Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  I laughed lightly to cover the awkwardness.

  ‘Not at all. Think nothing of it. Am I ill then? Is that what caused the strange experience I just had?’ She lifted one of my hands to take my pulse, only realising when she lifted her own arm that she was not wearing a watch. She looked instead at the clock sitting in the middle of the jumble of objects on the crowded chimneypiece. It seemed more likely to topple than ever today, from the pressure of the bills stuffed in behind.

  While the doctor was counting, I spoke again.

  ‘That treatment room which leads off from the spray baths?’ I said. I felt the pinch of her suddenly tightening her grip on my wrist, but it only lasted a moment and then she continued calmly counting. ‘What’s in there?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. She let my hand drop and went back to sit behind her desk, even going so far as to rearrange some papers in front of her as though all her reading and writing could defend her against me. ‘Just an unused room. It was never very convenient, what with the chance of someone slipping on the wet floor as she arrived or departed.’

  ‘Did someone slip?’ I said. ‘Did someone fall?’

  ‘No,’ said Dr Laidlaw. A blot of colour was beginning to stain her neck. ‘Why would you think so?’

  ‘Well, now,’ I said. ‘I don’t say that I believe it, but I can’t account for it exactly. The fact is, I think I might just have seen a ghost there.’

  Dr Laidlaw froze and for a long empty moment there was silence between us, then she stood, quite roughly pushing her chair back out of the way, and walked over to the window. She could not see anything through that dingy lace curtain, surely, but still she stayed there facing away from me, her shoulders rising and falling as she fought to bring her breath back under control.

  ‘I know how it sounds,’ I said. ‘Too silly for words, but there it is. I saw something which might have been wisps of steam, coming from the door. Not from under it or from the keyhole, but just as though the steam were passing right through the glass and wood.’

  Dr Laidlaw turned to face me again at last.

  ‘Steam,’ she said, with a great rush of breath released so that almost she was laughing.

  ‘At first I thought so,’ I said. ‘It formed … a shape.’

  ‘As steam will,’ said Dr Laidlaw, nodding.

  ‘And clouds and inkblots, oh absolutely,’ I agreed. ‘But the thing is, the shape was quite distinctly a woman.’

  ‘It may well have looked like one.’

  ‘And it spoke to me.’

  Still nodding, she came back and took her seat behind the desk, smoothing her skirt and once again touching the locket at her throat.

  ‘You were in the plunging pool?’ she said.

  ‘On my way in.’

  ‘You had been in the hot room?’

  ‘The steam room.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, sounding almost relieved.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ I agreed again. ‘I might have been swooning.’

  ‘It sounds that way.’ She was calm again now. She went as far as to sit back in her chair and fold her hands in her lap. ‘Perhaps you should move from the warm room to the sprays,’ she said. ‘I love the cold pool – always have done: it’s quite my favourite part of the Hydro – but the sprays are much less taxing.’

  ‘I suppose they would be,’ I said. ‘Shall I tell you what she said?’

  Dr Laidlaw inclined her head and smiled patiently.

  ‘Please do. I’m very interested in the mind, Mrs Gilver. In the things it tells us. What words did your mind put into the mouth of this wraith?’

  ‘What a wonderful word,’ I said. ‘Although she was hardly wraith-like. Very considerable in outline, actually.’ I noted a pucker at her brows as she heard this. ‘And what this ample wraith said to me was that she had a message for her son and daughter.’ Dr Laidlaw drew breath to speak and then stopped, her eyes darting. ‘She also said that she was cold and asked where her clothes were. Isn’t that a curious thing?’

  ‘Her clothes?’ It was a ragged whisper.

  ‘Yes, she was naked. Or at least she might have had a shift on, it’s hard to say.’

  Dr Laidlaw was shaking her head, just a little, and very fast.

  ‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘I give you my word,’ I told her, making myself look affronted. ‘Why on earth would it be impossible for my mind to put those words in the mouth I was imagining? The message for her daughter and son sounds like standard seance fare – we used to have them at school you know: great fun, but the mistresses were very down on it always – and as for saying she was cold and wanted her clothes? Well, I was halfway into a bath of ice-water and wearing nothing myself. No, Dr Laidlaw, you have quite set my worries aside. I shall eschew the hot room and the steam room from now on and I shan’t think of it again.’ I gazed at her out of innocent eyes. She was still struggling, breathing hard and rather wobbly about the mouth, but she managed a nod and a bit of a smile.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m glad I could help.’

