Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses (20 page)

‘Miss Gilver?’ she said. ‘I’m . . . Betty. You wanted me?’ Her voice was a curious mixture: the village Scotch of her early youth overlaid by a smattering of the Queen’s English, no doubt copied from her new school friends and her mistresses in admiration or to allay the teasing which must have come her way, and somewhere in there too was a trace – just a trace – of her Italian roots, in a kind of emphatic landing on the consonants and a slight reluctance to leave them behind.

‘Yes indeed, Betty,’ I said. ‘You don’t mind ‘Betty’? Sabbatina is a beautiful name.’

‘Sabbatina is a beautiful name for a Sabbatina,’ she replied, and her voice was pure Italian as she repeated the melodious word. ‘I am a Betty, though. You can have no idea, Miss Gilver, what a trial it is to have a name so at odds with your life.’

‘My Christian name is Dandelion,’ I said and was gratified to see a spark jump up and dance in her eyes. ‘You have my permission to chortle.’ Good child that she was, she only gave a very small smile before composing herself again.

‘Now, Sabbatina,’ I went on. ‘You know that Miss Lipscott is gone, don’t you? And I am the new English mistress?’ She nodded. I hesitated. All of a sudden I could not quite remember why I had thought I should speak to this girl at all. Or rather I had imagined a casual conversation somewhere, not this stark interview in an empty room.

‘I met your father,’ I said. Sabbatina gazed back at me very blankly. ‘I should like to be able to give him a good report of you. Tell him you are well and happy. I know you missed your visit home to see your parents yesterday.’ She was still gazing but her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

‘To see my father,’ she said. ‘Not to see my mother. Not yesterday.’

I had thought her father meant to hide the news from her but clearly he had changed his mind and although she was too polite to wail about her private woes to a perfect stranger her misery was palpable.

‘Are you all right?’ I said.

‘Just sad,’ said Sabbatina. ‘And a little confused. I don’t understand what is happening. I don’t understand how she could just go away.’

‘It’s a very odd world, the world of grown-ups,’ I said. ‘They often do inexplicable things and don’t usually stop to wonder how it looks to the innocent around them.’ I shut my mouth rather firmly at the end of this speech, having been mildly surprised to hear it coming out of me. Thankfully, she appeared to take it as yet another of the odd things that grown-ups do and not as the rebuke of her mother it most impertinently was. Besides, her loyalty was severely shaken. She looked fiercely angry as she looked at me and spoke again.

‘She was supposed always to be there. She said so.’

I nodded, dumb with pity for her, and could not think of a single platitude to serve up, for what woman in a thousand could leave her child? I am not the most maternal woman ever born, and often shut the numerous doors between drawing room and nursery, leaving Nanny to deal with the wailing. Frequently, too, I wilted with boredom listening to their stories and watching them at play (not to mention the fact that I faced the dreary prospect of Donald’s uncertain future with all the enthusiasm one usually takes to the dentist) but even I could not imagine just cutting loose and letting them tell their stories to the empty air, letting them listen to silence instead of adoring ‘good shows!’ when they scored a point or cleared a fence. And whatever hash Donald was going to make of his life without masters and prefects to keep him in line, I was determined to be there as a witness to it and, with luck, a hand on the tiller.

For the first time it occurred to me to wonder if her father’s early death – the Major had died without ever seeing his youngest child – could be at all to blame for the odd way that Fleur had turned out compared with the other two. Then I dismissed this as the tosh it had to be, for had not the two elder sisters lost their father to the grouse and the deer long before his death anyway, and had not little girls – and little boys, too – grown up without their soldier fathers throughout the whole of history? Mothers were quite a different thing.

‘I knew Miss Lipscott as a child, you know?’ I said to Sabbatina. This seemed to pique more interest in her than any of my previous offerings; or perhaps she was merely being polite to this odd newcomer who spoke of personal matters in such a way. ‘And it has been strange to me to meet her again as a grown woman, so much changed.’ Sabbatina nodded. ‘Of course, I only met her – this time around – on Friday, and I can’t tell for sure but I think perhaps she was not herself?’ Poor Sabbatina looked struck with terror at the thought of having to answer such an outlandish remark from a schoolmistress about another. ‘Did you see much of her?’

‘Of course,’ said Sabbatina. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just before she left, specifically?’ I added. Sabbatina was staring at me and I had to think very quickly. ‘When I told her sisters she had disappeared they wanted very much to know all that they could of her last days here. To hear all about her that could be told.’

