Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder (18 page)

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Authors: Catriona McPherson

BOOK: Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
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‘I tell you what I’d dearly like to know,’ I said. ‘I’d dearly like to know whether there’s the same unanimity chez Hepburn as I found chez Aitken this morning. Because there shouldn’t be.’
‘Dandy, you can’t go barging in the day after the boy died when Mrs Haddo was so clear about not wanting you.’
‘I must do something,’ I said. ‘I can’t just leave things be. Alec, I’m more sure than I’ve ever been about anything that . . . Well, actually I’m not sure what I’m sure of but I am sure.’
‘I believe you,’ Alec said. ‘But you have no authority, Dan. We have no client and you have no evidence. Come home.’
Alec had often laughed at me for the way I could think of something while saying it, and I did wish that I had come up with a different summary of the process, but it was about to happen again. I started up a defence of my position with nothing behind its robustness except my own conviction but while I was speaking the sense appeared that supported it.
‘We have a huge heap of evidence,’ I began hotly. ‘We have a crowd of grieving relatives whose attitudes only make sense if we posit at least one murder if not two. Look at the facts. The Hepburns don’t want their son to marry the Aitken girl and she conveniently dies. Then the Hepburn boy follows her. Both families want nothing said and nothing done, even those – like Bella and Fiona – who must suspect the truth. It’s a stand-off, Alec. Tit-for-tat. An eye for an eye.’
‘One of the Hepburns killed Mirren?’
‘Fiona Haddo thought so. And one of them was seen in the store, remember?’
‘And one of the Aitkens killed Dugald?’
‘Mary, you said. She arranged it anyway.’
‘That’s monstrous.’
‘Well,’ I said slyly, ‘the inspector certainly thought so.’
I heard Alec take a sharp breath.
‘I’m going to Roseville to quiz the Hepburns,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to you later, Alec dear.’
Although the house was in the deepest mourning I gained entry without difficulty, recognised by the little maid from the day before. I asked for Mrs Haddo and was ushered into the same sitting room to wait for her there.
The woman who entered the room minutes later was quite simply Fiona Haddo thirty years ago. Hilda, Mrs Robin Hepburn, was her mother’s double; the elegant limbs, the fine long neck, the strong lean features which managed to be feminine without any weakness about them and managed, which was more remarkable, to be handsome even today, when she was stricken with grief and pale from weeping.
‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, sitting and taking a black-edged handkerchief from the belt of her black dress which she pressed against her eyes to soak up the tears that had sprung there. ‘I must try hard not to cry,’ she said. ‘The girls are coming home from school and I don’t want to upset them. Dulcie went to fetch them for me from the station. Wasn’t that kind? Would you like some coffee? The house is in disarray – the servants were all so very fond – but I’m sure some coffee could be had.’
‘Mrs Hepburn,’ I said. ‘It was your mother I asked for. Perhaps the servants— Oh, I feel wretched to be here on such a day.’
‘My mother has sent me in her place,’ said Mrs Hepburn, with a very odd note in her voice. ‘She won’t be joining us. She warned me that the telegram she sent this morning probably wouldn’t do the job. She said if you arrived here, asking questions, I would have to answer them.’
‘That seems very strange,’ I said. ‘One would have expected your mother to be sparing you all possible burdens.’ I frowned at her, very puzzled.
‘My mother and I had a talk last night, in the middle of the night,’ she said. ‘She told me about the plan for the elopement. And I told her why it couldn’t have happened.’
‘Are you going to tell me?’ I said. ‘Why you disapproved of Mirren Aitken so?’
Hilda blinked. ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘Charming girl. Sweet little thing.’
‘Well, why you disapproved of the family then?’ I asked, trying to hide my exasperation.
‘I didn’t,’ she said again. ‘I don’t. I mean Abigail is hard work, by all accounts. She wasn’t always, you know, but she has turned heavy-hearted in her middle years, so they tell me. But I always liked Jack a great deal.’ My eyebrows rose and she saw them; she was as noticing as her mother. ‘Oh, I know. He’s as tricky as a bag of monkeys, but entertaining – sometimes even deliberately so. Mind you, perhaps a lifetime of that sort of entertainment has made Abigail turn into the lump she is today. And then poor Jack grumbles and Abigail sinks a little more.’
