken, Mrs Ninian I shall have to call her, following family tradition, if I am ever to keep them all in order. ‘I can guarantee it.’

  ‘As can I,’ said Abigail very faintly. Her mother glanced at her but said nothing.

  ‘Well then, time might well be of the essence, mightn’t it?’ I said, wondering at a grandmother who would send off a postcard to a detective so hastily that she made a mistake on it but delay the start of the searching.

  ‘Yes, but today,’ said Mrs John, then she lay back in her chair and twirled her string of beads like a propeller. ‘Lord, it’s like a comic operetta.’

  ‘Today is our golden jubilee,’ said Mrs Ninian, and she spat the words out as I am sure they have never been spat before, not being made for spitting. ‘Aitkens’ is fifty today, Mrs Gilver.’ She gave me a smile so swift and unconvincing that it was more like the flick of a lizard’s tongue to catch a fly than an expression of any human emotion. ‘And we owe it to the memories of John and Ninian not to let that little minx spoil it for everyone.’

  2

  ‘Ah,’ I said, nodding. ‘A jubilee. I thought there was something in the air.’

  ‘Festivities begin at one o’clock,’ said Mrs Ninian. She threw a look towards her daughter. ‘One sharp, Abigail.’

  Again it took a moment for young Mrs Jack to grasp the fact that she was being spoken to and then another to comprehend the words. Eventually, though, she shook her head.

  ‘I can’t, Mother,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you understand that? I can’t go.’

  ‘You must,’ said Mrs Ninian, her words more clipped than ever. ‘I will not thole this day being spoiled. We have gone to a great deal of trouble and expense, Abigail. The Provost is making a speech. Our very best customers have been invited. Lady Lawson is coming. And a photographer from the Herald— Oh, stop shaking your head that way, you stupid girl. And stop that idiotic moaning. You’re like a lowing cow!’

  ‘Mary!’ Bella had risen from her chair and stepped in between the two women with one hand out towards her sister-in-law in the manner of a policeman holding up traffic and one hand reaching back towards her daughter-in-law as though to cup her cheek or stroke her shoulder.

  In times gone by, I should not have known – as my maid Grant says – ‘where to put myself’. Things being what they were these days, of course, I watched all three of them with my piercing detective’s eye, wondering how the disappearance of a girl could produce three such very different reactions amongst a mother and two grandmothers, one fondly exasperated, one faint with terror and one so angry that I almost expected steam to hiss from her ears.

  ‘Abby dear,’ Bella went on, turning her back on the black pillar of fury and kneeling in front of Abigail, with some effort and some cracking at the knees, ‘listen to me. Mirren will be fine. She’ll turn up again. All will be well.’

  Abigail lifted her head at these soothing words.

  ‘There,’ said Bella. ‘That’s better. Now, come along and get ready like a good girl. Mirren wouldn’t want you to miss the frolics.’ She sat back on her heels and smiled. ‘We’ll laugh about all this one day, you’ll see. One of Mirren’s children will ask how Mummy and Daddy met and we’ll regale them with the scandalous tale. Abby!’

  Abigail had surged to her feet and now pushed past her mother-in-law, knocking the old lady off balance and landing her on the hard floor with a thump. She stumbled towards the door and would have fled had not at that moment a man appeared there and gripped her firmly around the upper arms.

  ‘What the devil?’ he said.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ said Abigail, burying her face against his chest. ‘I can’t go. I can’t face everyone. Tell them. They can’t make me.’

  ‘This is my nephew, Jack,’ said Mrs Ninian. I nodded, having guessed as much, but could not help feeling some surprise at her choice of words. Surely it was unseemly to advertise the very close connection quite so baldly, especially when the cousins were, as at the present moment, in one another’s arms. Or perhaps it was unremarkable to the Aitkens by now.

  Jack Aitken looked at me with some interest, clearly wondering who I was, pitched into the middle of the family drama this way, then turned his wife back towards the room and, with one arm around her shoulder and the other hand patting one of hers, brought her towards us again.

  ‘Silly!’ he said. ‘No one knows yet. Of course you can “face them”. We’ll say Mirren has a cold.’

  ‘I don’t know why you say no one knows “yet”, Jack,’ said Mrs Ninian. ‘There’s no reason for anyone to find out at all. Ever.’

  ‘We won’t be able to hide a marriage,’ said Bella. ‘It’ll get out in the end. And even if they never came back, people would put two and two together. Stands to reason.’

  Mrs Ninian twitched her head at that, shaking off the notion as a horse would a fly, but it was Jack Aitken’s reaction which interested me. He spoke to his mother in a light voice and with another of the fond smiles he had been bestowing on his trembling wife.

  ‘You might have been that kind of girl in your day, Mother.’ Bella Aitken gave a bark of laughter. ‘But not my little Mirren. She would never do such a thing to her mother and me.’

