Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses (4 page)

I frowned at him. ‘Why not? One would have thought you’d more quickly shove him into your old regiment than up the aisle with a fading beauty of questionable past.’

Grant was now, frankly, loitering. My case was packed and the drawer she was tidying out was perfectly tidy already.

‘If it comes to conscription then of course he shall go. They shall both go. But I will not encourage them into the vanguard.’

I shook my head at him. Hugh is a doom-monger of the very highest order. He was convinced that a nine-day strike a year or two ago was the coming of the revolutionary hordes and managed to get me thoroughly rattled despite my long experience of his dramatic premonitions (not to mention my long experience of my country not going in for revolutions much these days). His latest conviction, a mere ten years after the Great War ended, was that more of the same was on its way and from the very Hun that we had so thoroughly squashed. I do not pretend to follow the domestic politics of Bavaria with the interest my husband manages to muster, but I knew enough to be sure that this was his hobby-horse and nothing more sinister than that; more akin to campfire tales of ghosts when everyone is safe and cosy than a cool appraisal of the state of the world.

‘Goodnight, Hugh,’ I said.

‘Something to consider,’ he answered, making no move to leave my open doorway.

I stood and put my hand to the back of my neck as though to unfasten a button there, which did the trick. With a curt goodnight he left me.

‘Master’s right, you know,’ said Grant. ‘Madam.’

‘About the gathering clouds of war?’ I said, unfastening my dress buttons since I had all but started anyway.

‘About Young Master Donald,’ she replied. ‘I caught him up a tree with Eliza McManus once, gazing at her like the crown jewels.’

‘Eliza McManus!’ I shuddered. She was the daughter of a blacksmith, as broad as she was tall, with a red face and gaps between all of her front teeth. ‘How did Eliza McManus get up a tree?’

‘This was years ago, before she got so . . . sturdy.’

‘So they were children,’ I said. ‘Stop scare-mongering.’

‘Nanny said to me once that Donald said to her – in his bath – that when he grew up he wanted to be a daddy.’

‘How sweet. This correspondence is now closed,’ I said. ‘What am I wearing tomorrow?’

‘Leave off wrenching at those buttons and I’ll tell you,’ said Grant. ‘Madam. Turn around and let me at them before they all end up on the floor.’

It was a bright grey day when we arrived at Portpatrick the following afternoon (in Scotland, one must learn to make these distinctions), with a great deal of massing and thinning cloud scudding across the sky on a stiff breeze and, although the sun did not actually break through at all and there was no hint of blue from hilltop to horizon, every so often one could tell that it was getting towards evening from a patch of diffuse light gleaming far out to sea. The station was at the top of the hill and did not run to a taxi, so we descended to the village proper in a cart driven by the porter, a man of dour mien who kept up a droning monologue all the way, in such an impenetrable Wigtownshire brogue that it might as well have been the rumble of thunder.

At the bottom, the cart swung round onto the main (practically the only) street, a straggle of cottages, shops and one or two grander captains’ houses snaking along, all facing the harbour. A fleet of small fishing craft were moored for the night, tied together and jostling as they bobbed in the high water, looking like a flock of chickens settling on their perches, with a little squawking and a little shoving but cosy enough and used to the proximity. A few of the men were still at work on their nets in the lee of the far harbour wall and some of their wives were scrubbing out crates beside them, bent double, shoving their brushes back and forth with a steady rhythm. The sound of the clogs on the cobbled ground as the women rocked back and forth, back and forth, seemed to keep time with the clink of the painters, and the soft knock-knock of the boats themselves, making one great percussion section out of the whole scene.

‘Delightful,’ I said, standing up in the cart as it drew to a stop and spreading my arms to encompass all of the view. It was not in my nature to be so expansive but the last fifty miles from Dumfries to here had been spent on a tiny ancient train with very dark upholstery and very
very
small windows from which the view was of bleak high moors and glowering valleys, so this sight of the sea was as welcome as a toddy.

I breathed deeply in hopes of ozone, but was met instead with the sharp rich smell of fried fish and vinegar from somewhere nearby.

‘Fish on Friday,’ said Alec. ‘I’m ready for my dinner, Dan; I don’t know about you.’

