Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Are the boys all right?’ he demanded.

  ‘The boys are fine,’ I assured him.

  ‘Sir?’ said the dealer.

  ‘See you in the morning,’ I said and began to edge away. I had seen Tot Laidlaw at last. He was just entering the room from a small doorway set into the inside wall, slapping shoulders and kissing hands, nodding and bowing so much that he hardly had time to stand up straight in between. He stood up straight enough when he saw me, though. He jerked upright as though he had been kicked hard on the bottom and he began to weave between the tables to come and meet me just as I was weaving to get to him. We both noticed Dorothea at the same time. It was the spreading quiet which alerted me, a wave of whispering and nudging as the bright young things pointed her out to one another. She had dried her eyes and smoothed her hair, but in her tweed skirt and knitted jersey she stood out amongst the sequins and silk like a sparrow among peacocks. Tot feinted towards her and then resumed course for me. She reached me long before he did, coming right up and standing in front of me, laying a hand on my arm even.

  ‘How did you know about the death certificate?’ she said. ‘And about Sergeant Simpson?’

  I was momentarily stumped for an answer and when one dawned upon me I almost dared not give it for I knew it would be her undoing. ‘Mrs Addie told me.’

  Dr Laidlaw gave a shriek of pure anguish.

  ‘Are you one of them?’ she said. ‘Is she talking to all of you?’

  ‘I expect so,’ I said. ‘And I’m sure in time she’ll tell me or someone else how she died too.’ Tot was closing in on me but I dodged to the side of his sister and nipped away before he could catch me. There was nothing for him now, if he wanted to avoid a scene, but to take Dorothea by the arm and draw her gently away. The look he aimed at me across the room, meanwhile, would have curdled milk and withered posies, as Nanny Palmer used to say. He kept it up for quite a few moments too, but as Dorothea whispered to him his expression changed until his face was the perfect mirror of his sister’s, each with that terrified, wide-eyed gaze.

  ‘Good Lord above,’ Alec said, on the telephone the next morning. ‘If Mrs Bowie knew the half of it she’d drop down dead. I’m trying to make it sound so clean and simple and respectable, as if an exhumation these days is no grubbier than a trip to the dentist or having a horse shod. If she could hear the torrid horrors that her mother’s taking part in at your end … Still, good work, Dandy.’

  ‘And do you think you’ll prevail in the end?’ I asked him.

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ Alec said. ‘Not least because I’ve had a stroke of great good fortune. Mr Addie is a member of the Royal Burgess Golf Club. No, not a member – a pillar. And guess who else is a member? Unsurprisingly, I must say.’

  ‘Ohhh!’ I said. ‘The Fiscal.’

  ‘You are a very rewarding audience for snippets of good news, Dan, I must say. Yes, indeed, the Edinburgh Fiscal stands Mr Addie a stiff whisky in the spike bar most Sundays and the odd Thursday evening in the lighter nights too.’

  ‘Joy of joys,’ I said. ‘That’s got to help us.’

  ‘Even so, I think I shall have to stay and do a measure of hand-holding. So you’re on your own for a bit yet. What’s next?’

  ‘As far as Mrs Addie goes,’ I said, ‘I’d dearly love to find out what was in that room before they emptied it. There were quite pronounced discoloured dents where something had sat – not one of the ubiquitous couches; it was the wrong shape – and there were scraping marks where it had been moved. Recently too. So I’m looking for something three feet square and extremely heavy. And I’m thinking if it was moved then it must have something to do with her death and if they wanted to keep it under wraps they’d hardly have hoyed it into a cart and paraded it through town, so it must be stashed somewhere. I’m going to search for it.’

  ‘Three feet square?’ Alec said. ‘Did you get out your tape and measure it while you were chatting to the doctor?’

  ‘I paced it,’ I said. ‘My feet are nine inches long. And the doctor had rushed off by then. She was rather upset, I’m afraid.’ Alec was silent. ‘I know you think I’m being hard on her, Alec dear. But the fact is that she’s hiding something for that brother of hers.’

  ‘You’ll be careful, Dandy, won’t you?’ Alec said. ‘Prowling about searching where you shouldn’t be. Be very careful of Tot. And Merrick’s lot too.’