  ‘And I’m sorry if I upset you,’ I said. ‘I know that room is a treasured place for you.’

  ‘Treasured?’ she said faintly.

  ‘Regina mentioned it,’ I said, trying to sound airy. ‘That you go there to mourn your father. Was it his study? Surely not, opening off the ladies’ sprays that way.’

  ‘To mourn my father?’ Dr Laidlaw sounded thunderstruck.

  ‘Actually,’ I said, nodding as though the thought were only then occurring to me, ‘Regina said merely that you go there to weep. I naturally assumed … I mean, what else would you be weeping for?’

  I loathed myself for this and was determined to scold myself later, but it was certainly working. Dr Laidlaw was quite undone, slumped back in her chair, jaw fallen, eyes wide.

  ‘I can’t imagine what Regina meant by saying such a thing. I shall have to—’

  ‘Oh no, please don’t!’ I said. ‘Perhaps I misheard or misunderstood.’

  ‘Yes.’ She seized the lifeline.

  ‘As you say, it was all in my imagination, no doubt.’ I summoned my very airiest, breeziest voice. ‘It must be coincidence the way it’s reminding everyone of Mrs Addie.’

  She was, quite simply, turned to stone. I loathed myself even more, but only with a very small part of my attention. With the rest of it, I was watching her. Quite soon the little head-shaking motion began again and her lips started moving. She might have been muttering impossible, impossible as before, but this time it was too low for me to catch it. When she finally cleared her throat and spoke up, she said exactly what I had been expecting her to.

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘Regina and Mrs Cronin,’ I said. ‘But you mustn’t think they’ve been gossiping. You have a tremendously loyal staff here, Dr Laidlaw. The name just popped out unbidden when I described what I’d heard and seen, you know. It couldn’t have been helped.’

  I left her then, stricken and stranded amongst her dusty papers, and I had to harden my heart to do so. Indeed, glancing back from the door, I almost crumbled. She looked so very young, sitting round-shouldered, with her hands between her knees, staring down at the desktop. Could I really abandon a child who looked that way? More to the point, could I really pass up the chance further to question a woman who looked so utterly defeated? Surely she would succumb and tell me all sorts of things that I needed to know.

  After a long pause, with my hand on the door and my better self tussling with the rest of me, I decided to rest on my laurels awhile. Better to leave her stewing and have her dreading my return than to push her too far right now and have her turn oyster on me.

  ‘Goodbye, Dr Laidlaw,’ I said. She did not answer; I do not suppose she even heard me.

  Alec was on the terrace, as arranged. So was Hugh, but my wifely duties were discharged with a greeting, the news that he had had no post delivered at Auchenlea, and an undertaking to join him for luncheon.

  ‘I
might just slip along and have a word with Alec then,’ I said. ‘Since you are reading and he is not.’ Hugh craned forward in his deckchair, spotted Alec and waved his hat.

  ‘Are you up to anything that should concern me, Dandy?’ he said. I thought about the plumbers at Gilverton, the dead Hydro guest and the ghost stories I had been telling and shook my head no.

  ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Are you?’ Hugh put on his face a look of such injured innocence that I had to bite my cheeks not to laugh.

  ‘I?’ he said. ‘Of course not.’ In perfect marital harmony, then, each with our secrets, we parted.

  There was an empty deckchair next to Alec’s, by dint of his having put his hat and a folded newspaper upon it and of his smoking his pipe like a rank beginner so that plumes of blue fugged the air for a yard around him. I waved and coughed and sank down into the cushions.

  ‘Right then,’ I said. ‘Gosh, this is very comfy. Dr Laidlaw is reduced to a jelly. I was marvellous, even if I do say so. But I’ve decided to play a long game and leave her to get even more anxious before I give the screws another turn.’

  Alec turned and regarded me with rather a stony look on his face.

