Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘How did you make him anyway?’ I said. I could not imagine the scene: Alec rolling up at the man’s house, a perfect stranger, and asking him to explain such a private matter.

  ‘Easy,’ Alec said. ‘I told him Mirren was missing and he turned quite pale and rushed off to the telephone. It was while he was out of the room, incidentally, that I got a few words in with Mrs Hepburn. She came to see what the fuss was and she told me that Dugald was “away from home staying with friends”.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So his father had shot off to telephone these friends and check that the boy hadn’t disappeared too?’

  ‘Exactly. Or that Mirren hadn’t turned up there, I suppose. And when he got back, he was so relieved that he spoke quite freely. He said he would never consent to his son marrying “such a girl”, from “such a background”, with “such relations”. But here’s an interesting thing. Hepburn said his wife agreed with him, but while he was out of the room, she seemed to suggest that the objection was all hers and she had had to talk her husband round. She seemed surprised that she’d managed it.’

  ‘And was she any more forthcoming about what the problem was?’

  ‘No,’ said Alec, ‘but she wasn’t nearly as . . . visceral about it all. Ruefully amused, I’d say rather, as though the whole thing was a bit of a joke.’

  ‘A bit of a joke . . .’ I repeated, feeling a memory stir. ‘Ha-hah! That’s it. I remember. I remember why Jack Aitken was sent to close the doors. Mrs . . . I can’t recall her name, but she’s a senior member of staff at the Emporium . . . said she thought there had been an entente cordiale – except she made it sound fruit-flavoured – thought, and I quote, “them down by” were coming to the jubilee. Said it was just the sort of thing they might do and think it a great wheeze.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Dandy?’

  ‘Mrs Somebody who is a manager at Aitkens’ said that the girls in the Household Department had reported seeing Mr Hepburn in the store.’

  Alec stared.

  ‘And where is the Household Department?’ he said.

  ‘It’s split into two, but at least some of it’s on the top floor.’

  ‘The top floor,’ Alec repeated. ‘Close to the attics in other words then.’

  ‘But Mr Hepburn was at home, Alec. You were there with him.’

  ‘I was with a Mr Hepburn,’ Alec said. ‘There is young Mr Dugald Hepburn to be accounted for as well. And I was there briefly. Ten minutes at most.’

  ‘We’re getting carried away,’ I said. ‘Yes, people were running around the store like mice and perhaps one of the girls did see an unexpected visitor, but Abigail Aitken killed her daughter. She had a smoking gun in her hand, almost literally. And she confessed. There’s no reason to doubt what I saw.’ On the last of these points, however, I was wrong.

  Alec and I lingered over our coffee and then with no particular enthusiasm I stirred myself to go to the police station, find out whatever news I could and bear it back to the Aitkens. I hoped I could somehow soften the blow for them, I suppose, or at least tell them of Abigail’s demeanour and pass on my heartfelt belief that she had lost her mind that afternoon and was more to be pitied than reviled. Just as we reached the police station, however, we almost had our heels clipped by a small black motorcar emerging from a side lane at some speed and roaring off along the Maygate.

  ‘That was Abigail Aitken in the back seat,’ I said, stepping out into the middle of the road and staring after it. It was setting a tremendous pace for a narrow street in a busy town.

  ‘And it was definitely a bobby driving,’ said Alec. ‘Are you all right, Dandy? Did it brush you?’ I shook my head.

  ‘I wonder where they’re taking her?’ I said. ‘Good God, surely a hospital. Surely. Not a prison. Is there a women’s prison anywhere near here?’

  ‘Let’s go in and ask the sarge,’ said Alec. ‘I should think you can claim to be a representative of the family, don’t you?’

  The front office of the station was fairly buzzing with news; clumps of constables standing around with their uniform jackets off and their hats on the back of their heads, reliving their uncommon afternoon. It was with some difficulty that they managed to stop gossiping when Alec and I appeared amongst them.

