Deadly Measure of Brimstone

9

It was not difficult to account for the loyalty of Mrs Cronin and young Regina when I entered the doctor’s study moments later in response to her low ‘Come in’. She looked like a child who had been sent to sit in a grown-ups’ toyless room and wait for its punishment there. Her head shrank down between her shoulders when she saw that it was me.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, managing a faint smile which did not quite banish the troubled look behind it. ‘I’ve just had a very pleasant talk with one of your neighbours. Did you know he was here? A Mr Osborne of Perthshire.’

A dozen quick thoughts chased one another around my head like little fish. I did not know whether to admit to knowing Alec or to deny it. Had he claimed acquaintance of me? In spite of our agreement, had he gone ahead for some reason and told the tale of the visiting ghost instead of leaving it to me? If he had, then his handling of Mrs Bowie yesterday paled into oblivion beside this, for Dr Laidlaw had a soft look in her eye when she spoke his name. Thankfully, she wanted the pleasure of saying it again and she went on, not noticing that I had not answered.

‘Mr Osborne is very interested in my work here. Rather unusual.’ She lifted a hand to her throat and moved the locket on a chain which sat there. ‘I’m hardly ever lucky enough to have a willing audience these days,’ she said. ‘Since my dear father died. And even he… well, we disagreed. Profoundly. Which made for interesting exchanges but I rarely got the chance simply to air my ideas and see what I thought of them.’

Bravo, Alec, I thought to myself, understanding now what he had been up to. Quite simply, he had softened the doctor up for me.

‘Yes, he is a pleasant young chap, isn’t he?’ I said. ‘I’ve often thought so when we’ve run into one another at parties.’ That was a nicely judged compromise between an implausible lack of acquaintance – Perthshire is not so populous as all that – and the sort of intimate friendship which would have to be explained. ‘Well, I hope you don’t mind a second interruption of your morning’s work, Dr Laidlaw, but I have a matter of great urgency to discuss with you.’

She looked at me for the first time then, I think, and looked as a doctor would, taking in my flushed face and dishevelled hair.

‘Are you feeling all right, Mrs Gilver?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘That is, I would have said so and yet I hope not. It would be much better to put it down to illness really.’

She had risen and approached me at this less-than-certain assurance and now she laid a hand against my forehead, felt gently under my jaw with the tips of her fingers, and finished by cupping my face in her hands and turning it up to hers, looking very intently into my eyes. It was a curiously intimate gesture, and not one that any doctor had subjected me to before. I looked back at her quizzically.

‘Perhaps you’re tired after your disturbed night,’ she said.

‘I don’t follow you,’ I said. My sleep had been restless; Bunty, taking her time to get used to the new surroundings, had shifted and snuffled and pawed the counterpane every two hours. I, also still getting used to them, had woken each time and taken much longer than her to settle again.

‘The fire drill,’ Dr Laidlaw said. ‘I have no earthly idea why my brother thinks it’s a good idea to have them in the middle of the night. Such confusion, everyone rushing around in their dressing gowns.’

‘Have you forgotten, Dr Laidlaw,’ I said, ‘that I’m not staying in the hotel?’ The stricken look she gave me was so far beyond what my mild rebuke deserved that I almost reached out and touched her arm, to try to comfort her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I did. I forgot. I’m so very sorry.’

I laughed lightly to cover the awkwardness.

‘Not at all. Think nothing of it. Am I ill then? Is that what caused the strange experience I just had?’ She lifted one of my hands to take my pulse, only realising when she lifted her own arm that she was not wearing a watch. She looked instead at the clock sitting in the middle of the jumble of objects on the crowded chimneypiece. It seemed more likely to topple than ever today, from the pressure of the bills stuffed in behind.

While the doctor was counting, I spoke again.

‘That treatment room which leads off from the spray baths?’ I said. I felt the pinch of her suddenly tightening her grip on my wrist, but it only lasted a moment and then she continued calmly counting. ‘What’s in there?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. She let my hand drop and went back to sit behind her desk, even going so far as to rearrange some papers in front of her as though all her reading and writing could defend her against me. ‘Just an unused room. It was never very convenient, what with the chance of someone slipping on the wet floor as she arrived or departed.’

‘Did someone slip?’ I said. ‘Did someone fall?’

‘No,’ said Dr Laidlaw. A blot of colour was beginning to stain her neck. ‘Why would you think so?’

‘Well, now,’ I said. ‘I don’t say that I believe it, but I can’t account for it exactly. The fact is, I think I might just have seen a ghost there.’

Dr Laidlaw froze and for a long empty moment there was silence between us, then she stood, quite roughly pushing her chair back out of the way, and walked over to the window. She could not see anything through that dingy lace curtain, surely, but still she stayed there facing away from me, her shoulders rising and falling as she fought to bring her breath back under control.

