Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘That you off then, madam?’ said the doorman as I approached him and entered the revolving door. He gave it a nicely judged shove, allowing me to pass through without effort of my own but not causing me to rush to keep up with its revolution. While I was inside he popped out through the ordinary swinging door and was ready to meet me again on the pavement. ‘Can I see if I can flag you down a taxi?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, giving him a half-crown tip, ‘but my own little motorcar is round at the yard.’ He frowned down at his hand, wondering perhaps what the half-crown was for in that case. The answer was that I had remembered my plan to grill him. One of many questions troubling me was how Dugald Hepburn had got into the store when it was closed. ‘I felt for you most dreadfully about yesterday,’ I said, with a nod at the coin, to explain it.

  ‘Yesterday, madam?’ he echoed. ‘Me?’

  ‘Being denied the funeral,’ I said ‘And then such a dreadful thing happening while you were here all on your own.’

  ‘While I was alone here, madam?’ he said. ‘What would that be, then?’

  ‘Of course, you won’t have heard,’ I answered, kicking myself a little.

  ‘Heard what?’ said the doorman. ‘What’s happened now? Where’s it going to end?’

  ‘No, not something new,’ I said, laying a hand on his sleeve; he really was becoming quite agitated at the thought of fresh horrors, ‘only that the police surgeon reckoned poor Dugald died at half past two.’ The doorman frowned, calculating, and then his eyes opened wide.

  ‘Dear God!’ he said. ‘Half past two? That’s when the poor lad jumped?’ He turned around and looked back into the store. ‘I was right here, right in there, sitting on the chair there, waiting for the first of the staff to come back again after.’

  ‘A dreadful thing,’ I said.

  ‘I was that close,’ he said, and he took off his peaked cap and held it in both hands, newly struck by the fact of the death and needing to mark it once more.

  ‘No one could have expected you to do anything,’ I said. Of course, saying this to the man put exactly the opposite idea into his troubled mind, as I had hoped it would. (What a flinty soul a detective must have to be a successful one.) He began to talk nineteen to the dozen without a trace of artifice or self-regard.

  ‘I didn’t know a thing about it,’ he said. ‘I never heard a thing. You’d have thought I would, wouldn’t you, madam? But I can assure you I never. Not a single sound. Or else I’d have been away seeing what it was.’

  ‘You didn’t hear any movement on the stairs or doors opening?’ I asked. ‘Only one does wonder how he got in if the place was locked up.’

  ‘Maybe he came in the day before when we were open,’ said the doorman. I nodded absently, but I knew that would not do. Fiona Haddo had been very clear about when Dugald had fled Kelso. ‘I can tell you one thing – there was no jemmying locks or climbing in windows during the service, madam. It was as silent as the grave. I even thought that to myself, sitting there. As silent as the grave – and Miss Mirren going into hers and only twenty. On a Thursday afternoon too – that’s usually our busiest day in the week barring Saturday because so many other folk in the town have half-day closing and come in to Aitkens’. I never heard so much as a pin drop. Much less— Of course my hearing’s not as sharp as it was. I’m sixty-five this August and the wife’s never done telling me to turn the wireless down before we getting next door complaining.’ He turned again and looked in through the glass door. ‘A younger man might have—’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Absolutely not.’ It was time for a measure of – belated – humanity. ‘His neck was broken. He would have been dead instantly. There’s nothing you could have done.’ He looked somewhat mollified at this and I should have left it there. ‘Besides, I daresay there was nothing to hear no matter how sharp one’s ears. The lift shaft is a goodly way from the front door and there would only have been very dull sounds anyway. Muffled thumps at most, unless he screamed as he fell, which would resound right enough, so he can’t have.’ The poor doorman physically blanched at that. I pressed a further half-crown into his hand, squeezed his sleeve again and scuttled off with my head down, loathing myself and all my doings.

  I was vaguely aware of a lounging figure pushing itself up from where it had been leaning against the window frame of the newspaper office across the way.

  ‘For the third and last time,’ said Alec’s voice. ‘I feel like your swain, Dandy, meeting you outside Aitkens’ every few days this way.’

  I turned to him with a great surge of relief, shading immediately into irritation.

  ‘I didn’t ask you to meet me outside,’ I said. ‘I could have done with you in there. I could have done with you all day, as it happens.’

