Deadly Measure of Brimstone

5

Like a peg on one’s nose for profile, like a book on one’s head for posture, like all of those minor tortures we girls went through, it was worth it in the end. I felt, once out, dried and dressed again, as though I could have lifted off from the stones of the terrace and floated over the valley floor on waves of… who knows what exactly. My woollen underthings felt like the softest silk against my skin; my lisle stockings too, and from the inside my face felt dewy and rosy and beautiful. I could have stretched backwards to grab my own heels and turned myself into a hoop, so limber did I fancy myself after my sojourn in the baths.

It was spoiled rather when Hugh caught sight of me.

‘Good God, Dandy,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘Mother, really,’ said Donald, opening a sleepy eye.

‘Never mind, Mummy,’ said Teddy. Then he ruined it: ‘No one knows us here.’

True enough, there had been no looking glasses in that little changing cubicle and when I put my hand up to my hair what I felt there was far from usual, but the wonders of the steam bath were more than skin deep and my serenity, though dented, was not cracked and sprang back as I smiled down at them.

‘How did you get on with the doctor?’ I asked, sitting on the edge of Teddy’s deckchair and nudging his feet out of the way.

‘Never saw hide nor hair of him,’ said Hugh, his choice of pronoun confirming as much. ‘Suits me.’ He stretched his arms and put his hands behind his head. ‘I’m perfectly capable of deciding what I fancy from the brochure.’ He patted his breast pocket, from which I could see a folded catalogue peeping out.

‘But I must insist when it comes to the boys,’ I said, thinking again of Regina’s look of alarm as I thrashed in the icy water of the plunge pool. ‘They are not to be electrified or… pummelled unless the doctor says so.’

Hugh nodded absently.

‘Hot salt bath, galvanic wrap, dab of mud, spot of ultraviolet heat,’ he said. ‘And a quiet game of cards in the evening.’

‘Starting tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Have dinner with us tonight, dear, and then come back before bedtime.’ Of course, I needed a little time with him to finesse the Alec problem. ‘And now I must just go and see what’s kept the doctor.’

‘Oh, don’t make us see him, Mummy,’ said Teddy. ‘I’m not going to do all that salty, muddy nonsense anyway.’

‘Don’t be impertinent,’ I said, for I had noticed Hugh’s brows twitch down at the word ‘nonsense’. ‘I shall remake your appointments for tomorrow morning. Meet me in the hall in ten minutes, please, and we shall drive back in time for tea.’

‘Mr Laidlaw said there was cherry cake here,’ said Teddy.

‘Cinnamon toast and maids of honour at home,’ I said. ‘Donald?’ Donald opened his eyes which had fallen shut again.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he said, so languidly that Hugh caught my eye.

‘I’ll speak to the doctor,’ I repeated. ‘Ten minutes, please.’ And I hurried away.

Dr Laidlaw’s office was on the ground floor at the drive side of the house, unspeakably gloomy, but I supposed it was inevitable that all the west-facing rooms were reserved for guests. There was a little ante-room lined with those tall wooden cabinets for holding files of papers and in the middle of the floor one of the four-sided settees I had seen in the drawing room, a very practical way for four strangers to await their consultations without having to look one another in the eye or breathe one another’s germ-ridden air. At the moment, all four seats were empty. Nor was there anyone at the little desk with the telephone and type-writing machine. I passed to the inner door and knocked.

‘Oh! Who-? Come in.’ Dr Laidlaw’s voice came in a series of chirps and, when I entered, it was to find her peering up from behind a fortress of papers on her desk, with a startled look on her face, like a baby bird in the nest when it hears its parents’ wings.

‘Mrs… ah,’ she said.

‘Gilver. You arranged to see my husband and sons this afternoon, Dr Laidlaw. I wonder if it would be convenient for us to leave it until the morning?’

The baby bird appeared to realise that the wing beat was that of a marauding hawk, not its parent at all. She ducked slightly and almost disappeared behind the wall of articles, books and files she had built around her. I walked closer to the desk, not to seize her in my talons, but from the look of her one would not know.

