After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘But tell me some more about these feelings you had about the photographs,’ said Alec. ‘What did you think was wrong with them?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. Only that there was something off. Not just the fact of their existence; we agree on that. But something about the photographs themselves just wasn’t right.’

  ‘Say again what they were,’ said Alec. ‘As much as you can remember.’ To my surprise he got out a pencil and a pad of paper and poised himself to make notes.

  ‘Well, there were the two portraits of Cara in the crêpe-de-Chine fr –’ I broke off. ‘The two portraits taken inside the cottage, I mean. And some of Clemence and of Lena in the same room, although these were not portraits exactly, more like snaps. So it’s almost as though they knew that the pictures of Cara were the ones that mattered and that’s not right, is it? Then there were some taken in the garden which were very pretty. Everyone under a tree in blossom with the french windows open to the house. Really very happy pictures, except that Cara got cross with Clemence for telling her what to do and flounced off, spoiling one. The only other I remember is of Lena and Cara on a cliff-top with their dresses blowing about in the wind. Clemence must have scrambled down and taken it from the beach, unless Lena and Cara climbed the cliff to have it taken. Oh, Alec, I don’t know. I need to have another look at them.’

  ‘Hmm. Hard to see how you could do that without making Clemence’s whiskers twitch,’ said Alec.

  ‘Which is exactly why I want you to pester her for a set of your own. Or at the very least you should take a good look at them to see if you can spot whatever it is that’s bothering me. As a man, you might alight on different aspects of . . .’ I fell silent, chasing a wisp of thought.

  ‘What?’ said Alec, but I shushed him.

  ‘Men and women, what was I thinking? Men and women . . . Oh!’ I sat up and slapped my hands down on the table. ‘I think I know what it is. Read me back exactly what you wrote down, Alec darling.’ He did so and before he was finished I interrupted him.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure I’m right. It’s the crêpe-de-Chine dress. They are supposed to be a record of a week in the country. A whole week. But don’t you see? Cara’s wearing the same crêpe-de-Chine afternoon frock in every one of them. And that’s not all.’ I stopped and stared down at the tablecloth trying to summon the pictures back before my eyes.

  ‘The picture on the cliff-top,’ I said. ‘The picture on the cliff-top has the sun behind them, that is, on the east, making it morning.’ The white cloth was dancing before my eyes, little purple and yellow spots blooming in it as I tried to concentrate. I shut my eyelids tight and thought furiously, trying to call to mind every detail.

  ‘Were you ever at the cottage?’ I asked. ‘I should love to know where the landing window sat in relation to the compass, because in the photograph with Cara looking over the banisters the sun is simply pouring in.’

  Alec shook his head.

  ‘They’d only just got the place. This was their first visit to it.’

  ‘Well, Scottish architecture,’ I said. ‘Not exactly varied. I bet the staircase went up from the front and turned making the landing to the back and thus the landing window face east. Morning again, you see. And therefore extremely odd for Cara to be wearing a crêpe-de-Chine dress. That’s it. The pictures were all taken in one frantic session. Now, why should that be?’

  Alec whistled softly and clapped his hands.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘I should never have thought of that. But I wonder why they didn’t? Three ladies. Why didn’t they think to change their clothes?’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t have time,’ I said, trying to remember if in fact all three ladies had been in the same clothes in all pictures. I only seemed to remember Cara, gleaming in her pale frock, and could not bring the others to mind.

  ‘Presumably,’ I went on, ‘they were trying to make a record of Cara’s presence throughout the week when in fact she was leaving in time to get far away before the fire, her “death”, and any investigation. What odds that if we managed to find the man with the dog who botched the picture of them all together, he’d tell us not only that it was morning but that it was the start of the week.’

  ‘I’ll bet that’s it,’ said Alec. ‘I’ll bet if you went back now, Dandy, and asked your Mrs Marshalls just when they saw Cara, they would tell you they saw a great deal of her at the very start of the visit and then not again. Shades of your little boys, don’t you think?’

