Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  I was just summoning my reserves to leave when a curious thing happened. The three ladies, I am sure of it, simply forgot that I was there. Even though I had just trodden quite hard on one of their bunions, the pall of steam had cloaked me and perhaps my breathing was softer than theirs after all, but I am sure that the words which filled that muffled air were not meant for the ears of a stranger.

  ‘And you’re sure, are you, Mrs Riddle?’

  ‘Absolutely positive, Mrs Davies. My lady in Glasgow was perfectly clear that we’d not find them here. Not for a minute.’

  ‘They, Mrs Riddle? Is there more than one? That nice young man mentioned one only.’

  ‘Who’s to say, Mrs Scott? I’d be very surprised if, after everything that’s happened here in seventy-five years, it’s only been that one single time. That “nice young man” was out of his depth completely.’

  ‘Feeling his way.’

  ‘By pure faith.’

  ‘So unusual to find it in a youngster, never mind in a man.’

  ‘But we’re safe in here?’

  ‘As houses.’

  ‘But you shouldn’t be thinking of safety and danger, Mrs Davies. There’s no need to worry.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need to be lectured on that, Mrs Riddle. I’ve been active in my circle for twenty-odd years, a founder member, as you’re very well aware. And I have no fear of what we know. But this is something else again. All these … poisons, all these … ill humours.’

  I was, as can fairly be imagined, electrified with interest about it all. As lost as a blind lamb on a moonless night, certainly, but fascinated all the same. I was breathing as quietly as I could, sitting stock still lest my feet make another of those slapping noises should I move them and only wondering if I could possibly stay without melting.

  ‘Actually,’ it was the voice belonging to Mrs Scott, ‘I’ve done a thorough check on my bed-sitting room and I’m convinced that we’d be fine there.’

  ‘Your bed-sitting room?’ Mrs Riddle’s voice could not ring out in that soft enfolding dampness but she gave it a good try. ‘Then what in the name of all that’s holy are we doing in here?’ There was a sucking noise as she peeled herself off the marble. I tucked my feet up and tried to disappear against the wall behind me. Either I managed it or, despite the swirling caused by their movement, they did not notice me, but in any case the door opened, once more drawing a great draught of the steam out into the clear air on the other side, and then it shut behind them, leaving me alone, in a state of perplexity edging into utter bafflement.

  When my attention at last returned from my eavesdropping to my own comfort, I realised that besides being sopping wet, my head itched like a plague, my breath rasped in my throat and my cheeks and temples and my very eyeballs heaved in time to my pounding pulse. In short, it was long past time for me to draw my life’s association with Turkish bathing to a close. I stood, waited until I was sure I would not swoon, and then slipped out of the steam room.

  Regina, the round little person in the blue uniform, was outside, almost as though waiting to pounce upon me.

  ‘Mighty!’ she said, taking a look at my face. ‘You’ve maybes overdone it, madam. Now, quick about you and cool off then I’ll give you a nice salt rub-down.’

  ‘Cool off?’ I echoed, hopefully. It sounded lovely but I needed details.

  ‘Plunge pool or cold sprays?’ she said, leading me through an archway towards the wet marble temple with the slabs. I could see a woman standing rigid with horror in one of the niches as jets of water assaulted her from every angle and a downpour from a rose contraption, such as one would find on a giant’s watering can, drenched her head and plastered her hair to her face.

  ‘The pool,’ I said firmly. Regina led me through a second archway from the temple to the long room where the pool lay waiting. I shivered. Even the air was cold in here, but I could still see vapours rising off the surface of the water and I had not forgotten the feeling as I dipped my wrists in. I moved to the edge and looked down.

  ‘Should one use the steps?’ I asked. ‘It is called a plunge pool after all.’

  ‘It’s up to you, madam,’ said Regina. ‘Do you knock back castor oil or sip it with milk? Not that pool’s not lovely.’ This last part was rather late and did not convince me.

  ‘Down in one,’ I said. I sat on the marble wall, swung my legs over the water, shoved myself off and dropped.

