‘I’m expecting a helter-skelter at the end of all this,’ said Alec, sounding rather out of breath, and I laughed. We had arrived at the first landing and while Alec investigated the little room in the centre I paraded the terrace which wrapped around it. At least, I tried to; one could not actually walk all the way round because at one corner there was a door blocking the way.
‘It’s locked,’ I called to Alec.
‘Probably a cupboard,’ he replied, but I had crouched down to peer into the keyhole and I could see light.
‘No, it goes through,’ I said and rattled the handle. ‘It’s certainly locked though. I wonder why.’
‘Never mind, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘There’s air and light as requested.’
‘Not nearly enough,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Let’s go up again.’
The staircases got even steeper and narrower as they rose and by the time we stepped out onto the little terrace at the crow’s nest I did indeed feel a lift in my spirits to be looking across the rooftops at a far horizon instead of out of my barred window at the cherry tree.
‘I think I might be missing Perthshire,’ I said. ‘I think after all these years of distant forests and hilltops it’s finally got to me.’
‘Right,’ said Alec, who was still at the top of the stairway, examining the stonework and ignoring the panorama. ‘Now that you’re up here looking down,’ – at this he gulped – ‘what do you see?’
‘Well, give me a minute,’ I said, ‘it’s not like putting a penny in a slot machine and getting a bar of chocolate.’ I craned around the corner, trying to see beyond a jutting buttress. ‘You must get a good view to the Old Town too.’ I put my foot on a kind of stone skirting board and hoisted myself up.
‘Dandy, do be careful,’ said Alec, and put a firm hand around my arm, squeezing really quite tightly. ‘There’s a pathway round – you don’t have to clamber.’ I looked down at him. His lips had disappeared and although he had not looked tired a moment ago there was now a purple patch under each eye.
‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘You look very peculiar.’
‘Heights,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘I always forget. Now for God’s sake come down, or I shall faint and you’ll have to roll me down all those stairs again.’
I hopped down and stood beside him, feet squarely planted, while his colour returned to normal.
‘Now, please try to concentrate,’ he said. ‘You told me this idea was in reach when you were lying in bed. Is it about Pip’s bedroom? Something you saw near his bed? Something out of place in Lollie’s bedroom?’
‘Hush,’ I said. I was looking down at the view again now, at the long empty street, its tramlines shining like snail trails, and the few people scurrying about on the pavement, all looking very similar under their hats from up here. I could not tell which of the rooftops was 31 Heriot Row, for the fronts of the houses were hidden behind the trees of Queen Street Gardens, but I trained my gaze at where I thought the house must be and thought hard. I almost had it. I could almost touch it, just out of reach.
‘Say it,’ said Alec, very loudly in my ear.
‘Say what?’ I said. ‘Alec, I’m trying very hard to think and you’re making it harder.’
‘I was trying to help,’ he said. ‘I thought if you just blurted something out perhaps it would turn out to be the clue that unlocks it all. Psychology, you know.’
‘The locked door,’ I said. Alec tutted but I shoved him to shut him up. ‘Not the one downstairs. I mean, The Locked Door. In general. That’s what this case would be called if it were Sherlock Holmes’s. The case of the locked door. That’s what I hear last thing at night and first thing in the morning, lying in my bed; Mr Faulds, locking the doors. And Pip locked his bedroom door. And Lollie can’t sleep in a room with a locked door. And the mews door was locked in the daytime and one assumes that the back mews door – the garden door – was locked up at night. And Mattie had to stay in the vestibule to open the locked front door for his master and then lock it again after him. There’s something about all these locked doors.’
‘How would he get out?’ said Alec. ‘On the late nights, I mean.’
I shrugged. ‘I suppose he went out earlier, when the house was still open or at least when Faulds or Stanley were still about.’
‘No, not Pip,’ Alec said. ‘The hall boy cowering in the dark. What’s his name? Mattie. After he let Balfour in, how would he get out to go to bed in the carriage house?’
I leaned over and kissed him roundly first on one cheek and then on the other.
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Alec, you are a genius. That is it. How did Mattie get through a locked and bolted door in the night? That’s what’s been pricking at me.’ I beamed at Alec but his answering smile was so uncertain as to be hardly deserving of the name. ‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, most unconvincingly, ‘only hadn’t we agreed that the story of waiting in the hall wasn’t true? No more true than the TB visit or the trouser pockets or, indeed, the will? I mean, it’s good to have these loose ends cleared up but it doesn’t get us anywhere we hadn’t got already.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ I said, and put my hand up to stem the tide of argument which began. ‘I know. I know what we said, but Mattie certainly knows something, I’m sure he does. Clara, Phyllis and Mattie. When I asked them all about locked doors and people creeping around in the night yesterday dinner-time the two girls stared at me as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths and missed poor Mattie trying to catch their eyes to see if he should speak up or stay silent.’
‘Well, those three would be rather jumpy, wouldn’t they,’ Alec said. ‘If Clara’s story is the only real one and the other two are just made up.’
‘Although, to be fair, John was discomfited too, Stanley squirmed like a worm on a hook, and Millie and Eldry blushed to the roots of their hair.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Alec. ‘Are you absolutely sure you weren’t imagining things? Or wait: perhaps they were all staring and blushing because they had heard the cook and butler creeping around in the night and couldn’t believe you were being so indelicate as to ask about it.’
‘I’m still going to lean very hard on Mattie,’ I said. ‘Those two girls are as tricky as a bag of knives – Lord, I simply cannot remember that expression! – but Mattie is the weak spot. If I manage to get him on his own he’ll never be able to hold firm against me.’
‘You sound very fierce,’ said Alec. ‘I’m glad it’s not me keeping secrets. What can I do to help you, here on the outside, as it were?’
‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ I replied. ‘Find the missing persons. In case – as I fear – the police get nowhere with it. Start with George Pollard.’
‘No such man,’ said Alec.
‘Well, check at least. And the same for Josephine Carson. That should be easy enough. There will be a marriage certificate and Pip was twenty-six so you’ll only have to look through about eight years’ worth at the very most.’
‘Oh, so breezy when it’s not you!’ said Alec. ‘Only eight years’ worth indeed. What if they weren’t married in Scotland? How am I supposed to get to London to Somerset House? On a donkey? And what if they were married abroad?’
‘Maggie and Miss Abbott then,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask Lollie where the lady’s maid moved on to but I know that Maggie went to North Berwick to work for a baronet. She should be easy enough to find.’
‘North Berwick?’ said Alec. ‘Might as well be the North Pole right now.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Harry told me this morning that there’s petrol to be had again. He was complaining, of course, saying that “that toad Churchill” – not kind but not inaccurate either – has got soldiers delivering petrol all over the big towns. Actually, he was saying that there are vans marked “Petrol” delivering – oh, I don’t know – larks’ tongues and long-stemmed roses, but there must be some petrol getting through too. Enough for North Berwick, anyway.’