Deadly Measure of Brimstone

10

Long before we arrived at the Beef Tub, however, we had both decided it was out of the question. The librarian’s map had put it just beyond the northern edge of the town but we trundled along five miles or so, forging into the crease in the hills which would eventually become that blind, deep valley, and we knew there was no way a large lady of sixty who lived in a villa in the city could possibly have come so far.

‘And she made her journey down here on a train,’ I said, ‘so she can’t have driven. If she even knows how to. If she had hired a taxi or a dogcart then the driver would have been with her when she collapsed and we’d know it… There’s no way she could have got here.’

‘I agree,’ Alec said. ‘My God, what a dreary spot. It must get no sun at all from October to May.’

The track was worse with each yard, in fact was now more or less a rocky river bed, and I feared for the underside of my dear little Cowley. Nevertheless I kept driving. Not that Alec was wrong; great lumpen hills bare of trees, bare of gorse, bare even of bracken as far as I could tell, were closing in on us from both sides and all of the light had long disappeared behind the highest of them. As we took a turn to the west the valley narrowed yet further, and I could see what a wonderful spot it must have been for the Reivers, as snug as a key in a keyhole, hiding here.

‘I’ll turn at the end,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we can ask at the last farm or cottage, just to make sure.’

‘Ask what?’ said Alec.

‘Well, you might not like it,’ I said. ‘What I wanted to ask is if they heard a motorcar. Does Dr Laidlaw have a motorcar?’

‘I don’t know why you keep maligning my impartiality this way,’ Alec said. ‘Why wouldn’t I like it? And I’ve no idea, by the way.’

‘Only, I’m still bothered by the story that she “found” Mrs Addie. What if they saw the ghost together – Dr Laidlaw was very odd to me when I brought up the subject, you know – and what if she brought her back again to look for the lost bag?’

‘She would have returned the next day and found it,’ Alec said. ‘And sent it to the Addies.’ I felt myself deflate a bit.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to ask even if we find someone of whom to ask it. Ah, at last.’ Up ahead there was a farmhouse and some buildings, surely the last steading. I reversed into the yard gateway and looked for a place to turn and suddenly it seemed that every door in the place had opened. A woman stood in one wiping her hands on a cloth. An old man came to the large doors of the byre and started towards us, a young man emerged from a shed halfway up the hill behind the steading and numerous children appeared from behind walls and under hedges. Even a sheepdog planted its front paws on the bars of a gate and stared.

‘No chance of drivers-by not being noticed here,’ I said. ‘I give in. Whatever ghost Mrs Addie saw it wasn’t one of the Johnstone Reivers.’

‘Let’s find a spot with a blink of sunshine and start in on that pie,’ Alec said. I heard again the echo of his voice, ‘not so bad once the rations started up again’, and bit my lip on the teasing I might have given him only yesterday, then I waved at the advancing farming folk and gave them a toot of my horn as I drove away.

Our hopes of sunshine – even a blink of it – were folly, but we drew off the road onto a grassy holm just as the valley opened out again and spread the mackintosh squares on a couple of boulders. The grass was nibbled close by sheep, the air was rich with the smell of peat and crushed heather gusting down from the hilltops and a nearby burn chuckled companionably along behind us. In my stout shoes, felt hat, fox fur and driving gloves, and with Bunty settled like a blanket over my feet, it was almost comfortable, but I would not care to have been there any later in the day or when October turned to November either and, although I ventured to remove a glove, I was happy to have a hot beaker of coffee to hold. Alec cut two hearty wedges out of the pigeon pie and handed one to me.

‘We should have brought the boys,’ I said. ‘They love eating like savages. They’d never sit in a dining room again if I didn’t make them.’

‘You’ll have to get to work on Donald,’ Alec said.

He was right; we had spared Donald London this last summer, for he was far too callow to enjoy it and far too raw to be any value, but by the coming May he would be nineteen. Still too raw and too callow, of course, but I had been rung up by more than one despairing mother of girls, telling me of the uneven numbers at her daughter’s dance and scolding me for keeping a young man like Donald away.

‘Lord,’ I said, ‘it seems ten minutes since Nanny had to check that he’d cleaned his nails and behind his ears before a party. I can’t imagine him bringing back a wife to Benachally. Or perhaps he’ll be another who refuses to rush into things. Like you.’

