Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘And then today . . .’ said Reid. ‘She saw that poor corpse and said, “That makes it five”?’

  ‘She said “Five”, as you well know,’ I reminded him. ‘Why, it might not even have been connected to the four from yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Dandy,’ said Alec.

  ‘You should have told me there and then,’ Reid said.

  ‘I ready as ever I be.’ Joe Aldo was standing in the kitchen door. His hair was slicked flat and his face was scrubbed red and raw. His shirt cuffs were rolled down and his cuff-links fastened. He took a coat from the back of a kitchen chair and shrugged into it.

  ‘Right you are, Mr Aldo,’ said Reid. He stood and gave rather a withering look to be coming from a boy in his twenties to a great grand lady like me. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘since you’re all ready to go an’ that. It would be a shame to keep you hangin’ around while I just run and arrest somebody.’ Joe Aldo was blinking in some confusion.

  ‘I’ll fetch the sergeant if you like and tell him everything,’ I said. ‘Everything.’ Reid blushed again.

  ‘But look on the bright side,’ he said to Aldo. ‘From what I’ve just heard, chances are, it’s no’ your wife at all. Chances are, your wife’ll be back here wonderin’ where you’ve got to before we’re halfway home.’

  Alec nodded but I could not bring myself to agree. Rosa Aldo had been on the cliff top on Tuesday evening and now was gone. A woman’s body had washed up at the cliff foot on Saturday after three days or so in the sea. I did not see why Fleur Lipscott would have killed her and I agreed that the five mistresses gone and five murders claimed was a neat little balance, but I would not have raised Joe’s hopes that way.

  I waved them off in the motorcar – the sergeant was nowhere to be seen and one could only conclude that he had walked back to the station or perhaps climbed the hill to his wife and home. Reid drove and Alec and Joe sat in the back. I watched after them until the little car had disappeared from view at the top of the hill and even then I followed them in my imaginings, along the road and onto the lane, down the track and onto the path, across the shingle and into the building there. I remembered all I could of the woman I had seen. Were her clothes and her stockings French like Mademoiselle Beauclerc’s would be? Were they Italian? Would Rosa Aldo have Italian clothes or would she be dressed like every other washerwoman in Portpatrick, in clothes made up to Woolworth’s patterns in cloth from the local Co-operative store? I tried to think of the look of her dress and the scrap of lace at her neck. But it had been soaked and clumped with water and the frill at her neck was rusty with blood and brine mixed. For just a moment I wished I had returned in the motorcar. I could have looked at her clothes and tried not to see the rest of her. I could have surely found something to tell me something. I leaned over the harbour wall and looked down into the water, just beginning to slosh against the stones. If I fell in there when it was deep and was fished out after three days, what could they tell about me? Good underclothes made of decent silk and fine wool, skilfully mended here and there. A rather flashy shirt that Grant had got from London on postal order and Jenner’s Ladies’ best tweeds in greenish grey. I would look – on a slab in the cable station – like a Scotch matron of exactly my type and exactly my years, and I determined there and then to let Grant buy me some flashy skirts and coats to go with the shirt next time she was ordering.

  Then I remembered Miss Lovage from the evening before – and Miss Shanks with her cloaks – and I shuddered. I had been inoculated against theatricality in dress by my mother’s trailing sleeves and by her penchant for the sort of embroidery that belonged on the back of a kimono, if anywhere. Perhaps Fleur in her beige had it right after all, dressing like the schoolmistress she had become, with not a scrap left about her of the child I remembered so well.

  I smiled. Even then, when every girl and boy was beribboned and befrilled to the point of immobility and forced to be good (given the effort required to be naughty when one had so many elaborate garments to haul around with one), Fleur Lipscott had been renowned in the family, the village and beyond for the costumes she concocted day by day. There was a foundation layer – what archaeologists, or quite possibly geologists, call a substratum – of woollen underclothes, linen and lace petticoats, muslin and lawn frocks: the stuff of Edwardian childhood, but to it Fleur added trimmings of her own devising, unearthed and scavenged from all around her domain. She wore camphorous stoles and tippets found in the attic trunks, voluminous plaids spun by the crofter women around the Highland hunting lodge, a cage of crinoline hoops embellished with rag ribbons so that she looked like an enormous birdcage full of fluttering budgerigars. She found amongst the Major’s uniforms more items of interest than might have seemed likely: epaulettes and medal ribbons, sashes and spurs, hat-bands and waistcoats, and a greatcoat of such length and girth and unyielding thickness that she rather inhabited it as a dwelling than wore it like clothes. When she walked in this last item it made one think of how the pyramid stones were moved, impossibly slowly, on rolling logs. She always emerged with hot cheeks and damp hair and to our laughter and quizzical looks she would say that it was indeed rather warm but good for thinking. Then she would resettle her Indian headdress or pirate’s tricorne and sweep grandly off to another adventure.