‘I am so, so, so very sorry,’ she said. I moved another pile of dusty paper, made up into bundles with pink tape, and sat down. The furniture in the room comprised the desk and chairs, the bookcases lining the walls, an examination couch with a curtained screen half pulled around it and upwards of a dozen wooden crates, all packed with books, all standing open, all thick with dust. In fact, the whole office was lavishly untidy, its good glass-fronted bookcases stuffed to bursting with books not only in rows but jammed in horizontally on top of the rows too. I saw that the doors of one case, particularly under strain from its contents, were held together by more of the same pink tape threaded through the handles and tied in a bow. Buff-coloured files with carbon papers frothing out of them like coxcombs were stacked along the windowsill, bunching and pulling the grey-yellow lace curtain which looked as though it had not been washed since it was first hung there many years ago. On the chimneypiece there was a perfectly conventional clock flanked by two perfectly conventional vases, but behind the clock, numerous bills and chits threatened to push it forward to smash in the grate, and more of them bloomed in the vases instead of posies. A bunch of keys and a couple of syringes, still with their needles attached, threatened to crack a delicate Staffordshire bon-bon dish with their weight, or at least scratch its beautiful pattern with their sharp edges.

I turned my attention away from the disorder and back to Dr Laidlaw again, thinking that although my impression had been that she was dowdy, seeing her in her lair like this she seemed a daisy on a dung heap. She had noticed me looking around and apologised again.

‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘They’ve been wrapped up and snoozing in deckchairs all afternoon. I’m sure it’s done them a world of good to rest without interruptions.’

‘I- You are very gracious,’ she said. ‘But it won’t do. I could see them now. My consultation hours are over, but to make it up to you – a shocking lapse. That is to say, there was an emergency. But I should have sent a message. I could see them right now.’

I considered it. Specifically, I considered Donald’s lungs breathing in the dust and dirt of this frowsy chamber and, although I truly did think she was making a fuss over nothing, I decided to turn it to account.

‘What would make up for it,’ I said, ‘would be if you could manage a house call instead. Might I trouble you to examine the boys at home in the morning? Come and have coffee,’ I finished lamely. I can sometimes manage to be grand, but not often.

‘Most gladly,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘I see that the emergency ended well,’ I said. I am not naturally Machiavellian, never was, but detecting has changed me.

‘It did,’ said Dr Laidlaw. ‘Thankfully, yes it did. But how did you guess?’

‘Just that surely you would not be back in your study absorbed in reading had it not,’ I replied with a smile.

‘Of course, I see, yes of course,’ she said. ‘Yes, my work is absorbing. Not that the patients are not my work. What I mean to say is that when a paper comes under review and the reviewer…’

‘Gosh, so you are a researcher, Dr Laidlaw, are you?’

‘I am,’ she said, gesturing around the piles of books and scribbled-on papers.

‘Do you then not do house calls?’ I said. ‘I mean to say, you are a doctor, aren’t you? Hydropathy being your specialism?’

‘My poor father would turn in his grave to hear it,’ she said, ‘but no. Hydropathy is not exactly… that is to say… on the Continent…’ She cleared her throat. ‘I have an MD from Edinburgh, Mrs Gilver. In short, yes, I certainly am a doctor and as for your house call I certainly shall do it. Happy to.’

‘Excellent,’ I replied. ‘It’s good to know that there is someone right here on the premises should anything go wrong. Moffat is a step away and – between you and me, my dear – I’ve heard some things about one of the local doctors, from a friend, you know.’

Her face, blanching to the colour of putty, told me that she did indeed know. I felt a heel but I did not let that stop me.

‘A friend who used to come here. Before she died.’ Dr Laidlaw considered this, as one would consider a rattlesnake in one’s bed with one.

‘Can you give me any idea as to what ails your sons?’ she said, in a wavering voice, as I stood and brushed the dust from my coat. ‘So I know what to bring, you know. I don’t travel with a Gladstone bag every day like Dr Ramsay.’

‘Pleurisy and pneumonia after flu,’ I said. ‘Nothing serious like weak hearts or anything. In fact, let’s not pander to them with a house call after all. What was I thinking? I, like you, Dr Laidlaw, believe in fresh air and exercise. And yes, it was Dr Ramsay. How did you know?’