  The one good thing that could be said about the water in the plunge pool was that it was less sulphurous than that in the pump room. This I knew because I swallowed a good half-pint of it, opening my mouth and gasping, helpless not to. It was like needles, like a hundred hedgehogs rolling over me, pressing hard, and as well there was an ache, instant and profound, deep inside my body, and another in my head and yet another in my teeth. I rose, thrashing like a salmon, and coughing until my eyes streamed and I could feel the tears as they rolled down my cheeks, could tell them apart from the rest of the water coursing off me, because they were warm. Shuddering, almost whimpering, I galumphed my way towards the steps in an ungainly paddle.

  ‘Quite cold,’ said Regina. ‘Quite a surprise the first time, I daresay. But if you can just stay under till you’re settled it would do you a power of good.’

  ‘Settled?’ I said. I was perturbed to hear how loud my voice was, ringing round the room. I even thought I heard a titter from through the archway at the far end that led to the resting room. ‘I’ll be st-stone d-dead if I don’t get out of here. I’ll be d-dead of … what is it that they keep dying of on p-p-polar expeditions?’

  ‘Hypothermia,’ said Regina. ‘But this water wouldn’t give you hypothermia unless you stayed in twenty minutes or more. And so long as your heart’s strong there’s no chance of palpitations.’

  ‘My heart?’ I said. I must have looked alarmed.

  ‘You don’t have a weak heart, madam, do you?’ Regina had rushed forward, eyes wide, and was down a couple of steps, with her rubber-soled shoes in danger of spoiling. ‘Please come out, madam, do.’

  ‘I d-don’t have a weak heart,’ I told her. ‘Although I have to say it f-f-feels rather shaky right now. So the st-steam and p-plunge is not for everyone? Dr Laidlaw told me to help mys-s-self.’

  ‘Just …’ Regina attempted a smile. ‘Just me being daft, madam. Nothing at all to trouble you. And please don’t say to Dr Laidlaw that I caused you alarm, for she has enough on her pl— Anyway, all’s well, madam. All’s well.’

  But I had seen where she had looked, a flicked glance she could not help before her smile widened, and unless I was greatly mistaken (and I could well be, for I am able to get lost inside houses I have visited dozens of times), nevertheless, I was quite sure her eyes had turned to where Dr Laidlaw’s eyes had turned. In short, to that same locked door.

  5

  Like a peg on one’s nose for profile, like a book on one’s head for posture, like all of those minor tortures we girls went through, it was worth it in the end. I felt, once out, dried and dressed again, as though I could have lifted off from the stones of the terrace and floated over the valley floor on waves of … who knows what exactly. My woollen underthings felt like the softest silk against my skin; my lisle stockings too, and from the inside my face felt dewy and rosy and beautiful. I could have stretched backwards to grab my own heels and turned myself into a hoop, so limber did I fancy myself after my sojourn in the baths.

  It was spoiled rather when Hugh caught sight of me.

  ‘Good God, Dandy,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  ‘Mother, really,’ said Donald, opening a sleepy eye.

  ‘Never mind, Mummy,’ said Teddy. Then he ruined it: ‘No one knows us here.’

  True enough, there had been no looking glasses in that little changing cubicle and when I put my hand up to my hair what I felt there was far from usual, but the wonders of the steam bath were more than skin deep and my serenity, though dented, was not cracked and sprang back as I smiled down
at them.

  ‘How did you get on with the doctor?’ I asked, sitting on the edge of Teddy’s deckchair and nudging his feet out of the way.

  ‘Never saw hide nor hair of him,’ said Hugh, his choice of pronoun confirming as much. ‘Suits me.’ He stretched his arms and put his hands behind his head. ‘I’m perfectly capable of deciding what I fancy from the brochure.’ He patted his breast pocket, from which I could see a folded catalogue peeping out.

  ‘But I must insist when it comes to the boys,’ I said, thinking again of Regina’s look of alarm as I thrashed in the icy water of the plunge pool. ‘They are not to be electrified or … pummelled unless the doctor says so.’

  Hugh nodded absently.