‘I know how it sounds,’ I said. ‘Too silly for words, but there it is. I saw something which might have been wisps of steam, coming from the door. Not from under it or from the keyhole, but just as though the steam were passing right through the glass and wood.’

Dr Laidlaw turned to face me again at last.

‘Steam,’ she said, with a great rush of breath released so that almost she was laughing.

‘At first I thought so,’ I said. ‘It formed… a shape.’

‘As steam will,’ said Dr Laidlaw, nodding.

‘And clouds and inkblots, oh absolutely,’ I agreed. ‘But the thing is, the shape was quite distinctly a woman.’

‘It may well have looked like one.’

‘And it spoke to me.’

Still nodding, she came back and took her seat behind the desk, smoothing her skirt and once again touching the locket at her throat.

‘You were in the plunging pool?’ she said.

‘On my way in.’

‘You had been in the hot room?’

‘The steam room.’

‘Ah,’ she said, sounding almost relieved.

‘I see what you mean,’ I agreed again. ‘I might have been swooning.’

‘It sounds that way.’ She was calm again now. She went as far as to sit back in her chair and fold her hands in her lap. ‘Perhaps you should move from the warm room to the sprays,’ she said. ‘I love the cold pool – always have done: it’s quite my favourite part of the Hydro – but the sprays are much less taxing.’

‘I suppose they would be,’ I said. ‘Shall I tell you what she said?’

Dr Laidlaw inclined her head and smiled patiently.

‘Please do. I’m very interested in the mind, Mrs Gilver. In the things it tells us. What words did your mind put into the mouth of this wraith?’

‘What a wonderful word,’ I said. ‘Although she was hardly wraith-like. Very considerable in outline, actually.’ I noted a pucker at her brows as she heard this. ‘And what this ample wraith said to me was that she had a message for her son and daughter.’ Dr Laidlaw drew breath to speak and then stopped, her eyes darting. ‘She also said that she was cold and asked where her clothes were. Isn’t that a curious thing?’

‘Her clothes?’ It was a ragged whisper.

‘Yes, she was naked. Or at least she might have had a shift on, it’s hard to say.’

Dr Laidlaw was shaking her head, just a little, and very fast.

‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘Impossible.’

‘I give you my word,’ I told her, making myself look affronted. ‘Why on earth would it be impossible for my mind to put those words in the mouth I was imagining? The message for her daughter and son sounds like standard seance fare – we used to have them at school you know: great fun, but the mistresses were very down on it always – and as for saying she was cold and wanted her clothes? Well, I was halfway into a bath of ice-water and wearing nothing myself. No, Dr Laidlaw, you have quite set my worries aside. I shall eschew the hot room and the steam room from now on and I shan’t think of it again.’ I gazed at her out of innocent eyes. She was still struggling, breathing hard and rather wobbly about the mouth, but she managed a nod and a bit of a smile.

‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m glad I could help.’

‘And I’m sorry if I upset you,’ I said. ‘I know that room is a treasured place for you.’

‘Treasured?’ she said faintly.

‘Regina mentioned it,’ I said, trying to sound airy. ‘That you go there to mourn your father. Was it his study? Surely not, opening off the ladies’ sprays that way.’

‘To mourn my father?’ Dr Laidlaw sounded thunderstruck.

‘Actually,’ I said, nodding as though the thought were only then occurring to me, ‘Regina said merely that you go there to weep. I naturally assumed… I mean, what else would you be weeping for?’

I loathed myself for this and was determined to scold myself later, but it was certainly working. Dr Laidlaw was quite undone, slumped back in her chair, jaw fallen, eyes wide.

‘I can’t imagine what Regina meant by saying such a thing. I shall have to-’

‘Oh no, please don’t!’ I said. ‘Perhaps I misheard or misunderstood.’

‘Yes.’ She seized the lifeline.

‘As you say, it was all in my imagination, no doubt.’ I summoned my very airiest, breeziest voice. ‘It must be coincidence the way it’s reminding everyone of Mrs Addie.’

She was, quite simply, turned to stone. I loathed myself even more, but only with a very small part of my attention. With the rest of it, I was watching her. Quite soon the little head-shaking motion began again and her lips started moving. She might have been muttering impossible, impossible as before, but this time it was too low for me to catch it. When she finally cleared her throat and spoke up, she said exactly what I had been expecting her to.

‘Everyone?’

‘Regina and Mrs Cronin,’ I said. ‘But you mustn’t think they’ve been gossiping. You have a tremendously loyal staff here, Dr Laidlaw. The name just popped out unbidden when I described what I’d heard and seen, you know. It couldn’t have been helped.’

