Deadly Measure of Brimstone

6

Tuesday, 22nd October 1929

Of course, I had to tell him how I knew, which rather diminished my glory.

‘Well, if you will send me off to interview policemen,’ I said, ‘you can’t complain if I turn up treasure.’

‘You really are being quite insufferable,’ Alec said. He recrossed his legs and took his pipe out of his pocket to stare at it in mourning. We were in the winter gardens, packed with the more solid sort of Hydro guests this morning as the rain fell steadily on the late summer gardens outside, and Alec had come a cropper on that very part of the Hydro’s organisation which had so pleased Hugh, namely that all the smoking rooms were gentlemen’s rooms and if one wanted to converse with ladies one had to lump it. He was particularly miffed because the ladies were allowed to smoke in the ladies’ drawing room, but not so the gentlemen who joined them there.

‘What’s the point of that?’ he said. ‘Hardly fair.’

‘I suppose if all the ladies were puffing away on briars and fat cigars, it would be a nonsense,’ I said, ‘but until they do, I for one think it’s perfectly just. Go and stink up the billiards room by all means and leave us be. Besides, no one’s allowed to smoke in here.’

I was thankful of it. The winter gardens had soaring glass ceilings and were easily eighty feet from end to end, but even with the little air vents cranked open and the doors propped ajar they had a slightly Turkish feel about them on such a clammy morning. I supposed some of the guests installed in the basket-work armchairs which were dotted in groups around the walls must have braved the weather for some sort of airing before retreating in here, and so their outdoor clothes were gently steaming. Add to that the fact that there were orchids and palms and yet other exotics of unknown name arranged on staging at all the windows and planted in great clumps in the corners, the sort of plants that zealous gardeners will mist with water and even nicotine potions out of a pump spray every day if given their head, and it was hardly surprising that the air in the winter gardens felt like a warm drink, if not a square meal followed by a cigar, as one breathed it. It did not feel at all like the sort of place sickly people should pack into all together, especially after a soaking and the possibility of a chill.

‘Anyway,’ Alec said. His appetite for squabbling had been diminished by the prospect before him. ‘How would you go about asking if Mrs Addie believed in ghosts then?’

‘Very carefully,’ I replied. ‘I agree with the sergeant – no point in upsetting them. On the other hand, if she was fanciful perhaps they knew. Perhaps if they’re told that their mother thought she saw a ghost they’ll believe in the heart failure after all.’

‘Or perhaps they’re fanciful too,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps they’ll think – or her daughter at least – that she did see one. We might have done all we need to already.’

‘We?’ I said. ‘What did you do? And why, pray, should the daughter be the one to swallow mumbo-jumbo and not the son?’ Alec tutted and since I had no wish to sound like a suffragette – all very worthy I am sure, but so dull at parties – I changed the subject back again. ‘You might start in by asking them what made her believe in hydropathy? That’s the dominant note of mumbo-jumbo around here. Or here’s a thought: ask their religion-’

‘Church of Scotland,’ Alec said. ‘You only had to look at them.’

‘-under cover of breaking the news that there was no clergyman with her when she died. No time to fetch one and all that. But tell them that another guest, “a very spiritual lady”, sat with her and you only hope that brought her comfort. Use the word “spiritual” and make it a woman and see what they say.’

Alec was staring at me with his mouth hanging open.

‘Where do you get it, Dandy?’ he asked.

‘You wanted me to help you,’ I replied. ‘Don’t complain that I’ve managed it.’ Then I considered his question. ‘I honestly don’t know. I never used to be able to think up lies. When I was a child I couldn’t do it to save my life. Edward and Mavis concocted the most jaw-dropping tarradiddles and pointed at me and it was always me who got sent to my room with no dinner.’

‘Well, I’m glad that your moral standards have deserted you,’ Alec said. ‘That’s exactly the line I shall take. And having them think I went all the way to Edinburgh to broach such a delicate topic face-to-face can’t hurt our reputation.’

‘You can wheel out your head-undertaker routine again,’ I said. ‘They’ll adore you.’

‘What are you going to do in the meantime?’ Alec said, ignoring the jibe.

‘Attack it from this end,’ I said. ‘She saw a ghost? Surely she told someone. I shall try to find that someone.’

‘Sounds sensible enough,’ Alec said. If he meant it as praise he could have done better.

‘Not a guest,’ I said, musing. ‘It’s been too long. But I’m sure Dr Laidlaw knows more than she was happy to tell.’

‘Might only be that it wasn’t her idea to bowdlerise the tale for the Addie relations,’ Alec said. ‘I’d be surprised if it were, actually. She’s a very rational sort. I’d almost say tough-minded, if that didn’t sound nasty.’

