Deadly Measure of Brimstone

11

The Hydro guests, at least the doctor’s devotees and Tot Laidlaw’s bright young things, were making the most of this afternoon of Indian summer, the way Scots will always do. Heaven knew in what dark dungeon the mediums were gathered to stir chickens’ entrails and cast knuckle bones in the dust – or was I mixing up mediums with some other species of ghoul? – but everyone else was on the terrace, the clock golf course or the croquet lawn, or could be heard at the tennis courts and bowling greens, in the swish and whack of gut against sheepskin or the soft knock of ebony upon ebony and the ripple of applause.

Alec and I had the winter gardens to ourselves, then, and thankfully so given the discussion which needed to be had there.

‘What in the name of blazes method of murder fools a doctor and a policeman?’ Alec said.

‘An untraceable poison?’ I suggested. ‘Or not even untraceable, when I come to think of it, since there wasn’t a proper post-mortem. A perfectly traceable poison. Or smothering.’

‘Doesn’t smothering turn one’s face black?’ Alec said. ‘And anyway I’d have hated to be the one to overcome Mrs Addie and hold her down. Unless she was restrained somehow.’

‘Strangulation turns the face black, not smothering,’ I said. ‘But restraints would certainly show – rings of bruises on the wrists and ankles, mostly likely.’

‘And Dr Ramsay and Sergeant Simpson could hardly miss those.’

‘But if Laidlaw was saying she had collapsed and his sister had seen her do so and if she looked like someone who’d had a heart attack… It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? A little lie from a respectable person who is a good liar?’

‘The doctor this would be,’ Alec said. ‘I’m sure Sergeant Simpson wouldn’t have taken Tot’s word for anything. The man breaks ten laws every night when the sun goes down.’

‘Presumably Simpson doesn’t know that,’ I said. ‘I shall be sure and tell him. He is, after all, my next port of call. Or yours, darling. I shan’t fight you for the honour.’

‘What we need is an exhumation,’ Alec said. ‘How does one go about that in these parts? Not the Home Secretary, I don’t suppose.’

‘I shall ask Simpson that too. Ask about exhumation, tell him we don’t trust Tot, tell him about the clothes, ask him about the bag – to be on the safe side.’

‘I wish I could believe I’d make a better job of it than you, Dandy,’ Alec put a great deal of sincerity into the claim and I did not believe a syllable of it, naturally. ‘I’d gladly take it off your hands. But I’d bungle it. Sure to.’

‘Let’s go together,’ I suggested smoothly. ‘A united front. I’ll start talking – thank you for your kind words – and you can pitch in as and when.’

Alec pushed out his pursed lips and considered my offer from every angle but could see no way of wriggling out of the hole into which he had talked himself.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Jolly good. Let’s be off then.’ It occurred to him no more than it did to me that what we were setting out to do was march into a police station, announce that the bumbling rustics within had plodded down the wrong road once again and then ask them to follow Alec and me to enlightenment.

Sergeant Simpson, on behalf of the Moffat office and perhaps the entirety of the Dumfriesshire Constabulary as far as we knew, declined with some vigour. We re-emerged onto the High Street half an hour later, not exactly with a foot in the seat to send us on our way but certainly we were moving smartly.

‘Phew,’ Alec said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Well, at least we didn’t lead with it. We got some good stuff out of him before the portcullis came down.’

Alec was standing with his hat on the back of his head and his hands on his hips, looking up and down the street. He nodded vaguely and gave the rolling wave of the hand he uses to indicate that he wants me to prattle on while he is thinking. It is intensely annoying but prattling while Alec thinks had led to great moments of eureka before and so, through slightly gritted teeth, I obliged him, falling into step as he strode along.

‘No handbag, for one,’ I said. ‘With or without watch and letters. That’s worth knowing. Bad news of course that he wouldn’t countenance a word with the Fiscal but if I’m not much mistaken, he won’t need to. Where are we going?’

‘We’re here,’ Alec said. ‘The Moffat Toffee Shop. Just to make doubly trebly sure. Because they’re bound to have remembered a woman the size of Mrs Addie, aren’t they? What was that about the Fiscal?’ He held the door open, and as it dinged with the happy sound of sweetshops everywhere I passed through.