I left her then, stricken and stranded amongst her dusty papers, and I had to harden my heart to do so. Indeed, glancing back from the door, I almost crumbled. She looked so very young, sitting round-shouldered, with her hands between her knees, staring down at the desktop. Could I really abandon a child who looked that way? More to the point, could I really pass up the chance further to question a woman who looked so utterly defeated? Surely she would succumb and tell me all sorts of things that I needed to know.

After a long pause, with my hand on the door and my better self tussling with the rest of me, I decided to rest on my laurels awhile. Better to leave her stewing and have her dreading my return than to push her too far right now and have her turn oyster on me.

‘Goodbye, Dr Laidlaw,’ I said. She did not answer; I do not suppose she even heard me.

Alec was on the terrace, as arranged. So was Hugh, but my wifely duties were discharged with a greeting, the news that he had had no post delivered at Auchenlea, and an undertaking to join him for luncheon.

‘I might just slip along and have a word with Alec then,’ I said. ‘Since you are reading and he is not.’ Hugh craned forward in his deckchair, spotted Alec and waved his hat.

‘Are you up to anything that should concern me, Dandy?’ he said. I thought about the plumbers at Gilverton, the dead Hydro guest and the ghost stories I had been telling and shook my head no.

‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Are you?’ Hugh put on his face a look of such injured innocence that I had to bite my cheeks not to laugh.

‘I?’ he said. ‘Of course not.’ In perfect marital harmony, then, each with our secrets, we parted.

There was an empty deckchair next to Alec’s, by dint of his having put his hat and a folded newspaper upon it and of his smoking his pipe like a rank beginner so that plumes of blue fugged the air for a yard around him. I waved and coughed and sank down into the cushions.

‘Right then,’ I said. ‘Gosh, this is very comfy. Dr Laidlaw is reduced to a jelly. I was marvellous, even if I do say so. But I’ve decided to play a long game and leave her to get even more anxious before I give the screws another turn.’

Alec turned and regarded me with rather a stony look on his face.

‘You sound more callous every case we get, Dandy,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine the woman I met eight years ago reporting with such relish that she’d laid another low.’

‘Dear, dear,’ I said. ‘What’s got into you? If I wanted to be reproached about how far short I fall from “the woman he met” I’d have stayed up the other end with Hugh.’

‘I apologise,’ said Alec. ‘What reduced her?’

‘Only what we agreed,’ I said. ‘One mention of Mrs Addie’s ghost and she was terrified.’

‘A patient who died?’ Alec said. ‘I don’t doubt she was. And ghosts? Really, Dandy, who wouldn’t be?’

We sat quietly for a while. I looked out over the view when the clouds were across the sun and shut my eyes against the glare when it shone, enjoying the warmth on my face, then I thought I had better start talking again before I slipped into a doze.

‘Anyway,’ I began. ‘If Mrs Addie died outsi-’ but Alec had started talking too and was more determined to get to the end.

‘She’s having a very difficult time of it, you know,’ he said. ‘Typical story. A daughter and a son. The son’s a piece of fluff and the daughter’s a born scholar, but the father can’t drag himself into the modern age and see it so.’

‘She got to medical school, didn’t she?’ I said. ‘Gosh, when I think of my sister and me…’

‘But it was the will, Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘Her father’s will. He had to leave her the practice – one must leave a medical practice to a doctor – but Tot Laidlaw owns the lion’s share of the building and grounds. A controlling interest.’

‘Again, I’d say her father was perfectly fair. She got the practice and Tot got extra bricks and mortar instead. Why is she complaining?’

‘She’s not. She’s as sweet-tempered a woman as I’ve ever met. And at least he can’t just sell it out from under her. Much as he might want to.’

‘No? Well, again that’s a pretty decent arrangement, I’d say.’ Alec looked unconvinced and I regarded him closely, wondering from where all this concern for the good doctor was coming. ‘Did she just tell you all of this?’ I said, not liking to think that he had been taken in by some tale of woe.

‘Glad of someone to talk to,’ Alec said.

‘And I suppose she wants to keep it going and he wants to run it down? And she can’t afford to buy him out?’

‘Well, she certainly can’t afford to buy it,’ Alec said. He waved an arm at the terrace, the croquet lawn and the tennis courts beyond. ‘I mean, look at it, even if the hotel itself is a bit of a pile. But as to who wants what, it’s hard to say. It’s Tot who’s bending over backwards to keep it ticking over.’

‘Up to and including mm-mm.’ I hummed through the last bit since a squeakingly respectable family of mother, father and grown-up daughter were strolling by.

‘I think he’s pretty well using Dorothea as a front,’ Alec said.

‘Like a speak-easy. What a man he must be – his own sister!’

‘And she won’t hear a word agai-’ Alec began and then stopped and nudged me. ‘Look!’ he hissed.