I noted that he seemed more concerned with tailoring compliments for the good doctor than for me, and not for the first time I considered the way that intimacy of the sort Alec and I shared, now that we had been flung together in perils too many to name, was all very well, but I still missed the courtesy that there used to be.

‘If not her,’ I said, ‘I think I’ll go and pester Regina again. She definitely knows something too and might break more easily than the doctor when leaned on.’

I looked around the winter gardens, hoping that if I were very lucky I might see her little round personage bustling about, but there were only a couple of maid-cum-waitresses in black frocks and white caps taking orders, I thought, for coffee. Instead I saw, ambling along, feet dragging on the red clay tiles and making a noise which always grated upon me, Donald and Teddy. As I had suspected, Donald was already pulling at the soft collar of his shirt to loosen his tie, clearly feeling the muggy air too much for him. Again I felt one of my infrequent maternal pangs and was glad all over again to think that the secret of Mrs Addie’s death was most likely a white lie of sorts, not a black deed like murder at all. At least, I hoped so. If we uncovered anything much worse, I should really have to winkle my sons out of here and get them home. Perhaps it was even worth concocting a plausible tale I could keep up my sleeve and trot out if need be.

‘Mother, you’re squinting like a charmed snake,’ Donald said. ‘Good morning, Mr Osborne.’ As the three of them exchanged greetings, I retreated yet further into my own concerns.

Donald and Teddy could not be packed off home. How could I have forgotten? I was supposed to have rung up the factor as soon as we arrived to check that the workmen were set fair to begin their campaign on the draughts and drips of Gilverton first thing this morning. Gilchrist was already greatly troubled by his own treachery, colluding with me unbeknownst to his liege lord, but I had dangled a glittering prospect in front of his eyes and – more to the point – in front of the eyes of his wife who had three daughters under the age of ten and twin baby boys and had been brought up with indoor servants of her own, before marrying and having to make do with a daily maid and part shares in the estate gardeners. In short, I had offered the Gilchrists the chance to put their tin bath out in the yard for horses to drink from, and to turn the old privy into a kennel for their aged and unlovely terrier, and bask instead in an enamelled bath with a basin and lavatory, all installed in the old boxroom a step across the landing from where they slept. I had even agreed to the colour Mrs Gilchrist fancied best, although it made me shudder. Primrose it was called in the catalogue, depicted in a fanciful watercolour complete with bathing nymph. Custard, I called it, and powdered custard out of a tin at that.

There was to be a little gas water-heater above the kitchen sink too, and a larger one above the double sinks of the wash house, so Mrs Gilchrist could throw a cotton cloth over the old wash copper and stand a jug of flowers there. And of course there were to be radiators, all fed by a tank of oil in the yard, and the only coal to be carried would be a decorous brass scuttleful to make a cheery note in the sitting room on those few evening when the family had leisure to sit there. It would make a marked change from the twenty-hour day which began with lighting the kitchen range in the morning and ended with carrying covered shovels into the bedrooms at night, the hours between being filled with stoking and banking like a double shift on a steam engine.

Mrs Gilchrist’s eyes had shone as she leafed through the fanciful catalogue and even before she turned them beseechingly upon her husband, I knew she was mine. She was mine, he was hers and therefore he was mine too. He was not happy, but I had promised to draw all of Hugh’s inevitable wrath onto myself and had gone so far as to put it in writing that his job was safe. (If the worst came to the worst, he could hide at Benachally and help Donald for a month or two until matters settled again.)

Still, I really should have made sure to ring him. He was not used to having to forge ahead without Hugh. They sometimes reminded me, poring over their maps and plans, of two old women searching for a dropped stitch in their knitting.

Teddy was speaking. I shook all thoughts of Gilverton out of my head and attended to him.

‘-could have buttered me both sides and called me a bath bun,’ he said. This was a saying he had learned from a sweet nursery maid when he was very small. He took care to reserve it for use out of his father’s hearing, but it made me smile. ‘Donald too. You’ll never guess what the doctor is, Mummy.’

‘I shan’t take the bet, dear,’ I told him. ‘I knew.’

‘Did you tell Father?’ Donald said. He was smirking. ‘Because we didn’t. He’s in there now.’ Then the giggles got the better of both of them. I tried and failed not to join in.

‘And what did Dr Laidlaw say?’ I asked them. ‘What regime has she decreed for the pair of you?’