Abigail Aitken was right, I thought, regarding her. This was a callous and rather cruel woman to be speaking that way today.
‘Mrs Aitken is certainly heavy-hearted now,’ I said. ‘Her daughter gone. Her only child.’
‘And she was lovely, wasn’t she?’ said Hilda. ‘Poor thing. Poor Aitkens. She was perfect really. I’d have liked such a daughter.’
‘So why not welcome her into your family?’ I said. ‘It seemed a perfect match to everyone looking on.’
‘A perfect match!’ said Hilda, and her eyebrows were as high as a clown’s painted arcs, her forehead rippled above them. ‘Well, not really. I liked the individual Aitkens, as I said, some more than others and I don’t include Mary, but it was the family as a whole.’ She dropped her voice and looked away to the side. ‘Cousins,’ she said. ‘Full cousins. And Mirren the only child, simply years into the marriage too. Weak blood.’
‘Ah, yes, weak blood,’ I said, remembering Mary Aitken saying the same about the Hepburns while we were having luncheon in the garden room on jubilee day. ‘On both sides?’
Hilda stared and a blot of colour somewhere between pink and purple – an angry, ugly colour – rose up out of her collar and crept over her jaw and her cheeks leaving just her eyes still pale.
‘You know about Robin’s sisters then?’ she said. I inclined my head as if to suggest that I knew everything. The ploy worked. The angry colour deepened. ‘
I
didn’t, when I married Robin. Mummy didn’t. If either of us had known there was such a stain on the family . . . but one didn’t expect it. Sturdy merchant stock, one would have thought. It’s supposed to be the Haddos and their like who have relations not to be spoken of in polite company.’ She was making an attempt at lightness but her voice was brittle.
‘Well,’ I said, rather at a loss and rather disgusted by the agricultural turn the conversation was taking, ‘I suppose I can understand your anxiety. But on the other hand . . . Mirren was a bonny healthy girl and your husband and children are all hale and hearty, aren’t they? I don’t quite see the need for such excessive scruples, if I’m honest.’
Hilda Haddo blew out hard and gave me a considering look.
‘Mother told me you wouldn’t be put off,’ she said. ‘Very well. My scruples, as you put it, my anxiety, got the better of me twenty years ago. I was angry when I found out about Robin’s sisters and I decided not to risk it.’ Mrs Hepburn stuck her elegant chin in the air and spoke as though to the back of the balcony. ‘Dugald was Jack Aitken’s son, Mrs Gilver. Mirren was his half-sister.’
Her words seemed to reverberate in the following silence. I felt myself flush and waited until my blood had subsided again before I spoke.
‘I didn’t think you even knew one another.’
‘Oh, we were very chummy for a while when Robert and Dulcie first dragged us all here,’ she said.
‘And does he know? Jack Aitken?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Hilda. ‘Apart from anything else, Dugald looked more and more like Bella with every passing year. Robin never noticed but when one was guiltily watching for it, it was plain enough to see.’
‘So your husband doesn’t know then?’ I said. It was not quite a question.
‘Good God, no!’ said Hilda. ‘Jack and I always kept scrupulously apart in public and, given the rift, there’s never been any danger of us all coming upon one another.’
‘So that’s not what caused the rift?’ I had thought at least to have got to the bottom of that little mystery.
‘Heavens, no. That’s ancient history. Shop business. Nothing to do with Jack and me, but it did mean that we couldn’t sneak off at parties like ordinary people.’ I raised my eyebrows, but Hilda sailed blithely on. ‘We met in Aitkens’. After hours. It was like a game. Pinching a bottle of this or that from the food hall and a couple of glasses. We made a sort of little hidey-hole. Goodness knows what the floor staff used to think the next day.’
‘They probably thought it was a poltergeist,’ I said, and Hilda Hepburn laughed, carelessly. ‘So if Mr Hepburn doesn’t know . . . ?’
‘Robin?’ said Hilda.
‘Why was
he
so against the marriage?’
‘That probably
was
the thought of the cousins, as well as his sisters, you know.’
‘But surely having daughters of his own has stopped his worries about his sisters now?’
