Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘In the tearoom?’

  ‘Oh no, madam,’ she said. ‘I’m a sales assistant, not a waitress.’ She sounded very proud of the fact and another girl standing nearby – a waitress, I guessed – snorted and threw a look of disdain such as only pretty girls with slim ankles and waved hair can throw at shy girls in home-knitted jerseys and with hair scraped back into a ribbon.

  ‘In which department?’

  ‘Household, madam,’ she said. ‘Were you wanting something? Because we’re really closed but I could lay it aside for you until tomorrow.’

  ‘Here on the second floor?’ I asked her. I smiled. ‘I hope it wasn’t you mixing up sheets and eiderdowns.’

  ‘I never touched them!’ she said. ‘I work in the basement, in the bazaar.’

  A pair of older girls, coming to stand close to us with cups of tea and plates of cake, giggled. One of them gave me a very pert look and joined in our conversation without invitation or apology.

  ‘You’d be surprised the way things flit about in a place like this, madam,’ she said. ‘Mrs Ninian was worried about it on the jubilee day – worried that with all the crowds, we’d have trinkets away under coats and up jumpers – she had us all stationed round the scarves and notions, all the wee things that would be easy swiped.’

  ‘But it’s never the stuff you’d think, madam,’ said her friend. ‘You’d laugh if we told you what goes missing, wouldn’t she, June?’

  June nodded. ‘Like that time we left the cash tube with a ball in its mouth carrying thon cretonne curtainings to the lift for Mrs Taylor – they weighed a wet ton and she’s always the same – takes everything home in her wee car with her chauffeur no matter how much work it makes instead of getting a delivery like e’bdy else does.’

  ‘And guess what went, madam?’ said the other, dabbing up cake crumbs with her finger and licking them off. ‘You never will.’

  ‘I’d never leave my cash ball lying,’ said the girl from the bazaar.

  ‘You’ve no’ got a key to the chute, you wee besom,’ said June. ‘You’re only jist up to scuttles from buckets.’ Her friend laughed and the shy girl scowled at them.

  ‘But when I do get it, she said, ‘I would never.’

  ‘The bell,’ I said, taking a wild guess. They all frowned at me. ‘Scissors? Tape measure?’ I had named three items I always coveted from the cutting counters of shops when I was buying cretonnes of my own.

  ‘Stamps,’ said June. ‘A tube full of money, hanging wide open, and some funny wee buddy stole the stamps.’

  I tried to look suitably diverted by this news but all I had really taken in was that these girls worked on the second floor, and I wanted to keep talking to them.

  ‘One wonders that anyone had the nerve,’ I said. ‘Don’t you girls have eyes in the back of your head for what’s going on around you?’ All three of them looked pleased with this compliment and ready to accept it as their due. ‘I mean to say,’ I went on, ‘the idea that anyone could come skulking round and not be noticed – it’s preposterous!’ They were less certain now and who can blame them, poor things. I was no good at Giant Steps and Baby Steps when I was a child, always swaying and staggering when Grandma wheeled round and always out first. It was no different now. Try as I might to learn that stealthy detective’s way of making conversations flow imperceptibly in my chosen direction, to lift my pet subject off the sand and carry it away, to insinuate all my little questions into the stream without a ripple, I did still tend to heave great lumps of suspicion into the middle of things like boulders into a pond, muddying the waters, killing little fish, and making everyone around back away, shaking themselves and planning, in future, to avoid me.

  These three girls could not go that far; the boldest of them – June – spoke up gamely.

  ‘Likes of who, madam?’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ I said, nudging closer to them and dropping my voice, ‘I heard that Mr Hepburn tried to gatecrash the jubilee. I heard he was up here on the household floor, hiding.’

  ‘Mr Hepburn or young Mr Hepburn?’ said the shy girl from the basement.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘He was here when she—?’ She bit her lip and her eyes filled.

  ‘He was never,’ said June. ‘Was he, Poll?’ Her friend shook her head. Both of them were staring at me as though they had found me under a rock and wanted to drop it back on top of me. ‘I don’t know who’s been saying such things, madam, but you don’t want to listen.’

