Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (13 page)

‘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.