Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘I think she possibly did lose her mind at the end, Mr Laidlaw,’ I said. ‘But she didn’t kill Dr Ramsay.’

  Tot Laidlaw raised his head and stared at me.

  ‘Aren’t you wondering why my face looks this way?’ said Alec. He was indeed a dreadful sight this morning, shining with ointment and blistered where he wasn’t raw. ‘I tried to get to Dr Ramsay.’

  ‘But you failed,’ said Laidlaw. The relief in his voice was unmistakable.

  ‘He did,’ I said. I drew out the last remaining chair at the foot of the table and sat down. ‘But I didn’t. I had a very interesting talk with him before he died.’

  There was a moment of perfect stillness and then Tot Laidlaw leapt to his feet and raced for the door. The young constable was after him like a dog at the track, but it was Loveday Merrick who foiled his plan. He stuck out his silver-topped cane and when Laidlaw sprawled on the carpet, Merrick planted one of his enormous feet squarely in the middle of his back and leaned enough of his weight on it to start Laidlaw squealing.

  ‘Ladies,’ I said, ‘coffee will be served in the other room.’ The women stood – I have always been excellent at drawing off the ladies, even inexperienced ones such as some of these – and began to shuffle around the far side of the table to avoid the squirming Laidlaw and the young constable who was advancing with his handcuffs open.

  ‘I’m stopping here, though,’ Donald said.

  ‘Yes, me too,’ said Teddy.

  I threw them a glance. Perhaps it was because the rest of us were wan from exhaustion and adventures but they really did look a lot better than they had a week ago, rosy and bright-eyed, the Moffat Hydro’s last two satisfied customers.

  In the drawing room, Hugh was sitting behind a newspaper with a cigarette in his mouth. This was very odd, for he normally does not smoke until at least luncheon-time. He took one glance at the party of women and raised the newspaper higher than ever.

  The women began to twitter like a flock of little birds.

  ‘Old Dr Laidlaw must be turning in his grave!’

  ‘—been coming here for twenty-three years. I’ll have to go to Peebles now.’

  ‘—never have dreamed Tot could be such a sewer.’

  ‘—sister was dull but she didn’t deserve that, darling.’

  ‘And why did he do it?’

  ‘Yes, why would you burn down your own hotel and destroy your livelihood?’

  ‘For the insurance, of course. Now that doesn’t surprise me about dear old Tot at all.’

  Hugh cleared his throat and spoke from behind his newspaper barricade.

  ‘He’d better get onto his insurance broker quickly then, because if they’ve been buying common stocks like the rest of us he’ll be lucky to see a farthing.’

  I walked across and peered over the top of the newspaper.

  ‘Hugh?’ I said. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Just reading the news from America, Dandy,’ he said. ‘I’d like a quiet word, please.’

  I left the guests as Mrs Tilling advanced with a laden coffee tray and followed Hugh upstairs to our bedroom again. He shut the door and rubbed his face hard with his hands. I had not seen him indulge in such a gesture since the night when Teddy was small and his temperature from measles went higher than Nanny’s thermometer would show.

  ‘Hugh, what is it?’ I said.

  ‘While we’ve been here in a little world of our own,’ he said, ‘the American stock market has crashed, Dandy. Through the floor. I’m very sorry to tell you this, my dear, but we’ve taken heavy losses.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, money won and lost isn’t really lost at all, is it?’

  ‘Did you read any of those papers I asked you to sign and post to the broker?’ Hugh said.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Should I have?’

  He did not answer. He turned and looked at the room, surprised I think to see that it was a strange one.

  ‘If we leave Mrs Tilling and Pallister here to hold the fort,’ he said, ‘and Drysdale to bring them home whenever these walking wounded are off our hands, can we just go home this morning, please? You and me? Home to Gilverton, while we can.’

  ‘Well, actually, Hugh, I said, ‘there’s some good news and some bad news. About those papers. I didn’t want to release the funds from the stuff you sold because I had plans for them, you see. But I didn’t have time to look those particular ones out from that enormous bundle. I was nursing all of you and half the servants, remember. And so I didn’t post them. The papers. To the broker. They’re in my desk in my sitting room at home.’

  ‘You didn’t post any of them?’ Hugh said.

