Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Once the sun is safely up, eh?’ he said, giving me a solemn look. ‘I think you’ll have to summon more courage than that, Mrs Gilver, if your trip’s not to be a wasted one.’

  I stared and summoned, not courage, but my haughtiest voice and my most disdainful expression.

  ‘I do not have the pleasure of understanding you, Mr Laidlaw,’ I said. ‘You speak in riddles.’

  ‘Can I ask who recommended us to you?’ he said. ‘A family who hails from Perthshire needn’t by any means come as far as Moffat to a hydro.’ They were almost the words Mrs Cronin had spoken to me. ‘Any particular reason we took your fancy?’

  ‘Your sister – such a scholar – has no equal in Crieff,’ I said and I was intrigued to see him lift his chin up and away to the side to give me a narrow look from the corner of his eye. He reminded me of an archer sighting prey along his drawn bow. Then, at a sound from outside on the drive, he spun around on the balls of his feet to face the door.

  ‘Reinforcements,’ he said. ‘Who do you suppose this will be?’

  It was only to be expected that the owner of such a large hotel in such a dull spot would be charmed by arriving guests, but I found myself paying more attention than Nanny Palmer would have called polite as the door opened and the newcomers entered. I was agog to see if these would be more of the solid but sickly bourgeoisie I took to be the doctor’s lot or more of the vacuous crew I had filed under her brother’s name.

  I had momentarily forgotten my overhearings, but as soon as I saw the little caravan which hove through the baronial doors of the Hydro with bags and boxes aplenty as though planning to stay for a month I thought to myself: Aha! Class 3. For if Mrs Scott, Mrs Davies and Mrs Riddle – those odd, earnest ladies in the steam room – had had clothes on I was sure the clothes would be these.

  They were five in number, two men and three women all somewhere in the sixties or beyond. The men were dressed with outlandish – one might almost say Dickensian – extravagance in their tall hats, velvet facings, satin pipings and brocade upon any garment that brocade could applied to. I could not help but conclude they must be sorry that old-fashioned garb could only, at its farthest stretch, take them back that far, and that cut-away tailcoats and neck cloths of white silk would have been out-and-out fancy dress and would have brought the whistle to a constable’s lips if he had seen them.

  The women were even more extraordinary. To be sure, one was of a sort to be seen in village streets throughout the land, only not often in the lobbies of large hotels. She had stuck with the fashions of her youth throughout the fifty years since its passing and was therefore dressed in skirts which trailed the ground with a lace cap over her white hair. She had on a travelling cape of wool with a red flannel lining and a red-silk-lined hood, and if she had held out an apple and invited me to take a bite of it I might not have run, but I would certainly have broken into a trot in the opposite direction.

  The younger companion at her side, most solicitously offering her arm and helping the old woman up the stone steps from the vestibule to the lobby proper, was another sort entirely. Her hair, brownish-grey and wiry with it, was drawn straight back from her forehead and hung down almost to her waist. Her dress, of a greyish-brown one might imagine had been chosen to match her hair, except that no one would look so grimly drab on purpose, hung straight from her shoulders to her calves, like a sack, and the overcoat on top was of a navy serge I had not seen since the last time a troupe of Girl Guides had chosen an inclement day to storm the park at Gilverton and huddle around their campfires until the charabanc returned to fetch them home again.

  The final member of the coven was comparatively unremarkable set against the rest: hair of a somewhat suspicious bright brown given the wrinkles which striped her forehead and fanned from the corners of her eyes, and an outfit of military cut, the jacket well served with pockets and the skirt reminiscent of a lady’s riding costume with its clever deep pleats and moleskin touches. She took off her hat, threw her gloves into it and looked around for a servant who would take it away. Tot Laidlaw obliged, rushing forward and bowing to them all, but looking at them very hard all the while.

  At that interesting moment Hugh arrived, with the boys in tow, just in time to see me gawking at strangers like a guttersnipe. I think I may even have had my mouth open, and he let the spirit of Nanny Palmer live in the glare he gave me.

