Deadly Measure of Brimstone

16

My detecting career has put me in the way of several experiences – scenes witnessed, persons met, tasks undertaken – which my parents, Nanny Palmer, Mademoiselle Toulemonde, and the staff of my finishing school never foresaw and for which they failed to equip me. None of it, not the bodies plummeting from heights with firm hands at their backs, not the circus midgets in their caravans, not the digging of graves in the moonlight, rattled me as thoroughly, sent as many goose pimples marching over my flesh like an army of ants and left me as waxen and trembling as the night of the Big Seance.

It started quietly enough. The mediums stood in a circle all around the edge of the clearing, muttering their endless chant. Between the bodies of the two standing closest to Alec and me I could see that Grant was in the middle, with Loveday Merrick at her side. He thumped his cane on the ground and the muttering stopped.

‘Extinguish the torches,’ he commanded in that booming voice of his and the mediums clustered around a fire bucket someone must have brought up the hill. One by one they dipped the torches, setting off a sizzling loud enough in the quiet night to sound like the devil’s own firebrand, and sending a cloud of smoke up into the air. When the dowsed torches emerged from the water, however, they were still alight and within moments were burning as bright as ever again.

‘They’ve used sulphur and lime instead of tar,’ Alec whispered. ‘They’ll never get them out that way.’

There was silence in the clearing except for sounds of blowing as some of the mediums tried and failed to puff out the flaming rags as one would a birthday candle. I could feel a surge of laughter bubbling up inside me and I concentrated on containing it. After an awkward moment, one of the mediums piped up.

‘How do we do it, Loveday?’ Alec’s shoulders were shaking now too.

‘Roll them on the ground,’ he said. ‘And stamp on them.’

The few men in the crowd did just that but most of the women dabbed uselessly at the grass with theirs and made little darting movements with their feet, and all in all it took a full five minutes before every last one of the torches was out. Even at that there was some ominous glowing and when a gust of wind swept across the clearing several of them reignited for a second time and had to be rolled and stamped on again.

At last, though, there was darkness and silence and, with a few deep breaths, we quenched our threatened giggles. I could just about make out the white gleam of Grant’s neckpiece although my eyes watered and ached from the strain of looking. There came a muffled sound which I took to be Loveday’s cane again and then some movement I could not clearly see.

‘We are gathered here,’ said Merrick, sounding exactly like a minister at the start of a wedding, ‘on this twenty-sixth night of October in the year nineteen hundred and twenty-nine, one hundred years to the night since the black devil himself, William Hare, was sent to his eternal punishment. We come to honour the souls of his victims who became his avengers, to seek intercourse with them, to be the bearers of their messages from the world beyond to the world of the living. Most humbly we offer ourselves in service to them.’

It was all I could do not to whisper ‘Amen’.

Nothing happened for perhaps a minute. An owl hooted. Down in the town a door slammed, but up here on the hill all was quiet and still until the cane thumped again.

‘Be not afraid, gentle spirits,’ said Loveday’s voice. ‘We call upon you in peace and friendship to make yourselves known. We offer you this channel, pure and clean, and we beg you to come to us. Come down through the higher planes to our lowly sphere.’ He paused. ‘Speak!’ I am sure I was not the only one who jumped at the sudden bellow. ‘Speak, Jamie! We shall not mock you here. Speak, Mary! Your sins are forgiven here! Speak, thou poor blind child! You will be given an audience here with us tonight.’

‘What a load of complete tommyrot,’ Alec breathed in my ear.

There was a low moaning out in the clearing.

‘I feel them, Loveday,’ said a voice. It was perhaps Mrs Molyneaux’s, but it was set so sepulchrally low and was so bursting with portent it was hard to say. ‘They are close, but they are frightened to appear.’

‘He’s here!’ The voice was a pure peal of sound, pitched as high as the cry of a newborn. It was Grant. There was a ripple of interest all around the ring of mediums then Grant spoke again in her everyday voice. ‘They’re scared, Mr Merrick, because the bad man’s here.’

‘William?’ said Merrick.

‘Aye, that’s me,’ said Grant, low and guttural now and completely terrifying.