  ‘Not a one.’

  He strode over and took a firm hold of my upper arms as though he were about to shake me. Instead, he made an announcement.

  ‘I’m going to buy you a sable coat, Dandy,’ he said. ‘And a mink one too.’

  ‘You might not want to,’ I answered. ‘That was the good news. The bad news is that we might not be able to go home just now.’

  ‘Oh?’ he said. ‘Why not?’ I wriggled out of his grasp before continuing. Hugh had never shaken me like a rag doll until my teeth rattled, of course, and never would. Still.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘the plumbers are in. I’ve spent that money on central heating radiators and new bathrooms for Gilverton and Benachally.’

  ‘Pipes and taps and radiators?’ said Hugh. ‘At Gilverton?’

  ‘And Benachally, yes. And Gilchrist said they’d finished with one house but not started on the next yet. So depending on which one it is we might not be able to go home. Just yet. Until they’re done. But I must say for them to have done one in a week is a miracle so it shouldn’t be long.’

  He had, I realised, stopped listening a while ago. I think he stopped listening when I said ‘Gilchrist’.

  ‘My factor,’ he said and his voice was shaking. ‘My factor knew about this and never told me?’

  ‘You were ill, Hugh,’ I said. He marched across the room to the little desk where there was a telephone and fumed and swore until the call had been connected and Gilchrist – I assumed – was on the line. There were a few sharp exchanges and then the earpiece was banged into the cradle.

  ‘Well, at least we can go home,’ he said.

  ‘They did Gilverton first?’ I said. I hated it when he was this angry, but the thought of my new bathroom and the delicious warmth in my bedroom lifted my spirits anyway.

  ‘In a week, Dandy? Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Hugh. ‘They started with Woods Cottage. The factor’s house. Well, that’s all to the good in a way. When we advertise for a new man we can say the house is modern, can’t we?’

  ‘You’re not sacking him!’ I said. ‘Hugh, it was my fault. And you stopped it in time. And think if we’d crashed with the stock exchange. How can you be angry with anyone today?’

  There was a soft knock at the door and we both composed our faces.

  ‘Come in,’ I called.

  It was Grant.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ she said. ‘Madam. Only every stitch you had on last night is ruined and Mrs Tilling tells me your pale grey is in a bad way too. And I can’t even find your good coat.’ It was snagged on a bush on the Gallow Hill, so one could hardly blame her. ‘So I’ve been down to the town to Irene’s, which is not a bad little dress shop for a place of this size, and I’ve bought you something new.’ She turned in the doorway, picked up three enormous parcels done up with pale yellow paper and tied with dark brown ribbon. ‘Now, they’re quite daring for you, madam,’ she said, heaping them on the bed beside Bunty, ‘but they don’t carry a wide stock. You’ll need to stop in and pay the bill, by the way, and just remember when you do that these are London modes. She goes down on buying trips three times a year.’

  I turned to see what Hugh was making of all this.

  ‘I shall have Gilchrist and you shall have Grant,’ he said softly and left the room. I was delighted to note that he was whistling.
r />   Postscript

  I would greatly have preferred it had the Addies been willing to send a cheque through the post, for the thought of facing them once the endless grisly details came out was not an easy one. As Sergeant Simpson had said, all we ever want to hear is that death was instantaneous and our loved one did not suffer a moment’s pain, but that soothing tale was never going to do in this instance.

  Unfortunately Mr Addie was immovable on the point. Alec and I were summoned back to Fairways to give our report and receive our dues and as we stood on the doorstep one bright, crisp November day, the grin he gave me was as sickly as the one I returned. When the door opened, however, our reception was not at all what we had been dreading.

  Mrs Bowie née Addie had beaten the housemaid to the tape. She surged across the doorstep, pressed me to her bosom and then threw out an arm to haul Alec into an uncomfortable and somewhat excruciating three-way hug. Over her shoulder I saw the housemaid boggle, shrug and turn back to the baize door, leaving us to it.

  ‘How will we ever thank you?’ said Mrs Bowie, almost shrieking but muffled quite a bit against Alec’s coat and my fox fur. She stood back at last, just holding on to one hand of each, and beamed. Never had an Edinburgh matron acted more like a West End starlet on an opening night.

