Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses (37 page)

‘One’s only hope,’ I said, turning towards them, ‘is for a downpour proper. It would get us inside and stop that dreadful din.’

In their eyes was the flash as they recognised
their
sort and they did a bit of polite tittering.

‘Do you have a girl here?’ said the father. ‘Excuse me! Magnus Duncan and this is my wife, Ursula.’

‘Dandy Gilver,’ I said. ‘How do you do. I think we both know the Esslemonts, don’t we?’

‘Oh, how do you do,’ said Mrs Duncan. ‘Yes, dear Daisy.’

‘I don’t have a girl here,’ I said. ‘Yet. I’m thinking about it, though.’ I crossed my fingers in hope that our acquaintance was too slight for them to remember that I had only sons. They exchanged a quick look, as husbands and wives will, but it was impenetrable to me.

‘Well, St Columba’s has been very good for our girl, hasn’t it, Ursie?’ said Mr Duncan.

‘Oh, quite,’ said his wife. ‘Thoroughly to be recommended.’ Then both of them looked down into their coffee cups and took up what promised to be a lasting silence.

‘Well, that’s very good to . . .’ I said, staring at their partings. ‘Excuse me, won’t you. I see someone I have to . . .’

I did, as a matter of fact. I saw the unmistakable back view of Candide Rowe-Issing, in a lavender linen frock and an outrageous yellow hat which clashed painfully with the yellow of the St Columba’s uniform. I made a bee-line for her but was waylaid before I was halfway there.

‘Miss Gilver!’ It was Eileen Rendall, as pretty as a picture with a yellow rose tucked behind one ear, one of the few girls not washed out by the uniform.

‘Goody Goody Gilver,’ said Spring, coming up behind her. ‘I thought you’d gone. We were admiring ourselves for our quickest work yet, weren’t we, girls?’

‘Oh, I was only ever a stop-gap,’ I said. ‘How are you getting on with Miss Glennie?’

‘Well, on the bright side,’ said Spring, ‘she hasn’t snatched the sonnets back from us.’

‘We’ll always have you to thank for the sonnets, Miss Gilver,’ said Katie, joining them and slinging an arm around the neck of each.

‘On the other hand, she knows a choking amount of guff about Milton,’ Spring finished.

‘And she’s a dab hand with a grammar exercise too, more’s the pity,’ said Katie.

‘Who’s this?’ It was Sally Madden. ‘Our Latin, French and English are all grammar exercises now. And since chemistry and algebra are grammar too, to my mind anyway, it’s syntax as far as the eye can see. I love it.’

‘Oh, Sally, shut up, you
can’t
,’ said Spring. ‘And you don’t love Highland Glennie. No one could love that old—’

‘Girls,’ I said. ‘I might not be your mistress any more but that’s no reason to suspend all civility around me.’

‘Sorry, Miss Gilver,’ said Eileen.

‘Where’s Stella?’ I asked, accustomed to seeing them all together.

‘Why do you ask?’ said Stella’s voice behind me. As usual, the insolence was as pronounced as it was indefinable. ‘Did you want to ask—’ Then her attention was caught by something behind me. ‘There’s Mummy at last,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ I said, attempting the same languid tone. ‘I must slope over and say hello.’

But the terrace between the lemon-yellow hat and me was stuffed with parents, rather like a church-hall jumble sale. Actually, as I looked around, a great deal like a church-hall jumble sale. Fathers in shiny suits with braces showing and mothers in patterned frocks and unfortunate hats on the backs of their heads. A mother standing very near me gave a shy smile and sidled up like a little water buffalo.

‘You’re one of the teachers?’ she said. ‘I heard those girls talking to you.’

‘I’m . . .’ I said. ‘English mistress.’ It was perhaps just vague enough not to be an out and out lie. ‘Now, which girl is yours?’ Of course, the chances of me having met their daughter in my one day of active service were slim and the chances of remembering her name if I had were even slimmer.

‘Tilly,’ said the father, giving me a toothy smile.

I opened my eyes wide. ‘Tilly Simmons?’

‘That’s our little darling,’ said the mother. ‘She’s good at English, isn’t she?’ She sidled even closer and gave me a nudge in the ribs with her plump elbow. I thought back to Clothilde Simmons’s laboured and mediocre translation and gave a thin smile. I could feel the Simmons letter in my bag as though it were a hot coal.

‘And is this your first visit to the school?’ I said. ‘I must introduce you to dear Miss Shanks.’