I turned to where he was nodding. A perfect parade of individuals was making its stately way along the terrace. The gooseberry-eyed girl was there, the crow-hatted Mrs Molyneaux, our lady of the lace mittens, and many more; and at the centre and slightly in front, the Great Personage. If I had seen him in the street I should have taken him for an actor or perhaps a theatrical impresario, and if anyone had suggested a spirit medium could achieve such grandeur and such a look of prosperity I should have wondered what the world was coming to. He wore a homburg hat as glossy as an otter and an astrakhan coat which reached to his ankles with lapels like those of Beau Brummell. His cane was ebony and had a silver knob of some complicated design, and his tie was yellow satin. As he paced along he surveyed the terrace, the grounds and the sitting guests like a Persian king come among his subjects and greatly pleased by them. It was impossible not to watch, and almost impossible not to giggle.

‘What have you-’ I waited as the procession passed by. ‘What have you managed to find out about him?’

‘Nothing except his name,’ whispered Alec. ‘I insinuated myself into a group of them at breakfast and asked it. But I rather got the impression they thought if I didn’t know I wasn’t worth telling.’

‘And?’ I whispered back. ‘What is his name?’

‘Loveday Merrick.’

‘If it says that on his birth certificate I’ll give you ten sovereigns,’ I said. ‘Did you get any clues at breakfast as to what he’s here for? What any of them are?’

‘Not exactly,’ Alec said. ‘Ghosts, obviously. But most certainly not the Moffat Ram because I floated that and got looks of pity.’

‘I thought not. It’s one of the outlying ghosts, for sure, not a nice tidy one on a cobbled street in town.’

‘One thing one of them did say,’ Alec went on. ‘One of the young ones – such a waste of a pretty little thing who could get a job in a hat shop if she clicked her fingers-’

‘Yes, all right, all right,’ I said. ‘I understand perfectly. A pretty little thing liked the look of you and dropped hints by way of flirting. You’re making conquests all around.’

‘Yes, well, never mind all that, but she did say,’ Alec resumed, ‘that they are trying to calculate an anniversary.’

‘An anniversary of what, I wonder. The death of Yellow Mary? Some black day amongst the Johnstone devils? I wonder when they stopped the hangings at Gallow Hill. Hugh would know.’

‘Well, a good while ago,’ said Alec. ‘Surely. Even here. Public hangings had been held decently in town squares in Dorset for years before they finally stopped them.’ It is a curious thing, but whereas normally I am the greatest champion of Northamptonshire in particular and England in general, whenever Alec starts on the wonders of Dorset and the sins of Perthshire, I feel my hackles start to rise. It is most disconcerting to think that I am growing a layer of Scotch inside me and so I have never breathed a word of it to him and certainly not to Hugh who would be enchanted. Alec was speaking again.

‘Who else have I conquered?’ he said.

‘Good Lord, the doctor!’ I said. ‘Didn’t you try to? Didn’t you know?’

‘Really?’ he said and then he rose and went to tap out his pipe into the earth around a potted laurel. ‘Right then, Dan,’ he said upon returning. ‘Never mind conquests and for heaven’s sake never mind ghosts for a while. What about Mrs Addie? How did the poor woman die?’

‘A heart attack, following a fright, following an imagined sighting of a ghost on a country walk. Perfectly simple.’

‘Only the Laidlaws didn’t tell the police about the walk, the police didn’t tell the family about the fright and no one seems to have told Dr Ramsay about the ghost.’

‘I understand why anyone with compassion would edit out the ghost and the fright,’ I said. ‘But I don’t at all understand why the same people – the Laidlaws, this is – who drafted in a second doctor to put some distance between themselves and the death, also – at the same time – hid the real distance. She wasn’t here. It was nothing to do with them since she didn’t die in the Hydro. Or at least didn’t collapse here. It’s all very puzzling, I must say.’

‘Well, what about this?’ Alec said. He was beginning to smoke in that committed way which heralds clear thoughts, and I was ready to welcome them. ‘The Hydro is struggling. The Laidlaws are getting desperate. A patient dies, so Tot – it must be Tot – turns the death to account in the cleverest way. The Haunted Hydro, you know. So they don’t want any of the mediums to know that she wasn’t here at the Haunted Hydro when she got the fright that killed her. But if she dropped her bag and went back for it and if we find it then we’ll have proved that she was out and about and they’ll have to drop all the ghost stories and tell the truth to the Addies.’

‘What makes you think it’s Tot?’ I said. ‘He seemed rather horrified by the mediums as far as I could see.’

‘All part of the act,’ Alec said.

‘And anyway, it seems a bit unlikely. A patient dying is far more likely to harm the Hydro with the general public than give it a leg up. How many mediums can there possibly be?’

‘You’re right,’ said Alec with a defeated sigh. ‘It would harm the place less if she died of a heart attack out in the open air miles away.’

‘Fresh air,’ I said.