‘Her last days?’ said Sabbatina, drawing back. ‘You make it sound as though she’s . . . dead.’ This was true and had not occurred to me until I ran over the words again in my mind. I changed the subject swiftly.

‘So, what can I tell your father if I see him, Sabbatina? Are you keeping busy and doing all your schoolwork? Are you finding time for your hobbies? One can’t work all the time.’

‘Tell him I am very well,’ Sabbatina said. ‘Working hard and keeping up with my sewing. I’m stitching a bedspread, Miss Gilver. For my bottom drawer. My mother chose the material and I chose the pattern. I’ve been stitching it since I was twelve. If I go to university I will have to put it in a chest, in mothballs, but I still work on it a little every day.’

‘I think,’ I said to Alec later on the telephone – I had to use the one in Miss Shanks’s study and was listening strenuously for her dreaded return – ‘I
think
she was offended at my insinuation that she wouldn’t mind sneaking. Or she was offended that I made the slightest, most heavily veiled hint about her family’s current misfortune. Anyway, she put me in my place.’

‘Did you insinuate?’ Alec said. ‘Did you hint? And why are you whispering?’

‘Just typical,’ I said. ‘The mistresses’ room has been deserted all day – forcing me to grill little girls for scraps of gossip – I probably did, you know: hint and insinuate – but now when I want to use the telephone they’re all in there playing cards and having a whale of a time, so I’ve had to sneak into the head’s study and if she catches me I’ll be for it.’

‘You seem to be making it all very complicated,’ Alec said.

‘I don’t know who to ask or what to ask them or where to turn,’ I moaned down the line to him. ‘How did you get on?’

‘Oh, it was all very straightforward and out in the open,’ said Alec. ‘I found out from Joe who all Rosa’s customers were and went round them, asking if they had any clue where she might have gone. Did they know of anyone else who was missing, had they seen anyone suspicious hanging around; in short, I’ve started a bit of a panic that there is a lunatic at large snatching women and making off with them.’

‘Marvellous,’ I said. ‘Good work.’

‘And I stopped in at all the farms – well, both the farms – and all the cottages on the way to Dunskey Castle, and asked if anyone had seen or heard anything in the first half of the week.’

‘And?’

‘And was obliged to eat tea four times, one after the other. Not bad in the first farm – Portree – thin bread and butter and warm scones, but cottagers’ teas are meant for men who’re herding sheep and building dykes. Solid, don’t you know.’

‘But did you learn anything?’ I asked. ‘I could be obliged to ring off any minute, Alec. Stop wittering on.’

‘At the first of the two farms and at all of the cottages – nothing,’ said Alec. ‘Except how little apple and how much pie can make an apple pie for working men.’

‘And at the second of the two farms?’ I asked, suppressing a sigh. ‘I take it all of that was by way of an introduction.’

‘At the second of the two farms – Low Merrick – I was set upon by dogs.’

I snorted.

‘Serve you right,’ I said. ‘Barging into a farmyard. Some of these sheep farmers are absolute hermits, you know. You’re lucky it was one lot of dogs and four teas, not the other way around.’

‘But it wasn’t a hermitage,’ Alec said. ‘There’s a painted sign at the gate proclaiming bed and breakfast. Sea views and home-cooking. But when I marched up the drive and hallooed, someone – I saw her arm and hand quite clearly – opened a door and shooed out a pack of dogs to see me off.’

‘A pack of dogs,’ I repeated.

‘Three collies,’ Alec admitted, ‘but those mean little skinny ones, with teeth like ice picks. I had to vault a gate. No joke after the pie. And moments later a bobby turned up to arrest me.’

‘For what?’ I cried. ‘There’s no law of trespass in Scotland.’

‘Well, with hindsight, I suppose, a strange man – me – going about the quiet country lanes asking if there’s a strange man going about does become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whoever she was with the dogs at Low Merrick had rung the police too.’

‘Oh my God, Alec,’ I said. ‘What a pair we make!’

‘Thankfully, it was Constable Reid,’ Alec said. ‘He went back on duty at six. So, I wasn’t clapped in irons but I don’t feel covered with glory.’

‘You poor darling,’ I said, laughing.

‘This would be Mr Osborne, I take it,’ came Miss Shanks’s voice from the doorway. I had forgotten to listen and, laughing with Alec, had not heard her come in.