At this the dour porter let fly a stream of bitter invective, no more decipherable than his previous offerings in its detail but crystal clear as to its broad intent. Alec and I hurriedly descended and stood on the pavement while he tugged our suitcases out of the back of the cart and dumped them onto the ground.

‘Let’s go in and try for a cup of tea at least,’ I said, nodding at the hotel – not much more than an inn really – where we had alighted. ‘Then I think I’ll set off and try to find this school. Eh-hem, I say, Porter? Do you know where St Columba’s is?’

This innocent question set him off worse than ever, a torrent delivered at top speed and high volume of which I understood not a word, but since he was no longer holding the pony’s reins and had finished unloading, this time the words he spat out were accompanied by wild gestures. He shook his fists and jabbed the air with his fingers and, as our gaze followed the way he was so emphatically pointing, up above the roofs of the cottages, up the face of the cliff, all the way up to the headland, we saw a squat grey building, hunched above the village, glaring down. I could not believe – once it was noticed – that it had gone unnoticed before. Almost it seemed to be looming, although in fact it was set back safely with a terrace and a narrow strip of garden, but I wondered if I was alone in wanting to retreat lest it topple from its perch and flatten me.

‘I take it they don’t start with a kindergarten,’ Alec said. ‘I shouldn’t want my precious tot running around up there.’

‘Eleven and up,’ I said. ‘What a supremely unwelcoming facade. Or maybe it’s very different when approached from the carriage drive. One can only hope so.’

But when I came at it after tea – leaving Alec to stroll the harbour and the single street or so of the town – it was up the cliff path under its cold grey gaze after all, since it appeared that to make a more conventional entrance would involve me in a tiresome round trip, much longer but somehow just as steep-looking. I was wearing stout shoes, for Grant has got into the spirit of my new venture rather splendidly, even sewing extra pockets in my new tweed coats ‘for clues and what have you’ as she informed me (although none of our cases has yet produced the traditional cigar butt, scrap of unusual cloth, or hair ribbon snagged on a bush and wound around with one long red waving hair, a perfect match for the crowning glory of our chief suspect and therefore her swift undoing under our scrutiny). Stout shoes notwithstanding, though, it was a scramble and I was panting when I gained the terrace. I stopped, meaning to catch my breath, and was still looking down at the rooftops and watching Alec, ant-like, making his way round the harbour, when a voice behind me made me jump.

‘This is private property.’

‘Oh!’ I wheeled round.

‘Unless you’re Miss . . .?’

‘Gilver,’ I said. ‘Miss—’ I was going to say ‘missus’ but the woman I found myself addressing was such a very miss-ish miss that it died on my lips and she took it to be my matching curt demand for her name, since I had given mine.

‘Shanks,’ she supplied. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Um,’ I said, only now seeing the foolishness of (practically) climbing in over the back fence if I wanted to make sure of a ready welcome. Miss Shanks waited, regarding me stolidly. She was a high-coloured woman, hair so yellow there was almost an orange tint to it and face ruddy enough to clash with the hair. I thought again of Eliza McManus. Miss Shanks was similarly robust in her construction, with short thick arms, short thick legs and a middle like Humpty Dumpty. And she did not dress her frame well. She was wearing a capacious pleated frock, which made her look like a lamp.

‘I’m the headmistress,’ she said, but thankfully it sounded more like an assurance than a threat. Whatever my business was it was also hers, she seemed to say.

‘I’m here . . . um . . . I know Miss Lipscott . . .’ I said, thinking this was good and neutral.

‘Ah-ha!’ said Miss Shanks. ‘For Mademoiselle Beauclerc?’

‘Ah . . .’ I said.

‘From the agency?’

‘Yes,’ I said, although surprised at its mention. ‘Yes indeed. Gilver and Osborne.’

‘
Bon
,’ said Miss Shanks. ‘
Très bon
. We’ve been expecting you. Well, come in, Miss Gilver, come in. We’re just about to start din-dins.’ She turned and stumped off towards a half-open door leading from the terrace into the school.

For some reason, probably since Pearl and Aurora were not welcome here, I had taken it quite for granted that Fleur’s difficulties – whatever they might prove to be – were secret and I was more than a little nonplussed to be welcomed into the very bosom of the school this way. With one look behind me, I followed her.

