Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  Alec shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t have thought so,’ he replied. ‘It was one old lady and the place is filled to the rafters with guests. No one else has died recently.’

  It was a perfect example of the stiff upper lip and Hugh met it with its cousin, the soaring understatement.

  ‘Ticklish about the boys, mind you,’ he said. ‘But a little old lady …’

  ‘She was rather a large old lady, actually,’ I said.

  ‘We could always tell them,’ said Alec. ‘Put them on their guard.’ I was shaking my head before he had finished speaking.

  ‘They’d be out in the shrubbery bent double with magnifying glasses and we’d be completely undone,’ I said. ‘I really do think they should go.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Hugh said. ‘Shall we send Mrs Tilling back with them? Shall you eat here with me?’

  ‘Not home to Gilverton,’ I said. I was beginning to be aware of a throbbing at my temples. ‘I meant they could stay at Auchenlea.’

  ‘I’m for them carrying on with the treatments,’ said Hugh. ‘Let’s tell them to be on their guard – perhaps say that there’s been a suspicious stranger lurking about. But I’m for staying on a while anyway.’

  ‘Oh, Hugh, how can you?’ I said, losing all patience. ‘I know exactly why you’re “for staying”. I know all about Tot Laidlaw’s grubby little enterprise. But how you can throw your own sons to—’ I was on thin ice there and so I regrouped. ‘How can they be on their guard if they’re lying on tables covered with mustard wraps or with electric I don’t-know-whats attached to their arms and legs?’

  ‘Nothing grubby about it,’ Hugh said, showing me which of my barbs had wounded him. ‘Rather disappointingly respectable, in fact. The Moffat bourgeoisie come out to play. Isn’t that right, Osborne?’

  ‘We don’t get shackled to the couches, Dandy,’ Alec said, hurrying past any hint that he had joined Hugh in the casino. ‘And there is nothing electric attached to one. Just lamps shining down. Anyone could get up and hop it if he felt he wanted to.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re being so cavalier,’ I said to Hugh. ‘But since you are … I will allow them to stay as long as they stay together and don’t go into any little treatment rooms on their own. They can play golf and croquet and billiards and rest on the terrace.’

  ‘I can’t allow you to suspend the treatments, Dandy,’ Hugh said, meeting my glare with that unconcerned look of his. ‘Look at Donald! Just look at him and then tell me his baths aren’t helping him.’ He tapped his pocket where the brochure, now looking very well thumbed, was still folded. ‘I’m thinking of going in for a few more. I feel better all the time.’

  For two pins I would have told him the whole story, of Dr Laidlaw’s swooping in to use the spoils of her father’s beloved Hydro for her own cold scientific ends, of her cynical division of hopeful invalids into groups of guinea pigs and controls and of how she only cared about The Lancet and was not worthy of the name of doctor at all. For two pins I would but I had forgotten what it was called – that resort on the Mediterranean sea – and so I sat silently fuming instead and let him laugh at me.

  Matters were not improved by the arrival in the drawing room at that moment not just of Tot Laidlaw coming out like a famous chef from his kitchen after pudding and walking amongst the tables gathering laurels, but today of his sister too, padding along just behind him like a hand maiden and peering intently at all the faces of the guests for all the world as though she were a proper selfless doctor with the Hippocratic oath on her lips and a black bag in her hand. If it had been rock buns instead of meringues that teatime, I might well have shied one at each of them.

  So it was with no great surge of welcome that I agreed they could join us. Several of the other tea-takers scattered around the room looked with envy as dear Dr Laidlaw and good old Tot sat down with Hugh, Alec and me. I found myself thinking, briefly, that they were welcome to them, before reminding myself that this pair were at the very heart of the puzzle of the Hydro and I should be glad of the chance to study them at close quarters. I began with Tot, ready to whisk my eyes away if he caught me looking, but to my surprise he did not. He nodded at Alec and Hugh, gave his sister a glare and ignored me completely. I thought, besides, that there was something rather brittle about his air of jollity today, his winks less languid than usual, his preening more like fidgets than before.

