‘They probably thought it was a poltergeist,’ I said, and Hilda Hepburn laughed, carelessly. ‘So if Mr Hepburn doesn’t know…?’
‘Robin?’ said Hilda.
‘Why was he so against the marriage?’
‘That probably was the thought of the cousins, as well as his sisters, you know.’
‘But surely having daughters of his own has stopped his worries about his sisters now?’
‘Exactly,’ said Hilda stoutly. ‘That’s what I tell myself. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him and as far as he does know I gave him four fine children.’
‘As far as he knows?’ I echoed.
‘They might all be Jack’s,’ she said. ‘Or a mixture. I could never decide about the girls since they take after me.’
‘And did Abigail know? Did she tell Mirren? Is that why she was so sure Mirren wouldn’t elope?’
‘Jack swears she knows nothing,’ Hilda Hepburn said. ‘Actually,’ – her voice shook – ‘I couldn’t bear it if Abby knew about Jack and me. The poor thing. Especially now.’ Again she rallied, with a sniff. ‘Not that I haven’t paid for my sins. My oldest, my darling, my boy.’ Her head had drooped but she lifted it again. ‘But I still have the girls at least. And as I say they’ll be here soon, so if you’ll excuse me.’ She stood and tucked her handkerchief back into her belt again. ‘There. I’ve told you. My mother needn’t send me to bed without supper.’ She gave me a nod and looking, at last and very late, quite shame-faced she left me sitting there.
7
I departed Roseville in a daze. I am no prude, but she had been so blatant about it, so unrepentant, caring only about what was known and not a jot about what was done. I tried and failed to imagine the scene where Fiona had told her daughter about the planned elopement and Hilda had revealed to her mother what an abomination it would have been. Then with a shiver I put it out of my mind and turned instead to the question of what it meant for Mirren’s death and Dugald’s too, what light it cast on the mystery.
It all depended, I told myself, on who knew. Hilda had been sure that her secret was hers alone, hers and Jack’s; but if Mirren knew, then she had a motive for suicide. And then any of her family had a motive for killing Dugald – if blind rage and senseless revenge could be said to be a motive anyway. But Jack Aitken had said Mirren was sweet and fond to him in her last weeks. Would she have been so to a father she had just found out was an adulterer? She would not. I let my motorcar slow down, struck by a sudden thought. If Robin knew, might he not kill the child of the man who had cuckolded him? Might he not kill either child, or both even? I had to find whoever had seen a Mr Hepburn in the Emporium that day.
A tooting horn behind me jolted me to sentient life again and I pressed my foot down as hard as it would go. Today, I told myself, was the perfect day to go searching for her. The Aitken family would no doubt be back at the store sometime or other, but on the day after the funeral I could be sure of a clear run.
I left my motorcar in a little parking yard behind the Kirkgate and walked towards Aitkens’, planning my assault on its various members. As well as the elusive witness from Household, there was Miss Hutton to try to interview; I could not for the moment quite remember what it was she had said to me, or even when, which had led me mentally to turn down the corner of her card in this way, but I knew there was something I wanted to ask her. Then there was the doorman, the only individual, so far as I knew, who was inside Aitkens’ when Dugald Hepburn died.
I was loitering now, pacing up and down outside the plate-glass windows. The bolts of black velvet were gone again, the riotous urns from the jubilee day too, and in each window was a large spray of lilies and narcissus. I kept squinting at the doorman, waiting for a moment when he was free to speak to me, but there was a steady stream of traffic out and in and he was much taken up with receiving condolences from the customers entering and saying a few respectful words of gratitude to those leaving. I had turned for the third time and paced all the way to the end window again, looking in most studiously – as though there were anything to see – when a pair of shopgirls emerging from a side alley saw me, took pity and stopped to explain.
‘The store is open, madam,’ said the younger of them; a pert little individual dressed in a black skirt and white shirt with a cardigan thrown over it and over the strap of a satchel. ‘It’s only that the displays aren’t up because we’re in the deepest mourning.’ Her companion nodded, plucked at the armband on the coat she wore over her black serge dress and then folded her hands as though in prayer. ‘On account of how Miss Aitken has just passed away.’ She could not have spoken with more relish if she had been recounting victory in a sea battle and I wanted nothing more than to quell them with my severest nod, a talent closely related to that of cowing strange butlers which had worked so well on Trusslove a week ago. (Although I comfort myself that I have no effect at all on the servants at home. My goodness, the day I cow Grant will be the day I give up all pretence of youth and if I ever make a dent in Pallister I shall order my ear trumpet and bath chair.)
But the quashing down of my finer feelings is only one of the habits I have had to inculcate in the name of detection and one of these girls at least was clearly a gossip, and might be the very one I was seeking. I could not let either of them slip away.
‘I heard,’ I said. ‘Well, actually I was here, you know, on the day of the jubilee. A dreadful thing.’
‘Poor Mirren,’ said the girl. ‘Mr Jack’s only child.’
‘Twenty years old and all her life ahead of her.’ The companion spoke up at last.
‘Dear me,’ I supplied, to keep things going. It was as though I had shovelled coke into a roaring boiler.
‘Here today and gone tomorrow.’
‘Snuffed out like a little candle in a storm.’
‘Broken-hearted and couldn’t go on.’
‘Alone and unloved-’
‘Well, Mima, not exactly unloved,’ said the younger girl. Her friend caught her bottom lip in her teeth and blushed a little. ‘She was engaged, you see, madam.’ The girl hitched up the bulky satchel; she was wearing it across her body like a conductress’s ticket machine and the strap was causing her some discomfort. ‘To a lovely boy.’
‘Lovely boy,’ Mima echoed.
‘Dugald Randall Hepburn. Doesn’t he sound like a film star? Well, he looks like one too and-’
‘Looked, Elsie,’ her friend reminded her. Elsie shut her eyes as though a spasm of pain were sweeping over her and then went on in a voice even quieter and flushed with even more glee.
‘Star-crossed they were, madam.’
‘Forbidden love.’
‘Struck asunder.’
‘By cruel cold hearts who’d forgotten what it means to love.’
‘If they ever knew.’
‘And look where it’s got th-’
‘Elsie Dunn,’ said a voice, making us all jump. Mary had done it again. There she was, tiny and furious, dressed in the same columnar black bombazine as the first two times I had met her, her widow’s mourning impossible to deepen even after the recent dreadful loss, but today the spectacles on their black ribbon were joined by a measuring tape which she wore around her neck like a stole and a number of long pins in a sunburst pattern which stretched from the middle of her ribs all the way to one shoulder, wherever she had jabbed them during some task or other. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ she spat at poor Elsie. ‘And you should know better too, Jemima. Get in there right now, the pair of you.’ She pointed up the alley with a stabbing finger.