It was enough to rot one’s teeth simply to stand and breathe the air. As well as the glittering glass jars of boiled sweets set on shelves behind the counter and the trays of sugar mice and chocolates laid out on waxed paper in the shelves beneath it, there was a sort of shrine to toffee all along one wall. There were bars of toffee wrapped in printed paper, individual toffee morsels done up in coloured twists, tins and boxes of toffee with lurid scenes of Moffat painted upon them – everything from the Ram to the bath house to the municipal gardens complete with bandstand – and a vat of broken toffee pieces into which one could dip a little enamel shovel and fill a bag for tuppence.

I blamed this unwrapped, unfettered heap of toffee pieces for the thick buttery sweetness in the air, almost heavy enough to taste. It was either that, the tray of toffee-apples sitting on top of the counter, plump and shining, or possibly the neat packages of tablet, tied with string, and showing with a slight translucence in their paper that they had been wrapped very recently, while still warm.

‘A quarter of your famous Moffat toffee, please,’ Alec said to the woman behind the counter. She was dressed in an apron and cap which mirrored the company livery of black and white with bright red trim and looked, therefore, like something from a pantomime. Fifty if a day, she nevertheless dimpled a little at Alec’s voice. I decided to hang back and let him have his way.

‘Right you are, sir,’ she said. ‘And is that what brought you here to Moffat?’ She must have noticed my arched brow, for she gave me a cold look before turning back to Alec and switching on the twinkle again. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ she confided.

‘I’m sure,’ Alec said. ‘No, I’m at the Hydro for a few days, but a late friend of mine told me to be sure and stop by.’ He had let his voice fall and now his head drooped a little too.

‘A Moffat man?’ asked the shopkeeper, busily trying to think what gentleman had recently been called to his rest, I imagine.

‘An Edinburgh lady,’ Alec replied. ‘And a great devotee of yours. A Mrs Addie. She was often at the Hydro. I wonder if you know who I mean.’

‘Mrs Addie?’ cried the shopkeeper, pressing a hand to her breast. ‘A late friend, did you say, sir? Oh mercy, I’m sorry to hear that now!’

‘As am I to have broken sad news in such an unfeeling way,’ Alec said. The undertaker was back at his post.

‘Not at all,’ said the shopkeeper. She rummaged under the counter and brought up a doilied plate with a small heap of toffees on it. She took one for herself, her manners all departed with the shock of the news perhaps, and then held it out to Alec the way one would offer a cigarette. He took one and unwrapped it as solemnly as one can.

‘It should be tablet, really,’ said the shopkeeper with a sad smile. ‘Mrs Addie was a one for my mother’s tablet. She’d take a toffee if one was offered but it was tablet she bought for herself and tablet she always sent to her daughter.’

‘Ah, dear Mrs Bowie,’ Alec said. ‘She’s bearing up well but she feels it.’

‘I never met the young lady,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Mrs always came in alone.’

‘And when was it that you last saw her?’ Alec said. The door behind us had tinkled and he spoke rather quickly in case she was about to dismiss him and all his questions and go back to plying her trade.

‘Oh, the last time she was here,’ came the reply, spoken at a very comfortable pace; there was all the time in the world to discuss poor Mrs Addie, no matter that even now the door tinkled again. ‘Last summer. I did wonder if she wasn’t coming back again – changed days up there since the old doctor passed – but there! If she wasn’t well that’ll have been at the bottom of it.’

Here Alec had no choice but to turn to me, even if my insinuation into his tête-à-tête was not to his new friend’s liking, for he had not been in Scotland long enough to navigate his way to an understanding of ‘last summer’ spoken in October. I, in contrast, knew right away that we had scored a crucial point in our game. ‘Last summer’ to this Moffat worthy could not include the most recent September; it was over a year ago. ‘This summer past’, ‘that summer there’ and ‘summer just gone’ would have answered the case, but ‘last summer’ was unequivocally nothing to do with Mrs Addie’s final trip to the Hydro.

‘She was back, though,’ I said. ‘The dear lady.’ I should not try that stuff; it does not come naturally and I saw Alec biting his cheeks to hear me. ‘Just for a couple of nights, mind you. I wonder that she didn’t make it into the shop. I’m sure I would have made a beeline.’ I looked around the place and tried to make my eyes shine with greed, or at least to look as though my stomach were not roiling.