  ‘Darling little goose,’ I remember Pearl saying once, gazing after her.

  ‘And she slogs like a slave at it,’ Aurora had agreed. ‘That hat was miles too big until she put the rats in it.’

  Batty Aunt Lilah let out a small shriek and shot to her feet, calling Fleur back and demanding explanations.

  ‘Not rats, Batty Aunt,’ said Fleur, bowing so that her hat fell off into her hand. ‘Not Rattus rattus, although I don’t hate them like you do.’ She rummaged inside the tricorne and extracted an object which looked distressingly like a member of the Rattus rattus family to me. Batty Aunt Lilah shrieked again and recoiled from it.

  ‘It’s my hair!’ said Fleur, holding the thing in the palm of her hand to show it clearly. ‘Stitched up in a net. You know I found that old ratter of Granny’s and couldn’t resist it? Still in its box, with instructions and everything. I made three of my own and now I’m doing Aurora and Pearl. Separately, for hygiene, but I must say, Pearl, either you’re not brushing properly or Rora’s going bald, because she’s surging ahead of you. Come to my room and I’ll show you.’

  ‘You horrid child!’ said Pearl, pretending to shiver although really she was laughing. ‘I knew you’d been skulking in the bathroom. I never dreamed why!’

  ‘You’ll thank me when fashions change back again and you’re all ready for them,’ said Fleur, carefully inserting the rat back into the crown of the tricorne. ‘It’s not everyone who can be out of fashion and look remarkable instead of just peculiar.’ Then – dressed, under the greatcoat, in pale grey patent skating boots with the blades removed and an old sari – she had gone about her day.

  How I wished that little ribbon-ringleted Fleur was here today, prattling on without a care for who heard and what they made of it. Even the second Fleur, the painted and sequinned girl I had met only once and who had left such a searing impression upon me, would have been welcome; for although she was far from that innocent child who spoke without thinking, at least she spoke. She twittered and giggled and made spiked little jibes and, like any flirt, at times she gave away more than she meant to, reaching for a joke, playing out her line to its end to hook the laugh she had spotted there.

  Still, I should go up and find her, even the silent self-possessed woman she was now. I turned and leaned my back against the harbour wall, staring up at the school. She must surely be back by now, no matter how rambling a path she had taken home from the cove. With the thought, that sick feeling returned to somewhere deep inside me, but once again I swallowed and let it pass, not giving it form in my mind, not even examining it to see what form it would take. Instead I pushed myself up off the wall and strolled around the arm of the harbour, just like the
fisherwives, all of us waiting for our men to return.

  Fisherwives, I soon concluded, were better at waiting than me. In less time than it would have taken one of them to retie her shawl, fill her pipe and enquire in that rolling Gallovidian drawl after the health of the next fisherwife along the wall, I had grown bored and was marching back into the heart of the town. I was bound for the kiosk to ring home and tell them all where I was if needed, thence to St Columba’s, but I had hardly begun the long haul up the Main Street when I saw the police motorcar trundling down. Alec’s arm appeared, waving madly, in the side window as he saw me too and he jumped out while Constable Reid was still in the early stages of braking.

  ‘It’s not her,’ he said, lolloping towards me in enormous strides. ‘It’s not Rosa. Joe was quite certain.’

  The motorcar crossed the street and drew up beside us. Constable Reid was in the shadows, but I thought I could still discern a frosty look on his face as he nodded a greeting. I ignored him and leaned in at the back where Joe Aldo was sitting bolt upright with a fist clenched on each knee, staring straight ahead.

