Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder (36 page)

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Authors: Catriona McPherson

BOOK: Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
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‘I do,’ said the milliner. ‘Lord knows, Aitkens’ does and I’m trying to see what I can put together for House of Hepburn this very morning.’ She gestured to the lavender and grey. ‘This had red ribbons and silk poppies on it half an hour ago. But if it’s black you’re looking for, madam, you’d better go up the road. Is it a close bereavement?’
‘Dugald,’ I said. ‘Something for his funeral.’
Mrs Smellie’s eyes dimmed and she shook her head.
‘You’ll be fine in the lilac then,’ she said. ‘Mrs Haddo and young Mrs Hepburn themselves won’t be in black. Pearl grey for the one and burgundy with ivory touches for the other.’
‘And Dulcie?’
‘Black, I’m sure, madam, but she’s used to their ways. This place is all Mrs Haddo and her daughter, you know.’ She looked around and sniffed. ‘It’ll give young Mrs Hepburn an interest. Help her get back on her feet, come the time, I daresay.’
‘Very sad,’ I said, agreeing. I could not quite see how I was going to propel this interview forward in a useful way. I took another nibble at the edge of it. ‘Very sad for you to be busy with pearl grey and burgundy when you were expecting a wedding.’
‘I wasn—’ She bit her lip again. ‘Indeed, madam.’
‘You weren’t?’ I said, correctly interpreting what she had just managed not to utter. To my surprise, the woman sank down onto another of the pink chairs and put her hand, which was shaking, to her temple, rubbing the skin there in circles. I could not possibly just dive in, I told myself. This woman was the horrid inspector’s wife. If she told him I had been here pestering her he would be after Hugh with leg irons before sundown. On the other hand, she knew something, was bursting with it while it gnawed away at her like a migraine.
‘My dear,’ I said to her, ‘tell me what’s wrong. Dulcie has, you know. Dulcie has told me everything.’ She looked up, ragged and weary.
‘She can’t have,’ she said. ‘Dulcie doesn’t know. Oh, she knows about Bob and Mary all right. She knew they were sweethearts years ago and she knows about when they took up again for that wee while. She told me that much and I’m guessing that’s what she told you too.’ Then she started rubbing her temples again, not looking at me as she went on. ‘Yes, Dulcie knew that Mary and Robert’s wee fling resulted in Abigail. That’s why she thinks Mirren and Dugald were cousins.’
‘
Thinks
?’ I said. ‘So you know different. You know about Jack and Hilda.’
Her hand froze and she looked up at me. ‘Jack?’
‘Aitken,’ I said. ‘I know too.’
‘What about Jack Aitken?’
‘He fathered Dugald,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what you know? That Dugald and Mirren were siblings?’
Mrs Smellie was staring hard at me now, her face growing pale.
‘Dugald’s father was Jack Aitken?’ she said. ‘So they weren’t brother and sister after all?’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘They were. They were both Jack Aitken’s children.’ I frowned at her. ‘If you didn’t know about Jack and Hilda then why weren’t you looking forward to the wedding?’
‘I thought Dugald was Robin’s child,’ she said. ‘And so there would never have been a wedding. I would have had to stop it. Or I’d have got my husband to stop it anyway. Quietly, I mean. Not standing up in the kirk and objecting. My husband is a policeman, you see.’
‘How could it have been a police matter?’ I said. She only shook her head as if she could not begin to explain what kind of matter it might be. ‘I heard,’ I said, very carefully, ‘that the police knew something. Something that made them suspect the children were murdered. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it might be.’
‘It’s not “the police”,’ said Mrs Smellie. ‘It’s just my husband. I told him what I worked out, you see.’
‘Worked out,’ I repeated. My thoughts went skittering over all the ground I had trod in the last two weeks. What could she have worked out that I had missed?
‘I’ve got to tell someone,’ she said. ‘If you promise not to breathe a word to another soul. My husband won’t let me talk about it. He’s forbidden it even between the two of us. But if I don’t say something I’ll burst. My head is pounding with it. Can I trust you?’ I nodded, not daring to breathe.