‘Evil, evil, evil creature,’ said a female’s voice from somewhere to our left. ‘I can feel him. My skin’s crawling, my stomach’s heaving.’ She made a few half-hearted sick-noises but she did not have Grant’s talent for it and sounded more as though she were trying to keep from swallowing a fly.

‘Get away fro-’ said a voice which had not spoken before.

‘No!’ said Merrick. ‘William, if you can hear me. What is your full name?’

Grant rumbled and groaned a bit and then spoke in the low voice again. This time we could all hear the rather chewed-up vowels of a strong Irish brogue about the words.

‘I am the ghost of William Burke, wrongly judged and wrongly hanged, I come to wreak revenge on them as left me.’

Whispers of ‘Burke!’, ‘It’s Burke!’ went around the ring. Even Alec leaned in close to me and whispered: ‘Why did she go for Burke?’ I shrugged and shushed him. Grant was speaking again.

‘Twas him, twas all him and yet I hanged and not he. And her with her nagging and goading me on and I hanged and not she. And so I shall be with him always and I’ll haunt him and harry his soul to the end of days.’

‘William!’ said Merrick. His voice was set for a parade ground, a bark of sound. ‘William, you were wronged. Four of you did the deed and one of you paid the price. You were wronged. But the others…’

‘Give not thy soul unto a woman,’ said Burke’s voice. ‘Faithless and treacherous creatures, tricking us and blinding us to goodness with their wiles.’

‘Typical,’ I muttered.

‘Mr Merrick?’ Grant was speaking for herself now. ‘Why don’t I take William away? If he’s gone perhaps the others will come.’

Sensation! The mediums broke into such a storm of chatter that I could not hear a single word. At length, however, Mrs Scott’s voice rose clear of the others.

‘Are you telling us that you are a drawer as well as a channel?’ she said.

‘I don’t know what you’d call it,’ said Grant, faltering very convincingly. ‘This curse of mine… I try not to think of it and never speak of it. But I… There was this room in a house in the village when I was a child. No one would go in and so I went and found out what the trouble was and I took the poor spirit out and down to the river and…’

‘And what, girl?’ said Merrick. He sounded as though he were smiling.

‘I sent her away,’ said Grant.

Sensation upon sensation! This time I did pick out a word from the crowd, because they were all repeating the same one. It appeared that Grant was not only a medium, a channel and a drawer. She was a quencher too.

‘If you’re sure, Miss Grant,’ said Mr Merrick.

‘He doesn’t belong here,’ Grant said. She raised her voice. ‘William Burke, William Burke, I command you to follow me.’ The white of her neckpiece disappeared as she turned around and I could not see or hear her walk away.

‘Where will she go?’ Alec said.

‘Home for a bath and cocoa if she’s got any sense,’ I answered. ‘At least I hope so. Because we can’t follow her to make sure she’s all right, can we?’

It took a moment for the seance to get under way again after Grant’s spectacular exit, but in time muttering resumed and swaying too. The mediums, holding hands around the circle like a giant game of ring-a-roses, began to get into the swing of things.

‘I see a child,’ said a piping voice. Olivia Gooseberry, I thought. ‘Come, child. Oh, oh, he’s leading an old woman by the hand. And he’s not blind! He can see. Let me listen.’ There was a long silence. ‘Yes, yes, he can see!’

‘I hear him,’ said a nearby voice. ‘Oh, there he is. Oh bonny, beautiful boy! So happy.’ Beside me, Alec groaned quietly. I turned and smiled at the look of disgust on his face. Then I frowned.

‘Is it my imagination or is it getting lighter?’ I breathed. I turned back to the circle. It was definitely lighter now. I could see their linked hands and I could see light reflected on the pink faces of the ones at the far side.

‘The clouds must be lifting,’ Alec said. But to me it looked like the light of dawn. How long had we been here? It must surely not even be two o’clock in the morning yet and while Scotland in June is a great trial one can at least be sure of a good night’s sleep in the darkness by the end of October. I shrank down further behind the log, feeling my shoes sinking into the earth but not caring. If I could see the mediums, then they could see me.

‘Mary, Mary,’ one of them was saying. ‘Oh, how beautiful you look. See how her hair shines and see the cross around her neck!’

‘I’ll bet,’ Alec muttered.

‘I see her,’ said another. ‘And Lizzie and Peggy too.’

