We were out into the cool air, or what was left of it with all the steam pouring from the open door. I could see Mrs Molyneaux and the other mediums walking shoulder deep in the plunging pool, but in my mental fog I was sure they were wearing their cloaks and coats and that the hat with the raven feathers was perched on Mrs Molyneaux’s head in place of her turban.
Regina sat me down on one of the marble slabs and kicked away the doorstop, closing the steam room off again. She helped me out of my robe and pushed me down until I was lying supine, staring up at the rose of the spray above me.
‘Please don’t turn the cold water on,’ I whimpered.
‘I most certainly won’t,’ Regina said, twisting the lid off a jar of some unknown substance. ‘You need to cool down slowly.’
She rubbed her hands together in that powerful way of hers and then began slapping me all over, the rough salt from the jar causing the very last of my torpor to leave me.
‘Did Mrs Addie do something silly like that?’ I said. Regina’s face puckered and I was sure that I could see tears glinting in her eyes. She rubbed the back of one hand roughly across her face and then set it to work on me again.
‘I do wish to goodness you would stop about Mrs Addie,’ she said. ‘It was a very sad day for the Hydro. The first time a patient has ever died and even though it was her own— Well, I won’t speak ill of the dead.’
‘Her own fault?’ I echoed. ‘If she went out instead of sticking to her treatment? I suppose if she had stayed in the Hydro and had her heart attack here the doctor would have got to her sooner. But it’s rather a harsh judgement.’
‘I’d never say anything half so heartless about a dog in the street!’ Regina said. ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’
‘So … you mean if she had left the spirits alone she wouldn’t have been scared out of her wits?’ I asked. It was a guess, but a good one. Regina left off slapping me and sank down onto the marble at my side.
‘I just don’t know what’s happening here,’ she said. ‘First Mrs Addie saw a ghost and then you saw her ghost and there’s all these funny folk that came to see it too, talking about Old Abigail and Big Effie as if there’s spirits and spookies all over the place. I don’t like it, madam, and I can’t pretend I do.’
‘Nor do I, Regina,’ I said. ‘I wish I could convince you I was on your side. You can talk to me, you know.’ She shook her head, but she had already told me more than she knew. For one thing, Big Effie was a new name. As Regina resumed her ministrations with a fretful sigh, I determined to write it on my growing list as soon as I had my notebook near me. For another, it was interesting to know that the ghost Mrs Addie saw was the first and all the others, Big Effie included, came after. Perhaps Alec was right and Tot Laidlaw had made up the first ghost to cover the murder.
‘So the strange people—’ I said. I lowered my voice, conscious that four or five of them were wading about in the cold pool a few yards from where I lay. ‘—came to see the same ghost Mrs Addie saw? How did they know it was here?’ Regina shook her head. ‘Who knew that Mrs Addie had seen one?’ She shook her head again. ‘The word must have spread from someone.’
‘I never told a living soul,’ Regina said.
‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘Might I turn over, by the way? This is very refreshing but I’m beginning to feel rather flayed. I trust you, Regina, and I wish you would trust me.’ I gave her a piercing look and then turned over onto my front. The marble was unforgiving but the salt on my back felt wonderful.
Regina said nothing, but it was an inviting silence, I thought, instead of a repressing one. I answered the invitation.
‘That room over there,’ I said. ‘The locked one? What’s in there?’
‘Nothing,’ she replied loud enough for it to reverberate around the room.
‘What is it used for?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s empty. There’s absolutely nothing in there.’
‘Since when?’ I asked her. She did not answer and her hands fell away from my back. I was aware of a nasty creeping feeling as the wet salt slid off down my sides and dripped onto the marble below me. I raised myself on one elbow and looked over my shoulder. Regina stood with her arms hanging at her sides and more of the salt rub dripping from the ends of her fingers. She was staring at the door and then she raised her hands and stared at them.