  ‘Why, what have you been doing?’ he said. ‘And where are we going at this brisk pace anyway?’

  ‘To my motorcar,’ I said. Alec tutted.

  ‘I’ve driven down too,’ he said. ‘I was going to give you a lift back. We really must get ourselves a bit more organised, Dan.’ I wondered whether now was the moment to tell him about the cards and deduced that it was not. Instead I answered his first question.

  ‘Hilda Hepburn explained why Mirren and Dugald couldn’t marry,’ I told him. ‘Accounted for her objection and Jack’s – and what Jack’s been hiding, by the way – and perhaps everyone else’s objections too. If they knew. Which she says they didn’t. And actually I believe her.’

  ‘Dandy, for heaven’s sake,’ said Alec. ‘What are you talking about?’

  I told him and he gave a long, low whistle.

  ‘So what were you doing in Aitkens’?’ he said.

  ‘I spoke – not quite deliberately – to Miss Torrance of Ladies’ Gloves who told me nothing. Then to Miss Armstrong of Ladies’ Stationery who told me plenty of little bits and bobs, Miss Hutton of Ladies’ Gowns who told me one huge bit and bob which will knock you flat when I pass it on. Then I went rummaging around the attics—’

  ‘I thought we’d decided against the Abigail-in-gloves theory,’ Alec chipped in. ‘And why would Abigail kill her daughter because Jack had an illegitimate son?’

  ‘—where I found the gloves,’ I finished, with some triumph for which he would have to forgive me.

  ‘You never,’ said Alec. ‘Have you got them? Did you bring them out with you?’

  ‘I left them where they were for the police to find if it comes to that,’ I said.

  ‘Were they bloodstained? Gunpowder?’ said Alec, but before I could answer, he went on. ‘Hang on, though. Why would you think they’d be left there for the police to find in the sweet by-and-by if they ever get around to it? Won’t she just spirit them away?’ I opened my mouth to answer this and was interrupted again. ‘But wait a minute, why on earth are they still there?’ I drew breath. ‘Where were they?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They weren’t bloodstained. One of them looked a bit water-spotted but there was no blood or smell of cordite.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be by now, anyway, now I think of it,’ Alec said.

  ‘And would they have been bloodstained?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve been trying to work it out – gruesome business! – but I just don’t know.’

  Alec, as I had done, put two fingers up to one temple as though holding a gun then touched his other hand to the other temple where the bullet would have come out again.

  ‘I don’t know either,’ he said.

  ‘She was pretty close to the wall, I think,’ I said. ‘Judging by the stain there. So I was wondering if perhaps there would be a kind of backwards . . . even if her head blocked the immediate . . . dehiscence—’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s a botanical term. Hugh taught it me.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘The bursting open of a seedpod and scattering its—’

  ‘God Almighty, Dandy.’

  ‘I know. But we have to consider these things. Would the blood and—’

  ‘Let’s l
eave it at blood.’

  ‘Right. Would the blood come back off the wall with enough speed to hit the gloved gun hand once the head had dropped away?’

  ‘If the head dropped away as fast as all that. People can take a surprising amount of time to fall, you know.’ He knew; he had probably seen soldiers die on their feet at close range. He might even have caused a death that way. Of course, the last thing on his mind if he had would have been where a few drops of blood chose to fall. I decided to change the subject.

  ‘As for where the gloves were,’ I said, ‘– stuffed into a shoebox in a little room very near the lift. And there was just one pair, with their price ticket on, obviously plucked from the shop floor and taken up there. Most stuff – and there’s a lot of it, I can tell you – can be counted in the dozens if not hundreds: vases, leggings, saucepan lids. And most of it has obviously gone straight from the wholesalers to the attics, unloved and unpriced. So the gloves stuck out most remarkably.’

  ‘Which brings us back to the question of why she left them there.’

  ‘Especially since the room where Mirren hid was cleared and scrubbed.’

  ‘How do you know which room she hid in?’ Alec said.

  ‘Ah, now, yes. Miss Hutton’s bombshell,’ I replied. ‘Mirren was there the whole time, Alec. She didn’t just creep into the store and up the stairs on jubilee morning. She was staying there. In a little attic room with a fireplace and running water.’

  ‘I suppose that makes sense,’ Alec said. ‘She had to have been somewhere. I can’t agree about it being a bombshell, Dandy.’