The putty had faded to chalk, leaving her lips blue – rather prettily bowed lips, dimpling in at the corners; I had not noticed them before, unpainted as they were – and her eyes dark and enormous, with purple smudges around them. I felt a familiar thrill as I let myself out and made my way to the front hall to meet the others. It was becoming clearer and clearer that the Addies were not imagining things. Their dear dead mother had been wronged in some way, I was sure of it, and we would avenge her.

Naturally, Hugh and the boys were nowhere to be seen when I got there, Hugh’s stringent punctuality being reserved for beaters, chauffeurs, ministers of the kirk and fellow officers, not for the likes of me. Whenever he saunters in late to some rendezvous we have arranged, he looks at his watch and says, ‘Good, good. Let’s make an early start then since you’re here in nice time,’ as though I have come up to scratch for once in a blue moon and surprised him. Today I was glad of it, because an opportune meeting came my way. There was an inopportune one first, though.

As I waited, installed in one of those throne-like chairs with which hallways come equipped, seat-cushions stuffed with something which gives them that stodgy and unyielding consistency, like fudge, I was far from delighted to hear whistling and see a silhouette sauntering towards me along the passageway with its hands in its trouser pockets. Thomas Laidlaw; I could not take to the man.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said, when he reached me. He took his hands out of his pockets but only to rub them together as though with vast relish of unknown source, hardly more civil than if he had left them there. ‘Off already, Mrs Gilver?’

‘For the evening, Mr Laidlaw,’ I said. ‘In the morning I shall return.’

‘Once the sun is safely up, eh?’ he said, giving me a solemn look. ‘I think you’ll have to summon more courage than that, Mrs Gilver, if your trip’s not to be a wasted one.’

I stared and summoned, not courage, but my haughtiest voice and my most disdainful expression.

‘I do not have the pleasure of understanding you, Mr Laidlaw,’ I said. ‘You speak in riddles.’

‘Can I ask who recommended us to you?’ he said. ‘A family who hails from Perthshire needn’t by any means come as far as Moffat to a hydro.’ They were almost the words Mrs Cronin had spoken to me. ‘Any particular reason we took your fancy?’

‘Your sister – such a scholar – has no equal in Crieff,’ I said and I was intrigued to see him lift his chin up and away to the side to give me a narrow look from the corner of his eye. He reminded me of an archer sighting prey along his drawn bow. Then, at a sound from outside on the drive, he spun around on the balls of his feet to face the door.

‘Reinforcements,’ he said. ‘Who do you suppose this will be?’

It was only to be expected that the owner of such a large hotel in such a dull spot would be charmed by arriving guests, but I found myself paying more attention than Nanny Palmer would have called polite as the door opened and the newcomers entered. I was agog to see if these would be more of the solid but sickly bourgeoisie I took to be the doctor’s lot or more of the vacuous crew I had filed under her brother’s name.

I had momentarily forgotten my overhearings, but as soon as I saw the little caravan which hove through the baronial doors of the Hydro with bags and boxes aplenty as though planning to stay for a month I thought to myself: Aha! Class 3. For if Mrs Scott, Mrs Davies and Mrs Riddle – those odd, earnest ladies in the steam room – had had clothes on I was sure the clothes would be these.

They were five in number, two men and three women all somewhere in the sixties or beyond. The men were dressed with outlandish – one might almost say Dickensian – extravagance in their tall hats, velvet facings, satin pipings and brocade upon any garment that brocade could applied to. I could not help but conclude they must be sorry that old-fashioned garb could only, at its farthest stretch, take them back that far, and that cut-away tailcoats and neck cloths of white silk would have been out-and-out fancy dress and would have brought the whistle to a constable’s lips if he had seen them.

The women were even more extraordinary. To be sure, one was of a sort to be seen in village streets throughout the land, only not often in the lobbies of large hotels. She had stuck with the fashions of her youth throughout the fifty years since its passing and was therefore dressed in skirts which trailed the ground with a lace cap over her white hair. She had on a travelling cape of wool with a red flannel lining and a red-silk-lined hood, and if she had held out an apple and invited me to take a bite of it I might not have run, but I would certainly have broken into a trot in the opposite direction.