‘Since Mrs Addie died?’ I asked. Regina blinked and the colour which had drained from her came flooding back. ‘You’ve just realised what happened, haven’t you? Tell me!’ I was speaking in a fierce whisper, but nothing like as fierce as the one she fired back at me.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you nothing. It’s always been empty. There’s never been anything in there. It’s never been used for anything.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And why would that be?’
She shook her head and, wiping her hands on her apron, she ran away. She did not hurry or trot or bustle: she ran.
I was left cold, covered with salt and lying on a marble slab – all in all much more like an item of stock in a fishmonger’s than I ever thought to be – but more determined than ever to get into the locked room and see whatever Regina had just realised was in there. The door was partly glass and so I supposed I could wrap my hand in a scarf and break it, but that would put them all on their guard. I wasted a moment wishing I knew how to pick a lock and wondering where I could learn to do so. Finally, I returned to the more sensible question of who would have a key and how I could lay my hands on it. I had far too much respect for Mrs Cronin even to consider her; she popped up whenever one most needed her not to, even – apparently – taking notes from guests in the middle of her afternoon free. (I wished I knew why the sound of her outdoor shoes, every time I remembered it, bothered me so.) Neither did I much fancy trying to find Tot Laidlaw’s private rooms and let myself in there. That left Dr Laidlaw. I was in the changing cubicle by now, dressing and trying to ignore the uncomfortable scrape of salt against my skin, but the thought of searching for anything in that chaotic hovel of an office was enough to make me sink down on the velvet bench with shoulders drooping. Then my head snapped up. There would be no searching. I kicked myself for not thinking of it before. Dr Laidlaw’s keys were sitting out for all to see in a Staffordshire sweet dish on her chimneypiece. Now, all I had to do was think of a way to get her out of her room without pausing to lock it.
It would have to wait until evening, naturally, when the Turkish and Russian baths were empty; and so, long after dinner, I left the boys playing cribbage by the fire and Bunty already retired to the middle of my counterpane and drove my little motorcar back over the valley. I wondered how Alec had got on with the Addies and whether Hugh had begun his evening’s entertainments. Specifically I wished Alec were here in Moffat to help me and wondered if I could pretend to be joining Hugh if someone saw me – I had overdressed a little for dinner, to Grant’s satisfaction, and was just about swanky enough to walk into a casino without attracting attention. (Rather depressing when that is the highest aim of one’s toilette, but for this evening anyway I was thankful.)
Hoping to get away without having to make an entrance, though, I parked my motorcar in a passing place halfway along the drive and made the rest of my approach on foot, cursing the shoes Grant had persuaded me into, which had long, pointed toes, slightly turned up too, after the manner of a Turk’s slippers, and were very tricky to walk in without kicking gravel up in spouts before one.
It only occurred to me when I had got to the front door and was lurking in the rhododendrons on its far side that I should of course have thought of a different way to enter the Hydro if I wanted to be truly incognito. In my mind’s eye I traversed the stone steps, the vestibule, the carpeted steps and the hall beyond. It had to be forty feet without any cover at all until the mouth of the nearest passageway and it did not lead to the Turkish baths by any quick route that I knew. Cursing myself now, I slipped along the front of the building, round the si
de, down the shallow steps to the terrace level and along past the drawing room to the small smoking room, thinking that with any luck all the smoking gentlemen would be combining their cigars with a game of cards by now and any who were too wholesome for the casino would be tucked up in their blameless beds. I sidled past the window and then put my eye to the gap in the curtain. The room looked empty as far as I could see, but just as I was about to try the handle, I heard a movement from behind me. Someone was coming up the stone steps from the lawn. I darted away into the shadow of a climbing jasmine, hoping that the beads on my dress or the gold buckles on my ridiculous shoes would not catch the light. The figure which appeared at the top of the steps, however, did not so much as glance to either side. He simply strode over the terrace, opened the french window and disappeared inside, drawing it close but not shutting it behind him. I stood for a moment, searching my memory, for I was sure that I recognised him. I had only got a glimpse of his outline, enough to know he was dressed for the evening, but still I had the niggling feeling I knew who he was.
