Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder (13 page)

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Authors: Catriona McPherson

BOOK: Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
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I turned and rested my back against the wall, heaving deep wonderful breaths down into my lungs and panting them out again. I looked to the one side and saw the light switch, right there, blamelessly there, as why would it not be, just beyond where my frantic hands had been scrabbling. I looked to the other side and laughed at myself in earnest now. The opening onto the atrium was gone indeed; it was covered over with Aitkens’ best black velvet curtaining, tacked along the top and long enough to pool on the floor below. Of course, this dreadful place was blocked off from view – of course it was – or gawping ghouls would stand at the balcony one floor below and stare up here and point and wonder. I looked over to where Mirren had been. This time, I did not laugh and I was glad that I had stopped feeling my way along the wall before I got there. A wreath the size of a barrel was on the floor – I do not know how I missed the scent of it; lilies pumping out that choking reek like so many factory chimneys – and above, on the wall, where the stain had darkened the drab, was a patch of shining white paint, shaped like an arch so it almost looked as though a little shrine had been made there.
Suddenly I did not want to be here, grubbing around for clues on the strength of an invitation I knew I had imagined, while downstairs the girl was toasted and mourned. I stood up straight and had put one foot into the lift – I would take my chances with it on a downward journey – when I felt it start to rumble. I leapt backward, but my first panicked thought was wrong. It did not plummet; I had not witnessed its end. It was gathering itself with all its usual effort to descend with all its usual stately torpor. Mr Laming, the mending man, must be on the ground floor, and must have summoned it to him in some mysterious mechanic’s way.
Realising that when it did leave me I should be in darkness again, I stepped over and threw the light switch and when I stepped back the carriage was just beginning to move. Its floor dropped away from the landing and its ceiling began to drop down towards me. I looked away; it is most disconcerting when a part of one’s surroundings suddenly begins to sink like that, and it had given me a mild swirl of vertigo.
When I looked back again, the carriage was halfway down the opening and for a moment I had a plain view of the top of it: the heavy bolts like great steel knuckles bent against the roof of the thing, holding fast the enormous plates as thick as the palm of my hand, through which the cables groaned and thrummed.
All of that and the boy, dead and broken, lying with his legs folded under him and his head twisted round, one cheek dark and raw where it had scraped against the ropes, one hand even now dragging against the side of the shaft, making his arm jolt as the lift moved him towards my feet, carrying him away from me.
I crouched, reached out and managed just to grasp that arm. He shifted slightly, but I could not lift him clear; I could not hope to stop him dropping away. For a moment, I was almost decided to step onto the roof of the lift beside him, because I was sure I could feel a faint warmth through his sleeve and his arm moved so freely that I tried to believe it was not too late for me to help him. But then, as my hold slipped and I felt his cold hand and his icy fingers, stiffened like twigs and cracking as I clutched at them, of course I let him go.
Instead, I pulled hard on one of the ropes, trying to bring the lift back up again, but I do not even know if it was the right one and however these matters were decided, wherever they were decided inside the machine, Mr Laming on the ground floor took precedence over me. I could only stand and watch the boy getting smaller, the outlines of his broken body hidden as the dark throat of the lift shaft swallowed him, even the knocking of his hand against the wall growing indistinct until I could no longer see the movement and could not pick out the sound of it from all the other notes in the tired old song of the lift on what must surely be its last journey now.
I swung so fast down the six flights of stairs, hanging on to the banisters and wheeling past the landings, that I was dizzy by the bottom and staggering a bit as I burst out into the back of the Haberdashery Department. Over at the lift shaft, a middle-aged man in overalls under his coat looked up from where he was kneeling at an impressive toolbox and lifted his cap to me. A gormless-looking boy stood by him, who too doffed his cap. I noticed that both men wore black armbands.
‘Mr Laming?’ I said, trying not to gasp but still far from having enough breath to speak clearly. ‘Don’t touch the lift. Don’t do anything to it.’
Mr Laming had got to his feet and was scratching the dome of his head, his cap pushed back as he stared at me.
‘Are you . . . ?’ he said but came up short of sensible suggestions.
I took a good deep breath and spoke very calmly.
‘There has been a terrible accident,’ I said.
‘Poor Miss Mirren,’ said the gormless boy.
‘Today,’ I went on. ‘Someone has fallen down the lift shaft and I’m sure he’s dead.’
Mr Laming and the boy both turned to look at the floor of the lift and then back at me.
‘Doon there?’ said the elder man. ‘For sure?’
‘Onto the top of the carriage,’ I said. ‘I just saw him. He’s on the roof. We need to get the police. I’ll ring them if you stand guard here.’
His eyes narrowed a little at that.
‘Madam, pardon me, but—’ he said.
‘My name is Mrs Gilver and I’m a private detective,’ I said. ‘I was trying to find Mirren when she died and just this morning I was given the job of finding Dugald Hepburn too. I hope to God I haven’t.’
But of course there was not a particle of me that doubted it. Mr Laming rubbed his face hard with one large and oily hand, rasping his stubble and leaving a dark streak across one cheek.
‘There’s a hatch,’ he said, pointing up at the roof of the lift carriage. ‘I’ll just take a wee keek.’
I nodded. I needed him as an ally and he would be the better for seeing it with his own eyes, for not half-wondering if this were some kind of madwoman he was humouring. He closed up the enormous toolbox and lugged it into the lift, positioning it under a small, brass-edged panel I had not noticed before. Then he stepped up onto it and, reaching above his head, slid open a latch and very cautiously raised the trap-door. I think the fact that it rose at all set up doubts in him and I too suffered a pang of confused panic. Was not the body lying on that side of the roof, slightly curled around the rope where his cheek had grazed? Should not the hatch be weighted down, immovable?
