The Charming Quirks of Others

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I was going to tell you that,” said Isabel. “I think he felt guilty about cutting a rope.”

  Alex frowned. “No. Quite the opposite. His rope was cut.”

  “I’m not …”

  Alex put down his cup. “Apparently his life was saved somewhere up near Glencoe. The other climber had fallen and was tied on to him. He was beginning to drag John down into danger and realised that the only way in which he could stop this happening was to cut himself free. So he did, and fell. It was an act of self-sacrifice on the other man’s part. Remarkable, really. And John felt guilty that he was alive and the other man was killed. People can feel guilty in that way—survivor’s guilt, it’s called.”

  Isabel looked out of the window. Of course.

  “Anyway,” Alex went on, “he felt that he really couldn’t cope with this job in that frame of mind and he pulled out. Understandable. Poor man.”

  “Yes,” said Isabel.

  “But that still leaves the other two. Leafers and Simpson. What about them? Any skeletons there?”

  She was still absorbing the news of John Fraser’s withdrawal. There was not much left for her to say, she thought. “I haven’t really paid much attention to Simpson. I formed the impression that you had a lowish opinion of him.”

  He nodded. “I’m afraid so. He’s not up to it, in my view. There were one or two members of the board who were keen to give him a chance, so I let his name go on the shortlist. But I’m afraid that that’s as far as he’ll get.”

  “We don’t need to worry about him, then?”

  He shook his head. “No, we don’t. Even if there were to be something in his past, which I rather doubt, it wouldn’t matter. He’s not going to get the job.” He looked at Isabel expectantly. “And that leaves Gordon Leafers. Enlighten me about him.”

  Isabel knew what she must do. “I must declare an interest in respect of Gordon,” she said. “He’s my niece’s current boyfriend.”

  Alex listened as she explained that she liked Gordon but that she understood that she had to be objective.

  “And your objective assessment?” asked Alex.

  “My objective assessment is that there’s probably nothing to worry about with him, other than …”

  He looked interested. “Yes?”

  “I wondered whether he was the writer of the letter. I think he’s ambitious and might have wanted to compromise the other two candidates. I can’t say why I feel that—I have no evidence.”

  “So it’s just a feeling?”

  “Yes. He knew who was on the list. So he would have both motive and ability.”

  Alex thought about this. “But there were others who knew.”

  “Who?” asked Isabel.

  “Miss Carty. And another woman in the office. That’s where the list was typed up.”

  Isabel waited a moment. “By?”

  “Miss Carty, I believe. She’s the one who passed it on to me to pass on to you.”

  “So she knew I was going to see it?”

  He nodded. “And I think I told her about what we were asking of you. I trust her, you see. She’s in on everything here, but she’s the soul of discretion.”

  And she misled me, thought Isabel. But that was not what she wanted to talk about. “May I speak to you in absolute confidence?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know of any relationship between Mr. Slade and Miss Carty?”

  “Beyond an employer and employee relationship?”

  “Yes. An affair.”

  His eyes widened. “My goodness! Highly unlikely, I would have thought. I just can’t see him getting involved with her.” He seemed amused by the idea. “Nor she with him.”

  Isabel was insistent. “Why should it be so unlikely? Mr. Slade is a good-looking, even rather charismatic man. His wife, if I may say so, is hardly exciting.”

  Alex looked embarrassed. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I just don’t see it.” He paused. “Why would you even suggest it? Have you heard something?”

  Isabel hesitated. She did not like to lie. But one does not have to answer every question one is asked. So she said, “One should always be prepared to consider every possibility.”

  He shrugged. “Yes. But some possibilities … Still, what about Gordon Leafers? You have your suspicions about him. You think he might be capable of doing something underhand, such as writing an anonymous letter in order to strengthen his chances. Well, maybe, maybe not. I can’t see it, frankly.”

  He poured more tea. “There is, however, something I heard about Gordon that makes me think that he might not be our best bet. I heard, in fact, that he’s not a serious candidate at all—and never was.”

  She waited for him to continue.

  “I heard from a very reliable source, somebody at the school he’s currently teaching at, that his application is intended purely to enable him to show an offer—if he got one from us—to his existing employer and ask for promotion. Apparently he confessed to a colleague, and it got out. He doesn’t want to move at all. He’s using us, as people sometimes do in these job competitions. So we’re going to tell him that his application is no longer shortlisted. We are certainly not going to let people make use of us like that.”

  Isabel hardly knew what to say. All three candidates were out of the running now, which made her wonder why Alex Mackinlay had wanted to see her. Did he think she had nothing better to do with her time than investigate a list of non-candidates?

  She drew in her breath. “I’m surprised that you didn’t tell me about all this earlier,” she said. “I’ve rather wasted my time, haven’t I?”

  He looked immediately apologetic. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “I would hate you to think that. In fact, I have remained very keen to hear what you have to say.”

  She looked at him reproachfully. “But nothing I say has any relevance.”

  “But it does, Miss Dalhousie. It’s the letter I’m really interested in. Who wrote it? Can’t you see that this is in a way a more important issue for us? Is there somebody here who can’t be trusted? That’s a very important question for me.”