‘I’m a good milliner,’ she said. I blinked. ‘I don’t just make hats and decorate them. I study my ladies, madam. I get to know their heads, their faces, the turn of their neck, the line of their jaw, the way their hair grows up from the nape or over the ears, how high the forehead, how much space they need in the crown for a heavy head of long hair, whether a close brim will lift their cheekbones or press them down into jowls, what way to curl a brim to follow the line of their brow instead of clashing with it.’ She was tracing imaginary shapes in the air as she spoke and I was mesmerised by her long white fingers fluttering. Then she stopped and let her hands fall into her lap. She looked at me. ‘Can you guess?’ I shook my head ‘I started my apprenticeship at fourteen and I’m forty-seven now. I’ve made bridal-party hats for great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, aunts, bride, bridesmaids and little flower girls, but I’ve never seen as close a match – the head, jaw, setting of the ears, hairline at the brow and the nape, the tilt of the neck, everything . . . as Dulcie and Mirren. Never.’
I stared at her for a moment in silence. And then I remembered something.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yesterday. Dulcie came out of the shadows and I thought for a minute I’d seen a ghost. Soft hair and that little face like a bird.’
‘All of that too,’ said Mrs Smellie. ‘I wondered why no one else ever saw it, but then no one ever saw them together, not with the feud.’
‘So . . .’ I said. ‘Well, it had to happen at least once, that someone took strongly after their real forebears instead of conveniently after their official family members.’
‘You’re not thinking straight, madam,’ said Mrs Smellie. ‘To speak in that easy way.’
I frowned. ‘You mean that because Mirren took after her grandmother everyone would guess about Mary and Bob?’ I was being particularly dense, failing to see what she had just shown me.
‘Think, madam,’ she said. ‘Think it through. How could Mirren Aitken look like Dulcie Hepburn? There’s only one way.’
All of a sudden I saw it.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Robin was her father.’ Mrs Smellie nodded. ‘But that means . . .’ I said. ‘That means Dugald and Mirren were no relation to one another at all! Dugald was the child of Jack and Hilda and Mirren was the child of Abby and Robin.’ A vague feeling of unease brushed past me as I said this, but I ignored it. ‘They could have married after all. They weren’t related and Mirren wasn’t even the child of two cousins!’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ said Margaret-Ann. ‘There’s no word for what Mirren was. And she was no relation to Dugald, it’s true. But would he have wanted to marry her if he’d known? Would anyone? Think about it, madam. You haven’t seen the whole picture yet even though it’s right there in front of you.’
I frowned at her and then it fell into my mind like a great cold boulder. All the strings uncoiled and straightened in my mind and on their ends bloomed the most disgusting little flourishes, like toadstools.
‘The thing they were all so scared would happen if Dugald married Mirren,’ I said. ‘What Jack and Hilda thought it would be. Brother and . . . What Abby and Robin thought it would be. Brother and sister. It had happened already. That’s how Mirren came to be.’
Margaret-Ann nodded again and at last a little of the dazed, pained look cleared from her eyes. I imagine that it set up home instead in mine. I put my hand over my mouth. ‘And that’s why your husband thought someone might kill her?’
‘Put her away like a pup that’s come out wrong,’ said Mrs Smellie and her turn of phrase made my stomach lurch.
‘And then even if Dugald was killed for revenge, both families might just keep quiet for ever?’ Mrs Smellie was still nodding
‘So the thing that Abigail told her mother was that she had an affair with Robin,’ I said. ‘And it almost killed Mary.’
‘Well, it would,’ said Mrs Smellie. ‘But tell me this, madam: do you think Miss Abigail knows who her father is?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Definitely not. She thought she was helping Mary when she told her about Robin yesterday.’
‘What a mess,’ said Margaret-Ann, almost groaning.
‘I hope getting it off your chest will bring you some comfort,’ I said. I noticed that despite the pink light bulb my face in the glass, and hers too, was rather grey. ‘And you know the inspector was right in a way. It
is
perhaps best that Mirren at least is beyond the suffering that the knowledge must have brought to her. Oh, the poor child! I could never imagine what would make someone turn to suicide but I can see how she might not be able to
bear
herself once she knew.’
