‘Can I just ask,’ I said, ‘what made you decide to send Tilly to St Columba’s instead of one of the bigger and better known schools?’
‘Oh, we had her down for Cheltenham,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘But friends of ours, well, neighbours, new neighbours, after we moved, said to us that St Columba’s was the place. And their girls are to be presented at court, you know. Real young ladies.’
‘I see,’ I said, which was a lie. ‘Well, simply lovely to have met you, Simmonses.’ I gave a little bow and was amused to see them giving a real bow and curtsey in return as I left them.
‘And where are all the mistresses?’ said a voice as I plunged into the crowd once again. Where indeed? I thought. I had expected to feel a hand on my collar a lot quicker than this, and while in one way it was splendid to have had such a run at the parents and girls (not to mention the fact that I felt I was hearing all sorts of useful stuff from their innocent lips), looked at another way I knew that I was only ever going to solve the puzzle of St Columba’s by skewering the Misses Christopher, Barclay and Shanks. Those three were at the root of it, whatever it was.
‘Which mistress would you like most to talk to?’ I said, turning with a smile. ‘Perhaps I can take you to her or fetch her for you?’
‘Miss Barclay,’ said a man in a brown suit with a pipe in his mouth. ‘Geography. Our Christine is going to Edinburgh University to do geography at the end of next year.’ His voice had grown louder, in the hope that the bystanders nearest him would hear him and marvel.
‘Up to Edinburgh to read geography, Rex,’ said his wife in far softer tones.
‘Rex?’ said her husband. ‘Who’s Rex, when he’s at home? I’m Reg and I always have been.’ He winked at me. ‘She only started the Rex lark when Christine got interviewed at the university and they said she was in!’
‘You must be very proud of her,’ I said, smiling with genuine pleasure for them.
‘Oh well, how else would it be?’ he said. ‘My wife chose the school and took care of all that. I’m a plain man and happy to see the girls take after their mother.’
‘You’ve chosen very well for your daughter, Mrs . . .’ I said. ‘Edinburgh University, eh?’
‘She was worth it,’ said the woman, curiously tight-lipped beside her beaming husband.
‘And you have another daughter too?’ I said.
‘She’s not coming here,’ said the woman. She stared me straight in the eye. ‘You can tell Miss Shanks that from me, whoever you are.’
At last the pipe band gave a long discordant groan and an exhausted wheeze and were silent. A gong was struck and a voice – I thought it was Mrs Brown – announced that luncheon was served in the refectory. I turned back to the quiet woman and took hold of her arm as discreetly as I could do it.
‘I need to talk to you,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Or rather I think you need to talk to me.’
But she brushed me off quite roughly and backed away, shaking her head.
‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Not any more, not again. You can forget it.’ And with that she turned and vanished into the crowd.
‘My wife,’ said her husband, looking after her. ‘Nerves, you know. Been that way a few years now. You’ll have to forgive her.’
‘Of course,’ I said, with a distracted smile. ‘Don’t mention it. I hope she’s soon feeling better and please tell her I apologise if I upset her in any way.’
‘Dandy?’ The voice was not loud but it cut through the hubbub of jostling parents like a shard of glass. I turned and smiled.
‘Candide,’ I said. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’
‘But you have sons!’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me Shanks is taking boys now.’
‘Not as far as I know,’ I said, ducking under the hat brim and clashing my cheeks against hers. ‘I’ve just seen Stella. She’s your absolute twin these days.’
‘Only to look at,’ said Candide in a cool murmur. ‘How are your boys getting on, then? Not turning your hair white, I trust?’
‘Oh well, Donald is a bit of a handful,’ I said. ‘Teddy hasn’t set into shape yet, so who knows?’ But she was not really listening and I changed the subject. ‘I’ve seen your bathing pool,’ I said. Candide’s face, always quite foxy, grew positively pinched at the mention of it.
‘Blasted thing,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that they’d put our names on it.’
‘Very good of you, still,’ I said. ‘Given the times, especially.’