‘Let’s see if he wants to come up the Gallow Hill this afternoon with us to start with,’ Alec said, ignoring me. ‘Teddy too. Four pairs of eyes and all that. We can say you’re looking for something someone dropped this morning and happened to mention to you.’

‘He’d never make it,’ I said. ‘Unless this morning’s steam and mustard have had a marked effect on his lungs, anyway.’ I ate a bite of pie and drank some coffee, to be sure to get the tremor out of my voice. ‘So we’re pressing on, are we?’ I continued in a brighter tone.

‘Absolutely,’ Alec said. ‘I’ve been thinking that we should have gone straight for the Gallow Hill at the outset actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘As I said, Mary Milne could have been Mary Patterson for all we know. But the Johnstone Reivers would be Johnstones, wouldn’t they – so where would a Patterson come in to that?’

‘The throats they cut could have been Patterson throats,’ I said.

‘But they’d have been men’s throats, wouldn’t they? Not women and children and grandmammas. No – a crowd of twenty ghosts all together – a job lot, if you please – must surely be connected to the Gallow Hill. Where else would so many have met their end and hung around haunting?’

‘And whatever it was that Mary Patterson repented might well have got her hanged!’ I said. I squeezed my handful of pie a little too hard in my enthusiasm and the crust shattered. Mrs Tilling’s pastry is always very short; delicious, but dangerous to pale clothing. I heaved Bunty off my feet, stood up and wriggled until all the flakes had fallen off my skirt and onto the ground, where she ran them down and consumed them with snapping teeth and much licking.

‘I shan’t join you in your dance of joy just yet, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘But if we find the bag, just try and stop me.’

‘Come on then. If I don’t move after Mrs Tilling’s pie I get drowsy. Let’s walk it off. We might even see the sun if we’re quick about it.’

The Gallow Hill was a gentle delight after the stern soaring faces of the Beef Tub fells and if it had been clothed in elms and oaks, and had a few pretty cottages around its base, it might almost have been at home in the Cotswolds. As it was, the cottages were grey and mean-looking and the trees were the spindly larches and lichened beeches which cling onto Scotch hillsides long after they have ceased to have any value in the landscape. Constable himself would have left them out and just painted the sky behind them.

We left the motorcar tucked safely into the side of the lane where it could come to no harm and Alec lifted the latch of the gate to a path and ushered me through. Immediately we were enveloped in silence, none of the noises of life from the town managing to penetrate the high walls of brambles and dog rose which closed around us, darkening and scenting the air with a sweet dampness. Ahead, the path led straight and only slightly upwards for twenty yards and then the hill rose and the path disappeared in a way that reminded me of yew mazes and of being lost and tear-stained as a tiny child.

‘I’m glad I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I said.

‘What’s the handbag made of?’ said Alec. He was already looking studiously at the ground on either side.

‘Oh, best brown leather, I have no doubt,’ I said. ‘Absolutely invisible in this leaf litter. I suppose we must just hope for a glint off the clasp or something. Or Bunty might sniff it out if there are peppermints.’

‘Wouldn’t any dog in the last month have done the same?’ Alec sounded troubled. ‘I suppose we are hoping for rather a lot, expecting it still to be here, aren’t we? Look for signs that Mrs Addie passed along. What size feet would you say?’

‘I can never take us seriously when we go all out for snapped twigs and footprints,’ I said. ‘Have we ever found a footprint, Alec dear?’

He ignored me and so I trained my attention towards the ground at my side of the path and kept walking.

I held out no great hopes; unless Mrs Addie had thrashed her way through the brambles with a stick, it was hard to see how she could have left the path. On the other hand, her bag, if dropped on the path, could surely not have lain a night there, never mind a month. And it was the same all the way to the top: a winding track, close growth on either side, a few tree roots underneath, a pleasant smell of earth and the odd wink of light where a branch had broken off and left a chink in the canopy. All in all, if one went in for country walks I could see that this was a charming one, but I could not help but feel that our quest was pointless.

Well, at least it was dry and not too cold and at its end was not a grouse drive and an endless tramp to the next one, but a view, a descent and a cup of tea. We were drawing near the summit now, the beeches and brambles growing sparser and the ground underfoot changing from leaves and dryish mud to blades and then tussocks of grass. At the top we found ourselves in a clearing of sorts, with a view through the treetops to the Hydro chimneys. I made a movement to step forward, but Alec put out an arm to stop me.

‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the ground.

The grass was long and lush and all around it was flattened by footprints. They circled the clearing and criss-crossed it and appeared to converge on a spot towards the faraway end just before the trees began again. I made my way over.

There was no cairn, no marker of any kind, nothing to say that this was the very place which had given the hill its name. I suppose it was the highest point – at least, looking around, I saw none higher – but if I had had to guess at where the gallows would be, I would have plumped for the middle, not here almost under the lee of the nearest beech.

‘Was this the gallows?’ I asked. Alec walked over.

‘Seems likely,’ he said. ‘I wonder what all the feet were milling around for? A Sunday school picnic maybe?’ I shrugged. ‘Well, let’s look for the bag, the watch, the lock of hair, the precious letters and the proof that Mrs Addie died here, eh?’

Within minutes I could be sure that the trampling feet were no Sunday school picnic, for there was not a sweet wrapper, a lemonade bottle nor an apple core anywhere in the undergrowth around the clearing. There was nothing. Even Bunty failed to snuffle up so much as a peanut shell.

‘Any luck?’ I called to Alec. He had gone further than me into the woods, to examine a fallen log about ten yards from the edge of the clearing. He ducked down behind it and I made my way towards him. ‘Any luck?’ I repeated, looking over. He was bent double scrutinising the bare brown earth, but as far as I could tell there was nothing to see.

‘None,’ he said. ‘I think we’re wasting our time, Dandy.’ He looked around himself. ‘What would she be doing here?’

‘If we believe her daughter that she had no time for spooks?’ I said. ‘An assignation? A widow in her sixties would hardly go to the winter gardens to bat her eyes at some man who took her fancy.’

‘Or,’ said Alec, taking the baton, ‘perhaps Mrs Addie was interested in nature, or local history, or just wanted some-’

‘Fresh air and exercise!’ I said.

‘Quite,’ said Alec. ‘But why declaim it that way?’

‘It’s Dr Laidlaw’s favourite cure,’ I said. ‘She told me so. Oh, Alec, this is good. If Mrs Addie was sent out – sent as part of her treatment regime – and then she saw a ghost and got her blessed fright and dropped dead, then the doctor who sent her might well not want the family to know!’

Alec was nodding.

‘After all,’ he said, ‘nothing old Dr Laidlaw prescribed ever killed her.’ We beamed at one another for a bit. Eventually, Alec drew breath to continue but caught it again. I turned slightly towards the clearing and saw him do the same. From the way we had come a murmur of voices had arisen, but they were not speaking words. Instead, the sound was of a whispering, rhythmic chant, very quiet but growing louder. I clicked my tongue to Bunty to follow me, stepped over the log, and joined Alec, crouching. My lips were dry, and as I tried to lick them I found that my tongue was too.

‘Guess who!’ said Alec. ‘Goodness, it sounds like all of them.’

‘All twenty?’ I whispered.

‘Are there twenty?’ he whispered back, looking astonished.

‘Well, seven already and many more expected,’ I said. ‘Surely you remember.’

Alec’s eyes danced and, although he kept it in, the laughter bubbled through him.

‘Dandy, you goose!’ he said. ‘I meant the mediums. It’s the mediums coming chanting up the hill. You thought it was the ghosts? Really?’

‘Of course not,’ I said, reddening and dipping my head to hide it. ‘I misunderstood you. Now, shush, before we’re heard.’

We crunched ourselves down even further behind the log, I sending a silent apology to Grant for the fate of my skirt, and waited. The voices grew louder and before too long we caught sight, through the trees, of half a dozen figures, all moving slowly in loops and crosses, passing one another and repassing, gathering – with many feints, but gathering all the same – on the well-trodden spot just at the edge of the trees. In the centre of them all was Loveday Merrick, his bare head thrown back and his hair streaming down. He was muttering under his breath just like the rest of them and as the crescendo swelled, he lifted his silver-topped cane and banged the tip of it hard against the lowest branch of the beech tree. One of the younger mediums uttered a small shriek and then there was silence except for the rattle and rush of a few beech cobs falling through the boughs and dropping to the ground.

‘Do you feel anything, Loveday?’ said a woman’s voice.

‘They are not here,’ said the great man. It was a pronouncement of some authority and I could see shoulders slumping and faces falling even from my hiding place yards away.