‘Rest for me,’ said Donald, very gloomy. ‘Rest on the terrace with a hot bottle at my feet. Rest in some vibrating electric contraption with bright lamps shining on me – I’m sure to be seasick – and rest while wrapped up like a mummy in hot towels and camphor.’

‘Camphor?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Might have been menthol,’ Donald said. ‘Mustard even. Something pretty smelly anyway.’ Then he brightened. ‘She did say I was to have port wine at lunch and at dinner and red meat too.’

‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘Not a drop of water in any of that anywhere. I’m beginning to wonder how hydropathy got its name.’

‘Plenty of water for me,’ Teddy said. ‘I’m to swim in the bathing pool every morning. Breaststroke, she said. Loosening, whatever that means. And then the hot towels and mothballs, like Don. For expectation.’

‘Expectoration,’ I said. ‘At least, I would have thought so. Well, how gruesome. I hope you’re being mummified in a private room.’ Of course, what I really hoped was that I would not encounter someone, nicely loosened and now expectorating, in some shared part of the women’s accommodations. ‘No breaststroke for you then, Donald dear?’

‘No, I’m being thrown to the rubbers,’ he said. ‘Those burly men in blue overalls we saw in the hot rooms yesterday. One of them is supposed to pound me in between the lamps and the menthol.’

I did not much like the sound of that, some thug with big red hands setting about my poor diminished boy, but that was not why my face fell. His words had suggested something far worse to me. If the people dressed in blue in the hot rooms were dedicated, trained ‘rubbers’ – I supposed that plain term was just about preferable to ‘masseur’ with its whiff of decadence – then Regina was most likely to be found all day and every day in one place only, and there was only one way to fall in with her. Grant, I realised, was going to kill me.

In the end, I managed to get away with only the briefest stop in the coolest room before I caught sight of a blue sphere flashing past the opened velvet curtains leading to the rest beds. I shot to my feet, belted my robe firmly and scuttled after her.

‘Oh, it’s you, Mrs Gilver,’ she said, turning as she heard her name. ‘Back again, eh? I thought so.’ At my look (I hoped it was only puzzled and not actually guilty) she explained. ‘I can always tell who’s going to take to it and who’s not,’ she said. ‘You might have grumbled a bit when you hit the cold water, madam, but it’s nothing to what some of them let out. One lady once said a word I’d never heard in my life, and that’s me as used to pull pints in the public bar at the Annandale Arms to help out in the Tup Fair.’

‘Well, to be honest, Regina,’ I said, ‘I was rather hoping to run into you. I’ve got the most fearful crick in my neck – I think I must have wrenched it in the shock of the plunge, you know – and I wondered if you could help. Unless one has to book an appointment.’

‘Depends on the season and how busy we are,’ she said. ‘But you’re in luck this morning, madam. Slab and salt or warm oil?’ At my expression, she laughed and explained. One could either lie naked on one of the marble slabs beside the cold sprays and be doused with water and rubbed with rock salt then rinsed off, which sounded more like the beginning of a recipe to cure meat than anything one might visit upon one’s own person, or one could be taken to a quiet room, lie down on a couch and be rubbed with warm oil.

‘Only that’s extra on your bill, madam,’ Regina said. ‘And a salt rub on the slab down here is included. As many as you feel like.’ It was ‘first glass sixpence, second glass free’ all over again: I was willing to bet that the offer of endless time on the slab with the cold water was not going to ruin the Hydro in the immediate future.

I made my unsurprising choice and Regina steered me up a narrow set of wooden stairs at the side of the changing cubicles and into one of a number of small rooms which led off the upper landing. There was more of the dark wood and red velvet here, and with the couch – even if it was draped in white towels instead of silk shawls – the overall effect was that of a miniature boudoir. I lay down on my front and she expertly shrugged me out of the robe.

‘Now then,’ she said. ‘Crick in your neck, you said? Hmph. I see what you mean.’

I did not need to force rigidity into my muscles, for the novelty of suddenly having someone who was not Grant lay hands upon me and immediately comment on her findings caused an automatic tension to spread through me.

‘Wee drop eucalyptus oil,’ she said, and then bracing her feet hard, one knee bent and one straight, as I could see perfectly well over the side of the couch, she set about my neck and shoulders like a master baker with a batch of dough.

‘Golly,’ I said presently. ‘Oof. Gosh.’

‘This,’ she panted. ‘Will do you. The world. Of good. Madam.’

‘I can see why people come back year after year,’ I said, beginning to feel my way.

‘They have. So far. Anyway,’ Regina said.

This was an opening indeed, if I could just decide how best to use it.

