‘You’ll find,’ I said, trying to sound withering, ‘that debunking comes from Oscar Wilde. When they find out that Algy’s dying friend isn’t dying.’
‘That would be de-Bunburying,’ said Alec. ‘Do you know when the post-mortem’s going to-’
‘Phyllis!’ I said. I put my hand up to the glass to screen my eyes and peered out along the street. Phyllis the housemaid, unmissable in her yellow coat-dress, was walking smartly along towards India Street carrying a medium-sized suitcase. I spoke into the mouthpiece again. ‘Alec, I’ve just seen one of the other maids with rather more luggage than she would need on an afternoon off. She’s making her way towards the tram stop, bold as brass. I think she’s heading for the hills.’
‘Not by tram she’s not,’ said Alec. ‘But you’d better ring off and give chase anyway.’
I crashed the earpiece back into the cradle and – as I realised later – leaving tenpenceworth of pennies behind me, I slipped out of the kiosk and streaked across the road to the corner where Phyllis had disappeared. Hoping that no one could see me, I flattened myself against the wall and poked my head around to peep down the street after her. She was nowhere to be seen. I stepped away from the wall and rounded the corner properly, looking up and down each side, but there was no mistaking it. There were no carts, motor lorries or trees for her to be hidden behind, no more kiosks or even pillar boxes, no shops she might have stepped inside. She was gone. She must have started running, I realised. Perhaps she saw me peering out of the kiosk at her. I went at a very fast walk, almost running myself, to the corner of Jamaica Street and then to the next corner again, where Gloucester Place and Circus Gardens just fail to meet, and looked around in all directions. There was no sign of her anywhere. She could not possibly have rounded two corners in the time it took me to get here and there were no alleys or lanes for her to have dodged into; Edinburgh’s New Town is well known for the endlessness and unbrokenness of its many stretches of Georgian splendour.
There was only one explanation, I thought, as I stood there with my hands on my hips letting my breath slow down again. She had gone into one of the houses. Perhaps she had given notice and left, or had simply left – ‘flitted’, like Maggie – to a new situation already lined up before the events of the morning, in response to Pip’s threats of dismissal. But would a maid roll up to her new position in that coat and that hat, looking as though she were going for a walk along a promenade with her young man? Hard on the heels of that thought came another. What if she were indeed going to join a young man, in a flat in one of those houses, escaping from what she had done? What if she had robbed Pip Balfour of some valuable item that no one yet realised was missing and was making off, dressed up to the nines and sure she had got away with it?
‘Everything all right, miss?’ said a voice. I started and turned to see a rather elderly-looking policeman standing at my side. He was regarding me with an expression more quizzical than helpful.
‘Absolutely fine,’ I said. ‘I was supposed to meet up with a friend of mine but she’s given me the slip somehow.’ The policeman had reared backwards somewhat when I spoke and was looking at me with outright hostility now.
‘Just the one friend was it, miss?’ he said. I stared at him.
‘As it happens,’ I answered. ‘Why?’
‘Fine and well,’ he said. ‘I’ll take your name just the same though.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ I said. ‘You most certainly shall not.’
‘Oh, is that right then?’ said the policeman, squaring up.
‘It is,’ I replied. ‘I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong and I’m surprised, I must say, to find you hanging around here harassing innocent passers-by when your fellow officers are stretched to breaking point with the strikers.’ He took a step or two backwards, I am pleased to say. ‘Do you know Superintendent Hardy?’ I demanded. He nodded, swallowing hard and making his prominent and rather ill-shaven Adam’s apple sink into his collar and bob up again. ‘Well, so do I.’
‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ said the constable, who had instinctively pulled at his coat to smarten himself when he heard Hardy’s name. ‘Only I am minding out for the strike. I’m back in for it – been retired five years, properly. There’s trouble down on Princes Street and we’re trying to see where it is the gangs are forming. I thought you were standing there in the middle of the junction like that waiting for your pals.’
‘Gangs?’ I said. ‘On Princes Street?’
‘By the station there,’ said the policeman. ‘And a big crowd at the Tron too. Five arrests already and a policeman in the infirmary.’ I said nothing. ‘And what with you dressed so plain but speaking so fancy – if you’ll forgive me – I put you down for one of they intellectuals.’
‘I assure you, my dear fellow,’ I said, ‘that I am neither an intellectual nor a Bolshevist nor any kind of sympathiser.’ At that moment, I caught sight of a flash of yellow out of the corner of my eye and turned towards it. Phyllis was shutting an area gate about halfway up India Street. ‘There she is now!’ I said to the constable. Phyllis hefted her suitcase more comfortably into her grip and made her way back the way she had come.
‘Oh, really?’ he replied with what seemed to me to be an unwarranted level of interest.
‘I’ll just run after her, if that’s all right,’ I said, already beginning to move. ‘Keep up the good work, Constable.’
He gave me a knowing look and turned away.
Of course I had no intention of sprinting after Phyllis really, but I did want to see where she had been and try to work out what she might have been doing there. She had definitely come up from below stairs, but if she were merely visiting a friend why had she only stayed a minute and what was in the suitcase? Bloodied clothes would be my first guess and I should like to get inside the place before they were put into a furnace by her accomplice.
It was a grey stone house like any other in the streets surrounding, not so grand as the Balfours’ in Heriot Row and ill-kept in a vague way; as I drew nearer, the collection of bright new bell pushes set in by the front door revealed that it had lately been divided into flats. The basement windows were dusty, the area flags brown with dead moss which had been sluiced with ammonia but not scrubbed clear. An unprepossessing place, in all, but it had one feature of great interest to me. In the fanlight above the basement door, there was a crude painting of three brass-coloured balls. Without thinking about what I should do once inside, I opened the gate and descended.
The door was unlocked, but whoever waited inside was well warned of any visitor, for a string of tiny gold bells hanging behind it were set tinkling as I entered. A long passageway distempered in a tobacco colour stretched away in front of me, but on the nearest door, sitting ajar, a cardboard sign proclaimed it to be the Reception & Showroom.
A counter had been erected, cutting the room in half, and behind it were countless tiers of shelves, all around and above the fireplace, where the elaborate black-leaded range from when this room was a kitchen still crouched, glowing orange and radiating a most unwelcome heat for such a warm day. The shelves were stacked with brown-paper parcels, done up with string and bearing labels which hung down and fluttered in the rising heat.
On my side of the counter, in contrast to the neat shelves, was such a profusion of objects that one hardly knew where to rest one’s eyes. There was a rack of fur coats on wooden hangers, very rusty and stiff-looking fur coats too, with the large flat collars of twenty years ago. There were three tailors’ dummies, each dressed in a greying wedding gown and with a hat sitting on its shoulders and a pair of satin slippers resting against its solitary leg. There were glass cases of jewellery: barnacled brooches, dented watches and wedding rings, thin from wear, all set out against velvet. There were tea-chests full of odd golf clubs and a battalion of perambulators each piled high with folded linens. In pride of place were four wireless sets on a walnut table, and around the top of the room – on the high shelf where one would look for the largest of the pie dishes and trenchers, the rarely used platters and pans – there were perhaps a hundred dusty hatboxes, joined together with ropes of spider-web like bunting.