The shopkeeper decided to forgive my sin – which was, I expected, chiefly made up of my not being Alec – since I had brought hard news, and she gave a chuckle.

‘Oh, Mrs Addie never came to the shop until she’d been a good week with the doctor,’ she said. ‘She came and did her treatments and as soon as she was able she came down here and undid them all again.’

‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Alec said.

The woman pulled her face out of its grin and lowered her eyes. ‘I meant no disrespect, sir.’

‘I shouldn’t imagine it for a minute,’ he assured her. ‘But how could your toffee undo a cured back?’ I kicked him gently and he took his cue and changed course like a dressage pony. ‘Ah, well. Water under the bridge. Let’s just both be thankful we knew her and let’s never forget her, eh? Now, to business.’ He rubbed his hands together and began a protracted series of negotiations into the differences between toffee, tablet and fudge, the comparative ‘nippiness’ of pan drops, oddfellows and humbugs and an enquiry into the healthful properties of liquorice sticks which only ended when the queue which had built up behind him reached the door and was letting a draught in.

I bought sugar mice for Donald and Teddy, who would be mystified by my nostalgia, I was sure, and a quarter-pound of comfits for Hugh who is fond of them, and we left at last.

‘Well?’ said Alec, shifting a large piece of toffee into his cheek and carefully closing the wrapping on the remainder (thus does one try to pretend one is not going to eat the lot and have to sip warm water and baking soda later).

‘I think we can take the bad back as a politeness,’ I said. ‘Mrs Addie came to the Hydro for some “banting”.’

‘What?’

‘A reducing diet. I always think it’s a most expressive word.’

‘A reducing diet?’ said Alec. ‘Ah, I see.’

‘Which explains why her daughter would be so sure she wasn’t off the Hydro grounds within a day of getting there. The Old Doctor must have kept her captive until he had helped her shift a few pounds.’

‘It also explains why she was moaning about the food,’ Alec said. ‘Dorothea – Dr Laidlaw must have had her on a special menu, not the pies and custards the rest of us are wading through.’

‘I wonder if knowing that helps us?’ I said. ‘Let’s go back to the house and drop off Bunty. She’ll have had enough of the back seat by now.’

‘It might do,’ Alec said. ‘I can see why Dr Laidlaw would be interested in her anyway. I mean to say, standing someone on a set of bathroom scales is pretty black and white, isn’t it? There’s no way to disguise the fact that something’s working. Or not. And I happen to know from our discussions that Doroth- Dr Laidlaw’s biggest bugbear is that asking people how they are feeling is a hopeless way of finding out how ill they are.’

‘What is the work she does?’ I asked. ‘Doroth- Dr Laidlaw?’ I was not exactly sure why I was teasing him; sometimes I think it has simply become a habit as it was with my brother and sister and me. ‘What is it that absorbs her so that she ignores her appointments with her patients?’

‘Fascinating stuff,’ Alec said. He had coloured a touch at the teasing but let it go by unremarked, which was most unusual. ‘And she’s an expert in the field. More learned papers than you could shake a stick at and the Hydro is the perfect place to study it.’

‘Study what?’ I said. We were back at the motorcar and right enough, Bunty was standing up on the back seat with her head out of the side window flap, playing to a crowd of children who were taking turns to pet her. She grew excited enough when she saw me to drive them back a little, just enough to let us through.

‘Bonnie doggy, missus,’ said a grubby little sort in a tattered dress and a ribbon which only added to the tangles in her hair and did nothing for decoration. ‘She looks like a bag ae toffees.’ I laughed; it had not struck me before but the black-and-white patterned toffee shop did have a faint air of Dalmatian about it. I decided to spare myself Donald and Teddy’s looks of scorn at my sentiment and handed the urchin the bag of sugar mice, calling to her departing back that she should share them.

‘Snake oil,’ Alec said, once we were in and Bunty had recovered from the joy of reunion. ‘Faith healing. Mumbo-jumbo. Only she calls it the Placebo.’

‘Sounds like a resort on the Mediterranean,’ I said. ‘“Come to the Placebo – white beaches and dancing every night.” And she studies it at the Hydro?’

‘She thinks it’s the perfect place,’ Alec said again. ‘Promise you won’t tell Hugh.’ Light was beginning to dawn upon me. Alec grinned. ‘She doesn’t believe a bit of it. Not a jot. Not the sitz baths or the sun lamps or anything.’

