‘It would help if we knew what he looked like,’ Alec whispered, clearly having similar thoughts to mine.
‘He’ll look like a twenty-year-old boy rushing up to hug the coffin,’ I replied out of one corner of my mouth. The elderly couple who had squashed up to make room for us both swivelled their eyes and glared. They could not possibly hear what we were saying, but we were whispering in church and that was enough to earn black looks from them. I lowered my voice even further before I spoke again.
‘Straight to the police after this?’ The female half of the elderly couple gave a ringing tut which drew attention from all around, from members of the congregation who had not been troubled by Alec’s and my soft whispering. He mouthed to me that we would talk later.
The organist was already in his seat and at that moment he pumped his feet up and down on the pedals and laid his hands against the keys, sending a miasma of doleful chords rolling over the bowed heads of the waiting mourners. I could hear muffled knocks and thumps from behind as the coffin was manhandled, and I shivered.
Perhaps it was just the cold, the chill of damp air pressing down and the chill of old stone creeping up, so cold that even though every side-table and pillar at the altar and every niche and alcove up the sides was filled with flowers none of their scent could reach us. That was possibly a blessing, for the arrangements – three feet across and cascading to the floor – were made up of enormous rhododendron heads in the palest pink and masses of white narcissus as well as the usual lilies; in a warm room they would have been suffocating.
Here came the coffin, white and glittering, with another heap of flowers resting on it. These narcissi were trembling, showing us that the pall-bearers, although they looked steady and strong, were not unaffected by the burden on their shoulders. Jack Aitken was one of them, Mr Muir the manager of the gentlemen’s side another; I did not recognise the other four and saw no family resemblance although I was sure they were not professionals, being too individually dressed in their best dark suits and black shoes, not decked out with the uniformity of undertakers’ men.
Behind the coffin the Aitken women made their way up the aisle as though it were a cliff-face and there were a howling gale blowing hard against them. Bella, towering over Mary and Abigail, spread her arms protectively behind them and ploughed unsteadily on, while the two smaller women tottered one faltering step and then with effort another and swaying a little yet another and the congregation held its breath, men in the aisle seats shifting, ready to help should the pitiful threesome flounder.
When they had made it to the front pew and sunk down out of view, the rest of us sat back and the gust of our collective sigh drowned out the low notes of the organ as it began an even more sepulchral lament than before.
Then the minister and two session clerks emerged from the vestry, bowed to the coffin, bowed to the family, and the minister mounted the altar to begin. I swept the edges of the pews with a gaze, checking the sides of every pillar to see if there were any trace of someone hiding there. I could see Alec doing the same. The minister was speaking, intoning, more mournful than the organ even, and he finished with the words: let us pray. I crossed my fingers and bent my head.
‘We should have stayed standing up at the back,’ Alec whispered.
‘Well, we can’t go skipping off now,’ I whispered back.
‘Ssh!’ hissed our neighbour, managing to imbue the sound with all the indignation we deserved. I bent my head even further and tried to block out the words of the prayer, listening hard for movements where they should not be.
As it turned out, our vigilance was unneeded. The service wore on, ended, and the coffin and woebegone trio of Aitken ladies left again without any interruptions beyond the odd moment when one of the congregation, trying to weep silently, momentarily failed and had to apply a handkerchief to smother a sob or one of those great wuthering sighs. Alec and I had slipped out in advance of the family party of course, to keep an eye on potential trouble in the kirkyard, but the coffin was deposited back into the hearse, surrounded by wreaths, and the family deposited back into the motorcars, without incident. As the congregation filed out a procession formed behind the second motorcar and then at a snail’s pace and with the engines growling, the chauffeurs as tense as before, they drew away from the Abbey doors and began the dreadful journey through the streets to the cemetery. (The Abbey kirkyard had long been full, I concluded, looking around at the mossy old gravestones with their epitaphs worn away, and even if there were a plot remaining here and there into which a town worthy or church official might be squeezed, a suicide was never going to have rules bent and space found for her.)
Alec stood watching the procession snaking away. ‘Police now or graveside first?’ he said. He shivered slightly as he spoke, although one could not tell whether to blame the prospect facing him on the sudden chill in the air – the sun had retreated behind a bank of dark, determined-looking clouds as though it meant to stay there.
‘Police for me and graveside for you,’ I said. ‘I’d stick out like a sore thumb anyway.’ The old Scotch tradition of women staying away from the burial held strong in Dunfermline, it seemed. The procession was made up of men alone, and their wives idled at the Abbey door and among the graves, wiping their eyes and shaking their heads and beginning to talk of Mirren and the shame of it all and then slowly but inevitably of other things.
I kissed Alec’s cheek and was watching him edge up the side of the procession with a perfect mixture of purpose and decorum so that he could be close to the hearse, when someone sidled up to me and passed me a folded note.
‘From Mrs Ninian, dear,’ she said. I recognised Aitkens’ institution, Mrs…
‘Mrs Lumsden,’ she said, seeing me searching for her name. ‘Mrs Ninian asked me to make sure you got this if you were here.’
I opened the note and began to read it.
Dear Mrs Gilver, it said.
‘This isn’t Mrs Ninian’s writing,’ I said to myself, frowning.
‘No,’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘She was very upset. She dictated to me.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, how kind you are. You must be such a help.’ Mrs Lumsden looked a little uncomfortable, which was puzzling. I gave her an uncertain smile and returned to the note again.
I must beg your patience with regards to a meeting to settle your account. I will be detained at the funeral tea for Mirren today.
I stared, disbelieving, then, aware of Mrs Lumsden waiting for me to answer, I roused myself.
‘There’s a reception?’ I said faintly. Her homely face puckered as she tried to combine her natural loyalty with her equally natural good common sense.
‘At the Emporium. Just for the staff,’ she said, at last. ‘There are a hundred of us and we all loved the lass. Loved her dearly. We want to give her a send-off no matter what the rights and wrongs of what she did to herself, the poor love.’
‘You knew her well, then?’ I said. Mrs Lumsden’s face was formed for cheerfulness and it took some effort for her mouth to turn down and stay there, but she managed it.
‘From as soon as she could walk, she toddled about the store,’ she said. ‘Up and down on that lift like it was a see-saw. The hours she spent sitting on the counters and she never once fell off. Well, it’s every wee girl’s dream, isn’t it? Playing at shops in a real shop. Yes, we all loved her.’
‘And did it seem… that is, were you surprised at what she did?’
‘Surprised is hardly the word,’ said Mrs Lumsden. She looked startled at my understatement and I tried to explain.