‘It must be odd for your old regulars suddenly to have Dr Laidlaw Sr gone and so many changes,’ I said. Regina said nothing. She poured on a little more oil, smacked her hands together and set about a different bit of my back, somewhat towards the sides and threatening to be ticklish if I did not try hard to avoid thinking of it in that way.

‘Unless you mean something else?’ I said. I waited for a while. There was no sound except the unlovely one of oily hands smacking against oily back as she pitched herself with gusto at her task. ‘You don’t mean that Mrs Addie will cause a scandal, do you?’ Her hands lifted off my skin and there was silence except for her fast breathing. I craned round trying to see her and, at the sight of her patient twisting about that way, she was spurred back into action. She laid her hands rather tentatively on my skin, but did not move them.

‘I never said that,’ she whispered. ‘How did you even know about poor Mrs Addie? I never said any such thing.’

‘Of course not, my dear,’ I said. ‘One hears gossip, but not from you. Most commendable.’

‘I was fond of her,’ Regina said. ‘I’d not make tittle-tattle out of her going off that way.’ Rather uncertainly, she recommenced her pummelling. ‘Anyway it was her heart. It could have happened any time and anywhere. At home, in the pictures.’ The rhythm was back to normal, the slaps ringing out again.

‘But it happened here,’ I said.

I must say, if it could be arranged, it would be splendid to have every interview in every case accompanied by a vigorous back-rub. I could tell from the faltering of her hands again that what I had just said was troubling, could tell it as plain as day before she spoke a sound. And then her words when they came said the same.

‘That was the story,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t true.’ I am sure that she must have felt my muscles turning to iron but she made no reference to it. ‘She went out, madam. She collapsed away out somewhere. And that right there’s enough to stop any nasty talk. She wasn’t supposed to be out. She wasn’t supposed to go out traipsing for another week. Dr Laidlaw had a full regime all drawn up. If she’d stuck to it, she might be here today, because it was working. You could tell already it was. So as to any scandal sticking to the Hydro, I should say it’s the other way on. Vice versa.’ As she became more adamant in her words so did she in her rubbing. By the end of this speech I was being thrown about like a cork in the tide and had to grip the couch to hold on.

‘She wasn’t here?’ I said. ‘Well, in that case, I agree. Nothing for the Laidlaws to worry about. But why would they say she was at the Hydro if she was out on the town?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Regina. ‘I can tell you that, hand on heart. I don’t know that I’d say she was in the town, mind you. I thought maybe the woods. The hills, you know.’ Privately, I agreed. If she was going to see a ghost and collapse then a lonely spot seemed much more like it. There were only two problems: what had an Edinburgh matron who thought the world of the Hydro been doing in the hills or woods instead of availing herself of the many facilities and diversions for which she had come all this way? That was one. The second problem was even more thorny. If Mrs Addie was out on a wooded hillside in the dark, how exactly had Dr Laidlaw managed to find her there?

I was silent after that, thinking it through without ever being able to frame a question to put to Regina. Before long, she finished me off with a percussive set of blows all up and down my spine from nape to waist and then wiped me with a warm cloth and patted me nicely dry. It was an effort to peel myself up off the couch after the way she had tried to press me into it like a flower after a nature walk, but once I was up I felt quite wonderful and I thought to myself that I really had to try to run into her sometime when I had my bag with me so I could tip her. She did not loiter hopefully, to her credit, but bustled off and left me to wriggle back into my robe and make my own way to the cubicle and my clothes.

I dressed quickly and did not fuss with my hair, eager to get to what I was going to do next. In the dining room – it was comfortably luncheon-time now, although rather early for the bright young things – I scanned the tables for a likely party. Before I spotted one, though, Hugh spotted me and waved me over to make up a fourth with the boys and him. Odd, I thought, waving back and moving towards them. I was not puzzled for long.

‘Teddy tells me you’ve driven poor Osborne off already,’ he said, while pushing in my chair. ‘Back to Edinburgh on the noon train.’

‘Briefly,’ I said. ‘And nothing to do with me. He had some business or errand of his own to see to. He’ll be back tonight, he said, if he can possibly manage it.’ Hugh grinned.

‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said. ‘And you’ll be taking the boys back to the house after tea? You’re not staying here for dinner, are you?’

I surveyed the luncheon menu: tomato soup, calf’s head brawn, roasted mushrooms, cauliflower cheese, pickled cabbage, loganberry pudding, mint creams.

‘I shan’t be staying for dinner,’ I said firmly. ‘In fact, since I’m walking down to the town and the town is so very well served with tea shops and I’m not actually hungry at the moment, I don’t think I’ll stay for luncheon. Nice to have seen you and said hello, though. Four o’clock in the lobby, boys.’

