‘That doctor one wants a skelp then,’ said Mrs McCann. ‘I thocht you said it all happened when folk were in the Abbey. How did she get away to do all that without anybody seeing?’
‘I can take up the tale for this bit, Mrs McCann,’ I said, and I recounted the details of the hot water bottles, the quilts, the tea, the gloves and the call to Laming.
‘Porridge oats, she had worked into the lift doings,’ McCann finished up.
‘In the pulley or in the engine?’ said his father. ‘I hope in the pulley just, or that’s a waste of a guid machine.’ I met his wife’s eye and we shared the same thought: with a boy dead the lift hardly mattered.
‘See that’s where you’ve got the spurt on me,’ said young McCann. ‘I couldnae go in and out of Aitkens’ Emporium and slip roond the back like that.’ I smiled and forbore to point out that he could, however, march into Abbey Park, arrest Bella Aitken and take her to jail.
‘But you did better than us with the motive,’ I said. ‘We know she did it but we haven’t been able to guess why.’
‘I couldnae credit you asking her why,’ said McCann, shaking his head. ‘Why wis the easy bit.’ Alec and I shared a glance.
‘Well?’ Alec said.
‘For sure?’ said McCann. ‘You cannae guess, really?’ I shot a look towards the door to check that the little girls were out of earshot. Their tender innocence should not hear any of what was coming. ‘She and Dougie Hepburn’s granny had a wee secret wedding all cooked up atween them, and when Mirren ran away and shot hersel’, Bella knew Dougie had backed oot. Jiltit the lass. So she killt him.’
For what seemed like an age, Alec and I sat in absolute silence, simply staring. All those secrets, all those shameful hidden minglings and reminglings of blood, and the murderer knew none of it, knew nothing. Eventually, I cleared my throat and managed to speak.
‘So what put you on to her?’
‘My, eh, my girl works at Aitkens’,’ he said, blushing a little to admit it. ‘She kent there was something fishy aboot Auld Bella that day, steaming in and ordering folk aboot. And then she went back another day and gave them all a wee tip and a wee speech and Lynne said it jist stuck in her craw and she couldnae swallow it.’
‘Lynne?’ I said. ‘She’s your girl? Oh, I am pleased. Lynne’s lovely. She was one of the nymphs, Alec.’ Mr McCann’s eyebrows joined together in the middle about an eighth of an inch above his eyes.
‘One o’ the whit?’ he said. His son gave me a disbelieving look.
‘Sprites!’ I said, hastily and rather too loud. ‘She said you’re almost ready to set a date, if you’re lucky with a house anyway.’
‘Nae problem noo,’ said Mr McCann. ‘Sweet-pea said I would make sergeant for sure after this.’
‘Sweet-pea!’ Alec and I said in chorus and I clapped my hands, delighted.
‘You’ll have to learn a wee tate more respect to make sergeant, young Brucie,’ said his father, but at least he was smiling again.
‘Not at all, sir,’ Alec said. ‘This is a fine boy you have here. He shouldn’t change a thing.’
14
It was some months later – almost a year – when I stopped off at Dunfermline on my way to pay a visit, long arranged and impossible to postpone any more. Alec refused point-blank to go with me but I could not rest until the trip was made. They had all been in my mind again, the Aitkens and the Hepburns, the House and the Emporium, the two dead children and the adults left behind them, all hiding something and all mourning.
Bella had been tried and convicted but thankfully the sentence passed down to her was a clement one. The jury had not pressed for hanging and the judge had no desire to send a woman in her seventies to the gallows for a crime – as he called it – of grief and of love. I had held my breath opening the newspapers every morning, expecting any day to see that some of the family secrets had started to seep out from around the edges of the ordered testimony; one drop of the poison would have led to a trickle and a torrent and a great thundering deluge – like Niagara – as everyone told the other’s sins, and all were swept away.
As it happened, though, Bella knew none of it and no one else uttered a word. Of course, what that did mean was that when the shuffling began it hit Dunfermline like a tidal wave and the scandal was still rippling now. First up, Hilda Haddo had left her husband’s protection and had gone to live with Jack Aitken at Abbey Park, whereupon Robin had promptly divorced her for desertion. He had not, however, to the bewilderment of the horrified onlookers, tried to prevent her continuing to have close motherly relations with the three surviving children, the girls. If anything, he was happy to see them living with Jack and Hilda, and Fiona Haddo of course, who had joined them in that great empty house and started making her mark there.
‘His mother killed her son,’ a fellow passenger on the train explained to me as we rattled down through Fife. It had only taken my saying I was going to Dunfermline to do a little shopping and there was no stopping her. ‘Do you understand? His mother murdered her son and should have hanged for it if there were any backbone left in this country at all, and yet now she has gone to live in his house – she dropped her voice – ‘as man and wife, one can only presume’ – and returned to normal volume – ‘and they say that his sisters spent their Easter holiday there.’ She sat back, absolutely thrilled; nothing would have given her more pleasure if she could have ordered off a menu.
I could not see the attraction of Jack Aitken, speaking personally, but I would have felt sorry for him, rattling around that house all alone. Mary and Abigail, of course, were long gone even before the trial. Dulcie was gone too (I felt a flip of anxiety about the afternoon, like a seal turning over in deep water) but it was not until news washed back to Dunfermline’s shore about where they were all gone that the second explosion of gossip occurred. Thankfully, my carriage companion did not seem to know about this part of the story, or did want to dwell upon it anyway.
As to the third revelation: I was reminded again of my father and Gloria and how he did not care what the world had to say, or rather what the world whispered behind its hand as he passed with Gloria’s arm tucked under his in the village or up in town. Mrs Lumsden, little Mrs Lumsden, Mary’s loyal friend, had spotted an opening, taken a running jump and landed with both her dainty feet firmly planted in the Hepburn home. The flat above the Linen Bank, that is to say; Robin remained at Roseville quite alone. So, I thought, little Mrs Lumsden all those years ago was pining for Bob, while Bob pined for Mary and Mary set her sights at Ninian Lennox Aitken and his lavish plans. Now, fifty years later, at least one of them was happy.
I disembarked and strolled the familiar way through the town to the tolbooth. The House of Hepburn was open for business and customers entered it and left again. It was only April and far too early for a beach scene with real sand; in its place were stiff fans of handkerchiefs hanging from wires and pyramids of painted tea trays with, here and there, a small card announcing easy terms, ten weeks, nothing to pay until August. I looked in at the door. It was dove grey and lilac still (as how could it not be?) and the assistants drifted about in their matching frocks but there was a stand of leather belts in the middle of the floor. Black belts and brown ones, navy and racing green, like a solitary toad on a pool of water lilies, and I knew that someone without Fiona Haddo’s eye was at the helm here now. Mrs Lumsden perhaps, after years of Household, and one could only imagine what she would wreak if it were true.