‘Oh no, we know Miss Shanks,’ said Mr Simmons. ‘We’re very close to Miss Shanks, aren’t we, Mother?’

‘You see we’re not just parents,’ said his wife. ‘We’re benefactors.’

‘Or we will be soon.’ Mr Simmons put his thumbs under his braces and rocked on his heels with pride. ‘Just need to make up our minds between a yacht and some stables.’

‘I’m sorry?’ I said.

‘Don’t you know?’ said the man, looking rather crestfallen. ‘I’d have said it was worth talking about, me.’

‘Father and I are going to make a bequest to the school,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘Riding stables, we thought. But Miss Shanks is quite keen on a yacht to give the girls sailing lessons. Oh, Father! I hope she comes round to the stables. I’d never sleep thinking about Tilly out on them big waves.’

‘We’re not used to our kid being away from us yet,’ Mr Simmons said. ‘Never went away to school, didn’t Mother and me.’ I had guessed as much; everything from their hat and braces to their pancake-flat vowels announced that even though they might have a great deal of money (a very great deal if stables were on the cards) they had made it all themselves and were showering upon their daughter all the advantages they had missed. Since I am no snob (no matter what Alec says) my only concern was to help them shower it sensibly.

‘Can I just ask,’ I said, ‘what made you decide to send Tilly to St Columba’s instead of one of the bigger and better known schools?’

‘Oh, we had her down for Cheltenham,’ said Mrs Simmons. ‘But friends of ours, well, neighbours, new neighbours, after we moved, said to us that St Columba’s was the place. And their girls are to be presented at court, you know. Real young ladies.’

‘I see,’ I said, which was a lie. ‘Well, simply lovely to have met you, Simmonses.’ I gave a little bow and was amused to see them giving a real bow and curtsey in return as I left them.

‘And where are all the mistresses?’ said a voice as I plunged into the crowd once again. Where indeed? I thought. I had expected to feel a hand on my collar a lot quicker than this, and while in one way it was splendid to have had such a run at the parents and girls (not to mention the fact that I felt I was hearing all sorts of useful stuff from their innocent lips), looked at another way I knew that I was only ever going to solve the puzzle of St Columba’s by skewering the Misses Christopher, Barclay and Shanks. Those three were at the root of it, whatever it was.

‘Which mistress would you like most to talk to?’ I said, turning with a smile. ‘Perhaps I can take you to her or fetch her for you?’

‘Miss Barclay,’ said a man in a brown suit with a pipe in his mouth. ‘Geography. Our Christine is going to Edinburgh University to do geography at the end of next year.’ His voice had grown louder, in the hope that the bystanders nearest him would hear him and marvel.

‘
Up
to Edinburgh to
read
geography, Rex,’ said his wife in far softer tones.

‘Rex?’ said her husband. ‘Who’s Rex, when he’s at home? I’m Reg and I always have been.’ He winked at me. ‘She only started the Rex lark when Christine got interviewed at the university and they said she was in!’

‘You must be very proud of her,’ I said, smiling with genuine pleasure for them.

‘Oh well, how else would it be?’ he said. ‘My wife chose the school and took care of all that. I’m a plain man and happy to see the girls take after their mother.’

‘You’ve chosen very well for your daughter, Mrs . . .’ I said. ‘Edinburgh University, eh?’

‘She was worth it,’ said the woman, curiously tight-lipped beside her beaming husband.

‘And you have another daughter too?’ I said.

‘She’s not coming here,’ said the woman. She stared me straight in the eye. ‘You can tell Miss Shanks that from me, whoever you are.’

At last the pipe band gave a long discordant groan and an exhausted wheeze and were silent. A gong was struck and a voice – I thought it was Mrs Brown – announced that luncheon was served in the refectory. I turned back to the quiet woman and took hold of her arm as discreetly as I could do it.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Or rather I think you need to talk to me.’

But she brushed me off quite roughly and backed away, shaking her head.

‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Not any more, not again. You can forget it.’ And with that she turned and vanished into the crowd.

‘My wife,’ said her husband, looking after her. ‘Nerves, you know. Been that way a few years now. You’ll have to forgive her.’

‘Of course,’ I said, with a distracted smile. ‘Don’t mention it. I hope she’s soon feeling better and please tell her I apologise if I upset her in any way.’

‘Dandy?’ The voice was not loud but it cut through the hubbub of jostling parents like a shard of glass. I turned and smiled.

‘Candide,’ I said. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

‘But you have sons!’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me Shanks is taking boys now.’

