‘Understood,’ I said. ‘Rest now.’
But Mary was not quite done. She prodded herself in her chest and then drew her pinched fingers across her mouth again.
‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘I’ll make sure they know.’
As she dropped back, utterly spent, the curtain suddenly rattled open on its rings and a dapper little man entered the cubicle.
‘Mrs Aitken,’ he said. ‘What’s to do with you, my dear?’
This evidently was Dr Hill, the family physician, summoned to the bedside and responding in very smart time. Mary only flapped a tired hand at him and turned her head away.
‘Come now, Mrs Aitken,’ he said, bustling up to her bedside and taking hold of her good hand. ‘I’ll have none of that from you.’ He looked quickly between Alec and me and we made our goodbyes – a swift salute on the forehead from me and a wave from him – and hurried away.
‘Well, I’m glad all that meant something to you, Dan,’ Alec said.
‘Not all of it,’ I answered. ‘The thing Abby told her can’t have been what we thought. How could the Hepburns know about it?’
‘But you understand what she wants you to do?’
‘Yes. She’s willing to strike a bargain with the Hepburns. Whatever they know, whatever they did, Mary is asking for silence from them, offering silence from the Aitkens and ready at that to call it quits.’
‘More or less what the inspector insinuated to you then,’ Alec said. He was looking very troubled.
‘Yes, two dead children and best for everyone to leave it there.’
‘Can I make one request?’ Alec said. ‘Let’s not start tonight. I don’t think I’ve got the energy for any more dramatic scenes today. Let’s march in and demand the Hepburns’ silence tomorrow.’
‘Agreed,’ I said.
‘As to how we can command them to keep quiet, when we don’t know what the secret is…’
‘I have no earthly idea,’ I said. ‘But at least we go invested with some moral authority.’
‘We do?’
‘Yes, darling. We go to carry out the wishes of a – possibly – dying woman. That’s a lot better than: “Answer our questions or we’re telling on you”.’
11
Dinner at St Margaret’s Hotel was thick oyster soup, stuffed and be-crumbed cutlets and a concoction going by the name of Empress Rice, which appeared to be rice pudding made fit for company by the addition of a lot of unnecessary eggs, sherry and jam. After it I could have spent a comfortable night on a park bench, stoked by inner fires and in no danger of coming to harm even without the lightest covering of newspaper. As it was, in a vast, hot, plushy bedroom I felt I did not so much sleep as lie stupefied until morning.
The room smelled of mothballs, which mystified me; an hotel is after all under continuous occupation (I have to will myself not to think of that fact whenever I get into bed in one on the first night of a stay and, should I ever find evidence of the last occupant, I have to summon all my early lessons not to run away shrieking). The bed was very large and soft and groaned under a generous budget of blankets, which had been so expertly tucked in – I imagined a crack team of brawny chambermaids with their teeth gritted – as to be immovable, so that one had to insert oneself like a handkerchief into a breast pocket and resign oneself to be pressed there like a flower until one slithered out again, for there was no give which might allow tossing and turning. Indeed, the only moving part of the whole apparatus – the pillows and bolster tended towards the solid too – was one of those shiny quilts, neither use nor ornament, which slipped off if one so much as breathed. It was hideous, brick-coloured and glistening, but it looked fairly new – clearly not the source of the camphor smell – and so I wondered again why that great heap of the things had been whisked off Aitkens’ shop floor to languish unloved alongside the woollen leggings of yesteryear.
The next morning, hotel life seduced me with the lure of a bathroom through a private door, no need to scuttle along the corridor meeting travelling salesmen in their dressing gowns, and since it too was quite amazingly hot and had, apparently, an endless supply of even hotter water, I slopped around for quite half an hour, topping up the water twice, so that it was a quarter to ten when I finally joined Alec in the breakfast room. He did not comment on my frizzed hair and pink glow although I am sure he noticed them.
‘Thoroughly recommend the hot dishes,’ he said, pointing to the sideboard.
I took a plate and went to peer under the covers. Indeed, the devilled kidneys were plump and glossy, the kedgeree bright gold and heavy with fish, not the salty porridge one always dreads and often finds, and there was a natty little toasting machine into which one could slip triangles of thin bread and out of which, moments later, popped crisp slices of practically melba toast.
‘What a waste,’ I said, bringing a piece of the toast and a cup of chocolate back to the table. ‘If I’d known last night, I’d have hung fire with scrambled eggs and stoked up this morning.’
‘You might have lost your appetite anyway,’ Alec said. He had opened a Sunday paper and now folded it and showed it to me.
A CURSE ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES
DOUBLE TRAGEDY FOR MOURNING MERCHANTS
the headline read and below it were two photographs; one of Mirren Aitken, under a banner, smiling, with orchids in her hair, and a suggestion of a dark shoulder to one side where a companion in his dinner jacket had been excised. The other picture was of a serious young man, looking straight into the camera from under a campaign hat with a glimpse of striped neckerchief at his throat. I felt a prickle of unwelcome memory; the last time – the only time – I had seen that face it had been sinking slowly past me on the roof of the lift, blank-eyed and dreadful in death.
‘Very clever,’ Alec said, tapping both photographs with the tines of his fork. ‘She’s at a party and this is obviously a scout troop portrait so no one will ever pin down which so-called friend provided them.’
‘Pass it over,’ I said.
‘It’s muck,’ said Alec, keeping a tight hold.
‘I’m not going to read it,’ I assured him, ‘I just want to look more closely at them.’ With some reluctance, Alec handed me the paper. The article began, Prominent Dunfermline merchants, strangers to scandal, living under a cloak of respectability until now, today we bring shocking news to our readers of.. .‘Hmph,’ I said. ‘If they can’t even sort out their participles who would take their word on anything?’ Then I sipped my cocoa and stared at the two photographs, Dugald first with his large, round, slightly bottom-heavy eyes and shadowed, sallow skin. I thought I could see just a trace of Bella Aitken there, a family resemblance anyway, if one knew the connection and were looking.
‘His father – Robin Hepburn, I mean – has snow white hair and a white moustache,’ said Alec. ‘Pure white before fifty. I wonder if he’d have been suspicious in a few years if Duglad had stayed dark.’
I shook my head. ‘There are always so many forebears to blame a child’s looks on,’ I said. ‘It would only have been those who knew, or suddenly saw Dugald and Bella standing together. And even then, one is an elderly lady and the other a boy.’ I sighed and turned to the picture of Mirren. Again there was an unpleasant flash of remembering.
‘She was a lovely little thing,’ Alec said. ‘Like a flower.’
I had forgotten that he had never seen her before.
‘I thought that about her mother the first time I met her,’ I said. ‘Like a little flower in the rain with its head bowed. But Mirren, to me, is more like a bird.’
‘Yes,’ said Alec. ‘At least it’s hard to tell from one photograph but she has a sharper look than Abigail. A bit of Mary in there?’