Mr Laming grabbed the edges of the hole and, with a little bounce, hoisted himself off the top of his toolbox and popped his head up into the darkness. He swore, just once, quite loud and echoing, and dropped back down again, stumbling to the floor and leaning back against the wall of the carriage. He took his cap off and stared at me.
‘Aye, that’s Dougie Hepburn, right enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll get this thing stopped and you away and ring the polis, hen.’
‘Again,’ I said, staring back at him. He bent and opened his toolbox once more.
‘Hector,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘You get away hame to your mammy. This is no place for you. Not today.’
After a few false starts into stock cupboards and one nasty moment at the head of a basement staircase which dropped down from right behind an inward opening door, at last I found the corridor into the back offices and, there, a telephone. Even then though I fumbled and wasted time, because it seemed that the instrument was attached to some internal exchange with more buttons and levers than an ordinary telephone. I pressed and pulled them all in turn, with mounting panic, and must at last have hit upon the right combination because eventually a voice came down the line asking me for the number.
‘Police,’ I said. ‘As quick as you can.’
‘Isn’t that Aitkens’?’ said the voice, with deep suspicion.
‘Yes,’ I said louder. ‘We need the police here. And an ambulance too.’
‘Aitkens’ is shut today,’ said the exchange. ‘To whom am I speaking?’
‘Put me through to the police station this instant,’ I said and by now I was almost shouting.
‘But who are you to be in there when it’s closed?’ the girl said, a plaintive and insistent note creeping into her voice. ‘What’s going on there?’
‘Yes, all right, if you prefer it that way,’ I said. ‘I’m a burglar and I’ve broken into Aitkens’ and that’s not all. There’s a dead body here too. Perhaps I murdered him. What do you say to that?’
‘If I hear reports of a crime being committed while I’m properly carrying out my duties,’ she said, with a kind of prim boastfulness which made me want to reach down the telephone line and shake her teeth from her head, ‘I’m supposed to report it to the police straight away.’
‘Hallelujah,’ I said, and hung up hoping that the way I banged down the earpiece might have deafened her.
There were no whistles this time; the first Mr Laming and I knew of the police arriving was when we heard the front door handle being rattled and fists pounding upon the glass. I hurried across the haberdashery floor and through the foyer towards the three large silhouettes waiting there and with some struggle threw back the bolts.
I had been hoping for Constable McCann and dreading the inspector but I did not recognise any of these men I was letting in.
‘Dugald Hepburn has thrown himself down the lift shaft,’ I said. ‘I think he’s dead.’
For just a moment they all stared at me and then the most senior of them, a sergeant I thought, stuttered into action.
‘Did you see it?’ he said, striding away from me. ‘This way, boys, back corner.’
‘No,’ I said, trotting after him. ‘I found him.’
‘Over here,’ called Mr Laming’s voice and, perhaps in response to some note they could hear in the way he said it or perhaps because they knew the man and knew he did not always sound that way, all three of them broke into a run. I sped up too but then from behind us I could hear thumping on the outside door again and I wheeled round.
It was Alec, standing peering in at the door with his hands around his eyes making a visor. When he saw me he mimed enormous relief, clapping his hand to his chest, but before I had got the door open he had had time to register my expression and was worried again.
‘Dandy, what the hell?’ he said. ‘I’ve just come from the police station. I went to meet you, like we said, and you weren’t there and hadn’t been there and then three of them went pounding off and wouldn’t say where they were going. I thought something had happened to you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I changed my mind. I came here – there’s a wake going on and— Oh Alec! It happened again.’
‘What—?’ he said and then we both turned towards the door as the light darkened. The inspector was standing there flanked by a pair of constables. He moved forward very deliberately, nodding to one of the men to lock the door behind him.
‘Your pal here was at the station looking for you,’ he said to me.
‘Inspector,’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry – I don’t know your name. There’s been a horrible accident. Another one.’
‘Aye, and you reported it,’ he said.
‘Dugald Hepburn has thrown himself down the lift shaft. I saw him.’
‘Good God,’ said Alec. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No, no, I don’t mean I saw him fall,’ I said. ‘I mean I found him.’
‘Again,’ said the inspector. ‘And what are you doing here?’
‘There’s a reception going on upstairs,’ I said. ‘For Miss Aitken. Just the staff.’
The inspector nodded to his men and, apparently understanding, they made for the stairs.
‘Just the staff and yet you were invited?’ he said, returning his attention to me.
‘Now steady on,’ said Alec. I could tell that he was troubled but I could not follow what it was that was troubling him.
‘Is there a doctor coming?’ I said. ‘I think he’s dead, but I can’t be sure.’
‘You said you didn’t see him fall,’ said the inspector.
‘I didn’t see him fall, but I touched him and he was warm. I’m sure of it. Well, not cold.’
‘And
were
you invited?’ the inspector said.
‘Don’t answer, Dandy,’ Alec said. I blinked at him. Suddenly he seemed to be very far away and rather smaller than he should be.
‘Not exactly invited, Inspector,’ I said.
‘Mrs Aitken told me you weren’t invited last week either. To the jubilee.’
‘Again, not exactly,’ I said, nodding.
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Alec’s voice, sounding to me as though it were at the bottom of a well.
‘But along you came and “found” Mirren Aitken. Then along you came again today and now you tell me you’ve “found” Dougie Hepburn.’ He turned sharply away as someone came towards us through the archway.
‘It’s him all right, sir.’ It was one of the first three constables, looking rather green and with his voice wobbling. I gave him an encouraging smile; I was feeling rather green and wobbly too. ‘Dead as dead can be. About two hours I’d say, from the state of him.’
‘And when did you slip off to take your medical degree?’ said the inspector, spitting the words out. ‘Get Dr Stott. And escort this gentleman back to the station. I’ll want to speak to him.’

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