Deadly Measure of Brimstone

14

‘Why…’ I began, but I had to take another run at it. ‘Why on earth would the ghosts of the victims of Burke and Hare be haunting the Moffat Hydro?’

‘Actually in the Hydro?’ said Hugh.

‘They think they’re up at the Gallow Hill, really, sir,’ Grant put in. ‘But they come to the Hydro to contact the living.’

‘Very well then,’ I said. ‘Why would the ghosts of the victims of Burke and Hare be up a hill in Moffat then?’

‘Well,’ said Hugh. ‘The story goes-’ He was interrupted by a gasp from Grant.

‘The name we picked, madam!’ she said. ‘William! No wonder they’re tied in knots trying to make me say William who?’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘It was William Burke and William Hare,’ said Hugh. ‘My word, Grant, that must have set the cat among the pigeons.’

‘I said I’d been “wrongly judged and wrongly hanged” and was come down the hill to wreak revenge.’

‘Must be William Burke then,’ I said. ‘He was hanged, wasn’t he? And Hare turned King’s evidence on him and got away?’

‘Yes, but the story goes,’ said Hugh again, ‘that William Hare was pursued wherever he went by the ghosts of his victims – all fifteen of his murder victims or seventeen if you count those who died of natural causes but who he kept out of their decent Christian graves. The legend is that the ghosts – if they caught him – would bring him to justice. That’s why he kept on the move. Down to London, home to Ireland, back again.’

‘I suppose Moffat would be on his way,’ I said. ‘Did he stop here? I looked into all the local ghosts at the library and someone dreadful stopped at the Black Bull. I remember that much. It might have been Deacon Brodie, mind you, or Sawney Bean. They do run in together after a while: Mary in every castle and Wallace in every cave.’

‘It was King Robert in the cave,’ Hugh said, mildly for him when he takes me to task about ancient Scotch history. ‘And Bloody Mary did move about quite a bit, you know.’

‘Whether she did or not,’ I said, ‘I shall go and check, but I’m becoming surer and surer that William Hare stopped at the inn.’

‘Fleeing the ghosts of his victims, but they caught up with him and took him up the Gallow Hill and hanged him there as he should have been hanged with his pal in Edinburgh,’ said Grant. Then she blushed. ‘Or so the mediums believe, madam. Sir.’

‘And a hundred years later, they’re all getting together again to talk about old times,’ I said. Both Grant and Hugh gave me looks of one sort or another. They do not have the long experience of talking about cases that Alec and I do.

‘And now I’ve brought one of the resurrection men to the party when no one asked him,’ said Grant, catching on. ‘And who’s this James, sir, that Mr Merrick was asking me to name?’

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 certainly 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 crept 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.’

‘What do you mean when you talk that way?’ said Dorothea. ‘You sound dreadful. You’re frightening me.’

This outburst was greeted with silence. I drew away a little to ease the crick that was developing in my neck, but Alec stayed glued to the panelling. Then, all of a sudden, his eyes flared. He mouthed, ‘Tot!’, grabbed my arm and dragged me around the nearest corner, less than a second, it seemed, before the door opened and closed.

We waited with breath held and hearts hammering. If he came this way we would be undone.

‘Phew,’ I said at last, as the sound of his jaunty footsteps faded away in the other direction.

‘If people would only say “lovely chatting to you, see you at luncheon, goodbye, goodbye” at the ends of their conversations,’ Alec said, ‘listening at doors would be much less nerve-racking.’

‘So what was all that about?’ I asked.

‘Search me,’ Alec said. ‘I thought she wanted to keep going and he wanted to sell up and cut loose. In fact I know she did because she told me and then one of the rubbers told me too. But from what they were saying just now it sounds as though she’s for packing it in and he won’t hear of it.’

‘Yet,’ I said. ‘If he’s ready to sell what’s he waiting for? What bits of paper do you think he’s had her signing?’

‘He is a gambler,’ said Alec. ‘Perhaps he’s got the place mortgaged and he’s waiting to cash in his chips.’

