Hugh shook his head. ‘That was the saddest one of all,’ he said. ‘Daft Jamie.’
‘I think I’ve heard of him,’ I put in.
‘He was a simpleton,’ Hugh said, ‘but well known and well liked in the streets of the old town. One of the students in the dissecting room recognised him. He was Burke and Hare’s undoing.’
We all sat in silence for a moment or two, thinking of poor daft Jamie and the rest of them.
‘What sins did Mary Patterson have to repent of?’ I asked presently.
‘She was a woman of ill-repute,’ Hugh said. ‘Some of the medical students recognised her too, but they were ashamed to say so.’
‘Dearie me,’ said Grant, which was as good a way to sum it all up as any. ‘So will I say to the mediums that I can hear Jamie then?’ She put on a dull, idiotic-sounding voice. ‘“I’m Jamie, I am. Jamie Daff.” They often get the name a wee bit wrong, you know. It helps folk believe they’re trying to hear it over all the miles between this world and the next. “Help poor Jamie. Help me. Don’t let that bad man find me.”’ Hugh looked the way I had when she had first turned her talents on me.
‘I suppose you might as well,’ I said. ‘But all of these revelations don’t help at all with the question of why Mrs Addie died. Even now we suspect she died in a mud bath.’
‘Depends where they got the mud,’ said Grant. ‘Sir. Madam.’ She stood, bobbed and left us.
‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this game,’ said Hugh, staring after her.
‘It’s not always like this,’ I said. ‘And I can’t let you say that when you’ve just solved two of the things that were puzzling Alec and me for days on end. Without even trying.’
‘I can’t see how you can call it a solution,’ said Hugh. ‘If where we’ve ended up is that a woman sat in a vat of Gallow Hill mud, and out of the mud came fifteen ghosts and she died of fright.’
‘It really isn’t always like this,’ I said again. ‘I assure you.’
‘I’m going to fetch the boys,’ said Hugh, standing. He looked in through the french windows. ‘Grant is holding court in there like Charlotte of Mecklenburg. I’m off.’ I watched him all the way to the end of the terrace, striding along, furious with the silliness and frightfulness of it all, and annoyed with himself that he could not resist taking his sons out of harm’s way, even though the harm was nonsense, as it must be.
‘That’s a very soupy look you’ve got on your face, Dan.’ I turned and saw Alec standing at my other side, smiling down at me. He sat on the chair where Hugh had so recently been, swung his legs up and grinned at me.
‘So. Have I missed anything?’ he said.
When I had finished my report all he could do was give a long, low whistle.
‘The first thing I need to do is go and check that what I remember from the library is right enough,’ I said.
‘Do you?’ Alec said.
I laughed. ‘No, not really, but it’s something I can do and I can’t think of anything else. What about you?’
‘I’m going to wait for the PM report,’ Alec said. ‘Mr Addie said he’ll telephone to me. Probably tomorrow. Mrs Bowie’s still on about her grandfather’s watch, by the way. Good grief, to think of us all over the well path and the Beef Tub and the Gallow Hill like a pair of bloodhounds that day!’
‘I don’t suppose it could be something as silly as theft that got Mrs Addie killed, could it?’ I said. ‘This watch isn’t diamond-encrusted or anything? Only I wonder why they didn’t send her bag back to the family with her clothes. I wonder why they didn’t send those back until I prompted them, come to that.’
‘A plain gold watch, I think,’ said Alec. ‘And one doesn’t poison someone and set her to die in a vat of mud to achieve a burglary. A knock on the head with a cosh is more what you’d look for if it was theft at the bottom of it.’
‘And no marks of violence at all,’ I said. ‘It’s hard to believe they can still tell after a month. I mean, what does …? Did she still …?’
‘Believe me, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘You don’t want to know.’
We went our separate ways after that, I to the library and Alec to the men’s baths for a salt rub which he richly deserved after all his horrors. I had only got halfway across the drawing room though when Grant waylaid me.
‘They want me to stay, madam,’ she said. Her eyes were as round as beads. ‘They’re going to pay for my room so I can stay and go to their seance. It was Mr Merrick’s idea.’
