Free Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder by Catriona McPherson

do about the beds of tulips and pansies but otherwise, when I emerged from the station on the day of Mirren Aitken’s funeral, it was into a very different Dunfermline. Black ribbon wreaths were pinned to the doors of the Carnegie Library and, as far as I could tell all the civic buildings with which this tiny city is so lavishly endowed. All the shops in the High Street had their shades half-lowered and were displaying in their windows only the soberest and most blameless of wares: dark clothes, tartan carriage rugs and luggage; for some reason every shop which could muster it had filled its windows with luggage. The protocols and etiquettes of the merchant trade, I thought (not for the first time), were a mystery to me.
    Needless to say, Aitkens’ long row of plate glass was covered completely over with what looked like best black velvet. It must have cost them a pretty penny and I wondered idly if the bolts would be rewound and go back on the shelves to be sold afterwards or if the sunshine would have streaked it to uselessness. It was slightly out of my way but I could not resist walking down as far as Hepburns’ to see how their window trimmers had responded to the tragedy. With a dignified restraint which was somehow more excruciating than respectful, was the answer: the sporting young couple and the backdrops of their leisured life had been removed and in their place was set a single dark hat on a milliner’s stand just off centre in each window.
    The investigation had been completed within days, the inquiry satisfied in a few days more and, although the procurator fiscal had mouthed familiar words about the balance of her mind, he had also taken his chance of a swipe at her family for their part in the sad affair and thus had appeared to align himself with the newspapers and the gossips in the streets, where revulsion at the families’ behaviour was the dominant note in the chord.
    It was reported with the most bitter relish of all in the News of the World from which Grant had read it out to me. To be fair, though, the Scotsman had also let out quite a bit of line in its editorial, judging the rivalry of the Aitkens and Hepburns an indulgence for which the life of a pretty young girl was far too high a price to pay. The Times meanwhile had reported the matter with a disdainful loftiness which must have hurt more than the gossip in its way, and I hoped the families had not seen it and did not have the sorts of friends who would summarise the articles at future meetings, or indeed clip them and read them out, or even – as one of my great aunts used to do in the name of helpfulness, but really out of devilry – clip them and actually post them to the parties in question with biblical verses printed out on little cards.
    All that was left now was the funeral and it was set for two o’clock in the afternoon. Yet here I was at just gone eleven in the morning, retracing my steps of a week before. I had an address written on a card in my hand (although it was my butler’s own clear writing, since the message had come by telephone) and had been engaged by a lady I did not know to discuss the matter of Miss Aitken in a professional capacity.
    I found the end of Pilmuir Street after a little effort and toiled up it, realising too late – once I had deserted the busy part of town where there might be taxis – that number one hundred and twenty could be a stiff hike away. Sure enough I was puffing like a tugboat by the time I arrived.
    So perhaps it was shortness of breath that was making me dizzy and perhaps that contributed to the nasty prickling I could feel, but at least some of it was owing to the nightmarish sense that I was reliving a dark reflection of that cheerful day a week before. Once again the house for which I was bound surprised me; Roseville was Georgian grey just like Abbey Park, but was very wide and low, and set back from the pavement behind white railings with two patches of tumbling cottage garden