Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses (17 page)

‘Milton, eh?’ said Miss Shanks. She was stirring a pot of scrambled egg with a wooden spirtle and in her black church costume and already wearing a black church hat she looked rather witchy. ‘Well, Miss Lipscott was a one for that kind of thing.’

‘But the papers?’ I said. ‘Do I have to write an exam paper? On
Paradise Lost
?’

‘No, no, no, it’s written, Miss Gilver. The upper sixth and the fifth form are accounted for. School Certs, you know. It’s just the first to fourth forms and the lower sixth you need to take care of.’

‘Oh!’ I said, standing with the chafing dish lid in my hand, letting the uncovered bacon get cold. ‘Is that all? And do you happen to know what sort of stuff . . .’

‘You’ve all day after chapel to prepare, Miss Gilver,’ said Miss Shanks. She had finally got the scrambled egg stirred up to her satisfaction and now she scraped a great heap of it onto her plate with the spirtle and left me there. As my eyes followed her back to her place I saw that our little interchange had not gone unnoticed. Miss Christopher was watching me. She glanced at Miss Shanks and at Miss Barclay and back to me, saw me looking at her and finally lowered her gaze as though to spread toast with butter took all the concentration with which she had learned to subject a frog to dissection.

‘Well,’ I said, sitting back down. ‘Why ever Miss McLintock and Miss Stanley left, it wasn’t because of muddle in the organisation.’

‘What?’ said Spring.

‘Who?’ said Sally.

‘You were right, girls,’ I said. ‘The Higher Cert exam papers are written already and safely under lock and key.’

‘Who’s Miss Stanley?’ said Katie. ‘Was she before our time?’

‘Golly, how long have the mistresses being fleeing St Cucumber’s?’ said Eileen.

‘Maybe,’ I said, mentally crossing my fingers, ‘I got the names wrong. Weren’t they the science and history mistresses?’ I looked around their faces. ‘No?’

My ploy worked, as I had thought it would, for who can resist the chance to correct another’s mistakes, especially when that other is an elder and better? They filled the air with all the information I needed, babbling and chirruping over one another like a family of day-old chicks squabbling in their dust bath and, concentrating hard, I caught it all.

The science mistress had been a Miss Bell (called Tinker, affectionately by the girls) who had departed two years ago. Miss Taylor the history mistress, mystifyingly referred to as The Maid, had gone with her; and a Miss Blair, who had taken the girls for gym and music, had left just before an important hockey match.

‘And of course, dear Fräulein Fielding, who died at Christmas time,’ said Sally, her eyes misting. ‘She was the most marvellous Latin scholar, Miss Gilver. Not like old Plumface who just translates battle after battle and makes us draw tables of verbs.’

‘Miss Fielding died just this last Christmas?’ I said.

‘Golly no, two years since,’ said Sally. ‘And a half. And no one left when she was here. Misses Taylor and Bell were pals of old.’

I was rather disappointed in the selection of names – I had been hoping for something more prominent upon which to hang the next part of my ruse, but I did my best, walking to chapel alongside Miss Lovage, the art mistress.

‘The girls seem very fond of you all,’ I said, to start things off. Miss Lovage raised her striking profile to an even more glamorous angle, whether from pride in her girls’ fondness or the better to sniff the sea air I could not say. ‘They seem terribly to miss Miss Fielding and Miss Blair.’ The imposing chin came down a bit at that and Miss Lovage turned to look at me.

‘Miss Blair?’ she said.

‘I wondered if it could possibly be the same Miss Blair I know from my own schooldays,’ I said. ‘At St Leonards. Over twenty years ago now. A little Irishwoman with flame-red hair?’ Of course I had not been to school at St Leonards or anywhere else for that matter and the flame-haired Irishwoman was my own invention, but once again it worked for me.

‘Can’t be,’ said Miss Lovage. ‘Emily Blair was Scotch and Amazonian and what hair she let grow on her head was mouse. Did you say the girls loved her? Who have you been talking to?’

‘Ohh . . .’ I said.

‘My girls – the painters and sculptors – hated all that.
Endless
hockey all winter and cricket, if you can believe it, in the summer term. Cricket!’

‘That does seem a little odd,’ I said. We were nearing the church now and I plunged on before we should arrive and have the conversation cut off by song and prayer. ‘Odd too to find a Scotswoman with a yen for cricket. I wonder if she gets the chance where she is now.’ I paused but nothing came out of Miss Lovage’s ruby-red painted lips. ‘Do you know where she moved on to?’ I said but, as usual, the direct question shut the conversation down like a slammed door. Miss Lovage merely stared at me down her dramatic nose and then threw her dramatic scarf back around her neck with a gesture (dramatic, of course) presumably meant to brush me and my question away. I was not, however, to be so easily brushed.