‘You don’t have to do it,’ I said. I had misunderstood the round eyes.
‘But may I?’ she said.
‘Certainly, you may,’ I replied. ‘But you must promise me that you will not put yourself in any danger, Grant. Remember that Mr Osborne and the master are both here. I shall give you the numbers of their rooms and you are not to hesitate to go there.’
I fished in my bag for a slip of paper. Grant was fishing too.
‘I think it’ll be just one day, madam,’ she said. ‘So here’s what to lay out for yourself for tomorrow and if you decide to change for dinner, wear the peacock blue, and your Turkish slippers are in the airing cupboard. I steamed them after your game of rugby football the other night.’
‘I was working on the case, Grant,’ I said. ‘I did mention that they weren’t a suitable choice, if you remember.’
We swapped slips of paper and I went on my way. The voice from the depths of an armchair in a dark corner by the door surprised me.
‘She said she was a maid, right enough.’ A great leonine head of silver hair bent forward around the wing of the armchair. It was Loveday Merrick. ‘To a woman staying in town. I never put her together with you, Mrs Gilver.’
‘It’s Mr … Merrick, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That’s not my maid. My maid’s name is Palmer and she’s at home sewing. That girl promised to give me the recipe for a hair lotion she uses. I overheard her talking about it in the steam baths one day.’
‘Ah, the steam baths are indeed a wonderful place for overhearing,’ he said. ‘Good day, Mrs Gilver.’
‘Good day, Mr Merrick,’ I said. It was not until I was halfway to town that I thought to wonder how he knew me.
The librarian was closing up for the day when I pulled in at the kerb and hopped down.
‘Tch,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry to have missed you, but if you don’t mind answering questions while you lock the door, you could help me out a little.’
‘Happy to oblige, madam,’ she said. There was no sign that she remembered me.
‘I suppose I could ask in the Black Bull but a library is much more to my taste,’ I went on, buttering her up for no reason except that I had planned to. When I rehearse a conversation ahead of execution I very often cannot amend as I go. ‘It’s about the Black Bull as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘My husband and I are having one of these little disagreements. I say that William Hare stayed there and he thinks it was Deacon Brodie.’
‘Oh, no, no, no,’ said the librarian. She had finished with her locks and bolts now and she stowed her bunch of keys away safely in a large bag with a stout clasp, snapping it tightly and checking it twice before she put the handle over her arm. I could not drag my eyes away from it although I had no idea why. ‘Deacon Brodie was never in Moffat, madam, I’m glad to say. But William Hare was and no two ways about it. And you’re the third one to ask about him this last weather, you know.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘A lady was in the other day asking about ghosts and ne’er-do-wells and I told her. Drew her a map and everything. And then a gentleman was here too about a month ago. Almost the same thing. All the ghosts of Moffat. He didn’t need a map though.’
‘I see,’ I said. It did not seem worth telling her that the lady from last time was me.
‘Now, ordinarily,’ I said to Alec on the telephone that evening, ‘I’d think it couldn’t have been Tot Laidlaw because she said she didn’t know him, but if she’d forgotten me after three days then it c
ertainly could be.’
‘Ordinarily I’d think it wasn’t Tot because she said “gentleman”,’ Alec replied.
‘Ah yes, but to the librarian “a gentleman” is anyone who isn’t wearing boots,’ I said. ‘And what it made me think about was the letter to Spooks’ Monthly that Grant heard about. That was a “gentleman” too – a respectable sort, a professional man I think she said. And someone else at some time during this case has spoken of a respectable man … I wish I could think who it was and what we were speaking about.’
‘And you’re sure it must have been Tot?’ Alec said. ‘Because I was wondering about Loveday Merrick. If he’s a fraud – and he must be, mustn’t he? – then wouldn’t he have to mug up in advance?’
‘But this gentleman didn’t need a map,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it was Tot. His latest wheeze, you know. Give the place the reputation for being haunted and get some extra business that way. I mean to say, any man who’s running a casino … he can’t hope to get away with that indefinitely.’