‘Huh!’ I said. ‘She charges enough for it in that case.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Alec. ‘But she charges because it works. I tell you, Dandy, it’s a marvel. The theory is – Do-octor Laidlaw explained it all to me – that Donald and Teddy and Hugh will all get better even though it’s complete hocus-pocus. And they’ll all get better faster than if they just rested and let nature take its course, and they’ll all get better quicker with three different “treatment plans” than if they all did the same. And the more trouble it is the better it works.’

‘That must be why the patients who’re only there for the casino have to submit to treatments,’ I said. ‘Only… I wonder what she’s measuring if they’re not ill to start with.’

‘Could be any one of a hundred things,’ Alec said. ‘She’s working on an enormous review of it. Thinking about The Lancet, no less.’

‘She certainly seems to have convinced you,’ I said. ‘You don’t think that maybe if something went wrong – if one of her patients died, for instance – she would cover it up? With The Lancet in view?’

‘Not patients. Guinea pigs,’ Alec said. ‘That’s what she calls them.’

‘Such callousness doesn’t exactly speak to-’ I began. Then I stopped as a thought struck me. ‘Why did she tell you all of this? When she’d only just met you?’

‘I’m a control,’ Alec said. ‘She really does have a first-rate mind, Dan. She tells a select few to see if it still works when we know it’s all nonsense.’

‘Ah,’ I said. We were swinging into Auchenlea’s gate now. ‘So you’re a guinea pig too then, really. I thought for a bit she was taken with you.’ I did not turn my head since I was navigating a narrow drive, but I thought I saw him stiffen. ‘Won’t it muck things up rather – for The Lancet – that there’s nothing wrong with you? Will you pretend to get better or pretend to stay crocked? Can you even remember what it is that’s supposed to be wrong with you?’

‘Bad back, like Mrs Addie,’ Alec said in a distant voice. ‘I never thought of that.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘My bright idea about the Fiscal means that you’ll have to open your little cage and run away anyway. The experiment is over, at least for you.’

He did not take much convincing. Dr Laidlaw might see Alec as just another dead moth to be pinned but I was becoming ever more sure that he had failed to take a comparably professional view of her. All that choking on her name and letting me rib him. To me she was a suspect, like her brother and Mrs Cronin and even Regina. To Alec she was an innocent, sullied by the coarseness of Tot, and deserving, without question, of all the loyalty Mrs Cronin and Regina could give her. For that reason too I was not as loath as I normally would be to despatch him on an errand.

‘I prefer “mission”,’ he said. I was not going to quibble. Certainly I was not going to fight him for the opportunity to raise the thorny question of exhumation. It would take all of his charm to talk Mrs Bowie into anything of the kind and Mr Addie would not have let me get to the end of the first sentence before he paid his outstanding bill and showed me the door.

‘I’m sure I’m right,’ I said. ‘The family and the Fiscal. Sergeant Simpson repeated that twice or three times, lording it over us who are neither. But what he forgot is that the Fiscal who swallowed the story – the one in Dumfries – is not the Fiscal who’ll have to sign the order. He’s in Edinburgh. If you can persuade the Addies to ask him – and of course you can; they adore you – then surely… Well, I’m not sure, to be honest, but I’d wager a modest sum. He probably feels some professional loyalty, but he probably feels some rivalry too and when we get right down to it his first duty is to the citizenry under his care. To wit, Addie and Bowie née. I’ll bet you I’m right, Alec.’

‘And my job is to go to these respectable people and suggest digging the old girl up and having a poke about to see what we can see,’ Alec said. We were standing at the front door of the Hydro. He looked up at it, sighed and consulted his watch. ‘I wish there was a bar in there,’ he said. ‘I hope they’ll bring a whisky and soda to the drawing room. Meanwhile what are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to get into that locked room if it kills me,’ I said. ‘I’m half convinced that’s where Mrs Addie died. There might still be clues.’

Before that, though, there was a very difficult conversation to be had. I begged Alec to be there and to promise not to leave no matter what happened. Quite simply, now that we thought Mrs Addie had been murdered I could no longer countenance Donald and Teddy spending their days at the Hydro. I could not claim to be too keen on the guinea pig end of things either, if it came to that, and it lent me the courage to speak, just not enough to speak without Alec there to protect me.