‘Or perhaps she didn’t take up another position?’ I said. ‘If she left in the rush she seems to have . . .’

‘You are remarkably inquisitive about your fellow man,’ said Miss Lovage.

‘Inquisitiveness is rather to be encouraged, though, wouldn’t you say?’ I replied. ‘As a schoolmistress and a shaper of young minds, one would expect you to be all for it.’

‘A mind which enquires into Life and celebrates Beauty,’ said Miss Lovage, ‘is greatly to be encouraged, of course. But the quotidian minutiae of strangers’ lives has never enthralled me.’

She sounded, as Donald and Teddy say, as though she had swallowed a dictionary.

‘Miss Blair was hardly a stranger to you,’ I insisted, ‘and although she and I did not overlap, as a new mistress where she was an old one, I’m naturally interested in what became of her.’

‘What do you mean “new mistress”?’ said Miss Lovage, quite forgetting to drawl and letting her face fall into its natural lines, without arched eyebrows or stretched neck. ‘Miss Shanks said a French mistress of impeccable pedigree had arrived from the agency.’

‘Oh, she did,’ I said. ‘
Incredible
pedigree, really. But haven’t you heard? Miss Lipscott is gone. I’m taking over English for her.’ Miss Lovage reared backwards like an adder about to strike. ‘For a while anyway,’ I said.

‘But how can you switch from French to English?’ she said. ‘Which are you?’

‘Oh, I’m a . . .’ I sought desperately for some phrase other than that – jack of all trades – which had sprung to my mind. ‘I’m a generalist, Miss Lovage.’

‘This is an outrage,’ Miss Lovage said, rather rudely to say the least. ‘Excuse me, Miss Gilver. I must speak to the headmistress right away.’

With that, she shot forward to where Miss Shanks was stumping along and I dropped back and fell into step with Miss Barclay and Miss Christopher, together again like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

‘I’ve upset Miss Lovage,’ I told them.

‘Not difficult,’ said Miss Barclay, with a world of scorn in her voice for artists and their flighty ways.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ said Miss Christopher.

‘Well, I was asking about Miss Blair to start with,’ I said. ‘Which she didn’t like at all.’ The chalky little titter of Miss Barclay and the rattling chuckle of Miss Christopher were loud enough to cause some of the girls to turn and stare.

‘Hardly a surprise!’ said Miss Barclay. ‘Not much kindred spirit there.’

‘Because of the cricket?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you heard about the cricket, did you?’ said Miss Christopher. ‘Some of the mummies and daddies didn’t think it was quite nice. And such a waste of the lovely new tennis courts too. Not to mention her taste in music.’

‘Violins?’ I asked. I could think of nothing worse than the sound of children learning to play the violin.

‘Bagpipes,’ said Miss Barclay.

‘Dear God!’

‘But Miss Shanks took over when Blair left us in the lurch, and the girls are just as well off with callisthenics and country walks. And Mrs Tully in the village is happy to listen to them playing their scales.’

We were at the church gate now, joining the rest of the flock being gathered in under the stern eye of a black-garbed minister who stood on the step, and it was impossible to resist the unspoken command to stop talking and stare at the ground as one passed him. Just as well, I daresay, for how could I relate Miss Lovage’s horror at the makeshift way I had dropped French and taken up English to two women who were cribbing science and history by staying one page ahead of the girls in the textbooks?

During the service I had plenty of time for quiet reflection, for the rites of the Church of Scotland – in which there are no kneeling and no responses and what little standing is required is heavily cued by the organ – give one’s mind a blissful chance to wander with no one able to tell. Actual snoring is frowned upon, but pew after pew of glazed, slumping parishioners dreaming of their dinners is the sight which greets many a minister of that kirk every week, I am sure.

And so after the service, when I excused myself from the walk along the promenade and dodged into the Crown by the back way, I felt I had plenty to tell.

To my surprise and slight annoyance, Alec was not alone in the parlour but was sharing a glass of beer and a plate of sandwiches with an off-duty Constable Reid, rather resplendent in britches and a golfing jersey and with a pancake of a golfing cap lying beside him on the settle.

‘The sarge’s no’ buying it,’ he said. ‘Good news for you, missus.’

‘Buying what?’ I asked.

Constable Reid took a pull at his pint glass before replying.

