After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

  Darling Dan,

  Wonder of wonders! I hope you don’t think my astonishment is any slur on your abilities, darling, only when we heard about poor, darling Cara we naturally thought that there was an end to your investigations and our hopes of an answer. Do you think me a hag from hell if I admit it crossed my mind that her death, poor darling, might also bring an end to Lena’s machinations? I never should have dreamed in a hundred million years that it was simply the plot thickening. How dared you, Dan? What resolve you must have needed to stick to your guns and keep Sherlocking away regardless! But what vindication! One can scarcely believe one is in the presence of such scheming – I’m talking about Lena now, darling, not you, although . . . !! – and really I think it almost amounts to wickedness, when it gets to putting the death notice in (although I suppose they could hardly not) and sending out invitations for a memorial service – have you got yours yet, darling? – in fact the memorial service makes my absolute blood boil, doesn’t it yours? Because they might perfectly easily have said they were much too upset and since there’s nothing to bury anyway . . . I don’t know how I shall get through it without being sick, darling, but do let’s sit together,

  Yours very impressed indeed and agog for more,

  D xxx

  I had been invited to the memorial service and had been facing it with as little relish as Daisy. Now, as well as the general disinclination, I had the worry that Daisy would blurt out, as established fact, in front of Alec, some part of what I had told her in my letter and she had swallowed whole. (It was chastening to realize just how strongly I had played the suit of Cara’s still being alive.) Well, I certainly would not meet trouble halfway, by showing him what she had written. Apart from anything else one should shield Daisy’s stylistics from the gaze of strangers; I like her letters myself but I wonder if she ever reads them through.

  Presiding over my most enormous silver teapot on the day the fishing party assembled, I hoped to fix such an image of my fragrant presence in the minds of Hugh’s cronies that they would overlook hardly seeing me again for the rest of their stay. Dr Milne appeared with Alec and seemed quite equal to his company, droning away about rods and flies and the poundage of his last triumph, neither listening to the droning on either side of him nor caring that his fellows droners were not listening to him. I foresaw success and a few days of peace for me, and that evening I put on my smoking suit and listened to dance music on the wireless, as happy a pike widow as ever there was. Grant checked on me just once to see that I was lounging as decadently as the smoking suit demanded and she seemed quite pleased. She was waiting for the day I dared to wear this costume at a party, and waiting very patiently – that is, she always packed it for me when I went away but hardly ever suggested it out loud.

  Dr Milne was allowed a clear day’s fishing the next day, my plan being to spring an ankle on him the day after, but in the end a better excuse presented itself. I had slipped off on the second evening to The Perils of Pauline at the cinema in Perth and, while there, the thought struck me that I might come down with a flea. It should be noted that between my artsy crafty childhood and my adulthood in a houseful of dogs, I have been dealing with fleas quite expertly from a young age, but Dr Milne was not to know that and I thought something slightly disreputable and undignified might bring us closer together than an ankle, no matter how I shoved it in his face and howled.

  Accordingly I sent for him straight after breakfast and was huddled in a chair in my sitting room looking sheepish when he was admitted.

  ‘Have you had coffee, Dr Milne?’ I asked, pouring a cup out before he had time to answer. ‘You’ll think this is a fearful cheek, I’m sure, but I wondered if I could have a professional word?’ He looked crestfallen and answered:

  ‘Yes, of course my dear Mrs Gilver, I never come away without my bag, but you should have said when you wrote.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I protested. ‘This has just come up. Sheer opportunism since you’re here anyway.’ So he had been a little suspicious about the summons, then. I should have to tread lightly. ‘The thing is,’ I said, and I found that I was blushing, which added a great deal in the way of authenticity, ‘the thing is, I think I’ve got a flea.’ I clapped my hand over my mouth as though trying to disguise either shock or nervous giggles and waited for him to respond with the expected professional gravity. To his credit, however, he threw back his large head and roared with laughter, at which I started to giggle for real and the ice was well and truly broken.