‘Hugh,’ I said, joining him at a tea table in the drawing room. He had a whisky and soda, I was interested to see, although the boys were tussling with a silver teapot and a three-tiered stand of bread-and-butter, griddle cakes and meringues.

‘Boys,’ I said. ‘Slop out that dishwater and let me pour you a nice hot cup then load up your plates and run along. I need to speak to Daddy.’ This was a great treat, for of course they had been trained from the days when their bread was served in soldiers to affect ignorance of the higher, sweeter tiers until the duller fare was gone. I was rather horrified to see them immediately build towers of cake on their tea plates, but I simply poured the tea, told them they could not have sugar in it and waited until they took themselves off to a window seat with a view of the bowling.

‘Now then, Hugh,’ I said. ‘How are you feeling?’

Hugh gave a quick glance towards Alec. It was low of me to force him to speak of his health in front of another man, and a neighbour come to that.

‘Perfectly well, Dandy,’ he said. ‘Thank you for asking.’

I sighed. ‘I mean are you feeling the better for having come here?’

‘Oh, tremendously so,’ he said. ‘I’ve been telling you for years that water treatment is the thing. The boys are vastly improved too.’ I smiled and tried not to think about how angry he would be if he ever found out about the snake oil.

‘Well, just remember that as you listen to what I’m going to tell you,’ I said. ‘And remember too that I rented a house. I didn’t suggest we stayed here. Remember that, please.’

Hugh took a contemplative sip from his glass. Alec looked away and ordered a drink of his own from a maid who was passing.

‘Go on,’ Hugh said.

‘Yes, now you see, the thing is,’ I said. ‘What I mean to say is – and you’ve probably already guessed because not much gets past you and I have seen you laughing once or twice and not sharing the joke.’ If I hoped to butter him up with this, I hoped in vain. All I did was make him suspect I knew about the casino. Not much gets past him, as I say. ‘The thing is that Alec and I are working.’

‘On a case,’ Alec said.

‘Fraud?’ said Hugh, quite loudly. I took it to mean that he had not cashed in his winnings and was trusting Laidlaw with whatever sum he had racked up to date.

‘Ah, no,’ I said. ‘Nor theft – which would be dreadful, nothing worse than a hotel where one’s belongings aren’t safe. Remember that terrible place in Paris? With the drains?’

‘Something less dreadful than theft then?’ he said. ‘I hope it’s going to pay enough to cover the cost of you both rushing down here. Or did it arise after we came?’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It was certainly partly responsible for my suggesting decamping to here. But mostly it was you and the boys. And Pallister and Mrs Tilling too.’

‘And what is this crime – if it even is a crime – that’s not so bad as maids pilfering cufflinks?’ he said.

‘An odd end to a patient’s treatment,’ I said. Did he know already? Had he guessed and begun toying with me?

‘Seems to me there are only two ends,’ Hugh said. He had guessed, damn him. ‘Recovery or… death.’

‘Yes,’ I said and then hurried on. I judged it best to keep talking and get everything out at once. ‘A death. A woman, though, a good bit older than you, and much, much older than the boys, with a very different complaint – bad back and a tendency towards stoutness which she was being treated for with surely completely different treatments from those you’d need if it were your lungs and a long illness like the boys and you. And besides I’m telling you today because I think the boys should leave now that we’ve decided that it’s… that is, now that there’s a chance that what happened was perhaps that she was… murdered. Weeks ago.’ I think it was that last point that pushed him over the edge. He set down his glass with a smack that drew attention from several of the other tea tables. I had to calm myself with a few very deep breaths before I dared to look him in the face and when I did it was to see that he was smiling. More than smiling; he was laughing. A silent laugh with shaking shoulders, which I had only ever seen before when he recounted stories from George at the club.

‘I actually thought we must be iller than the doctors would tell us,’ he said, ‘when you suddenly dragged us off down here. It kept me awake one night. But now all is revealed.’ All except the hot water and radiators at Gilverton, I thought, giving him a sickly grin. Hugh turned to Alec. ‘Are we in any danger, old man?’

Alec shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t have thought so,’ he replied. ‘It was one old lady and the place is filled to the rafters with guests. No one else has died recently.’

It was a perfect example of the stiff upper lip and Hugh met it with its cousin, the soaring understatement.