  ‘We got tired of waiting for you on the terrace,’ he said with astounding cheek. ‘Thought we’d try here. Good, good. Let’s be off then.’ As an apology for lateness it failed on every count but I saved my breath, simply rolling my eyes and standing to follow him. He held the door open for me – what manners were drummed in by his own nanny and the subsequent schoolmasters are unshakeable – and I swept out, managing to pick up a mention of ‘late booking’ and ‘lucky cancellation’ on my way past the new arrivals.

  I had expected to need a long quiet evening to creep my way towards the fact of Alec, his presence in the Hydro, the coincidence of our arrival there and the thorny question of whether I had dragged my loved ones into a case or an assignation, but we were still on the drive heading back to the road when Hugh broached it himself.

  ‘You didn’t know Osborne was headed here, did you, Dandy?’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s right, Mummy,’ said Teddy. ‘We saw him again. I told you he got off the train.’

  ‘I did not,’ I said. ‘Is he really here then? At the Hydro? What fun.’

  ‘Bit odd,’ said Donald. ‘Why didn’t he tell you?’ Hugh was not exactly watching carefully but he was far from looking out of the window.

  ‘He told me about the Hydro,’ I said. ‘It was his praise of the place that put me in mind to come here. But when he said he was going away, I somehow got the idea that it was London.’

  ‘Hope he doesn’t mind you rolling up,’ said Hugh. He gave me that same amused look as before.

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t mind any of us “rolling up”,’ I said. ‘Why should he? Unless you think he left Perthshire to escape us.’

  At this Teddy snorted. It was an ugly noise, with a good deal of the after-effects of flu about it, and both Hugh and I frowned.

  ‘Sorry,’ Teddy said. ‘Just, well. Gilver and Osborne. In that order, Mummy. Sort of makes you Mr Osborne’s boss. And he’s skipped off on a spree and now his boss has come along and caught him.’

  ‘I’m not Mr Osborne’s “boss”, Teddy,’ I said. ‘What a nasty, slangy word.’

  ‘What other word is there for it?’ asked Teddy, with a fair to middling innocent look, not the full-force cherub he sometimes employs, but a lot of round blue eye and round pink mouth nonetheless for a boy of sixteen. ‘I’m simply calling a spade a spade.’

  ‘Superior officer,’ said Hugh. In Hugh’s world, there was only one job his boys could ever conceivably do, and that was how to describe the men under whom they would do it.

  ‘I am glad to say I have never seen a spade,’ said Donald in a trilling voice, making us all giggle, except Hugh, naturally.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oscar Wilde,’ I told him. ‘Cecily.’

  ‘Gwendolen,’ said both boys.

  Hugh was so disgusted that his children – not to mention his wife – could quote from this oeuvre that he said nothing, just drove the car steadily along the lane and swung it down the hill towards the town.

  ‘He’s got a point, mind you,’ said Donald, although whether he meant Teddy or Oscar was unclear. ‘You have dragged us down, Mother, where Teddy needs words like “boss” to describe the world around him.’

  ‘There is nothing more vulgar than a snob, Donald dear,’ I shot back.

  ‘Good grief,’ said Hugh. It is almost his strongest epithet and we all quieted on hearing it. ‘I wouldn’t blame Osborne if his heart did sink to see you as large as life at his journey’s end. What nonsense you speak, all three of you.’

  ‘Hugh,’ I said. ‘Alec Osborne is a dear friend who can speak nonsense like a drunke
n parrot. If he came to the Hydro I am sure it was because he is feeling a little under the weather and needs a pick-me-up – the same as you. I have no more intention of interrupting his treatment than I have yours.’

  Hugh raised an eyebrow and one side of his mouth.

  ‘He looked perfectly healthy to me,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps he’s here to woo a Moffat maiden,’ said Donald. ‘Just as you said, Mother.’

  ‘Best not get in the way of that then,’ Teddy said.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Hugh. His air of mystery was becoming too irritating to bear. ‘It’s possible, but I doubt it.’

  At that moment, when all three of them were making me want to spank them with a slipper, I spied, out of the motorcar window, distraction and diversion.

  ‘Pull over, please, Hugh,’ I said. ‘I’ve just remembered an errand. I’ll make my own way back to the house from here.’

  ‘Sure?’ said Hugh, chivalry spilling out of him again as it does when he is not concentrating. ‘It’s no trouble for us to park and wait. Help you carry things.’