‘Ahhhhhh,’ said Loveday Merrick. There was instant silence. ‘Davey Riley. And Josephine Riley too. How wonderful to meet you both at last. And who is that with you? Mrs Ritchie! Welcome, dear lady.’

‘It’s the last three with no names,’ someone said. ‘Oh Loveday, you are wonderful. Mr and Mrs Riley and Mrs Ritchie, we welcome your spirits and offer ourselves to serve you.’

‘There they are!’ said Mrs Molyneaux. ‘Oh, there they are, holding hands. Oh welcome, welcome, dear friends.’

‘You’re very quiet,’ said Mr Merrick, suddenly turning and directing his gaze to a woman and man at the right side of the clearing. They had not joined in the greeting. I could see them – it was lighter than ever – shuffle their feet and look at the ground.

‘I haven’t heard a thing, Mr Merrick,’ said the female half of the pair. ‘I haven’t been chosen.’

‘Me neither,’ said the man. ‘I’ve not pleased the spirits tonight.’

‘Mrs Riley has a message for her grandchild,’ came a cry from opposite. Mr Merrick swung round.

‘Ah, well done,’ he said. ‘You are a true and faithful servant…?’

‘Anne Tasker,’ said the woman, sounding thrilled.

‘And what is the message, Anne Tasker?’ he said. Then he turned our way, looking past us towards the Hydro. ‘What…?’

‘That light’s beginning to get quite-’ Alec said. He turned and at the same moment so did I and together, in the warm glow of the sky to the west of us, we saw a tiny orange fleck rise up from behind the trees of the Hydro grounds and wisp off into the dark. A second later, before we could move, footsteps came pounding back into the clearing. It was Grant.

‘Fire,’ she shouted, rushing back into the middle of the clearing and pointing. ‘There’s a fire! Look behind yourselves! Can’t you see?’

‘It’s the Hydro!’ I shouted, standing up and scrambling through the trees for a better view, all thoughts of secrecy gone. Alec was at my side and I could hear footsteps as some of the mediums came behind us. Ahead, glowing between the tree trunks, the light grew brighter and now we could smell it too, the sweet pleasant smell of smoke on a chilly night. I plunged onward and at last could feel the slope steepening under my feet. I crashed on, down another few feet, through the brambles, snagged my coat on a branch, struggled and then shrugged out of it. Alec caught my arm.

‘You’ll break your neck, Dan,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back and come round by the path. There will be others there already. Listen!’ Now we could hear faint shouts and then a sudden scream.

‘Hugh is in there,’ I said. Still he hesitated. ‘And Dorothea.’ I did not wait to see how he might react, but just turned away and went back to breaking through the undergrowth with my arm in front of my face against the thorns.

‘Let me through, my dear lady,’ came the booming voice of Loveday Merrick. He was right behind me. ‘Let me through. I have a cane.’

He pushed past me and began whacking a path through the bracken and brambles. I was at his heels. Someone bumped into me from behind and fell heavily. I did not even turn to see who it might be.

The flames were growing; I was sure of it. It was not just that we were getting closer. And I could hear the fire itself now, over the sound of shouts and screams. A roaring and rushing and then a great creak and crash and the sky was filled with a shower of sparks. The roof was falling.

Then all at once we were down out of the woods, Merrick, Alec, Grant, the gooseberry girl and I, and the garden wall of the Hydro was before us. We raced along the dark lane and in at the back gate to the servants’ area and stable yard. The place looked fine from here, locked up for the night, dark and quiet, but suddenly there was a squeak and a groan and then one of the windows by the back door blew out and shattered over the cobbles of the yard. Grant shrieked and pulled me back. Merrick had opened the gate to the lawns and we all rushed through, blundering in the dark under the cedars, heading for the light ahead of us, and when we got there we could see that it was the fire reflected on the pale clothes and white faces of the crowd who stood helpless, watching, on the lawns.

Every window on the west side was alive with leaping flames and the slivers of glass on the ground reflected the light and sparkled like rubies. I caught the arm of a woman in dressing gown and bedroom slippers.

‘Is everyone out?’ I said. ‘Is everyone safe?’