‘Ticklish about the boys, mind you,’ he said. ‘But a little old lady…’

‘She was rather a large old lady, actually,’ I said.

‘We could always tell them,’ said Alec. ‘Put them on their guard.’ I was shaking my head before he had finished speaking.

‘They’d be out in the shrubbery bent double with magnifying glasses and we’d be completely undone,’ I said. ‘I really do think they should go.’

‘As you wish,’ Hugh said. ‘Shall we send Mrs Tilling back with them? Shall you eat here with me?’

‘Not home to Gilverton,’ I said. I was beginning to be aware of a throbbing at my temples. ‘I meant they could stay at Auchenlea.’

‘I’m for them carrying on with the treatments,’ said Hugh. ‘Let’s tell them to be on their guard – perhaps say that there’s been a suspicious stranger lurking about. But I’m for staying on a while anyway.’

‘Oh, Hugh, how can you?’ I said, losing all patience. ‘I know exactly why you’re “for staying”. I know all about Tot Laidlaw’s grubby little enterprise. But how you can throw your own sons to-’ I was on thin ice there and so I regrouped. ‘How can they be on their guard if they’re lying on tables covered with mustard wraps or with electric I don’t-know-whats attached to their arms and legs?’

‘Nothing grubby about it,’ Hugh said, showing me which of my barbs had wounded him. ‘Rather disappointingly respectable, in fact. The Moffat bourgeoisie come out to play. Isn’t that right, Osborne?’

‘We don’t get shackled to the couches, Dandy,’ Alec said, hurrying past any hint that he had joined Hugh in the casino. ‘And there is nothing electric attached to one. Just lamps shining down. Anyone could get up and hop it if he felt he wanted to.’

‘I can’t believe you’re being so cavalier,’ I said to Hugh. ‘But since you are… I will allow them to stay as long as they stay together and don’t go into any little treatment rooms on their own. They can play golf and croquet and billiards and rest on the terrace.’

‘I can’t allow you to suspend the treatments, Dandy,’ Hugh said, meeting my glare with that unconcerned look of his. ‘Look at Donald! Just look at him and then tell me his baths aren’t helping him.’ He tapped his pocket where the brochure, now looking very well thumbed, was still folded. ‘I’m thinking of going in for a few more. I feel better all the time.’

For two pins I would have told him the whole story, of Dr Laidlaw’s swooping in to use the spoils of her father’s beloved Hydro for her own cold scientific ends, of her cynical division of hopeful invalids into groups of guinea pigs and controls and of how she only cared about The Lancet and was not worthy of the name of doctor at all. For two pins I would but I had forgotten what it was called – that resort on the Mediterranean sea – and so I sat silently fuming instead and let him laugh at me.

Matters were not improved by the arrival in the drawing room at that moment not just of Tot Laidlaw coming out like a famous chef from his kitchen after pudding and walking amongst the tables gathering laurels, but today of his sister too, padding along just behind him like a hand maiden and peering intently at all the faces of the guests for all the world as though she were a proper selfless doctor with the Hippocratic oath on her lips and a black bag in her hand. If it had been rock buns instead of meringues that teatime, I might well have shied one at each of them.

So it was with no great surge of welcome that I agreed they could join us. Several of the other tea-takers scattered around the room looked with envy as dear Dr Laidlaw and good old Tot sat down with Hugh, Alec and me. I found myself thinking, briefly, that they were welcome to them, before reminding myself that this pair were at the very heart of the puzzle of the Hydro and I should be glad of the chance to study them at close quarters. I began with Tot, ready to whisk my eyes away if he caught me looking, but to my surprise he did not. He nodded at Alec and Hugh, gave his sister a glare and ignored me completely. I thought, besides, that there was something rather brittle about his air of jollity today, his winks less languid than usual, his preening more like fidgets than before.

‘So,’ he said as he settled down, with much plucking at his trousers and shirt cuffs. He was as dapper as ever in his too-light flannels, cut to flatter a figure in which, the more I saw it, the more I could trace the marks of dissolute living. He was certainly wearing worse than his sister, although I thought he could easily be younger than her. She had the pale cheeks and dark eyes of a dedicated scholar but also the smooth saintly look which they sometimes develop, untouched by the trials of husband, home, servants and children. That was it, I thought, looking at her. Even though thirty if a day and perhaps a good deal more, she looked a girl still. She looked unmarried. It is a look one is well accustomed to these days, when there are still so many of what I cannot bring myself to call ‘surplus women’.