  ‘You’re sure, Mr Aldo?’ I said. He turned his head immeasurably slowly and showed me stricken eyes with black circles under them.

  ‘My head,’ he said, in a whisper. ‘My head is to break in pieces.’

  ‘Tension,’ I said. ‘You must go home and rest. It must have been horrid for you until you knew.’

  Perhaps his headache was too severe to let him nod, but he squeezed his eyes shut and tilted his head just a fraction.

  ‘Is not Rosa,’ he said. ‘Dress, hair. I roll her sleeves and is not Rosa’s skin. Rosa has . . .’ He poked his finger here and there over his other forearm as if to dot it.

  ‘Freckles?’ I said.

  ‘From the soap.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘But might not the sea water have . . .?’

  ‘Sottoveste,’ said Joe, gesturing. ‘Under. Underneath.’

  ‘Petticoats?’ I said. He nodded. ‘But—’

  ‘Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘It’s not her. They were married for fifteen years.’

  ‘And the lady, poor lady, is too . . . Rosa is a little apple. My little peach, my little plum.’

  But it was what Alec had said that convinced me. I can never understand it when one reads in the Sunday papers that a headless torso has been found sans legs, sans arms, in a suitcase, and no one can guess who it might be. If the torso were part of a husband then I should think the wife would know. I could tell any part of Hugh big enough to fill a suitcase, certainly.

  Besides, this tussle between Alec and me was becoming ridiculous. He could carry on alone desiring my client’s sister to be a murderess; I was no longer going to desire his client’s wife to be drowned.

  ‘If you’re gettin’ out here, Mr Aldo,’ said Constable Reid, ‘I’ll swing round and get up by.’ He jerked his head in the direction of St Columba’s. ‘Are you comin’?’ he asked me. I was not, I noted, worthy of even a ‘missus’ now, never mind a ‘madam’. I hesitated; I did not want to consign Fleur to being arrested without an ally, but I could not promise to be a staunch one. I would not lie.

  Before I had decided, we were interrupted by the sound of a bell being rung with great energy a little way up the street. I squinted, shading my eyes from the sun, and could see a large woman dressed in a shopkeeper’s overall pulling on a bell chain as though her life depended upon it. The bell itself was attached to a cottage wall, accompanied by no blue light or red plaque and quite a way from the harbour.

  ‘Is that the lifeboat bell?’ I said, nevertheless.

  All around, street doors were opening but it was not burly lifeboat men who emerged. Instead, housewives in their aprons and old men in carpet slippers, holding their newspapers open at the racing news, stepped out and looked up the street.

  ‘Post office telephone,’ said Reid from inside the motorcar.

  ‘It’s for that Mr Al-do,’ cried out the bell-ringing woman. ‘Him fae the chip shop.’

  A cluster of children had gathered around her, Pied-Piper-style, and were clamouring.

  ‘Me, me, Miss Broon.’

  ‘I’ll gan, Miss Broon.’

  ‘I’ve no’ been chose for donkey’s.’

  The doors were closing on withdrawing villagers and, as the street cleared, Miss Brown (could it be another tentacle of that same family, I wondered) noticed us standing further down; noticed Joe Aldo, anyway.

  ‘Mr Al-do?’ she called, again managing to make two blameless little syllables sound as though they had taken a huge effort of concentration to pronounce. ‘There’s somebody asking for you on the telephone.’ She looked back at the post office door and deigned to walk a little way down the street towards us.

  ‘I’ll get ’im, Miss Broon,’ said the most tenacious of the children, the others having given up and begun a game of marbles in the gutter. ‘You cannae leave the desk and all the stamps and money. I’ll tell him. Save you shouting.’ But Joe was walking up towards her now. Alec and I trailed after him, and Constable Reid threw the police motorcar into its reversing gear and backed slowly up the hill too.

  ‘Me?’ said Joe as he drew near Miss Brown. ‘Inside?’

  ‘It was pure luck you were so close,’ she said, with a strong note of disapproval which I could not easily fathom. ‘By rights you should be tipping a message boy a penny.’

  ‘Aye!’ said the tenacious child.

  ‘Somebody on the telephone for me?’ said Joe again.

  ‘And she’ll no’ be best pleased if you keep her hangin’,’ Miss Brown told him. ‘Never mind me needin’ to get back to the counter. Are you comin’ or no’?’