But she was too shocked to speak to me. Her lip trembled and she shook her head, turning back to look at the blaze. I began frantically darting through the crowd, calling Hugh’s name. At the other end of the house a Dennis engine was parked on the grass and I could see the gleaming helmets and the glittering buckles and buttons of the firemen as they scurried around with their ladders and hoses. One hose was spouting water already, straight into one of the dining-room windows, but it only served to increase the smoke while doing nothing to lessen the force of the flames. I turned away and kept calling. I was beginning to whimper when I heard someone answer me. I wheeled round. Alec and he were walking calmly towards me.

‘Good heavens, Dandy,’ Hugh said. ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. I was playing cards and heard the alarm. I strolled out of the nearest door and didn’t even have to hurry. There, there, my dear. Now please, pull yourself together, or you’ll upset the servants.’

What he really meant was that I would delight the servants and the other guests and be one of the highlights of the evening which everyone told and retold if I did not stop clutching him and weeping.

‘But you’re filthy with soot,’ I said. ‘How did that happen if you strolled out?’

‘Naturally when one found out it wasn’t a drill one went back in to help the women,’ said Hugh. ‘Now, I’m off to get the car if I can.’ He gave me a tight smile and left. I stared after him.

‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ Alec said. ‘I heard him bellowing your name. That’s how I found him.’

‘He went back in?’ I said and I knew that my voice shook as I spoke. Alec rolled his eyes. ‘Well, next time he lectures me about taking on dangerous cases when I have sons to think of I shall take great pleasure in reminding him. Is everyone out?’

‘They seem to be,’ Alec said.

‘Mr Osborne!’ It was Dorothea Laidlaw, white and shaking, standing like a ghost at our side. She had eyes only for Alec, not so much as a nod to me.

‘My dear Dr Laidlaw,’ Alec said. He took off his coat and put it around her shoulders.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ she said. ‘Everything my father… his whole life. And all of my work.’ She turned and blundered off. She did not console any of the huddled groups of guests in their dressing gowns who stood around hugging one another and watching in helpless horror as another enormous section of the roof fell in with a sigh and a cascade of embers. She did not look twice at the groups of bright young things shivering in their beaded dresses or the young bloods who ignored them and stood smoking, watching the Hydro burn.

‘Drat,’ said Alec. ‘She’s gone off with my pipe in the pocket.’

Slowly, the scene was changing. Some young men from the casino crowd were setting benches together in the quiet dimness just beyond the heat of the flames and I saw Regina and Mrs Cronin help an elderly lady over to one and lie her down with a blanket under her head and a robe to cover her. Another of the maids was ripping towels into strips and dipping them in the fountain, then passing them out to be laid on people’s blistering faces for relief. Before long, I was sure someone would find a way to make tea and the world would begin to turn on its axis again. I was just beginning to calculate how many we could fit into Hugh’s Rolls-Royce and how many we could give comfortable lodgings to at Auchenlea, when I felt someone seize my arm.

‘The doctor’s in the mud bath room.’ It was Loveday Merrick. His great, handsome face was drawn up in horror and his sonorous voice was cracking. ‘Someone saw. Someone just told me!’

‘Alec,’ I cried. ‘Dr Laidlaw’s gone back in. To the mud room!’

‘Damn it, Dandy,’ he said, rushing up. ‘We should have known she’d do something like this. I’ll tell the firemen. Perhaps they can get to her.’

But I was furiously thinking. The whole of the Turkish and Russian baths was made of marble and the corridor which led to it was stone.

‘Come with me,’ I said, grabbing his arm and leading him to the garden door where the mud bath had been brought outside.

‘Madam,’ said Grant. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Dr Laidlaw went back in,’ I said.

‘I know,’ said Grant. ‘I saw her.’ She pointed to the gap in the wall which led to the servants’ yard and the garden door. ‘I was just…’ She held out her hand to show me the dripping wet handkerchief she held there. I snatched it up and tied it over my face.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘I know where she’s gone. Tell Mrs Cronin and Regina to have wet towels ready.’ Then, before I could change my mind, I dashed to where the garden door stood open, with Alec behind me.

‘Sorry there’s only one hanky,’ I said as we darted inside. I turned the corner from the offshoot to the passageway proper and sprinted for the stairs.

‘Not too bad in here, anyway,’ Alec said.