He pounded his stick on the ground.

‘But they are close!’ A little thrill passed through the group, made up of whispers and darting movements, as the mediums clutched one another. ‘They are all together in a warm place very near here.’

‘All of them, Loveday?’ asked a man. It might have been one of the tall hats with satin piping. ‘Can you feel all of them?’

Mr Merrick drew in an enormous breath, all but snorting, and closed his eyes. He began to sway gently. ‘Mary and Lizzie and Peggy are here,’ he said. ‘And the dear old grandmother and the poor blind child. Joseph the Miller is here.’ The crowd thrilled to hear it. ‘Abigail Simpson, Ann Dougal, Marjorie Docherty too.’

‘What about Old Donald?’ That was Mrs Molyneaux. ‘Is he with them? If we could answer that question, Loveday…’

‘There is an old man,’ said Mr Merrick. He was swaying so far from side to side that the mediums nearest him began to ready themselves to catch him if he fell. ‘A Mr Higgins and his Christian name begins with the letter D. Is it Donald? Donald Higgins? Is that you?’ He was rocking front to back now too. ‘I cannot hear him. Donald Higgins! Come to me! You are with friends. You are safe here. Is it- Is it-’

The cane toppled, the great man crumpled, the companions rushed forward and stopped him from falling. Behind our log Alec and I turned flabbergasted faces to each other. I started to whisper but Alec held a finger to his lips. Out in the clearing, Mr Merrick had recovered. He picked up his cane, swept his hair back into some kind of order and took a flask out of his inside pocket. After a good swig from it, he spoke in what passed for his normal voice again. Still rather grand but not absolutely set to part the clouds and bring God’s ear to the opening.

‘Now then, my dear friends, what did I say?’

There was a clamour of voices, shouting the names. Loveday Merrick counted them off on his fingers. Hastily scrabbling in my bag for a slip of paper and a stub of pencil, I jotted them down too, as best I could.

‘Ten,’ he announced at last when he was finished counting. ‘Ten of them. This is inarguable evidence, my dear friends. This will set the world on its ears. And those who have laughed will be humbled and those who have scorned will be filled with awe.’ He looked around at the upturned faces and clasped hands all about him. ‘Now, let’s go back to the Hydro for a nice cup of tea.’

Alec spluttered, the inevitable consequence of holding one’s breath and then suddenly laughing.

‘What was that?’ It was the gooseberry-eyed girl. She turned those pale green orbs towards the log where we were hiding and all the others followed, swivelling and craning and making me feel like a hare sitting up in a field. I ducked, waiting for the shot to ring. Loveday Merrick strode to the edge of the trees and, shading his eyes, looked straight towards our hiding place.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘A bird turning the litter. Nothing at all.’ Then he strode off, his little band of acolytes following after. We waited until we could no longer hear even the echo of their tramping feet before we moved.

‘Did he see us?’ Alec said.

‘I’m not sure,’ I answered. ‘He certainly made that up about the bird anyway. But why would he not stride over here with his big stick, demanding to know what we were doing?’

‘Because it’s common land and he wouldn’t have the authority?’ Alec screwed up his nose even as he said this. ‘Not that he’s a man who has trouble assuming authority. What on earth was all that?’

‘Poppycock and tommyrot,’ I said. ‘I’m ashamed of myself for being rattled earlier. What an old fraud.’

‘I agree, naturally,’ Alec said. ‘But what in particular is it that’s riled you?’

‘The initial D!’ I said. ‘It’s a music hall trick. Someone here has lost a loved one. Name begins with D. “Oh, that must be old uncle Deuteronomy” pipes up a voice from the second row. “That’s right, lovey. Deuteronomy. He’s looking for his niece.” Sensation all round. I’m just surprised he had the gall to wheel it out amongst his own people. One would think they’d see through it, since they must use exactly the same stuff in music halls of their own.’

‘The excitement seemed genuine enough,’ Alec said. ‘And they seemed to recognise the names he was spouting.’

I read them from my slip of paper, once out loud and once to myself.

‘They don’t mean anything to me,’ I said. ‘But one thing does strike me. I don’t see how they could be the ghosts of people who were hanged here.’

‘Oh?’ said Alec.