  ‘No one said which Mr Hepburn,’ I told them. ‘No one suggested for a minute that it was Dugald.’

  ‘Dugald?’ said Poll, her eyes just about popping out of their sockets. ‘That’s a story, madam, and a gey cruel one too.’

  ‘Because she only did what she did because they were kept apart,’ said June. ‘If he’d come to get her she’d still be here now.’

  ‘Stands to reason.’

  ‘If he knew she was here.’

  ‘And no one did.’

  So whoever it was who had spied whichever Mr Hepburn it was, Poll and June it was not, but I could not stop them talking now. The ripples of my heaved boulder were sloshing around the banks as though they would never settle. Worse, Mary and Mrs Lumsden were walking towards us.

  ‘Sssh!’ I breathed, through still lips.

  Thankfully, some sense of decorum or perhaps a healthy desire not to be sacked came to the fore and June piped up in quite a different voice:

  ‘Miss Shields says it used to be tallow candles, madam, when they came in farthing boxes. She says she couldn’t keep them on the shelves.’

  ‘But everyone in Dunfermline’s got the electric light now, so it’s bulbs these days,’ said Poll.

  ‘And Miss Shields always says it was a whatchoocallit that pinched everything,’ said the basement maiden.

  ‘Wheesht, Addie,’ hissed June.

  ‘Miss Shields,’ said Mary, drawing near, ‘has too much imagination for her own good.’ June and Poll dropped their eyes but poor Addie did not appear to have that talent which senses trouble and changes flight to dodge it.

  ‘Right, Mrs Ninian,’ she said. ‘Because why would a whatchoocallit need candles? What do you call it again? I cannae mind.’

  ‘Can’t remember, Adelaide,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘If you don’t speak nice you’ll be back in the stockroom.’

  ‘And if you don’t stop spreading tales you’ll wish you were back in the stockroom because you’ll be out on your stupid ear.’ Mary delivered this in a cold, low monotone which made me tremble in my shoes, let alone the shopgirls. Then she turned and stalked away, so stiffly that she made me think of a clockwork soldier.

  Adelaide’s eyes were brimming.

  ‘I didnae mean no harm, Mrs Lumsden,’ she said. ‘We were all talking about it. The poultry ghost. That’s it! Poultry ghost. It was Miss Shields that told me.’

  ‘Poltergeist, ye wee daftie,’ said June. ‘And it was never, anyway. Eh no, Mrs Lumsden?’

  ‘It was donkey’s years ago,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘And it was tramps. And if you don’t have the sense to see that poor Mrs Ninian doesn’t want to be thinking about ghosts in the attics today of all days, Adelaide McVitie, then you’ve even less sense than I’ve seen in you and that’s saying something.’ She shook her head at the poor girl, almost really angry, perhaps as near it as she ever was. ‘Now get away into the kitchen and help the girls dry up the cake forks. Don’t touch anything china and stop that petted lip before I skelp you.’

  Adelaide fled.

  ‘Mrs Ninian was just coming to speak to you, Mrs Gilver,’ Mrs Lumsden went on. She shooed away the other two girls, who looked glad enough to go. Once they were out of earshot Mrs Lumsden gave something between a laugh and a sigh. ‘I know I’m too soft with my girls. That Addie McVitie’ll never make a sales assistant if she lives to be a hundred, but her father has no work and her mother’s got a bad chest and five more of them at home.’

  ‘Stockroom?’ I said.


  ‘The lassie can’t add two and two and get four.’ This time the sigh was a sigh, nothing more. ‘Mrs Ninian has been good to me, keeping me on, and I try to do the same. Addie was getting a shilling a week in the council laundry when I found her.’ I gave an understanding nod, but in truth I thought that Adelaide would be happier in a laundry where she understood what was required of her and then perhaps some bright girl could leave the laundry behind and flourish at Aitkens’, rising from the basement buckets to the heights of the cutting counter on the curtain floor. And to be entirely honest, since sweet bright pretty Mirren Aitken had been snuffed out at twenty I had precious little sympathy left for laundry girls of any stamp who could still step out into the fresh air at the end of their shift and go dancing.