  ‘Hot salt bath, galvanic wrap, dab of mud, spot of ultraviolet heat,’ he said. ‘And a quiet game of cards in the evening.’

  ‘Starting tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Have dinner with us tonight, dear, and then come back before bedtime.’ Of course, I needed a little time with him to finesse the Alec problem. ‘And now I must just go and see what’s kept the doctor.’

  ‘Oh, don’t make us see him, Mummy,’ said Teddy. ‘I’m not going to do all that salty, muddy nonsense anyway.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent,’ I said, for I had noticed Hugh’s brows twitch down at the word ‘nonsense’. ‘I shall remake your appointments for tomorrow morning. Meet me in the hall in ten minutes, please, and we shall drive back in time for tea.’

  ‘Mr Laidlaw said there was cherry cake here,’ said Teddy.

  ‘Cinnamon toast and maids of honour at home,’ I said. ‘Donald?’ Donald opened his eyes which had fallen shut again.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said, so languidly that Hugh caught my eye.

  ‘I’ll speak to the doctor,’ I repeated. ‘Ten minutes, please.’ And I hurried away.

  Dr Laidlaw’s office was on the ground floor at the drive side of the house, unspeakably gloomy, but I supposed it was inevitable that all the west-facing rooms were reserved for guests. There was a little ante-room lined with those tall wooden cabinets for holding files of papers and in the middle of the floor one of the four-sided settees I had seen in the drawing room, a very practical way for four strangers to await their consultations without having to look one another in the eye or breathe one another’s germ-ridden air. At the moment, all four seats were empty. Nor was there anyone at the little desk with the telephone and type-writing machine. I passed to the inner door and knocked.

  ‘Oh! Who—? Come in.’ Dr Laidlaw’s voice came in a series of chirps and, when I entered, it was to find her peering up from behind a fortress of papers on her desk, with a startled look on her face, like a baby bird in the nest when it hears its parents’ wings.

  ‘Mrs … ah,’ she said.

  ‘Gilver. You arranged to see my husband and sons this afternoon, Dr Laidlaw. I wonder if it would be convenient for us to leave it until the morning?’

  The baby bird appeared to realise that the wing beat was that of a marauding hawk, not its parent at all. She ducked slightly and almost disappeared behind the wall of articles, books and files she had built around her. I walked closer to the desk, not to seize her in my talons, but from the look of her one would not know.

  ‘I am so, so, so very sorry,’ she said. I moved another pile of dusty paper, made up into bundles with pink tape, and sat down. The furniture in the room comprised the desk and chairs, the bookcases lining the walls, an examination couch with a curtained screen half pulled around it and upwards of a dozen wooden crates, all packed with books, all standing open, all thick with dust. In fact, the whole office was lavishly untidy, its good glass-fronted bookcases stuffed to bursting with books not only in rows but jammed in horizontally on top of the rows too. I saw that the doors of one case, particularly under strain from its contents, were held together by more of the same pink tape threaded through the handles and tied in a bow. Buff-coloured files with carbon papers frothing out of them like coxcombs were stacked along the windowsill, bunching and pulling the grey-yellow lace curtain which looked as though it had not been washed since it was first hung there many years ago. On the chimneypiece there was a perfectly conventional clock flanked by two perfectly conventional vases, but behind the clock, numerous bills and chits threatened to push it forward to smash in the grate, and more of them bloomed in the vases instead of posies. A bunch of keys and a couple of syringes, still with their needles attached, threatened to crack a delicate Staffordshire bon-bon dish with their weight, or at least scratch its beautiful pattern with their sharp edges.

  I turned my attention away from the disorder and back to Dr Laidlaw again, thinking that although my impression had been that she was dowdy, seeing her in her lair like this she seemed a daisy on a dung heap. She had noticed me looking around and apologised again.

  ‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘They’ve been wrapped up and snoozing in deckchairs all afternoon. I’m sure it’s done them a world of good to rest without interruptions.’

  ‘I— You are very gracious,’ she said. ‘But it won’t do. I could see them now. My consultation hours are over, but to make it up to you – a shocking lapse. That is to say, there was an emergency. But I should have sent a message. I could see them right now.’