  ‘Ah well now,’ I said. ‘When it comes to the mediums, I’ve had a brainwave.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Alec said.

  ‘And I shall be quite safe. Like a general, sitting back and sending the troops to the front. I’ve drafted reinforcements, you see.’

  It had taken very little in the way of persuasion. Grant comes from a theatrical background, as is sometimes obvious from the way she paints my face and arranges my hair, and when I had put my plan to her at bedtime the evening before, her face had lit as though all the limelight in the West End had just been shone on it.

  ‘Now, you must think it over very carefully before you agree, Grant,’ I said. ‘It is far beyond the call of duty.’

  ‘I’m only sorry it’s taken so long, madam,’ she said. ‘I told Becky right from the start that I expected Gilver and Osborne would call on my services. I thought maybe that business with the circus, but this is nearly as good. Spirit mediums? I wonder if there’s a sewing machine in the house.’ She carried on blithely brushing my hair as I gaped at her in the glass. That circus business, as she called it, had been four years ago and I had thought, back then, that my detecting adventures were a secret all my own.

  ‘I’m slightly feeling my way about what your story’s to be,’ I told her when she finally stopped planning her costumes, ‘but I thought perhaps we could mix a bit of truth in with the lies. We can say that you are here with your employers – as you are – while they’re taking the waters – as they are – but that after you arrived you felt a tremendous whatever it is you’d feel.’

  ‘Vibration, madam,’ said Grant. She was pinning the side curls into my hair for the night and spoke quite casually.

  ‘I bow to your unexpected greater knowledge,’ I said. ‘Now, since you are not known in spiritualists’ circles …’ I paused a moment in case she was about to correct me, ‘I think you should say that you are a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter or whatever but that you had such upsetting experiences when you first tried to direct your powers, that these days you try to avoid …’

  ‘Contact with the other world,’ said Grant.

  ‘Quite. Now, as to what was vibrating. I wondered about Mrs Addie, but perhaps you should steer clear of her. So tell me what you make of this instead: the mediums are conversing with – we think, Mr Osborne and I – the spirits of hanged prisoners from the Gallow Hill.’ Grant nodded calmly. ‘That is to say, they’re pretending to. Or are deluded into thinking they are. Just to make it clear that I don’t believe any of this.’

  ‘I’ll need to see when I get there,’ said Grant.

  ‘And the reason we think this,’ I said, passing swiftly on, ‘is that they’re meeting at the hanging place on the hill and also that one of them – actually it wasn’t one of them; it was another guest who was going to tell them about it, now that I remember – said that Mary Patterson – when she appeared – was speaking of repenting her sins and forgiving her killers. The judge and the hangman, this would be.’

  ‘That’s nice of her,’ Grant said. She had finished pinning my hair and was dabbing it with lotion to keep it safe through the night.

  ‘Well, anyway, the mediums seem to know how many they’re expecting – either fifteen or seventeen anyway – and they know some of the names but not all. From piecing together old court records, I suppose. They’ve got some already.’ I opened my dressing-table drawer and took out my notebook, leafing through it to the right page. ‘Lizzie, Peggy, Marjorie Docherty, Ann Dougal, Big Effie, Mary Patterson, Abigail Simpson, Joseph the Miller and a grandmother
with a blind grandson.’

  Grant tutted.

  ‘Say what you like about the good old days, madam, but we don’t hang blind children any more. No wonder him and his granny are not resting easy.’

  ‘Yes, so what I think you should do is pick a very common name – Rose or Jeannie for a woman, James or William for a man – but best stick to women, since most of them seem to be women so far – and claim to have been … contacted.’

  ‘A man,’ said Grant, ‘because it’ll be so much better when I speak in his voice. Listen to this, madam.’ She finished stretching my net cap over my hair, then half turned away and cleared her throat. When she spoke again it was in a deep, ragged, rumbling voice which seemed to come straight from the pit of her stomach without her lips moving at all.

  ‘I am William, come down from the hill. Wrongly judged and wrongly hanged, now I seek my revenge.’

  ‘Good God Almighty!’ I said. There were shivers running through me from head to toe and Bunty, on the bed, had raised her head and was staring at Grant with her lip drawn back from her remaining upper teeth in the closest thing she could ever make to a snarl.