There was a faintly acrid smell in the air and I thought I could see a light haze of drifting smoke, but it wasn’t until we got to the top of the stairs that my eyes began smarting and I heard Alec start to cough, but we were heading away from where the smoke was thickest and with a great rush of thankfulness I saw that the door to the Turkish and Russian was closed. I tested the handle – not hot – wrenched it open and hustled myself and Alec through. In here the air was clear and all was as ever. It was warm, but not any warmer than when the baths were open. I took Alec’s hand and pulled him along the cubicle corridor, through the resting room, up the side of the plunging pool and through the round room where the spray baths were. The mud room door was closed and I prayed that she had not locked it behind her.

Alec grabbed the handle and pulled it open and I did not have time to think what he meant by his yelp of pain before we were in the room, choking on smoke and looking up through the hole in the ceiling at the flames raging and crackling above us.

‘Dr Laidlaw,’ I shouted, retching at the smoke.

‘Help me!’ came a man’s voice. I stumbled forward, came up hard against the solid wooden side of the mud bath and screamed to see Dr Ramsay’s head, shining with sweat and twisted with terror.

‘Help me!’ he screamed again. Alec was struggling with the fastening and when the top trapdoor burst open he hauled the doctor out by his armpits then together we dragged him clear.

‘Thank God it’s empty,’ Alec said, grimly, ‘or we’d never have shifted him.’

The doctor was dressed, dinner jacket and black tie, and his patent shoes scraped on the tiles as we lugged him outside and closed the door. Back in the marble spray-bath room everything had changed, even in the moments we had been away. The walls were running with condensation as the temperature rose and the plaster ceiling was bulging and darkening even as we looked at it. We dragged the doctor into the plunge pool room, but things were worse there. A brown bloom was spreading over the ceiling and a few wisps of black smoke were beginning to curl away from the surface of the plaster. Suddenly, at the far end, the door to the corridor blew open and we could hear the fire crackling and roaring beyond it.

‘Oh God,’ Alec said. Dr Ramsay was unconscious, hanging from our shoulders, slack and helpless.

I looked around desperately. There was no other way out. Just the solid marble walls and the long empty pool of cold water. A thought struck me and I dropped down and stuck my hand into the water. It really was still cold.

‘Quick!’ I said. ‘Into the pool.’ We dragged the doctor over and let him drop into the water. He came up spluttering and choking but wide awake again. I stepped up on the edge and jumped in beside him, feeling the same sharp slap and then the ache of the cold. I put my arm across Dr Ramsay’s back and held him up. ‘Come on, Alec,’ I said. ‘Jump in!’

‘I need to see if she’s there,’ he said and ran back towards the mud room. As I watched, a long thin section of plaster with a burning beam behind it arched gently down and closed off my view of him with a sheet of flames.

‘Now, Dr Ramsay,’ I said. ‘When the ceiling goes, take a big breath and go under. Stay under as long as you can. Do you understand me? Alec!’ I shouted over my shoulder. ‘Alec, hurry!’

‘He left me there to die,’ said Dr Ramsay. I was watching the ceiling. The edge of the hole where the long thin strip had collapsed was licking and curling with tongues of flame and the brown bloom above us was darkening to black and blistering all over. ‘I thought it was one of his jokes. I actually climbed in and let him close the thing!’

‘Well, you’re out now,’ I said, wishing he would shut up and let me listen for Alec.

‘It started as a tease! He’s such a joker himself. I was only teasing.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Alec!’ I turned back to the doctor. ‘Get ready to breathe in and duck. It wasn’t seemly behaviour for a professional man, though, was it, Dr Ramsay?’ For I had worked it out as soon as I saw him there. The gentleman who wrote to say a woman died of fright at the Moffat Hydro. It was Dr Ramsay. ‘You thought if he had the nerve to dream up a story like that he deserved a bit of ribbing, eh?’ I said. ‘So you wrote to the magazine. And then when the mediums began to arrive you went to the library, didn’t you, and asked what ghosts you could tell tales of in Moffat and have them believed. You let some of Tot’s friends in on the joke, didn’t you? And persuaded them to spread your stories for you.’

‘It was only a tease,’ he said again. ‘And he was ready to kill me!’