  ‘What did Mrs Ninian want me for, Mrs Lumsden?’ I asked ‘Should I go after her?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Lumsden, putting out a hand to stay me. ‘It was just to apologise, really. She meant to say a few words to the staff, you know. But she doesn’t think she’ll be able to, as it turns out. She’s taken this so hard, just gone to pieces really. So Mrs John’s going to take her home.’

  ‘She certainly doesn’t need to apologise to me,’ I said, feeling very uncomfortable. What Mrs Lumsden said next hardly helped.

  ‘Well, she knew you must be expecting an audience with her a wee bit later,’ she said. ‘You know – to settle up – but she’ll have to ask you to wait for another time.’ I could feel myself blushing. ‘And to be honest, Mrs Gilver, Mrs Ninian was surprised to see you here – they both were, her and Mrs John. She said to me she didn’t mean her note that way at all. And I can’t think what I wrote because my mind was on ten other things and I just scribbled it. But there’s proof of the state she’s in right there, not saying exactly what she means. Not like her. Not like her at all and I’ve known her woman and girl.’

  I was squirming by now, as can well be imagined, with a horrible wriggling guilt which crept in at my collar and scuttled up and down my spine, even though I told myself that it was exactly like Mary, for had she not written the wrong date on her first postcard to me? To salve my conscience, I told myself that the least I could do was carry out the plan for which I had infiltrated this wake in the first place. I only hoped I had the chance before it ended.

  ‘Are you going to switch off the urn and send them all home?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘In fact between you, me and the gatepost, Mrs Gilver, I think I might just slip through to the food hall for a couple of bottles of sherry. They look like they need it.’ Indeed, the few dozen men and women, the handfuls of boys and girls were looking pretty woebegone, standing around with their cups of tea. ‘Anyway, we need to wait for Laming now.’

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘Mr Laming, the lift fixer. Well, locksmith and small engine and anything else he can turn his hand to. Oh my goodness, but Mrs Ninian wasn’t pleased about that, madam, was she now? She’ll not be sorry to be away out of it and missing him.’ She nodded as she spoke and I turned to see Bella and Mary Aitken making a slow path to the head of the stairs which led out of the tearoom. When they had descended out of view, the first of the young men began to slide into seats on the long banquette and a few of the bolder girls – I noticed June and Poll among them – perched on the wooden chairs opposite and started giving out smiles.

  ‘I’ll need to judge this sherry carefully, eh?’ said Mrs Lumsden with raised eyebrows. ‘I don’t want to be ringing the polis to help me clear the place later.’

  Her words were prophetic, as we were soon to know.

  5

  Between the rise in spirits which Bella and Mary’s departure could not help but cause, cats and mice being what they are, and the introduction into the party of two bottles of cream sherry and one of whisky, I was not lamented as I slipped away to the back stairs and crept up to the attics to search for clues.

  I was hoping for gloves, even though gloves would suggest that Abigail Aitken had killed her child and had thought up a fiendishly devious way to get away with it, but the longer I considered of such a woman hatching such a plot the more convinced I was that it could not be. It would have taken such pluck to sit there, gun in hand, waiting for the police to come and see past the surface, as far as the trick beneath it but no further. Such a strong will would be required and I just did not believe that Abigail Aitken possessed one.

  Still, I would search since here I was with a chance to do so and if I found nothing I would tell the police, better trained at such things than I, to search again.

  The landing seemed darker today with the large hanging lights in the atrium unlit and those dark clouds massing, so I felt around the top of the stair head for a light switch. There did not seem to be one, however, and so I began to make my way along the wall towards the switch by the lift which Bella Aitken had used that earlier day.

  Halfway there though I stopped. I had suddenly remembered what had been upon this wall I was touching; the stain bright and shocking, the thin trails of blood running down to the skirting and pooling there, the slight but unignorable texture to the stain because it was not blood alone that clung there to the brown distemper. Shuddering, I scuttled sideways to the middle of the floor and walked forward blindly with my hands out in front to feel the far wall when I got there. How could it be so dark up here? Clouds or no, how could it be that I needed to feel my way?