  ‘It’s really nothing, madam,’ Grant said. ‘Just a question of breath control. I could teach you.’

  ‘I am glad to say I don’t foresee needing to know,’ I told her. ‘But William it is – wrongly judged and wrongly hanged. Excellent, Grant. You can start in the morning.’

  13

  Friday, 25th October 1929

  I was lucky enough to witness her arrival too. Mrs Scott, Mrs Davies and the gooseberry-eyed girl, who I had discovered was called Olivia, were taking morning coffee in the ladies’ drawing room, no sign of Mr Merrick, and I was waiting there to see Donald and Teddy safely out of their respective Faradaic heat bath and ten lengths of breaststroke, install them on the terrace with hot bottles and then begin my search for the missing yard-square object. As I sat there I saw a mousy figure enter at the double doors, hesitate and then come creeping towards the party of ladies who were just one table away from me, reading luridly coloured picture papers which I did not recognise – Spiritualists’ Weekly, perhaps. Grant was wearing something close to a novice’s habit, a plain grey pinafore dress and white neckpiece underneath it, and had straightened her hair and scraped it to either side of her head. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she made only darting glances up to see where she was going, keeping her head for the most part decently bowed.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, bobbing a curtsy when Mrs Scott deigned to notice her. ‘Are you the … Someone told me I should speak to you. I’m in need of counsel. I just don’t know what to do.’ Before any of the women could answer, Grant seemed to buckle at the knees and she sank into a chair, raising a shaking hand to her brow. ‘I feel sick,’ she said. ‘Oh my, I feel so very sick. Such great evil. I don’t think I can bear it.’ She went so far as to make a couple of rather convincing noises which caused Mrs Scott to edge away as far as she could without leaving her chair. The gooseberry-eyed girl, Olivia, put a hand out and touched Grant’s arm. Grant immediately raised her head and smiled. I would have said that roses bloomed in her cheeks but no one, even from a theatrical background, even a Barrymore, could change colour at will.

  ‘Thank you,’ Grant said. Then she frowned a little and looked at the girl’s hand on her arm. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I am at peace with my gift,’ said Olivia. ‘I simply shared my peace with you.’

  ‘Gift!’ said Grant. ‘It’s a curse! I pray and pray for it to be taken away and I pray for forgiveness for whatever I did to bring it down upon my wicked head.’

  ‘My dear girl,’ said Mrs Scott. I was surprised to hear Grant addressed this way. She is slightly older than me and it has been a while since I was a ‘girl’, dear or otherwise. But something about the white collar and meekly parted hair had taken years off her. ‘My dear girl, you have not been among friends. You are among them now. Please, tell us what’s troubling you.’

  ‘I’m staying in the town with my lady – I’m a maid, you see – and oh, there’s such great evil. I can’t sleep! That voice! I wish I could believe I’m dreaming, but it’s real. And the look of him. I asked for help at the church but the minister scorned me. Then – I’m ashamed to admit it – but I stepped into the Crown for a glass of port, just to help me sleep; because we’re right next door and the sound of the men in the bar put the notion in my head, and someone there was saying that up at the Hydro there was a convention of spiritualists. I thought maybe you could help me.’

  ‘I’m sure we can,’ said Mrs Davies. ‘This voice, what does it say? And what is it that you see?’

  ‘Oh, a terrible sight,’ said Grant. ‘A rough, low beast of a man and … harmed. Not right at all. His neck!’ All three mediums were sitting on the edges of their seats now and no one could blame them. It was a bravura performance.

  ‘And what does he say?’ said Olivia Gooseberry. I hoped that Grant would not unleash the dreadful rumbling sound of her ghost. Not here in the ladies’ drawing room. I felt my shoulders rise as I braced myself for it, but I should have trusted her.

  ‘He says …’ Grant hesitated. ‘It doesn’t come through my ears, you know. It’s as though I’m speaking it, only not in my voice – oh, it’s too hard to explain.’

  ‘A channel!’ said Mrs Scott. ‘Don’t fret, my dear. We understand completely. What does he say?’

  ‘He says …’ She stopped again. ‘It’s such wickedness, I hardly want to tell you.’ All three were wound like springs now. If Grant did not tell them at her next approach, one of them would pinch her.

