‘Until little Cissie saw them!’ said Alec.
‘Yes, yes, that’s what I thought,’ I said, recovering my breath. ‘But Alec, Rosa Aldo called her husband on the telephone. I spoke to her myself. Remember?’
‘Nonsense,’ Alec said. ‘You had never met Rosa Aldo. It’s not as though you recognised her voice or anything. You spoke to someone who rang Joe. Someone who spoke a bit of Italian, such as a studious sort would pick up in a couple of years of visiting an Italian family.’
‘Fleur?’ I felt a tremor pass through me as though someone had hit an anvil with a hammer close by. ‘It couldn’t be.’
‘Why not?’ Alec said. ‘I never could understand why Joe was so floored by someone supposedly seeing Rosa with her boyfriend, but it makes sense if the boyfriend was him and he was just about to shove her off the cliff top. So it can’t have been Rosa on the telephone. If it wasn’t Rosa, who else?’
‘He must have nerves of steel,’ I said. ‘We were standing right there and Fleur was on the phone and he pretended it was his wife? And she pretended to be his wife? Why would she do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alec said. ‘But I’m sure she did. He told Fleur what to say and you obligingly relayed the message to him, not understanding what she said until he translated it for you.’
‘I got the gist,’ I said, and then another tremor made its way through my innards and this one left me cold.
‘Alec,’ I said. ‘Cissie said she didn’t understand what Rosa and the stranger were saying but she knew it was sweet-talk. I thought she didn’t hear the words themselves.’
‘But now you think maybe she did hear them but she didn’t understand them because they were in Italian?’
‘And she doesn’t like fish and chips,’ I said. ‘So she very likely had never seen Giuseppe Aldo even if his wife was familiar to her.’
‘More evidence,’ said Alec. ‘But Dan, what’s wrong?’
‘I told Joe the Turners’ maid was the one who saw Rosa and friend on the cliff top. And – oh Alec! – maybe Cissie isn’t sulking. Maybe she’s missing. Maybe he got her too.’
Alec was running already and reached the police station before I had made it a yard up the street. By the time I got to the door Reid and he were on their way out again. Reid wrenched open the door of the police motorcar and Alec shoved me in and then jammed in after me. As we began to climb the hill with the engine whining, Sergeant Turner came out onto the street and stood, hands dangling at his sides, watching the three of us speed away.
Outside the Turner villa, Reid screeched to a halt and jumped down. He leapt over the garden gate, rounded the side of the house and disappeared. Alec and I scrambled after him. In the yard, the kitchen door was banging back on its hinges and Reid was in the middle of the linoleum floor with his arms wrapped round an astonished Cissie like an octopus with its prey while a thin cook looked on, a baking bowl under one arm and a wooden spoon held up like a baton.
‘Cissie,’ I said. ‘Oh my dear girl, thank goodness!’
‘Who are you?’ said the cook.
‘I’m a chump and this is my idiot friend,’ I said to her. ‘Gilver and Osborne. They were speaking Italian, Cissie, weren’t they? That night on the cliff top. Rosa and the man who wasn’t her uncle?’
‘Lots of people speak Italian,’ she said. ‘Get off, Wullie.’
‘Has someone been speaking Italian to you?’ said Alec. Cissie blushed.
‘Writing it,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a friend and admirer, Wullie Reid, and he’s told me all about you!’
‘What’s going on?’ said the cook. ‘This is my kitchen, ye ken, and I’ll call the mistress if you don’t tell me what’s to do.’
‘All about me what?’ said Reid.
‘All lies,’ said Alec, ‘whatever it was. This secret admirer, Cissie – has he asked you to slip out and meet him yet?’
‘He said he had to go away a wee while,’ she said, ‘but maybe next week, he said he’d take me a hurl in his car and we’d get some dinner.’
‘Out for dinner!’ said Reid. ‘How am I supposed to compete wi’ that on ma wages?’
‘William,’ I said, ‘I think you’re losing sight of the main point here, aren’t you? Aldo only needed to keep Cissie apart from you until he was ready to shut up shop and disappear for good. He’s not coming back to take her for dinner or even for a bag of chips at the harbour.’
‘I don’t like chips,’ Cissie said. ‘He promised a proper dinner.’
‘Cissie, that man is a liar and a murderer,’ Alec said. ‘It was Giuseppe Aldo who wrote to you. He was the one you heard on the cliff path with his own wife and he killed her. He would have killed you if you had gone out to meet him too.’
‘He’s a very dangerous man,’ I said, ‘and he plays risky games. Do you realise, Reid, that he pretended his wife was on the telephone that day when really it was Fleur all the time who was in Glasgow station and…’ I stopped and let the silence fill me.
‘What is it, Dan?’ Alec said.
Finally, the little pip of information which had been tickling at me was in my grasp.
‘Up,’ I said. ‘Sabbatina Aldo said that Fleur had invited her “up” to stay for the holidays. She kept saying Fleur would go home. She couldn’t believe Fleur would go anywhere else except home. But Pereford – Somerset – isn’t up anywhere. Sabbatina meant Alt-na-harrie. The Major’s lodge. The place Fleur went to when her life at Pereford changed for ever all those years ago.’
‘But they sold it,’ Alec said.
‘To an anonymous buyer,’ I reminded him. ‘And Fleur came into a lot of money when she was eighteen. More than she could spend on a Bugatti.’ I turned to Reid.
‘Constable,’ I said, ‘Miss Lipscott is at home in a hunting lodge near Ullapool. I’m sure of it. If you go there, you’ll find her.’
‘I’ll never get let go all the way up there,’ said Reid. ‘The sarge’ll be after me wi’ a strap for takin’ his car this far.’
‘We’ll hire a motorcar and you can come with us,’ I said. ‘It’s pretty tricky to find, actually. You’d probably do better with a native guide. Meantime, Cissie, I’m sure Aldo is gone for good but until he’s caught – just to be on the safe side – perhaps you’d better stay in and don’t answer the door. No matter who it is calling.’
‘My God, Alec,’ I said as we made our way from the high road of villas to the back street where the car-hiring garage was to be found. ‘Do you realise how many young ladies there currently are stashed all over this fair land? Four counting Sabbatina, who’s in Fleur’s room at the school, breaking her poor heart over her mother and her patron. And her no-good father as well, probably.’
‘Why’s she stashed?’ Alec said.
‘Because I wasn’t thinking straight and I couldn’t tell if the school was mixed up in the Aldo mess.’
‘It’s not, is it?’ he asked, and then he rapped hard on the open garage doors at which we had arrived. ‘Me again, Mr Donaldson. I’m getting to be your best customer, eh?’
‘Aye, right, son,’ said the man in the dark-blue cambric overall straightening up from where he was bent over an open bonnet. ‘But ye’re no’ in luck today. The car’s away.’
‘Oh,’ said Alec. ‘Right.’
‘Aye, thon Eye-tie took it yesterday. Said he’d a wee trip to go on.’
I glanced at Alec to see what he made of this.
‘Has he cut and run?’ I asked.
‘Why on earth would he run in a hired car which would soon become a stolen car if he didn’t return it?’ Alec said to me.
‘Eh?’ said Mr Donaldson. ‘Who’s sayin’ he’s no’ returnin’ it? He said he had a wee bit business where there’s no trains.’
‘Alec!’ I said, clutching at him. ‘Sabbatina told me! She said she had spoken to Joe about Fleur running away. He knows where she’s gone. He’s gone after her to Ullapool. And he’s got a day’s head start on you and me.’