  My breath was quickening and it seemed that I could hear it inside my head, louder than it should be, as though the air around me had changed. It was thick and muffled and I could not understand, began to think that I was not where I had thought to be, that somehow I had come to a different place from that landing where Mirren died, because where was the ledge to the atrium and why could I hear my own breathing so loud and how could it be so dark at this time of day?

  When my fingers touched something cold in front of me I squealed – that is the only word for it – but the darkness swallowed the sound at a gulp. Then, almost whimpering, I began to run my hands around the edge of the cold slab – it was the metal frame of the lift shaft, of course – looking for the light switch I knew was there. But where? I felt to my full arm’s reach on both sides, higher than any switch could ever be, lower too, and could not find it, and all the while the darkness was pressing against my back and the sound of my ragged breathing was growing louder, joined now by the pounding beat of blood in my ears and throat, and over and over again I felt the edge of the lift-shaft door and the raised plate of the call-button panel; I even pushed it and heard the faint ping of the call inside the lift carriage. When the sound had faded I felt around again, the edge of the shaft door and the round polished handle there and nothing else. And now I could not imagine ever finding the light switch and I could not imagine letting go and walking back through that blackness behind me to find the stairs and then, just as I let that panicky thought engulf me, just as I began to see that the only way out was to give in to terror and scream for help, sweet reason returned and half-laughing from the flood of relief through my body I grabbed the lift-shaft door handle and opened it and wrenched the door of the carriage open too and light from the lift poured out onto the landing.

  I turned and rested my back against the wall, heaving deep wonderful breaths down into my lungs and panting them out again. I looked to the one side and saw the light switch, right there, blamelessly there, as why would it not be, just beyond where my frantic hands had been scrabbling. I looked to the other side and laughed at myself in earnest now. The opening onto the atrium was gone indeed; it was covered over with Aitkens’ best black velvet curtaining, tacked along the top and long enough to pool on the floor below. Of course, this dreadful place was blocked off from view – of course it was – or gawping ghouls would stand at the balcony one floor below and stare up here and point and wonder. I looked over to where Mirren had been. This time, I did not laugh and I was glad that I had stopped feeling my way along the wall before I got
there. A wreath the size of a barrel was on the floor – I do not know how I missed the scent of it; lilies pumping out that choking reek like so many factory chimneys – and above, on the wall, where the stain had darkened the drab, was a patch of shining white paint, shaped like an arch so it almost looked as though a little shrine had been made there.

  Suddenly I did not want to be here, grubbing around for clues on the strength of an invitation I knew I had imagined, while downstairs the girl was toasted and mourned. I stood up straight and had put one foot into the lift – I would take my chances with it on a downward journey – when I felt it start to rumble. I leapt backward, but my first panicked thought was wrong. It did not plummet; I had not witnessed its end. It was gathering itself with all its usual effort to descend with all its usual stately torpor. Mr Laming, the mending man, must be on the ground floor, and must have summoned it to him in some mysterious mechanic’s way.

  Realising that when it did leave me I should be in darkness again, I stepped over and threw the light switch and when I stepped back the carriage was just beginning to move. Its floor dropped away from the landing and its ceiling began to drop down towards me. I looked away; it is most disconcerting when a part of one’s surroundings suddenly begins to sink like that, and it had given me a mild swirl of vertigo.

  When I looked back again, the carriage was halfway down the opening and for a moment I had a plain view of the top of it: the heavy bolts like great steel knuckles bent against the roof of the thing, holding fast the enormous plates as thick as the palm of my hand, through which the cables groaned and thrummed.

  All of that and the boy, dead and broken, lying with his legs folded under him and his head twisted round, one cheek dark and raw where it had scraped against the ropes, one hand even now dragging against the side of the shaft, making his arm jolt as the lift moved him towards my feet, carrying him away from me.