‘Same thing. Don’t quibble.’

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to remember something…’

‘I say!’ Alec said, very loudly. ‘I’ve just thought of this. Someone dropping dead on a lonely hillside has a post-mortem and a full inquiry, doesn’t she? So perhaps saying she died here when she didn’t is their way of avoiding both. That would make the lie a great big black one and only worthwhile if it was covering something blacker. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’

‘It certainly does,’ I said. ‘I wish you hadn’t started yelling it at me when I was trying to remember a crucial detail, though.’

‘Only… where does the locked room come into any of that?’

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘Unless I hit on the truth by chance. Perhaps it really was a favoured place of old Dr Laidlaw and young Dr Laidlaw goes there to cry, and since a patient died in her care she’s just been crying more.’

Alec gave me a long and uninterpretable look.

‘Oh, Dandy,’ he said, then he shook himself. ‘Those aren’t bad shoes. Would you care to join me on a country walk before luncheon?’

‘I would not,’ I said. ‘Have you looked at an ordnance survey of the countryside around here? Contours like thumbprints in every direction. But I wouldn’t mind going back to Auchenlea, asking Mrs Tilling for a picnic and setting off in my motorcar.’

‘And where shall we try first?’ Alec said. ‘I’m for the well, because take this Yellow Mary you mentioned. Who’s to say that her full name isn’t Yellow Mary Patterson? Repenting of her sins and all that?’

I asked a maid to tell Drysdale to bring the motorcar round and then there was just one small matter to see to before we could depart. It had occurred to me as Alec and I were talking that I could drip another cold drop of fear into Dr Laidlaw’s ear and so I steered him along the corridor leading to her study en route to the front door. Luck was with me, however, and an even better chance happened along. Not only was the doctor herself outside her study, where I could more easily pretend to run into her, but with her, heads together, shoulders hunched as though against a storm, was her brother. They looked up as they heard our footsteps approach along the passageway. Dr Laidlaw’s face fell and Tot missed his usual bumptious good cheer by close to a mile too.

‘Mr Osborne,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Gilver.’ He took a breath to deliver a witticism but none came.

‘I’m so glad I ran into you again, Dr Laidlaw,’ I began. I felt Alec shift away from me and turn a little. ‘The coincidence grows and grows. I’ve just heard from one of the maids that Mrs Addie did indeed have two children. A son and a daughter, exactly as the ghost told me. What do you make of that?’

‘I – I cannot account for it,’ she said, with her voice breaking.

‘What’s this?’ said Alec, the traitor.

‘Oh, no doubt nothing,’ I replied, with a careless wave of my hand. ‘Perhaps I remembered reading something about it in the newspapers, subliminally, you know. Or whatever.’

‘Subconsciously,’ the doctor corrected.

‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘Was the death in the papers?’

Tot Laidlaw rubbed his hands together, a meaningless gesture just then, and laughed with a very dry barking sound.

‘Good heavens, I should think not,’ he said. ‘Good Lord! It was a heart attack that carried the poor woman off, you know. Long history of heart trouble, didn’t stick to her treatment diary. Well, one doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead…’

‘In that case, I really am puzzled,’ I said. ‘Although, as you said, Dr Laidlaw, the mind is a wondrous thing. But why on earth should I see the poor woman’s ghost floating out of an unused room in the Turkish bath of all places? Where did she die, by the way?’

‘In-’ the doctor began, but her brother cut her off smartly.

‘Safely in her bedroom attended by not one but two doctors,’ he said. ‘We’ve all got to go sometime.’

‘Indeed,’ I said.

‘And now we must stop bothering you,’ said Alec, ‘and get along.’ He gave a short nod to Tot, a more courtly bow to the doctor and gripped me firmly above my elbow to drag me away.

‘They didn’t like me asking where she died, did they?’ I said, when we were safely out of earshot. Alec finally let go of my arm.

‘And Brother Tot told an out-and-out lie,’ he said. ‘Long history indeed.’

‘So no matter what you think, I’m rather proud of that little ruse.’ We stepped out of the front door and I carried on down the stone steps and onto the gravel. Alec had stopped at the top of the steps and was staring down at me.

‘What do you mean, no matter what I think?’ he said. ‘I said not a word against it.’

‘I assumed you were annoyed with me, grabbing me and marching me off that way,’ I told him. He gaped.

‘I was worried for you,’ he said. ‘He lied right to our faces, Dandy. It’s not a misunderstanding or the Addies’ wishful thinking – Tot Laidlaw is lying. And you didn’t see his face when you mentioned that the ghost came through that locked door. I don’t think his sister had told him that bit.’

‘I think we should go to the police station,’ I said.