‘Wonderful fire drill,’ Tot was saying. ‘Fastest yet. Of course, it helps when not absolutely everyone is upstairs in bed, eh?’ He jerked his elbow at Hugh although he was too far away actually to nudge him. Of course! The middle-of-the-night fire drills would not discommode Tot’s bright young things, who would still be at the tables and only needed to step outside with their drinks in their hands. I wondered what Dr Laidlaw’s patients in their pyjamas made of it all. ‘I’m discounting you, Dottie,’ he said, giving his sister a penetrating look.

Dr Laidlaw winced but then managed a smile. Alec recrossed his legs and regarded Laidlaw coldly.

‘My sister, Mrs Gilver,’ Tot went on, turning to me at last. He was grinning his wide grin but I was almost sure I could see a sheen of sweat on his high brow. ‘Can you believe she just worked right through the clanging? I had to go and fetch her. If that had been a real fire, Dot, we would both have been in trouble.’

‘I’m sorry, Thomas,’ she said. ‘I’ve apologised already. I had cotton wool in my ears.’

‘Is your study noisy?’ Alec asked, with an air of pitching in. ‘It’s nowhere near- I mean, there’s no source of any noise, surely? Foxes? Owls? I haven’t heard them.’

‘It helps me concentrate,’ she said. ‘When I’m writing. It gives me the sense of a cocoon, with everything shut out, you know.’

‘Oh, yes, we know,’ Tot said. He spoke lightly but from the way his sister shrank from his words he might have been grinding his teeth and glowering at her. ‘We know all about your tremendous feats of concentration.’ He turned again to take us all in. ‘Absent-minded professor. Like our father. Not me! I’m the black sheep that was never going to come to any good, isn’t that right, Dottie?’

I turned a little in my chair and looked hard at Hugh. How could he stand this odious person? How could he bear him, airing his family’s cruel little sayings that way? I was gratified to see Hugh assume the distant look he affects when trying simply to pretend that what is passing before him is not.

‘Still,’ Tot said. ‘It’s all good fun and what else is life for, eh?’

No one managed to summon a reply and so he spoke again.

‘Everyone settled? No thoughts of leaving? I’d be sorry to see you take off, old man. And if that business in the steam room is all squared away for your good lady…?’

In other words, I thought, Hugh was having his usual run of luck in the casino and Tot didn’t want my encounter with a ghost to cause him to cash his chips before the luck turned and the casino could win it all back again. I caught Alec’s eye and a thought passed between us. Had it been Tot who planted the toffees and told Mrs Cronin to make sure we saw them?

‘How are your sons, Mrs Gilver?’ said Dr Laidlaw, rather blurting it out to change the subject.

‘I’m very glad you asked,’ I said. I pointed over to where Donald and Teddy were lounging on the window seat. ‘Their posture is not what one would hope for, but they seem markedly improved. Thank you.’ I took a deep breath and plunged on before my nerve failed me. I had only just remembered an odd little moment Dr Laidlaw and I had shared that very first day and I wondered if alluding to it would shake something loose that might be useful. ‘Knowing that you – their doctor – are taking a close interest in their convalescence is most reassuring. We mothers, as I’m sure you know, are rather fierce on the subject of harm coming to our young. I think that almost more than any treatments they might undergo or not undergo it’s wonderful to think that they are in safe and caring hands and will not come to any harm here.’

Half of my audience shifted uncomfortably. Hugh was unsettled by this sickly display of sentiment as he would be by any. Alec was trying not to laugh; he knew exactly what the act had cost my dignity. I carried on regardless, for it was the other half I had in my sights and thus far I had only taken aim.

‘I blame my own mother, of course,’ I said. ‘And my nanny too. But I’m sure you won’t mind me asking.’ I simpered a little here, or tried to, and dared not look at Alec or Hugh. ‘I suppose you do drain and clean the plunging pool regularly, don’t you? You didn’t quite answer when I asked before, Dr Laidlaw, but surely you do.’

