‘Anyway,’ I said to Bunty, who recognised my tone of voice and slithered onto the floor, stretched and shook herself all over, ‘what possesses a person to sleep on a platform? And how does one tuck in the sheets on an oval bed?’
At my desk, after breakfast, safely back on the solid ground of real life – for Hugh had skipped off early to some distant part of the new estate which was his current pleasure ground, thus avoiding any unseemly affectionate gratitude the way that a small boy will avoid a grandmother’s kiss or a mother’s scrub with a wetted hanky, and Mrs Tilling had sent up only porridge because ‘I wouldn’t want another egg so soon after my late supper, surely’ – I noticed two telegrams amongst my morning’s budget and fell on them.
I read one – Appreciate no mention of visit yesterday. No case now. Fiona Haddo – and then the other – Send bill at convenience. No further need for services. Mrs N.L. Aitken, laid them side by side and stared hard at both for so long that Bunty had time to fall into the deep, snoring sleep for which she needs perfect silence. When finally I stirred myself to reach for the telephone, it rang just as my hand touched it, and I smiled.
‘You woke Bunty,’ I said.
‘I left it until now so as not to wake you,’ said Alec. ‘How are you this morning, darling?’
‘Itching,’ I said. ‘Listen to these telegrams and see if you don’t start itching too.’
He was silent for a moment after I read them.
‘Who’s N.L. Aitken?’ he asked at last.
‘Mary. Mrs Ninian. Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘Sorry. I can’t see whatever you’re seeing, I’m afraid. Lay it out for me.’
Now this gave me a moment’s pause, for it is more usually the case that Alec’s thoughts and mine march in step, or at least stagger along in a three-legged race together. If he had not leapt to the same conclusion as had I, perhaps I had been wrong to.
‘Very well,’ I began. ‘All right. Yesterday Fiona Haddo thought that Mirren had been murdered. Now that murder has cost her beloved Googie his life, wouldn’t she be more keen than ever to get to the bottom of things?’
‘No,’ said Alec. ‘She was spurred into action by worry about Googie – do we really have to call him that? – when he disappeared, in case harm came to him. Well, now harm has come and there’s nothing to fight for.’
‘What about justice?’ I said. ‘And why would she say there was no case? That’s very different from saying she wanted the case dropped, isn’t it?’
‘It was a telegram, Dandy. She was trying to save words.’
‘And as for the other one,’ I went on, ‘could anything read more like a satisfied customer whose object has been achieved?’
‘Eh?’
‘No further need for your services, please send your bill? Sounds like job well done, thank you and goodnight, to me.’
‘What are you talking about, Dandy?’ Alec said. ‘You can’t subject telegrams to literary criticism and hang people for them. I can easily imagine that both families want only to close the shutters and never speak to another soul about any of it ever again.’
‘It’s not a telegram alone I’m hanging them from,’ I told him. ‘And anyway, it’s not both families; it’s two grandmothers. There are another two grandmothers in the case, not to mention all the parents.’
‘So what are the other strands in the rope then?’ Alec said.
‘Inspector Smellie is one.’ Alec snorted. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Why could he not change the pronunciation to Smiley and then change the spelling and save people a lifetime of trying not to giggle? It’s almost rude not to. But Inspector S. knows something. Something that made him haul me off to the clink. It took me a while to stop panicking and realise it was so, but I’m convinced now.’
‘Clink!’ said Alec.
‘Yes, but think about it, Alec dear. What in heaven’s name about the incidents of the last week would make the fragrant inspector decide that I had been engaged by the families to kill their little ones?’
‘What?’ said Alec, so loud that even Bunty raised her head and looked at me. ‘Shush, down, good girl,’ he went on, revealing that at the other end he had woken Millie too. ‘Hang on a minute, Dan, while I let her out.’ I waited, watching glumly as Bunty settled again. Alec’s spaniel is so well trained as to be rather sickening and I knew that there was only one way to explain her being let out to romp off her high spirits while Bunty simply yawned and turned her head away. The fact was that my darling was almost twelve years old. I could not help a quick glance towards the bookshelf where Merriman’s Care and Training of the Dalmatian sat as it had done since the day in 1915 when I had put it there after a quick read-through and an even quicker realisation that Colonel Merriman’s regime was not for me. I knew that the last chapter concerned itself with the long list of diseases to be expected in old age, the stark facts of average life length, and the brutal advice – this was what had finally caused me to slam the book shut and shelve it – that the next puppy should be acquired before the end, to give the old dog an interest and teach the new one its place in the pack and save it from spoiling. In other words, I had thought, to force the old dog to spend its last days having its ears chewed and make one resent the usurping puppy so much that any chance of its relieving one’s grief was dashed even in advance of the grieving. I roused myself as Alec returned to me.
‘Did he actually say that, Dandy? Engaged to kill them?’
‘Not in so many words,’ I admitted. ‘But he insinuated like anything. He said it was suspiciously “convenient” that I had been there.’
‘The man’s a fool,’ Alec said.
‘He would have to be,’ I agreed, ‘but since he’s probably not, he must know something we don’t in order for such a wicked thought even to occur. And I almost got it out of him, you know. He was just about ready to cough it up when the doctor nabbed him. Then he found out I was in the clear and he must have been so embarrassed about pinching me that he went to ground.’
‘How did the doctor put you in the clear then?’ said Alec.
‘Timing,’ I replied. ‘Dugald died about half past two.’
‘Ah, when you were in the Abbey with hundreds of witnesses.’
‘Exactly. And then came Hugh.’ I sighed a sigh that rattled and whistled and buzzed all the way down the many lines and exchanges. ‘I can’t exactly go back and resume the conversation now, can I?’
‘Come on, Dan,’ Alec said. ‘Be fair. I won’t listen to you moaning about what Hugh did yesterday.’
‘I suppose not,’ I said. ‘It was quite something.’
‘I’ll cherish the memory all my days.’
‘And he can’t have guessed in advance that he wouldn’t be had up for it.’
‘Not a bit,’ said Alec. ‘He leapt to defend you without a thought of himself.’ We were quiet for a minute. ‘I felt a bit of an idiot, to be frank. Sitting there for hours, waiting, and then Hugh rolls up and…’
‘Huffs and puffs and blows their house down.’
We were quiet again.
‘So given that,’ said Alec presently, ‘and given the fact that the families want it left alone… why exactly are you itching?’
‘Because something just doesn’t add up,’ I said. ‘The inspector knows it. Listen: most members of both families, Aitkens and Hepburns the same, think that Mirren and Dugald killed themselves for love.’