Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (17 page)

‘How?’

‘My dear Dandy, he’s running a casino.’ My mouth fell open and I had to scramble to stop my cigarette falling into my lap and burning me. ‘After midnight,’ Alec said, ‘when all of Dr Laidlaw’s patients are tucked up in their little beds, the winter gardens are transformed. The doors to the terrace are bolted, there’s a doorman on the only door to the passageway and the respectable majority know nothing.’ He laughed again, but he laughed alone.

‘Hugh!’ I said. ‘All those sly looks and that smirking!’ For Hugh loves nothing more on earth than a casino, or rather he loves a casino with a passion equal to his love for grouse, stags, well-managed woodlands and tidy farms running at profit and giving work to his men. I have known him take estate plans to Monaco and spend the days in his room poring over them while the sun shines and the sea sparkles outside, whiling away the hours until darkness falls and the croupiers split their decks for the evening. Finding a casino in a Scottish valley with forests and moors and pheasant outside must have seemed to him like a dream come true.

‘It’s always been an unaccountable quirk of his to me,’ I said. ‘I like a game of cards at home with friends, but one meets such dreadful people in public casinos. The sort of people who would give Hugh toothache if he had to share their carriage on a train.’

‘But taking their money must be lovely,’ Alec said. I had to laugh and nod at that, for while Hugh loves to gamble he does not suffer from the gambler’s usual complaint of loss and remorse and threatened penury. He is either lucky or brilliant or has an iron will because he always walks away from the roulette wheel and the rouge-et-noir where chance is all, as well as from the poker table and the vingt-et-un where skill can help one, better off than when he arrived; and what losses he has endured over the years have been of the size which can be met with a shrug and an extra glass of whisky before bedtime. It is intensely irritating to me, not least since on the few occasions when I have joined him I quickly lost my all and wanted nothing more than to keep going and win it back again.

‘That certainly explains the bright young things,’ I said, shoving thoughts of Hugh aside. ‘But why do they have to subject themselves to the salts and waters? If it’s supposed to convince the staff and other guests that they are patients, it’s not working. You said on the first day that there were two camps.’

Alec shook his head.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Something to do with tax, maybe? Tot Laidlaw is what my father used to call a warm man. Onto anything that offers a profit.’

‘I wonder if he’s charging the ghost hunters a premium for the entertainments,’ I said. We gave one another a long and sober look.

‘Ah yes,’ Alec said. ‘The enormous and unspeakable thing. Are you going to say it or shall I?’

‘Oh, I don’t mind
saying
it. I just don’t know what to make of it.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Very well. The Moffat Hydro is a honey pot which draws not bees but spiritualists, mediums and witchety-woos as though it’s Hallowe’en at Alloway Kirk.’

‘And our suspicious death was apparently caused by a ghostly visitation.’

‘These two things must be related.’

‘But not in the most obvious way.’

‘Which is?’

‘That Mrs Addie saw a ghost and the mediums coming to see it too is no different from archaeologists high-tailing it to Egypt because the Earl has found a new tomb.’

‘Poor Porchy,’ I said. ‘He was a sweet man.’ Alec was giving me a very hard look. I sighed and relented. ‘No, I can’t countenance any of that. It troubles me how detailed things are getting, mind you. Some of the ghosts have names.’

‘
Some?
’ said Alec. ‘How many are there?’

‘I overheard someone saying seven had been sighted, or heard tapping or whatever ghosts do. And another dozen were in the offing.’

‘Seven?’ said Alec. ‘With names and everything? That can’t be a mistake about a piece of flapping cloth on a lonely fencepost then. Someone must be deliberately making it up. In careful detail, as you say.’ I was nodding.

‘Extremely careful,’ I agreed. ‘Because actually it wasn’t “another dozen or so”. There were four with names or descriptions, and another either eleven or thirteen. As though two schools of thought were having a little academic wrangle. And it seems – again from my overhearings: Nanny Palmer would spank me – that some great personage is coming from London, some panjandrum of the spirit world, to subject the goings-on to serious study. The underlings are all atwitter.’

We sat in silence for a short while, turning it over. It is not a pleasant thing suddenly to have one’s solemn and serious work made into a nonsense that way.

‘So …’ said Alec at last, ‘do we think then that the Laidlaws believe the Hydro is haunted and they wanted to keep it quiet and that’s why they suppressed so many of the facts surrounding Mrs Addie dying?’

