‘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.’