‘Hah!’ said Candide. ‘Well, yes, that bloody pond used to be a Canaletto. There’s a pale patch on the landing wall.’ I stared at her and she looked off to one side, took a short sharp nip at her cigarette, almost like a little kiss, and then blew the smoke out in a long stream. ‘One does what one can,’ she said. ‘And better a simple bequest than a lifetime’s obligation worked off in testimonials.’
‘Well, Stella is a fortunate girl,’ I said, ‘and Miss Shanks a very fortunate woman.’ I knew I was staring harder than ever but in truth my mind was far away, sorting through all that I had heard: from the Simmonses and the Duncans, from Mr and Mrs Reg to Candide’s few cryptic offerings.
‘Stella,’ said her mother, ‘is a disappointment and a pest. I only hope she makes it all worthwhile in the end by marrying someone half-decent, that’s all.’ Then she threw down her cigarette, flashed me a quick smile, clashed cheeks again and swept towards the open dining-room doors, the lesser parents (and that was more or less all of them) parting like the Red Sea at her coming.
‘Oh no,’ I groaned for, in the space where she had been standing, there now stood Stella herself, and for once her brow was not arched and her lip not curled. She was white-faced with shock and her mouth trembled.
‘What did Mummy just say?’ she said, not drawling at all now.
‘I didn’t catch it,’ I answered. Feigning unlikely deafness is such a help at so many awkward moments.
‘A disappointment?’ Stella said. ‘A pest?’
‘Have you quarrelled?’ I asked. She had been badly enough crumpled by the unfortunate overhearing that I did not shrink from putting a friendly arm around her, as one would any child. And crumpled as she was, she submitted to it.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The last time we quarrelled was when they said I had to come here to school instead of where I wanted.’
‘Why was that, do you know?
‘Friends said it was marvellous,’ she replied. ‘And they got a bargain, they said.’
‘Well, Stella,’ I said. ‘You know what to do when you overhear ill of yourself, don’t you?’ She rallied a little.
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I shall put it out of my mind.’
‘Or hoard it in secret until your mother is old and infirm and then cast it up endlessly,’ I whispered. ‘Ask her who’s a pest now, when you’re wheeling her round in her bath chair. Bellow it down her ear-trumpet in revenge.’
This recovered her completely and she gave a rich chuckle and tossed her hair.
‘You have a better wit than any other mistress around here,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you stay?’
I leaned towards her.
‘I’m not a mistress,’ I said. ‘Remember Donald Gilver who chased you out into the snow at that Christmas party at Cawdor, trying to kiss you?’
‘How do you know about that?’ said Stella.
‘I’m his mother,’ I said. I saw her eyes narrow and then widen as she recognised me. ‘I spanked him with a hairbrush for frightening you and spoiling your pretty shoes.’
‘So what were you doing here?’ Stella said.
‘I’m a private detective,’ I told her and had the satisfaction of seeing her sharp little face register utter amazement. ‘And I’m just about at the bottom of what’s happening here. At least I might be if I could have ten minutes’ solitude to think it through.’
‘Can I tell the others?’ she said. And a little of my short career as an English mistress was in me when I echoed Hugh and answered:
‘You
may.’
Where, though, was solitude to be found in St Columba’s on this day of all days? I did not want to run into any of the mistresses now. After luncheon no doubt all of the dorms and classrooms would be swarming with little girls showing their beds and desks to mummies and daddies, and from the rows of seats arranged in the flat part of the grounds north of the school there was clearly some outdoor entertainment planned too. I slipped into the building by a garden door and seeing the little flower room where the mistresses’ bags were stored reminded me that one room of all would be sure to be empty today. And I knew the way, thankfully. It took me only a moment to find Fleur’s door, try the handle, send up a silent prayer and slip inside.
As the door closed softly, though, I got and gave the most tremendous shock, for Fleur’s little room, cold and bare, was not empty. Betty Alder, Sabbatina Aldo, was lying full-length on the narrow bed, sobbing her heart out into the pillow, and she leapt to her feet with a shriek (matching my own) when she saw me.
