Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  Alec and I had spent long hours discussing exactly what happened after Mrs Addie entered her mud bath that Sunday night in September. One thing we had agreed on was that Regina and Mrs Cronin were innocents in the matter, or at least guilty of no more than an abundance of loyalty. Regina was horrified when the truth finally dawned upon her, and Mrs Cronin had spent the last month at the Hydro trying to be everywhere at once in case Dorothea forgot someone again. No good would come of pointing the police in their direction, besmirching their good names and thrilling the newspapers.

  When it came to the Laidlaws, however, we found it harder to see eye to eye. I blamed Tot for just about everything; Dorothea forgot her patient and failed to tell the truth about it, swept up in her brother’s schemes. But I was sure it was Tot who found the body, washed it, handed it to Regina, signed up Dr Ramsay and lied to the police about the outing and the ghost. At some point in the grisly process, Dorothea found out what he was doing, certainly, but whether she happened upon him at the pool, actually dousing the poor dead Mrs Addie in cold water, or answered the door to Dr Ramsay and wondered what he was doing there, Tot was the engineer of it all.

  Alec did not agree. He made the admittedly compelling point that Tot’s usual round would not suddenly take him into the ladies’ baths one evening and that Dorothea must at least have found the body and turned to him for help in dealing with it. I argued him down: he might well have gone there looking for his sister; knowing the kind of man he was, he might have gone looking for someone who was not his sister. But, in the end, Dorothea Laidlaw was too sensitive a topic for Alec and me to argue for long.

  I returned my attention to Merrick, who had got on to Ramsay himself by this time.

  ‘Although Laidlaw’s at least partly responsible for what happened to Ramsay in the end,’ he was saying.

  ‘Wholly responsible,’ said Alec fiercely. ‘Tot killed Ramsay plain and simple.’ He suspected me of blaming myself for Dr Ramsay’s death and was always most vociferous about Laidlaw’s guilt any time the matter arose between us.

  ‘Ah, but Ramsay’s never going to melt a jury’s hearts,’ Merrick said. ‘He put his name to the death certificate of a murder victim to escape his gambling debts. And he spun ghost stories. Some of my “colleagues” are easily angry enough to give Laidlaw’s lawyers chapter and verse on that one. And then Ramsay isn’t a local man and the Laidlaws are Moffat from generations back. I can’t see fifteen good Dumfries men letting him swing.’

  ‘But he’s a fiend,’ I said. ‘He’s brought nothing but shame on the town and the county.’

  ‘It would be shame to you, Mrs Gilver, and to me,’ Merrick said. ‘But others have a taste for notoriety we don’t share. He’s brought high drama, filled all the inns with newspapermen, he’s rid the place of a white elephant and made space to build some neat wee houses instead, and it’ll be a long while again before Moffat sees its next casino.’

  ‘You really think Laidlaw will have the gall to play his lovable scamp act again after all of this?’ I said. ‘To a jury?’

  ‘I’ve no doubt,’ said Merrick. ‘Of course he’ll never see the outside of a prison cell but he’ll not be short of visitors either.’

  We had arrived at Morningside Road, bustling with motorcars, carriages, carts and trams, bicycles, pedestrians and omnibuses, all surging up from the city or pressing down there. Mr Merrick stopped outside a small tearoom and consulted his watch.

  ‘I believe I shall rest a while here and take refreshment,’ he said. ‘I’ve time before my train and the Addies, with their grief, were rather trying.’ He took his leave, then ducked inside the tearoom door and left Alec and me to carry on alone.

  ‘I’m almost glad our acquaintance with Loveday Merrick is drawing to a close,’ I said presently. ‘I find him more than a little unnerving.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ Alec said. ‘That sensation of having one’s strings pulled and not quite being able to resist him. For all he said about Tot Laidlaw winning over juries I think Merrick is the real snake-charmer of this case, don’t you?’

  ‘I certainly never found Tot irresistible,’ I said, shuddering.

  ‘Ah, but your senses are honed from years of sniffing out tricksters,’ Alec said. ‘I say, Dandy?’

  ‘Hm?’ I said. We were passing one of those little hat shops one finds in places like Morningside. Just one rather dashing evening cap on a stand in a chiffon-draped window.

  ‘You don’t suppose there’s anything in it after all, do you? Merrick’s peculiar talent, I mean. I mean, who’s to say what Mrs Addie’s sore back was? I would never have believed her son and daughter could be taken in before I saw it this morning. So maybe they weren’t taken in after all. Maybe Merrick isn’t just an uncoverer of charlatans. Maybe he’s the one nugget of gold amongst the dross. And maybe that’s why he dedicates his life to showing the dross for what it is.’

  This was quite a long speech for Alec and an even more remarkably candid one. I said nothing for a while. He had seen more death than I ever would if I lived to be ninety and kept detecting until I dropped. If he could bring himself to believe in a soft white light and kindly spirits looking down he might be able to lay who knew what old worries to rest and face the future. He might even be able to contemplate a wife who was more than a sensible girl who wanted a family. He would give his heart, newly minted, to his own true love and not mind the silly nonsense for a minute.

  On the other hand, he had just muttered about servants of truth and he had made a clear distinction between dross and gold. And so it was my turn to risk ridicule.

  ‘There’s good news and bad on that score, darling,’ I said, and I tucked my hand into his arm where it fitted very well indeed. ‘I’m sorry to say that Loveday Merrick wouldn’t know an actual ghost if it walked up and spoke to him. That’s the bad news. On the other hand …’ I took a deep breath and told him how it was I came to know.

  Facts and Fictions

  The ghosts of Moffat do include the Haunted Ram but although the Johnstone Reivers must have spoiled the Beef Tub as a picnic spot during their lives, they are long gone. The well is real but, thankfully, Yellow Mary is not. And while there is a story that William Hare spent a night in The Black Bull we have no information about where he went the next morning or where, in the end, he died.

  The Moffat Hydro was real enough until it burned down in 1921. I have merely given it a few extra years and made them eventful ones.