‘I think, my dear doctor,’ I said, ‘that he was going to kill you because the story of Mrs Addie was crumbling and he didn’t want you to tell the police that he… what shall we say?… bribed you to sign the certificate?’

‘Not bribery,’ said the doctor. ‘He was going to write off my losings.’

At last, I remembered the other mention of a respectable man. Hugh had said that Tot’s casino attracted them. That was who I had seen slipping into the Hydro by the smoking-room door. He was on his way to the poker table or roulette wheel, where he would not have to pay his debts, at least not at twenty shillings to the pound.

‘And I wouldn’t have done it if there was a mark of violence on her,’ the doctor said. ‘She died of natural causes. She must have. Heart failure was the truth after all.’

‘She died as you were going to,’ I said. ‘Only without the fire to make it quick for her. Now, duck under! Alec, please! Alec, hurry!’

There was a huge creak and as I took in an enormous breath and let myself sink, I saw the ceiling above us give way and let a ball of yellow fire, ragged with grey and orange fringes all around, come rolling down towards us and then I was under the cold water and the silence filled my ears. I had lost Dr Ramsay. I felt for where he should be, but there was only the swish of empty water there and I knew that I would be able to hold my breath much longer if I kept from moving. So I crouched down as low as I could with my eyes shut and prayed and prayed, until my chest was searing with pain and my head was pounding.

When I could not hold on another second, I pushed off the bottom and came up through the warming water, letting my lungs empty and then filling them again as soon as my mouth broke the surface. It was hot and bright, filled with the sound of breaking timber and shattering glass, a nightmare place. I dragged in another breath, looking all around for Alec or Dr Ramsay, but the surface of the water was blocked with sizzling debris and I could see nothing. I closed my eyes, gulped as much air as I could and went under again.

I counted to two hundred before I felt myself begin to swoon and pushed upwards the second time. Up in the air, the nightmare was worse than ever. The ceiling was gone and a black chasm with fire at its edges rose above me. All around, pyres of broken timber and plaster were crackling like bonfires and belching smoke up into the air. Someone was screaming with pain nearby.

‘Alec!’ I tried to call out, but my voice was no more than a ragged whisper. ‘Oh, Alec.’ I looked up and saw a shard of floor beam coming straight down towards me like a burning arrow. I dragged in a breath and sank again.

It was warm all the way to the bottom this time, and I felt sluggish and heavy in my clothes and shoes. Odd objects bumped against me, but when I reached out my hand it was pieces of plaster, turning to mud in the wet, and I pushed them away.

I knew that my lungs gave in more quickly this third time. It seemed hardly a moment before I was rising again and when I got to the surface I lay back weak and panting, before I dared open my eyes.

The fire in the resting room was still crackling and leaping, but in here the flames were mere flickers and the smoke had cleared. I lifted my arms and let them float on the surface of the water, then shrieked as someone clutched my hand.

‘Dan!’ I turned and there was Alec, surging towards me through the debris in the pool. His face was shining red, his lips blistered, but he was alive and he was smiling at me. ‘She wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get to you for all the burning rubbish but I’ve been shouting and shouting.’

‘I was under the water,’ I said. ‘Holding my breath.’

‘What a good idea,’ Alec said, touching his lips and wincing. ‘I’m going to look like a toffee apple tomorrow.’

‘Where’s Dr Ramsay?’ I said. Alec nodded to a spot behind me but then tightened his grip on my arm.

‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘He tried to get out and a piece of the ceiling fell on him.’

‘I told him to hold his breath and duck!’ I said. ‘Is he dead?’

Alec raised his eyebrows and then winced again as his wrinkling forehead stung.

‘He’s very very dead,’ he said. ‘Please don’t look, darling. Now, I reckon since we’re soaking wet, if we go the way we came we’ve got a fair chance of getting out of here. What do you say? We can always come back if it gets sticky.’

I shook my head, feeling the rat’s tails of my hair lashing back and forth. With every gulping breath I was taking in more of the sulphurous burning stink.

‘I’m never coming back to this bloody place ever again,’ I said and began wading to the edge of the pool to haul myself out. ‘I understand now why fire and brimstone are such an effective threat, I can tell you.’

