Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder (38 page)

Read Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder Online

Authors: Catriona McPherson

BOOK: Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
8.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘And I believe her.’
‘And so we leave them to what comfort they can bring one another,’ said Alec. I nodded slowly. ‘Bella seems to have come up trumps, doesn’t she?’ I nodded again and we descended the stairs in silence. ‘Come on then,’ he sighed when we got to the bottom and were standing in the hall. ‘Out with it, Dandy.’
‘Out with what?’
‘I know that faraway look. Something’s bothering you.’
‘But what could it be?’ I said. ‘Everything’s tied up. No loose ends at all. Unless it’s the gloves.’
‘Gloves?’ said Alec, rather blankly, racking his brain.
‘The one pair of gloves with the price ticket, slightly stained, in the shoebox.’
‘The price ticket slightly stained or the gloves?’ said Alec.
‘One glove,’ I said. ‘I only mentioned the price ticket because it made them unusual amongst all the stuff in the attic. Almost all. But stained price tickets . . . What am I remembering?’
‘Nothing much apparently,’ Alec said.
‘I wonder if they’re still there,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and see.’
‘What for?’ said Alec, like a whining child who does not want to go shopping.
‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ I said. ‘I know! It annoys me too, but I can’t help it. This case isn’t over yet, Alec. I feel it in my bones.’
13
Ferguson the doorman gave me his everyday cheerful smile but it died on his lips a bit when he fully recognised who I was and remembered all the matters he would rather forget that seeing me brought back to his mind.
‘I feel like the bad fairy at the christening in here now,’ I said. ‘I’ve just ruined that poor man’s day.’
‘How?’ said Alec. ‘You passed him without a word.’
‘The very sight of me brings back painful memories,’ I said. ‘I quizzed him about what he might have heard during Mirren’s funeral when Dugald fell down the lift shaft and somehow made him feel that he should have stepped in and saved the boy.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Alec said. ‘He’d never have heard noises from the lift shaft from out on the street with the doors closed behind him.’
‘He wasn’t outside,’ I said. ‘The store was closed, remember. He was sitting in the foyer, on one of those seats where I sat down after almost swooning.’
Alec stopped walking abruptly.
‘You never told me that,’ he said. He looked back the way we had come and then moved around one of the Haberdashery counters so that both the front door with its row of seats and the lift, cordoned off with a black rope now, were in view.
‘What is it?’
‘He was sitting there?’ Alec said, pointing. ‘And he didn’t hear a lad falling down the lift shaft
there
? I don’t believe it.’
‘Really?’ I said, but indeed standing here at the halfway point it did not seem like much of a distance at all. ‘He is slightly hard of hearing,’ I offered, looking over at the doorman who was ushering a customer out of the store with her parcels and tipping his hat at her.
‘You mean actually deaf or just “not so young as once he was”?’ asked Alec.
‘Well, certainly he didn’t have any difficulty hearing me when we spoke,’ I said. ‘Out on the street, with carts and trams going by. But there surely wouldn’t be much to hear so long as Dugald didn’t yell or make any loud noises of that sort—’
‘Didn’t yell?’ said Alec. ‘Are you mad, Dandy? He’d scream his lungs out of his chest. He’d howl like a banshee.’
‘Are you sure?’
Alec gave me that very hard look that says I should not inquire any further. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Even if he had chosen to jump?’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t that be different from being shoved or falling?’ Alec was shaking his head as vehemently as he possibly could and his lips were pressed firmly together.
‘Makes not a blind bit of difference,’ he said. ‘It’s a reflex. It’s an animal instinct. Horses are just the same.’
‘So Dugald would definitely have been heard,’ I said. I looked back at the doorman again. ‘What does that mean? Is Ferguson lying?’
‘Either that or the time’s wrong, and the old boy
wasn’t
in the store when it happened after all.’
‘The doctor seemed pretty sure about the timing.’