The younger companion at her side, most solicitously offering her arm and helping the old woman up the stone steps from the vestibule to the lobby proper, was another sort entirely. Her hair, brownish-grey and wiry with it, was drawn straight back from her forehead and hung down almost to her waist. Her dress, of a greyish-brown one might imagine had been chosen to match her hair, except that no one would look so grimly drab on purpose, hung straight from her shoulders to her calves, like a sack, and the overcoat on top was of a navy serge I had not seen since the last time a troupe of Girl Guides had chosen an inclement day to storm the park at Gilverton and huddle around their campfires until the charabanc returned to fetch them home again.

The final member of the coven was comparatively unremarkable set against the rest: hair of a somewhat suspicious bright brown given the wrinkles which striped her forehead and fanned from the corners of her eyes, and an outfit of military cut, the jacket well served with pockets and the skirt reminiscent of a lady’s riding costume with its clever deep pleats and moleskin touches. She took off her hat, threw her gloves into it and looked around for a servant who would take it away. Tot Laidlaw obliged, rushing forward and bowing to them all, but looking at them very hard all the while.

At that interesting moment Hugh arrived, with the boys in tow, just in time to see me gawking at strangers like a guttersnipe. I think I may even have had my mouth open, and he let the spirit of Nanny Palmer live in the glare he gave me.

‘We got tired of waiting for you on the terrace,’ he said with astounding cheek. ‘Thought we’d try here. Good, good. Let’s be off then.’ As an apology for lateness it failed on every count but I saved my breath, simply rolling my eyes and standing to follow him. He held the door open for me – what manners were drummed in by his own nanny and the subsequent schoolmasters are unshakeable – and I swept out, managing to pick up a mention of ‘late booking’ and ‘lucky cancellation’ on my way past the new arrivals.

I had expected to need a long quiet evening to creep my way towards the fact of Alec, his presence in the Hydro, the coincidence of our arrival there and the thorny question of whether I had dragged my loved ones into a case or an assignation, but we were still on the drive heading back to the road when Hugh broached it himself.

‘You didn’t know Osborne was headed here, did you, Dandy?’

‘Oh, yes, that’s right, Mummy,’ said Teddy. ‘We saw him again. I told you he got off the train.’

‘I did not,’ I said. ‘Is he really here then? At the Hydro? What fun.’

‘Bit odd,’ said Donald. ‘Why didn’t he tell you?’ Hugh was not exactly watching carefully but he was far from looking out of the window.

‘He told me about the Hydro,’ I said. ‘It was his praise of the place that put me in mind to come here. But when he said he was going away, I somehow got the idea that it was London.’

‘Hope he doesn’t mind you rolling up,’ said Hugh. He gave me that same amused look as before.

‘I’m sure he doesn’t mind any of us “rolling up”,’ I said. ‘Why should he? Unless you think he left Perthshire to escape us.’

At this Teddy snorted. It was an ugly noise, with a good deal of the after-effects of flu about it, and both Hugh and I frowned.

‘Sorry,’ Teddy said. ‘Just, well. Gilver and Osborne. In that order, Mummy. Sort of makes you Mr Osborne’s boss. And he’s skipped off on a spree and now his boss has come along and caught him.’

‘I’m not Mr Osborne’s “boss”, Teddy,’ I said. ‘What a nasty, slangy word.’

‘What other word is there for it?’ asked Teddy, with a fair to middling innocent look, not the full-force cherub he sometimes employs, but a lot of round blue eye and round pink mouth nonetheless for a boy of sixteen. ‘I’m simply calling a spade a spade.’

‘Superior officer,’ said Hugh. In Hugh’s world, there was only one job his boys could ever conceivably do, and that was how to describe the men under whom they would do it.

‘I am glad to say I have never seen a spade,’ said Donald in a trilling voice, making us all giggle, except Hugh, naturally.

‘What?’

‘Oscar Wilde,’ I told him. ‘Cecily.’

‘Gwendolen,’ said both boys.

Hugh was so disgusted that his children – not to mention his wife – could quote from this oeuvre that he said nothing, just drove the car steadily along the lane and swung it down the hill towards the town.

‘He’s got a point, mind you,’ said Donald, although whether he meant Teddy or Oscar was unclear. ‘You have dragged us down, Mother, where Teddy needs words like “boss” to describe the world around him.’

‘There is nothing more vulgar than a snob, Donald dear,’ I shot back.