‘Sabbatina?’ I said, recovering first. ‘What’s the matter, and what are you doing in here?’
She had clearly been crying for quite some time: her eyes were swollen half-shut and her nose was swollen too and reddened from blowing. Her beautiful olive skin was blotchy and her raven curls were plastered damply to her forehead and neck.
‘I can’t bear to be with the others today,’ she said. ‘My mother and father didn’t come. I saw my father yesterday and I . . . told him things. I think I drove him away.’
‘But you didn’t want to see your father,’ I reminded her. A fresh course of tears slid down her cheeks and she scrubbed at them.
‘I wanted to see my mother,’ she said. ‘Father didn’t tell me she wasn’t coming. I waited and waited in the front hall until everyone else was gone and there was just me standing there.’
‘But Sabbatina, my dear,’ I said, sitting down beside her and rubbing her back (it seemed to be my day for comforting the daughters of uncaring mothers, today). ‘Of course she didn’t come. She’s gone, dear. Oh, poor you! Were you pinning your hopes on her coming back?’ The girl sniffed and blinked.
‘Gone?’ she said. ‘Gone where? Coming back from where?’ I think I might have blinked at that.
‘But you knew she was gone,’ I said. ‘We spoke of it.’
‘I didn’t— Gone where, Miss Gilver? My mother? Gone where?’
I stopped rubbing her back and began instead rubbing the bridge of my own nose.
‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘We had at least one conversation about this. And you said to me that you were going to see your father – not your mother – last Saturday.’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘I never see my mother on a Saturday. She goes to Dunskey House on that day. You know. Washing.’
‘But who is it you’re missing then?’ I said. ‘Who is it that’s gone and left you? I feel as if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.’
‘Miss Lipscott,’ the child said, and her voice broke. ‘Miss Lipscott, of course. She’s gone. And I can’t bear it.’ She threw herself back down onto the bed, buried her head in the pillow and howled. I felt quite safe rolling my eyes since she could not see me, but I managed to make my voice kind and calm.
‘My dear girl,’ I said, ‘it’s quite normal to have these overwhelming feelings about one’s mistresses, you know. But you shouldn’t give in to them. Now, sit up and dry your eyes.’
She did sit up then.
‘It’s not a pash, Miss Gilver,’ she said. ‘It’s not a crush. Miss Lipscott took care of me. I thought she was like a sister.’
‘Well, that’s very nice,’ I said, ‘but you really should—’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Sabbatina. ‘Miss Lipscott was my patron. She paid for me to be here. She even said that maybe after I was finished with school I could live with her.’
I stared at her, feeling things shift but still not knowing where they were off to.
‘I was at the village school when I met her,’ she said. ‘She used to walk and I used to walk – on my own, because of all the teasing – and then we walked together and she brought me books and then she started coming down to the house and giving me lessons and she was like one of the family. And then I came here and she said maybe we could all live together. Only, she stopped saying that after a while. And now I don’t know what to think. I don’t know if she ever cared for me at all. But she said I could go up and spend the summer with her. And now she’s gone, Miss Gilver, and I can’t stay at St Columba’s and go to university and I shall be a washerwoman like my mother and—’ She stopped dead. ‘My mother’s gone?’
Inside, I groaned to have let it slip out like that.
‘What am I going to do?’ Sabbatina said. ‘How could she go off and leave me?’ And since I quite honestly did not know which one of the two women she meant, I said nothing. Anyway, I was thinking hard. She had just said something that had struck me. ‘What am I going to do, Miss Gilver?’ the girl whispered again. ‘I did something silly and I’m sorry.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I took her bags. I hid them under my bed, but it’s sheets change day tomorrow and I don’t know what to do.’
‘You sto— You took Miss Lipscott’s bags from the flower room?’ I said.
‘I heard you on the telephone when I came to give Miss Shanks a note,’ said Sabbatina. ‘You said where they were and I – I just wanted something of hers to keep. And there was a letter in her bag and I opened it – even though it wasn’t for me – and now everything’s spoiled. And my mother’s gone too?’