‘Headmistress!’ I said. ‘I apol—’

‘Oh, no need, no need,’ said Miss Shanks. She sat down in the supplicant’s chair in front of her desk as though unconcerned that I was sitting in her place behind it. ‘Maybe
ask
another time, but don’t be sorry. And what ails Mr Osborne that makes you pity him so?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. I was still dumbly hanging on to the earpiece and could hear Alec’s careful breathing while he listened to this odd exchange. ‘Just nonsense, really. We’re old friends and nonsense is our habit, I’m afraid to say. I shall be much more solemn in the classroom with the girls.’

‘Ocht away,’ said Miss Shanks. ‘The girls could do with a wee bit cheering up in the English classroom. Young Miss Lipscott was solemn enough for us all.’

My joy was unconstrained on learning that, while dining with the girls was a daily duty, breakfasting with them was confined to Sundays. On this Monday morning the other mistresses and I were to be served porridge, eggs and bacon – or in my case coffee and rolls – in a little breakfast room off the staff common room. Even better was the realisation that Miss Shanks was not amongst our number.

‘Oh, try dragging Shanks away from her girls in the morning!’ said little Miss Christopher, looking more mole-like than ever this morning in a dark-grey coat and skirt of velvety nap.

‘Well, I suppose that’s when any new sore throats and dicky tummies are most to the fore,’ said Miss Lovage, with a delighted nastiness I could neither put my finger on nor ignore. I stared as she raked back her black and white hair with a ringed hand, then I exchanged a look with Miss Glennie, who seemed just as puzzled as me.

‘You see, Miss Ivy Shanks wasn’t always a headmistress,’ Miss Lovage continued.

‘But she’s a fine headmistress now,’ said Miss Barclay, and set to buttering her toast so ferociously she all but tore it into rags. Her voice was clipped, her lips pursed, even her head of tight curls seemed tighter than before.

‘And,’ said Miss Christopher, ‘since it was your own dear Miss Fielding who elevated her I wonder at your sneering.’

‘I don’t sneer,’ said Miss Lovage, looking down her aquiline nose and curling her top lip, and so unfortunately producing a sneer which could have stood as the very definition in a pictorial dictionary.

‘What Miss Lovage is hinting at,’ said Miss Barclay, now trying to patch her toast back together again with globs of marmalade, ‘is the fact that when Miss Fielding and Miss Shanks, as colleagues, first conceived of their own school, Fielding was Latin mistress and Miss Shanks was on the less academic side of things.’

‘Miss Shanks was under-matron,’ Miss Lovage snapped. ‘Less academic indeed!’

‘A matron?’ I said, and once again caught Miss Glennie’s eye. She was no less surprised than me but, unlike me, she was trying not to look so.

‘And Mrs Brown was the cook,’ said Miss Lovage. ‘I’m only surprised she hasn’t stepped into Miss Fielding’s shoes to fill the vacancy.’

‘Dear Miss Fielding,’ said Miss Barclay, attempting a honeyed tone but failing rather miserably at it owing to her clenched teeth, ‘had a vision. For the girls’ education, of course, but not only that. She believed that good food and good healthy habits were just as important as what they learned in the classroom. It was absolutely her conviction that a matron was as important as a Latin mistress.’

‘And she believed in seeing the good in everyone,’ added Miss Christopher. ‘We should all remember that without Miss Fielding none of us would be here.’

‘It’s . . . um . . . wonderful that the school is thriving without her,’ I said. ‘If she was— I mean
given
that she was such a visionary. One could easily assume that her loss would change things.’

‘Oh, things have changed,’ said Miss Lovage. ‘Things have certainly changed. I’m not sure I should as readily have sunk my savings into a school run by a cook and a matron.’

I thought then about what Hugh had said, on the subject of single women and what they did with their money. It was interesting that Miss Lovage was more than just the art mistress here.

‘But Miss Shanks sees the good in people too.’ It was the first time Miss Glennie had spoken, and she did so with a tremor in her voice. ‘I mean, I think Miss Fielding sounds wonderful but it’s Miss Shanks I have to thank for
my
being here.’

‘My investment in St Columba’s was considerable,’ said Miss Lovage, clearly disliking to hear the absent Miss Shanks given all the gratitude.

‘You sound as if you’re suddenly regretting it, Anna,’ said Miss Barclay. ‘We don’t normally hear you casting it up to the rest of us.’ There was a warning note in her voice that I could not interpret.