‘Good grief,’ said Hugh. It is almost his strongest epithet and we all quieted on hearing it. ‘I wouldn’t blame Osborne if his heart did sink to see you as large as life at his journey’s end. What nonsense you speak, all three of you.’

‘Hugh,’ I said. ‘Alec Osborne is a dear friend who can speak nonsense like a drunken parrot. If he came to the Hydro I am sure it was because he is feeling a little under the weather and needs a pick-me-up – the same as you. I have no more intention of interrupting his treatment than I have yours.’

Hugh raised an eyebrow and one side of his mouth.

‘He looked perfectly healthy to me,’ he said.

‘Perhaps he’s here to woo a Moffat maiden,’ said Donald. ‘Just as you said, Mother.’

‘Best not get in the way of that then,’ Teddy said.

‘I doubt it,’ said Hugh. His air of mystery was becoming too irritating to bear. ‘It’s possible, but I doubt it.’

At that moment, when all three of them were making me want to spank them with a slipper, I spied, out of the motorcar window, distraction and diversion.

‘Pull over, please, Hugh,’ I said. ‘I’ve just remembered an errand. I’ll make my own way back to the house from here.’

‘Sure?’ said Hugh, chivalry spilling out of him again as it does when he is not concentrating. ‘It’s no trouble for us to park and wait. Help you carry things.’

‘Quite sure,’ I said. ‘Don’t hold tea. If you happen to see Grant-’

‘Gosh, yes, Mummy, we’ll give her warning,’ Teddy said. Donald laughed and even Hugh smiled as they pulled away. I tugged down hard on my hat, hoping to hide as much of the trouble as I could, and made my way to where I had seen the police lamp.

I have no fondness for police stations any more – not since I was required to sit alone in a small room inside one, friendless and anxious, for hours on end while a nasty piece of work of an inspector pretended to suspect me of murder – and although my chin was high and my shoulders back as I marched in, my heart let the side down miserably, thumping away like a trapped rabbit in my chest. I hoped my voice would be steady, but I did not count on it.

‘I should like to speak to a sergeant or inspector if there is one,’ I asked of the child at the desk. He was surely only just tall enough to make a policeman at all, and was as smooth of cheek as Teddy even this late in the day.

‘Certainly, madam,’ he said, as meek as a lamb. ‘Who can I tell the sergeant it is, please? The inspector is in Dumfries and won’t be back round here until Friday.’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Mrs Gilver of Perthshire.’ I had decided that a private detective might raise hackles and be kept waiting but a woman of my sort, started on the path towards being a dowager, although thankfully far from its end, would elicit exactly this forelock-tugging and prompt service.

It was only minutes later then that I was shown into a shabby but comfortable office, lamps and rugs and cushions in the chairs to soften the municipal green distemper and brown paint, and introduced to a uniformed sergeant who rose from behind the desk and held out a hand to greet me.

‘Sergeant Simpson, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, sitting down again as I settled myself. ‘What can I do for you? I trust you’ve come to no harm on your visit here, have you?’

‘Thank you, Sergeant, no. I am quite well. I have a little matter to discuss with you. A matter of protocol, I suppose you would say. A point of procedure.’

‘I’m all ears,’ said Sergeant Simpson. I smiled at him and had to work not to do more than smile; this was unfortunately true and the red mark around his head where his cap must sit when he was out patrolling the streets of the town only drew attention to it. He smiled back, in on the joke, and I decided I liked him.

‘If there were a death…’ I said and his smile snapped off. ‘I don’t know if you’d say a sudden death or a suspicious death, but one where the Fiscal was involved before it was all sorted out and the body returned for burying…’ I drew breath. ‘What I’d like to know is, would the matter pass through the hands of the police on its way?’

‘Which case is this you’re referring to, madam?’ said Sergeant Simpson, seeing through my ruse right away. He even drew out a small notebook and snapped it open on itself with a terrific crack of its India-rubber band.

‘In general,’ I persisted.

He waited.

‘Mrs Addie,’ I said, relenting. ‘She died at the Hydro a month ago. On the ninth of September. A local doctor signed the death certificate, but it went across the Fiscal’s desk and her family are concerned. They are acquaintances of mine and since I was on my way here I promised them I’d have a quiet word.’