  ‘I can’t help you with that, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Except to pass on a good tip for killing the little devils. I’m always getting them, visiting in the village. There’s one family in particular . . .’ He shuddered. ‘Stand in an empty bath, take off all of your clothes slowly, item by item, and drop them into a basin of water set beside you. If the flea is in the clothes it will swim to the top. If not then it must be on you or on the bath, where you can see it. You find it, pinch it between your fingers – tight, mind – and put it in the water to drown. Don’t take the clothes out of the basin until you’ve seen it belly up. And some calamine lotion for the bites,’ he finished, reaching into his bag. I was scratching for real by now, always having been very suggestible on the topic of fleas and ticks.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said and settled back to chat. ‘Well then, happier circumstances than last time.’ I was glad to see that he seemed ready to sit and talk, fleas or no.

  ‘I see there’s to be a service in Edinburgh,’ he said.

  ‘Are you going?’ I asked. ‘I know the Duffys had not had the cottage long, poor things, but did you get a chance to get to know Cara at all?’ My stomach gave a little lurch as he shook his head.

  ‘I never met the poor lass,’ he said. ‘I knew her father to pass the time of day. Met him when he came down to look at the cottage. It must have seemed such a charming idea. A little wooden cottage by the sea for the ladies.’

  ‘Dreadful, dreadful,’ I said vaguely, trying to think as fast as I could what to say next. ‘I should think the last thing they’ll want to do is rebuild on the site, don’t you? So, I suppose from the point of view of the village it would be best if they just sold the land to someone else.’ Dr Milne looked puzzled at the turn the conversation was taking, and I hurried on. ‘I mean how awful for the local people simply to have that great big blackened hole sitting there to remind them.’ Dr Milne nodded and took up the theme.

  ‘Aye, right enough,’ he said. ‘I know old Mrs Marshall up the lane is in a terrible state about it all.’ My stomach revolved once more. Surely my ally had not spoken of things she should not. His next words calmed me.

  ‘She can’t stand to go down to the shore for kindling I heard, and that was her daily jaunt before now. She’s a wonderful old woman, one of the old kind.’ I remembered in good time that I could not be expected to know who this Mrs Marshall was, in fact had better not know in case he wondered how, but I saw an avenue.

  ‘Is that the Mrs Marshall who went in to clean for the Duffys?’

  ‘Her mother-in-law,’ said Dr Milne.

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘I do like the way these country places have their settled families, don’t you? Hugh’s tenants on the home farm have been here longer than the Gilvers. I say, Dr Milne, I’ve just had the most – well, I hope the most fanciful idea. They never did get an explanation of how the fire started, did they?’ It was hard work to remember just how little I was supposed to know and how little concerned I should reasonably appear to be. ‘A thought just occurred to me. The poor little servant girl. You know, the one who died? She wasn’t local, was she? It couldn’t have been her family taking some kind of revenge, or . . .’ Dr Milne looked flabbergasted.

  ‘Where do you get an idea like that?’ he said.

  ‘The cinema, I suppose,’ I said, sheepish again. ‘Along with the flea.’ I hoped he would say more without having to be prompted again, as I wanted to save all the patience he had left for the outrageous suggestion I might
have to make next.

  ‘No, that wee lass had come down with them from Edinburgh,’ he said. ‘I had never set eyes on her before in my life.’ I took this steadily, betraying no emotion. ‘It would be as like a Gatehouse girl to get herself into that kind of trouble right enough, but not to take such a way out of it. Most often what happens is someone leans hard on the boy and there’s a wedding and an “early blessing”. No, that wouldn’t be the way of it at all.’ He mused now, as though talking to himself. ‘It was a shame, right enough. A bonny wee thing, damned shame.’

  ‘Dreadful,’ I said again in a murmur which I hoped would not interrupt the flow.

  ‘And it hit Mrs Duffy hard,’ he went on. ‘I thought at the time it had hit her harder than she was happy to show. No weeping and wailing, mind, but she was a terrible colour and I was worried. I thought to myself, that for all she was stiff – if you’ll pardon me saying so – she had a heart in her. Yes, a wee kitchen maid she had probably not seen above a dozen times and you would think it was her own –’ He broke off, confused at where his meandering had taken him, and fell to nodding sorrowfully. I lapsed into a silence preparatory to my next move. After a couple of agonizing minutes had ticked by on the clock, I began to speak with a little laugh.