‘It always bothered me, actually,’ Alec said. ‘It seemed off, somehow, that Dugald should jump during Mirren’s funeral. I’d have thought he’d either do it straight away, as soon as he knew she was dead, or he’d wait until afterwards, visit her grave, do it there, even. Why would he so conveniently jump during the ceremony and why here?’
‘Because she died here, obviously,’ I said.
‘And how did he get in?’
‘I don’t know. Actually, now that you mention it, that bothered me too. Off and on anyway. Only there was so much else to think about.’
‘Such as when was he told about Mirren’s death and who told him and where he went when he left Kelso and . . . we’ve rather neglected him, haven’t we?’ Alec was giving me one of his stern looks.
‘You thought the case was tied up in a bow half an hour ago,’ I pointed out.
‘Before I knew you’d let such a clanger of a discrepancy go past you,’ he retorted.
‘So let’s interview Ferguson again,’ I said, giving a sigh I hoped would express my admirable forbearance when he was being so tiresome. ‘See if perhaps he stepped away for a moment.’
‘Or the doctor,’ Alec said. ‘See if he worked backwards instead of forwards.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ask if he thought to himself: well, he died before everyone came back to the store and no one heard anything so it must have been when the store was empty. Quick look at the body; yes, that’ll do. Two thirty and Bob’s your uncle.’ I was shaking my head at him.
‘Granted, darling, I missed a tiny little trick about the doorman because I didn’t know that people instinctively shout out while they’re falling, but I’m sure the doctor is much more scrupulous than me. I overheard the first report, remember. He had done a proper examination, listed all the injuries, and he was working from the temperature of the body in its surroundings.’
‘Doorman it is then,’ Alec said.
‘Lying for someone?’ I asked. ‘Bought off by a murderer? Because if the doorman’s covering something up it’s got to be murder, hasn’t it? He’s hardly likely to have taken a fiver from Dugald to let him in and ignore his dying screams.’ I turned and looked at the revolving door. Only the man’s uniform sleeve was visible as he spun the contraption from outside on the pavement. I could not believe that that man, who turned down his wireless when his wife asked him to, could be party to a murder. ‘And I’m sure it’s not Mary he’s lying for. She was completely taken by surprise when I asked about Dugald. It was the furthest thing from her mind.’
‘It might take care of your gloves,’ said Alec. ‘We’re sure Mirren killed herself, aren’t we? So hidden gloves are nothing to do with her death. They might just have something to do with Dugald’s.’
‘They might be something to do with someone having to move a dead pigeon six months ago,’ I said. Alec said nothing. ‘How about this?’ I went on. ‘Let’s go up to the attics and if those gloves are gone, I’ll take that as evidence of someone mucking around up there and trying to hide the fact that they’d done so. And I’ll accept that it might have been when Dugald died and then I’ll consent to grilling the doorman.’
‘Agreed,’ said Alec. ‘Lead the way.’
We made for the back stairs, passing Miss Armstrong of Stationery on the way, who hallooed when she saw me and called out that she had a mock-up ready for my inspection.
‘Not today, Miss Armstrong,’ I said, sailing past.
Miss Torrance of Gloves gave me a mournful wave; the news of Mary’s collapse must have gone around the staff already.
‘Aitkens’ will never survive without Mrs Ninian,’ she said.
‘Don’t say that, Miss Torrance,’ I protested – although, privately, I agreed. ‘There’s Mr Jack to take up the reins.’
‘We need a woman’s touch,’ Miss Torrance said. ‘Did you go “down the street” for your
mousquetaires
?’ She had lowered her voice. ‘Then you’d see what I mean. A woman’s touch.’
‘Well, perhaps Mrs Jack when she gets back on her feet again,’ I said with no conviction. ‘Or Mrs John even.’ This last suggestion met with a look of such frank incredulity that I felt a pang for poor Bella. Right enough, though, a woman who could not be sure of two matching stockings on her own legs could hardly arrange three floors of merchandise into a tempting array.
We loitered at the back corner, pretending to inspect a coloured catalogue of headbands and tiaras which stood on an oak and brass lectern in a kind of little bower with a brown horsehair chair and a brass cheval-glass.
‘What is this?’ Alec said.