Again, he regarded me in silence. Then he closed his little book with a more minor snap and gave me a smile of deep avuncularity – I could not begin to imagine what was coming.

‘Are you a detective?’ he said.

‘Gosh, no,’ I replied before I even considered the fact that I was lying to the police, which is surely against the law. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

‘My mistake,’ said Simpson. ‘It was just the very orderly manner in which you put your points across, Mrs Gilver. You struck me that way.’

If I had planned to keep lying my plan was undone by the beaming blush of pleasure which spread across my face. Sergeant Simpson laughed out loud to see it.

‘Sorry if I misled you just then,’ I said.

‘When you answered no to a straight question when the true answer was yes?’ he asked and waved a magnanimous hand. ‘We policemen are not accustomed to getting our final answer first time out, Mrs Gilver. I daresay it’s the same for you.’

I was reeling. I had encountered scorn, hostility and amusement from policemen who heard of my calling and sergeants were always the worst of all. My beloved Inspector Hutchinson, it was true, had grudgingly thawed towards Alec and me over the course of the case we had shared, but this instant chumminess was something else again.

‘I am very grateful to find such… collegiate spirit in a policeman, Sergeant Simpson,’ I said. ‘So. Yes. Mrs Addie of Edinburgh died at the Hydro. Heart failure. Dr Ramsay here in town signed the cert., the Fiscal stamped it or whatever the Fiscal does-’

‘Enters the record,’ supplied Simpson.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘The Fiscal entered the record, but the family are troubled. They say she had no history of heart trouble. Said she was as strong as an ox, in fact.’

‘Well-chosen phrase,’ said Sergeant Simpson. ‘I saw the lady in question, you know. She was… large-ish.’

‘You saw her? About the town?’

‘Post-mortem,’ he said. ‘I saw her after her death. We were called in. The lady was away from home and the Hydro – never mind all the white sheets and machines – it’s not a hospital. If someone dies away from home or a hospital, we try to look in, you know. Just to see that everything’s shipshape.’

He might have been a schoolmaster telling of how he likes to look in on prep to check that boys aren’t whispering.

‘Who rang you?’ I asked.

‘Straight to the heart of the thing,’ he said. ‘You are good at your job, Mrs Gilver.’ I might have blushed a little again. ‘Yes, it was Dr Laidlaw who rang us up. Shocked to her core, she was, but did the proper thing. She even insisted – well, this was her brother as it happens – they both insisted that Dr Ramsay be called. He came along – he left a party and came right along in his evening suit, there within minutes, late as it was, and he’d no need to – and he examined the body and he didn’t hesitate. Heart failure, as you say.’

‘And the Fiscal didn’t order a full post-mortem exam?’ I said.

‘He saw no need,’ said the sergeant. ‘It was a very clear case and properly handled. More than properly, really. Dr Laidlaw could have signed her own name to the thing and never got Dr Ramsay involved at all.’

The good sergeant clearly did not share my view of that particular item of fancy footwork. I paused a moment wondering how best to introduce the point to our little chat. It was sure to reduce the warmth at least a bit. When Sergeant Simpson cleared his throat and resumed speaking, however, I realised that I had paused long enough to make a silence, one which he was moved to fill.

‘I’m sorry to hear the family are troubled,’ he said and cleared his throat again. ‘We had hoped to spare them any pain. Along the lines of what you don’t know can’t hurt you.’ My amazement must have showed on my face. ‘Collegiate spirit, you said, wasn’t it, Mrs Gilver?’ He was teasing me, but very gently. ‘In that case between the doctor, the Fiscal and me.’

‘Indeed,’ I answered. ‘I am sure your words appear more mysterious than they really are, Sergeant Simpson, but I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.’

‘We’d all like to think that our loved ones just slip away in their sleep, don’t you agree, Mrs Gilver?’ he said. ‘Or never knew what hit them. That’s another good one. Every boy that didn’t come home from the war, eh?’ There was a lengthy pause. His gaze slipped away from my face and came to rest on the desktop. ‘Instantaneous death, they always said. Never knew what hit him.’

‘I am very sorry, Sergeant Simpson,’ I said, for that is all there ever is to say.

‘It can’t possibly be true every time, can it?’ He looked up again. ‘But I was grateful for it and I try when I can to carry it on.’

