‘She did!’ I said. I sat up very straight and said it rather loudly, loud enough to attract the attention of the nurse in the room next door. She came stalking back and with one look at Mary’s pale and tear-stained face she bundled us unceremoniously out of the room, Dr Hill or no. Out on the landing, I grabbed Alec by the arm and hissed at him.
‘She did go after the grandfather, Alec,’ I said. ‘Oh, glory be! This is like finally getting rid of a raspberry seed that’s been stuck in one’s teeth for a month. She wrote to Mr Hepburn. She must have and that’s why he came to the store. On the Monday. To meet her.’
‘Old Mr Hepburn?’ said Alec. ‘Her grandfather?’
‘There’s no such person as old Mr Hepburn,’ I said. ‘This had been niggling at me like nothing on earth. “Mr Hepburn” is Robert. Robin is “young Mr Hepburn”. Dugald was “Master Hepburn”. That’s why the maid at Roseville sent us to the other house when we asked for Mr Hepburn. And I thought the Emporium girls were talking about Dugald when they mentioned young Mr Hepburn and accused them of changing their story when they denied it a moment later.’
‘So Robert came to Aitkens’ to see Mirren,’ said Alec.
‘Thinking he was coming to see the daughter of his daughter. And I’ll bet that’s when he recognised her. And that’s when he realised that she was also the daughter of his son. I’ll bet you something else too. I’ll bet you it was Robert who suddenly hustled Dugald off to Kelso. Once he had seen Mirren and realised what it meant. I wonder what he said to her while they were together. Rather, I wonder if what he said to her was what made her kill herself.’
‘You think she did kill herself then?’ Alec said.
‘Oh, she must have, poor little thing,’ I said. ‘And Dugald didn’t know about the planned elopement and he killed himself too. All alone, both of them. Dammit!’ I turned round and looked at the closed door of Mary’s sickroom. ‘I’m sure Dugald killed himself but I wish I had asked Mary while I had the chance if she knew anything about it. Remember I told you how agitated she was about the lift man coming.’ Alec nodded and then put his fingers to his lips and a hand behind his ear. I listened too and could hear water running in the little side-room. Very quietly, I opened the bedroom door again and crept back to Mary’s bedside. I could see the nurse’s back, as she filled a hot water bottle from a kettle and topped it up with cold water from the tap. I turned to Mary.
‘Mrs Aitken,’ I said in a low voice. ‘The day of Mirren’s funeral, did you know or even suspect that Dugald was in the store?’ She shook her head and looked so surprised at the question that I had no hesitation in believing her. ‘You didn’t guess what was wrong when the lift went wonky that way?’ Another shake of the head. I patted her hand and smiled, then glanced at the nurse again. Evidently she had made the bottle too hot or too cold and was emptying it out again to refill it. She had wrapped a cloth around its neck to catch the drips. What a fusspot, I thought, but however fussily she carried out the task, it was almost complete and I did not want to get caught by her. I bent and kissed Mary Aitken’s forehead, then stole out again and rejoined Alec on the landing.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘And I believe her.’
‘And so we leave them to what comfort they can bring one another,’ said Alec. I nodded slowly. ‘Bella seems to have come up trumps, doesn’t she?’ I nodded again and we descended the stairs in silence. ‘Come on then,’ he sighed when we got to the bottom and were standing in the hall. ‘Out with it, Dandy.’
‘Out with what?’
‘I know that faraway look. Something’s bothering you.’
‘But what could it be?’ I said. ‘Everything’s tied up. No loose ends at all. Unless it’s the gloves.’
‘Gloves?’ said Alec, rather blankly, racking his brain.
‘The one pair of gloves with the price ticket, slightly stained, in the shoebox.’
‘The price ticket slightly stained or the gloves?’ said Alec.
‘One glove,’ I said. ‘I only mentioned the price ticket because it made them unusual amongst all the stuff in the attic. Almost all. But stained price tickets… What am I remembering?’
‘Nothing much apparently,’ Alec said.
‘I wonder if they’re still there,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and see.’
‘What for?’ said Alec, like a whining child who does not want to go shopping.
‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ I said. ‘I know! It annoys me too, but I can’t help it. This case isn’t over yet, Alec. I feel it in my bones.’
13
Ferguson the doorman gave me his everyday cheerful smile but it died on his lips a bit when he fully recognised who I was and remembered all the matters he would rather forget that seeing me brought back to his mind.
‘I feel like the bad fairy at the christening in here now,’ I said. ‘I’ve just ruined that poor man’s day.’
‘How?’ said Alec. ‘You passed him without a word.’
‘The very sight of me brings back painful memories,’ I said. ‘I quizzed him about what he might have heard during Mirren’s funeral when Dugald fell down the lift shaft and somehow made him feel that he should have stepped in and saved the boy.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Alec said. ‘He’d never have heard noises from the lift shaft from out on the street with the doors closed behind him.’
‘He wasn’t outside,’ I said. ‘The store was closed, remember. He was sitting in the foyer, on one of those seats where I sat down after almost swooning.’
Alec stopped walking abruptly.
‘You never told me that,’ he said. He looked back the way we had come and then moved around one of the Haberdashery counters so that both the front door with its row of seats and the lift, cordoned off with a black rope now, were in view.
‘What is it?’
‘He was sitting there?’ Alec said, pointing. ‘And he didn’t hear a lad falling down the lift shaft there? I don’t believe it.’
‘Really?’ I said, but indeed standing here at the halfway point it did not seem like much of a distance at all. ‘He is slightly hard of hearing,’ I offered, looking over at the doorman who was ushering a customer out of the store with her parcels and tipping his hat at her.
‘You mean actually deaf or just “not so young as once he was”?’ asked Alec.
‘Well, certainly he didn’t have any difficulty hearing me when we spoke,’ I said. ‘Out on the street, with carts and trams going by. But there surely wouldn’t be much to hear so long as Dugald didn’t yell or make any loud noises of that sort-’
‘Didn’t yell?’ said Alec. ‘Are you mad, Dandy? He’d scream his lungs out of his chest. He’d howl like a banshee.’
‘Are you sure?’
Alec gave me that very hard look that says I should not inquire any further. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Even if he had chosen to jump?’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t that be different from being shoved or falling?’ Alec was shaking his head as vehemently as he possibly could and his lips were pressed firmly together.
‘Makes not a blind bit of difference,’ he said. ‘It’s a reflex. It’s an animal instinct. Horses are just the same.’
‘So Dugald would definitely have been heard,’ I said. I looked back at the doorman again. ‘What does that mean? Is Ferguson lying?’
‘Either that or the time’s wrong, and the old boy wasn’t in the store when it happened after all.’
‘The doctor seemed pretty sure about the timing.’
‘It always bothered me, actually,’ Alec said. ‘It seemed off, somehow, that Dugald should jump during Mirren’s funeral. I’d have thought he’d either do it straight away, as soon as he knew she was dead, or he’d wait until afterwards, visit her grave, do it there, even. Why would he so conveniently jump during the ceremony and why here?’