The Deep Dark Sleep

After an appropriate pause I blew a long, low whistle. ‘Three thousand pounds a year is a very substantial amount of money,’ I said. It certainly was, especially in a city where the average wage was about seven pounds a week. ‘And it always arrives on the twenty-third of July?’

‘Yes. Give or take a day …’

‘… if it falls on a Sunday …’

‘… for example.’

‘Is that your birthdays?’ I asked.

‘No,’ they said in unison and I could see identical reluctance on both faces.

‘So what is the significance of the twenty-third of July?’

The twins looked at each other before answering.

‘The robbery …’

‘… in Nineteen thirty-eight …’

‘… at the Empire Exhibition …’

‘Saturday the twenty-third of July was the day the robbery took place …’

‘Do you see …’

‘… our conundrum?’ The twins asked between them.

I leaned back in my captain’s chair and laced my fingers before me – sagely – while thinking of how much I really would like to see their conundrums. The truth was that I was struggling: I’d worked out that Isa and Violet were twins as soon as I saw them and felt that should have been enough Holmesian deduction for one day. I could see identical disappointment on their faces.

‘We knew that Daddy had had to go away …’

‘… after all of that trouble …’

‘… but we knew he was looking after us …’

‘… by sending us the money every year …’

And then it hit me. The discovery of his remains in the river meant that Gentleman Joe Strachan had been in a state of terminal repose for eighteen years and, as far as I was aware, there was no postal pick-up at the bottom of the Clyde.

‘So you want to know who’s been sending you the money, if not your father?’

‘Exactly,’ Isa and Violet said in emphatic unison.

‘Unless it’s not your father’s remains they found …’ I said.

Two identical heads shook with identical grim certainty. ‘The police showed us the cigarette case …’

‘… we both recognized it right away …’

‘… we remembered it clearly …’

‘… and our Mam always said to us how Daddy wouldn’t go nowhere without his special cigarette case.’

‘But that’s all there is to go on?’ I asked.

‘No …’

‘… they found clothes …’

‘… rotted to rags …’

‘… but they were able to read the labels …’

‘… and they were from Daddy’s tailors …’

‘… and our Da was always particular about where he bought his clothes …’

‘What about dental records?’ I asked. They both looked at me with blank confusion, which shouldn’t have surprised me. This was Glasgow, after all.

‘Our Da was tall …’

‘… five foot eleven …’

‘… and the police said the leg bones matched someone that height …’

I nodded. Five foot eleven was tall for Glasgow. I was tall for Glasgow and it was my height. I reluctantly handed back the wads. Isaac Newton had formulated the concept that every mass, from a coffee cup to a mountain to the Earth, had its own gravitational field: for me, cash always seemed to exert an irresistible force disproportionate to its mass. And as an object, I was anything but immoveable.

‘I have to tell you ladies,’ I said, ‘that I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to walk around the streets of Glasgow with that amount of cash about your persons.’

‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said Isa. ‘Violet’s husband Robert drove us here. We’re on our way to deposit the money in the Clydesdale Bank around the corner.’

‘But we thought we’d come and see you first.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose the starting point has to be the money itself. It would appear to be the only material clue we have at the moment. It arrives by post, you say?’

Another simultaneous nod, followed by another coordinated dip into the handbags which resulted in two empty brown envelopes presenting themselves on my desk. Each was addressed differently, but in the same hand. There was a London postmark on each.

‘These are your current addresses?’

More harmonious concurrence.

‘And you have had no contact with the sender?’

‘Of course not.’

‘So how did the sender find out about your new addresses? What about your mother? Whoever is sending these payments must have been told of your marriages. Could it be that your mother really knew who this is?’

‘No. She was as surprised as we was …’

‘… we both got married in the same year and the next packages arrived at our new addresses …’

‘… with an extra five hundred each.’

‘I have to say, ladies, that that sounds very much to me like the actions of a regretful absentee father. Especially when you take the significance of the date into account. You’re both absolutely sure that it was your father they found?’

‘As sure as we can be.’

‘And our Ma said she never believed the money came from Daddy.’

‘Oh?’ I asked. ‘Why did she think that?’

‘She said …’

‘… all along …’

‘… that if Daddy had been alive, that wherever he was, he would have sent for us. To be a family.’

‘Maybe that was impossible for him to do,’ I said.

I didn’t mention that I had also heard of Gentleman Joe’s prowess as a bedroom swordsman: the twins were unlikely to be the only family he had.