‘The inspector?’ said Mrs Smellie. I blinked at her. ‘I never mentioned my husband’s rank, madam.’
‘I think you did, you know,’ I replied.
‘I know I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I never do. Because my sister is married to an inspector. She always gets it in somewhere and it always grates on me.’
‘Well then, I can’t account for it,’ I said. I stood and pushed the little pink chair tidily in under the looking-glass table. ‘A lucky guess? Or maybe Dulcie said so. Yes, that’s it. Dulcie told me.’ A faint ghost of that mischievous grin was back on Mrs Smellie’s face although her complexion was still waxy.
‘Mrs Gilver?’ she said. I froze. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘I was so angry with George when he told me what he had done to you. I didn’t scold him because he had a steak clapped to his face and he couldn’t answer me back, but for two pins I’d have socked him one on the other side and balanced it out for him.’ I let my breath go in a huge rush.
‘You were angry with
your
husband?’ I said. ‘Not mine? Not me?’
‘Certainly not you, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘My gracious heavens, if we all had to take the blame for what our husbands do! And as for Mr Gilver – he was sticking up for you; he sounds a fine man if you don’t mind me saying. Besides,’ she dropped her voice, ‘policemen can get too used to tramping about in their size elevens telling everybody else what’s what and how come. Don’t you think so?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say, Mrs Smellie,’ I said.
‘Smiley,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘He’s the stubborn one, madam, not me.’
Alec was tucked up in a club armchair in what I perceived to be the gentlemen’s corner of Hepburns’ tearoom. Most of its area was covered with more of the little Continental-looking tables and chairs where pairs of ladies perched and nibbled at pastries, but in one corner, furthest away from the doorway into the hairdressing salon (from which unmistakable traces of Marcelling lotion were emanating to mingle with the aroma of good fresh coffee and warm buns), there was an oasis of armchairs, where daily newspapers were folded on the tables and where husbands and chauffeurs might wait in relative masculinity.
I waved to Alec and beckoned him to join me at a wrought-iron perch, rather an out-of-the-way one where I might speak freely.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Mystery solved?’ I nodded. ‘Coffee? Cake?’
I shook my head. ‘You’ll wish you hadn’t had any either when I tell you.’ He raised one eyebrow and sat back with his arms folded to hear the tale. Now, I know Alec thinks I veer too much towards the dramatic for no reason, so I should really have tried to make sure he braced himself for what was coming. As it was, his face drained and he gulped and one of the waitresses – Hepburns’ staff were really quite stupendously attentive – came over to ask if he felt quite well and did he perhaps require a drink of water or a taxi. He accepted the offer of water with grateful thanks.
‘No wonder Mary went off like a rocket years ago when she returned home to find things so chummy with the young Hepburns and Aitkens,’ he said.
I shook my head; it was so awful that one almost had to laugh: almost.
‘But what she didn’t see and what Robert Hepburn didn’t see either was that they made the other family forbidden fruit with their stupid feud. Jack and Hilda got an extra frisson from trysting with one another, and in Aitkens’ too. Robin probably thought he was being very daring with Abigail.’
‘And what was Abby up to?’
‘Following her mother’s hints,’ I said. ‘Finding an obliging lover so that she could carry on the Aitken name, even if not the bloodline.’
‘Well, Abby doesn’t have any Aitken blood, does she?’ Alec said. ‘No wonder Mary wasn’t worried about her marrying her so-called cousin Jack.’ He blew out hard. ‘And so the secret of Mirren’s parentage was what Abby told Mary yesterday.’
‘And for all Mary knew, Mirren might have told Dugald and so Mary couldn’t rest until she found out if any of the surviving Hepburns knew about it and, if so, whether they could be trusted never to say.’
‘And do they?’
‘I think Robert does,’ I said. ‘I’m sure he recognised Dulcie’s likeness in Mirren and worked out what it means. Remember, he couldn’t bring himself to look at her picture and when he saw it in spite of trying not to he was horrified. He saw his wife there.’
‘How long do you think he’s known? How did he find out?’

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