Minty took a sip of wine. “Then do you mind my asking: What is your interest in the firm? You see, first you asked Paul about it, and then you start talking to Johnny Sanderson, and so on, and this makes me wonder why you’re suddenly so interested. You’re not in a financial job, are you? So what explains the interest in our affairs?”
“Your affairs? I didn’t realise you worked for McDowell’s.”
Minty bared her teeth in a tolerant smile. “Paul’s affairs are closely linked with mine. I am, after all, his fiancée.”
Isabel thought for a moment. On the other side of the room, Jamie looked in her direction and they exchanged glances. She T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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was uncertain what to do. She could hardly deny the interest, so why not tell the truth?
“I was interested,” she began. “I was interested, but not any longer.” She paused. Minty was watching her, listening intently.
“I’m no longer involved. But I was. You see, I saw a young man fall to his death a little while ago. I was the last person he saw on this earth and I felt that I had to enquire about what had happened.
He worked for McDowell’s, as you know. He knew something untoward was happening there. I wondered whether there was a link. That’s all.”
Isabel watched the effect of her words on Minty. If she was a murderess, then this was as good as a direct accusation. But Minty did not blanch; she stood quite still; there was no shock, no panic, and when she spoke her voice was quite even. “So you thought that this young man had been disposed of ? Is that what you thought?”
Isabel nodded. “It was a possibility I felt that I had to look into. But I’ve done so and I realise that there’s no proof of anything untoward.”
“And who might have done it, may I ask?”
Isabel felt her heart beating loud within her. She wanted to say: You. It would have been a simple, a delicious moment, but she said instead: “Somebody who feared exposure, obviously.”
Minty put her glass down and raised a hand to her temple, which she massaged gently, as if to aid thought. “You evidently have a rich imagination. I doubt very much if anything like that happened,” she said. “And anyway, you should know better than to listen to anything Johnny Sanderson had to say. You know he was asked to leave McDowell’s?”
“I knew that he had left. I didn’t know in what circumstances.”
Minty now became animated. “Well, maybe you should have 2 2 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h asked. He didn’t see eye to eye with people there because he was unable to adjust to new circumstances. Things had changed. But it was not just that, it was because he was suspected of insider deals, which means, in case you don’t know, that he used confidential information to play the market. How do you think he lives as he does today?”
Isabel said nothing; she had no idea how Johnny Sanderson lived.
“He has a place up in Perthshire,” Minty went on, “and a whole house in Heriot Row. Then there’s a house in Portugal, and so on. Major assets all over the place.”
“But you never know where people get their money from,”
said Isabel. “Inheritance, for a start. It might be inherited wealth.”
“Johnny Sanderson’s father was a drunk. His business went into receivership twice. Not a notoriously good provider.”
Minty picked up her glass again. “Don’t listen to anything he tells you,” she said. “He hates McDowell’s and anything to do with them. Take my advice and keep away from him.”
The look which Minty now gave Isabel was a warning, and Isabel had no difficulty in interpreting it as a warning to stay away from Johnny. And with that she left Isabel and returned to Paul’s side. Isabel stood where she was for a moment, looking at a picture beside the mantelpiece. It was time to leave the party, she thought, as her hostess had clearly indicated that such welcome as she had been accorded had now expired. Besides, it was time to walk up the Mound to the museum and to the lecture on Beckett.
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F O U R
E
THE LECTURE AT THE MUSEUM was well attended and Professor Butler was on form. Beckett survived the professor’s reassessment, much to Isabel’s relief, and afterwards, at the reception, she was able to talk to several old friends who had also attended. Both of these things—Beckett’s survival and the meeting with old friends—contributed to a raising of her spirits. The conversation with Minty had been unpleasant, although she was very much aware that it could have been worse. She had not expected Minty to launch into an attack on Johnny Sanderson, but then she had not expected the other woman to know that she and Johnny had met. Perhaps she should not have been surprised by this; it was hard to do anything in Edinburgh without its getting around; look at Minty’s own affair with Ian Cameron. Presumably she would not have imagined that others knew all about that.
Isabel wondered what Minty might take from their meeting.
She would be confident, perhaps, that Isabel was no longer a danger to her; Isabel had very explicitly said that she was no longer taking an interest in the internal affairs of McDowell’s.
And even if she were involved in Mark’s death, which Isabel—on the basis of Minty’s reactions to her comments about this—was 2 2 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h now firmly convinced could not be the case, then she would be bound to conclude that Isabel had uncovered nothing about how it had happened. She doubted, then, if she would hear any more from Minty Auchterlonie, or from the unfortunate Paul Hogg.
She would miss them, in a curious way; they were contacts with a different world.
She stayed at the reception until it started to break up. She spoke briefly to Professor Butler himself. “My dear, I’m so glad that you enjoyed what I had to say. I have no doubt that I shall say more on the subject one day, but I shan’t inflict that on you. No, I shall not.” She appreciated his urbanity, so increasingly rare in modern academic circles, where narrow specialists, devoid of any broad culture, had elbowed out those with any sense of courtesy.
So many academic philosophers were like that, she thought.
They spoke to nobody but themselves, because the civilities of broader discourse eluded them and because their experience of the wider world was so limited. Not all of them, of course. She had a mental list of the exceptions, but it seemed to be shrinking.
It was shortly after ten that she walked up Chambers Street and took her place in the small queue at the bus stop on George IV Bridge. There were taxis about, prowling down the street with their yellow signs lit, but she had decided in favour of a bus. The bus would drop her in Bruntsfield, more or less directly outside Cat’s delicatessen, and she would enjoy the ten-minute walk along Merchiston Crescent and down her own road.
The bus arrived, and as she noticed from the timetable displayed in the bus shelter, it was exactly on time; she would have to mention this to Grace, but perhaps not, as it might provoke a tirade against the transport authorities. It’s all very well running on time at night, when there’s nobody about. What we want are buses that run on time during the day, when you need them.
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Isabel stepped into the bus, bought her ticket, and made her way to a seat at the back. There were few other passengers: a man in an overcoat, his head sunk against his chest; a couple with arms around each other, impervious to their surroundings; and a teenage boy with a black scarf wound round his neck, Zorro-style. Isabel smiled to herself: a microcosm of our condition, she thought.