Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘But isn’t it terribly dull?’ I said.

  He smiled at that, a sudden bonny grin that made him look as young as Teddy, and beckoned us around the far end of the well house to where he had set up a little lean-to with an old armchair and a box for a table. There was a spirit lamp and a kettle, just keeping warm. And open on the chair was a volume of – I squinted – Walter Scott.

  ‘Beats workin’,’ he said, still grinning. ‘There’s four bairns in the house. I’m better off out here.’

  ‘Good for you, Mr …?’ I said.

  ‘Milne,’ he supplied.

  ‘And although I’m sorry to hear about Mrs Milne – was she your father’s mother?’ He nodded. ‘At least some good has come of it.’ I gave him another shilling, Alec gave a folded note of a denomination I could not see and we made our way back to the motorcar.

  ‘One down, two to go,’ I said, throwing it into reversing gear. ‘Golly, I never thought about turning when I drove up here.’ Bunty, who is always delighted when I am reversing, stuck her snout into the crook of my neck and poured out her love for me, in deep groans.

  ‘Of course, these settled places don’t refer to a married woman by her married name,’ Alec said. ‘Yellow Mary Milne could be Mary Patterson, as easy as anything.’

  ‘Yes, but if she died at Christmas-time then the mediums would hardly be gathering for an anniversary in October, would they? One down. Quite a remarkable young man, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ said Alec. Then he laughed. ‘Except that he’s reading Walter Scott and no one’s making him,’ he said. ‘I’d rather brave the house and the four bairns. Fearful stuff. Right, then, Dandy. Where is the Devil’s Beef Tub?’

  I had reached a gate and I swung back into it thankfully, emerging to drive the rest of the way facing forward. I wiped my neck with my handkerchief, told myself to remember not to dab my mouth with it, for no matter what Hugh says I am not silly when it comes to dogs and their germs.

  ‘Back through the town and out to the north past the Hydro,’ I said. ‘Keep going until you see the unquiet ghosts of a dozen murderous Reivers. Pity there won’t be a tub-keeper to tell us if they did for anyone in the last month or so.’

  10

  Long before we arrived at the Beef Tub, however, we had both decided it was out of the question. The librarian’s map had put it just beyond the northern edge of the town but we trundled along five miles or so, forging into the crease in the hills which would eventually become that blind, deep valley, and we knew there was no way a large lady of sixty who lived in a villa in the city could possibly have come so far.

  ‘And she made her journey down here on a train,’ I said, ‘so she can’t have driven. If she even knows how to. If she had hired a taxi or a dogcart then the driver would have been with her when she collapsed and we’d know it … There’s no way she could have got here.’

  ‘I agree,’ Alec said. ‘My God, what a dreary spot. It must get no sun at all from October to May.’

  The track was worse with each yard, in fact was now more or less a rocky river bed, and I feared for the underside of my dear little Cowley. Nevertheless I kept driving. Not that Alec was wrong; great lumpen hills bare of trees, bare of gorse, bare even of bracken as far as I could tell, were closing in on us from both sides and all of the light had long disappeared behind the highest of them. As we took a turn to the west the valley narrowed yet further, and I could see what a wonderful spot it must have been for the Reivers, as snug as a key in a keyhole, hiding here.

  ‘I’ll turn at the end,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we can ask at the last farm or cottage, just to make sure.’

  ‘Ask what?’ said Alec.

  ‘Well, you might not like it,’ I said. ‘What I wanted to ask is if they heard a motorcar. Does Dr Laidlaw have a motorcar?’

  ‘I don’t know why you keep maligning my impartiality this way,’ Alec said. ‘Why wouldn’t I like it? And I’ve no idea, by the way.’

  ‘Only, I’m still bothered by the story that she “found” Mrs Addie. What if they saw the ghost together – Dr Laidlaw was very odd to me when I brought up the subject, you know – and what if she brought her back again to look for the lost bag?’