‘And so what is the truth?’ I asked. ‘The whole story?’

‘She had a shock,’ Simpson said. ‘A very nasty one. And she didn’t die right away. She collapsed. They found her. Dr Laidlaw found her. Got her into her bed, tried to bring her round. Did everything she could but the poor woman’s heart gave out in the end. And so it was. Heart failure.’

‘What sort of a shock?’

‘A fright,’ said the sergeant. ‘Did you know you can die of fright?’

‘I know a loud noise is a danger to a man with heart troubles,’ I said. ‘I had heard so. But again there was no history of heart troubles at all.’

‘Not a loud noise,’ he said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ He took a moment to rearrange some of the small items on his already tidy desk, pushing the pens in the stand until they were all upright, picking up a couple of auditor’s tags and dropping them into a little tray. ‘Now, tell me, Mrs Gilver,’ he went on at last, ‘you’re not the sort to go upsetting the family for nothing, are you? You seem a lovely lady. I’m sure you wouldn’t. But tell me straight so’s I know.’

His words about the blunting of bad news had hit home in me and I meant it when I assured him that I would not go making trouble for nothing, not me. He smiled and spoke again, but what he said surprised me.

‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy,’ were his words. Startling ones to hear issuing from a policeman’s lips. ‘Would you agree with that, Mrs Gilver?’

‘Up to a point,’ I replied. ‘What bearing does it have on this matter, though?’

‘Well put, madam,’ said the sergeant. ‘What a lovely way of speech you have.’ He took a deep breath. ‘She had a shock. She got a fright.’ I nodded; he had already said this much. Finally he got to the point: ‘She saw a ghost.’

‘A ghost.’ It was not a question. I am not at all sure what it was, beyond an echo.

‘Earlier in the day. And she went back at night to see it again. It was too much for a woman of her years, not to mention her size. Her heart gave out. She was fighting for life when they found her.’

‘A ghost,’ I said again.

‘They don’t know which one,’ said Simpson. ‘She never told them.’

‘Are there lots?’

‘A fair few.’

I was at a loss for words, a deep and enduring loss which went on beyond all the bounds of normal conversational pauses, beyond silences and well into rudeness, and yet I had no expectation of it ending. Sergeant Simpson sat forward, both hands on his desk, and peered at me.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts, Mrs Gilver. I’m not saying any of it was true.’

‘Oh!’ The spell was broken and I could talk again.

‘Good heavens above!’ said Simpson. ‘I’m an elder of the kirk and my father was the session clerk. My wife runs the Sunday school, too. I’ve no time for nonsense, none at all. But Mrs Addie… She saw a shadow, or heard a sound, and she frightened herself out of her precious life. Now. You can see why we wouldn’t want to tell her family the poor lady was as daft as all that!’

‘When you put it that way, Sergeant,’ I said, ‘I do begin to.’

And so it was that when I rang up Alec that evening I was able to steal his thunder in the most resounding style. I was in Grant’s clutches for a while first, to be sure, as I had expected to be.

‘Never,’ she had said. ‘Never in all my years. I mean, I’ve seen you in some states after a day’s shooting and I’ve been that busy with the invalids this last while, you’ve been more tousled than I’d like. But this! What have you been doing? Where have you been?’ She was helping me out of my coat and my shirt as she scolded me; clearly I was to have my head stuck under one of the sprays for an actual washing, no matter how recently I had had one and how long she had hoped it would last me.

‘I was-’ I began, but she was not finished.

‘And don’t blame the weather,’ she said, driving me down onto my knees beside the bath. ‘Madam. For Mrs Tilling and Mr Pallister and me have been out in the woods for a nice walk and there’s not a hint of drizzle about it. What did you do?’

‘I had a Turkish bath, Grant,’ I said, just as she bent me over the side. ‘And it was wonderful. Quite delightful. My skin feels like silk and my-’

‘Your skin is under your clothes,’ she said. ‘Your hair feels like wool, same as it looks. Wild wool. On a fence. In the rain.’ She rubbed the hair soap hard between her hands and set to work on me. My teeth were still chattering when I was sitting, head wrapped in a towel, waiting for her to heat her irons.