‘I could walk down to the town with you, Mummy,’ said Teddy. ‘Donald’s having his seat in the electric chair.’

‘Please don’t call it that,’ I scolded. ‘Not even in jest. I’m going to the lending library, you can certainly come there with me and choose something to read. And then I need to find a hat shop where they do repairs and cleaning, and Mrs Tilling wanted me to track down a florist since the gardens are so bare. You’re more than welcome-’

‘Never mind,’ said Teddy. I had named three of his least favourite establishments. The hat shop alone would have been enough to send him packing. ‘There’s a little lending library here. I’ll see what they can cough up for us.’

‘Don’t say “cough up”,’ said Hugh and I almost in perfect unison and we parted on good terms, as always when we agree on something.

On my way out of the dining room I had another scout about for a likely table. Of course Hugh, if he saw me, would withdraw from our shared view of Teddy’s vocabulary into his more usual disapproval of me and all my works, but that was not to be helped. Almost at the door, tucked away to the side of the serving table, I saw what I was looking for. Three of the most overdressed, over-coiffed, over-maquillaged women I am sure the Hydro dining room had ever contained: one of them had lace mittens on and yet was spreading brawn onto a cracker. One of the others had a hat perched on her piled-up hair, with so many greenish-black feathers I had to squint to make sure it was not a whole crow.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said, sidling up to them and standing with my hands on the back of the free chair. ‘I’ve only just found out that you’re here. I hope you don’t mind me stopping by to say hello.’ I was scanning all three of them, and I spotted one preening herself slightly. I stuck my hand out to this one. ‘Dandelion Gilver,’ I said, thankful for the first time in my life that my parents had given me such a ridiculous name.

‘Petrushka Molyneaux,’ she said, with a bow which made the feathers catch the light and gleam greener than ever. A likely story, was what I thought. Patsy Miller, probably.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘How exciting to have you here. And so unexpected. I’m here with my husband and sons who’ve all been ill with this wretched flu. I had no idea. Does Moffat have lots of ghosts then? I’ve never heard of any.’

Mrs Molyneaux’s face snapped like a rat-trap and her companions recoiled from me.

‘A handful,’ said the one with brawn in the lace of her mittens. ‘The usual number. For the tourists.’ She did not say ‘such as yourself’. She did not need to.

‘That is not why we’re here,’ said the third of the coven, a young white-faced woman with thin pale hair and enormous pale green eyes like gooseberries. ‘And certainly not why Madame Molyneaux has left her consultancy and come all this way.’ After a few further pleasantries had been rather stiffly exchanged I left with a flea in my ear (but thinking ‘consultancy, indeed’). What charlatans!

Charlatans or no, however, they had given me an idea. If Mrs Addie had conjured a ghost for herself it was more than likely one of the handful laid on for the tourists, and what better way to learn of those than to visit the public library after all.

The rain had let up and although the going was unpleasant, especially as the wind had shaken free the first of the leaves which were now lying sodden underfoot, the air was clear and sparkling and I strode out with a light heart and an empty stomach. This is my favourite internal arrangement if I can manage it, so long as there are pots of tea and buns at my destination; and there were. If Alec could confirm that Mrs Addie believed in ghosties and ghoulies and I could find some witness to place her at one of Moffat’s haunted spots, then we could add our voices to the chorus singing ‘heart attack’ and file the case under jobs well done.

There was no public library in Moffat town, I soon learned, but the reading room in the bath house included, as well as the circulating library, a large reference collection and in one corner, better all the time, a wooden sign hanging on chains and reading ‘Local History: please enquire here.’ At a desk under this sign, which swung gently in the breeze as I closed the outside door, was the perfect person, just who I wanted to see. She was sixty if a day, high-coloured, dressed with a little more panache than one might look for in a librarian, and she had the round bright eye of one who is interested in all that passes around her. The town gossip, in short, or rather one of the no doubt dense tangle of them; and with those bright gold chains around her neck and that enormous brooch of unlikely blue stones, she did not look the sort of devout little body who would be shocked to speak of the things I was going to ask her.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said, sitting. Those bright eyes took in everything about me, head to toe, in an instant.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘How may I help you?’

‘I have rather an odd request.’ I delivered this with a little wriggle and a titter. Neither of these came naturally to me and so I hoped she believed them. ‘I’m interested in the… folklore of your delightful town. Folk tales, you know.’ From the way she kept peering at me, politely enquiring, no sign of a nod or a smile, it appeared that she did not. I tried again.

