Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘I shall see you at luncheon,’ I said, waving them off, and then wandered over to sink into an armchair beside the brogues and wait for the newspaper guard to be lowered. Alec gave me his most impish smile but did not mention the awkwardness.

  The first thing he did say to me was as much a surprise as a disappointment.

  ‘Pretty clear why Ramsay got in on things then. Poor Dr Laidlaw couldn’t even sign the death certificate, much less get a fool like Addie to face simple facts head-on.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he?’ I said.

  ‘Blind prejudice,’ said Alec. ‘Although I’ve always wondered how prejudice can be blind if justice is too. Blind to different things perhaps? Funny sort of blindness, though.’

  ‘Alec,’ I said. ‘You’re wittering. Why couldn’t he?’

  ‘I’m musing,’ said Alec. ‘Perhaps even philosophising. I don’t, my dear Dandy, witter. She, by the way.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ I said. ‘Dr Dorothea Laidlaw. I see. I didn’t think that peculiar man looked much like one. What does he mean by such a get-up in the middle of the day?’

  ‘He hasn’t been to bed yet,’ Alec said. ‘The get-up’s left over from last evening.’

  ‘Why on earth—’ I began and then Alec’s bombshell, which had rolled across the carpet intact, burst at last. ‘Medical examinations!’ I said. ‘Dr Laidlaw’s going to examine Hugh? He’ll curl up and die!’

  ‘Only his chest,’ said Alec. ‘When I found out the doctor was a female I made sure my back trouble was in the shoulder blades – I had been tending towards the lumbar region; that’s where I always feel it after a day’s hunting – and only my shirt was disarranged. My trousers—’

  ‘He’ll die,’ I said.

  ‘—passed through the exam without a glance from her.’

  ‘The boys are used to Matron, but Hugh will climb out of the window and down a drainpipe to get away.’

  ‘Didn’t he have a Matron of his own in his day?’

  ‘A retired sergeant!’ I said. ‘Sergeant Black. Poor little boys of eight and suddenly only Sergeant Black instead of Mummy.’ We spent a moment thinking – I was anyway – what a lot that explained if you went in for such things and then got down, at long last, to business.

  ‘If Mr Addie’s mistrust of a lady doctor is all that’s afoot here,’ I said, ‘then you could melt away before Hugh sees you.’

  ‘Would that it were, would that I could,’ Alec said, sounding like someone translating Latin verb tables.

  ‘You said Dr Ramsay got wheeled on out of blind—’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Alec. ‘The Laidlaws must have thought the Addies would swallow his certificate with less of a gulp than they’d take to swallow hers. But don’t you see? They’d only care about having the death cert. spat out if they had something to hide. And they do have something to hide. I know it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I got a strong whiff of something fishy during my tour with Miss— Dr Laidlaw. I couldn’t say what exactly. What about you?’

  ‘I couldn’t say what at all,’ Alec answered. ‘Not even a fishy whiff. I just …’

  ‘Hah!’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve had a hunch. After all the sneering you’ve done about hunches to me over the years.’

  ‘I don’t sneer, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘I tease. And it’s not a hunch. It’s a proper hydropathic clue.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said, sitting forward. Of course, he had been here overnight and might well have uncovered something already. ‘What do you mean?’

  Alec grinned. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘I feel it in me water.’

  I told myself that they would have all sorts of salves and mechanicals here with which to treat bruises and so I kicked him.

  4

  Luncheon was, on several counts, a revelation. Remembering what Mrs Bowie née Addie had reported I had expected clear soup and rye wafers, but when I joined Hugh and the boys at one of the many tables in the vaulted and pillared dining room, the menu card announced potted shrimps, brown bread, cold ham, baked potatoes, egg mayonnaise, tomato chutney, apple charlotte and custard, and lest one faint from starvation before teatime there was the further option of biscuits, radishes, celery and cheese. Far from such fare driving one down to Moffat to the Toffee Shop for tuck, I wondered how one could rise from one’s armchair even to start the journey. That was the first surprise: the menu.