The male members of the bright young set had not resolved themselves into individuals for me; they were still an undifferentiated mass of humanity inside a cloud of laughter and cigarette smoke. It might have been one of the few male mediums, I supposed. Not the unmistakable Loveday Merrick, but one of his lesser fellows. Or perhaps another of our Perthshire neighbours had come to take the waters as had we, far from home and the flu and scarlet fever which were rife there.
Whoever he was, his appearance had told me one thing: I could be sure there was no one in the smoking room, for I would have heard their manly hellos. So, before I could talk myself out of it, I slipped out of the shadow and in at the door, through the empty room and along the dim corridor beyond. I had my story all ready: Grant collapsed and labouring for breath, me thinking only of Dr Laidlaw and how she had helped Hugh and the boys.
Grant had agreed to let the doctor in when she arrived and to say that she felt much better.
‘I’ll tell her I coughed out a right big— I mean to say, I’ll tell her I enjoyed a productive cough and it cleared things,’ she said. I shuddered. ‘Like Master Donald that night, remember?’
‘How could I forget?’ I said. ‘But I’m hoping it won’t get as far as that.’
‘I’m ready to help if it does,’ Grant told me.
In preparation for my part in the charade, I made sure my face was troubled and my breath coming in gasps before I knocked on the doctor’s door. I was going to say that my little motorcar had run out of petrol and she should go on ahead, that I should get Hugh to ring for his chauffeur. I thought I could be fairly certain of pulling it off, although it did strike me now as tremendously complicated. I missed Alec again. I was sure he would have come up with a way of getting Dr Laidlaw out of her office without my dressing to the nines, roping in Grant and sprinting half a mile in these slippers. I shook the thoughts out of my head and knocked.
There was no answer, but I remembered that this was a woman who ignored fire bells. I knocked again. Still nothing. Feeling very bold, I grasped the handle, turned it and burst in.
‘Oh, Dr Laidlaw,’ I began, but the room was empty. My eyes darted to the chimneypiece and I saw the jagged shape of the keys in the bon-bon dish. In three strides I was there. I hid the key ring in the folds of my dress, thinking that Grant’s taste in flowing robes had its uses, and then I fled to the Turkish and Russian – more Turk than Cossack in my Ali Baba slippers – with luck on my side and not a soul to see me.
It was unsettling in the extreme to be there in the darkness when the place was empty, and none the less so for the sensation being so difficult to explain. Perhaps it was just that the rooms, unheated now, felt dead and much colder than in fact they were. The couches, without their towels, were funeral biers and the marble chamber a mausoleum. Even the pool room was changed by the quiet and dark. The water was a blank, black gleam, bottomless like the well, and the ferns and palms around it, in the dark, were moss and lichen and even reaching hands. I turned away and faced the locked door.
The keyhole was fairly large and so I immediately discounted all the littlest of the keys in my bunch. The first one I tried went in halfway and then stuck. I pulled it out again and picked over the bunch looking for one slightly smaller. Then my fingers froze. I was sure I had heard a scuffling from inside the room. Well, perhaps I had, for an unused room in any house will attract scuffling things. I chose another key and tried again. This one went all the way in but would not turn. Nor when I pulled at it would it come out again. I jiggled it this way and that and felt something give. It was not the key in the lock, though; it was the latch. This door was open.
Using the bunch of keys as a handle I twisted and pushed and the door swung wide. I was ready for anything: a new victim; Tot Laidlaw coming at me with a piece of iron piping; even, I am ashamed to say, the sturdy spectre of Mrs Addie in her robe, hovering three feet above the floor and moaning at me.
What I saw was none of these things. At first I thought the room was absolutely empty, no furniture, no equipment, no fittings of any kind. Nothing more than the marks on the floor where something heavy had been standing and the deep scores across it where the thing had been dragged away. I was staring at these scratches, trying to make sense of them, when I saw a movement from near the far wall.
‘Tot?’ said a small, broken voice.
I felt beside me on the wall for a light switch and when my fingers met it I did not hesitate but snapped it on.
Dr Laidlaw was huddled on the bare floor of the empty room, hugging her arms about herself and stricken from weeping.