  ‘So,’ he said as he settled down, with much plucking at his trousers and shirt cuffs. He was as dapper as ever in his too-light flannels, cut to flatter a figure in which, the more I saw it, the more I could trace the marks of dissolute living. He was certainly wearing worse than his sister, although I thought he could easily be younger than her. She had the pale cheeks and dark eyes of a dedicated scholar but also the smooth saintly look which they sometimes develop, untouched by the trials of husband, home, servants and children. That was it, I thought, looking at her. Even though thirty if a day and perhaps a good deal more, she looked a girl still. She looked unmarried. It is a look one is well accustomed to these days, when there are still so many of what I cannot bring myself to call ‘surplus women’.

  ‘Wonderful fire drill,’ Tot was saying. ‘Fastest yet. Of course, it helps when not absolutely everyone is upstairs in bed, eh?’ He jerked his elbow at Hugh although he was too far away actually to nudge him. Of course! The middle-of-the-night fire drills would not discommode Tot’s bright young things, who would still be at the tables and only needed to step outside with their drinks in their hands. I wondered what Dr Laidlaw’s patients in their pyjamas made of it all. ‘I’m discounting you, Dottie,’ he said, giving his sister a penetrating look.

  Dr Laidlaw winced but then managed a smile. Alec recrossed his legs and regarded Laidlaw coldly.

  ‘My sister, Mrs Gilver,’ Tot went on, turning to me at last. He was grinning his wide grin but I was almost sure I could see a sheen of sweat on his high brow. ‘Can you believe she just worked right through the clanging? I had to go and fetch her. If that had been a real fire, Dot, we would both have been in trouble.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Thomas,’ she said. ‘I’ve apologised already. I had cotton wool in my ears.’

  ‘Is your study noisy?’ Alec asked, with an air of pitching in. ‘It’s nowhere near— I mean, there’s no source of any noise, surely? Foxes? Owls? I haven’t heard them.’

  ‘It helps me concentrate,’ she said. ‘When I’m writing. It gives me the sense of a cocoon, with everything shut out, you know.’

  ‘Oh, yes, we know,’ Tot said. He spoke lightly but from the way his sister shrank from his words he might have been grinding his teeth and glowering at her. ‘We know all about your tremendous feats of concentration.’ He turned again to take us all in. ‘Absent-minded professor. Like our father. Not me! I’m the black sheep that was never going to come to any good, isn’t that right, Dottie?’

  I turned a little in my chair and looked hard at Hugh. How could he stand this odious person? How could he bear him, airing his family’s cruel little sayings that way? I was gratified to see Hugh assume the distant look he affects when trying simply to pretend that what is passing before him is not.

  ‘Still,’ Tot said. ‘It’s all good fun and what else is life for, eh?’

  No one managed to summon a reply and so he spoke again.

  ‘Everyone settled? No thoughts of leaving? I’d be sorry to see you take off, old man. And if that business in the steam room is all squared away for your good lady …?’

  In other words, I thought, Hugh was having his usual run of luck in the casino and Tot didn’t want my encounter with a ghost to cause him to cash his chips before the luck turned and the casino could win it all back again. I caught Alec’s eye and a thought passed between us. Had it been Tot who planted the toffees and told Mrs Cronin to make sure we saw them?

  ‘How are your sons, Mrs Gilver?’ said Dr Laidlaw, rather blurting it out to change the subject.

  ‘I’m very glad you asked,’ I said. I pointed
over to where Donald and Teddy were lounging on the window seat. ‘Their posture is not what one would hope for, but they seem markedly improved. Thank you.’ I took a deep breath and plunged on before my nerve failed me. I had only just remembered an odd little moment Dr Laidlaw and I had shared that very first day and I wondered if alluding to it would shake something loose that might be useful. ‘Knowing that you – their doctor – are taking a close interest in their convalescence is most reassuring. We mothers, as I’m sure you know, are rather fierce on the subject of harm coming to our young. I think that almost more than any treatments they might undergo or not undergo it’s wonderful to think that they are in safe and caring hands and will not come to any harm here.’

  Half of my audience shifted uncomfortably. Hugh was unsettled by this sickly display of sentiment as he would be by any. Alec was trying not to laugh; he knew exactly what the act had cost my dignity. I carried on regardless, for it was the other half I had in my sights and thus far I had only taken aim.