  ‘Quite sure,’ I said. ‘Don’t hold tea. If you happen to see Grant—’

  ‘Gosh, yes, Mummy, we’ll give her warning,’ Teddy said. Donald laughed and even Hugh smiled as they pulled away. I tugged down hard on my hat, hoping to hide as much of the trouble as I could, and made my way to where I had seen the police lamp.

  I have no fondness for police stations any more – not since I was required to sit alone in a small room inside one, friendless and anxious, for hours on end while a nasty piece of work of an inspector pretended to suspect me of murder – and although my chin was high and my shoulders back as I marched in, my heart let the side down miserably, thumping away like a trapped rabbit in my chest. I hoped my voice would be steady, but I did not count on it.

  ‘I should like to speak to a sergeant or inspector if there is one,’ I asked of the child at the desk. He was surely only just tall enough to make a policeman at all, and was as smooth of cheek as Teddy even this late in the day.

  ‘Certainly, madam,’ he said, as meek as a lamb. ‘Who can I tell the sergeant it is, please? The inspector is in Dumfries and won’t be back round here until Friday.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Mrs Gilver of Perthshire.’ I had decided that a private detective might raise hackles and be kept waiting but a woman of my sort, started on the path towards being a dowager, although thankfully far from its end, would elicit exactly this forelock-tugging and prompt service.

  It was only minutes later then that I was shown into a shabby but comfortable office, lamps and rugs and cushions in the chairs to soften the municipal green distemper and brown paint, and introduced to a uniformed sergeant who rose from behind the desk and held out a hand to greet me.

  ‘Sergeant Simpson, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, sitting down again as I settled myself. ‘What can I do for you? I trust you’ve come to no harm on your visit here, have you?’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant, no. I am quite well. I have a little matter to discuss with you. A matter of protocol, I suppose you would say. A point of procedure.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ said Sergeant Simpson. I smiled at him and had to work not to do more than smile; this was unfortunately true and the red mark around his head where his cap must sit when he was out patrolling the streets of the town only drew attention to it. He smiled back, in on the joke, and I decided I liked him.

  ‘If there were a death …’ I said and his smile snapped off. ‘I don’t know if you’d say a sudden death or a suspicious death, but one where the Fiscal was involved before it was all sorted out and the body returned for burying …’ I drew breath. ‘What I’d like to know is, would the matter pass through the hands of the police on its way?’

  ‘Which case is this you’re referring to, madam?’ said Sergeant Simpson, seeing through my ruse right away. He even drew out a small notebook and snapped it open on itself with a terrific crack of its India-rubber band.

  ‘In general,’ I persisted.

  He waited.

  ‘Mrs Addie,’ I said, relenting. ‘She died at the Hydro a month ago. On the ninth of September. A local doctor signed the death certificate, but it went across the Fiscal’s desk and her family are concerned. They are acquaintances of mine and since I was on my way here I promised them I’d have a quiet word.’

  Again, he regarded me in silence. Then he closed his little book with a more minor snap and gave me a smile of deep avuncularity – I could not begin to imagine what was coming.

  ‘Are you a detective?’ he said.

  ‘Gosh, no,’ I replied before I even considered the fact that I was lying to the police, which is surely against the law. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘My mistake,’ said Simpson. ‘It was just the very orderly manner in which you put your points across, Mrs Gilver. You struck me that way.’

  If I had planned to keep lying my plan was undone by the beaming blush of pleasure which spread across my face. Sergeant Simpson laughed out loud to see it.

  ‘Sorry if I misled you just then,’ I said.

  ‘When you answered no to a straight question when the true answer was yes?’ he asked and waved a magnanimous hand. ‘We policemen are not accustomed to getting our final answer first time out, Mrs Gilver. I daresay it’s the same for you.’

  I was reeling. I had encountered scorn, hostility and amusement from policemen who heard of my calling and sergeants were always the worst of all. My beloved Inspector Hutchinson, it was true, had grudgingly thawed towards Alec and me over the course of the case we had shared, but this instant chumminess was something else again.