And then I watched very closely while trying to appear not to. Dr Laidlaw was doing her scared rabbit routine again, her eyes seeming to take up half her face. Tot Laidlaw, though, was far more interesting. The geniality was gone, the smirk, the crinkling at the eyes, every last twinkle – quite gone. And he was sweating, and none too lightly either; droplets gathering into rivulets and coursing down his brow. For the first time I saw that there was more than just the family nose to show that his sister and he were sprung from the same source. With his face pale and his eyes suddenly dark, and with that look of dismay spreading over him like a stain, he might have been her twin. It took him a full minute to shake himself back to life and say something.

‘Why, my dear Mrs Gilver, I hardly know what to say. I’m almost flattered, it’s almost a compliment. We’ve really made you so comfortable with all of this’ – he broke off and waved around at the drawing room – ‘that you’ve forgotten what Laidlaw’s is? This Hydropathic Establishment is a hospital, dear lady. A hospital, not a hotel. I could show you the licences and other papers to prove it to you. And cleanliness and hygiene are watchwords here. So fret not, my dear lady, fret not at all.’

‘So when was it last cleaned?’ said Alec, cutting through all the soft soap.

‘As recently as a month ago,’ Tot Laidlaw said. He seemed to believe his answer scored a point for him, but Alec and I knew better.

Tot made an excuse shortly afterwards, rose, bowed and walked off, managing to get the swagger back into his stride on his way down the room so that by the time he reached the end of it and passed out into the hall he was quite his old self again.

‘I must be running along too,’ said Dr Laidlaw. ‘I have some work to do.’

‘Did that pretty child give you the bundle of clothes, Dr Laidlaw?’ I said. ‘From Mrs Cronin, via me.’

‘Yes,’ said Dr Laidlaw miserably. ‘Yes, she did.’

‘Rather astonishing, eh?’ I said. ‘What a coincidence!’

‘A coincidence?’ she said. ‘You don’t think then that it… wraps things up?’

‘I suppose if one believed in such things as ghosts one might say she can rest in peace now,’ I said. ‘But I’m not much of a one for hocus-pocus. Mumbo-jumbo, call it what you like. Are you?’

The doctor muttered something incomprehensible under her breath and not hiding her thankfulness even a bit she hurried away.

‘Well,’ said Hugh. ‘If that’s a typical example of the kinds of scenes I’m missing by staying out of your game, Osborne, I can’t say I’m sorry.’ I rolled my eyes but left Alec to navigate this blatant attempt to sneer.

‘Oh, you toughen up over time,’ Alec said, masterfully. ‘So, Dandy, you were supposed to think the spirit of Mrs Addie wanted her clothes back, got them, and all lived happily ever after.’

‘Or mouldered quietly in the grave. Exactly,’ I said. ‘Unfortunately she won’t be allowed to. When are you setting off for town?’

‘Tomorrow, first thing,’ said Alec. Perhaps he regretted his snub to Hugh for he turned to him now with a rueful smile. ‘I must to Edinburgh,’ he said, ‘to persuade the woman’s relations to order an exhumation. We think they’ll find poison if they trouble to check, don’t we?’

‘Poison?’ said Hugh, looking sharply down into his glass of whisky. Then he cleared his throat and took a careless swallow of it. ‘What about you, Dandy?’

‘Interesting as it was to discover that they cleaned the pool after Mrs Addie died,’ I said, ‘I still need to search for clues in the room where we think the murder was done.’ I was over-egging but only a churl could blame me. ‘We know which room it is but it’s kept under lock and key, as you can imagine.’

‘The murder room, eh?’ said Hugh. ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ I could not help but smile.

‘I shall,’ I said. ‘As ever. And thank you.’

‘Only, God knows,’ Hugh said, ‘there are some very strange people about.’ He nodded to where a small procession of mediums with Loveday Merrick at its head was making its stately way towards the door. Mr Merrick saw Alec and me, tipped the silver top of his cane to his temple, and moved on.

‘Do you know him?’ Hugh said.

‘Not exactly,’ Alec said. ‘But I get the impression he knows us.’

‘Who is he?’ said Hugh. ‘Extraordinary-looking chap, even for here.’

I considered briefly telling him that one little murder was not the half of it, that there were ghosts and grandmothers and savage histories piling up behind every door and spirit mediums rushing to greet them.

‘He’s not connected to the case,’ I said firmly. How happy I would be if that were so.