Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses (15 page)

It was hardly less unthinkable, though, that there could be two Commander B.T.H. Rowe-Issings and that one would donate a pool to the school where the other’s daughter happened to be boarding.

Such a puzzle, and such a delicious morsel too. Not that I was a gossip; at least, I had not been until I took up detective work, but of late I had begun to wonder. Perhaps the very habit of sleuthing was working on some neglected part of me, like eurhythmics for posture, causing it to grow brawny from frequent use. Perhaps, on the other hand, the question of the Rowe-Issing bathing pool would have piqued the interest of a swami sitting cross-legged in a tree. In either case, for the first time that day I did not wish that Alec was there to listen and enlighten. For the first time in my professional life, I think, I simply longed for Hugh.

The longing passed and when Alec arrived at my side I was as happy as ever to see him, bursting with news and questions after a frankly rather lonely early evening. Saturday supper at St Columba’s was a kind of picnic cum buffet, it appeared; the kitchen staff loading up the long refectory tables with boiled eggs, cold ham and salad and the girls drifting in to fill their plates, pour themselves lemonade from the tall jugs set on the sideboards and drift out again. One could hear them giggling and yelling inside all the dorms and studies as one passed. Indeed, going by one particularly raucous gathering I felt the spirit of Nanny Palmer move within me and I opened the door after one sharp rap.

Five small girls in pyjamas, their mouths full and their eyes wide, turned to stare at me.

‘Simmer down a little, please,’ I said in my best attempt at clipped exasperation.

‘What . . .?’

‘Who . . .?’

‘It’s Saturday night!’ This was from a child eating her supper sprawled on her bed like a Roman at a Bacchanalia, except that such a Roman would not be absorbing a wedge of bacon and egg pie.

‘You’ll get a sore tummy if you eat lying down like that,’ I said to her. ‘Not to mention the crumbs.’

‘But it’s Saturday night!’ she said again.

‘Well, be sure to put on your dressing gowns and slippers before you take your plates back down,’ I said. ‘It’s getting chilly in the passageways.’ For the sight of their bare feet, little toes either red or white with cold, was bothering me and they were at the age where frequent spurts of growth ensured that there were stretches of bare leg at the bottoms of their pyjamas and draughty little gaps between jackets and trousers too.

‘Oh, we don’t take them down, Miss Gilver,’ said another. She was sitting on a dressing-table top with her plate of ham and salad resting in amongst the hairbrushes in a most unsavoury way. ‘We just stick them outside for the maids in the morning.’

‘You . . .?’ I was rendered quite speechless with disapproval, and did not know whence the worst of the shock hit me. Such indolence in the young, such sloppy housekeeping and such inconsideration towards one’s maids were neck, neck and neck. I left them to it and ignored the surge of giggles which followed upon my closing the door.

I might even have dipped a careful toe into the subject with my fellow mistresses but when I edged open the staff room door, holding my own supper plate, it was to find the room empty and the fire cold. When I happened to pass Miss Christopher’s rooms on my way to Fleur’s (which were now to be mine) I saw a light under the door and, listening a little, heard the scrape of a pen and the crunch of an apple being eaten. The maths and science mistress was hard at work. Saturday evening, evidently, was a jamboree for the girls and another night in the salt mines for everyone else; maids and mistresses, anyway.

So when the knock came at my own door a short while later I was glad at the prospect of company.

‘Come in,’ I said.

It was Mrs Brown, and I was pleased to see her.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Good, I was wondering . . . Might I trouble you to have my things sent up from the Crown, Mrs Brown? I know you’re in frequent contact with your niece. Perhaps you would ring down to her? And then I wonder too if I might ask for the bed to made up in here? And perhaps an armchair or two? Unless the English mistress has a study elsewhere?’

She was nodding.

‘Surely, surely,’ she said. ‘Of course, but I’m here, Miss Gilver, to bring you a visitor.’ And with that she stepped back and let Alec fill the doorway. He paused on the threshold and Mrs Brown, from behind him, spoke again.

‘I’ll get your bags and get one of my girls to bring your sheets so’s you can get your bed made, Miss.’ And with that she was gone.

‘Good evening, Miss Gilver,’ Alec said, still standing neither in nor out of the room.

‘I can’t believe you asked to be brought to my rooms!’ I said.

‘I didn’t!’ Alec replied. ‘I asked if you could be fetched and that doughty woman said “Oh, away and come on with you” and delivered me. I must say, Dan, I thought a girls’ school would be a bit more circumspect.’ He looked around with some interest. ‘And a bit frillier too.’