  ‘And between closing on Saturday and opening up on Monday morning she left a letter for her grandmother, a handwritten note, slipped under Mary’s office door.’

  ‘Boom!’ Alec said. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because Miss Hutton trod on it when she unlocked the office door early in the morning to leave some papers in there.’

  ‘Did she read it?’ Alec’s eyes were gleaming with the thrill of the chase. I shook my head. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Sealed, eh? And she didn’t even think of steaming it open over a kettle?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, she said it was only folded in,’ I said. ‘But she didn’t look at it anyway.’ Alec snorted. ‘I’m quite serious. She’s as innocent as a flower. Worryingly innocent, if you ask me.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Alec said.

  ‘She concluded that Mirren left the store after she dropped off the note for Mary, because if not, Mary would have gone looking for her and found her and Miss Mirren would be with us still.’

  ‘Golly,’ said Alec. ‘Yes, that is an unusual amount of trusting innocence to find in a grown woman these days. What was your conclusion, in contrast, my darling?’

  ‘That Mary Aitken decided to let Mirren stew up in the attics until her hired detective came to find the girl on a day and at a time of Mary’s choosing. Once the jubilee was safely out of the way. And that after Mirren died, Mary got the attic cleared so that no one would know Mirren had been there.’

  ‘But Mary didn’t kill her?’

  ‘I don’t think so, or she’d have dealt with the gloves as part of the general tidy-up.’

  ‘Back to Abigail,’ Alec said. We went along in silence for a moment, trying hard to think with clarity about it all.

  ‘I suppose . . . no,’ said Alec.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I suppose they were women’s gloves, were they? Sorry! Of course they were or you’d have said— Oh, Dandy!’

  ‘Don’t be so superior,’ I said. ‘It’s all very well for you just waiting for my reports and then picking holes in them.’ I blew upwards into my hair trying to cool my blushes.

  ‘So. Not necessarily back to Abigail after all,’ Alec said. ‘Back perhaps to Mr Hepburn who snatched a pair of gents’ gloves off the shop floor as he was passing, hid them after the dark deed was done so he couldn’t be caught with them about his person and of course can’t just waltz back into the shop to fetch them now, unlike Mary Aitken who needs no excuse to be there scrubbing and clearing away. Although, actually . . .’

  ‘Any man who did that must have nerves of iron,’ I said. ‘I mean, he must have been there, hiding while the place was crawling with policemen.’

  ‘Or have fled immediately and been out of the building before anyone worked out what the noise was.’

  ‘Down a stair he was sure no one would use to come up.’

  ‘Having hidden the gloves.’

  ‘Unseen by Abigail.’

  ‘Even though he put the revolver in Mirren’s hands.’ I kept walking without noticing that Alec had stopped. Then I turned and stared back at him. ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got this all wrong,’ he said. ‘Even if we can bodge together a motive for Hepburn – something in the cuckold line, I suppose – how would he get into Aitkens’? How would he know Mirren was there? And worst of all for us, how could he have killed Mirren with Jack Aitken’s service revolver?’

  ‘He – he – she could have brought it with her and then . . . No. He could have come to see her not to kill her but she had planned to kill herself only . . . No, hang on. If she brought the gun . . .’

  ‘He couldn’t,’ Alec said. ‘It makes no sense at all.’

  ‘But if he was seen,’ I insisted. ‘Alec, there are precious few hard facts to be grabbed hold of in this sorry mess. We can’t afford to go discounting those we have.’

  ‘You heard Mrs Lumsden say that she heard some unnamed girl say that she had seen one of the Mr Hepburns in the store. But it might have been Dugald Hepburn. It needn’t have been Robin at all.’

  ‘It couldn’t be Dugald,’ I said. ‘He was in Kelso.’

  ‘Still, until we find the girl and pin her down to it, it’s not a hard fact as far as I can see.’

  ‘So let’s find her and pin her.’

  ‘So why are we walking away from Aitkens’, instead of scouring the Household Department?’

  I looked at my wristwatch; it was almost five.

  ‘We don’t have time to do it today,’ I said. ‘The store will be closing. It’s a pity we can’t blockade the back door and quiz them all as they leave.’

  ‘Or just ask Mrs Lumsden who it was,’ said Alec, nodding.

  ‘Well, we can’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve been warned about Mrs Lumsden very specifically. She’s squarely in Mary Aitken’s corner, loyal to the core.’