  And yet I found him not the least bit convincing. He sounded enough like the juvenile lead in a drawing-room comedy and, w
ith his sleek hair and fine features, he even looked quite like one – a middle-aged sort of juvenile lead, as one finds in repertory companies of the second and third tier – but there was a slick of sweat on his upper lip and the hand gripping Abigail’s shoulder was as tense as a claw. Also, like a third-rate actor, he had made a mistake with his delivery.

  ‘But if you don’t think Mirren has eloped, Mr Aitken,’ I said, pouncing on the error, ‘what do you think she has done?’ He frowned. ‘Or do you agree with your wife? That something has been done to her?’

  I had the gratification of seeing Jack Aitken freeze.

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ I said. ‘My name is Dandy Gilver and I’m a private detective. Mrs Aitken engaged me but of course I shall be working on behalf of all of you who are hoping for Mirren’s safe return.’ Wicked of me – that ‘Mrs Aitken’. The poor man’s eyes rolled around the three women like billiard balls after a clumsy break.

  At that moment, the butler, Trusslove, entered the room already drawing breath to speak. He hesitated upon seeing the tableau – the Jack Aitkens embracing, Mrs John still on the floor, Mrs Ninian glaring poison darts at me – but only for a second or two.

  ‘Light refreshments in the garden room, madam,’ he said. ‘As ordered. I’ve set a place for Mrs Gilver, naturally.’

  They could hardly get rid of me – they dared not even try – but their longing to and their hiding it hung over the garden room like a black rain cloud so that, of the four of them, only Bella, Mrs John, made a good meal, forking thick slices of ham onto her plate and demolishing ripe tomatoes in the most sensible way, by popping them whole into her mouth and munching. The other three picked and nibbled, sipped barley water and fiddled with their napkins. At least Mr and Mrs Jack did. Mary, Mrs Ninian, picked and nibbled and stared at me. For my part, I ate just enough to excite no attention (as Nanny Palmer had trained me to do) sitting in polite silence for just the proper length of time before I began speaking.

  ‘The obvious first question,’ I said, ‘is who it is you’re so sure she hasn’t eloped with.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Bella said. ‘I think she has.’ Abigail picked up her barley water glass and her hand shook so badly as she did so that a little of it spilled onto the tablecloth. She stared at the blot, watching it spreading. Her mother tutted and I saw her push a hand up under the cloth, checking that the table protector was there.

  ‘And who is the man?’ I persisted.

  ‘A mere boy,’ said Jack. ‘And Mirren such a child herself.’

  ‘A most unsuitable family,’ said Mary. ‘Really quite unthinkable.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said and turned. ‘You don’t agree, Mrs Aitken?’

  ‘I’ve nothing against any of them,’ Bella said. ‘And Dugald himself—’

  ‘They have a shameful secret,’ said Mary, drowning her out. ‘Bad blood, Mrs Gilver. Weak blood. Not suitable talk for the dinner table. Luncheon, either.’ She flushed and cleared her throat, hoping to hide the slip.

  ‘Oh Mary,’ said Bella again. ‘There’s nothing shameful about it. All families have their black sheep. Look at the Tsars of Russia! Look at Prince John! And you could say as much about the Aitkens if you had that turn of mind as you can about the Hepburns any day.’

  ‘Hepburns?’ I said. ‘Hepburn as in—?’

  ‘Drapers,’ said Mary, as though she were saying ‘vermin’. ‘They’ve opened up a little shop at the bottom of the High Street. Opposite the police station.’

  I said nothing to that. House of Hepburn was perhaps more modest than Aitkens’ Emporium, but it was still a sizeable enterprise, and to my eyes it had looked as solidly established as the Emporium any day.

  ‘It was getting on for twenty years ago, Mary,’ Bella said, rolling her eyes at me and not troubling to hide the fact from her sister-in-law. ‘And as for “drapers”, let he who is without . . .’

  ‘Ninian was a tailor,’ said Mary. ‘John was a businessman as much as any banker. And Aitkens’ in case you have forgotten celebrates fifty years today.’ She snapped round to face me and gave me the old on-and-off-again smile. ‘I hope we can persuade you to join us for the celebrations, Mrs Gilver.’

  ‘Mother,’ said Abigail, speaking for the first time. ‘Mrs Gilver isn’t here to toast Aitkens’. The sooner she starts looking for Mirren . . .’ Then, saying her daughter’s name, she ran down like an unwound clock and returned to silence.

  ‘I’d be delighted to come,’ I said, for I had been plotting.

  When we had finished our coffee I turned to Bella.

  ‘Can you direct me to a telephone, Mrs Aitken?’ I heard the creak of bombazine as Mrs Ninian stiffened beside me.