‘Far from it,’ Alec said. ‘Two young oafs were talking in the hot room—’
‘Aha!’ I said.
‘And one of them happened to say to the other that he would miss it when it was gone. That it was such a fag having to drag himself all the way through France for the same terms.’
‘Well, there you are then,’ I said. ‘Tot’s been whispering stories into just the right ears to get the Hydro started on its career as a haunted house. Or writing letters to the right magazines anyway.’
‘You don’t mean to say that he killed Mrs Addie to get the ball rolling?’ said Alec.
‘I don’t know. I hope the PM turns up something. Or Grant does. Oh, by the way, don’t jump out of your skin if there’s a knock at your door tonight, will you? Grant’s staying to do a seance and I’ve told her to come to you if she gets in any difficulties. I don’t trust that Merrick at all. And I’d hate anything to befall her.’
‘I saw her in the dining room,’ Alec said. ‘She had them all eating out of her hand. I think she’ll be fine.’
Saturday, 26th October 1929
But when I next saw her she was not fine at all.
I had decided to have one last crack at Regina or Mrs Cronin, whichever one I ran into first. They both knew more than they were telling, and for some reason I could not get Regina, especially, out of my mind. She had been in my thoughts since my conversation with the librarian the afternoon before and she had walked through my dreams too. I had been in one of the little cubicles, sitting on the velvet bench, quite naked, waiting for her to come to me. My pose must have been, I imagine, similar to the way Grant held herself when I caught sight of her in the resting room the next morning. She was perched on the edge of one of the couches, still dressed in her grey pinafore and outdoor coat and still with her hat on and her bag clutched on her knees.
‘I’m waiting for Dr Laidlaw,’ she said. ‘She was supposed to be assessing me for the galvanic baths. I’m sure she said it was here I was to wait.’
‘The Turkish and Russian resting room?’ I said. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘An hour, madam, and it’s very hot.’ I did not alarm her with news of how hot it got once one started through the velvet curtains.
‘Is that all that’s troubling you, Grant?’ I said. ‘You seem rather forlorn.’
‘I’d have liked to press that shirt before you wore it, madam,’ she said. ‘That’s not the one that was on the list I gave you. And I’m tired too. It was gone three before they let up last night, with their moaning and swaying.’
I bit my cheeks so as not to smile. The mediums would be mortified if they could hear this depth of scorn.
‘I could do with just sitting in the drawing room with a weekly paper and a pot of tea, madam, I can tell you,’ Grant went on, ‘but if you’re staying here you have to have treatments. It’s the rules.’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘And it’s always puzzled me. I mean, some of the treatments are free and so you’d think it would make sound business sense to restrict them, not shove them down everyone’s throats this way.’ Grant looked uninterested in the profits and losses of the Laidlaws’ Hydro and so I changed the subject to one where I expected she would shine. ‘How did you acquit yourself last night?’ I asked her. ‘Could you tell what they made of you?’
‘Oh, they’d like to bottle me and keep me,’ Grant said. ‘They’re not safe to be out alone. That Loveday one tried to trick me again, right enough. He asked me if there was a Mrs A “amongst their number”. That’s how he put it.’
‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘What did you say?’
‘I put their eyes out on organ stops, I can tell you,’ said Grant, brightening at the memory. ‘I asked if they meant the large lady who was here but didn’t belong with the others.’
‘Oh, bravo,’ I said. ‘Grant, I was thinking in terms of a tip but I am beginning to wonder if you shouldn’t be on the payroll this time. Pro-rata.’
‘Not that I’ve found out anything much,’ said Grant. She and Hugh were both far too scrupulous about claiming their honours, compared with Alec and me. I said nothing about it, though, because I could hear someone approaching from the hot rooms.
Then the velvet curtains were opening and Mrs Cronin was by my side.
‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you this morning?’ She said it in the tone which would usually go better with the words ‘What do you want from me now?’ I decided to try to put her on her back foot.