  ‘So let’s join her there,’ Alec said. ‘Or pretend to anyway.’ He grabbed me by the elbow, wheeled around and started back towards Aitkens’ again almost at a trot, just as the town hall clock began to strike the hour.

  Young men in pairs and threes, all with their black armbands on their overcoat sleeves, came strolling down the alley at the side of the Emporium and dispersed up and down the street, mounting their bicycles or hurrying for their buses and trams, then, when the stream of them had dried to a trickle, the girls began.

  ‘Dawdlers,’ said Alec. It would not have occurred to him, a bachelor still, how much longer it takes a woman to tidy herself for even the shortest and most everyday outing, but I could see in the newly brushed hair, the rouged lips and the straightened stockings – not just of the elegant creatures from Gowns tripping along on heels far too high for their homeward journeys, but of the plainer girls too in their plainer way – that they had all taken time at the end of their weary day to make sure they were ready for any adventures which might come along; adventures which might take the seat beside a girl on an omnibus and change her life for ever, adventures which might catch a girl’s eye in the park and doff a hat with a smile and an unspoken promise to meet, doff and smile again tomorrow.

  ‘I suppose you’d recognise Mrs Lumsden all right in her hat and coat, would you?’ Alec said.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘I expect the seniors have to stay behind to lock things and— Look, here she comes now.’ Little Mrs Lumsden, in black straw hat, shiny black summer coat and very small and high-heeled black patent shoes, came bundl
ing out – there is no other word for it – of the alley mouth like one of those very busy, bulbous little beetles. Alec had primed me with my lines while we hurried back to wait in the doorway and I stepped forward with an air of confidence I hoped was to be fulfilled.

  ‘Mrs Gilver?’ she said. ‘Were you waiting for me?’

  ‘I was, my dear Mrs Lumsden,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad I caught you. I wanted to drop a word in your ear, very softly, if I may.’ Mrs Lumsden, a born gossip, was almost quivering. ‘It’s about Mirren.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s been idle talk,’ Alec said. ‘Of the most unpleasant kind.’

  ‘And we rather think,’ I put in, ‘that it must have come from Aitkens’ by some route or another.’

  ‘I was just in the pub down the way there,’ Alec said, ‘and a chap at the bar was saying that Miss Mirren wasn’t alone where she died. That she hadn’t been alone, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘She wasn’t,’ said Mrs Lumsden, who had not taken Alec’s meaning, clearly. ‘You know that, madam. Miss Abigail was close by. Mrs Jack, that is. If that’s the talk it more likely came from the police, not from anyone here.’

  ‘No, Mrs Lumsden,’ said Alec. ‘It was a man this chap was talking about. That a man had been up there before Miss Aitken took her life in that terrible way.’

  ‘Well, that’s a story!’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘That’s just nasty lies. And why you’d think it came from Aitkens’ I don’t know. And why you think it came from me! I would never spread such filth about the family and I know all the secre— I would never say such things about Miss Mirr— About anyone. Even if they were true and they’re not true. Miss Mirren was as innocent as a newborn baby. It’s not her fau—’ With considerable effort, Mrs Lumsden managed to stop talking and just stood with her lips pressed shut glaring at us, her bosom heaving. I took a deep breath and pressed on.

  ‘It was what you said about one of your girls from Kitchenwares saying she saw young Mr Hepburn upstairs on jubilee day.’

  ‘What?’ said Mrs Lumsden and the torrent of talk began again. ‘No, no, no. It wasn’t Housewares at all. It was Bessie Millar from Linens. And she’s been here as long as I have and would never run about telling tales.’ I cheered to myself. It had been Alec’s brainwave to mention the wrong department and make a definite accusation about Dugald in hopes that a rush of accurate information would pour out as Mrs Lumsden set the record straight again. ‘And it wasn’t young Mr Hepburn. It was his father. And anyway, she didn’t mean upstairs in the attics. She meant upstairs in the Linens Department, on the second floor. That was all. And besides, she must have been mistaken. Mrs Ninian said. It must have just been someone who looked a bit like him, for there had been no truce. Mrs Ninian told me so. So that can’t be where the talk’s coming from. It’s tired old gossip that’s forgotten. It’s two things mixed up together and making five, madam. I don’t want you thinking one of my girls is behind it. Why, it wasn’t even jubilee day.’