‘Shall I fetch him?’ I said. She sat up and wiped the tears away with her sleeve.
‘No!’ she sobbed, and shrank even further into the corner where she was cowering.
‘Did he put you in here?’ I asked. Nothing Tot did would shock me and I was at a loss as to explain her horror at hearing his name.
‘No,’ she said again but this time it was a low groan as though she spoke through great exhaustion. ‘Please leave us alone, I beg you.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ I went on, ‘how did you get in, since I have your keys?’ I did not really believe in the possibility of secret passageways and hidden doors in the panelling, but thought it best to make sure.
Dr Laidlaw roused herself so far as to look at the key ring I waved and then she sank back again. ‘Those are spares,’ she said. ‘Please, please, just leave us alone.’
‘But why are you protecting him?’ I said. It went against every one of my finer feelings to keep on pestering her while she begged me to stop but I hardened my heart, even as she began crying again. ‘I know you want to carry on with your work,’ I said. The sobs grew louder. ‘But do you need your brother for it? Really and truly, do you?’
‘You don’t understand,’ Dr Laidlaw wailed. ‘My brother is very good to me.’
‘I do understand,’ I said. ‘He’s thought of a way of drawing a crowd of guests for you to work on. But whatever happened to Mrs Addie will come out in the end. This can’t go on. And anyway, you refused to sign the death certificate, didn’t you? You are blameless. Why not come with me to Sergeant Simpson now and tell him the whole thing.’
‘Please,’ she begged me, crying harder than ever. ‘Please leave me alone. Just leave me.’
Clearly though, she had despaired of my ever relenting, for she sprang up suddenly, rushed past me and was gone.
When I set off to the winter gardens, no doubt well into their night shift as an outpost of Monte Carlo by now, I had no further thought than to see if Tot was there and if I could rattle him again by telling him his sister was sobbing in the locked room. On the way, however, it occurred to me that I could also look around for the tantalising stranger who had entered by the terrace doors. It was bothering me that I could not place him. I turned the corner at the end of the corridor and began to hear the first faint sounds of music and laughter. At the door, a young man
dressed like a waiter bowed and ushered me in. I strode ahead with confidence but then faltered at the very oddness of it. That same soaring glass ceiling which filled it with light in the daytime rendered it glamorously dark in the night, the glass gleaming blackly far above the low lamps which lit the tables. Around the tables was the familiar scene: gentlemen in dinner jackets smoking and drinking and concentrating on the dice and cards, and ladies – girls these, mostly – peeping over shoulders and trying to distract them. There were ladies’ games going on as well; at least one roulette wheel in the distance and a poker game where a slightly older clutch of females showed every bit as much concentration as the men and smoked, if anything, even harder. I remembered blaming the orchids and their attendants for the fug in here and thinking the ventilation inadequate. In fact, the fans and skylights must work some kind of miracle in the early hours to turn the place back to garden again every day.
The smoke was not the worst of it; over the whole of the room, too, there was that hum of excitement and anxiety which I dislike to the point of loathing, not being hard-hearted enough to view others’ losing streaks as entertainments or optimistic enough to view their winning streaks as promises of my own.
I took a glass of champagne from another waiter who was passing with a tray and, sipping at it, I began on a course about the room, looking for Tot or for a familiar outline. The bright young things were like a chorus of starlings.
‘—down to my last chip, and it’s such a pretty colour I can’t bear to bet it.’
‘—taken up in a bath chair if I have another cocktail.’
‘—give you her address, if you like. She’s wonderfully cheap but you have to buy the material yourself and take it in a taxi to Battersea of all places.’
Implausible as it might sound, it was only when I heard my name that I remembered who else I was bound to run into.
‘Dandy?’ came Hugh’s voice. He had half stood but sounded disapproving, of course; that is always where he begins with me. I turned and saw him at one of the card tables. He had a whisky glass and a miniature metropolis of stacks of poker chips in front of him. The men in the other four seats had the familiar half-sick look men get when they play cards with Hugh.
Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone Page 21