‘Fascinating, these old superstitions. One wonders how they begin.’ She blinked but otherwise her face remained, as before, polite, interested and utterly devoid of any signs of understanding. ‘I was in Alloway, recently. Most interesting, the bridge and the kirkyard and all of that…’

‘Oh, ghosts!’ she said in tones one might have expected to be drummed out of a librarian by years of whispering. The very lampshades rang above our heads.

‘Ghosts it is,’ I said. ‘Are there any materials I might consult which would cover-’

‘Oh, we’re very well off for ghosts!’ she exclaimed. I wished she would not keep declaiming the word at full volume. ‘That’s not an unusual request at all. Why it’s only a matter of weeks since I was telling the last reader who wanted to know all about them.’

‘Indeed? Are there many?’

‘Oh yes, madam. Well there’s the Haunted Ram, of course.’

‘A public house?’ I asked.

‘A ram,’ she corrected. ‘Haunted. And the Devil’s Beef Tub is notorious.’

‘Haunted cows?’

She sailed on. ‘And then, let me see, there’s Yellow Mary at the well, although she’s not been seen so much since the new wee housie was built there. I always fret that she’s trapped underneath it, you know. And not a soul that belongs to Moffat would go up the Gallow Hill at the full moon. Will I write these down for you, madam? I could draw you a wee map too.’

Fifteen minutes later, I came reeling out into the uncertain sunshine with my wee map in my hand and my head swirling with phantasms too many to number; Moffat most certainly was a place where the dead seemed to go about their business unimpeded by their change of state and with no thoughts of lying down quietly and mouldering.

The Devil’s Beef Tub was not haunted by cattle after all, but by the spirits of the marauding Johnstone clan – the infamous Border Reivers – and by the spirits of such of their enemies as had tried and failed to besiege them there and grab the stolen herds back again. The problems of the Gallow Hill spoke for themselves. Apparently the earth turned red with the blood of the hanged in the light of the full moon each month (I had forborne to mention to the little librarian that hanging does not cause much bloodshed and that I happened to know that the dark of the moon is the time when nights get really tricky). Even leaving aside Yellow Mary at the well, since she had evidently been squashed, that still left quite a parade of the usual suspects. To wit: a century ago either William Burke or William Hare had stopped the night at the Black Bull Inn, a century before that Bonnie Prince Charlie had watered his horses and left a soldier to die on the banks of the stream. Bloody Mary, of course, had passed a few nights in a nearby castle and her grief and sorrow had seeped into its walls. Reaching back into history, Bruce and Wallace and even Malcolm had paused at Moffat on their travels, watering their horses again (a thirsty lot, the mounts of these Scottish warriors) and imbuing the hills and fields with the sort of vanquished hopes and tragic disappointment which inevitably end up as grey ladies and headless pipers.

I consulted the map and decided to start with the Ram, since it was closest to me. Almost too close, I decided a few minutes later, standing in the middle of the High Street and staring up at it. If Mrs Addie had collapsed here, with scores of houses all around and, even in the evening, plenty of passers-by walking to and from the many inns and public houses, someone would have seen her. Of course, I was hoping that someone would have seen her – corroboration of Sergeant Simpson’s story was my purpose in this ghost hunt after all – but this spot, halfway up the busiest street in town and only a stone’s throw from the water trough where every carter rested his horses like all of his kings before him, was far too unguarded a setting for a death which had been so carefully bowdlerised. If a woman had clutched her heart and dropped to the ground here in front of Moffat’s most famous ghost it would surely have been in the papers and the Addies’ feelings could not have been spared no matter if the Lord Chief Justice himself joined the Fiscal in wishing them so.

Besides, no one would die of fright from this haunting. The librarian had told me the whole story and there was not enough in it to cause a decent shriek never mind a heart attack. The statue – an impressive bronze of a large full-coated and fully horned ram, standing proudly on a soaring stone base (which might have looked like a mountain crag if the mortar between the stones had not been picked for contrast) – had been commissioned by one William Colvin, a prosperous local farmer, in honour of the town where he had prospered. All was well until, after his death, the statue had been moved from the spot he had so carefully chosen to this one and, displeased, he took up residence inside it and manifested his presence by ‘ghostly tapping’. I lifted one side of my hat brim – current fashions worked hard against efficient eavesdropping – edged around one of the four basins set about it and laid my head against the base.

There was silence within. Without, there was laughing. I straightened up and turned to see a pair of housewives, their shawls crossed over their breasts and their full baskets hefted high, giggling at me.

‘Colvin’s ghaist only comes oot at nicht,’ said one.