  She understood. An anonymous letter was an acutely destabilising thing. It bred distrust and suspicion; it weakened the normal bonds between people.

  He suddenly turned and reached for a file on the table behind him. Taking out a single sheet of paper, he held it out towards her. It was the letter. She saw the green ink and the handwriting—which had been disguised in childish capital letters.

  “This bit of paper is potentially very destructive,” he said. “And I was hoping that you might be able to help us find out who wrote it. Have you any ideas?”

  She stared at it. Miss Carty and her assistant knew who was on the list, but so did the other members of the board. She had no means of knowing what they thought about the candidates and she doubted if she would have the time or opportunity to find out. Any one of them might have written the letter.

  “I’m not sure. But perhaps we should consider the obvious suspect.”

  “Namely?”

  “Well, Miss Carty knew who was on the list, didn’t she?”

  He laughed. “You do have it in for her, don’t you?”

  “Well, she had the information and she had a motive. What if she didn’t want Harold Slade to leave? What if she thought that the best way of ensuring this was to prevent, or at least delay, the appointment of his successor?”

  His reply was brusque. “Out of character. As much out of character as … having an affair with Harold Slade.”

  Isabel considered this. He seemed confident of his opinion, even if he had earlier admitted to her how wrong he had been about that poor man in Glasgow.

  “May I tell you something?” she said. “When I was being shown in here, she—Miss Carty—said to me that she had no idea who was on the list. She said that. Nor, apparently, has she seen any of the candidates. Why would she mislead me?”

  He frowned. “Is that what she said?”
r />   “Yes.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t mishear her?”

  “Positive.”

  He frowned again. It was as if he was searching for an explanation. It came. “Discretion,” he said. “She’s very discreet. What would you do if somebody engaged you in conversation about a sensitive topic—one of which you had confidential knowledge? Might you not say, ‘I don’t know anything about it?’ I would. It puts people off.”

  He seemed pleased with this, and he looked at her expectantly, as if challenging her to refute what he had said. Isabel said nothing. She looked at the letter in his hand. “May I?” she said.

  He handed it to her. “Offensive thing, isn’t it?”

  She noticed that the letter was crumpled where he had been holding it. She felt chilled at the thought of the venom that went into the writing of something like this. Snideness too. Cowardice.

  “Did you show it to anybody?” she asked.

  Alex Mackinlay answered in an offhand way, “Show it? No, of course not.”

  “So nobody else—absolutely nobody—saw it? Not even your wife?”

  “I certainly didn’t show it to Jilly,” he said. “I put it in that file and that’s where it remained. It disgusts me. I feel dirty even handling a thing like that.”

  “But you mentioned it to other people?”

  “No,” he replied. “As far as I recall, the only person I told was Jilly.”

  Isabel felt her breath coming in short bursts. She was getting close. When they had first discussed this over coffee at Cat’s delicatessen, Jillian had told her that the letter was written in green ink, and yet she had never seen it. Her mind raced ahead. That meant that … No, all that it meant was that her husband had probably told her. Letters in green ink were unusual, and he could well have mentioned that feature of it to Jillian. She felt disappointed: it would all have been so neat.

  “Green ink,” she muttered, looking at the letter.

  Alex frowned. “What?”

  She gestured to the letter. “Green ink.”

  He shrugged. “Oh, I see. Or don’t, rather. I have the usual male thing—red-green colour blindness.”

  She spoke very quietly. “You can’t tell?”

  He seemed slightly irritated by her question, as if he wanted to get back to the subject in hand. “No, I can’t. And lots of men are in the same position. It’s very common. You women don’t seem to suffer from it—or hardly ever.”

  For a few brief, delicious moments, Isabel experienced a sense of euphoria. It was akin to the satisfaction felt on solving a difficult crossword puzzle, or seeing the reasoning behind a mathematical proof. This fact established the authorship of the letter beyond question. Alex Mackinlay could not have told his wife that the letter was written in green ink, nor had he shown the letter to her. It was she who wrote it.

  He was staring at her. “You look as if you’ve had a brainwave,” he said. “Care to share it?”

  Isabel opened her mouth, and then closed it. No, she thought. No, I don’t care to share it.

  “Well?”

  She handed the letter back to him with a shrug. “The whole point about anonymous letters,” she said calmly, “is that we don’t know who wrote them.”

  He took the letter from her and slipped it back into the file. He was losing interest; she could tell. And that, she thought, was the way this man was; he was interested in those who could help him, but not in others. She had a strong intuition to that effect, and this time she decided to trust it.

  She looked at her watch. “I really must get back to town,” she said. “I’m sorry that I’ve been unable to help you very much.”

  He was polite, even if there was a lack of warmth in his voice. “I’m most grateful to you, Miss Dalhousie. I’m most grateful to you for the time you have spent on this matter, even if we are no further forward than when we began.”

  But we are, she thought. We are a great deal further than you imagine.

  “I take it, then, that you’ll ask Harold Slade to stay?”