  Now Mr Addie joined us too, coming halfway along the hall from the drawing-room door and shifting from foot to foot, saying:

  ‘Hear, hear. Yes, indeed. I quite agree. Now away and let our guests in the door, Margaret. We’ve many things to say.’

  Mrs Bowie gave us both one last squeeze of the hand and then switched to ushering us inside, taking coats, offering coffee and fussing about the fire, the sunlight coming through the blinds and the comfort of the chairs. Anyone would think we had brought her mother back to her and Alec and I shared more than one puzzled glance, before the coffee and plain biscuits were served and the four of us were settled.

  ‘I’d a letter from the Dumfries Fiscal you wouldn’t believe,’ said Mr Addie. ‘Grovel? What? He tied himself in a sailor’s knot apologising. And another from the Chief Constable. A telegram, no less, from the Edinburgh pathologist and, ahem—’ He broke off and smoothed his moustache before continuing. ‘An invitation to dine with the Fiscal here in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Both of us,’ said Mrs Bowie. ‘To dine with him and his wife.’

  ‘Of course, I know him from the golf club,’ said her brother, playing it down, but I could see what a leap it was from two men drinking in a clubhouse to Mrs Bowie putting her pearls on and climbing into a taxi for dinner at eight. The Addies, it would appear, were being wooed out of plans to write to The Scotsman or instruct a lawyer.

  ‘And all because of you,’ said Mrs Bowie. ‘If it weren’t for you two dear people, the story of Mother’s death would have stood forever quite quite wrong, and her troubled spirit would never have found its rest.’

  ‘And for that we are most grateful of all,’ Mr Addie said. ‘It’s a new world to me, I must say, and I’m a plain man for the most part, but your associate has opened my eyes as well as calmed my mind.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. I could think of nothing more, but threw a frantic glance at Alec for aid.

  ‘I’ll just fetch him in,’ said Mrs Bowie. ‘He stepped out to take a turn in the fresh air. It’s that draining, you know.’ And she bustled off through the double doors to the adjoining room and then out of the french windows into the garden. Alec and I both sipped coffee the better to cover our total bewilderment and within a minute Mrs Bowie was back, skipping up the stone steps like a girl and holding the french window wide. I only just began to realise who was about to step through it as he appeared: leonine and magnificent, the sunlight giving him a kind of halo in his full regalia of astrakhan coat, silk scarf and silver-topped cane, Loveday Merrick strode into the room.

  ‘Mrs Gilver, Mr Osborne,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Merrick. What are— What a pleasant surprise.’ Alec had found his voice first.

  ‘I had to come,’ said the great man. ‘Mrs Addie would not be denied.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Mrs Bowie. ‘I always believed there was something, but I never dreamed to have it proven to me.’

  ‘Proven?’ I said, unable to help myself.

  ‘Beyond all doubt,’ said Mr Addie. ‘Mr Merrick seems to know my mother better nearly than I do myself. And it’s not at all a case of – ahem – crossing the palm with silver, for he has refused to take a penny piece and has told us from Mother in the strongest terms that she’s going to her rest now and if anyone else comes around saying they’ve a message we’ve not to listen.’

  ‘Marvellous indeed,’ said Alec. ‘It’s good to hear that she’s … in such good … after her ordeal.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s what she was so very determined to tell us,’ Mrs Bowie said. ‘There was no ordeal.’

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘She was warm and comfortable and she drifted off to sleep,’ Mr Addie said.

  ‘And when she awoke she was surrounded by soft white light and she was floating, quite weightless, above the ground, looking down but feeling nothing but calm.’

  ‘Remarkable,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t at all distressed by what she saw whilst “looking down”?’ Both Addies looked puzzled and Loveday swept in.

  ‘There was indeed great wickedness,’ he said. ‘Thomas Laidlaw was a man lost to all goodness. But none of his capers had the power to touch Mrs Addie by then. And good may come of evil, you know.’

  ‘This is the most wonderful bit of all,’ Mrs Bowie said. ‘And there’s no way Mr Merrick could have known of it unless Mother told him. So we know we can trust him.’