  ‘But how can she have gone?’ I said, coming back down to earth with a thump. ‘Never mind why or where. How can she have got away without anyone seeing her? She had no car and there is no train station within miles and rather few buses, never mind that Cara travelling alone on the Gatehouse bus would have been pretty conspicuous to all the interested locals.’

  ‘Well, consider this,’ said Alec. ‘We ’ve been thinking that they went to Kirkandrews because it was a quiet spot to stage a fire, but what, when you get right down to it, is its main feature?’ I looked at him blankly, and he continued: ‘The sea, Dandy, it’s on the coast. And how better to get far away with the greatest possible discretion than in a boat?’

  ‘It’s all a bit Bonnie Prince Charlie,’ I said. ‘But I suppose you may be right. Although, if someone was coming to get Cara in a boat, then they might just as easily have come in a car. We hadn’t thought of her being fetched before. I wish I did have a good excuse to go back to Gatehouse and quiz the Mrs Marshalls.’ I was speaking idly.

  ‘And find the man with the dog and try to find out if someone saw a boat,’ said Alec, who clearly was not.

  ‘I think the local fishermen might be more in your line,’ I said, but Alec shook his head.

  ‘We can’t possibly both go again. You need a plausible motive for your return and I should only undermine it. Besides, I intend to cultivate Clemence and get a hold of those photographs by hook or by crook. I might just let slip to Kiki and Kuku that the album exists and let Clemence try to resist their attempts to winkle a copy out of her.’

  I was rather hurt that Alec felt he needed to see them for himself, as though my conclusions could not be trusted, and my face must have shown some emotion, which he correctly interpreted.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said. ‘Don’t, please, be in any doubt about that, Dandy. But the time may be coming close when we find ourselves trying to convince someone that more official investigation is needed, and at that point we shall need some proof.’

  ‘So I’m off to Gatehouse again,’ I said. ‘What on earth am I going to tell Hugh this time?’

  Alec had already stopped listening, I think, although he answered, after a fashion: ‘Say you’ve gone to see a man about a dog.’

  Chapter Ten

  After a long, fruitless attempt to think up something better, I did, in fact, in the end, tell Hugh that I had gone to see a man about a dog.

  Clemence had described the one being walked by the man who tried to help them with their pictures as ‘a hideous little thing’ and for some reason I got it into my head that this meant a Jack Russell terrier. Assuming her to be as snobbish about dogs as most people are, I felt sure that any of the hideous breeds which happened to have some social cachet – bulldogs, King Charles spaniels, all the bulging of eye and bald of bottom – she would perceive with scrupulous correctness as adorable, but that a sweet little Jack Russell terrier would be an affront.

  So I told Hugh in an innocent voice at breakfast, that whilst in Galloway I had met a man whose terrier bitch had recently been brought to bed and that I had resolved on going back to procure one of the puppies. Hugh looked rather pulled about by this. He has always despised what he calls my silliness about Bunty, not seeing why she should not sleep and be fed with his dogs, and the news was most welcome that I was considering another to dilute my adoration, and a terrier at that. On the other hand, there was the possibility that two dogs on cushions in my sitting room being fed chicken from
two little china dishes might only be twice as annoying. I have to say I do not agree with Hugh’s assessment of my sentimentality over Bunty. She is simply my companion, as the hairy pack which follows him around is his, and since I spend my days inside in the comfort of my sitting room it is only common sense that she should be clean and sweet-breathed, while his dogs can with just as much common sense be reeking of carrion and caked in mud as he and they tramp around the woods and farms. Besides, Bunty is a Dalmatian and it is quite simply a waste of God’s considerable efforts to let a Dalmatian get dirty.

  ‘I thought you would approve,’ I said. ‘The breed as a whole and these puppies’ parents in particular are excellent molers.’ Hugh’s ears perked up at this. He is inordinately fond of his gardens, to the point of being quite peculiar at times, and we were suffering just then from a savage attack of moles, causing him acute pain each morning as he surveyed the desecration of yet more of the sward. Add to this the lamentable fact that a good mole-catcher is one thing the neighbourhood of Gilverton lacked (what mole-catchers there were being variously incompetent, lazy and, in one case, drunk by noon) and it is easy to see why a Jack Russell terrier from a talented moling lineage might be a very welcome addition to the household.

