The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

manner, rose in six stories of dressed stone, topped with a high-raked slate roof. Some of these roofs were bordered with turrets, like the slated turrets of French châteaux, with ironwork devices at the point. Or the edge of the roofs had stone crenellations, carved thistles, the occasional gargoyle, all of which would have given the original occupants the sense that they were living in some style, and that all that distinguished their dwellings from those of the gentry was mere size. But in spite of these conceits, they were good flats, solidly built, and although originally intended for petit-bourgeois occupation they had become the preserve of students and young professionals. The flat she was visiting must have been typical of numerous such establishments rented by groups of three or four young people. The generous size of the flats made it possible for each tenant to have his or her own room without impinging upon the largish living room and dining room. It would be a comfortable arrangement, which would serve the residents until marriage or cohabitation beckoned. And of course such flats were the breeding ground of lasting friendships—and lasting enmities too, she supposed.
    The flats were built around a common stone staircase, towhich access would be gained by an imposing front door. These doors were usually locked, but could be opened from the flats above by the pressing of a button. Isabel looked at the range of bells at the front door and found one labelled “Duffus.” She pushed it and waited. After a minute or so a voice sounded through the small speaker of the intercom and asked her what she wanted.
    Isabel bent to speak into the tiny microphone on the intercom box. She gave her name and explained that she would like to speak to Miss Duffus. It was in connection with the accident, she added.
    There was a brief pause, and then the buzzer sounded. Isabel pushed the door open and began to climb up the stairs, noting that stale, slightly dusty smell which seemed to hang in the air of so many common stairs. It was the smell of stone which has been wet and now has dried, coupled with the slight odour of cooking that would waft out of individual flats. It was a smell that reminded her of childhood, when she had gone every week up such a stairway to her piano lessons at the house of Miss Marilyn McGibbon—Miss McGibbon, who had referred to music which
starred
her; which meant she was stirred. Isabel still thought of
starring
music.
    She paused, and stood still for a moment, remembering Miss McGibbon, whom she had liked as a child, but from whom she had picked up, even as a child, a sense of sadness, of something unresolved. Once she had arrived for her lesson and had found her red-eyed, with marks of tears on the powder which she applied to her face, and had stared at her mutely until Miss McGibbon had turned away, mumbling: “I am not myself. I apologise. I am not myself this afternoon.”
    And Isabel had said: “Has something sad happened?”
    Miss McGibbon had started to say yes, but had changed it tono, and had shaken her head, and they had turned to the scales which Isabel had learned and to Mozart, and nothing more had been said. Later, as a young adult, she had learned quite by chance that Miss McGibbon had lost her friend and companion, one Lalla Gordon, the daughter of a judge of the Court of Session, who had been forced to choose between her family (who disapproved of Miss McGibbon) and her friendship, and who had chosen the former.
    THE FLAT WAS ON the fourth floor and by the time that Isabel had reached the landing, the door was already slightly ajar. A young woman was standing just within the hall, and she opened the door as Isabel approached. Isabel smiled at her, taking in at a glance Hen Duffus’s appearance: tall, almost willowy, and wide-eyed in that appealing, doelike way which Isabel always associated with girls from the west coast of Scotland, but which presumably had nothing to do with that