‘Bad for business?’ I said. ‘Only it’s not, is it? The place is filling up like a pub on market day.’

‘And I wish it weren’t,’ Alec said. ‘I don’t like those mediums. One of them that passed me in the corridor yesterday had the creepiest eyes I’ve ever seen outside a fairground. Not that we actually believe …’

‘Of course not!’ I said stoutly.

‘So what
do
we think?’

‘We think someone is making mischief, Mrs Addie caught wind of it and went to see for herself. That’s all. And dropped her bag and went back to find it.’

‘And died of fright. But we don’t believe there was anything to die of fright of. Does that actually make sense, Dandy, when you get right down to it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, stouter still. ‘She could have got a fright from something she imagined. Easily.’ I drained my glass in a most unladylike way. ‘Or the whole story of the fright and the heart attack could be covering up murder, it’s true. But let’s not jump down that hole until we have to.’

‘I still think we could just tell Dr Laidlaw that we know her patient went out and collapsed somewhere.’

‘I’d rather find the bag and not get Regina into trouble,’ I said.

‘Because if she was unscrupulous,’ Alec persisted, ‘she’d have signed that certificate. Why can’t we at least just ask her about Mrs Addie and see what she says?’

‘We can,’ I said. I sat straight up in my chair from where I had been slumping in the aftermath of all our good ideas. Here was the best idea I had had all day. ‘Oh, it’s delicious, of course we can! Well, you can, anyway.’

‘Happy to oblige,’ Alec said. ‘But how can I?’

‘It’ll be a bit of a performance – laurels galore if you pull it off. What you do is let on to someone – the doctor herself, Tot, Mrs Cronin—’

‘The doctor,’ said Alec. ‘Mrs Cronin is far too strait-laced to perform to. Do you know she doesn’t approve of Sunday bathing? Everyone in the Hydro’s supposed to just sit and read the Bible from Saturday teatime through to Monday.’

‘Very well, the doctor then. And tell her that an apparition came to you in the night. A Mrs A—. That her spirit is troubled. That she is cold and she needs her clothes. That there is something she wants her dear son and daughter to know.’

‘Good God, Dandy.’

‘It’s perfect!’ I insisted. ‘One ghost among so many? What better place than a haystack to claim that you’ve seen a straw of hay?’

‘Mother?’ We both jumped. Donald and Teddy were standing just inside the doorway, dressed in the dinner jackets that still made me blink: where were the little boys whose shirts buttoned onto their britches?

‘Are there ghosts in the Hydro?’ said Donald.

‘Is that why you didn’t want us staying there?’

‘But you don’t care if Daddy gets haunted?’

I could tell them there were no such things as ghosts. I could tell them that the Hydro was unsuitable on account of the illicit casino and that I did not want them growing up to be gamblers like their father in case they had not inherited his luck and ended by ruining us all. Or I could tell them there might be a murderer at large there and that Daddy could take his chances so long as the three of us were safely miles away. None of it cast me in favourable light.

‘There seem to be a fair few ghosts floating around, it’s true,’ I said.

‘Are you and Mr Osborne going to catch them?’

‘Can we help you?’

‘There are a fair few ghost
stories
floating around,’ Alec said, shaking his head at me. ‘Your mother and I are going to catch the rascal that’s spreading them. And you are forbidden to meddle in any way.’

‘Hear, hear,’ I said.

‘Does Father know?’ said Donald.

‘Your father doesn’t believe in ghosts,’ I said, hoping that my sleight of hand would go unnoticed. It did not.

‘Does Father know about the rascal spreading stories?’ Donald said.

‘He doesn’t, as it happens,’ I replied. ‘He has been very ill and needs to rest, like the two of you. Now pour yourselves two small sherries – very small for you, Donald dear, for you’re to have more port after dinner.’ The prospect of strong drink distracted them as I knew it would, and it took the attention of both, for despite the dinner jackets they were still boys and if one was pouring the other would have to watch and see fair measures.

‘Well?’ I asked Alec softly. ‘What do you think of my idea? Will you ask Dr Laidlaw in the morning?’

‘It’s your turn, strictly speaking,’ he replied. ‘Since I went to the Addies.’ This was not at all my view of it. He had gone to the Addies as a forfeit and his paying a forfeit conferred no debt upon me.