  The second was the crowd. After the empty treatment suite, the deserted baths and the hollow, echoing drawing room, I had expected the four of us to be marooned in a vastness (Alec had volunteered to take a tray in his room until I could break the news of his presence and hence the reason for ours to Hugh).

  The dining room was certainly vast. It was designed after the fashion of a winter garden – indeed I was later to learn, when I got to know the layout of the Hydro properly, that it matched the winter gardens in the other wing – except that only the ceiling was glass, the walls between the mock pillars being plaster painted with outdoor scenes. The painter, very sensibly, had decided to depict rather better weather than was often to be viewed through the glass walls of the winter gardens proper, and there were palm trees, bougainvilleas, stretches of white sand and the straw roofs of distant village huts besides. Inside these exotic walls, tables were set for couples, fours and sixes, with good white linen and glittering Sheffield plate and, as I say, there was a trickle, a steady trickle, of guests entering, taking seats and unfolding napkins. I could not help noticing, as I glanced around, that there was not a Mrs Addie amongst the lot of them.

  To be sure, I had never met the woman, but I had seen her photographic portrait, her children and her house and could have told an inquisitor everything about her from her felt hat to her rubber galoshes, from her morning paper to her evening prayer. None of the characters filing into the Hydro dining room that day were the sort to wear felt and galoshes, nor yet to say prayers, and the few who had newspapers under their arms, as though it were breakfast and not luncheon, had them turned to the sporting pages and society columns.

  I was now, frankly, staring as they sat themselves down, lit cigarettes and started up desultory conversations with their neighbours. I could not get the idea of breakfast to leave my mind, for most of them had a dishevelled look, some yawning, some coughing as they lit what looked to be the first smoke of the day, and a few positively hungover. I recognised the careful movements and the yellow-tinged pallor from my unmarried days when I would have to go down to breakfast at house parties and face the bloodshot eyes of some young man as uninteresting now, in his headache and stomach troubles, as he had been in his wine and stories the evening before. One of the several benefits of giving up girlhood for husband and home was breakfast in bed at house parties and never having to look at a hangover again. Hugh, thank goodness, does not go in for them.

  ‘Funny lot,’ he said now, looking around. This was a wild excursion into gossip for him; usually he affects complete oblivion of anyone in the surroundings to whom he has not had an introduction. Before my detecting days I used to too. I wondered at the comment and turned to regard him. I found him staring back out of wide, unblinking eyes. Odder and odder.

  ‘Invalids, I daresay,’ I murmured. ‘Here for their livers, by the looks of them.’

  Hugh nodded and turned to address a speech to Donald. Rivers was the topic and I stopped listening, but I did not stop watching and I am sure that I did not imagine the look in Hugh’s eye. Amusement. Satisfaction. One of those looks that gleams, anyway.

  As I worked my way through my potted shrimps, which were delicious and would make an ideal luncheon followed by the cheese and biscuits, if one could sidestep all the ham and custard in between, I watched the dishevelled masses come slowly to life. Glasses of warm water and lemon were served, brown bread was nibbled, shrimps ignored, and eventually conversation began to ripple and swoop amongst the tables. Someone laughed. Someone else called across half the room to arrange a tennis match. Someone groaned, but it was the groan with which a sil
ly joke was answered, not a groan of suffering.

  And as I watched I began to notice that here and there, like big black crows in a cage full of budgerigars, there were parties of Addies after all. Whatever their names were they were Addies at heart, sitting bolt upright like nannies at a party, eating their way stolidly through the courses and ignoring the twittering and plumage around them.

  Mr Laidlaw appeared as the coffee was being served and took a cup with him as he walked about the room. He had ditched his dinner jacket at last, into a normal suit although rather light for the country, but looked no less of a head waiter as he made his circuit, stopping to chat, beaming, evidently entertaining since gales of laughter met his every word. He did not neglect the tables of Addies, but here he modified his demeanour, bowing, murmuring, cocking his head and spreading a look of grave concern over his face as one dowager seemed to issue a complaint. Indeed, he went as far as to set down his coffee cup, extract a small notebook from his breast pocket and jot something down in it with a pencil. The dowager did not crack a smile but she nodded firmly and with a word he was on his way again. He was making his way towards our table and he caught me watching him. I was facing him head-on, no chance to dissemble.

