‘Nothing like so sharp as all that!’
‘Mind you, we’ve only seen Abby very cowed,’ Alec said. I nodded and started carefully tearing around the picture of Mirren. ‘Are you really going to take that and wave it under the Hepburn noses?’ he asked me.
‘We’ll see,’ I answered. ‘Well, no, of course not. I was only going to wave when I wanted answers. Now we’re extracting promises – like gangsters – I don’t suppose we’ll need it.’
‘And do we really need to go round all of them?’ Alec said.
I thought for a minute and then shook my head. ‘Hilda and Fiona hardly need to have promises extracted. They have secrets of their own to keep. If they even know Mirren’s secret – which I doubt, don’t you? – they can be trusted with it. But we certainly need to speak to the menfolk and I suppose for the sake of completeness the other grandmother, Dulcie. It might be that no one knows anything anyway. Let’s hope so.’
‘Shall we start at Roseville, with Robin?’ said Alec. I was still staring at Mirren’s picture.
‘I’ll keep this with me,’ I said. ‘I’ll wave it in front of my own eyes if my resolve falters. Look at her, Alec!’
But looking at her turned him so glum that I folded the picture away into my notebook to let him finish his breakfast without feeling like a monster for being able to do so.
Since it was a Sabbath morning between a death and a funeral we knew better than just to roll up and expect to find the master at home. Instead, we rang after breakfast and inquired of the parlourmaid who answered the telephone what time Mr Hepburn would be back after church.
‘Mr Hepburn won’t be coming here, madam,’ said the maid in that refined shriek with which servants mistrustful of the new contraption conduct all telephone conversations. ‘He’ll be going to number eighty-six.’
‘Number eighty-six?’ I said.
‘High Street,’ said the maid. ‘The old house. Mistress Dulcie’s.’
‘Ah, of course,’ I said, bluffing. ‘Thank you. We’ll catch him there.’
‘I’m glad we saved ourselves Pilmuir Street anyway,’ Alec said, as we puffed up the hill from the hotel. ‘The High Street’s bad enough after that breakfast.’
‘Easily,’ I said, panting.
‘So where’s eighty-six then?’ said Alec. We had emerged at the mouth of Guildhall Street and stood looking up and down the quiet stretch of shuttered shops and empty pavements.
‘Close by,’ I said, nodding at the other side. ‘Those are the high seventies.’
‘Which way does it go?’ said Alec, strolling a little way down towards the tolbooth. ‘No, this is wrong. Uphill, Dandy.’
‘But can that be right?’ I said, trailing after him and looking around myself with some puzzlement. ‘It’s all shops and we’re practically at Aitkens’.’
‘Eighty,’ said Alec. ‘Eighty-two, eighty-four is the bank.’ Here he crossed the end of a narrow lane which led away up the hill beyond the High Street. ‘So this must be… hmph. Eighty-eight.’ He stopped, and looked back down the street with his hands on his hips.
‘Could there be another High Street?’ I said. ‘It seems odd that the Hepburn house would be right here in the hurly-burly.’ Alec had gone up the narrow lane and now he beckoned to me.
‘Here it is,’ he said. The number, burnished brass, was attached to an iron gate on the side of the bank building and the same number was painted in gold on the fanlight above an imposing door, just inside.
‘A manager’s flat?’ said Alec.
I walked back around the corner, crossed the road, stopped outside Aitkens’ plate-glass window – still bearing only some flowers – and simply stared.
‘My God,’ I said, looking up at the three floors of house windows above the branch of the British Linen Bank.
‘That’s spite, surely,’ said Alec. ‘Or something very peculiar anyway.’
For number eighty-six High Street was directly opposite Aitkens’ Emporium and looked across the narrow stretch right into its upper windows.
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I remember Mary Aitken being most odd – even for her – when I queried her sending a pair of girls off down the street with the deposit. I couldn’t imagine what such a blameless institution could have done to upset her so.’
‘So Robert and Dulcie Hepburn live right opposite their arch-enemy,’ said Alec. ‘And in a flat? While Robin and Hilda swan around in Roseville.’
‘Well, as to that,’ I said, ‘I’ve been in a manager’s house above a bank branch once before. Upstairs here might surprise you.’
We recrossed the road, tried the iron gate and, finding it open, entered and pulled on the bright polished handle of the doorbell. A maid with a black cap and a red nose answered and nodded, sniffing, when we said we had come to see Mr Hepburn if he was there. She led us up the stairs, which were exactly as prosperous and substantial as I had expected, easily as broad and shallow as our back stairs at home, and into the upstairs hall which was quite twelve feet square and lit by a cupola, spangles of red and blue scattering down from its panes and dotting the good plain carpet and gleaming mahogany.
We waited in an equally plain but gleaming morning room, I on the edge of my seat although Alec managed to look as though he were not thrumming with nerves at the thought of the coming interview.
Mr Hepburn did not keep us waiting long. He entered the room slowly, looking rather stooped, and closed the door behind him before he turned to us.
‘Yes?’ he said, looking at Alec and me without recognition. I glanced at Alec, shocked. This was Hilda Hepburn’s husband? He looked seventy. Had grief done this to the man?
‘Mr Hepburn,’ said Alec. ‘Excuse us, sir, there has been a mix-up. We were hoping to speak to your son.’
‘Robin?’ said the old man. I could see now that he was an old man, not just tired and sad, but truly old. Robin Hepburn might well have white hair but this man’s hair and his moustache too were thinning, his chin hanging in a wattle and his eyes creased and pouchy behind his pince-nez. It was only because I had expected Robin that I had assumed this was he. ‘Robin is at home, young man. And perhaps as well you didn’t find him. Today is a very bad day to seek out my son. He has had a dreadful thing just happen to him.’
‘We know about Dugald,’ I said, and my voice shook from fear of my own temerity. ‘It was on that subject we wanted to speak to him.’ I swallowed. ‘That subject’ sounded horribly cold when I heard it. Mr Hepburn Senior frowned but it was with puzzlement, not displeasure. He came over slowly and eased himself into a chair, looking at Alec and me thoughtfully.
‘And what’s your interest in my grandson’s death?’ he said.
‘We have been trying to puzzle out what happened,’ I said. ‘There are some things that don’t make sense, you see. We’ve even gone as far as to think, in fact, that Dugald might have been killed. By another person, I mean.’ In fact, of course, we no longer thought any such thing, but it had been our opening to every interview and I could not drum up another one on the spot while he sat there looking at me that way.
Unlike Bella, unlike Abigail and most certainly unlike Jack, Mr Hepburn did not start up in violence or moan in agony at my words. He just nodded slowly again and waited for me to continue.
‘We understand you were against the match between Dugald and Mirren,’ I went on. He frowned very sharply at my words, but surely he did not know that Jack Aitken was Dugald’s father as well as Mirren’s? Surely such a paterfamilias would not have suffered Hilda for a moment if he knew. So did he know Mirren’s secret, whatever it was? Or was it only the bitter rivalry with the Aitkens that had set him against the alliance with them? ‘Can you tell us why?’ I said.
‘On what authority do you ask?’ he said. It was a very proper response and delivered calmly.
‘Mrs Ninian Aitken wanted us to,’ said Alec, and at the mention of her name all the measured calmness was gone.