‘Bit odd,’ said Donald. ‘Why didn’t he tell you?’ Hugh was not exactly watching carefully but he was far from looking out of the window.
‘He told me about the Hydro,’ I said. ‘It was his praise of the place that put me in mind to come here. But when he said he was going away, I somehow got the idea that it was London.’
‘Hope he doesn’t mind you rolling up,’ said Hugh. He gave me that same amused look as before.
‘I’m sure he doesn’t mind any of us “rolling up”,’ I said. ‘Why should he? Unless you think he left Perthshire to escape us.’
At this Teddy snorted. It was an ugly noise, with a good deal of the after-effects of flu about it, and both Hugh and I frowned.
‘Sorry,’ Teddy said. ‘Just, well. Gilver and Osborne. In that order, Mummy. Sort of makes you Mr Osborne’s boss. And he’s skipped off on a spree and now his boss has come along and caught him.’
‘I’m not Mr Osborne’s “boss”, Teddy,’ I said. ‘What a nasty, slangy word.’
‘What other word is there for it?’ asked Teddy, with a fair to middling innocent look, not the full-force cherub he sometimes employs, but a lot of round blue eye and round pink mouth nonetheless for a boy of sixteen. ‘I’m simply calling a spade a spade.’
‘Superior officer,’ said Hugh. In Hugh’s world, there was only one job his boys could ever conceivably do, and that was how to describe the men under whom they would do it.
‘I am glad to say I have never seen a spade,’ said Donald in a trilling voice, making us all giggle, except Hugh, naturally.
‘What?’
‘Oscar Wilde,’ I told him. ‘Cecily.’
‘Gwendolen,’ said both boys.
Hugh was so disgusted that his children – not to mention his wife – could quote from this oeuvre that he said nothing, just drove the car steadily along the lane and swung it down the hill towards the town.
‘He’s got a point, mind you,’ said Donald, although whether he meant Teddy or Oscar was unclear. ‘You have dragged us down, Mother, where Teddy needs words like “boss” to describe the world around him.’
‘There is nothing more vulgar than a snob, Donald dear,’ I shot back.
‘Good grief,’ said Hugh. It is almost his strongest epithet and we all quieted on hearing it. ‘I wouldn’t blame Osborne if his heart did sink to see you as large as life at his journey’s end. What nonsense you speak, all three of you.’
‘Hugh,’ I said. ‘Alec Osborne is a dear friend who can speak nonsense like a drunken parrot. If he came to the Hydro I am sure it was because he is feeling a little under the weather and needs a pick-me-up – the same as you. I have no more intention of interrupting his treatment than I have yours.’
Hugh raised an eyebrow and one side of his mouth.
‘He looked perfectly healthy to me,’ he said.
‘Perhaps he’s here to woo a Moffat maiden,’ said Donald. ‘Just as you said, Mother.’
‘Best not get in the way of that then,’ Teddy said.
‘I doubt it,’ said Hugh. His air of mystery was becoming too irritating to bear. ‘It’s possible, but I doubt it.’
At that moment, when all three of them were making me want to spank them with a slipper, I spied, out of the motorcar window, distraction and diversion.
‘Pull over, please, Hugh,’ I said. ‘I’ve just remembered an errand. I’ll make my own way back to the house from here.’
‘Sure?’ said Hugh, chivalry spilling out of him again as it does when he is not concentrating. ‘It’s no trouble for us to park and wait. Help you carry things.’
‘Quite sure,’ I said. ‘Don’t hold tea. If you happen to see Grant-’
‘Gosh, yes, Mummy, we’ll give her warning,’ Teddy said. Donald laughed and even Hugh smiled as they pulled away. I tugged down hard on my hat, hoping to hide as much of the trouble as I could, and made my way to where I had seen the police lamp.
I have no fondness for police stations any more – not since I was required to sit alone in a small room inside one, friendless and anxious, for hours on end while a nasty piece of work of an inspector pretended to suspect me of murder – and although my chin was high and my shoulders back as I marched in, my heart let the side down miserably, thumping away like a trapped rabbit in my chest. I hoped my voice would be steady, but I did not count on it.
‘I should like to speak to a sergeant or inspector if there is one,’ I asked of the child at the desk. He was surely only just tall enough to make a policeman at all, and was as smooth of cheek as Teddy even this late in the day.
‘Certainly, madam,’ he said, as meek as a lamb. ‘Who can I tell the sergeant it is, please? The inspector is in Dumfries and won’t be back round here until Friday.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Mrs Gilver of Perthshire.’ I had decided that a private detective might raise hackles and be kept waiting but a woman of my sort, started on the path towards being a dowager, although thankfully far from its end, would elicit exactly this forelock-tugging and prompt service.
It was only minutes later then that I was shown into a shabby but comfortable office, lamps and rugs and cushions in the chairs to soften the municipal green distemper and brown paint, and introduced to a uniformed sergeant who rose from behind the desk and held out a hand to greet me.
‘Sergeant Simpson, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, sitting down again as I settled myself. ‘What can I do for you? I trust you’ve come to no harm on your visit here, have you?’
‘Thank you, Sergeant, no. I am quite well. I have a little matter to discuss with you. A matter of protocol, I suppose you would say. A point of procedure.’
‘I’m all ears,’ said Sergeant Simpson. I smiled at him and had to work not to do more than smile; this was unfortunately true and the red mark around his head where his cap must sit when he was out patrolling the streets of the town only drew attention to it. He smiled back, in on the joke, and I decided I liked him.
‘If there were a death…’ I said and his smile snapped off. ‘I don’t know if you’d say a sudden death or a suspicious death, but one where the Fiscal was involved before it was all sorted out and the body returned for burying…’ I drew breath. ‘What I’d like to know is, would the matter pass through the hands of the police on its way?’
‘Which case is this you’re referring to, madam?’ said Sergeant Simpson, seeing through my ruse right away. He even drew out a small notebook and snapped it open on itself with a terrific crack of its India-rubber band.
‘In general,’ I persisted.
He waited.
‘Mrs Addie,’ I said, relenting. ‘She died at the Hydro a month ago. On the ninth of September. A local doctor signed the death certificate, but it went across the Fiscal’s desk and her family are concerned. They are acquaintances of mine and since I was on my way here I promised them I’d have a quiet word.’
Again, he regarded me in silence. Then he closed his little book with a more minor snap and gave me a smile of deep avuncularity – I could not begin to imagine what was coming.
‘Are you a detective?’ he said.
‘Gosh, no,’ I replied before I even considered the fact that I was lying to the police, which is surely against the law. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’
‘My mistake,’ said Simpson. ‘It was just the very orderly manner in which you put your points across, Mrs Gilver. You struck me that way.’
If I had planned to keep lying my plan was undone by the beaming blush of pleasure which spread across my face. Sergeant Simpson laughed out loud to see it.
‘Sorry if I misled you just then,’ I said.
‘When you answered no to a straight question when the true answer was yes?’ he asked and waved a magnanimous hand. ‘We policemen are not accustomed to getting our final answer first time out, Mrs Gilver. I daresay it’s the same for you.’
I was reeling. I had encountered scorn, hostility and amusement from policemen who heard of my calling and sergeants were always the worst of all. My beloved Inspector Hutchinson, it was true, had grudgingly thawed towards Alec and me over the course of the case we had shared, but this instant chumminess was something else again.