  ‘She?’ said Alec. Joe had returned to his blank, dead state again. ‘It might be her,’ Alec prompted him. ‘It might be Rosa.’ Joe blinked and then started as if a shock had passed through him. He barrelled inside the post office, fairly shoving Miss Brown out of the way. Alec and I started after him but she stepped in front of the doorway.

  ‘Do youse two have Post Office business?’ she said. ‘For there’s no loitering.’ Then she turned on her heel and swept in, muttering about ‘you people’, whoever that might be. Of course, all that happened was that we loitered outside instead, and with us Constable Reid, his engine running. In under a minute, Joe was back, the circles under his eyes darker than ever and his face paler. His hand shook as he opened the door and his voice shook as he spoke.

  ‘Is Rosa,’ he said. ‘Rosa to say she is leave me. No say where she is.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Al-do?’ said Miss Brown, coming fussing out after him. ‘Do you know you’ve left my good telephone hanging down where it’ll scratch all my varnish?’

  ‘Talk to her!’ said Joe, taking hold of Alec’s lapels and clutching him until they were nose to nose.

  ‘If you’ve damaged Post Office property . . .’ said Miss Brown.

  Joe swayed and his face turned a ghastly shade of grey. Alec reached out and put both arms around him. He threw me a desperate look. Quickly, I slipped into the post office to the kiosk in the back corner and caught the earpiece, which was indeed swinging at the end of its cord.

  ‘Mrs Aldo?’ I said. There was a sharp buzzing as she sobbed, or possibly gasped, at the other end of the line. ‘Mrs Aldo?’

  ‘Si,’ came a faint whisper. ‘Is me.’

  ‘Mrs Aldo, I know I’m a stranger but if you could see the state of your husband at this minute, you couldn’t, no matter what the temptations . . .’

  Now she was sobbing for sure.

  ‘And think of your daughter,’ I said.

  The sobs grew to wails. Behind me I was aware that Miss Brown had come back in from the street and was watching me, arms folded, eyebrows lost in her hair. I drew the door closed so that at least she could not hear me. In the new muffled air of the kiosk, Rosa Aldo’s sobs were louder than ever in my ear.

  ‘Come home,’ I said. ‘Just come home. This man, whoever he is, who has lured you away, he can’t possibly
have honourable intentions. Or a good heart, I have to say. Your husband loves you. Not one woman in a hundred has a husband who loves her so.’ But the more I spoke the harder she cried, until it felt cruel to go on.

  ‘I go,’ she whispered. ‘Tell Giuseppe, mi dispiace tanto.’ And with that the line stopped all its buzzing and the soft, close quiet of the kiosk filled both my ears.

  ‘She hung up,’ I said, rejoining Alec and Joe on the pavement.

  ‘She say nothing?’ asked Joe, stricken all anew by this, it seemed. ‘Not one word?’

  ‘She said, um, “Me dispassy tanto”,’ I repeated, feeling foolish. Joe Aldo let all his breath go at once. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It mean – so very sorry,’ said Joe. ‘She is leave me, for true.’ At this he buried his head in Alec’s shoulder and began to weep, louder and more noisily than his wife even. Alec patted him awkwardly.

  ‘We’ll find her,’ he said. ‘I’ll get onto the exchange and ask them about the call and we’ll find her.’

  I thanked all my stars I was English, turned to Constable Reid in the motorcar and nodded.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said. Alec’s case had had its moment of excitement, but now the faceless corpse – Mademoiselle Beauclerc, in all likelihood – was mine again, her identification my problem and her possible murderess my particular responsibility.

  Reid nodded back, but did not make any move to step down and open a door for me. Alec had his hands full supporting Joe and so I opened it myself and climbed in.

  ‘I can explain, Reid,’ I said as we drew away.

  ‘No need to explain it to me,’ said Reid, swinging the motorcar around and beginning to ascend the hill.

  ‘She’s an old friend. I’ve known her since she was a child. You understand a protective instinct. I know you do.’

  ‘Right,’ said Reid. My patience was exhausted.

  ‘Poor Cissie,’ I said. ‘No man is perfect but a man who pouts and sulks is a fearful drag. I shall tell her so in a spirit of warning when I meet her.’