THE LECTURE AT THE MUSEUM was well attended and Professor Butler was on form. Beckett survived the professor’s reassessment, much to Isabel’s relief, and afterwards, at the reception, she was able to talk to several old friends who had also attended. Both of these things—Beckett’s survival and the meeting with old friends—contributed to a raising of her spirits. The conversation with Minty had been unpleasant, although she was very much aware that it could have been worse. She had not expected Minty to launch into an attack on Johnny Sanderson, but then she had not expected the other woman to know that she and Johnny had met. Perhaps she should not have been surprised by this; it was hard to do anything in Edinburgh without its getting around; look at Minty’s own affair with Ian Cameron. Presumably she would not have imagined that others knew all about that.
Isabel wondered what Minty might take from their meeting.
She would be confident, perhaps, that Isabel was no longer a danger to her; Isabel had very explicitly said that she was no longer taking an interest in the internal affairs of McDowell’s.
And even if she were involved in Mark’s death, which Isabel—on the basis of Minty’s reactions to her comments about this—was 2 2 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h now firmly convinced could not be the case, then she would be bound to conclude that Isabel had uncovered nothing about how it had happened. She doubted, then, if she would hear any more from Minty Auchterlonie, or from the unfortunate Paul Hogg.
She would miss them, in a curious way; they were contacts with a different world.
She stayed at the reception until it started to break up. She spoke briefly to Professor Butler himself. “My dear, I’m so glad that you enjoyed what I had to say. I have no doubt that I shall say more on the subject one day, but I shan’t inflict that on you. No, I shall not.” She appreciated his urbanity, so increasingly rare in modern academic circles, where narrow specialists, devoid of any broad culture, had elbowed out those with any sense of courtesy.
So many academic philosophers were like that, she thought.
They spoke to nobody but themselves, because the civilities of broader discourse eluded them and because their experience of the wider world was so limited. Not all of them, of course. She had a mental list of the exceptions, but it seemed to be shrinking.
It was shortly after ten that she walked up Chambers Street and took her place in the small queue at the bus stop on George IV Bridge. There were taxis about, prowling down the street with their yellow signs lit, but she had decided in favour of a bus. The bus would drop her in Bruntsfield, more or less directly outside Cat’s delicatessen, and she would enjoy the ten-minute walk along Merchiston Crescent and down her own road.
The bus arrived, and as she noticed from the timetable displayed in the bus shelter, it was exactly on time; she would have to mention this to Grace, but perhaps not, as it might provoke a tirade against the transport authorities. It’s all very well running on time at night, when there’s nobody about. What we want are buses that run on time
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Isabel stepped into the bus, bought her ticket, and made her way to a seat at the back. There were few other passengers: a man in an overcoat, his head sunk against his chest; a couple with arms around each other, impervious to their surroundings; and a teenage boy with a black scarf wound round his neck, Zorro-style. Isabel smiled to herself: a microcosm of our condition, she thought.
Loneliness and despair; love and its self-absorption; and sixteen, which was a state all its own.
The boy alighted from the bus at the same time as Isabel, but went off in the opposite direction. She crossed the road and began the walk along Merchiston Crescent, past East Castle Road and West Castle Road. The occasional car went past, and a cyclist with a flashing red light attached to his back, but otherwise she was alone.
She reached the point where her road, a quiet, leafy avenue, ran off to the right. A cat ran past her and leapt onto a garden wall before disappearing; a light shone out from a house on the corner, and a door slammed. She followed the pavement down towards her house, past the large wooden gates of the house on the corner and the carefully tended garden of a neighbour. And then, under the boughs of the tree that grew on the corner of her property, she stopped. Further down the road, about fifty yards or so, two cars were parked. One she recognised as belonging to the son of one set of neighbours; the other, a sleek Jaguar, had been left with its parking lights on. She walked down, peered into the car, which she noticed was locked, and then looked up at the house outside which it was parked. The house was in darkness, which suggested that the owner of the car was not being entertained there. Well, there was not much she could do to alert him. The battery might last out a few hours, but beyond that he would need help in starting.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel walked back up the road towards her house. Outside the gate she paused; she was not sure why. She looked into the shadows under the tree, and saw movement. It was the striped cat from next door, who liked to lurk under her trees. She would like to have warned him of Brother Fox, who might take a cat if he were feeling peckish, but she did not have the words, so she willed a warning instead.
She opened her gate and began to walk down the path to her front door, in shadows, protected from the streetlight by the spruce and by a small stand of birches at the entrance to her driveway. And it was then that she felt the hand of fear upon her; an irrational fear, but a cold one. Had she talked that evening to a woman who might, calmly and calculatingly, have planned the demise of another? And had this woman uttered a warning?
She fished her key out of her pocket and prepared to insert it into the door; but then tested the door first, pushing gently against it. It did not budge, which meant that it was locked. She fitted the key into the lock, turned it, and heard the bolts slide within. Then, opening the door carefully, she stepped into her outer hall and fumbled for the light switch.
Isabel had an alarm, but she had grown careless in setting it, using it only when she went away for the night. If she had set it she would have been more confident; as it was, she could not be sure whether or not anybody had been in the house. But of course nobody would have been in the house; it was ridiculous to imagine it. Just because she had had that frank conversation with Minty Auchterlonie did not mean that Minty was watching her.
She made a conscious effort to put the thought to one side, as one should do with all fears. Living by oneself it was important not to feel afraid, as every noise made by the house at night—
every squeak or groan which a Victorian house made—would be T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