‘Waiting for what?’ I said.

‘Well, the market to peak, I suppose,’ Alec said. ‘It’s tremendously exciting what’s happening in New York, Dandy. Did you read the newspaper yesterday? The busiest day on the stock exchange since its beginning. Hugh is going to kill you, you know.’

‘But then why would it matter whether the books were up to date?’ I said, ignoring the sideswipe. ‘For a mortgage. And why do you suppose Tot insists that every guest has treatments?’

‘Isn’t that Dr Laidlaw?’ Alec said.

‘No, I’m sure it’s Tot. One of the bright young things that’s really here for the casino was moaning about it. They’ve even got Grant signed up for galvanic baths, whatever they are.’

‘That can’t be related,’ Alec said.

‘And what do you suppose he meant by that nasty vague threat about the mediums?’ I asked.

‘I’ve no idea, but I think we should get Grant safely away before it happens. Terrace or winter gardens?’ Alec said. ‘I need to speak to you.’

‘Depends if we need privacy,’ I said. ‘It’s such a lovely day the winter gardens will be deserted.’

‘Winter gardens it is,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve got the post-mortem report and I rather think privacy would be a good thing.’

I would have preferred fresh air, not to say a stiff breeze, if I was to be the audience for a report on livers and kidneys and suchlike, but the terrace was at capacity, muffled figures rolled in blankets on every deckchair, making the most of the brightness even though there was precious little warmth to the sunshine this late in the year. We settled ourselves under one of the open roof-vents, but since the gardeners had been misting the orchids very recently it was a stuffy spot nonetheless, not to mention the faint residue of alcohol and tobacco smoke which I could not miss, now that I had seen all the drinking and carousing which went on in here.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Poison?’

‘Not a one,’ Alec replied. ‘Not a trace, not a wisp of anything in any of her organs. Nothing.’

‘And her heart was healthy.’

‘Her heart was fine.’

‘So what did she die of?’

‘Dieting?’ said Alec. ‘I’m only half joking. The doctor said again in the report what he said at the graveside. She had nothing in her stomach at all. Or anywhere. She was empty.’

‘Well, those bladders and adjacent systems you spoke about often… empty out at the last,’ I said. ‘It never happens in the beautiful death scenes in plays but I learned as much in the convalescent home.’

‘As did I in the trenches,’ Alec said. He sat forward and stared at the floor. ‘I feel wretched for the Addies, you know. I persuaded them to dig the poor old girl up and there’s nothing to show for it except a hint that her last few days were a misery for a woman who so much enjoyed her food. I can’t even lay hands on her jewellery and send it back to them.’

‘Jewellery?’

‘Well, the watch.’

‘Jewellery,’ I said again.

He looked up at me. ‘What is it, Dan?’

‘I’ve got it,’ I breathed.

‘Oh, at last,’ said Alec. ‘Go on then.’

‘It was something Regina said,’ I told him. ‘And I couldn’t remember what it was. I’ve been kicking myself that every time I talk to Regina I’m in a robe and turban without any of my things – my notebook and pencil – and I couldn’t write it down. But it’s not just that, you see. And then watching the librarian locking up yesterday made it even worse. I dreamed about it last night. And then I saw Grant sitting there this morning and she looked so out of place in her outdoor clothes.’

‘Well, what is it? Tell me,’ Alec said.

‘I know where Mrs Addie’s bag is,’ I said. ‘I never have my things when I speak to Regina because she takes away one’s clothes and folds them and she takes away one’s bag and jewellery and puts them in a sort of… it’s hard to describe but the clasp is very like the one I saw the librarian closing… then into a locked cupboard in return for a ribbon, with a key, which you wear round your wrist.’

‘And if Mrs Addie died – of untraceable poison? – in the mud room by the Turkish baths…’ Alec said.

‘Her clothes were folded in a neat bundle and could be produced a month later when someone thought of them,’ I said. ‘But her bag must have been locked away in a little pouch in a cupboard. Regina said guests sometimes leave things in there for weeks together, because it’s so secure. I’ll bet you anything you like it’s still there.’