‘Five murders. Or even one murder. I’ve telt him all about Miss Lipscott – good family, went off the rails, teachin’ in a school, livin’ like a nun – and he reckons she’s likely a wee bit’ – he twirled his hand beside his head and whistled – ‘and no need to listen to her.’

‘But she has to be found!’ I said. I had had a complete change of heart in the matter of Fleur’s protection, thinking that if the police wanted her for murder, they would work all the more for her safe return.

‘We don’t know how she got away,’ said Reid. ‘She didn’t get on the train here nor Stranraer nor Glenluce as far as the station masters can recall – and she’d have had a wheen of luggage, mind.’

‘Stranraer?’ I said.

‘I already asked about a ferry-boat,’ said Alec. ‘No joy. And she didn’t hire a car or ring anybody to come and get her.’

‘And she’s no’ holed up in any wee place in town or in Portlogan that takes in guests unless they’re lyin’ and why would they? So there you have it. She’s gone.’

‘And Sergeant Turner is simply washing his hands of her?’ I said.

‘I told him what you told me,’ said Reid. ‘That they women are always taking off. He’ll send her lines out – her description – to the other forces but nobody’s reported her missin’ and so . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Can I report her missing?’ He was shaking his head already. ‘Her headmistress? Or one of her sisters?’

‘Aye, a sister for sure,’ said Reid. ‘
Then
we’ll have another wee look-see.’

‘But in the meantime, Dandy,’ said Alec, ‘it’s you and me.’

‘And what about the corpse?’ I said.

‘It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper,’ said Reid. ‘We’re asking the ferries and the fishing boats – no’ that our fishermen would have a woman aboard, mind – and asking down the coast if anyone’s missin’ and we’ll just need to wait till somebody pipes up.’

‘And no clues from the body itself?’ I said. ‘Did someone search the headland?’ Reid was nodding. ‘And question passers-by?’ Now his eyes flashed. ‘Yes, I
do
mean Cissie,’ I said. ‘If she was there on her own, noticing Mrs Aldo with her mysterious companion, she might have noticed someone else too.’

‘But only on Tuesday evening and only at that spot, Dan,’ said Alec.

‘Better than nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to the girl and do it gently.’

‘Or me,’ Alec said.

‘I think you’ll have other fish to fry,’ I said. ‘Do you suppose you could impersonate a distressed headmaster, or a doting and wealthy father of at least five?’ I sailed on without waiting for a reply. ‘Here’s what I’m thinking. How many gym-cum-music mistresses can there possibly be in this rather small country – Scotland, that is – who like to get their charges playing cricket and bagpipes?’ Neither man answered. ‘Now, if Miss Blair left suddenly in the middle of a term – and I think she did – wouldn’t she most likely apply with some haste to an agency to find work? And even if she didn’t, mightn’t an agency know her of old?’

‘And I what?’ said Alec. ‘I ring up pretending to want a woman to teach cricket?’

‘Exactly,’ I said.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier for you simply to keep digging for a home address or something?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘On two counts, no. First, if I “dig” they’ll get suspicious, and secondly you can do this right now instead of waiting. And if you find one ex-mistress you can ask her about the others.’

‘But why start with Blair?’ said Alec.

‘The other two have even more dispiritingly ordinary names – Taylor and Bell.’

‘What’s ordinary about Lipscott and Bow-clark?’ said Reid, making me flush.

‘Very sound point, Constable,’ I said. ‘Although it’s a bit quick to expect Fleur to be back on the books.’

‘I’ll eat my hat if she turns up on agency books at all,’ said Alec. ‘She’s lying low, mark my words. Mademoiselle Beauclerc though . . . could be.’ He thought for a moment, sucking on his unlit pipe in that disgusting way (the very thought of what it must taste like made me grimace). ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘not getting a whiff of them doesn’t mean anything. They might have gone home to their people.’

‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘But if we
did
find Miss Blair, for instance, happily coaching some pigtailed first eleven somewhere, we could stop worrying that she’d been murdered.’

‘No’ that again,’ said Reid. ‘If the body we’ve got the now isn’t the French one, why think there’s anything in it that four other teachers went away?’

‘Because I still don’t believe we can be sure that the corpse
isn’t
Miss Beauclerc,’ I said, to a chorus of their groans. ‘I know Miss Lipscott said not, but she ran away straight afterwards. And I know Miss Barclay said not, but . . .’ Both of them sat forward and opened their eyes very wide. ‘I don’t trust her,’ I finished lamely. ‘I don’t trust anyone in that place.’