‘Aye, so does mice,’ said the other. And I nodded, for I agreed. Tapping noises from inside a hollow stone plinth and the hollow bronze sheep above it would always suggest nesting rodents and not unquiet spirits to me.

I looked once again at the pencilled map the librarian had sketched for me. The Devil’s Beef Tub was a fair walk out of town. The well where Yellow Mary lay under the new wee housie was a shorter walk but a stiffer climb, up past the Hydro and around the back of Gallow Hill. Gallow Hill itself I could see looming up to the east and I quite simply was not shod for it. I let my eyes come down the slope to where the Hydro sat, flags flying, windows twinkling, and I was aware of a shift of unease inside me. A house near a church is favoured by villagers, whether for the respectability conferred by such neighbours or for the sanctuary near at hand, should the devil ride, but I always wonder at those cottagers whose gardens abut the graveyard walls, as they often do. Does it ever occur to them as they look with pride at their soaring beans and swelling roots that the rich earth which feeds their crops is fed in its turn? Similarly now, I had to question the placing of a hydro, supposed to offer complete relaxation, in the lee of a gallow hill. Would not exactly those who thought a sulphurous drench would cure their arthritis also believe that the shadow of such a place would disturb their rest? If it came to that, I wondered how many knew that the sulphurous waters themselves came from a well where a Yellow Mary once was found. If she were yellow from the sulphur it suggested she had fallen in and drowned there. If she were yellow from fever then, even if she only lived nearby, it was hardly a testimonial. Or was I getting confused between yellow fever and Typhoid Mary and making more than I should out of nothing? I turned away and surveyed the High Street instead. I was admirably shod for a stroll to a tea shop. Perhaps there was a better way to discover which ghost Mrs Addie had met in the night. Perhaps Regina, who thought it was to the hills and woods that Mrs Addie had gone, would know a little more and could tell me at least which hill or which wood was most likely.

I stopped in my tracks. Of course she knew more, my little round pummelling friend. She must have heard Dr Laidlaw or Dr Ramsay or someone say ‘Gallow Hill’ or ‘the Beef Tub’ or something when they brought the invalid back again. How else could she have a view on the matter at all? I abandoned my plans for tea, thinking that there was bound to be a substantial offering at the Hydro very soon, and retraced my steps up the hill.

I should have to find another way of communing with Regina very soon, I thought as I shrugged out of my clothes again. I wondered if I could discover her afternoon free, if Grant could be made to invite her to tea, and if I could gatecrash their party and grill her.

In the meantime, I settled down on the little velvet-covered bench in the changing cubicle with my robe about me, to listen for the squeak of her rubber-soled shoes on the polished boards. I wanted to speak to her but not enough to brave the heat again. I tucked my feet up and made myself very comfortable, except for a faint rumbling in my middle.

The next thing I knew, I started awake at the sound of a cubicle door banging next to me. My neck, its fictitious crick well cured by Regina only that morning, was actually cricked now and made a horrid clicking sound as I stretched it. I was just about to stand and unknot my back and legs too when I became aware of a whispered conversation drifting over the top of the cubicle wall.

‘Two women, a mother and daughter, Peggy and Lizzie. That’s what she said to me. And that’s what brought me.’

‘They’re common enough names,’ came the reply.

‘And then what I heard myself, you will not believe when I tell you.’

‘Heard from where?’

‘Someone who rang up the offices looking for guidance. Rang up after I’d come down here and they passed it along. He didn’t know what he was saying at all. Hadn’t a clue.’

‘And what was it?’

‘An old woman and a blind child.’ There was a gasp and then a long silence.

‘Truly? A blind child?’

‘A wee boy. And his grandmother.’ This brought another gasp. ‘Both very troubled, a lot of turbulence, a lot of excitement.’

‘Peggy and Lizzie and an old woman and a blind child.’ Her voice had a tone of awe about it now. ‘And how many more?’

‘Ah,’ said the voice. ‘That’s the question. How many more? Eleven or thirteen? Who’s to say?’

‘But what I meant was how many more have been contacted.’

‘Three more so far.’

‘Someone needs to take charge. Someone needs to draw up a list and make sure. We need…’

‘We most certainly do.’ There was a dramatic pause. ‘And he is on his way. He is coming from London today and arrives tonight.’

At that thrilling moment – and it was thrilling even to me who did not have the first clue what the thrill might be – a door opened and the unmistakable sound of Regina advancing could be heard all along the cubicle corridor. The two women in the next cubicle opened the door and began to walk away. I opened my own a crack and put my eye to it, watching them.