  I considered it. Specifically, I considered Donald’s lungs breathing in the dust and dirt of this frowsy chamber and, although I truly did think she was making a fuss over nothing, I decided to turn it to account.

  ‘What would make up for it,’ I said, ‘would be if you could manage a house call instead. Might I trouble you to examine the boys at home in the morning? Come and have coffee,’ I finished lamely. I can sometimes manage to be grand, but not often.

  ‘Most gladly,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I see that the emergency ended well,’ I said. I am not naturally Machiavellian, never was, but detecting has changed me.

  ‘It did,’ said Dr Laidlaw. ‘Thankfully, yes it did. But how did you guess?’

  ‘Just that surely you would not be back in your study absorbed in reading had it not,’ I replied with a smile.

  ‘Of course, I see, yes of course,’ she said. ‘Yes, my work is absorbing. Not that the patients are not my work. What I mean to say is that when a paper comes under review and the reviewer …’

  ‘Gosh, so you are a researcher, Dr Laidlaw, are you?’

  ‘I am,’ she said, gesturing around the piles of books and scribbled-on papers.

  ‘Do you then not do house calls?’ I said. ‘I mean to say, you are a doctor, aren’t you? Hydropathy being your specialism?’

  ‘My poor father would turn in his grave to hear it,’ she said, ‘but no. Hydropathy is not exactly … that is to say … on the Continent …’ She cleared her throat. ‘I have an MD from Edinburgh, Mrs Gilver. In short, yes, I certainly am a doctor and as for your house call I certainly shall do it. Happy to.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I replied. ‘It’s good to know that there is someone right here on the premises should anything go wrong. Moffat is a step away and – between you and me, my dear – I’ve heard some things about one of the local doctors, from a friend, you know.’

  Her face, blanching to the colour of putty, told me that she did indeed know. I felt a heel but I did not let that stop me.

  ‘A friend who used to come here. Before she died.’ Dr Laidlaw considered this, as one would consider a rattlesnake in one’s bed with one.

  ‘Can you give me any idea as to what ails your sons?’ she said, in a wavering voice, as I stood and brushed the dust from my coat. ‘So I know what to bring, you know. I don’t travel with a Gladstone bag every day like Dr Ramsay.’

  ‘Pleurisy and pneumonia after flu,’ I said. ‘Nothing serious like weak hearts or anything. In fact, let’s not pander to them with a house call after all. What was I thinking? I, like you, Dr Laidlaw, believe in fresh air and exercise. And yes, it was Dr Ramsay. How did you know?’

  The putty had faded to chalk, leaving her lips blue – rather prettily
bowed lips, dimpling in at the corners; I had not noticed them before, unpainted as they were – and her eyes dark and enormous, with purple smudges around them. I felt a familiar thrill as I let myself out and made my way to the front hall to meet the others. It was becoming clearer and clearer that the Addies were not imagining things. Their dear dead mother had been wronged in some way, I was sure of it, and we would avenge her.

  Naturally, Hugh and the boys were nowhere to be seen when I got there, Hugh’s stringent punctuality being reserved for beaters, chauffeurs, ministers of the kirk and fellow officers, not for the likes of me. Whenever he saunters in late to some rendezvous we have arranged, he looks at his watch and says, ‘Good, good. Let’s make an early start then since you’re here in nice time,’ as though I have come up to scratch for once in a blue moon and surprised him. Today I was glad of it, because an opportune meeting came my way. There was an inopportune one first, though.

  As I waited, installed in one of those throne-like chairs with which hallways come equipped, seat-cushions stuffed with something which gives them that stodgy and unyielding consistency, like fudge, I was far from delighted to hear whistling and see a silhouette sauntering towards me along the passageway with its hands in its trouser pockets. Thomas Laidlaw; I could not take to the man.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, when he reached me. He took his hands out of his pockets but only to rub them together as though with vast relish of unknown source, hardly more civil than if he had left them there. ‘Off already, Mrs Gilver?’

  ‘For the evening, Mr Laidlaw,’ I said. ‘In the morning I shall return.’