Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses (22 page)

‘Alec, shut up, for heaven’s sake,’ I said. All around us people were turning to see what such a thing would look like and I hunched my neck down into my coat collar to avoid their gaze.

‘Come up,’ said Alec. At the next window along I saw the curtain move and was sure that the shadow there was the convalescent widow. Hands fussed their way out from behind the lace and brought the sash down with a sharp rap into its frame.

‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘Apart from anything else, if that was the quarter chiming then I need to hurry up to the school for the start of lessons. Come down and walk with me.’

He was at my side in less than a minute (oh, to have a man’s toilet instead of my own, even with bobbed hair and zip fasteners and Grant to mix the lash-black), determined to solve the riddle of my shining eyes and the small smile I could not quite persuade to leave my lips.

‘I went to see Joe to tell him we can’t keep looking for Rosa,’ I said.

‘I’d have done that,’ said Alec, handing me up the first and steepest of the cliff steps.

‘I wanted to tell him how unhappy Sabbatina is too,’ I said. ‘Oof! Thank you, I’m all right on my own from here. She found out about her mother leaving and she’s in low spirits.’

‘Doesn’t sound too enchanting so far,’ said Alec. ‘Why the bounce in your step and the broad grin?’

‘Oh, too silly for words, but Giuseppe Aldo is such a flirt and I suppose I’m not quite beyond being flattered by it yet.’

‘Not a flirt, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘A charmer, I’d say. Don’t forget how he had
me
hugging him in the street after a day’s acquaintance. You have nothing to berate yourself with for being taken in.’

‘Ah well,’ I said. ‘I daresay he won’t be alone for long then. Any of the women round here who’re used to fish guts and monosyllables might be happy to try hot fat and sweet nothings.’

‘If he can pry his heart away from Rosa, anyway,’ Alec said. ‘But he might pine for ever.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘His spirits are lifting already. He was talking about Sabbatina and the sunshine and sea breezes when I left him. I’m sure he does love his wife with that heaving Latin heart of his, but he’s an India rubber ball and he’ll bob back to the surface.’

‘Anyway, thanks to you cutting the ties he is no longer our problem,’ Alec said. ‘So I feel no compunction in sloping off on the 10.05.’

‘Sloping where?’ I said. ‘To do what?’

‘Did you know that scholastic agencies open at eight o’clock in the morning?’ he replied. ‘And of course newspaper offices keep notoriously early hours, worse than bakers. I’ve done a day’s work already. Oh, thank God!’ We had reached the top of the cliff steps and come out on level ground. ‘Twenty past nine, Dandy, let’s sit a minute while I brief you. And I must say the revelations of life in a girls’ school go on – nine thirty?’

‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘I thought they’d be knee-deep in slide rules and conjugations by this time too. Anyway, the sloping?’

‘North Yorkshire,’ said Alec. ‘It’s a devil of a journey too unless I catch this first train to Dumfries and hope for a tail wind. A very tight connection in Carlisle.’

I sighed and waited.

‘Yes,’ Alec said. ‘Right. The Lambourne Agency popped Miss Blair’s name right out as soon as I mentioned girls and cricket and apparently she’s working at an establishment by the name of The Bridge House School for Young Ladies, which is somewhere out in the middle of the moors north of Pickering.’

‘The agency just told you where she was?’ I said. ‘To help you poach her?’

‘Well, she’s none too happy about the moor, it seems,’ said Alec. ‘So she’s still on the books, as it were. Anyway, north of Pickering, Dan. Not ringing any bells for you?’

I shook my head.

‘The Forresters’ house is less than twenty miles away.’

‘Of course!’ I said.

‘And since Elf was a cousin of theirs, I think there’s bound to be some leavening of the Lipscott loyalty with a little Forrester loyalty. Not to say in Aurora – but perhaps her husband? So I thought I’d stop in on them under some pretext or other and see what I can find out.’

‘And you don’t fear more dogs? Either at the school or the Forresters’?’

Alec laughed.

‘I’d put on moleskin britches if I had them,’ he said. ‘But I told you yesterday, the farmer’s wife actually
set
those dogs on me. I’ve never been snubbed by a dog of its own free will in my life. Plenty of cats, naturally, but dogs love me.’

‘Strange way to offer bed and breakfast,’ I said, then shook the thought away. ‘What do you hope to learn from the Forresters anyway?’