‘Oh Lord, I suppose you’d be better inside than standing there,’ I said, grabbing him. ‘But keep your voice down and don’t light that accursed pipe.’

When we were arranged, Alec on the hard chair and I on the end of the bed – sitting much more primly than the little girls at their picnic – we shared the fruits of our afternoons. Alec went first, unusually (he prefers to be the finale).

‘Glasgow,’ he said. ‘That’s where Rosa called Joe from. We’ll have a hard job finding her in that teeming anthill of a place.’

‘Did she call from a kiosk?’ I said. ‘If it’s near where she’s staying . . .’

‘At the Central Station,’ said Alec.

‘Ah.’

‘Quite. There must be dozens of kiosks there. And hundreds of strangers every day and no chance of anyone remembering one of them. Even a black-haired Italian one.’

‘Well, actually, darling, there are quite a lot of black-haired Italians in Glasgow. That’s a thought – does she have relations?’

‘I asked Joe and he said not.’ Alec took his pipe out of his pocket and looked at it sorrowfully.

‘Well, missing persons are the usual bread and butter of a detective agency, or so one is led to believe,’ I said. ‘You could look on it as a belated apprenticeship.’

‘Hm,’ said Alec.

‘Or you could retire gracefully from your case and help me with mine,’ I said. ‘Lord knows I could do with it.’ He looked up at this. ‘Fleur has gone,’ I told him. ‘Packed her traps and slung her hook. This is her room, as it happens, so you can see she meant it.’

‘How many is that?’ said Alec. ‘Six?’

‘The balance shifted a little the other way,’ I said. ‘A Miss Glennie turned up to teach French. But yes: Fleur was the sixth departure including Miss Fielding’s death.’

‘And how is Miss Shanks taking it?’

‘She doesn’t seem all that troubled,’ I told him. ‘That’s the puzzling thing! There’s something very odd about this place, Alec.’ He spread his arms and gestured around him. ‘Well, yes, it’s most peculiar that the housekeeper showed a gentleman up to my chamber, but there’s more.’

‘And what about the police?’ Alec asked. ‘Are they closing the ports and combing the land till they find her?’

‘Miss Barclay has gone to the cable station with PC Reid,’ I said. ‘In fact, she must be long back by now. If she says the body is Miss Beauclerc, then I suppose they’ll have to go after Fleur with bloodhounds.’

‘Leaving aside the other four murders,’ said Alec.

‘I suppose that too,’ I said and then I cocked my head. ‘Someone’s coming.’ Indeed someone was, and I knew who, flitting along the corridor at a tremendous rate. There was a squeak of shoe leather right outside my room and the door burst open.

Miss Shanks swept the room with her gaze and then let go a huge held breath.

‘Good evening, Miss Gilver,’ she said. ‘Mr Osborne.’

We waited, both Alec and I, for the expected tirade on the subject of his presence in my bedroom, but nothing came.

‘Miss Shanks,’ I said at last, ‘has Miss Barclay returned?’

‘Oh, she has, she has, she certainly has,’ said Miss Shanks, still standing there, with her hand on the doorknob and breathing heavily after her sprint along the corridor.

‘And?’ I said.

‘It wasn’t our mam’zelle,’ said Miss Shanks. ‘A complete stranger. Nothing to do with St Columba’s at all, whoever she was, the poor soul.’

‘Well then,’ said Alec. ‘Not that one would wish drowning on a stranger, but good to know it wasn’t a mistress. Or a parent.’

‘A parent?’ said Miss Shanks, her voice rising to a shriek.

‘There was a suspicion it might be Sabbatina’s mother,’ I said.

‘Betty Alder?’

‘Quite,’ I continued. ‘But it’s not.’

‘Why on earth would Betty
Alder’s
mother want to kill herself?’ said Miss Shanks, in that same dismissive way which had puzzled me earlier in the day. ‘Right then,’ she went on. ‘I’ll leave you two to it. Goodnight, Mr Osborne. Chapel at nine, Miss Gilver. Breakfast at eight. Long lie on a Sunday.’ She gave the room another searching look and then was gone.

‘She is the oddest creature I have ever encountered,’ I said, when her footsteps had pattered away and there was silence again.

‘What was she looking for? She quite obviously didn’t come to tell you the news of the body.’

‘Ah yes,’ I said. ‘The body. The mysterious body.’