  ‘You sound more callous every case we get, Dandy,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine the woman I met eight years ago reporting with such relish that she’d laid another low.’

  ‘Dear, dear,’ I said. ‘What’s got into you? If I wanted to be reproached about how far short I fall from “the woman he met” I’d have stayed up the other end with Hugh.’

  ‘I apologise,’ said Alec. ‘What reduced her?’

  ‘Only what we agreed,’ I said. ‘One mention of Mrs Addie’s ghost and she was terrified.’

  ‘A patient who died?’ Alec said. ‘I don’t doubt she was. And ghosts? Really, Dandy, who wouldn’t be?’

  We sat quietly for a while. I looked out over the view when the clouds were across the sun and shut my eyes against the glare when it shone, enjoying the warmth on my face, then I thought I had better start talking again before I slipped into a doze.

  ‘Anyway,’ I began. ‘If Mrs Addie died outsi—’ but Alec had started talking too and was more determined to get to the end.

  ‘She’s having a very difficult time of it, you know,’ he said. ‘Typical story. A daughter and a son. The son’s a piece of fluff and the daughter’s a born scholar, but the father can’t drag himself into the modern age and see it so.’

  ‘She got to medical school, didn’t she?’ I said. ‘Gosh, when I think of my sister and me …’

  ‘But it was the will, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘Her father’s will. He had to leave her the practice – one must leave a medical practice to a doctor – but Tot Laidlaw owns the lion’s share of the building and grounds. A controlling interest.’

  ‘Again, I’d say her father was perfectly fair. She got the practice and Tot got extra bricks and mortar instead. Why is she complaining?’

  ‘She’s not. She’s as sweet-tempered a woman as I’ve ever met. And at least he can’t just sell it out from under her. Much as he might want to.’

  ‘No? Well, again that’s a pretty decent arrangement, I’d say.’ Alec looked unconvinced and I regarded him closely, wondering from where all this concern for the good doctor was coming. ‘Did she just tell you all of this?’ I said, not liking to think that he had been taken in by some tale of woe.

  ‘Glad of someone to talk to,’ Alec said.

  ‘And I suppose she wants to keep it going and he wants to run it down? And she can’t afford to buy him out?’

  ‘Well, she certainly can’t afford to buy it,’ Alec said. He waved an arm at the terrace, the croquet lawn and the tennis courts beyond. ‘I mean, look at it, even if the hotel itself is a bit of a pile. But as to who wants what, it’s hard to say. It’s Tot who’s bending over backwards to keep it ticking over.’

  ‘Up to and including mm-mm.’ I hummed through the last bit since a squeakingly respectable family of mother, father and grown-up daughter were strolling by.

  ‘I think he’s pretty well using Dorothea as a front,’ Alec said.

  ‘Like a speak-easy. What a man he must be – his own sister!’

  ‘And she won’t hear a word agai—’ Alec began and then stopped and nudged me. ‘Look!’ he hissed.

  I turned to where he was nodding. A perfect parade of individuals was making its stately way along the terrace. The gooseberry-eyed girl was there, the crow-hatted Mrs Molyneaux, our lady of the lace mittens, and many more; and at the centre and slightly in front, the Great Personage. If I had seen him in the street I should have taken him for an actor or perhaps a theatrical impresario, and if anyone had suggested a spirit medium could achieve such grandeur and such a look of prosperity I should have wondered what the world was coming to. He wore a homburg hat as glossy as an otter and an astrakhan coat which reached to his ankles with lapels like those of Beau Brummell. His cane was ebony and had a silver knob of some complicated design, and his tie was yellow satin. As he paced along he surveyed the terrace, the grounds and the sitting guests like a Persian king come among his subjects and greatly pleased by them. It was impossible not to watch, and almost impossible not to giggle.

  ‘What have you—’ I waited as the procession passed by. ‘What have you managed to find out about him?’

  ‘Nothing except his name,’ whispered Alec. ‘I insinuated myself into a group of them at breakfast and asked it. But I rather got the impression they thought if I didn’t know I wasn’t worth telling.’

  ‘And?’ I whispered back. ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Loveday Merrick.’

