Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 06 (23 page)

The receptionist who had greeted Isabel smiled and spoke quietly into her telephone. Then she invited Isabel to wait. “Mr. Dundas will only be a moment.”

He was not much more than that. “Ms. Dalhousie?”

Isabel looked up from the magazine she was perusing. She had started on an article about a man and his friend who had transformed a run-down Glasgow flat into an elegant venue for entertaining. George
(left)
and Alice
(right)
had met at art college where they had both studied design. “We both liked red,” said George. “It was a bond between us,” explained Alice. “Reds brought us together.” And now the Glasgow flat which had been “the most ghastly beige colour when we saw it first—we were almost sick on the spot”—was largely red. “George knew a guy who made really good bespoke furniture. He had trained with Lord Linley and his work was all over London …”

She put the magazine down with some reluctance. She would never be able to find out more about George and Alice, but she was not worried about them—reds would hold them together, she had no doubt about that.

She stood up and looked at Jock Dundas, who was standing
in the doorway. He looked grave, and she knew immediately that her instinct had been right.

“This way, please,” he said, indicating a short corridor. At the end, behind a half-ajar door, was a small interview room furnished in dark mahogany.

“Please sit down.”

“Thank you.”

He closed the door behind him and returned to take a seat at the table.

Isabel studied him. He was frightened; behind the air of professional competence and suave self-assurance, there was fear.

Jock Dundas spoke first. “Why have you come to see me?”

“Because I believe you telephoned me yesterday.”

He looked down at the table. “I didn’t leave a message. Perhaps I should have.”

She wanted him to look at her, but he would not meet her eyes.

“Are you afraid of something, Mr. Dundas?”

He looked up sharply. “Yes, of course.”

“May I ask what is it that you’re afraid of?”

He dropped his gaze. “You,” he muttered.

Isabel’s surprise prevented her from saying anything for a few moments. Jock Dundas spoke again. “You didn’t expect me to say something like that?”

Isabel recovered her composure. “Of course not.” She paused. “Why on earth would you be frightened of me?” Then she added, “It’s ridiculous.”

Again the lawyer’s reactions made it apparent that he meant what he said. “Is it? Is it ridiculous? Or is that just part of your technique of intimidation?”

Isabel’s voice rose. “Of what?”

He articulated the word carefully. “Intimidation.”

Isabel leaned forward. “I am at a loss, Mr. Dundas. An utter loss.”

If Isabel had been able to read Jock Dundas earlier, now he could do the same to her; and he, too, realised that Isabel was not dissembling. She was indeed at a loss, and this conclusion led to a sudden change in his demeanour. “You aren’t … you aren’t what Margaret Wilson said you are?”

Isabel spread her hands in a gesture of puzzlement. “I have no idea what Margaret Wilson said I was.” Margaret Wilson? The name was vaguely familiar, but possibly only because its two elements were. Isabel knew plenty of Margarets and plenty of Wilsons; she could not place Margaret Wilson, though.

Jock Dundas sat up. His earlier air of defeat had vanished and he was once again the confident lawyer, safe on his own ground.

“And I’m afraid I don’t know who Margaret Wilson is. Or I don’t think I do.”

“Margaret Wilson,” he said, “is one of Minty’s colleagues. They’re also quite close friends.”

“I see. And?”

“She came to see me after you and I met in the Botanics. She said that she had to warn me about something.”

Jock Dundas had taken a pen out of his pocket and was fingering it, slipping the cap on and off. Isabel watched his fingers; they were tanned and the nails were carefully manicured. He was an elegant man; Minty would never have consorted with anybody crude.

Jock continued with his explanation. “Margaret said that
she had found out that Minty had approached a woman enforcer. That’s the word she used. Enforcer.”

Isabel wanted to laugh. It was completely absurd. Enforcers were the thugs used by gangsters to twist people’s arms metaphorically, which meant to break them in reality.

“She said I was an
enforcer
?”

He nodded. “She said you were a subtle one.”

“Well, at least that’s something,” said Isabel. “I should hate to be thought of as some sort of
mafiosa.
” She wondered whether Italian had a feminine form of
mafioso.
Presumably not, as the Mafia was traditionally a male organisation.

“She said that you specialised in ruining reputations,” Jock continued. “She said that you could kill a professional reputation stone-dead. Through smears.”

“I see.”

“Yes. And she said that you were going to make sure that I didn’t get my partnership here.” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder. “This is a fairly conservative firm, as you may know. It wouldn’t be helpful for the partners here to know that I had …”

“Had an affair with another man’s wife?” prompted Isabel. “Particularly a man as well-connected as Gordon?”

“Yes. And she said that you could ruin me in other ways. She didn’t say how.”

“I suppose there are ways,” said Isabel. “But not being an enforcer, I wouldn’t really know.”

He sat back in his chair. “So I tried to contact you. To tell you that I was dropping my claim to Roderick. I didn’t get you and so I telephoned Margaret and asked her to pass on the message to Minty that I was out of it. Altogether. Completely. She wouldn’t hear from me again.”

Isabel was listening, but as she did so she was trying to master what had happened. It was very neat. Minty had used her to give Jock Dundas a fright. She could have made the threats herself, but it might not have had the same effect. To hear that somebody else had been engaged—particularly somebody portrayed as being ruthless—gave a subtle twist to the situation. It was considerably more frightening, bringing in two enemies instead of one.

“May I ask you something?” Isabel said.

“Yes.”