‘Not as far as I know,’ I said, ducking under the hat brim and clashing my cheeks against hers. ‘I’ve just seen Stella. She’s your absolute twin these days.’

‘Only to look at,’ said Candide in a cool murmur. ‘How are your boys getting on, then? Not turning your hair white, I trust?’

‘Oh well, Donald is a bit of a handful,’ I said. ‘Teddy hasn’t set into shape yet, so who knows?’ But she was not really listening and I changed the subject. ‘I’ve seen your bathing pool,’ I said. Candide’s face, always quite foxy, grew positively pinched at the mention of it.

‘Blasted thing,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that they’d put our names on it.’

‘Very good of you, still,’ I said. ‘Given the times, especially.’

‘Hah!’ said Candide. ‘Well, yes, that bloody pond used to be a Canaletto. There’s a pale patch on the landing wall.’ I stared at her and she looked off to one side, took a short sharp nip at her cigarette, almost like a little kiss, and then blew the smoke out in a long stream. ‘One does what one can,’ she said. ‘And better a simple bequest than a lifetime’s obligation worked off in testimonials.’

‘Well, Stella is a fortunate girl,’ I said, ‘and Miss Shanks a
very
fortunate woman.’ I knew I was staring harder than ever but in truth my mind was far away, sorting through all that I had heard: from the Simmonses and the Duncans, from Mr and Mrs Reg to Candide’s few cryptic offerings.

‘Stella,’ said her mother, ‘is a disappointment and a pest. I only hope she makes it all worthwhile in the end by marrying someone half-decent, that’s all.’ Then she threw down her cigarette, flashed me a quick smile, clashed cheeks again and swept towards the open dining-room doors, the lesser parents (and that was more or less all of them) parting like the Red Sea at her coming.

‘Oh no,’ I groaned for, in the space where she had been standing, there now stood Stella herself, and for once her brow was not arched and her lip not curled. She was white-faced with shock and her mouth trembled.

‘What did Mummy just say?’ she said, not drawling at all now.

‘I didn’t catch it,’ I answered. Feigning unlikely deafness is such a help at so many awkward moments.

‘A disappointment?’ Stella said. ‘A
pest
?’

‘Have you quarrelled?’ I asked. She had been badly enough crumpled by the unfortunate overhearing that I did not shrink from putting a friendly arm around her, as one would any child. And crumpled as she was, she submitted to it.

‘No,’ she said. ‘The last time we quarrelled was when they said I had to come here to school instead of where I wanted.’

‘Why was that, do you know?

‘Friends said it was marvellous,’ she replied. ‘And they got a bargain, they said.’

‘Well, Stella,’ I said. ‘You know what to do when you overhear ill of yourself, don’t you?’ She rallied a little.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I shall put it out of my mind.’

‘Or hoard it in secret until your mother is old and infirm and then cast it up endlessly,’ I whispered. ‘Ask her who’s a pest now, when you’re wheeling her round in her bath chair. Bellow it down her ear-trumpet in revenge.’

This recovered her completely and she gave a rich chuckle and tossed her hair.

‘You have a better wit than any other mistress around here,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you stay?’

I leaned towards her.

‘I’m not a mistress,’ I said. ‘Remember Donald Gilver who chased you out into the snow at that Christmas party at Cawdor, trying to kiss you?’

‘How do you know about that?’ said Stella.

‘I’m his mother,’ I said. I saw her eyes narrow and then widen as she recognised me. ‘I spanked him with a hairbrush for frightening you and spoiling your pretty shoes.’

‘So what were you doing here?’ Stella said.

‘I’m a private detective,’ I told her and had the satisfaction of seeing her sharp little face register utter amazement. ‘And I’m just about at the bottom of what’s happening here. At least I might be if I could have ten minutes’ solitude to think it through.’

‘Can I tell the others?’ she said. And a little of my short career as an English mistress was in me when I echoed Hugh and answered:

‘You may.’

Where, though, was solitude to be found in St Columba’s on this day of all days? I did not want to run into any of the mistresses now. After luncheon no doubt all of the dorms and classrooms would be swarming with little girls showing their beds and desks to mummies and daddies, and from the rows of seats arranged in the flat part of the grounds north of the school there was clearly some outdoor entertainment planned too. I slipped into the building by a garden door and seeing the little flower room where the mistresses’ bags were stored reminded me that one room of all would be sure to be empty today. And I knew the way, thankfully. It took me only a moment to find Fleur’s door, try the handle, send up a silent prayer and slip inside.