  ‘Certainly,’ Bella said. ‘Nearest one’s in the morning room.’ She clicked her tongue and then went on: ‘Easiest way is out into the garden, up to the drive, back in the front door and it’s first left.’

  I rose and made my purposeful way to the open french windows. (We were down on the basement floor in a room I guessed to be directly below the library, and I was grateful for the directions; I should never have found my way back through the passages of the house and might have had trouble getting rid of whoever volunteered to guide me.)

  Before I was quite out of the room, Mary cleared her throat.

  ‘Who are you—?’ she began. ‘That is, are you—? Are you going to ring the police?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I said, ‘but would you like me to?’

  Various sounds emerged from all of them then and I made my escape.

  You deserve to be spanked with your hairbrush, Dandelion, I told myself as I scrambled up the grassy slope to the gravel. The front door was open and I marched straight in.

  Thankfully Alec was at home but I had a measure of listening to do before I got the chance to start talking.

  ‘Hah!’ he said. ‘Well, then. See? What did I tell you? And so here you are, a matter of hours later, cap in hand, humbly begging.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I agreed. ‘Beg beg. But I couldn’t have brought you. She wrote to me, just to me, and it would have looked dreadful to have pitched up with a burly sidekick.’

  The ‘burly’ mollified him a little.

  ‘Still, Dandy,’ he said, ‘we might like to put this thing on a proper footing someday. Or I’m always going to be ten steps behind you.’

  ‘Hm,’ I answered, thinking that if we did have cards made up or put ourselves in the Post Office Directory as Mrs Gilver and Mr Osborne, the world being what it was, Mr Osborne would have cases coming out of his pipe and Mrs Gilver would be reduced to making up invoices and filing. (Not that any of our cases had ever produced much to be filed. What is it that people who file file, I wonder?) ‘You’ll be ten steps ahead before today’s out if you’ll shut up and listen.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ Alec said.

  And so I told him about Mirren Aitken of Aitkens’ Emporium and how she had fallen in love with Dugald Hepburn of House of Hepburn and how the Aitkens had refused to countenance such miscegenation, such soiling of the good name of Aitken with such upstarts, and such poor stock, with such shameful secrets they could not be spoken of, and how the Aitken obduracy had driven Mirren away from her home into the cold, cruel world.

  Alec was silent when I finished.

  ‘So she’s run off with him,’ he said. ‘What are we supposed to do about it? It’s her father’s job to stand over the boy with a shotgun.’

  ‘Yes, but listen,’ I said. ‘Of the four Aitkens I’ve met this morning only her paternal grandmother agrees with you. Her mother – Abigail – seems convinced that the girl is in some kind of peril – no, not that kind; stop snorting – and her father is, I am sure, just as rattled but he’s trying to hide it and bungling the attempt so that nothing about his demeanour makes any sense at all.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘The other grandmother,’ I went on, ignoring him, ‘the one who sent me the card, is furious. White with suppressed rage. And – here’s the th
ing, Alec – she wanted me to come tomorrow. Not today. She was livid that I’d come today. Even livider that I spoke to her daughter and the other granny, as if some wonderful plan has got away from her and she can’t get it back again.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘So I think it’s pretty clear what we need to do. I’ll go along to the jubilee and keep an eye on them all, and you come and do what I’d have done tomorrow, today. See if you can work out why Grandmama didn’t want me to.’

  ‘And what would you have done tomorrow?’ said Alec. ‘Or today if she hadn’t stopped you.’

  I noted that all thoughts of the equal partnership had withered and he was asking for instructions like an errand boy.

  ‘Find these Hepburns, find out if Dugald has taken off too. See if anyone has an idea where they might have gone to. You might even find her, if they’ve taken her in. If they’re all for it on his side.’

  ‘Hepburn,’ said Alec slowly, writing down the name. ‘Did the girl’s family say the boy’s lot were keen then?’

  ‘Well, Granny Mary hinted that they might be climbers,’ I said. ‘But apart from Granny Bella no one said much about them at all. They can hardly pronounce the name of Hepburn without choking.’ I would have said more but I could hear footsteps approaching and so we rang off, with a plan in place to meet for tea and share our afternoon’s gleanings.

  ‘Ready, Mrs Gilver?’ said Mary, stalking into the room and looking just a little disappointed not to overhear the end of my conversation. She glared at the instrument as though she hoped to discern some fading echo of what had been spoken into it. ‘You can come along in the first motor with Mrs John and myself.’

  But Bella – Mrs John – coming in at her heels would have none of it.

  ‘Nonsense, Mary,’ she said. ‘You and I are going together and Jack and Abby were to follow on with Mirren. So it makes sense for Mrs Gilver to go in Mirren’s place.’

  ‘Oh, yes, please do, Mrs Gilver,’ said Abigail’s voice from the doorway where she was hovering. ‘Everyone will be expecting three of us, you see.’