‘Too many women. Not to say that no women were ever executed but they were the unusual cases. If these ghosts were the spirits of the hanged there’d be Williams and Georges and Jameses to spare instead of all these Anns and Lizzies – I mean, you know, not that we actually believe any of it.’

‘We really should just take that point as established once and for all,’ Alec said. ‘And not repeat it ten times a day. Of course, either someone is causing mischief or these mediums are just making it up entirely, but as to what Mrs Addie came in search of and what she thought she saw… I don’t agree that it couldn’t be the spirits of hanged men, just because so many of them are women.’

‘But-’

‘I think it strengthens the argument if anything. These are the wronged, Dandy. Not the murderers and brigands who deserved their fate, but innocents, wrongly convicted and wrongly hanged. Perhaps that’s why Mrs Addie wasn’t scared to come back for her bag – which I wish we’d found, by the way. So I should say of course lots of them are women. Perhaps they were wise women hanged for witchcraft.’

‘And children,’ I reminded him. ‘Would a blind child have been hanged with his grandmother?’

‘Certainly,’ said Alec. ‘If it was long enough ago. I’m not going to let you spoil my theory with that.’

I did not need to; its despoliation was waiting for us back at the Hydro.

Mrs Cronin must have been watching for our arrival for she was bearing down on us along the passageway when we climbed the steps into the hall.

‘Mrs Gilver, Mr Osborne,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to have run into you. Look what I’ve found.’ She was carrying some sort of bundle, laid across her arms the way that page boys carry cushions with coronets upon them. This was no velvet and gilt-braided object, though. It was a heap of brown tweed with a chamois leather shoe bag balanced on top. ‘Mrs Addie’s clothes,’ she said. ‘After what you told me this morning, I got to thinking.’ The colloquial phrase sounded wooden in her mouth, for her tone was very clipped and formal. ‘And it occurred to me that Mrs Addie’s things must have been sent to the laundry and maybe they’d got forgotten about there. It wasn’t the regular day, you see. And so I checked, and there they were! We can send them to her family now.’

‘Splendid,’ I said. I did not believe a word of it and felt embarrassed for her having to speak the lines.

‘I’m just going to tell Dr Laidlaw,’ she went on. ‘But I have patients waiting, as a matter of fact. So, I wonder if you would be so kind.’ With that she held out the bundle. We are brought up to accept whatever is offered – thus gypsies trick us into buying violets at the railway station and climbers we intended to cut manage still to give us their hands – and so, astonished as I was, I held my arms out like a godmother at the altar and accepted the bundle. Mrs Cronin thanked me, turned on her heels and hurried away. Alec and I were left gazing at the pleats and ruffles of her cap until she whisked around the corner and was gone. Alec was first back into the swing.

‘Quick, Dandy, before someone sees us!’ he said. ‘Let’s get the swag to my room.’

We hurried along the corridor to the stairs, up two flights and round to the west side, Alec fumbling his key out of his trouser pocket as we went along. Once inside his room I tipped my armful onto the bed and stared at it. Everything was there: shirt, petticoat, stockings, vest, chemise, brassiere and underdrawers – the lot.

‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Tweeds, cotton underthings and corsetry go to completely different bits of a laundry, as I well know.’ I had spent nine days on a case once pretending to be a lady’s maid, and none of the arcane lore I had amassed would ever desert me. ‘How could they all be lost together and then found again?’

Alec picked up the coat part of the tweeds and held it against him. It was gargantuan, looking as though it would wrap twice round Alec’s frame. He let it drop and lifted the skirt, which was easily a yard wide.

‘Everyone kept saying she was a sizeable lady,’ he said. ‘They were being kind.’

I was unfastening the drawstring of the shoe bag. I drew out one wide leather brogue, turned it up and peered at it.

‘Look, Dan,’ Alec said. ‘A walk up a hill could easily have killed a woman this size.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. I put the shoe down and took the skirt from Alec’s hands.

‘The woman who fitted these clothes should never have been sent out climbing hills for exercise,’ he persisted. ‘We’ve cracked it. Dr Laidlaw prescribed it and it did for her. That’s what they’re hiding.’

I was examining the skirt, rubbing the material through my fingers. I sniffed the cuffs of the coat too.

‘But it’s nonsense,’ I said.

‘They’re not hers?’ said Alec.