‘Anything to avoid tramping through the muddy lanes, eh?’ Alec said. This was not entirely fair, but not entirely groundless either and so I said nothing. ‘Nothing Tot or Dorothea have said so far suggests more than the cover-up job Sergeant Simpson already admitted to. We know that there’s something extra up – they’re too worried, too anxious – but it’s nothing one could explain to a policeman. We need to find the bag, charge them with telling the Addies where their mother died and then flatten them when they admit that they’re too scared to risk a PM.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘But before we go sleuthing about in the brambles and nettles for naught, shouldn’t we ask at the police station if there has been an unidentified bag handed in in the last month or so? After all, if we think we might find it then why shouldn’t someone else have done so already?’

‘It wouldn’t be unidentified,’ Alec said. ‘Wasn’t it full of letters?’

‘The ink might have run in the rain,’ I said. ‘Oh good, here’s the car.’ Drysdale rolled very slowly along the gravel and stopped with the back door exactly opposite where I stood; it is a talent of his. Alec opened up, handed me in, and went around to join me.

‘Home, please,’ I said. And then, because even if we were to make a visit to the police station there was no need to let Drysdale know it, I closed the window between us before picking up where we had left off.

‘And unless the watch had a full name engraved on it,’ I said, ‘there could easily be nothing in the bag at all to say it was Mrs Addie’s.’

‘Don’t you have your names stitched onto the lining?’ Alec said. ‘Like hats.’

‘Good grief, no,’ I said. ‘Not these days when everyone has latch keys. Imagine what a find it would be for a thief to have a latch key and an address and a diary saying just when the owner was due to be from home.’

‘A latch key?’ Alec said. ‘For Gilverton?’

‘Well, not me,’ I admitted. ‘But one moves with the times.’

‘Would Mrs Addie move with them?’ Alec asked. He was becoming quite dogged on the point.

‘I’m not trying to wriggle out of going looking,’ I said. ‘By all means, let’s search first and ask the police if we turn nothing up, if that’s what it takes to convince you!’

Mrs Tilling rose to the occasion of an impromptu packed lunch with her usual mastery. She had been sitting on the lawn outside the dining-room windows with Pallister and Grant as we rolled up the drive, all three in deckchairs and rugs just like the Hydro inmates across the valley. On the grass at their feet, Bunty lay on her back with all four paws waving. It is an attitude I know very well and it speaks of having been fed many titbits and being in hopes of more, even though she is stuffed to bursting. I affected not to notice them; I would not put it past Pallister to ban any further deckchair sitting if he thought it had been marked by a member of the family and met with disapproval. He might even take it out on Bunty and shut her in the boot room for the rest of the day to consider her shortcomings. Still, I thought I could discern an extra stiffness to his neck and chin and a slight cast of colour across his cheeks as he padded into the drawing room moments later, with Bunty bounding – arthritically but still just about bounding – behind him.

‘Madam,’ he said. ‘Mr Osborne.’

‘Please tell Mrs Tilling to pack luncheon for two, Pallister, and put it in the Cowley,’ I said. ‘Anything at all. Boiled eggs, bread and jam – I fully appreciate that she is not in her own kitchen. And she needn’t trouble herself with drinks because we are going to the well.’

‘I shall inform you when the motorcar is ready,’ he said. It had taken him a few years to stop asking whether Drysdale was needed. I know it still troubles him to see me racketing about behind a steering wheel, but he is just as good at affecting not to notice things as am I.

Not so Grant, who came in as he was leaving.

‘A picnic, madam?’ she said. ‘Let me see. Yes, I think that can be managed. Shall I wait for you upstairs or will you come now?’

‘I’m not changing, Grant,’ I said. She frowned deeply and looked at my skirt, which was a very pale dove grey and fashioned in a series of loops, rather like opera house curtains. ‘I’ll make sure Mr Pallister packs the mackintosh squares,’ she said. ‘If you can sit on one and keep off the grass that would be lovely.’ She started to leave, then turned back again. ‘Walls too,’ she said. ‘Madam. Lichen.’

Alec laughed, but softly so that Grant would not hear him. He is a kind man.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But we are used to one another and I only have myself to blame. She was twenty when she came to me, you know. I thought she’d be less terrifying than some of the more experienced women my mother interviewed. So all of that has happened with me watching. Anyway, I prefer it to Pallister’s rectitude sometimes.’

Pallister’s rectitude was strained to its limits when he returned.

‘All ready to go, madam,’ he said and then cleared his throat, lifting a ceremonial hand to his mouth as he did so. ‘Mrs Tilling asked me to tell you, madam, that she has packed a small bottle of lime to be used in solution in case you are determined to drink the well water, but also a flask of coffee which she recommends instead.’

‘Ah, Mrs Tilling has tasted it then,’ I said. ‘But I’m hoping that the well water might be less revolting than the stuff at the bath house.’

‘It is exactly as unpleasant, madam,’ Pallister said. ‘And not helped by tin cups.’