  ‘I blame my own mother, of course,’ I said. ‘And my nanny too. But I’m sure you won’t mind me asking.’ I simpered a little here, or tried to, and dared not look at Alec or Hugh. ‘I suppose you do drain and clean the plunging pool regularly, don’t you? You didn’t quite answer when I asked before, Dr Laidlaw, but surely you do.’

  And then I watched very closely while trying to appear not to. Dr Laidlaw was doing her scared rabbit routine again, her eyes seeming to take up half her face. Tot Laidlaw, though, was far more interesting. The geniality was gone, the smirk, the crinkling at the eyes, every last twinkle – quite gone. And he was sweating, and none too lightly either; droplets gathering into rivulets and coursing down his brow. For the first time I saw that there was more than just the family nose to show that his sister and he were sprung from the same source. With his face pale and his eyes suddenly dark, and with that look of dismay spreading over him like a stain, he might have been her twin. It took him a full minute to shake himself back to life and say something.

  ‘Why, my dear Mrs Gilver, I hardly know what to say. I’m almost flattered, it’s almost a compliment. We’ve really made you so comfortable with all of this’ – he broke off and waved around at the drawing room – ‘that you’ve forgotten what Laidlaw’s is? This Hydropathic Establishment is a hospital, dear lady. A hospital, not a hotel. I could show you the licences and other papers to prove it to you. And cleanliness and hygiene are watchwords here. So fret not, my dear lady, fret not at all.’

  ‘So when was it last cleaned?’ said Alec, cutting through all the soft soap.

  ‘As recently as a month ago,’ Tot Laidlaw said. He seemed to believe his answer scored a point for him, but Alec and I knew better.

  Tot made an excuse shortly afterwards, rose, bowed and walked off, managing to get the swagger back into his stride on his way down the room so that by the time he reached the end of it and passed out into the hall he was quite his old self again.

  ‘I must be running along too,’ said Dr Laidlaw. ‘I have some work to do.’

  ‘Did that pretty child give you the bundle of clothes, Dr Laidlaw?’ I said. ‘From Mrs Cronin, via me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Laidlaw miserably. ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘Rather astonishing, eh?’ I said. ‘What a coincidence!’

  ‘A coincidence?’ she said. ‘You don’t think then that it … wraps things up?’

  ‘I suppose if one believed in such things as ghosts one might say she can rest in peace now,’ I said. ‘But I’m not much of a one for hocus-pocus. Mumbo-jumbo, call it what you like. Are you?’

  The doctor muttered something incomprehensible under her breath and not hiding her thankfulness even a bit she hurried away.

  ‘Well,’ said Hugh. ‘If that’s a typical example of the kinds of scenes I’m missing by staying out of your game, Osborne, I can’t say I’m sorry.’ I rolled my eyes but left Alec to navigate this blatant attempt to sneer.

  ‘Oh, you toughen up over time,’ Alec said, masterfully. ‘So, Dandy, you were supposed to think the spirit of Mrs Addie wanted her clothes back, got them, and all lived happily ever after.’

  ‘Or mouldered quietly in the grave. Exactly,’ I said. ‘Unfortunately she won’t be allowed to. When are you setting off for town?’

  ‘Tomorrow, first thing,’ said Alec. Perhaps he regretted his snub to Hugh for he turned to him now with a rueful smile. ‘I must to Edinburgh,’ he said, ‘to persuade the woman’s relations to order an exhumation. We think they’ll find poison if they trouble to check, don’t we?’

  ‘Poison?’ said Hugh, looking sharply down into his glass of whisky. Then he cleared his throat and took a careless swallow of it. ‘What about you, Dandy?’

  ‘Interesting as it was to discover that they cleaned the pool after Mrs Addie died,’ I said, ‘I still need to search for clues in the room where we think the murder was done.’ I was over-egging but only a churl could blame me. ‘We know which room it is but it’s kept under lock and key, as you can imagine.’

  ‘The murder room, eh?’ said Hugh. ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ I could not help but smile.

  ‘I shall,’ I said. ‘As ever. And thank you.’