We sizzled a bit in some of the corridors on our way to the outside and the floor felt hot through my shoes now and then, but we met no serious harm and when we emerged and came reeling out onto the lawns, we might not have looked as beleaguered as we felt for the crowd gathered there ignored us absolutely. They were all looking upwards to exactly the same spot on the first floor, some with their hands clasped over their mouths and some with their hands clasped for praying. I cast my gaze to where they were facing and saw Alec, from the corner of my eye, do the same.

Framed in one of the windows, a figure stood with a bundle of papers in its arms. The papers were on fire but she – it was a woman; it was Dr Laidlaw – threw them out anyway.

‘Stamp on them!’ she said. ‘Don’t use the hose. My work! My life’s work!’

‘Never mind your life’s work,’ shouted one of the firemen. ‘Save your life, you silly lassie. Jump and I’ll catch you.’

She bent and picked up another armful of paper folders and notebooks, casting them out of the window and then screaming as she saw them start to burn while they fell. Her hair was on fire now and one sleeve of her dress too, and yet no one turned away. We simply stood there, horrified, watching.

‘Jump and I’ll catch you!’ called the fireman again. Three of his colleagues came, running heavily in their boots and helmets, and the four of them stretched a tarpaulin sheet under the window.

‘Jump, Dr Laidlaw,’ someone else cried.

‘Do what your father would tell you!’ It was Mrs Cronin, standing wringing her hands, gazing up in horror.

‘Dorothea, for God’s sake!’ It was Alec’s anguished voice beside me.

She seemed to look at him for a long still moment in the midst of all that chaos and confusion and then slowly she turned away, walked into the fire and was gone.

Then from all around came shrieks of disbelief and sounds of weeping as though, with that one last horror, this dreadful night had undone everyone.

‘All for nothing,’ said Mrs Cronin, beside me, still staring. ‘All for nothing after all.’ Then there came a cry of ‘Nurse!’ from over by the benches and Mrs Cronin gathered herself and turned away.

‘I was going to propose,’ Alec said, once she had gone. He spoke quite calmly, as though of some small matter which had slipped his mind. I turned and regarded him, realising only now how many little signs I had missed and how unknowingly cruel I had been, teasing him. Now it was time to be kind.

‘I don’t think you would have if you had really known her,’ I said. He did not turn. He was still looking up at the window, but he cocked his head a little my way. ‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. Right now we need to get you some ointment for your face. I can’t believe you didn’t think to go under.’ I turned away, hoping to see an ambulance man who might help with some first aid, but what I saw was Grant, barrelling towards me with tears pouring down her face. She stopped dead three feet short and curtsied.

‘I’m very glad you’re all right,’ she said. ‘Madam.’

I felt my lip begin to wobble and held out my open arms. She stepped into them and hugged me so hard that drips of plunge-pool water were squeezed out of my clothes and fell into my shoes. Over her shoulder I saw Hugh, whose face was a battleground of at least four different emotions: shock at Grant, disgust with me, and horrified interest as to what had happened to Alec’s face; what was filling his eyes and making him sniff, though, was something it made me smile to see. He nodded and then turned and walked away. I would never allude to the fact that I saw his shoulders shaking as he wept out his feelings quietly for no one to witness.

‘I’m so glad to see you safe and well, my dear Mrs Gilver,’ said Loveday Merrick. He took off the magnificent astrakhan overcoat and gave it to me. ‘I can’t imagine why that woman told me the doctor was in the mud room. I would never have forgiven myself if you had come to harm because of me.’

‘Who are you, Mr Merrick?’ I said. ‘I know you’re not who everyone believes you to be. And how did you know what that little room was?’

But he saw me swaying on my feet and made the same decision I had for Alec moments before.

‘I shall call upon you tomorrow, if I may,’ he replied, ‘and tell you the whole story.’

‘You can come tonight and sleep in an armchair, if you like,’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying to think how many refugees we could take in.’

He bowed his acceptance. ‘More than I deserve after I put you in danger.’

‘But a doctor was in the mud room,’ I said. ‘Just not Dr Laidlaw. One of the local men. He didn’t escape, I’m very sorry to say.’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Right enough, she didn’t say a name. Just “the doctor”.’

‘Who was it who told you?’ I asked him.

‘I didn’t catch her name either,’ Merrick said. ‘A stout lady in a robe and turban. I haven’t seen her again since she spoke to me.’