‘I think one’s supposed to choose a model and then sit here and admire it,’ I replied, thinking with fondness of the pink and white Millinery Department at Hepburns’.
‘You know what, Dandy,’ Alec said, looking around. ‘I do disapprove of the way they treat menfolk but otherwise I think House Of might have the edge.’
‘Just possibly,’ I said, drily. ‘Right, no one’s looking. Let’s go.’
Inside the stairwell all was quiet, all was dim, and we crept right up to the attic floor without interruptions or meetings. It was not a good sign, to my mind. The lift was
hors de combat
and by rights this stairway should have been bustling. I did not give Aitkens’ much chance after all the scandals and with its rightful queen laid low.
‘So which way are the shoeboxes?’ Alec said, when we were out on the landing. The lily wreath was gone and only the patch of new white paint marked the spot where Mirren had died now.
‘Let’s go and get a lantern,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I’ll find them quite easily.’
My words jinxed our chances, of course, as they always do. Lantern in hand, I set off on a backwards route through the attics, expecting to find the room of shoeboxes right away, but somehow I came upon Mirren’s hidey-hole first. Alec looked around, shaking his head.
‘I wonder if this is the same room Jack and Hilda used to meet in,’ he said. ‘Come on, Dandy. It must be somewhere: concentrate, darling.’
I opened another door, looked in and shook my head.
‘This is the wormy tables and— Hello! Someone’s been up and tidied the quilts.’
‘What?’ said Alec, distractedly. I had entered the room properly now. The heap of shiny eiderdowns which had been stuffed all anyhow in and around the card-wrapped table legs was now a neatish pile stacked in an orderly way with the corners of the quilts poking out from under the table-top.
‘And the price tickets are gone too,’ I said.
‘The stained ones you mentioned?’ said Alec. ‘Do you think that’s significant?’
‘No, these tickets weren’t stained,’ I said. I went over and traced my hand up and down the pile, feeling the slippery satin of the covers and the slightly damp and clumped feeling of the feathers inside. ‘Mary didn’t make this pile of quilts. I can tell you that much.’
‘How?’
‘Because if she had the edges would be facing the other way and the folds would be to the front. I watched her tidying sheets when she was upset and close to tears and the pile she produced was perfect. It was second nature.’
‘Someone else then,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps they always stuff things up here and then take the tickets off when they get around to tidying.’ I nodded. There was something moving in the back of my mind. These quilts and Mary tidying the pile and the nurse in the side-room. I shook my head and turned away.
‘Gloves!’ I said and strode off, hoping that an air of purpose would bring the room to me like Mohammed’s mountain. Sure enough, not much later we found it.
‘I’ll bet they’ve gone,’ I said from the door. ‘They were in that top box here.’ I walked towards it. ‘This one. And it wasn’t properly closed.’ I unwound the little string from the cleat and prised off the shoebox lid. Inside were the two chamois bags and no sign of the gloves at all. ‘Better check a few more but I’m sure it was this one.’
As Alec fiddled with the lids I stood thinking, chasing that wisp of an idea round the back regions of my memory like a housewife going after a mouse with her broom.
‘Shame about these shoes,’ Alec said. He was holding one up – a high-heeled evening slipper of plum-coloured kid with a glittering gilt buckle. The buckle was rusty and there was bloom of mould on the kid too. ‘Shame the boxes aren’t sturdier, I mean. There’s water been getting in here. Or damp, anyway.’
‘Water,’ I said.
‘Or damp.’
‘Water bottles. Hot water bottles, Alec, let’s find them.’
I could not remember where in the exuberant chaos of Aitkens’ attics the hot water bottles had been and so we just circled around, opening door after door until my head at least – Alec kept his own counsel – was whirling.
‘Ah!’ I said, when we opened a door and saw a profusion of plaster limbs. ‘I think they might be near here. With marmalade.’ Alec had gone on ahead.

Other books

Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted) by Julian, Stephanie
Evolution by Toye, Cody
Someone Like You by Susan Mallery
Night by Edna O'Brien
La escalera del agua by José Manuel García Marín
In Dark Waters by Mary Burton