  ‘If we’d had this conversation yesterday,’ I said, ‘I should have been able to account for the dream I had last night. The worst nightmare I’ve ever had since I was a child. In fact –’ I gave him a twisted smile, and my look of trepidation was quite genuine – I did not know if what I was about to say was a masterstroke of subtly entwined truth and fancy or my biggest blunder yet. ‘In fact, I wonder if I wanted to tell you about it – “subconsciously” as they say. Do they still say that? – and that’s why I didn’t even think of dealing with the flea by myself.’

  Dr Milne looked gently encouraging, but said nothing.

  ‘I dreamt about Cara,’ I said. ‘Or rather about that poor little servant girl, but in the dream they were one and the same person. Cara was lying in bed and her mother was there and so were you and there was blood simply everywhere.’ I dared not look at Dr Milne to see how any of this was going, but ploughed on, finding my stride. ‘I had to wade through it up the stairs to the attic, and by this time it was the attic here at Gilverton – you know the way one can never dream very convincingly about the unknown and so one substitutes something more familiar? – and the blood was hot as though it were flames and where it spattered on the walls in the little bedroom it was singeing and blackening the paper, and when it hit the people’s faces – and it did, you know, it went simply everywhere – they screamed as though they were being burned. It was quite, quite dreadful, because you see I knew, in the dream, that we were all going to die there, that none of us was able to escape and there was a voice coming from somewhere reading a dispatch like in the war, telling how we had all perished in a fire and Cara started to scream, “No, no, no. Not a fire! It was the blood. It was the blood!”’

  I stopped at last and squinted at Dr Milne from under my brows. He looked as thunderstruck as one might expect after what had turned out to be rather a Gothic narrative, but he did not look at all anxious or afraid.

  ‘Most unpleasant, Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘Thoroughly nasty. What were you reading before you put out your lamp?’

  ‘Oh yes, I daresay you’re right,’ I said. ‘At least, it was all rather torrid at the cinema. Or could it have been that dashed flea? You know, in my sleep I could feel it feasting on my blood and making me burn with itches? Or perhaps not.’ I really should try to rein in these excesses; he was gaping at me now.

  ‘But the worst thing is, Dr Milne,’ I said after a pause, ‘that I can’t seem to shake it off even in the cold light of day. I just can’t get rid of the silly idea that Cara was the maid and the maid was Cara. And so just now when you said that you had never met either of the two girls before, I suddenly thought perhaps I was right. Perhaps my dream was a premonition! Not that I believe in all that, and it would be a post-monition anyway, wouldn’t it? Or a message from the spirit world or something.’

  Now he looked anxious, and I hurried to put things right.

  ‘I don’t really mean that. Of course I don’t believe in such things, but it would be a real kindness on your part if you could reassure me that no such thing is possible. I mean, the servant was a servant, wasn’t she? And she really did – I mean, she really had – I mean, did you actually see . . .?’

  Professional calm reasserted itself in Dr Milne’s flushed face, now that he presumably had me placed one short step from the gates of the madhouse. He reached out and patted my arm.

  ‘Come now, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, placidly. ‘You are far too mature and sensible to give way to these flights of fancy. It was a nightmare. A very shocking nightmare, but no more than that. The film, the flea, as you say, and I expect the very fact of me being here and you seeing me again, all these things together and nothing more are to blame for your restless night. But if you are sure it won’t simply upset you further, I can put your mind at ease.’ I nodded bravely and he went on, sitting back in his chair and looking at the carpet as he spoke.

  ‘The poor little girl whose body I examined was most certainly a servant, Mrs Gilver. Her hair, her hands . . . Go and hold your own pretty hand next to one of the kitchen maids’ downstairs and you will soon see how impossible it would be to make a mistake like that. This child’s hands were quite raw, you know, bits of pot scourer under her nails. And I’m afraid there was no mistaking what she had done to herself. It was the typical silly nonsense that only a very ignorant girl would believe in. And only such a creature wouldn’t see that she was just as likely to die from it as to miscarry. Does that put your mind at rest?’