  “I shall,” he said. “In fact, I’ve already done that, and he was happy to agree.”

  “Temporarily?” she asked.

  “No, permanently.”

  “But what about Singapore?”

  Alex smiled. “Oddly enough, I think they’re going to be quite pleased if Harry doesn’t go—or some of them will be. I had a chat with my counterpart, the chairman of that school’s board. He became quite frank and admitted that they were not exactly of one mind about the appointment. There was a strong faction on their board that wanted an internal appointment—the deputy head. The chairman let slip that he was of that persuasion himself, but had been out-voted. He’ll be pleased when Harry calls off.”

  Isabel sighed. “Well, that seems to settle that,” she said. “I must say again that I’m somewhat surprised that you asked me to look into this in the first place. Everything seems to have settled itself rather satisfactorily.”

  He said nothing. She turned to face him again. There had been a note of anger in her voice, and he reacted; he looked concerned.

  “But I didn’t ask you,” he said. “My wife did. She acted entirely off her own bat and then presented me with a fait accompli. I concurred and let you get on with it.”

  Isabel turned away, looking out of the window at the lawn below. Two boys were engaged in what appeared to be a wrestling contest, one throwing the other down and then sitting on his chest. Their hair was dishevelled, their shirts hanging out of the tops of their trousers. The boy on the ground hit the other on the back and rolled him off. Then he kicked him, but only lightly. They were obviously good friends.

  “May I ask you,” she said, turning back to face Alex. “May I ask you this: Who does your wife think wrote the letter?”

  He hesitated, seemingly unsure as to whether to answer. But then he said, “Janet Carty.”

  “And she voiced these suspicions to you?”

  “Yes, she said she was pretty sure it was her. She urged me to take action.” He looked bemused. “In fact, she seemed to think that your investigation would back her up.”

  Of course she did, thought Isabel. And she remembered the evening at Abbotsford, recalling the sight of Jillian mouthing something across the table at Harold Slade; and the look on his face as he responded. Lovers. Of course they were lovers. And what if Jillian had a rival? And this rival was Janet Carty? It would make perfect sense for her to undermine the secretary and at the same time stop, or at least delay, her lover’s departure for Singapore.

  “I’m confident that Janet Carty did not write the letter,” she said. “If there’s one thing that’s clear to me, it’s that.”

  He looked interested. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I know who wrote it.”

  She spoke impulsively, and immediately regretted it. I should not have said that. I can’t tell him his wife is having an affair. Why? Because it could bring his whole world down around him, and who am I to do that? The affair might come to an end, fizzle out, and Jillian might return to him. And who am I to preclude that possibility?

  He fixed her with an intense gaze. “But you implied a few moments ago that you had no idea.”

  She began to move towards the door. “That was then,” she said.

  “Then who was it?”

  She hesitated. She did not trust this man and she could not trust him not to take his anger out on his wife.

  “I choose not to tell you.”

  He raised his voice almost to shouting pitch. “You choose not to tell me?”

  Perhaps this is why his wife is looking elsewhere, she thought. Perhaps he needs somebody to tell him.

  “That is what I said, Mr. Mackinlay. You are an arrogant man, I’m afraid. You are used to demanding that people comply with what you want of them. I shall not.”

  She walked past him. She half expected him to try to stop her leaving, but he did not.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I would norm
ally give people the information to which they are entitled, but I do not think you deserve this information. So I shall not.”

  She left the room. He said nothing as she opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

  Miss Carty was outside. You have been listening at the door, thought Isabel; it is quite apparent from your demeanour.

  ISABEL DROVE BACK even more slowly than she had driven there. The road was quiet, and she felt calmer now as she made her way home under the wide sky of late afternoon. To her right, on the horizon, were the folds of the Lammermuir Hills, blue against blue. Between the road and the hills were rich stretches of green, squared by hedges and drystone walls that marched off into the distance.

  I love this country, she thought. I love it because it is soft and green and the sky is a theatre of white and grey and is so heartbreakingly beautiful in all its moods. I love it because of its people, who are frustrating and interesting and full of joy and sorrow, in equal amounts perhaps; who plot and scheme and yet find time to love one another and make songs and music and plant rhododendrons and write poetry and talk Gaelic and catch fish. I love it for all of that.

  As her car picked up speed when the road dipped down towards Flotterstone, Isabel thought about what she had done. She had been asked to find things wrong with three people with whom there was essentially not much wrong: they were simply human. But the people who had involved her in this had more substantial faults. They were schemers, she felt; schemers in a small and contained society. But then, were we not all like that, whatever circles we moved in? Were we not all concerned with our reputation? Were we not all intent on securing what we could for ourselves? Did we not all have flaws of greater or less magnitude—all of us?

  She had effectively left them to their own devices, but what else could she have done? She could have said to Alex Mackinlay, “Your wife wrote that letter, you know. Your own wife.” And he would have laughed at the very idea, or reacted angrily perhaps and challenged her to justify the accusation. Which she had decided she could not do, because it would have made the whole situation messier and more difficult.