  ‘The sarge’ however was immovable. I petitioned as a witness, as a family friend, as a prominent member of society who could command an audience with the Chief Constable at a click of the fingers, as a licensed private detective (the licence was fantasy, of course; if such things exist I certainly did not possess one) and finally as a subject of His Majesty and citizen of what I believed to be a free democracy and not the kind of totalitarian state where he would clearly be more at home, but there was no budging him. I was just gathering myself to deliver a farewell tirade which I hoped would spoil his dinner and his night’s sleep even if it got me nothing much, when Alec cleared his throat and tapped the side of my shoe with the side of his. I turned. Someone was signalling to me from the street door, a young man in grey flannel trousers and a knitted pullover whom it took me a moment to recognise as Constable McCann. I shut my mouth, tirade undelivered, and followed Alec outside to where McCann was waiting.

  ‘I dinnae ken why they’re being so close wi’ it,’ he said. ‘Mrs Aitken is away hame. It’s no’ a secret.’

  ‘Out on bail, eh?’ said Alec. ‘Perhaps they fear a mob descending if it’s generally known.’

  At that moment another pair of young officers in their civvies came out of the station and stared hard at us in passing.

  ‘I cannae talk here,’ said McCann. ‘I’ll meet youse roond at the park gates on Pittencrieff Street.’ He pointed. ‘None o’ my brother officers stay oot that way.’

  He took off at a good pace and Alec and I followed casually, after an interval. When we reconvened, Constable McCann asked us to walk along with him, saying that his mother would have his tea ready and the dog would get the lot if he was late again.

  ‘It’s no’ bail she’s got,’ he said when we were under way. ‘She’s let go. She’s innocent. Wee Mirren killt herself, so the doc said anyway.’

  ‘But I saw her,’ I said, stopping walking until Alec put a hand under my elbow to get me moving again. ‘She was sitting there with the gun in her hand and the blood still dripping. Besides, she confessed.’

  ‘Aye well,’ said Constable McCann. ‘The thing is, see, the police surgeon took – what d’ye cry them? – swabs. From Mrs Aitken’s hands and from Mirren’s hands an’ a’ and it turns oot they can tell fae the gunpowder how Mirren had fired the gun and her mother hadnae. So there it is.’

  ‘And the confession?’ I said. We had arrived at McCann’s house it seemed: a small grey cottage in a long terraced row. He stopped at the open front door. From behind a fringed fly curtain, there drifted the smell of bacon and the sound of a wireless.

  ‘Dr Stott said it happens all the time,’ he said. ‘A suicide and the mammy pretending she did murder.’ He touched his cap and disappeared behind the coloured beads of the curtain.

  ‘Can you believe that?’ Alec said, looking after him.

  I nodded. ‘Thinking back, you know, she practically told me. In subtle code, but all the same. She said she didn’t have the courage to turn the gun upon herself, but she wanted to sit there holding it until the police came, because Mirren was dead and only if they hanged her could she be dead too.’

  Alec heaved a sigh up from his boots.

  ‘What a god-awful mess,’ he said. ‘Poor Aitkens. I wouldn’t be in that house right now for a pension.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I was just going to suggest we paid them a visit.’ Alec looked suitably horrified and I hastened to explain.

  ‘I was supposed to find her, Alec. I was charged with finding her and bringing her home. As awkward as it’s going to be socially—’

  ‘Awkward!’ Alec squawked and I grimaced, agreeing with him.

  ‘—professionally, the least I can do is go and acknowledge . . .
my complete failure.’

  Abbey Park, however, was shut tight against all comers. The gate by which I had entered that morning was closed – locked and padlocked – and the tradesmen’s gate the same. The little lodge had its door locked and windows shuttered, and the house itself was hidden behind its walls.

  ‘I’ll write to her, then,’ I said, standing peering up at the chimneys, unable to help imagining what scenes of despair might be playing out in those rooms now. I hoped perhaps that Mary would be comforting Abigail, that Bella might have found it in herself to succour Jack, but when I remembered them all at the Emporium, stunned and crumpled by the shock of it, it was only too easy to think that each of the four would be curled up alone in some separate quiet corner, silently aching.