‘But why didn’t they think of it?’ Alec said. ‘Whoever it was who killed her. Mrs Cronin, or Regina, or one of the Laidlaws.’

‘Definitely not Regina,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ I said, ‘I think Regina probably noticed the clothes. She gave them to… Mrs Cronin, who gave them to Dr Laidlaw or Tot. But they couldn’t explain to the Addies why they weren’t with the rest of their mother’s things so they just hung on to them. Until we came along and they cut their losses. But if Regina had killed her she’d have remembered about the bag too.’

‘And why didn’t the real killer remember?’

‘Because no one else apart from Regina is as bound up with the question of keys and lockers and so it didn’t occur to them.’

‘But why didn’t anyone see the key? On the ribbon? On the corpse?’ Alec asked me, but even as he spoke the answer occurred to him and he groaned.

‘The ribbon came off the corpse when they heaved it out of the mud bath,’ I said. ‘If we really want Mrs Addie’s father’s watch back again we need to go to the apple house and start digging.’

Clearly, it was my turn for a task such as this one, after Alec’s graveside duty the day before, and so it is testament to his character as nothing else could be that he insisted we both go. We took stout waxed gloves and scarves to tie over our faces and we made a silent agreement to forget the emptiness of poor Mrs Addie’s various bodily systems, or not to discuss it anyway.

Besides, now that I knew that the smell was only more of the Moffat brimstone, along with a few traces of nothing worse than I had encountered during the war, it did not seem to smell quite as bad as it had before.

‘Shall we just shovel it out then?’ Alec said. As well as the opening in the top of the bath where one stepped in, there was a trapdoor in the back closed with a pin and sealed with some kind of putty and it looked as though most of the contents might run out quite readily if we got it open.

‘You shovel and I’ll go through the shovellings,’ I said, claiming the worst of the job for myself. Alec wrenched up the pin and removed it and immediately there was a cracking noise as the putty seal around the little door began to bulge.

‘I think you fit the pin in there to act as a handle,’ I said, pointing. Alec nodded and did so. Then he looked at me, pulled the scarf a little higher over his nose and yanked the door open.

I stepped back, but it was not the volcanic flow of reeking slime I was expecting. Instead, inside the trapdoor was a wall of dried grey clay which hardly moved except for a few flakes falling off and crumbling as they hit the floor. Alec raised his shovel to strike at the block of clay, but I stopped him.

‘Wait!’ He froze with his hands above his head. ‘Look!’ I said. I bent in close to the opening, pointing at a crack in the mud. I took my glove off for this was careful work. I picked away at the crack for a minute and then rubbed hard with the pads of my finger and thumb. Where I had rubbed one could see the faint pink colour of a scrap of fabric, less than a quarter-inch across. It was the needle in our particular haystack: the end of the ribbon. I took the scarf away from my face and grinned up at him.

‘I declare this key found,’ I said, and pinching the fraying end hard between my nails I pulled, it gave, I pulled some more, I had three inches of it out now and I took a better hold. A firm tug and it was six inches. I wrapped it around my hand.

‘Stop!’ Alec cried.

He was too late. I sat back with the whole length of unknotted ribbon in my hand and looked at the wall of mud somewhere inside of which the tiny key was still hiding.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Alec. ‘I always preferred knocking down sandcastles to building them.’ He raised the shovel high over his head again and brought it down cleanly into the middle of the clay.

Never in all his childhood years of laying waste to castles on the Dorset beaches can he have wielded a shovel to such spectacular ends. The clay shattered and sent a cascade of dust and small cobbles, as hard as rock, all over the apple house, Alec and me. I did not even have a chance to shut my mouth in time and the taste of that eggy, murky powder, coating my teeth and lips and then turning slick as I tried to spit it out again will be with me always. Alec fared rather better. He was still wearing the scarf around his face, for one thing, and he was above the worst of it so that only dust, puffing up, reached his hair and clothes. I, on the other hand, had little flakes and lumps of clay in all the creases of my clothing. I stood up and shook myself like a dog. Alec started laughing.