‘Well, the newspaper reports were very sketchy. Accidental death. Nothing to say whether he shot himself cleaning a gun or came off his horse crossing a ditch or anything.’

‘How very odd. Go for Mrs Forrester senior,’ I said. ‘She’s always rather disapproved of Aurora and if you work up the current scandal with Fleur you might well loosen her tongue.’

‘And what would you suggest as a method?’ Alec said. ‘Moral high ground? Flirting? Like Joe?’ He gave me a sly look, still teasing.

‘God, no,’ I said. ‘Fenella Forrester is a formidable woman of the old school – absolutely no nonsense about her. If I had to get her talking I’d go along the . . . good plain commonsensical route.’ Alec looked puzzled. ‘You know: it’s all a bit of a mess and too silly for words so we’d better tidy it up before someone trips and turns an ankle.’

‘I’m not sure I can pull that off,’ Alec said. ‘Not sure any man could.’

‘I shall treat that as a compliment to my sex,’ I said. ‘No doubt wrongly. Also, if you do get hold of Aurora – and she’s a much better bet than Pearl, which is probably why it’s been Pearl who was delegated to speak to us; Aurora’s far from bright and therefore easier to winkle things out of – you should use a modified version of the same thing. All too silly and let’s get it straightened out for poor Fleur.’

‘And there’s no way on earth I can pull off
that
one,’ Alec said. ‘Really, Dandy, I was feeling tiptop and all go until you started helping. Now I doubt whether it’s worth the train fare.’

‘Well,
I’m
not going,’ I said, standing up and pummelling myself where I had been resting against the numbing stone of the parapet. ‘I’ve got the third form for
Tam o’Shanter
any min—’ I was interrupted by the clang of the lesson bell and immediately upon it came the now familiar sound of girls’ feet tramping and girls’ voices clamouring. ‘And someone in this place must know something about why the mistresses are scattering to the four winds and be willing to tell me.’

‘Not to worry,’ said Alec. ‘I’m sure Miss Blair will have no hesitation in telling
me
.’ With that he and I both sprang from our marks and set out to learn more and faster than the other, thinking only of winning and crowing and not at all of poor Fleur or No. 5 or any of the vanishing mistresses or putative murders. One wonders at times whether this constant – or at any rate, frequent – immersion in crime and brutality is good for one. I was thankful that my two boys were going to be ‘farmers’ like their father and that neither of them would follow in my footsteps, for even amongst the constabulary of Portpatrick I could trace the path downwards from the open heart and clear head of a Constable Reid to the hard-bitten mien and flinty soul of a Sergeant Turner. Perhaps, I mused to myself as I followed the corridor to Fleur’s classroom, here was the explanation for the nature of the sergeant which had always puzzled me: quite simply, it was the low point on the journey through the heart of darkness, inspectors having survived it and emerged on the other side and the lowly ranks having not yet reached its black depths.

I swung into the English classroom and saw twelve little girls staring down a heart of darkness all of their own. Twelve copies of Chaucer were open on their desks and twelve pairs of eyes looked lifelessly up from them as I entered.

‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘Now—’ but I had forgotten to leave time for the answering chorus, slow as a dirge.

‘Good morning, Miss Gilver.’

‘Yes, quite, thank you. Now, girls, close your books, please, and pass them along to the ends. We’re having a change.’ I swept into the book cupboard with the not inconsiderable pile of
Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
and emerged again with the much more modest pile of
Complete Works of Robert Burns
. I suppose had he lived to see forty he might have run to a thicker volume, but I could not help but attribute my lighter load at that moment to his bonny nature rather than his sickly lungs.

‘Open up to page one hundred and forty-three, please, girls,’ I said. ‘And . . . you there. Start reading.’

‘Marion, Miss Gilver,’ said the child I had picked upon. She fluttered the pages and stood up, clearing her throat.

‘
Tam o’Shanter
,’ she announced. ‘When chapman . . .’ She put her finger on the page and looked up. ‘What does
chapman
mean, Miss Gilver?’

‘An excellent question, Marion,’ I replied. ‘Does anyone know?’ There were blank looks all around. ‘And what do we do if there’s a word we don’t know?’ I continued, riffling hastily to the back of the book to check. ‘We look it up in the Glossary, don’t we? Look it up in the Glossary, Marion.’ Not only did she but so did the rest of them, keen little scholars all, and the turning pages caused a breeze for a moment until they all found what they were looking for and their arms started to wave like ears of wheat. I nodded towards the nearest waving arm.