‘They might be,’ I replied. ‘I can telephone to Mrs Bowie and ask her what dress size her mother took. But these clothes weren’t worn outside on a muddy hillside. She had dirt under her nails, but her coat cuffs are clean and don’t smell of benzene. They smell of lily-of-the-valley cologne.’ I put the coat down and sorted through the pile of smaller garments, lifting a stocking. ‘She had dirt ground into her knees, Regina said. But look at this stocking. It should be torn, or snagged at least, and it’s perfect.’

‘Maybe-’

‘No, look at it, Alec.’ I held it up and let it dangle. ‘It hasn’t been washed. Look.’

‘It looks clean to me,’ Alec said.

‘It’s still got the shape of the leg in it,’ I insisted. ‘Clean stockings look like sausage skins, you know. Worn stockings have the ghost of the leg in them.’ I had not chosen my words wisely and I let the stocking drop again, unnerved. Alec was rummaging in the coat pockets, or trying to, anyway, but looking for pockets where he would in a coat of his own and not finding any. When he finally plunged his hand into the only two there were in women’s suiting, his eyes widened and he drew something out and showed it to me.

‘The lack of muck and benzene is a puzzle,’ he said, ‘but look at this. Proof positive, at least, that she went out that last day.’

In his hand was a striped paper bag, twisted shut at the corners, bearing the name and black-and-white livery of the Moffat Toffee Shop. That, more than the pitiful stocking with the ghost of Mrs Addie’s sturdy leg inside it, melted my heart. I picked the bag up and twirled it around to open it.

‘Poor thing,’ I said, ‘she didn’t even have one.’ For it certainly looked like a full quarter-pound of wrapped toffees in there and the bag had the pristine look that never lasts long after leaving the sweetshop. I glanced up at Alec. He was frowning down at me. He looked to the coat which lay on the bed and back again.

‘Doesn’t seem all that likely,’ he said. ‘How do you get to be the size of those tweeds if you don’t dip into your toffees as soon as you’ve bought them?’

‘Tablet,’ I said. Alec looked into the bag.

‘Toffee,’ he insisted.

‘Yes, it is,’ I agreed. ‘And it shouldn’t be. Mrs Bowie told us when we were there and she said it again on the telephone. Her mother loved the tablet from the Moffat Toffee Shop. Presumably whoever bought these and put them in the pocket of her coat didn’t know that.’

‘This is very bad,’ Alec said. He was trying to refold the skirt and coat into neat squares, hating all of a sudden, I think, to be touching her things.

‘That’s why Mrs Cronin shoved them at us,’ I went on. ‘Perhaps we were meant to do what we did or perhaps I was just supposed to witness Dr Laidlaw discovering the bag of sweets. Well, I’m not going to play their game. I shall ring for a maid to deliver them. Someone’s laying a false scent, Alec, and I don’t want them to know whether or not we’ve got a sniff of it.’

‘A false scent,’ Alec said. ‘Yes, I see. It wasn’t that she went out and they pretended she didn’t.’ He nodded as he thought his way through the thicket. ‘Far from it. She went nowhere and someone is pretending she did.’

‘Regina must have been told to say Mrs Addie was a bit grubby and she went much too far.’

‘Just as the ghosts are going too far now also,’ Alec said. ‘All those mediums. It’s completely out of hand.’

‘Isn’t it worrying that there are two stories?’ I asked him.

He was nodding faster now. ‘The one where she went out and collapsed. And one where she saw a ghost here and died of fright. But there’s as much effort going into suppressing the stories as there is to spreading them. Sergeant Simpson, Dr Ramsay, and the Addies all think different things. I don’t understand at all.’

‘And all of a sudden, I do,’ I said. ‘They couldn’t agree on one. They can’t agree on anything much, after all – whether this place is a hospital or a casino, for instance. Whether to sell up or keep going. Even whether these clothes were supposed to have been to the laundry and back or had been put away at day’s end with a bag of toffees in the pocket! There are two stories, Alec, because there are two Laidlaws, and they can’t agree.’

‘And even if it’s not the two Laidlaws,’ Alec said. ‘If it’s Tot and someone else, or if it’s Tot changing his mind. The ghosts are attracting too much attention so he’s switched to a new tale. No, don’t shake your head at me that way. It makes no difference. Competing stories or successive stories, Dandy – either way when there’s so much effort going into covering something up, it rather looks as though that something might be murder.’