  For one dreadful moment I thought I had gone too far and he was going to suggest he come with me but, thinking quickly, I put a stop to it.

  ‘I shall go in the motor car and take Grant with me this time,’ I said. ‘And Bunty, of course. There’s no use in bringing home a puppy she hasn’t met and might not take to.’ He disappeared behind his newspaper with a deep frown and one of those little harumphs he has begun to emit since he turned forty. Hugh is bored and pained by Grant’s and my conversations and would have been irritated beyond anything by the sight of my letting Bunty choose a puppy. I myself was quite looking forward to this bit, until I remembered that it was part of my cover story and was not actually going to happen.

  Mrs McCall was delighted to see me again, all the more so since this time I was travelling as she obviously thought I should, with my maid and my chauffeur, and she took to Bunty immediately although not to the extent of letting her sleep in my bedroom; she treated this suggestion of mine as a joke.

  Early the following morning I got Drysdale to drop me off at a convenient spot north of the patch of coast in question and arranged to be met again on the road to Borgue in two hours’ time. The morning was fresh and bright, a stiff sea breeze making me glad I had put a great deal of cream on my face but bringing no low cloud to threaten my walk. I had a snapshot of Cara, taken from Alec’s wallet, to jog memories and Bunty was straining to be off, plunging around with excitement and wagging her whole body from the shoulders backwards in delight.

  ‘That’s a grand-looking beastie,’ said a voice behind me, and I turned to see a young man in corduroys and a rather shabby mackintosh smiling at Bunty as he came towards us. ‘As they say in these parts,’ he went on. ‘What a beauty.’ He was not, after all, I saw as he drew nearer, a young man in the usual sense of the phrase, being rather creased about the eyes as well as the mackintosh, but ‘young man’ was his type in that he looked unburdened the way young men do, and utterly unmarried.

  I looked about him for a dog of his own, thinking what luck it would be if this were the bumbling photographer already. There was no sign of one, but I tried my theory anyway.

  ‘Yes, she’s a dear,’ I said, falling into step with him as it seemed our paths both lay towards the beach. ‘Do you have a dog of your own? Only I’m on the hunt for someone around here – not sure who exactly – who has some Jack Russell puppies going begging.’ I stopped short, too late. I should never find an unknown man with a dog of some inelegant kind by making it a bitch, having it pregnant and dreaming up a breed for it all out of my own fluff-filled head. ‘Or so I heard. But I daresay the puppies are spoken for, if they even exist. Village gossip being what it is there’s a fair chance that some blameless little dog just happened to have a large meal of rabbit one day. Do you? Have a dog, I mean?’ I tried a light laugh, as though unaware of or at least unconcerned by the inanities I was spouting.

  ‘Cats,’ said the young man. ‘Cats for me every time, I’m afraid. Although this handsome creature gets close.’ With that he tipped his hat and disappeared into an opening in the hawthorn hedge which marked the start of a path.

  ‘Faint praise for you, Bunty,’ I muttered.

  The walk along the cliff-tops was splendid although I made no further progress with the mystery man or his hideous little dog. None of the lounging youths or bustling old women I met was able to think of any such pair who walked along the coast, although I established that Sandy Marshall had a collie and that another branch of the seemingly endless Marshall family had a fearful mongrel; ‘mongrel’ excited me for a moment, since I could guess what Clemence would make of one, but it was clear from its description that it was far too big for the role. ‘Feet the size of your face, madam,’ said my informant, an image which made me hope I never encountered the thing. Eventually, I was persuaded by an aged worthy that I was wasting my time: ‘It could easily have been a tripper, a tourist, a visitor or even a hiker, madam, come to that.’ I agreed ruefully that it could be any one of these, whatever the differences were.

