‘I suppose you’d recognise Mrs Lumsden all right in her hat and coat, would you?’ Alec said.
‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘I expect the seniors have to stay behind to lock things and- Look, here she comes now.’ Little Mrs Lumsden, in black straw hat, shiny black summer coat and very small and high-heeled black patent shoes, came bundling out – there is no other word for it – of the alley mouth like one of those very busy, bulbous little beetles. Alec had primed me with my lines while we hurried back to wait in the doorway and I stepped forward with an air of confidence I hoped was to be fulfilled.
‘Mrs Gilver?’ she said. ‘Were you waiting for me?’
‘I was, my dear Mrs Lumsden,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad I caught you. I wanted to drop a word in your ear, very softly, if I may.’ Mrs Lumsden, a born gossip, was almost quivering. ‘It’s about Mirren.’
‘I’m afraid there’s been idle talk,’ Alec said. ‘Of the most unpleasant kind.’
‘And we rather think,’ I put in, ‘that it must have come from Aitkens’ by some route or another.’
‘I was just in the pub down the way there,’ Alec said, ‘and a chap at the bar was saying that Miss Mirren wasn’t alone where she died. That she hadn’t been alone, if you take my meaning.’
‘She wasn’t,’ said Mrs Lumsden, who had not taken Alec’s meaning, clearly. ‘You know that, madam. Miss Abigail was close by. Mrs Jack, that is. If that’s the talk it more likely came from the police, not from anyone here.’
‘No, Mrs Lumsden,’ said Alec. ‘It was a man this chap was talking about. That a man had been up there before Miss Aitken took her life in that terrible way.’
‘Well, that’s a story!’ said Mrs Lumsden. ‘That’s just nasty lies. And why you’d think it came from Aitkens’ I don’t know. And why you think it came from me! I would never spread such filth about the family and I know all the secre- I would never say such things about Miss Mirr- About anyone. Even if they were true and they’re not true. Miss Mirren was as innocent as a newborn baby. It’s not her fau-’ With considerable effort, Mrs Lumsden managed to stop talking and just stood with her lips pressed shut glaring at us, her bosom heaving. I took a deep breath and pressed on.
‘It was what you said about one of your girls from Kitchenwares saying she saw young Mr Hepburn upstairs on jubilee day.’
‘What?’ said Mrs Lumsden and the torrent of talk began again. ‘No, no, no. It wasn’t Housewares at all. It was Bessie Millar from Linens. And she’s been here as long as I have and would never run about telling tales.’ I cheered to myself. It had been Alec’s brainwave to mention the wrong department and make a definite accusation about Dugald in hopes that a rush of accurate information would pour out as Mrs Lumsden set the record straight again. ‘And it wasn’t young Mr Hepburn. It was his father. And anyway, she didn’t mean upstairs in the attics. She meant upstairs in the Linens Department, on the second floor. That was all. And besides, she must have been mistaken. Mrs Ninian said. It must have just been someone who looked a bit like him, for there had been no truce. Mrs Ninian told me so. So that can’t be where the talk’s coming from. It’s tired old gossip that’s forgotten. It’s two things mixed up together and making five, madam. I don’t want you thinking one of my girls is behind it. Why, it wasn’t even jubilee day.’
‘What?’ I said, glancing at Alec and seeing him glancing at me.
‘It wasn’t the jubilee day Bessie Millar saw him,’ she said. ‘It was the day before, maybe even the day before that, the Monday. She just remarked to me that she had seen Mr Hepburn having a good look round the pillowcases. And it’s not as if Bessie was up on a soapbox in the park. She just happened to say to me, in passing.’ The tears were brimming now. ‘And of course I knew it was unlikely. I knew about all the trouble, of course I did. That’s what I said to Mrs Ninian, madam, and you were there.’
‘I remember, Mrs Lumsden,’ I said. ‘You asked if there had been an entente cordiale. I remember it as clear as anything.’
‘Now, you’ll have to let me go,’ Mrs Lumsden said. ‘I’m that upset I hardly know what I’m saying. I don’t understand this, madam. I don’t see how anyone could have worked up old stories and got that out of them. I wouldn’t have Mrs Ninian hurt and humiliated for the world. She’s paid her debts twice over. She’s made everything up to me that she ever- She’s been very good to me. I wouldn’t see her hurt for the world. I’ve got to go.’
‘So,’ I said, as we sat side by side in my motorcar, moments later. ‘What do you make of all that then?’
‘I feel as though I struck a single match and burned the house down. What was she talking about?’
‘We definitely hit some kind of nerve. A story about a man up in the attics where he shouldn’t be… an old story, old secrets. Do you think there was gossip about Jack and Hilda when they used to meet there?’
‘That would be a woman where she shouldn’t be,’ Alec said. ‘And Mrs Lumsden was talking about Mary, wasn’t she? Not Jack at all.’
‘Very odd,’ I said. ‘But did the struck match cast light on anything?’
‘If “nothing at all” counts as anything,’ Alec said. ‘It was a case of mistaken identity and two days too early to be significant. Dugald’s father wasn’t seen in Aitkens’ on the fateful day. There’s no reason to think he wore the gloves to kill Mirren. Or that he killed Mirren, in fact.’
‘And we agree that Abigail Aitken wouldn’t have left the gloves in the shoebox to be found. If she’d killed Mirren, she would have gone back and removed them.’
‘Same with Mary,’ said Alec. ‘She’d have taken them away along with everything else.’
‘So the gloves are an irrelevance,’ I said. ‘My one discovery of the day.’
‘Hardly,’ said Alec. ‘You found out about Jack and Hilda.’
‘But it didn’t lead anywhere. Hilda is adamant that no one knew about Dugald except Jack and her. Mirren didn’t know. None of the Aitken women knew. Robin didn’t know.’
‘And you discovered Mirren’s letter to her grandmother.’
‘Again. Nowhere.’ Suddenly, I seemed to have worked very hard for nothing.
‘I don’t like it that we suspect Mary of so much and yet can’t suspect her of murder,’ said Alec.
‘Too bad,’ I said. ‘She was standing right next to me – not to mention the Provost – when the shot was fired.’
‘She could have arranged it,’ Alec said. ‘She strikes me as an arranger. After all, she arranged for someone to clear the attic room. She didn’t personally tie her hair up in a duster and set to.’
‘Didn’t she?’ I said. ‘Miss Torrance on the glove counter told me that Mary quite readily polishes counters and wraps up orders. “No swank to her” was what she said.’
‘Only I was thinking,’ Alec said, ‘that it would be fine for her to tell one of her minions to tidy up, because the fact of Mirren’s having been up there was out in the open after she died. But if Mary was implicated somehow in the murder, she could hardly tell said minion to go hunting for a single pair of gloves and burn them.’
‘But she could have done it herself without any problem,’ I said. ‘She could have slipped into the shoebox room and got the gloves under cover of going to inspect the minion’s work. I can’t see the difficulty.’