  4

  One could hardly believe it was the same town. The sun was shining as it had a week before and there was nothing the park-keepers could do about the beds of tulips and pansies but otherwise, when I emerged from the station on the day of Mirren Aitken’s funeral, it was into a very different Dunfermline. Black ribbon wreaths were pinned to the doors of the Carnegie Library and, as far as I could tell all the civic buildings with which this tiny city is so lavishly endowed. All the shops in the High Street had their shades half-lowered and were displaying in their windows only the soberest and most blameless of wares: dark clothes, tartan carriage rugs and luggage; for some reason every shop which could muster it had filled its windows with luggage. The protocols and etiquettes of the merchant trade, I thought (not for the first time), were a mystery to me.

  Needless to say, Aitkens’ long row of plate glass was covered completely over with what looked like best black velvet. It must have cost them a pretty penny and I wondered idly if the bolts would be rewound and go back on the shelves to be sold afterwards or if the sunshine would have streaked it to uselessness. It was slightly out of my way but I could not resist walking down as far as Hepburns’ to see how their window trimmers had responded to the tragedy. With a dignified restraint which was somehow more excruciating than respectful, was the answer: the sporting young couple and the backdrops of their leisured life had been removed and in their place was set a single dark hat on a milliner’s stand just off centre in each window.

  The investigation had been completed within days, the inquiry satisfied in a few days more and, although the procurator fiscal had mouthed familiar words about the balance of her mind, he had also taken his chance of a swipe at her family for their part in the sad affair and thus had appeared to align himself with the newspapers and the gossips in the streets, where revulsion at the families’ behaviour was the dominant note in the chord.

  It was reported with the most bitter relish of all in the News of the World from which Grant had read it out to me. To be fair, though, the Scotsman had also let out quite a bit of line in its editorial, judging the rivalry of the Aitkens and Hepburns an indulgence for which the life of a pretty young girl was far too high a price to pay. The Times meanwhile had reported the matter with a disdainful loftiness which must have hurt more than the gossip in its way, and I hoped the families had not seen it and did not have the sorts of friends who would summarise the articles at future meetings, or indeed clip them and read them out, or even – as one of my great aunts used to do in the name of helpfulness, but really out of devilry – clip them and actually post them to the parties in question with biblical verses printed out on little cards.

  All that was left now was the funeral and it was set for two o’clock in the afternoon. Yet here I was at just gone eleven in the morning, retracing my steps of a week before. I had an address written on a card in my hand (although it was my butler’s own clear writing, since the message had come by telephone) and had been engaged by a lady I did not know to discuss the matter of Miss Aitken in a professional capacity.

  I found the end of Pilmuir Street after a little effort and toiled up it, realising too late – once I had deserted the busy part of town where there might be taxis – that number one hundred and twenty could be a stiff hike away. Sure enough I was puffing like a tugboat by the time I arrived.

  So perhaps it was shortness of breath that was making me dizzy and perhaps that contributed to the nasty prickling I could feel, but at least some of it was owing to the nightmarish sense that I was reliving a dark reflection of that cheerful day a week before. Once again the house for which I was bound surprised me; Roseville was Georgian grey just like Abbey Park, but was very wide and low, and set back from the pavement behind white railings with two patches of tumbling cottage garden on either side of a flagged path. It had a coach house at one flank and a high orchard wall at the other and was as charming as it was unexpected: a village house, my mother would have called it (never suspecting that when she did so in those ringing tones of hers she always offended the owners, who heard the echo of ‘a village child’ for which read apple thief, ‘a village family’ where laundrymaids and jobbing gardeners might be found, and ‘a village affair’ by which she meant any feud or scandal she deemed beneath her notice which was nonetheless too significant to be ignored).