  ‘She would have returned the next day and found it,’ Alec said. ‘And sent it to the Addies.’ I felt myself deflate a bit.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to ask even if we find someone of whom to ask it. Ah, at last.’ Up ahead there was a farmhouse and some buildings, surely the last steading. I reversed into the yard gateway and looked for a place to turn and suddenly it seemed that every door in the place had opened. A woman stood in one wiping her hands on a cloth. An old man came to the large doors of the byre and started towards us, a young man emerged from a shed halfway up the hill behind the steading and numerous children appeared from behind walls and under hedges. Even a sheepdog planted its front paws on the bars of a gate and stared.

  ‘No chance of drivers-by not being noticed here,’ I said. ‘I give in. Whatever ghost Mrs Addie saw it wasn’t one of the Johnstone Reivers.’

  ‘Let’s find a spot with a blink of sunshine and start in on that pie,’ Alec said. I heard again the echo of his voice, ‘not so bad once the rations started up again’, and bit my lip on the teasing I might have given him only yesterday, then I waved at the advancing farming folk and gave them a toot of my horn as I drove away.

  Our hopes of sunshine – even a blink of it – were folly, but we drew off the road onto a grassy holm just as the valley opened out again and spread the mackintosh squares on a couple of boulders. The grass was nibbled close by sheep, the air was rich with the smell of peat and crushed heather gusting down from the hilltops and a nearby burn chuckled companionably along behind us. In my stout shoes, felt hat, fox fur and driving gloves, and with Bunty settled like a blanket over my feet, it was almost comfortable, but I would not care to have been there any later in the day or when October turned to November either and, although I ventured to remove a glove, I was happy to have a hot beaker of coffee to hold. Alec cut two hearty wedges out of the pigeon pie and handed one to me.

  ‘We should have brought the boys,’ I said. ‘They love eating like savages. They’d never sit in a dining room again if I didn’t make them.’

  ‘You’ll have to get to work on Donald,’ Alec said.

  He was right; we had spared Donald London this last summer, for he was far too callow to enjoy it and far too raw to be any value, but by the coming May he would be nineteen. Still too raw and too callow, of course, but I had been rung up by more than one despairing mother of girls, telling me of the uneven numbers at her daughter’s dance and scolding me for keeping a young man like Donald away.

  ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘it seems ten minutes since Nanny had to check that he’d cleaned his nails and behind his ears before a party. I can’t imagine him bringing back a wife to Benachally. Or perhaps he’ll be another who refuses to rush into things. Like you.’

  ‘Let’s see if he wants to come up the Gallow Hill this afternoon with us to start with,’ Alec said, ignoring me. ‘Teddy too. Four pairs of eyes and all that. We can say you’re looking for something someone dropped this morning and happened to mention to you.’

  ‘He’d never make it,’ I said. ‘Unless this morning’s steam and mustard have had a marked effect on his lungs, anyway.’ I ate a bite of pie and drank some coffee, to be sure to get the tremor out of my voice. ‘So we’re pressing on, are we?’ I continued in a brighter tone.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Alec said. ‘I’ve been thinking that we should have gone straight for the Gallow Hill at the outset actually.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘As I said, Mary Milne could have been Mary Patterson for all we know. But the Johnstone Reivers would be Johnstones, wouldn’t they – so where would a Patterson come in to that?’

  ‘The throats they cut could have been Patterson throats,’ I said.

  ‘But they’d have been men’s throats, wou
ldn’t they? Not women and children and grandmammas. No – a crowd of twenty ghosts all together – a job lot, if you please – must surely be connected to the Gallow Hill. Where else would so many have met their end and hung around haunting?’

  ‘And whatever it was that Mary Patterson repented might well have got her hanged!’ I said. I squeezed my handful of pie a little too hard in my enthusiasm and the crust shattered. Mrs Tilling’s pastry is always very short; delicious, but dangerous to pale clothing. I heaved Bunty off my feet, stood up and wriggled until all the flakes had fallen off my skirt and onto the ground, where she ran them down and consumed them with snapping teeth and much licking.

  ‘I shan’t join you in your dance of joy just yet, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘But if we find the bag, just try and stop me.’

  ‘Come on then. If I don’t move after Mrs Tilling’s pie I get drowsy. Let’s walk it off. We might even see the sun if we’re quick about it.’