‘You’ve been?’ I asked. Pallister cranked his back to a pitch of stiff attention that looked likely to break it and then nodded.

‘Mrs Tilling, Miss Grant and I took the liberty yesterday,’ he said. ‘A very pleasant walk, and the well-keeper was most obliging.’ It was torturing him to be forced into such intimacy, but I was not done with him.

‘There’s a well-keeper?’ I said. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Yes, madam,’ he said. ‘To prevent-’ At this his collar appeared to choke him. ‘I hope you have an enjoyable outing,’ he said. ‘Madam. Mr Osborne.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ I said, as we drove away. ‘If there’s a well-keeper we can ask him whether Mrs Addie visited. And about Yellow Mary too.’

Alec was twisted round poking about in the hamper, aided by Bunty who stuck her nose in close and began beating her tail.

‘God bless Mrs Tilling,’ he said. ‘This looks a lot like pigeon pie. And’ – there was some rustling as he opened a wrapped package – ‘gingerbread. It’s hotpot and junket at the Hydro today, I happen to know.’

‘And surely if he says she wasn’t around then we can save ourselves the searching and go straight to the Beef Tub,’ I said. ‘Now how would you best describe Mrs Addie to bring her back to the mind of a man who must see strangers every day?’

Thrashing out a description which honoured her memory – one could not simply say that she looked like a piglet in tweeds – and yet served our purpose, took us through the streets of the town, along the broad roads of pleasant villas and out onto a little back way into the hills. ‘A well-set-up lady of sixty years with an Edinburgh accent and a fine strong face’ was what we settled upon, and I only hoped that there were not so many ladies who visited the well alone that ours could be lost in the crowd.

I should not have thought so, I considered to myself, looking around as we left the last farmhouse behind and bumped onto a rutted track. Moors on both sides rose gradually to form high hills, the Gallow Hill to the west and to the east the beginning of the Eildons which rolled on for many miles, stark and roadless.

‘No wonder the pump house does such a roaring trade,’ Alec said, craning to look out, ‘if this is the other option.’ I drew off the track beside a cottage and, following our noses, we crossed a small meadow towards a little three-sided stone bothy, its fourth wall open to the path, no bigger than a dovecote and not nearly so tall. I could see a railing across its open side, presumably guarding the well. Bunty went a short way into the trees to attend to her concerns of her own.

‘Reminds me of a crypt,’ Alec said. I could see a figure moving in the shadows and I shushed him.

‘Good afternoon,’ I cried.

‘Efternuin,’ said a voice. I had expected a well-keeper to be something out of Grimm, bent and ancient and not quite of this world (I have no idea why), but the figure emerging was a youngish man, neatly barbered, neatly dressed and neatly booted. ‘Come to tak the watters, have you?’ he said. He nodded towards a stone shelf set into the wall. ‘Aye well, there’s the cups and there’s the box for your pennies.’ The water at the well was a bargain compared with town prices, it seemed. I was just about to suggest that he might serve us our draughts – for what other purpose had he? – when I noticed that one sleeve of his coat was stitched shut at the elbow and tucked neatly into his pocket. Alec noticed at the same moment as did I and we both rushed forward to help ourselves, becoming a little tangled on the way.

It was not, anyway, a question of letting down a bucket into the depths and hauling it up again, for the well had steps leading down and the water was so high that one could fill a cup just by stooping, or if even that were too much like work one could hold the cup out to a pipe which stuck right out of a fissure in the rock. I tried not to wonder at the nature of the many deposits, black and shining with slime, which grew upon the rock, the pipe, the stopcock and even the steps. I just straightened, held my breath and drank. It was disgusting; not more disgusting than before, but in a different way. On the one hand, it was stronger, more disagreeably eggy, but on the other it was sparkling instead of cloudy and made one think of liver salts.

When I had finished, the well-keeper held out his hand for the cup, took it, held it against his body and wiped it vigorously with a cloth before setting it back on the stone ledge for next time. I dropped my penny in the wooden box which was nailed up by the shelf and then gave him a shilling too.

‘What about her?’ I asked. Bunty, after rejoining us, had lolloped down the steps and plunged her muzzle into the well to start lapping. ‘Stop it, B. Come away!’

‘Ocht, she’ll no’ drink ower much,’ said the well-keeper, and right enough Bunty lifted her head almost immediately and shook it, snuffling, trying I assume to drive out the nasty taste. She came back up the steps and sat down beside me, subdued and puzzled.

‘Where was that then?’ Alec said, as he handed back his own cup in turn. I took this to be a formulation familiar to soldiers for the young man glanced at his empty sleeve.

‘Amiens,’ he said. ‘You, sir?’

‘Missed that one, thank God,’ Alec said. ‘I was at St Quentin when the music stopped.’