‘Pedlar, Miss Gilver,’ called out the child, as she shot to her feet and sank back down again. I could see that this off-the-cuff translation of Burns’ Scots was going to be a good dose of healthy exercise for their arms and legs as well as their tongues and brains.

‘Good girl,’ I said.

‘When chapman billies fill the street,’ Marion resumed. ‘And drouthy . . .’

The pages were fluttering again.

‘Thirsty, Miss Gilver.’

‘Splendid.’

‘. . . neighbours neighbours meet.’

If this were all there was to it, I thought to myself, sitting back and almost enjoying the halting recital and the punctuating translations, then I was a marvellous teacher.

I thought too that I agreed with Giuseppe Aldo about his daughter’s talents and not at all with Miss Shanks’s dismissal of them, for when it came time for Sabbatina to stand and recite, she did so in a clear and pleasing voice and showed in her phrasing that she understood exactly what the words conveyed (unlike some of the girls who rumty-tummed their way through the lines regardless of their meaning). I was a little unsettled by hearing her describe Tam and the married landlady of the inn sharing their ‘secret, sweet and precious favours’, unable not to think of her mother and the nameless suitor who had charmed her away from her husband and home, dreading to hear one of the other girls whisper or giggle behind her hand. But either none of Sabbatina’s classmates knew of the scandal, or they were too innocent to draw the grubby connection which sprang to my mind. Or, I allowed myself to think, they were too enthralled by the exciting material so skilfully chosen by their new favourite mistress.

By morning coffee time, however, when the girls went outside to run around for ten minutes, I was back on solid ground with my heels still ringing from how hard I had hit it. For the fifth form were lolling in a haystack with Piers Plowman as he dreamed one of his unfathomable dreams and while, to the casual glance, it was less terrifying than Tam’s escapade with the ghosties and ghoulies it struck terror into me, for I knew not how to pronounce it, parse it, gloss it, or imagine what examination questions might have been set upon it or how in heaven I was ever to mark the answers to them.

‘Um,’ I had said in desperation, ‘translate the next thirty lines, girls.’

‘
Thirty
, Miss Gilver?’ they had groaned as one.

I glanced at the gobbledygook stretching down the page.

‘All right, twenty,’ I said. ‘And keep very quiet, on your honour, please. I’ve just got to slip out and see Miss Shanks about something.’

Thankfully she was not out on the cliff in her underclothes leading a class in callisthenics, or marking worn linen in a cupboard somewhere – I had not forgotten that she was a matron at heart (indeed, perhaps it explained why she was such a very peculiar headmistress, in a way) – but was sitting quietly in her study with fat ledgers open before her.

‘Fielding always used to take care of the accounts,’ she said, slamming a ledger shut with a sharp smack and a puff of dust. ‘It’s Greek to me.’

‘School Certificate papers, Miss Shanks,’ I said. ‘I shall need to have a look at them if I’m to know what the girls should be swotting up – I mean, studying. And if I’m to be quite sure that I’m all set to mark them too.’ I tried to make this second consideration sound very airy.

‘Of course, of course,’ said Miss Shanks. She stood and went over to a picture on her wall – an unfeasibly highly coloured print of cattle standing knee deep in a loch with glowering mountains behind them – unhooked it and set about opening the safe it was hiding with the largest of the bristling bunch of keys she wore at her belt.

‘Now then, now then,’ she said, stirring the papers inside the safe’s modest chamber with perfect unconcern for their disarrangement. ‘School Cert English . . .’ She plucked a pale green sheet from amongst the mess she had made. ‘And you might as well take the Higher Cert paper too, while you’re at it.’ A pale pink sheet joined the other. ‘Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your aunt.’ She lifted a knee to stop a small pile of letters from cascading out of the safe door onto the floor and managed to pin two or three to the wall. I shot forward and retrieved the rest. I shuffled them back into a bundle and exchanged them for the exam papers. Miss Shanks grinned at me, threw the letters back inside and closed the safe door with a clang.

‘And when do you need the papers for the other forms?’ I said.

‘Oh, there’s a whiley yet,’ said Miss Shanks. ‘Exams start in late June – along with the hay fever, you know. If we leave the doors open to the rose gardens half the wee souls have sneezing fits and if we shut them there’s always one or two take to fainting. The examination hall was a ballroom, you know; faces due south, and was never meant to be used during the day.’