  ‘If it says that on his birth certificate I’ll give you ten sovereigns,’ I said. ‘Did you get any clues at breakfast as to what he’s here for? What any of them are?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Alec said. ‘Ghosts, obviously. But most certainly not the Moffat Ram because I floated that and got looks of pity.’

  ‘I thought not. It’s one of the outlying ghosts, for sure, not a nice tidy one on a cobbled street in town.’

  ‘One thing one of them did say,’ Alec went on. ‘One of the young ones – such a waste of a pretty little thing who could get a job in a hat shop if she clicked her fingers—’

  ‘Yes, all right, all right,’ I said. ‘I understand perfectly. A pretty little thing liked the look of you and dropped hints by way of flirting. You’re making conquests all around.’

  ‘Yes, well, never mind all that, but she did say,’ Alec resumed, ‘that they are trying to calculate an anniversary.’

  ‘An anniversary of what, I wonder. The death of Yellow Mary? Some black day amongst the Johnstone devils? I wonder when they stopped the hangings at Gallow Hill. Hugh would know.’

  ‘Well, a good while ago,’ said Alec. ‘Surely. Even here. Public hangings had been held decently in town squares in Dorset for years before they finally stopped them.’ It is a curious thing, but whereas normally I am the greatest champion of Northamptonshire in particular and England in general, whenever Alec starts on the wonders of Dorset and the sins of Perthshire, I feel my hackles start to rise. It is most disconcerting to think that I am growing a layer of Scotch inside me and so I have never breathed a word of it to him and certainly not to Hugh who would be enchanted. Alec was speaking again.

  ‘Who else have I conquered?’ he said.

  ‘Good Lord, the doctor!’ I said. ‘Didn’t you try to? Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Really?’ he said and then he rose and went to tap out his pipe into the earth around a potted laurel. ‘Right then, Dan,’ he said upon returning. ‘Never mind conquests and for heaven’s sake never mind ghosts for a while. What about Mrs Addie? How did the poor woman die?’

  ‘A heart attack, following a fright, following an imagined sighting of a ghost on a country walk. Perfectly simple.’

  ‘Only the Laidlaws didn’t tell the police about the walk, the police didn’t tell the family about the fright and no one seems to have told Dr Ramsay about the ghost.’<
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  ‘I understand why anyone with compassion would edit out the ghost and the fright,’ I said. ‘But I don’t at all understand why the same people – the Laidlaws, this is – who drafted in a second doctor to put some distance between themselves and the death, also – at the same time – hid the real distance. She wasn’t here. It was nothing to do with them since she didn’t die in the Hydro. Or at least didn’t collapse here. It’s all very puzzling, I must say.’

  ‘Well, what about this?’ Alec said. He was beginning to smoke in that committed way which heralds clear thoughts, and I was ready to welcome them. ‘The Hydro is struggling. The Laidlaws are getting desperate. A patient dies, so Tot – it must be Tot – turns the death to account in the cleverest way. The Haunted Hydro, you know. So they don’t want any of the mediums to know that she wasn’t here at the Haunted Hydro when she got the fright that killed her. But if she dropped her bag and went back for it and if we find it then we’ll have proved that she was out and about and they’ll have to drop all the ghost stories and tell the truth to the Addies.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s Tot?’ I said. ‘He seemed rather horrified by the mediums as far as I could see.’

  ‘All part of the act,’ Alec said.

  ‘And anyway, it seems a bit unlikely. A patient dying is far more likely to harm the Hydro with the general public than give it a leg up. How many mediums can there possibly be?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Alec with a defeated sigh. ‘It would harm the place less if she died of a heart attack out in the open air miles away.’

  ‘Fresh air,’ I said.

  ‘Same thing. Don’t quibble.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to remember something …’

  ‘I say!’ Alec said, very loudly. ‘I’ve just thought of this. Someone dropping dead on a lonely hillside has a post-mortem and a full inquiry, doesn’t she? So perhaps saying she died here when she didn’t is their way of avoiding both. That would make the lie a great big black one and only worthwhile if it was covering something blacker. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly does,’ I said. ‘I wish you hadn’t started yelling it at me when I was trying to remember a crucial detail, though.’