  ‘I see,’ I said and waited. If Loveday Merrick had found good in any of what had happened at the Hydro I was more than keen to hear.

  ‘Mother’s sore back,’ Mrs Bowie said. ‘It wasn’t the old trouble after all. It was something else.’

  ‘And if she hadn’t passed when she did,’ said Mr Addie, ‘how she did, drifting off that way, she would have been in for a very unpleasant time of it.’

  ‘What was it?’ Alec asked, rather baldly. I had already guessed; their very reluctance to say it screamed its name.

  ‘A growth,’ said Mrs Bowie in hushed tones. ‘Of the spine. Advanced and unstoppable. Mr Merrick told us.’

  ‘After Mrs Addie told you?’ I asked Loveday, turning a face I was keeping carefully blank towards him.

  ‘And so good came of evil, you see,’ Loveday Merrick repeated. ‘A calm, easeful death instead of the suffering that was coming.’

  ‘But wouldn’t the post-mort—’ Alec began, but he caught himself just in time.

  ‘And no,’ Loveday said later when he, Alec and I were walking back down through the city towards the railway station together, ‘the post-mortem wouldn’t. If it had been an organ, then certainly, but a growth in the muscle tissue around the spine? It could easily be missed. There are no holes in my story for the Addies to fall through. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m rather good at it now.’

  He had tucked my hand under his arm in an avuncular way, shepherding me safely through the drifts of fallen leaves and over the cobbles slick with the last of the morning’s frost, and now he gave me a squeeze with his elbow as well as a slight wink. I was instantly his ally and found myself speaking up.

  ‘Where’s the harm, Alec, really? If Mr Merrick has brought comfort to the poor Addies and proofed them against being picked off by music-hall mediums in future, where’s the harm?’

  ‘Gilver and Osborne, servants of truth,’ muttered Alec. I could see what he meant and when he shot rather a poisonous look at the way my gloved hand was nestled in the crook of Merrick’s arm I could see what he meant there too.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Merrick. ‘Truth. I’m glad you mentioned it and I’m very glad we have this chance to speak plainly away from the family and their sensitivities. Now, I don’t know how much you’ve been told about what Tot’s been coming out wit
h.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, astonished. ‘Told by whom?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve found Sergeant Simpson pretty forthcoming,’ Merrick said. In other words, he had the police eating out of his hand as well as the family. Thank goodness, I thought to myself, that his intentions were pure, for Svengali had nothing on him. Under cover of getting a handkerchief out of my pocket to dab at a smut on my cheek, I got my hand away and moved to walk a little closer to Alec, who was persuasive at times, but never actually mesmerising.

  ‘And I think,’ Merrick went on, ‘that Laidlaw simply can’t resist showing off, telling how clever he’s been.’

  ‘How clever?’ I said. ‘The man’s in jail, his sister dead, his hotel burned down and his reputation in shreds.’

  ‘But for a while there,’ said Merrick, ‘oh, for a while there it looked so promising. It was high stakes, but Tot Laidlaw’s nothing if not a player. The insurance was all stoked up, although it took his last pennies to stoke it, it seems. The guests were taking treatments to keep the books square – Dorothea would have got a tidy sum for the loss of such a successful clinic, you know. The casino was only open to the kind of hard-bitten gambler who’d keep his mouth shut so long as the cards were dealt.’ Alec caught my eye a little at that, but we said nothing, although I tucked the phrase away to use on Hugh sometime when I needed to.

  ‘What about Dr Ramsay?’ Alec said.

  ‘Yes, using Dr Ramsay was a mistake,’ said Merrick, ‘but one that Laidlaw almost managed to put right – dragging that infernal mud bath back to the Turkish, tricking the poor fool into it.’

  ‘Was he counting on it burning to ash and hiding his crime?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think he could have been thinking very clearly at all by then,’ said Merrick. ‘But he was certainly planning a hero’s death for Ramsay: a doctor going in to save souls with no thought for his own neck.’

  ‘And what of Laidlaw’s neck?’ Alec asked. ‘Will he hang?’

  Merrick shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘He didn’t kill Mrs Addie and he didn’t kill his sister.’

  ‘But he threw that poor woman’s body in the water and hid what killed her – it was him, wasn’t it?’