Inside the door, which was half-glass, one of many half-glass doors set in pairs along the terrace, I found myself in a long plain dining room, with whitewashed walls and an oak floor washed with soap and left unwaxed so that it was pale and dry-looking. Stretching the length of the room were two narrow tables, set for dinner but with yellow cotton cloths instead of white, jugs of water and cups instead of wine glasses and bottles.

‘Sit here,’ said Miss Shanks, leading me to a seat halfway up one of the tables, facing the glass doors. ‘You can have a nice view of the sea tonight since you’re new.
Sehr gut
. If only it were German . . . but there isn’t the appetite for German these days and it’s not as though I haven’t tried.’

I said nothing.

‘Sit! Sit!’ said Miss Shanks, summoning a maid to squeeze in an extra place for me.

Once the maid had returned I sat, noticing that she had brought bone-handled silver where all around was Sheffield plate, and a crystal water glass in place of a cup.

‘Where are your things?’ said Miss Shanks. ‘At the front door? Still at the station?’

‘My things are down in the village at the pub,’ I said. ‘I was planning to sleep there tonight.’

‘In the pub?’ said Miss Shanks, rearing backwards a little. ‘Dearie me no, Miss Gilver, that won’t do. We’re quite ready for you. More than ready. After din-dins I’ll let one of the big-uns off prayers and she can show you to your cell.’ Here she let out a peal of laughter and poked my shoulder. ‘I’m joking,’ she said. ‘I meant your room. Here they come.’

Indeed there was a faint babbling like water just released from a far-off dam. It grew louder and louder and was joined by the tramp of feet, and then two sets of doors burst open at the back of the room and a rabble – there is no other word – of girls, big and small, all dressed in yellow shirts and grey gymslips, spread like a flood through the room and threw themselves into seats at the tables.

‘Up, up, upsie-daisies!’ shouted Miss Shanks, powerfully enough to be heard above the din. ‘If you had a sea view at muncheon you have a wall view tonight. Sort yourselves out, girlsies. Chop-chop. Hurry now.’ None of the girls moved but they did stop talking and many of them sat up straight and clasped their hands together. The crowd around me, amongst the tallest, possibly seventeen or so, went as far as to bow their heads, letting the points of their bobs droop almost to the tablecloth.

‘Grace!’ shouted Miss Shanks. ‘Here we go. With a one and a two and a—’

‘Dear Lord Above!’ Their timing was immaculate but the sound of a hundred girls all droning the words together was not devotional. ‘Some hae meat and canna eat and some wad eat that want it. We hae meat and we can eat, sae let the Lord be thankit. Amen.’ And the babble began again as maids began to hand round plates of thick soup and baskets of rolls.

The girl who served me spoke very slowly and rather loud, welcoming me to St Columba’s, and she called me, to my astonishment, ‘mademoiselle’. I blinked and stared after her, feeling realisation begin to creep up on me from far away.

Of course, the misunderstanding had the usual cause. When I did not understand what Miss Shanks meant – spouting French and lamenting German that way – I assumed she meant nothing, and she took the same view of my mentioning Gilver and Osborne. And then what with us both latching on to the shared notion of Miss Lipscott, and our determination not to challenge one another lest we appear to be fusspots, the whole conversation was a failure from start to end. Or rather, it was a failure as far as communication went; from my point of view it was a rousing success for here I was, in the school, sitting drinking soup with half of the sixth form, and if I had the nerve and could remember enough verb conjugations it appeared I was free to stay.

Of course, I did not have the nerve. Not that ‘going undercover’ was unknown to me, but here at St Columba’s there would be a race between the real new mistress turning up, Miss Shanks deciding she had better ask who Gilver and Osborne were when they were at home, and (most likely of all) the paucity of my French vocabulary and the haphazard mess of my grammar undoing my ruse before the first lesson was hardly begun.

I was going to spin it out through this evening, though, since here was a lucky chance to do some detecting, just when I needed all the luck I could find. I was too late, clearly: Fleur had bolted and gone, long enough ago for Miss Shanks to have rung the agency for her successor, but I surmised that the girls must know something and was pondering how much I could ask them. I wondered too if the mistresses – who were dispersed up and down the tables with a view to discipline – would retire to a common room afterwards for coffee and bluestocking chatter; there were certainly no coffee cups to be seen in the dining room anywhere.