  A maid who had clearly been told to expect me – ‘advised of my arrival’ as she put it – let me in and showed me into a morning room at the back of the house with a french window open onto the garden. I just had time to note the pale carpet and silk-covered walls, the elegant gilded furniture and delicate watercolours, but I had no chance for my customary snooping before the door opened again and someone strode into the room. A young woman, a woman, an elderly woman, I thought in quick succession as she came towards me and held out her hand, for the initial impression of vigour was seen off by the matronly cut of her coat and skirt and the confident rake of her hat (an angle like that only comes, if it comes at all, with maturity), and the coat and skirt and hat (and brooch and pearls) in their turn could not disguise the iron grey hair, lined skin and thickened wrists of quite advanced age. She wore startlingly red lipstick and had painted very thick black eyebrows onto her head; her nails too were red and black – red from paint and black from gardening. I knew the type. She was not, after all, an elderly woman: she was a game old girl.

  ‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, giving me a wide grin and showing strong yellow teeth which were not flattered by the lipstick, neither the shade of it nor the fact that a great deal of it was on them. ‘Fiona Haddo. Bella Aitken told me about you. Thank you for coming and do sit down.’

  She rang for coffee and then eased herself into an armchair and regarded me.

  ‘It’s about Mirren.’

  I nodded. The nightmare was going strong.

  ‘I’m Googie’s grandmother, you see.’ I said nothing and my face must have been blank because she hurried to explain. ‘Dugald. Googie was his little sister’s best attempt and it stuck. Hilda – my daughter – hates it.’

  I could not help my eyebrow rising at her daughter’s name. Hilda Haddo was a dreadful curse to visit upon a child.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said her mother, getting the point of the raised brow. She was clearly an old girl of great perception and I would need to disport myself more cautiously. ‘But she was a Hilda. If you’d only seen her the day she was born – glaring up at me with that look on her face telling me the whole thing was an outrage. A Teutonic battle-maid if ever I’d seen one. Anyway, she’s Hilda Hepburn now which isn’t so bad. Unless one counts it as bad that I married off my daughter to a draper’s boy. Sounds like a music-hall song, doesn’t it?’ She laughed again. ‘But Robert Junior – Robin, as the family have always called him – is a dear man, with pots of money, and Hilda has been very happy. Until now, of course. Until now.’

  ‘The boy must be distraught,’ I said. ‘I can quite imagine his mother suffering along with him.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Fiona Haddo, but did not elaborate.

  ‘Was he terribly fond of her?’

  ‘Googie adored her,’ said Mrs Haddo. ‘To see them together was almost enough to make one believe in love’s young dream again. Even a cyn
ical old trout like me could grow quite misty. So it’s almost beyond belief that . . .’ She gave me a shrewd look. ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, carefully, ‘I’ve heard a great deal but all from one source. Another perspective would perhaps be illuminating.’ Fiona Haddo gave a twisted smile in acknowledgement of my carefully chosen words.

  ‘I’ll start at the beginning,’ she said. ‘Mirren and Googie had many friends in common as you can imagine – Dunfermline is a small town – but they were never particular friends of one another. So it was a surprise to us all when Googie told us he was engaged. Just after St Valentine’s Day. He must have proposed then – such a sweet boy. Twenty years old and he informed his father and mother about it as though he were the headmaster giving out extra prep.’

  ‘Mirren wasn’t quite so forceful with her parents,’ I said.

  ‘And the Aitkens were adamant in their refusal. Beyond adamant.’

  ‘Not all of the Aitkens, surely. I can’t imagine Abigail . . .’

  She grinned at me. ‘No, not all. Perhaps just one. But that one is very forceful indeed. You know, of course, that she was a shopgirl when Ninian married her?’ I nodded. ‘And of course, Aitkens’ is the older of the two firms and they view the Hepburns as fearful usurpers. But it was her mother and father that Mirren spoke of when she came to me. Abigail and Jack had forbidden it too. Well, who can guess at that – they’re an odd pair from all I hear. But what did seem odd was that Googie’s parents thought the same. And actually, I suppose if one’s being fair they were pretty adamant too. Especially Robin. “No son of mine” and all that.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘He talked about “poor stock” and “weak blood” which was ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, Mirren’s mother and father are cousins,’ I said. Fiona Haddo shuddered.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it ghastly? When I think of my boy cousins, I could almost retch! But people in glass houses . . .’