‘I’m glad to hear you had time for a walk, Grant,’ I said. ‘This is by way of helping Pallister and Mrs Tilling convalesce and you recover from your extra exertions, you know. Coming here, I mean. And if you decide to use the Hydro’s facilities, I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.’

‘That’s very generous of you, madam,’ Grant said. ‘I’ll tell the others. And thank you.’

‘I meant as to times, actually,’ I said. ‘One wouldn’t want-’ to meet one’s cook and maid stark naked in the plunge pool, was what I was thinking.

‘Oh, I’m sure,’ said Grant. ‘But this house runs itself, more or less, the size that it is and all electric with it.’ She had misunderstood me, which was probably best, and I let it be.

Alec was most entertained by the notion when I mentioned the delicate matter later over the telephone.

‘You don’t mind total strangers, but close acquaintance is beyond the pale?’

‘Something like that,’ I agreed.

‘Mind you, Dorothea said she only goes at night when it’s empty.’

‘Dorothea?’ I asked. ‘Does her title stick in your throat a little, Alec? I never took you to be so old-fashioned as to baulk at a lady doctor.’

‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I don’t. I just… Anyway, Miss Grant and Mrs Tilling would no more take off all their clothes and sit in a cloud of steam than they would-’

‘You’re probably right,’ I said. ‘I wonder about Pallister, though. If you meet him in the men’s Turkish, be a love and don’t tell me.’

‘I shan’t be in there either,’ Alec said. ‘I spent one rainy season in Nagpur as a child and the tummy bug I caught there is the stuff of legend amongst the Osborne clan. It put me off heat and humidity for life.’

‘Aren’t the germs in the drinking water?’ I said. ‘I don’t think they fly through the air.’

‘The power of association,’ said Alec. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of Mr Pavlov and his salivating dogs.’

‘Don’t you?’ I retorted.

‘I was talking about that only this afternoon, in fact,’ said Alec. ‘And you’ll never guess to whom.’

‘Very likely not,’ I said. ‘Anyway, let me tell you about my chat with Sergeant Simpson.’

‘There’s more going on in this here Hydro than meets the eye,’ said Alec, talking over me. ‘I thought it was all mumbo-jumbo, I have to say, but the psychological angle is-’

‘I wonder if that’s what Hugh’s laughing up his sleeve over,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t seem all that likely.’

‘No, no, no,’ Alec said. ‘That’s quite another neck of the woods. Brother Laidlaw – can you believe they call him Tot? – has hit on a bit of a wheeze to keep the place afloat and lessen his boredom. No, I’m talking about Dr Laidlaw. She’s not that interested in hydropathy per se.’

‘I should say not.’ I laughed to remember it. ‘She seems to be in a world of her own.’

‘An ivory tower,’ Alec said. ‘She called me back for a second examination and we had a very interesting discussion instead. I don’t think she got as far as writing my name on the little card. So I’d be surprised if she’s even noticed what’s going on now.’

‘Tot’s latest wheeze?’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘No, something else again,’ Alec said. ‘There are Dr Laidlaw Sr’s loyal patients who’ve been coming for years. Then there’s Tot’s crowd – rather a fast set, they are. But you will never guess who’s started arriving to make a third faction.’

I thought of my eavesdropping in the steam room, and the strange bunch who had turned up in the foyer as I was leaving. I thought of Simpson’s revelation too.

‘What’s the bet?’ I asked.

‘First pick of the next juicy bit the case offers,’ said Alec.

‘Does that include shirking the next dull bit?’ I said.

‘Of course.’

‘It’s a deal,’ I said. ‘I am spitting in my palm and holding it to the mouthpiece. I think the wave of new guests coming to the Hydro are… mediums.’ He was silent. ‘Spiritualists.’ Still nothing. ‘Ghost hunters, darling.’

‘Brava,’ said Alec, sounding about as pleased as someone who has just dropped his watch down a grating. ‘How did you know?’

‘And the next irksome task in this case,’ I said, ‘which I must say is beginning to get interesting, is to go back to Edinburgh to the Addies and delicately try to find out if their mother was the fanciful sort who would see a shadow, call it a ghost and drop dead from the shock of it. A ticklish business to carry it off without offending or alerting them, I must say. I’m glad that it falls to you.’