  When the cliffs dipped into grassy hummocks, I scrambled down on to the beach, not wanting to walk through Kirkandrews and have to pass the burnt patch where the cottage used to be if I could help it. Presently, I identified the spot at which Clemence must have taken the photograph of Cara and Lena on the cliff-top; I remembered the jagged look of the rock, and that tortured little hawthorn clinging to the lower slopes had shown up clearly on the snap. One very interesting thing I noticed was that there was no easy path from the cliff just there, and so to set this picture up Clemence must have brought her camera and other accoutrements along the beach from the dip where I had joined it. Had she been photographing rock pools and happened to see her mother and sister above her, it might have made some sense, but trying to pass the scenario off as a plausible posed shot was ludicrous. I stood frowning up at the cliff, puzzled. Even once one knew what one knew, that is that the Duffys were constructing a record, it was still odd for part of that record to be this particular picture. What was gained by Clemence’s hauling her things along the shore and by Lena and Cara’s long wait at the top in that wind which whipped their clothes into a blur and must have chilled them? My imagined pretext, that Clemence was otherwise engaged and the others were caught impromptu, would only have gained merit if some of Clemence’s rock pool studies or whatever were in the album to support it. I wondered what she had done with them, then I shook my head to clear it – there were no rock pool studies. I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep a clear boundary between what I actually knew and what I surmised. Worse, conclusions based on my surmising threatened constantly to mix themselves in with known details and when that happened I should be lost.

  On I trudged, leaving Bunty racketing about, snuffling in piles of damp seaweed and getting more and more excited by the unfamiliar slip and spray of sand under her paws. Each time I got further from her than she liked she gave a chorus of offended barks and raced to catch me up, overshooting and skidding to a halt in yet more of the enchanting sand and bladderwrack whereupon the whole performance started again. She was therefore quite exhausted by the time we had completed our loop, and she trotted quietly up the lane beside me, seeming – sand and scent apart – in a fit state to go visiting.

  Still, I quailed at the thought of young Mrs Marshall’s reception – how I pitied Sandy, whom I had imbued with all of his mother’s good qualities – so I went straight to the old lady herself. From sitting slumped at the bench by her door after my labours I knew that she had a good view of the sea and I surmised that a cottager only has a bench by her door if it is her habit to sit there, so I felt some hope that she might be able to help me out in the matter of the boat, if indeed this romantic departure of Cara’s turned out to
be true.

  Old Mrs Marshall was ‘tickled’ to see me, as she put it, and took very readily to the unusually sedate Bunty, but she had no information to offer about any hideous little dog. What’s more she looked at me with piercing incredulity when I trotted out this excuse for my presence, and so for a while I sat quietly, looking out to sea – for we were indeed installed on the bench by her door – breathing in the scent of the new mint growing around our feet and enjoying the weak sunshine. I wished for a fishing boat or something to bob into view and help my next round of questions into being, but since nothing came I had to do what I could.

  ‘This is a very quiet spot,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, it is that,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘A tiny wee cottage in the middle of nowhere.’ I recognized the words I had used to Agnes and gave a snort of self-deprecating laughter, only blushing a little.

  ‘Yes, but I meant the sea, really. One expects there to be little boats and ferries and things and yet look at it – nothing. Is it always like that?’

  ‘The boats are out there right enough, off at six this morning and back at six tonight, if they’re spared.’

  ‘And are there ever pleasure boats?’ I asked. ‘Sailing boats? Is there anywhere for them to land hereabouts?’

  ‘Come the summer,’ said Mrs Marshall.

  I paused again, planning my next enquiry, when she took me by surprise, saying: ‘Why don’t you just out and ask, madam, whatever it is?’ I looked at her from the corner of my eye and saw that although the twinkle was as ready as ever her face was serious, so I took a deep breath and decided to trust her and my instincts about her. I ignored the nagging voice in my head totting up the growing column of people I had either told outright about my theories or told such nonsense that they must suspect something worse.