‘Bella can say what she likes,’ she said. ‘I think it matters what folk think and it matters what folk say. And these sheets should have a pillowcase folded into a fan on top and a ribbon rosette too. Not just lying there in a heap like your linen press at home.’ She looked around herself, her neck elongating and her spine straightening as she did so. ‘In fact, this shouldn’t be sheets at all. This should be eiderdowns, here on the aisle where they’ll be seen by anyone going by. Sheets should be at the back. It’s the only decent way and it’s the Aitkens way. I’ll need to get this seen to.’ With that she stalked off leaving me to trot after her.
Aitkens’ tearoom when we finally arrived was found to be a large square room off the back of the food hall, with an endless brown horsehair banquette undulating around its walls and tables to seat six pushed up against it at intervals. The walls were adorned with prints of lochs and mountains and around the top ran a painted frieze of clan shields. In the middle of the floor was a high and forbidding counter where large platters of fruitcake and sandwiches were laid out and where an elaborate and well-polished electric samovar spat and grumbled, drawing uncertain looks from the members of staff closest to it and even causing those standing in groups further away to stop talking and look round as it let out a particularly vehement hiss and rocked on its little chromium-plated legs.
‘Oh Mrs Ninian!’ said Mrs Lumsden, who had been peering at the samovar from a safe distance. ‘Somebody’s let this blessed urn empty to the very bottom and it’s not happy.’
‘I keep telling you, Mrs Lumsden,’ said a hefty female who, although she was in a cloth coat and black straw hat with a brooch pinned to her lapel and a handbag looped over one elbow, nevertheless screamed ‘cook’ louder than any striped frock and white apron ever could, ‘my girls would no more drain the water off the element than yours would…’
‘Put flannel sheets on an aisle stand?’ said Mary Aitken. Mrs Lumsden raised a hand to her mouth. ‘Just this side of the mercerised madras,’ she went on. ‘You’ll need to get it changed before tomorrow.’
‘Yes, Mrs Ninian,’ chorused a good few of the girls and women who were listening. The Household Department, one presumed.
‘And just go ahead and pour the tea,’ Mary said. ‘If it’s kippered it’ll teach you for next time.’
‘Yes, Mrs Ninian,’ chorused another section of the choir, but when their voices faded I could hear a few grumbles too.
‘Dinnae see how we should hae burnt tea. It wisnae us that drained the damn thing.’ This was from a young man dressed in spiffing style, although perfectly properly in mourning. I took him to be from Gents’ Tailoring and thought that he was an excellent advertisement for the store.
‘Jist tell yersel’ it’s Lapsang Souchong,’ said another young man.
‘Aye, or ask yersel’ whit’s the use of a tea kettle that can burn the tea. My Annie’s the worst cook that ever spiled a pun o’ mince and even she cannae burn tea.’ They all laughed at that and Mrs Ninian sent over one of her piercing glares.
‘Shotty, shotty!’ said the first young man. ‘She can hear ye.’
Trying to be very casual, I edged away from them and towards the nearest of the young women who had piped up in response to the news of the eiderdowns. She watched me approach with a shy look and she bobbed a curtsey when I got to her.
‘And where do you work, my dear?’ I said.
‘Here at Aitkens’,’ she answered. I looked sharply at her, suspecting cheek, but she returned a limpid blue gaze.
‘In the tearoom?’
‘Oh no, madam,’ she said. ‘I’m a sales assistant, not a waitress.’ She sounded very proud of the fact and another girl standing nearby – a waitress, I guessed – snorted and threw a look of disdain such as only pretty girls with slim ankles and waved hair can throw at shy girls in home-knitted jerseys and with hair scraped back into a ribbon.
‘In which department?’
‘Household, madam,’ she said. ‘Were you wanting something? Because we’re really closed but I could lay it aside for you until tomorrow.’
‘Here on the second floor?’ I asked her. I smiled. ‘I hope it wasn’t you mixing up sheets and eiderdowns.’
‘I never touched them!’ she said. ‘I work in the basement, in the bazaar.’
A pair of older girls, coming to stand close to us with cups of tea and plates of cake, giggled. One of them gave me a very pert look and joined in our conversation without invitation or apology.
‘You’d be surprised the way things flit about in a place like this, madam,’ she said. ‘Mrs Ninian was worried about it on the jubilee day – worried that with all the crowds, we’d have trinkets away under coats and up jumpers – she had us all stationed round the scarves and notions, all the wee things that would be easy swiped.’
‘But it’s never the stuff you’d think, madam,’ said her friend. ‘You’d laugh if we told you what goes missing, wouldn’t she, June?’
June nodded. ‘Like that time we left the cash tube with a ball in its mouth carrying thon cretonne curtainings to the lift for Mrs Taylor – they weighed a wet ton and she’s always the same – takes everything home in her wee car with her chauffeur no matter how much work it makes instead of getting a delivery like e’bdy else does.’
‘And guess what went, madam?’ said the other, dabbing up cake crumbs with her finger and licking them off. ‘You never will.’
‘I’d never leave my cash ball lying,’ said the girl from the bazaar.
‘You’ve no’ got a key to the chute, you wee besom,’ said June. ‘You’re only jist up to scuttles from buckets.’ Her friend laughed and the shy girl scowled at them.
‘But when I do get it, she said, ‘I would never.’
‘The bell,’ I said, taking a wild guess. They all frowned at me. ‘Scissors? Tape measure?’ I had named three items I always coveted from the cutting counters of shops when I was buying cretonnes of my own.
‘Stamps,’ said June. ‘A tube full of money, hanging wide open, and some funny wee buddy stole the stamps.’
I tried to look suitably diverted by this news but all I had really taken in was that these girls worked on the second floor, and I wanted to keep talking to them.
‘One wonders that anyone had the nerve,’ I said. ‘Don’t you girls have eyes in the back of your head for what’s going on around you?’ All three of them looked pleased with this compliment and ready to accept it as their due. ‘I mean to say,’ I went on, ‘the idea that anyone could come skulking round and not be noticed – it’s preposterous!’ They were less certain now and who can blame them, poor things. I was no good at Giant Steps and Baby Steps when I was a child, always swaying and staggering when Grandma wheeled round and always out first. It was no different now. Try as I might to learn that stealthy detective’s way of making conversations flow imperceptibly in my chosen direction, to lift my pet subject off the sand and carry it away, to insinuate all my little questions into the stream without a ripple, I did still tend to heave great lumps of suspicion into the middle of things like boulders into a pond, muddying the waters, killing little fish, and making everyone around back away, shaking themselves and planning, in future, to avoid me.
These three girls could not go that far; the boldest of them – June – spoke up gamely.
‘Likes of who, madam?’ she said.
‘Well,’ I said, nudging closer to them and dropping my voice, ‘I heard that Mr Hepburn tried to gatecrash the jubilee. I heard he was up here on the household floor, hiding.’
‘Mr Hepburn or young Mr Hepburn?’ said the shy girl from the basement.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘He was here when she-?’ She bit her lip and her eyes filled.