‘Exactly,’ said Hilda stoutly. ‘That’s what I tell myself. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him and as far as he does know I gave him four fine children.’
‘As far as he knows?’ I echoed.
‘They
might
all be Jack’s,’ she said. ‘Or a mixture. I could never decide about the girls since they take after me.’
‘And did Abigail know? Did she tell Mirren? Is that why she was so sure Mirren wouldn’t elope?’
‘Jack swears she knows nothing,’ Hilda Hepburn said. ‘Actually,’ – her voice shook – ‘I couldn’t bear it if Abby knew about Jack and me. The poor thing. Especially now.’ Again she rallied, with a sniff. ‘Not that I haven’t paid for my sins. My oldest, my darling, my boy.’ Her head had drooped but she lifted it again. ‘But I still have the girls at least. And as I say they’ll be here soon, so if you’ll excuse me.’ She stood and tucked her handkerchief back into her belt again. ‘There. I’ve told you. My mother needn’t send me to bed without supper.’ She gave me a nod and looking, at last and very late, quite shame-faced she left me sitting there.
7
I departed Roseville in a daze. I am no prude, but she had been so blatant about it, so unrepentant, caring only about what was known and not a jot about what was done. I tried and failed to imagine the scene where Fiona had told her daughter about the planned elopement and Hilda had revealed to her mother what an abomination it would have been. Then with a shiver I put it out of my mind and turned instead to the question of what it meant for Mirren’s death and Dugald’s too, what light it cast on the mystery.
It all depended, I told myself, on who knew. Hilda had been sure that her secret was hers alone, hers and Jack’s; but if Mirren knew, then she had a motive for suicide. And then any of her family had a motive for killing Dugald – if blind rage and senseless revenge could be said to be a motive anyway. But Jack Aitken had said Mirren was sweet and fond to him in her last weeks. Would she have been so to a father she had just found out was an adulterer? She would not. I let my motorcar slow down, struck by a sudden thought. If
Robin
knew, might he not kill the child of the man who had cuckolded him? Might he not kill either child, or both even? I had to find whoever had seen a Mr Hepburn in the Emporium that day.
A tooting horn behind me jolted me to sentient life again and I pressed my foot down as hard as it would go. Today, I told myself, was the perfect day to go searching for her. The Aitken family would no doubt be back at the store sometime or other, but on the day after the funeral I could be sure of a clear run.
I left my motorcar in a little parking yard behind the Kirkgate and walked towards Aitkens’, planning my assault on its various members. As well as the elusive witness from Household, there was Miss Hutton to try to interview; I could not for the moment quite remember what it was she had said to me, or even when, which had led me mentally to turn down the corner of her card in this way, but I knew there was something I wanted to ask her. Then there was the doorman, the only individual, so far as I knew, who was inside Aitkens’ when Dugald Hepburn died.
I was loitering now, pacing up and down outside the plate-glass windows. The bolts of black velvet were gone again, the riotous urns from the jubilee day too, and in each window was a large spray of lilies and narcissus. I kept squinting at the doorman, waiting for a moment when he was free to speak to me, but there was a steady stream of traffic out and in and he was much taken up with receiving condolences from the customers entering and saying a few respectful words of gratitude to those leaving. I had turned for the third time and paced all the way to the end window again, looking in most studiously – as though there were anything to see – when a pair of shopgirls emerging from a side alley saw me, took pity and stopped to explain.
‘The store is open, madam,’ said the younger of them; a pert little individual dressed in a black skirt and white shirt with a cardigan thrown over it and over the strap of a satchel. ‘It’s only that the displays aren’t up because we’re in the deepest mourning.’ Her companion nodded, plucked at the armband on the coat she wore over her black serge dress and then folded her hands as though in prayer. ‘On account of how Miss Aitken has just passed away.’ She could not have spoken with more relish if she had been recounting victory in a sea battle and I wanted nothing more than to quell them with my severest nod, a talent closely related to that of cowing strange butlers which had worked so well on Trusslove a week ago. (Although I comfort myself that I have no effect at all on the servants at home. My goodness, the day I cow Grant will be the day I give up all pretence of youth and if I ever make a dent in Pallister I shall order my ear trumpet and bath chair.)

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