‘Must have taken you a whiley to get hame fae there,’ said the young man. I was pretending to find items of endless interest in the rocky wall of the spring.

‘Well, you know,’ Alec said. ‘It wasn’t so bad once the rations started up again.’

‘Aye!’ said the young man with feeling. I had always rather scorned Alec’s deep and serious concern with the menu for every meal and with any opportunity to eat that came along in between them. If he had once been starving, though, I supposed it was a very different thing.

‘So will you sign the wee book?’ said the well-keeper. Alec caught my eye and I could see the flash even in the dim light of the well house. He seized the book eagerly from its place on the shelf and read down the page, turned back and read again.

‘Does everyone sign?’ he said, looking up.

‘As can,’ said the keeper.

‘Only…’ Alec turned to me.

‘We’re interested in finding out if someone we know came up here while she was visiting the town,’ I said. ‘She insists she did, but I suspect her of sticking to the pump room and giving herself airs, you know.’

‘And her name’s no’ in there?’ asked the young man.

‘Can’t spot it,’ Alec said. ‘A Mrs Addie. Lady in her sixties. Edinburgh.’

‘When was this?’ said the young man.

‘A month ago,’ said Alec. The well-keeper was shaking his head.

‘I’d mind of an old lady all alone, no fae here,’ he said. ‘Sure and I would.’

‘You seem very certain,’ I said.

‘That’s why I’m here,’ he replied. ‘You’ll no ken Yellow Mary, eh no? Not being local.’

‘I think I might have heard of her,’ I said.

‘She was my granny,’ he said. ‘Fell in the well and drowned. That was when they started paying a well-keeper again.’

‘Why was she called Yellow Mary?’ I asked him.

‘When they drug her oot,’ he said. ‘Yellow and puffed up like a toadstool she was. I’ll never forget the sight of it. Days in this water’ll dae that to you.’

‘And when was this?’ I was calculating furiously. If he was thirty and remembered the day his grandmother died, the longest ago it could be was twenty-five years or so. I felt the cup of water shift inside me. I had assumed a ghost of long ago and to think that I had drunk water a woman had drowned in in my own lifetime was much more disgusting somehow.

‘A year past Christmas,’ he said. I rather thought even Alec blanched a little at this news. Certainly he shot a glance at the black well water and the mossy walls. It was only too easy to believe that some of this depthless vat had been there a year past Christmas, at least a cupful anyway.

‘Aye, it was terrible,’ the young man went on. ‘The Laird was dead against lanterns, up on the hills. Said it feart the birds, stopped them nesting. And so Granny was coming home in the dark and tripped and tumbled and in she went. And the Laird felt so bad, he built this new wee housie and in the summer when the visitors are here I’ve a job pays me better money as I would get at anything else I could manage.’

‘But isn’t it terribly dull?’ I said.

He smiled at that, a sudden bonny grin that made him look as young as Teddy, and beckoned us around the far end of the well house to where he had set up a little lean-to with an old armchair and a box for a table. There was a spirit lamp and a kettle, just keeping warm. And open on the chair was a volume of – I squinted – Walter Scott.

‘Beats workin’,’ he said, still grinning. ‘There’s four bairns in the house. I’m better off out here.’

‘Good for you, Mr…?’ I said.

‘Milne,’ he supplied.

‘And although I’m sorry to hear about Mrs Milne – was she your father’s mother?’ He nodded. ‘At least some good has come of it.’ I gave him another shilling, Alec gave a folded note of a denomination I could not see and we made our way back to the motorcar.

‘One down, two to go,’ I said, throwing it into reversing gear. ‘Golly, I never thought about turning when I drove up here.’ Bunty, who is always delighted when I am reversing, stuck her snout into the crook of my neck and poured out her love for me, in deep groans.

‘Of course, these settled places don’t refer to a married woman by her married name,’ Alec said. ‘Yellow Mary Milne could be Mary Patterson, as easy as anything.’

‘Yes, but if she died at Christmas-time then the mediums would hardly be gathering for an anniversary in October, would they? One down. Quite a remarkable young man, wasn’t he?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ said Alec. Then he laughed. ‘Except that he’s reading Walter Scott and no one’s making him,’ he said. ‘I’d rather brave the house and the four bairns. Fearful stuff. Right, then, Dandy. Where is the Devil’s Beef Tub?’

I had reached a gate and I swung back into it thankfully, emerging to drive the rest of the way facing forward. I wiped my neck with my handkerchief, told myself to remember not to dab my mouth with it, for no matter what Hugh says I am not silly when it comes to dogs and their germs.

‘Back through the town and out to the north past the Hydro,’ I said. ‘Keep going until you see the unquiet ghosts of a dozen murderous Reivers. Pity there won’t be a tub-keeper to tell us if they did for anyone in the last month or so.’