  ‘Only, God knows,’ Hugh said, ‘there are some very strange people about.’ He nodded to where a small procession of mediums with Loveday Merrick at its head was making its stately way towards the door. Mr Merrick saw Alec and me, tipped the silver top of his cane to his temple, and moved on.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Hugh said.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Alec said. ‘But I get the impression he knows us.’

  ‘Who is he?’ said Hugh. ‘Extraordinary-looking chap, even for here.’

  I considered briefly telling him that one little murder was not the half of it, that there were ghosts and grandmothers and savage histories piling up behind every door and spirit mediums rushing to greet them.

  ‘He’s not connected to the case,’ I said firmly. How happy I would be if that were so.

  12

  Thursday, 24th October 1929

  When I took myself off back to the Russian and Turkish it was only to find out what keys there were and who kept them. When I saw Regina’s face fall at the sight of me, however, I decided to turn the thumbscrews one last time to see what I could see.

  I folded my clothes and handed them over. She took them away and returned. She held out the lead-lined receptacle and in it I dropped my few items of jewellery and my little purse. All of this was done in total silence.

  ‘I shall want a rub-down, Regina,’ I said.

  ‘Salt and water on the marble, madam?’ she said. ‘That’s all we’re doing today. We’re too short-handed to offer oil rubs up in the private rooms.’

  I wished I was as intimately acquainted with the Hydro’s catalogue as was Hugh. After his hours of browsing he would have known right away whether this restriction was set out in the pages of the brochure – where to be fair, there were many detailed exceptions and codicils along the lines of half-hour Nauheim treatments being almost free if one combined them with Schott exercises, but rather pricey if undertaken all on their own – or if Regina had just decided off her own bat that she was not going to let me get her alone in a private treatment room, not even for ready money.

  ‘Short-handed?’ I said. ‘Is Mrs Cronin having another afternoon off?’

  ‘Mrs Cronin is busy,’ Regina said. At that unfortunate moment we both heard a door being swept open and the unmistakable sound of Mrs Cronin in her indoor shoes squeaking along the oiled boards to the hot rooms. Regina coloured and bobbed and bore the lead-lined bag away.

  ‘Give me fifteen minutes to get nice and warm,’ I said. ‘And then come and find me.’ I remembered to look as she was departing to see whether there was a ring of keys anywhere about her. There was not.

  I had had no intention of venturing into the steam room or plunging pool, but by a chance as I was entering the cool room someone was leaving and in the warm room so
meone else was moving up again and so, for just a moment, there was a clear view right through the two sets of curtains all the way to the end, where who should be standing and wiping perspiration from her forehead but Mrs Petrushka Molyneaux herself, along with a quorum of underlings. I supposed that she had to come to the Turkish baths to lord it now; everywhere else she was merely one of Loveday Merrick’s minions.

  Would they go straight to the sprays? I wondered. Or would the whole pack of them venture into the Turkish? It was worth finding out and so I doubled back and sprinted along the side of the pool, past the marble temple and into the steam. I climbed to the top shelf and lay down, trying to breathe silently and become invisible.

  It was then that I found out just what a worthy system the cool, warm and hot rooms are, for sprinting straight from the changing cubicle to the steam was a very different matter. Within minutes I was feeling giddy, a few minutes more and I felt as sick as I ever had, Channel crossings included. I told myself to leave, but could not summon the momentum to push myself up and begin moving. I decided instead to have a little snooze and hoped to wake feeling better.

  Thankfully, Regina was the sort to face trouble head-on and get it over and she did not give me anything like fifteen minutes before she came to summon me for my rubbing. As a consequence I had not quite slipped into a stupor and I heard her clearly when she opened the door.

  ‘Mrs Gilver?’ she said.

  ‘Ssh, Regina,’ I replied. Through my groggy stupor, it seemed terribly important and absolutely real. ‘They’ll hear you. And close the door. You’re letting the steam out and they’ll see you too.’ There was a scraping noise as she pulled a heavy iron doorstop forward to prop the steam room open.

  ‘Come out, madam, do!’ she said. She came and shook me and then lifted my feet down onto the shelf below and tugged on my arms to sit me up. ‘How could you be so silly? How could you let yourself get in this state? I told you how to go the baths that first day and don’t say I didn’t. Don’t you dare get me into trouble now.’