  The Gallow Hill was a gentle delight after the stern soaring faces of the Beef Tub fells and if it had been clothed in elms and oaks, and had a few pretty cottages around its base, it might almost have been at home in the Cotswolds. As it was, the cottages were grey and mean-looking and the trees were the spindly larches and lichened beeches which cling onto Scotch hillsides long after they have ceased to have any value in the landscape. Constable himself would have left them out and just painted the sky behind them.

  We left the motorcar tucked safely into the side of the lane where it could come to no harm and Alec lifted the latch of the gate to a path and ushered me through. Immediately we were enveloped in silence, none of the noises of life from the town managing to penetrate the high walls of brambles and dog rose which closed around us, darkening and scenting the air with a sweet dampness. Ahead, the path led straight and only slightly upwards for twenty yards and then the hill rose and the path disappeared in a way that reminded me of yew mazes and of being lost and tear-stained as a tiny child.

  ‘I’m glad I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I said.

  ‘What’s the handbag made of?’ said Alec. He was already looking studiously at the ground on either side.

  ‘Oh, best brown leather, I have no doubt,’ I said. ‘Absolutely invisible in this leaf litter. I suppose we must just hope for a glint off the clasp or something. Or Bunty might sniff it out if there are peppermints.’

  ‘Wouldn’t any dog in the last month have done the same?’ Alec sounded troubled. ‘I suppose we are hoping for rather a lot, expecting it still to be here, aren’t we? Look for signs that Mrs Addie passed along. What size feet would you say?’

  ‘I can never take us seriously when we go all out for snapped twigs and footprints,’ I said. ‘Have we ever found a footprint, Alec dear?’

  He ignored me and so I trained my attention towards the ground at my side of the path and kept walking.

  I held out no great hopes; unless Mrs Addie had thrashed her way through the brambles with a stick, it was hard to see how she could have left the path. On the other hand, her bag, if dropped on the path, could surely not have lain a night there, never mind a month. And it was the same all the way to the top: a winding track, close growth on either side, a few tree roots underneath, a pleasant smell of earth and the odd wink of light where a branch had broken off and left a chink in the canopy. All in all, if one went in for country walks I could see that this was a charming one, but I could not help but feel that our quest was pointless.

  Well, at least it was dry and not too cold and at its end was not a grouse drive and an endless tramp to the next one, but a view, a descent and a cup of tea. We were drawing near the summit now, the beeches and brambles growing sparser and the ground underfoot changing from leaves and dryish mud to blades and then tussocks of grass. At the top we found ourselves in a clearing of sorts, with a view through the treetops to the Hydro chimneys. I made a movement to step forward, but Alec put out an arm to stop me.

  ‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the ground.

  The grass was long and lush and all around it was flattened by footprints. They circled the clearing and criss-crossed it and appeared to converge on a spot towards the faraway end just before the trees began again. I made my way over.

  There was no cairn, no marker of any kind, nothing to say that this was the very place which had given the hill its name. I suppose it was the highest point – at least, looking around, I saw none higher – but if I had had to guess at where the gallows would be, I would have plumped for the middle, not here almost under the lee of the nearest beech.

  ‘Was this the gallows?’ I asked. Alec walked over.

  ‘Seems likely,’ he said. ‘I wonder what all the feet were milling around for? A Sunday school picnic maybe?’ I shrugged. ‘Well, let’s look for the bag, the watch, the lock of hair, the precious letters and the proof that Mrs Addie died here, eh?’

  Within minutes I could be sure that the trampling feet were no Sunday school picnic, for there was not a sweet wrapper, a lemonade bottle nor an apple core anywhere in the undergrowth around the clearing. There was nothing. Even Bunty failed to snuffle up so much as a peanut shell.

  ‘Any luck?’ I called to Alec. He had gone further than me into the woods, to examine a fallen log about ten yards from the edge of the clearing. He ducked down behind it and I made my way towards him. ‘Any luck?’ I repeated, looking over. He was bent double scrutinising the bare brown earth, but as far as I could tell there was nothing to see.

  ‘None,’ he said. ‘I think we’re wasting our time, Dandy.’ He looked around himself. ‘What would she be doing here?’