Of course, it is hard to tell much when everyone is wearing white towelling robes and has her hair twisted up in a turban. One was short and thin and could, I reckoned, be the slip of a girl with the gooseberry eyes I had met at luncheon – she was Mrs Molyneaux’s friend after all – and the other was taller and broader, older too by the look of her gait. She might have been one of those I had seen arriving, but from what this pair had just said there were ghost hunters descending upon the Hydro from all around. From London!

I watched them until they disappeared through the velvet curtains and then I opened the door wide. When I did, it was to see Regina, standing with a bundle of wet towels in her arms, regarding me with a look composed of three parts politeness and two parts amusement upon her face.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘Back again?’

‘Not for more rubbing,’ I said. ‘And not for more heat.’

‘That’s all we do in the Russian and Turkish,’ she said. Perhaps I imagined that her eyes flared with alarm but I did not think so.

‘I simply want to talk to you, my dear,’ I said. She looked down at the bundle of towels in her arms and took a step backwards.

‘I’ve to get these to the laundry,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to make any trouble,’ I assured her. ‘Not for you or for anyone.’

‘It’s about Mrs Addie, isn’t it?’

‘I just want to know where she was,’ I said. ‘Where she went exactly.’

‘Why?’ said Regina. ‘How will that help you?’

‘Witnesses,’ I replied. ‘If someone saw her then there’s proof she was there.’ She started again to back away. Those two words – ‘proof’ and ‘witnesses’ – spoken together had startled her. I left the cubicle and walked beside her, following her right through the staff door and into a bare, distempered corridor.

‘You’re not supposed to be in here,’ she said, miserably.

‘Regina, my dear,’ I said, relentless (I am not proud of myself sometimes), ‘I am sure that Mrs Addie died of a heart attack. I think it was misguided of the Laidlaws to try to spare her relatives’ feelings. They should have told them everything. I’d like to tell them everything and then their minds will be at rest. That’s all. Nothing to worry you. Now, where exactly did she go when she went out?’

‘I don’t know,’ Regina said. ‘I don’t even know when it was – except I know it was that Monday – and I don’t know how she got there.’

‘Walked, I suppose,’ I said, and did not miss the glance she gave me. ‘Very well, let me try another tack. What made you think she’d been in the country and not in the town?’

‘Because of how she was dirty, madam,’ she said. ‘She was like a bairn that’s been playing out.’

‘You saw her?’ I said. I wished that we were sitting at a tea table where I could ply Regina with buns, instead of standing in this draughty dark corridor with a load of damp towels doing their best to make things dreary. If Regina had witnessed the dying Mrs Addie’s return she might well have more to tell me.

‘I suppose you could say that,’ she said. ‘I… saw… her after the doctor was gone. I laid her out. The undertaker would have done it, but Dr Laidlaw wanted us to take care of her. Nicer that way. And Mrs Cronin was out, with it being Monday, and so it fell to me.’

I was working hard not to let my jaw drop open. This girl had actually washed and clothed the body! If there was a mark of violence upon her, Regina would know.

‘And when you laid her out, she was dirty,’ I said.

‘She was. I remember saying to myself, well to Mrs Addie really, the poor lady. I said, “Where have you been then? What have you been up to?” She looked like she’d been out scrambling up and down hills. Dirt under her nails. Dirty knees. She’d had a bit of a wash, like, off the doctor it must have been, when she got home, but she was still grubby. I made her nice as nice, anyway, when she fell to me. I was always fond of Mrs Addie. I was sorry to see her go.’ She broke off at the sound of someone moving in the distance, the squeal of brisk steps in those rubber-soled shoes. I laid a hand on her arm.

‘Regina, if you had to guess: where would someone scramble and slip? The Beef Tub, the well or the Gallow Hill? If you’ve been walking there?’

‘Why would she go to one of those places?’ she said. She was pulling away from me as the footsteps came closer. I glanced towards the turn in the passageway. I only had a minute.

‘To see Yellow Mary or the Reivers or the spirits of the hanged,’ I said. To be fair, I must have seemed like a madwoman suddenly to spout these words, gripping her plump little arm like the ancient mariner, hissing at her in the dark that way. She snatched herself free.

‘Mrs Addie?’ she said. ‘Is that what they’re saying? That she was one of them? She was none of the kind! Is that why they’ve come then? She was never!’ And she turned on her heel and sped off as fast as she could, barrelling along the passageway as though Yellow Mary and the Reivers and the spirits of all the hanged were after her. I hurried back to the staff door, opened it and slipped through, with the merest glance behind me as the footsteps grew closer still. Idiot! If I had kept my back turned I would have been just another figure in a white robe and turbanned towel. As it was, Mrs Cronin got a good look at me.