‘Oh?’ I said, although I was sure I knew what unwelcome topic she was getting to.
‘They don’t know that I know,’ she said, her voice coated in a kind of delighted scorn, ‘but the fact is that Robert and Dulcie Hepburn had four daughters before Robert Junior came along.’ She paused, her eyes glittering. ‘And not one of them has ever seen the outside of a nursing home.’
I nodded, trying to look neutral. Abigail had told us that Mary herself was no stranger to a nursing home and there was something about the way she passed on the gossip with such relish that sickened me.
‘How unfortunate,’ I said. ‘Ill health in a family is a great strain on everyone.’
‘I don’t mean ill health,’ said Mary. ‘I was being quite literal, Mrs Gilver. They never brought the babies home. Never announced their births after the first one or two. Four of them! And they tried to stop the world from knowing.’
‘The world can certainly be very unkind,’ I said.
‘I found out in my lying-in hospital when I was confined with Abigail,’ Mary said. She was absolutely livid now, drops of spittle forming at the corners of her mouth. ‘One of the nurses told me. As if I would let my Mirren, my girl, have anything to do with a family like that. Once I knew. Once it was all out in the open and their secrets weren’t their secrets any more. I went to Humbie to the nursing home and saw those Hepburn sisters, you know. Three of them are still alive. You could see them yourself if you care to. And they thought they could hide it!’
‘Mrs Aitken, please,’ said Alec. He spoke mildly but seemed only to incense her more.
‘Oh! Oh!’ she said. ‘You’d rather not think about such things, I suppose. You find it “distasteful”, eh?’
‘I find it illuminating,’ I said. I had given up on my neutral expression and supposed that I was now looking at her as though she were a white toad someone had told me to pick up and cradle. ‘Tell me, Mrs Aitken, did you take Mirren to the nursing home to visit these unfortunate women? Did you go that far?’
‘I would have,’ said Mary. ‘I didn’t need to. I explained it to her.’ All of a sudden all the fire went out of her as though someone had turned down the gas in a lantern. She sat back, the last peep of flame snuffed out. ‘I explained. And she… she died. I did that. That was me.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Our sins will surely find us out. My sins…’
Alec, who has surprised me more times than I can list through the years of our friendship, delivered his greatest surprise then.
‘What about “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much”?’
Mary opened her eyes and gazed at him.
‘Don’t be so quick to blame yourself, Mrs Aitken,’ he said. ‘Your daughter Abigail has just told us that Mirren didn’t kill herself because of anything that came from you.’
‘Abigail said that? What did she mean?’
‘She wouldn’t say,’ said Alec, firmly. ‘It’s a family matter, I understand. Nothing to do with Mrs Gilver and me.’
‘Well, I must go and ask her,’ said Mary, rising up with some of her old vigour. ‘I can’t imagine what she means but I must ask her to tell me.’ She left us without another word, without even a goodbye or an order not to bother them again.
I was glad that she had not waited to see us off the premises; I do not think I could have peeled myself off my chair for a king’s ransom.
‘My goodness,’ said Alec, when the silence had had time to settle around us. ‘Between the three of them, that was the most uncomfortable series of conversations I hope I will ever have to endure. You weren’t very sympathetic, Dan. What got into you?’
‘It’s a particular dislike of mine,’ I said. ‘Grisly news sucked like bon-bons.’ I shuddered.
‘But have we solved the mystery?’ said Alec. ‘Tied in all the ends?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Hilda and Jack, obviously, knowing what they know. Abby, if my guess was right. Mary, without a shadow of a doubt. Even without the business rivalry – and my goodness, wasn’t she fierce? – her avoidance of the Hepburn “bad blood” accounts for her misgivings.’
‘Odd though, isn’t it?’ said Alec. ‘A woman who could marry her daughter off to a cousin and then suddenly grow so squeamish the next generation down.’
‘Oh, Alec, don’t!’ I said. ‘You sound like those horrid German scientists. What is it called, the thing they get so excited about?’
‘Eugenics,’ said Alec.
‘Well, it’s vile. As though we were dogs. Revolting.’
‘We don’t need to concern ourselves with it, thankfully,’ said Alec. ‘The point is that it could be two suicides after all. Two broken hearts. Star-crossed lovers indeed.’
‘But what about the inspector?’ I said. ‘And the gloves? And do we rely on the business rivalry to explain the Hepburn men’s opposition? We have no explanation for that otherwise.’
Alec only shook his head.
‘It’s not a new set of Meccano, Dan; it’s a boxful.’ Then seeing that I did not understand, he went on. ‘There are bits left over even once we’ve built the best model we can.’
Reluctantly, I nodded.
‘Come on then, darling girl,’ I said to Bunty. ‘I’m going to take you a nice walk up the High Street and find you a big juicy butcher’s bone.’
Bunty, despite the fact that I had used two of her favourite words in the same sentence, ignored me. She had her head cocked to one side, with her brow wrinkling.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ said Alec.
‘Ssh,’ I said. I cocked my head up too and, from what seemed like a great distance, I heard a voice bellowing. Alec and I raced out into the hall. It was upstairs somewhere. It was a woman’s voice and she was begging for help. We wheeled into the stairwell and took the steps three at a time with Bunty streaming up ahead of us. We paused on the first-floor landing but the sound was still above us, and so again up we surged to the second floor and out onto the gallery under the cupola where the voice boomed around the empty space above and all around.
‘Help! Help! Help me!’
Bunty, scared now she was so close to the noise, whined and pressed herself into the wall behind her, but Alec and I charged around the gallery to an open door on the other side and burst in.
Abigail Aitken was kneeling on the floor, still bellowing, holding her mother’s face to her bosom, shaking the woman like a rag doll. Mary’s hands lay limp at her sides and her legs were splayed out, her stiff black bombazine skirts twisted up and one seam split open. Abigail turned to face us, her mouth gaping open and an ugly raw sob coming out of it, her hair hanging down in tangled oily clumps around her shoulders and one cheek bright pink and shining.
‘Help me!’ she wailed.
I rushed over and knelt down beside them, taking Abigail’s hands and prising them gently away from Mary’s shoulders. Mary’s body slumped back into my grasp and with a great rush of relief I heard a low groan and saw an eyelid flickering. Very carefully I laid her down flat on the floor and then grabbed Abigail’s shawl from where it sat in a heap and bundled it into a pillow. I lifted Mary’s neck and set the bundle underneath her.
‘What happened?’ said Alec. Abigail did not answer but only stared down at Mary’s grey face. I stared too, horrified to see how it had slipped downwards at one side, her eye, cheek and mouth melting into a doughy and expressionless travesty.
‘Something dreadful,’ I said. ‘We’d better get a doctor. Or an ambulance if there is one. Tell Trusslove. He’ll know what to do.’ Alec nodded and left. I pulled down one of my cuffs and wiped Mary’s mouth. Abigail was rocking back and forward, whimpering. I looked around myself for the first time and saw bedroom furniture. I wondered if we could, between the two of us, lift Mary onto the bed and wished I’d sent Abigail to the telephone and kept Alec with me. I put my hands under her shoulders and lifted them. She was a small woman but I felt numb and she was all but unconscious, a dead weight in my arms. I laid her back down and wiped her mouth again.