  ‘If we believe her daughter that she had no time for spooks?’ I said. ‘An assignation? A widow in her sixties would hardly go to the winter gardens to bat her eyes at some man who took her fancy.’

  ‘Or,’ said Alec, taking the baton, ‘perhaps Mrs Addie was interested in nature, or local history, or just wanted some—’

  ‘Fresh air and exercise!’ I said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Alec. ‘But why declaim it that way?’

  ‘It’s Dr Laidlaw’s favourite cure,’ I said. ‘She told me so. Oh, Alec, this is good. If Mrs Addie was sent out – sent as part of her treatment regime – and then she saw a ghost and got her blessed fright and dropped dead, then the doctor who sent her might well not want the family to know!’

  Alec was nodding.

  ‘After all,’ he said, ‘nothing old Dr Laidlaw prescribed ever killed her.’ We beamed at one another for a bit. Eventually, Alec drew breath to continue but caught it again. I turned slightly towards the clearing and saw him do the same. From the way we had come a murmur of voices had arisen, but they were not speaking words. Instead, the sound was of a whispering, rhythmic chant, very quiet but growing louder. I clicked my tongue to Bunty to follow me, stepped over the log, and joined Alec, crouching. My lips were dry, and as I tried to lick them I found that my tongue was too.

  ‘Guess who!’ said Alec. ‘Goodness, it sounds like all of them.’

  ‘All twenty?’ I whispered.

  ‘Are there twenty?’ he whispered back, looking astonished.

  ‘Well, seven already and many more expected,’ I said. ‘Surely you remember.’

  Alec’s eyes danced and, although he kept it in, the laughter bubbled through him.

  ‘Dandy, you goose!’ he said. ‘I meant the mediums. It’s the mediums coming chanting up the hill. You thought it was the ghosts? Really?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, reddening and dipping my head to hide it. ‘I misunderstood you. Now, shush, before we’re heard.’

  We crunched ourselves down even further behind the log, I sending a silent apology to Grant for the fate of my skirt, and waited. The voices grew louder and before too long we caught sight, through the trees, of half a dozen figures, all moving slowly in loops and crosses, passing one another and repassing, gathering – with many feints, but gathering all the same – on the well-trodden spot just at the edge of the trees. In the centre of them all was
Loveday Merrick, his bare head thrown back and his hair streaming down. He was muttering under his breath just like the rest of them and as the crescendo swelled, he lifted his silver-topped cane and banged the tip of it hard against the lowest branch of the beech tree. One of the younger mediums uttered a small shriek and then there was silence except for the rattle and rush of a few beech cobs falling through the boughs and dropping to the ground.

  ‘Do you feel anything, Loveday?’ said a woman’s voice.

  ‘They are not here,’ said the great man. It was a pronouncement of some authority and I could see shoulders slumping and faces falling even from my hiding place yards away.

  He pounded his stick on the ground.

  ‘But they are close!’ A little thrill passed through the group, made up of whispers and darting movements, as the mediums clutched one another. ‘They are all together in a warm place very near here.’

  ‘All of them, Loveday?’ asked a man. It might have been one of the tall hats with satin piping. ‘Can you feel all of them?’

  Mr Merrick drew in an enormous breath, all but snorting, and closed his eyes. He began to sway gently. ‘Mary and Lizzie and Peggy are here,’ he said. ‘And the dear old grandmother and the poor blind child. Joseph the Miller is here.’ The crowd thrilled to hear it. ‘Abigail Simpson, Ann Dougal, Marjorie Docherty too.’

  ‘What about Old Donald?’ That was Mrs Molyneaux. ‘Is he with them? If we could answer that question, Loveday …’

  ‘There is an old man,’ said Mr Merrick. He was swaying so far from side to side that the mediums nearest him began to ready themselves to catch him if he fell. ‘A Mr Higgins and his Christian name begins with the letter D. Is it Donald? Donald Higgins? Is that you?’ He was rocking front to back now too. ‘I cannot hear him. Donald Higgins! Come to me! You are with friends. You are safe here. Is it— Is it—’