‘It’s not me you need to think of,’ I said. ‘It’s this poor girl here. Do you know she’s been waiting for Dr Laidlaw for an hour to see to her treatment? She had a very bad night and now she’s just hanging around. People are supposed to come here to be made better, Mrs Cronin, not to be worn out from endless waiting.’
Mrs Cronin’s face was like a hatchet.
‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? The lady has come to no harm.’
‘The lady,’ I said, and I did not miss Grant’s look of intense amusement to hear the word coming out of my mouth about her, ‘can surely expect more for her money than to come to no harm. Good grief, if the Hydro is setting the jumps as low as that now!’ I changed tack, hoping to shake something out of her. ‘What’s keeping Dr Laidlaw, anyway? Where is she?’ I turned my eyes slowly and very deliberately toward the spray bath room and the locked door beyond it. Mrs Cronin flushed.
‘She’s in her study,’ she said.
‘Well, I think I shall go there,’ I retorted. ‘And see what exactly it is that’s so much more important than her patients today.’ Mrs Cronin made a move as though to follow me, but I turned and barred her way. ‘Oh no, my dear matron,’ I said. ‘You are here instead, as you say. You must take care of this’ – I turned to indicate Grant and, since Mrs Cronin could not see my face, I dropped a wink at her – ‘lady.’
I found it hard to account for myself, thinking it over as I stalked the halls and passageways en route to Dr Laidlaw’s study once more. I did not usually forget myself so far as to antagonise those who were either suspects or useful witnesses. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar demands placed upon me by Hugh, or perhaps it was Grant of all people, being part of the case this time. Perhaps it was a cocktail of guilt over dragging Donald and Teddy into it and guilt over then banishing them to the paltry entertainments of Auchenlea until we were done, although that was Hugh’s doing, to be fair. Or perhaps it was just understandable frustration that every time one question was answered in this puzzle the answer only led to seven more questions and Mrs Addie was still there right in the middle as dead as ever and with no one nearer knowing why.
Then I turned the corner to the passageway leading to Dr Laidlaw’s study door and smiled, for all the clouds were gone and the sun was bright again. There was Alec, standing like a totem pole in the middle of the passageway, staring with ferocious nonchalance in the opposite direction from the door. When he saw it was me, he stood at ease and then crep
t softly back and put his ear against the wood again. Setting all thought of Hugh, the boys and Grant far from my mind – they would have been horrified, and Nanny Palmer would have wept – I tiptoed over and joined him.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ Dr Laidlaw was saying. She sounded as though she had been weeping. ‘I’m not interested in your money!’
‘Your money, Dottie,’ her brother replied.
I put my mouth very close to Alec’s ear and breathed my words rather than whispered them.
‘What are they talking about?’
Alec turned back to me and placed a finger on his lips.
‘What money?’ wailed Dorothea. ‘What have you done now?’
‘I?’ said Tot. ‘I, sister mine? Not I. You should really look at the pieces of paper shoved under your nose before you sign them.’
‘But I can’t carry on with this … charade,’ she said. ‘I’m frightened. That dreadful woman knows something about Mrs Addie, I’m sure.’ I stiffened and Alec waggled his eyebrows at me.
‘She’s been listening to fairy stories. It’s the smooth young man you need to watch out for,’ said Tot. ‘I’ve met his type before.’ I waggled mine back. ‘Anyway, it’s not long now.’
‘Until what?’ said Dr Laidlaw, her voice rising.
‘Don’t you trouble your pretty little head about it, Dottie,’ said Tot. ‘Just make sure you keep your books up to date, eh? And don’t say I’m not good to you.’
‘I don’t say that,’ said Dorothea. ‘I know very well how good you have been, but you don’t understand my work and what I need. This can’t go on.’
‘And it won’t, Dot,’ her brother said. ‘It’s nearly over.’
‘But it’s getting worse,’ she said. ‘All those people. The London people were bad enough, but these new people, more and more every day. Who are they?’
‘Don’t trouble yourself about them,’ Laidlaw said. ‘They’ll get what’s coming to them. They all will.’
Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone Page 25