‘Funny now,’ I said. ‘Until we both go down with cholera.’ At least, though, there was no point in daintily picking through the mess, since we could not get any filthier if we tried, so I pulled my gloves back on, shuddering at the way they scraped over the silt on my skin, and plunged both hands into the middle of the cascade, roughly where I thought the key must be.

In retrospect, given that the key was about the size of a sixpence, knowing how long it can take to find a sixpence in a plum pudding, and allowing that the plum pudding in this case was larger than a whisky barrel, I should have been prepared for how long it took to find it. After another twenty minutes I was looking back ruefully at the moment I had believed we could not get filthier and was rehearsing a theory to put to Alec that the key was taken off the ribbon as the corpse broke the surface of the mud and that we were wasting our time, when suddenly I felt a hard little nub under my fingers. I grasped it and pressed it, expecting it to crumble like the many other little nubs which had fooled me as we crouched there. This time, my fingers felt something more unyielding than clay and I drew my hands out, noting the dust filling my turned-back cuffs, and held it up.

‘Oh thank God,’ Alec said. ‘Now where exactly are these lockers, Dan? Let’s go.’

‘In the ladies’ Turkish baths,’ I said. ‘We need to wait until night-time at least, if you actually come along at all. But that’s all right, because it will take us until then to get clean again.’

Before we left we covered our tracks. We scraped most of the clay back inside the barrel and tried to fashion it into the shape it might have assumed if the pin had spontaneously snapped, the door burst open and the contents spilled all on their own. It was not, one had to say, very convincing, especially as we forgot to drop the pin on the floor underneath the spill.

‘We could dig a hole and bury it,’ I said, but Alec picked it up and threw it across the room instead.

‘I’m not digging another inch in that stuff,’ he said. ‘It shot clear when the thing burst open.’

‘Which it wouldn’t do as the mud dried, would it?’ I said. This thought had been troubling me. ‘It would get smaller and shrink.’

‘It settled against the door, Dandy,’ Alec said very darkly. ‘And that’s the end of it. Now how are we getting home?’

The only possible thing, of course, was to go in my beloved little Cowley and we could not even ask for newspapers to cover the seats. Alec spread his handkerchief and I tried to hover as much as possible, hanging onto the steering wheel and not settling my whole weight onto the upholstery. I drove right around to the kitchen door at Auchenlea and Mrs Tilling and Pallister both came to see who it was.

Mrs Tilling stepped back and put her apron over her nose, but Pallister, to his credit, closed the motorcar door behind me and took the whole disgusting spectacle in his stride.

‘I shall fetch a blanket for you to wrap around yourself, madam, while you proceed to your bathroom and then you can lay it down on the floor. If you would care to step into the scullery, Mr Osborne’ – Mrs Tilling rumbled – ‘that is to say, if you would care to step over to the stables, Mr Osborne, we can take a first pass at you there. I shall look out some of Master’s things for you.’

When the blanket arrived, Mrs Tilling held it out to me at arm’s length as Pallister ushered Alec across the yard, putting his arm behind him without touching, the way a shepherd herds flighty sheep with an outstretched crook.

‘My goodness, madam,’ Mrs Tilling said. ‘What is it?’

‘Just mud,’ I said. ‘Almost entirely mud.’

‘Miss Grant’s not here, you know.’ It might have been a warning that I would have to manage on my own, but I did not think so.

‘Thank heaven for small mercies,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been put over someone’s knee and spanked with a brush for years.’

Mrs Tilling laughed and then buried her face in her apron again. ‘Don’t make me laugh, madam,’ she said. ‘It’s worse when you breathe it in deeply. Now, I’ll go and make a nice light luncheon for Mr Osborne and you, shall I?’

‘Anything but eggs,’ I said, then I kicked off my shoes, wound myself up in the blanket like a mummy and waddled off to my bathroom and the bliss of the hot water spray.