  ‘Hello again,’ he said. ‘Hello, hello. Now, how are you settling in? Everything running smoothly? Feeling better already, are we?’

  He was just the sort of man – hail fellow, well met – that Hugh normally cannot stand but there was no look of scorn or detestation here today although he did not go as far as to answer such inanity.

  ‘Jolly good fodder,’ said Teddy. ‘I don’t wonder people get better, sir, if you feed them like this every day.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Donald. And I was torn between feeling fond pride at their manners for once and smarting at the sideswipe to Gilverton’s kitchens.

  ‘And your medical chores will all be over by tea,’ said Laidlaw. ‘Ginger snaps and cherry cake, I believe. But I did just want to warn you of the fire drill.’

  ‘When is it?’ asked Hugh, getting out his watch and flipping it open.

  ‘Over the course of the next few days,’ said Laidlaw. ‘A better drill if we don’t know exactly when, eh? But it’ll be in the night, save anyone clambering out of a bath and shivering on the terrace in a towel.’

  Hugh looked understandably disgruntled at this news but I knew he would not lament to me. He had been so pleased at besting me and escaping Auchenlea House that he would not for a pension admit he had let himself in for inconvenience and that I, tucked up alone in the room he had spurned, might have the better of it.

  ‘Very sensible,’ I said. ‘What’s a fire drill if everyone knows it’s coming?’

  ‘But you’re not actually staying in the Hydro, madam?’ said Laidlaw. ‘Nor the young men?’ He was giving me a sharper look than I had yet seen upon his face. I offered a faint smile in return. ‘And your husband tells me you made quite a recent booking. I see, I see. Well, welcome one, welcome all.’ He tipped me a salute and moved away.

  I roundly hoped that he did not see and I did not think that he could, for neither Alec nor I had done a single thing to raise suspicion of our intent. Still, I worried because his words were puzzling.

  ‘What a peculiar person,’ I said, falling back on my grandmother’s way of dealing with puzzlement: stake a claim to sense and normalcy and blame the other party for any troubled feelings or confusion they might have caused. ‘Finished, boys? What shall we do?’

  ‘I’m awfully tired,’ said Donald. ‘Like a pit pony at dusk.’

  ‘Like a python who’s just eaten an antelope,’ I corrected, looking at the crumbs on his cheese plate. ‘I’m not surprised. Why don’t all three of you tuck up on some of those nice deckchairs out on the terrace and I’ll tell the doctor where to find you.’

  ‘There’s a croquet lawn,’ said Teddy, hopefully.

  ‘Rest first,’ I said. Even Hugh agreed, to my surprise, and so I accompanied them out there, a deep terrace facing the lawns where the afternoon sun warmed the stones and released billows of scent from the stands of jasmine which stood like sentries outside all of the french windows. The deckchairs were filling fast, with the bright young things – not so young, all of them, but very bright – from the dining room, and I was forced to walk at an unseemly pace to secure three together from under the nose of another party.

  ‘Hmph,’ said one of these, a woman in her forties with the naked look of one who normally wears a great deal of paint but is currently doing without any. Perhaps such a look could not possibly be; it might come down to the over-plucking of eyebrows or the sheen of the wrinkle cream such women trowel on out of the same vanity that leads to the painting.

  ‘Awfully sorry,’ I said. ‘Were these yours?’

  ‘Come on, Pegs,’ said one of the men who was with her. ‘Let’s go and float in the swimming bath and call that our day’s treatment.’

  ‘Pegs’ giggled and turned with a swish of her pleats to follow the men back along the terrace.

  ‘We’re going to float,’ she called, waving at some swaddled nappers she was passing. ‘No contraptions for us today. Yah-boo! Sucks to you!’

  There was a wave of laughter at this wit. We four Gilvers pretended not to hear her and instead made ourselves busy with pillows and rugs and cranking the backrests up and down until the angles were agreeable.

  ‘I’ll tell someone to let Dr Laidlaw know where you are,’ I said. ‘And I’ll see you later. Now, be brave boys when the time comes, won’t you?’ I was looking at my sons but thinking of Hugh, naturally.