“If I tell you that this is complete nonsense,” she said. “If I tell you that I spoke to you the other day purely as a favour for Minty and with no intention at all of intimidating you. If I told you all this—and if you believed me—would you still give up your claim to Roderick?”

“Yes.”

“For career reasons?”

It took him some time to speak. “All right. Yes. You won’t approve of that, will you?”

Isabel remembered T. S. Eliot. This was a clear case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. But she said nothing about that.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “It really is.”

She rose to her feet and offered her hand. “I think we should shake hands. We don’t have anything else to say to one another really.” But then she thought that in fact she did.

“We have both been wronged by the same woman,” said Isabel.

Jock Dundas looked thoughtful. Then he nodded his agreement. “Yes, we have.”

“And I hope that you find somebody else,” said Isabel. “Maybe somebody with a child, or children. It’s a good thing to be a stepfather, you know, even if you can’t be a father. It’s a good thing.”

They shook hands. Isabel noticed how soft his hands felt, like the hands of a woman, a young girl. She noticed, too, that he was wearing some sort of cologne—sandalwood, she thought. She had bought Jamie a bottle of something like that the previous Christmas, but he had left it on a shelf in the bathroom with the top off and it had evaporated. She had asked him, “Was that a mistake, Jamie? Or did your subconscious prompt you to do it because you don’t want to use it?” And he had looked at her, smiled, and said, “Why must you complicate everything, Isabel?”

It had not been an argument, merely a discussion about why things are done, or not done, the way they are—or are not.

S
HE LEFT THE OFFICES
of McGregor, Fraser & Co. and walked the short distance into Charlotte Square itself. It was a little after noon, and she felt at a loose end. Grace had been left in charge of Charlie until two, and was taking him out to lunch with one of her spiritualist friends, Annie, a woman whom Isabel had not met but of whom she had heard a great deal. Annie, who came from the Isle of Mull, was said to have a particular gift of second sight. “A lot of people from the islands are like that,” said Grace. “They see things we don’t see. Annie often knows what the weather is going to be like. It’s uncanny.”

Isabel had been about to suggest that Annie might perhaps watch the weather report, but checked herself. She had discovered that there was no point in engaging with Grace on these issues, as her housekeeper usually interpreted even mild disagreement as a direct challenge to her entire
Weltanschauung.
Not that Grace felt undermined by such exchanges. “You’ll find out,” Isabel had once heard her mutter. “You’ll find out once you cross over.”

Isabel had thought about this. She was open-minded enough to recognise that the self—or the soul, if one wished—
might
have an extra-corporeal existence that might just survive the demise of the mass of brain tissue that appeared to sustain it; the rigid exclusion of that possibility could be seen as much as a statement of faith as its rigid assertion. That is what she believed, and it allowed her to concede that Grace could be right. It also allowed her to find room for spirituality in its attempt to give form to a feeling that there was something beyond what we could see and touch.

“I’ve never asked you this,” Jamie had once said, as they sat together one summer evening on the lawn. “Do you believe in …” He looked at her and spread his hands to create a space.

And that space, she thought, might be God. “In God? Is that what you’re asking?” She assumed so, although he could very easily have been about to ask, “Do you believe in Scottish independence?” or “Do you believe in pouring the milk in first when you make a cup of tea?” Both important questions, but not ones that would necessarily lead to much.

He picked a tiny blade of grass and idly began to strip it down; how complex—and perfect—the construction of even this little piece of vegetation. “Yes. I suppose that’s what I want to know.”

“And you?” she asked.

“You first. I asked you.” Children dared one another in this way: you jump first, no you, no you go, then I will.

She lay back on the grass. The night was warm as was the lawn itself, warm, breathing out into the darkening air. The earth breathes, she thought.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Not in the white-bearded sense. But I
sense
something that is beyond me. I’m not sure I would give it the name
God.
But one could, if one wanted to.”

He listened carefully, and she realised, turning her head slightly
so that she could see him, that for him this was one of the most intimate conversations they had ever had. To talk about sex was nothing to talking about God; the body stripped bare was never as bare as the soul so stripped. “And what about you?” she asked gently.

“I don’t think about it very much. It’s not really the sort of thing that I think much about.”

The answer pleased her. She would not have wanted him to reveal a certainty concealed up to this point. And there was something unattractive about a belief that excluded all doubt.

“But you’re not an out-and-out atheist? You don’t deride people who do believe in God?”

Again his answer pleased her. “No, not at all. People need some idea … some idea of where they are.”

“Exactly.”

He had been lying down too, and now he propped himself up on an elbow and faced her. “And there’s Mozart.”

She encouraged him to explain.

“Mozart, you see,” he said, “is so perfect. If there can be music like that, it must be tied in some way to something outside us—it has to be. Some combination of harmony and shape that has nothing to do with us—it’s just there. Maybe God’s something to do with that. Something to do with beauty.”

Something to do with beauty.
Yes, she thought, that was one way of expressing it. Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we would find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations. It was an intriguing thought, as it meant that a concert could be a spiritual experience, a secular painting a religious icon, a beguiling face a passing angel.

But that was on the lawn and this was in Charlotte Square. She looked at her watch again. The meeting with Jock Dundas had resolved itself well—in a handshake that had amounted to an act of reconciliation. Yet in another sense it had left her angry and disturbed. She had been used by Minty Auchterlonie, and had she not gone to see Jock Dundas, she might never have discovered that fact. It should not surprise her, of course. Peter Stevenson had spelled it out for her: Minty was, quite simply, wicked. Of course she would use people, as she had just used Isabel.