‘You’re right, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘You need my help. So where do we begin?’

In response, I stood and wrestled open the sash window.

‘I can’t even begin to begin without a cigarette,’ I said. ‘And you may as well light that filthy thing, Alec, since the powers that be know you’re here anyway.’

‘Gladly,’ Alec said and busied himself with the considerable paraphernalia.

‘So,’ I said, once calmed by a good few lungfuls of delicious Turkish smoke. ‘As I see it, we have three separate problems. We need to find these mistresses – and actually, since I’m employed by the Lipscotts, finding Fleur is the only bit of the whole case that’s really my business.’

‘When did that ever matter to you?’ Alec said. ‘Agreed, though. Number one. Find mistresses.’

‘Number two – possibly related and possibly not – solve five murders. Or at least find out if they really happened.’

‘The fifth corpse is real enough.’

‘And three – again possibly related and possibly not – identify the all-too-real corpse.’

‘I can’t see us chasing off to Glasgow after a missing wife, then,’ said Alec.

‘There might
be
some chasing off, though,’ I answered. ‘I can root around at this end as to where the mistresses might have gone – good God, I don’t even know the names of the first three! – and if the search for any of them should take you to Glasgow . . .’

‘As for the corpse,’ Alec said, ‘I’d be best to ask around about here, don’t you think? If anyone saw anything? If anyone’s missing? And actually, if I were to pretend to be asking after the departed Mrs Aldo and her paramour, I’d have a handy way in.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘And I shall try to find out if Fleur was close to any of the remaining mistresses or perhaps some of the girls and see if she ever spoke of her . . . exploits . . . to any of them.’

‘And so you might take a moment to chat to Sabbatina, in case she knows or can guess where her mother might have gone.’

‘I’ll try,’ I said, ‘but I can’t promise, Alec dear. There are rather a lot of other matters more pressing.’

‘Let’s start with the easy bit then,’ said Alec. I waited. ‘How do we determine whether Fleur Lipscott killed this unknown woman on Tuesday or Wednesday of this last week?’

‘Alibi.’

‘Exactly. Where was Miss Lipscott on those two days? Could she have gone out on the cliff and shoved someone off it?’

‘We don’t know that that’s how our corpse got in the water, though, do we?’ I said.

‘True,’ Alec agreed. ‘So . . . more generally, did Miss Lipscott have any periods of solitary time long enough to go boating? Or any time at the high tide to go swimming? If not . . .’

‘You’re beginning to doubt it?’ I asked. ‘You seemed sure enough when you were gaily telling all to Constable Reid.’

‘I
am
doubting,’ Alec said. ‘It’s what we’re taking to be the confession.’

‘You too? That’s been niggling at Constable Reid and me.’

‘Bright boy,’ Alec said.

‘But what else could she mean by saying “five”?’ I countered.

‘No, it’s not what she said, it’s when she said it.’ I sat up and snapped my fingers at him. ‘She looked at the corpse three days later and said it then.’

‘Of course,’ I said sinking back again. ‘She should have said it when the woman was plummeting down the cliff face, or just after she’d tipped her out of the boat, or held her under.’

‘Exactly. It was too late by miles by the time it came to the cable station. On the other hand, if it was said for your benefit, then the whole thing is so stagey I don’t believe it can actually be true. Why would a murderer say such a thing at such a moment? Was she the theatrical sort, when you knew her before?’

I smiled in spite of the dreadful conversation. Was little Fleur Lipscott theatrical? Not in the way Alec meant it. There was nothing insincere or calculated in the extravagance with which she lived. One always got the impression, on the contrary, that she would go on in just the same way in an empty room in an empty house, or indeed if washed up all alone on a desert island. I watched her once that summer, from under the walnut tree where we had tea almost every afternoon. She had been painting, dressed in a calico smock and a black beret (stuffed with the rats to stop it slipping over her ears), and she was about to leave her easel and palette on the lawn while she went in to change. I watched her dab two unused brushes into the paint and then thread them through the thumbhole of her palette along with the one she had really been using. I watched her reposition the palette on the grass, walking around to view the composition and replace it twice before she was happy. She even dragged the easel round a bit – away from the view – until it was framed against a yellow rose which scrambled over a pergola. Then she quickly added some blobs of yellow to her picture, walked round the whole thing again, nodded firmly and pelted off to the garden door and the nursery stairs, turning twice on the way to look at the pretty arrangement she had left behind her.