  ‘He says, “I am William.” He never says a surname. “I was wrongly judged and wrongly hanged. I am come to wreak my revenge.” And some other things I can never make out and something about his mother but he’s always crying by then.’

  The three mediums were dumbfounded, a tableau of rapt stupefaction which lasted so long that Grant raised her head and took a surreptitious peek at them.

  Mrs Scott was the first to find her voice.

  ‘No surname?’ she asked weakly. ‘Not even an initial?’ I thought I could see Grant considering the initial. ‘M’ was always a good bet in Scotland as were ‘O’ in Ireland and ‘T’ in Cornwall, but very sensibly she shook her head no.

  ‘What does it mean, Mrs Scott?’ asked Olivia.

  ‘Something stupendous,’ Mrs Scott replied. ‘Something unhoped-for and almost undreamed-of. We must find Mrs Molyneaux, ladies. Or perhaps … dare we … Yes! We must take this straight to Mr Merrick himself.’ She rose. ‘Stay here, my dear. Help yourself to a cup of coffee. Ring for a fresh pot. Tell them to put it on Mrs Scott’s bill if it’s extra. We shall return.’

  They stood and sailed out of the room with the wind behind them and the harbour in view, leaving Grant and me gazing at one another over the empty chairs.

  ‘That seems to have gone down rather well then,’ I said softly.

  ‘I wonder which part of what I said convinced them,’ said Grant. ‘I hope they tell me. I can suddenly make out the mumbled words if they let me in on what I’m supposed to be hearing, can’t I?’

  ‘Practise some restraint for now,’ I answered. ‘That would be my advice anyway. You seem to have done plenty to get their attention.’

  It was with the greatest reluctance that I managed to drag myself away, for I wanted nothing more than to skulk in my chair and overhear what happened when Mr Merrick appeared on the scene. But generals do not skulk about the front line once the orders are given and I had tasks of my own.

  Attics or basement, I wondered as I made my way across the hall to the servants’ door. If the missing object was as heavy as all that I imagined it would be no small matter to lug it up to the attics, even using the invalid lift by which the frailer Hydro guests made their way between bedroom and baths. I would start in the basement, and it seemed sensible to start in the very corridor where Regina, Mrs Cronin and I had all converged that day. There h
ad been doors on either side of it and what could they be except boxrooms? Or possibly boiler rooms, for all that steam had to have its source somewhere.

  Finding the place was not going to be easy, though. I could go to the Turkish baths and start from there, but if anyone saw me I could not claim to be lost. If I started at the other end I could, with a little more plausibility, say that I was taking a short cut and had misplaced myself.

  I skirted the kitchens, the sculleries and laundry, a boot room, the wine cellar and a boxroom where the casino tables stood waiting for nightfall under their baize covers. What is more, I did it without a single servant seeing me. I even found time to congratulate myself on how much improved in stealth I was these days. When I reached the less populous and well-utilised areas of below stairs, I began to pay close attention to the floor, looking for scraping marks, and I began to try the handles of the doors. Most were locked and I regretted the impulsive way I had thrust Dr Laidlaw’s keys into her hands as she rushed past me the evening before. Those few doors which were unlocked opened to show me guests’ luggage, old deckchairs with their canvas faded and fraying, a collection of toboggans awaiting the winter, a heap of rusting bicycles from early in the century, and any number of moth-eaten tennis nets rolled up and stuffed into tea chests.

  At the end of a short corridor leading off the main one, outside yet another locked door, I thought I saw some scratch marks but could not be sure. I put my eye to the keyhole and saw nothing except grey light with strings of cobweb floating in it. I straightened and sneezed, deadening the sound with my finger and thumb pinched around my nose, the way that Nanny Palmer always told me would burst my ear drums, then I lit a match and took a closer look at the scratch marks on the floor. I was almost sure they were about as far apart as the marks on the tiled floor of the empty room last night. Did I dare go back to Dr Laidlaw’s office and re-steal her keys to get through this door? I did not; and besides, she would surely not have returned the keys to the dish from which they had been taken. I was at a loss as to how else I could gain entry to a locked windowless basement, short of hacking the door down with an axe, when I stopped short. It was not windowless, there was grey light and cobwebs in there. If I could work out where on the outside of the building that room lay then I could peer in at the window.