‘Quick,’ I said, ‘while they’re still at luncheon. Let’s go and get the bags and bring them here. I want to read this letter, to see if there’s anything to tell us where she might be.’
‘There isn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s just a horrible, sordid letter that spoiled everything.’ She sniffed. ‘Are you sure she didn’t go home?’ I nodded. ‘Do you think she’s all right? I still care, even after everything.’ I gave a firm nod with nothing behind it except wishful thinking, and then together we slipped out of the room to flit up the stairs and along the passages to Sabbatina’s little dorm.
‘Of course, this is very wrong,’ I said, somewhat belatedly, when we had got the bags back to Fleur’s room again and Sabbatina had put the letter in its envelope into my hands, ‘but sometimes we have to do things of which we’d ordinarily be ashamed.’
‘I’m not ashamed,’ she said. ‘At least, I’m only ashamed for Miss Lipscott and I’m ashamed of thinking she loved me.’
‘I’m sure she did,’ I said. Sabbatina nodded to the envelope.
‘Read it, Miss Gilver, and then tell me.’ I looked down and my eyes widened. It was addressed to Sr Giuseppe Aldo. ‘Miss Lipscott wrote a letter to my father every week,’ said Sabbatina. ‘I usually took it to him. I thought she was letting him know how I was getting on and all that. I put it right into his hands. Every Saturday.’
‘Not to your mother and father together?’ I said.
‘Mother doesn’t read English,’ she said. ‘I want to teach her but she never has time until it’s late and she’s tired. Maybe if I had taught her to read . . . I keep forgetting that you told me she’s gone.’
I frowned a bit then, for how could any upset over a lost English mistress drown out the news that one’s mother had left one? I opened the envelope and drew out the single sheet inside.
Dear Joe, it began (rather chummily, I thought, but then Joe Aldo did seem to have the knack for making chums. I was sure I had called him that myself in the course of our few short meetings). First things first, the letter went on. Sabbatina’s essay this week was first-rate and her grammar work is coming along wonderfully too. The other mistresses are not fulsome in their praise but I have seen her exercise books and she is near the top of the form in almost everything. I say again, as I have before, that to have such a daughter must be a great blessing and could be the foundation of a very happy life for Rosa and y
ou if you would give up these silly notions of yours.
Rather peppery, I thought, and read on to see to what silly notions she might be alluding. I cannot pretend that I do not share your feelings, because you know I do and the few times you overcame my better principles were some of the sweetest moments of my life. I looked up at Sabbatina, but she had looked away. But I will never be responsible for coming between a husband and wife. I would not marry you if you divorced Rosa and I will not live in sin. My head was beginning to reel. Joe Aldo the fish fryer? I did not seek your affections and I regret not being firmer in my resistance to them in the early days when we were first friends. I am going away from St Columba’s very soon, Joe. I shall continue to pay for Sabbatina’s education and I shall always think fondly of you, her and Rosa and pray for your future happiness as the family, blessed by God and joined in His name, that you are. Goodbye, Fleur Lipscott.
‘He drove her away, Miss Gilver,’ Sabbatina said. ‘He loved her – not me – and she loved him – not me – but she wouldn’t do wrong and he drove her away. And he drove my mother away too. She must have found out.’
‘Sh, Sabbatina,’ I said, for I was trying to think. ‘Hush, now.’
Fleur was planning to run away from Joe Aldo, who would not stop pursuing her. What had happened to make her abandon the plan and flee, leaving Jeanne Beauclerc behind? I glanced down at the letter again. I would not marry you if you divorced Rosa and I will not live in sin.
‘Oh my God,’ I said. If living in sin was out and divorce was out that left only one option. And in my memory I saw Fleur bending over the faceless corpse and whispering ‘Five’. ‘Oh my God,’ I said again. We were sure that No. 5 was not Rosa Aldo, because her own husband had told us so. But if her husband had killed her, then of course he would deny recognising the poor broken thing that his murder had made of her.
Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses Page 30