  ‘Brave?’ said Teddy. ‘There won’t be needles, will there?’

  ‘Not a one,’ I said. ‘I’m sure the doctor will be as gentle as gentle can be.’ I might have given Hugh a gleaming look of my own, something for him to ponder. Then I kissed all three of them on their foreheads and withdrew.

  I told a passing maid – she might have been a nurse-orderly; the uniform made it hard to say – that Dr Laidlaw’s afternoon’s patients were on the terrace and then set about the task of finding Alec. There was no reception desk or lobby as in a normal hotel and there did not appear to be an internal telephone system either. I was loitering with no firm intent near the door which led to the men’s treatment rooms when I heard heels clip-clopping rapidly across the parquet and caught sight of the matron-like figure from the morning whisking across the end of a passageway dressed in outdoor clothes. I shot after her.

  ‘Mrs Cronin?’ I said.

  She stopped and turned. ‘Mrs Gilver?’

  ‘I was just wondering,’ I said. ‘Is there a … well, on a cruise it would be a passenger list. One of my sons thinks he spotted a neighbour.’

  ‘Very possibly,’ she said, and I was at a loss to explain the dryness of her tone. ‘Name?’

  ‘Oh, but with the Hydro so full, you couldn’t surely …?’

  ‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘It depends if he’s one of Doctor’s or one of Master’s.’

  ‘I understand,’ I lied, hoping that my face betrayed nothing. ‘It’s a Mr Osborne. A young chap. Bad back.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘I put him down as Master’s but I was wrong. He’s one of the doctor’s after all.’

  ‘And how would I find out where his room is?’ I asked. She blinked. ‘So I can slip a little note under the door.’

  ‘I could deliver a note,’ she said. ‘Or you could pop it in the bag in the entrance hall.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘But as it happens, there’s no need. I’m glad you hailed me, Mrs Gilver.’ There was a dramatic pause. ‘I was looking for you to give you this.’ With quite a flourish she produced an envelope she had been holding behind her back. My name was written on it, in Alec’s hand. ‘He thinks he spotted you too,’ she said with a smile which lifted one side of her mouth, but left the other and both of her eyes unchanged.

  ‘Ha!’ I said. ‘Gosh, what a— How—’ I cleared my throat. ‘Thank you.’ I took the e
nvelope.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she said. ‘We don’t get many folk from Perthshire, what with all the hydros up there, right to hand. Two at once is very remarkable.’ The rat-a-tat-tat of her heels on the polished floor began again and she was gone before I could shut my mouth, much less open it again to answer.

  ‘Matron’s onto us,’ I said, slipping into Alec’s room a few minutes later. It was another of the white chambers, with a metal bed-frame and an enormous bare window taking up most of one wall, but the view was across the valley and so the room was flooded with afternoon light. It was so warm, with the sun beating in, that the paint, distemper and wood varnish, the very soap which had been used to wash the floor, were releasing their pungencies to mix in the stifling air. Alec sat in the room’s only armchair, a wicker one, looking stupefied.

  ‘I have a hearty appetite, Dandy, as you know,’ he said. ‘But that luncheon and this sunshine have almost done for me. Could we take a turn about the gardens?’

  ‘Hugh and the boys are on the terrace,’ I said. ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘I did, but all my blood’s in my middle dealing with the apple charlotte. None left in my brain. Onto us how?’

  ‘How disgustingly detailed,’ I said. I crossed the room and after a moment’s wrestling with the unfamiliar catch I threw open the window. ‘I’m not sure, but she certainly hasn’t swallowed the notion of our just happening to meet here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Alec was taking deep gulps of fresh air but was still not exactly sparking.

  ‘I hope she hasn’t twigged that we’re detectives. If she’s neck deep in Mrs Addie, anyway.’ I turned away from the breeze to light a cigarette. ‘Odd about the food, after what Mrs Bowie said, isn’t it?’

  ‘We haven’t started detecting yet,’ said Alec. He hauled himself to his feet and joined me, looking down over the grounds, and farther out across the valley. ‘With any luck she only suspects us of an assignation.’