  ‘I am very grateful to find such … collegiate spirit in a policeman, Sergeant Simpson,’ I said. ‘So. Yes. Mrs Addie of Edinburgh died at the Hydro. Heart failure. Dr Ramsay here in town signed the cert., the Fiscal stamped it or whatever the Fiscal does—’

  ‘Enters the record,’ supplied Simpson.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘The Fiscal entered the record, but the family are troubled. They say she had no history of heart trouble. Said she was as strong as an ox, in fact.’

  ‘Well-chosen phrase,’ said Sergeant Simpson. ‘I saw the lady in question, you know. She was … large-ish.’

  ‘You saw her? About the town?’

  ‘Post-mortem,’ he said. ‘I saw her after her death. We were called in. The lady was away from home and the Hydro – never mind all the white sheets and machines – it’s not a hospital. If someone dies away from home or a hospital, we try to look in, you know. Just to see that everything’s shipshape.’

  He might have been a schoolmaster telling of how he likes to look in on prep to check that boys aren’t whispering.

  ‘Who rang you?’ I asked.

  ‘Straight to the heart of the thing,’ he said. ‘You are good at your job, Mrs Gilver.’ I might have blushed a little again. ‘Yes, it was Dr Laidlaw who rang us up. Shocked to her core, she was, but did the proper thing. She even insisted – well, this was her brother as it happens – they both insisted that Dr Ramsay be called. He came along – he left a party and came right along in his evening suit, there within minutes, late as it was, and he’d no need to – and he examined the body and he didn’t hesitate. Heart failure, as you say.’

  ‘And the Fiscal didn’t order a full post-mortem exam?’ I said.

  ‘He saw no need,’ said the sergeant. ‘It was a very clear case and properly handled. More than properly, really. Dr Laidlaw could have signed her own name to the thing and never got Dr Ramsay involved at all.’

  The good sergeant clearly did not share my view of that particular item of fancy footwork. I paused a moment wondering how best to introduce the point to our little chat. It was sure to reduce the warmth at least a bit. When Sergeant Simpson cleared his throat and resumed speaking, however, I realised that I had paused long enough to make a silence, one which he was moved to fill.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear the family are troubled,’ he said a
nd cleared his throat again. ‘We had hoped to spare them any pain. Along the lines of what you don’t know can’t hurt you.’ My amazement must have showed on my face. ‘Collegiate spirit, you said, wasn’t it, Mrs Gilver?’ He was teasing me, but very gently. ‘In that case between the doctor, the Fiscal and me.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I answered. ‘I am sure your words appear more mysterious than they really are, Sergeant Simpson, but I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.’

  ‘We’d all like to think that our loved ones just slip away in their sleep, don’t you agree, Mrs Gilver?’ he said. ‘Or never knew what hit them. That’s another good one. Every boy that didn’t come home from the war, eh?’ There was a lengthy pause. His gaze slipped away from my face and came to rest on the desktop. ‘Instantaneous death, they always said. Never knew what hit him.’

  ‘I am very sorry, Sergeant Simpson,’ I said, for that is all there ever is to say.

  ‘It can’t possibly be true every time, can it?’ He looked up again. ‘But I was grateful for it and I try when I can to carry it on.’

  ‘And so what is the truth?’ I asked. ‘The whole story?’

  ‘She had a shock,’ Simpson said. ‘A very nasty one. And she didn’t die right away. She collapsed. They found her. Dr Laidlaw found her. Got her into her bed, tried to bring her round. Did everything she could but the poor woman’s heart gave out in the end. And so it was. Heart failure.’

  ‘What sort of a shock?’

  ‘A fright,’ said the sergeant. ‘Did you know you can die of fright?’

  ‘I know a loud noise is a danger to a man with heart troubles,’ I said. ‘I had heard so. But again there was no history of heart troubles at all.’

  ‘Not a loud noise,’ he said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ He took a moment to rearrange some of the small items on his already tidy desk, pushing the pens in the stand until they were all upright, picking up a couple of auditor’s tags and dropping them into a little tray. ‘Now, tell me, Mrs Gilver,’ he went on at last, ‘you’re not the sort to go upsetting the family for nothing, are you? You seem a lovely lady. I’m sure you wouldn’t. But tell me straight so’s I know.’