  It did and I smiled at him with unfeigned relief, prompting him to begin to work off some of the considerable annoyance that he was much too polite to let out in any other way. After all, I had made a pretty monstrous suggestion about his professional integrity.

  ‘We doctors don’t just glance at a corpse and sign our names, you know. I only wish we did. I made a very thorough examination of the poor creature and there was no doubt at all that this was a female of the servant classes, whose body bore the unmistakable marks of pregnancy. And I assure you, Mrs Gilver, it’s as easy for a medical man to tell such things as whether or not a female has borne a child as it would be for you to tell a man from a woman. I can’t put it any plainer than that.’

  I was beginning to have had enough and, before the good doctor could go into any more revolting detail, I rose and held out my hand to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And please, if I could presume on your kindness even further, please don’t tell my husband about this. He thinks I’m silly enough as it is. Now, a-hunting I shall go,’ I finished, picking up the bottle of calamine lotion and brandishing it before me. I was halfway to my bathroom before I remembered that the flea was not real.

  Sickened and fearing nightmares for real unless I turned my attention to gayer things, I busied myself in the nursery wing for the rest of the day, where I rather thought I should do a little redecorating before the boys came for the summer. I should shed a tear at the passing of the blue curtains with ducks on them, but they would be most gratified to find manly stripes instead, and so I threw myself into it and grew quite cheerful. Successful as this was for the hours of daylight, however, it was destined not to last.

  At a little after nine that evening when my supper had been cleared and I was tucked up on a sofa with Mr Pickwick to jolly me along until bedtime, Alec appeared with a soft knock and slithered almost furtively into my room.

  ‘Hugh’s taking a contingent to look out of a telescope and I’ve peeled off,’ he said.

  ‘Quite right, too,’ I said, putting my feet to the floor and closing my book. ‘The tower room will be freezing.’

  ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ Alec asked. ‘Are you just off to bed? I don’t want to disturb you.’

  ‘It’s a
smoking suit,’ I said, trying for haughtiness. ‘Right. Report from Dr Milne. Has he said anything, by the way, to the rest of you, about my mental state? He thinks I’m slightly mad after this morning.’ I told Alec with as few grisly embellishments as I thought I could get away with, just what Dr Milne had told me: that he had never met either this child or Cara but that given the thoroughness of his examination there was no doubt about the creature’s class nor her condition.

  ‘That’s that then,’ said Alec, when I was finished. ‘I still can’t believe it though. A theft, a suicide or whatever you want to call it, and a fire all happening to the same family in such quick succession and none of them connected to any of the others?’

  ‘Well, in my version,’ I said, ‘the theft and the fire are connected, and it’s just the poor maid that’s the unforeseen catastrophe. And I still think there’s something fishy about that. Why on earth would they take a kitchen maid away with them in the first place? I mean to say, the rough work of the kitchen is the one thing they could be sure to have done daily by some local woman. A lady’s maid, I should have thought.’

  ‘Who said she was a kitchen maid?’ asked Alec.

  ‘Good point,’ I said. ‘It was Dr Milne, and I don’t suppose he really knew, just placed the poor creature as low as he could on the scale to match his distaste for what she had done. You should have heard him this morning, Alec. Nothing but disdain for the type of “creature” who would do such a thing. I wish we knew her name. It’s hateful to keep calling her a creature. It makes me no better than he is.’

  ‘But she really is a distraction, Dandy dear,’ said Alec. ‘Your concern for the poor cr– for the girl does you credit, but it’s Cara we need to think about.’

  I sighed and said nothing. It still bothered me greatly that Cara, Cara, Cara mattered so much and the other little girl not at all. I was sure that Dr Milne’s revulsion was not only for her desperate action – an unusual one to be sure – but for the all too common action which led to it. I was sure as well that if poor dear darling Cara had found herself in a similar spot . . .