‘I can’t say I saw a ghost in the night,’ I whispered. ‘I’m not sleeping there.’

‘Say you saw her in the steam room,’ Alec said. ‘Say she came floating through the locked door.’ The mediums in the Turkish bath had said phantasms did not care for steam but the thought of mentioning the door to Dr Laidlaw was enticing. For that reason and to keep from squabbling like the boys over the sherry glasses I threw up my hands in defeat.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I give in. But the next two nasty jobs shall fall to you.’

To add as much verisimilitude to my tale as any story which treats of a ghost can ever contain, I had at least to go through the motions. I had to be where I had to be to see what I was going to claim to see. In other words, yet again, I was off to the Russian and Turkish. I made a neat job of folding my clothes, getting practised now, and I handed over my things to Regina like an old hand. She eyed me very warily but I smiled and said nothing.

‘Will you be wanting a rub-down, madam?’ she said.

‘Not today, thank you,’ I answered. ‘I’m sorry I upset you yesterday, Regina. Here.’ For once, I had thought of tipping before I was stripped of my worldly possessions. The coins went some way towards Regina’s unbending and she managed a bob before she left me.

I made my way into the cool room and subsided. Unfortunately it was not empty today and if I were going to play out this charade with any amount of thoroughness I would have to make sure of at least a moment alone. Besides, the locked door was not in view from here. After five minutes I stood and passed through to the warm room. From the far end, when the curtains were open, one had a view through the hot room to the sprays and if one leaned over and squinted, I thought one could surely catch a glimpse of the door too. Unfortunately, three of the beds were occupied: it was far too early for the bright young naked things with their nail files and picture magazines, but there were three swathed and solid matrons (on closer inspection, perhaps one solid matron and her two solid offspring, but such was the extreme degree of the swathing one could hardly tell) and so again I settled myself to wait out the shortest plausible time before moving on again. Even at that, one of the solid offspring opened an eye and spoke to me as I rose.

‘Rather you than me, dear,’ she said, and then licked the corners of her lips as a drop of moisture, dislodged by her speaking, ran down each cheek and settled there. I was struck again by the way we were all rendered equal, once I had discarded my tweeds and pearls and good silk stockings and she had sloughed off her serge and lisle (to judge by her vowels anyway). I saw the point all at once of nuns’ habits and monks’ cowls and thought how restful it must be. Then I smiled to myself, imagining Grant, across the valley, suddenly shivering and not understanding why. I drew the hot-room curtain to one side and slipped through.

There was no one in there, I was pleased to see. Neither, however, was there a view of the locked room. Where exactly had I been when I had got a good clear sight of it? I puzzled and then remembered, with a bit of a groan. Of course, I had been sitting on the edge of the plunging pool, trailing my fingers and learning the lie of the land from the doctor. I sat down on the nearest bed, guessing that the ones by the warm-room doorway might be marginally less blistering than the ones at the top end. How far was I willing to take this rigmarole? Since there was no one here I could surely pass through the marble chamber, past the sprays, along the side of the plunge bath and out again. Who was to know? Regina would think it odd that I managed the whole shebang in twenty minutes but only if she saw me.

I could feel my hair beginning to soften and lie down to die on my head again. If I got out right now and gave it a bit of a blotting with a towel, perhaps I could salvage things. I stood and hurried out and then, in the marble slab room, I stopped. There was Regina, rolling up wet towels from the slab benches, wiping the marble dry and unrolling fresh ones.

‘That was quick, Mrs Gilver,’ she said. I wondered if I were imagining the arch note in her voice, or if she had come here expressly to see if I were really giving myself over to the heat or if I were up to no good and only faking.

‘I far prefer the steam to the dry heat,’ I said grandly, and swept open the etched glass door.

Of course, I did not prefer the steam heat at all. I loathed all of the rooms and was fast beginning to detest the feel of marble under my feet and the chafe of towelling on my skin, but there was nothing for it now. If Regina was skulking out there to catch me, I was going to have to jump into that dratted icy pool again, and if I was going to freeze myself half to death then I was jolly well going to boil myself up nicely first, hoping to strike a balance that way. Accordingly, I sat in the steam room – all alone: no gossiping ghouls to help the time pass today – until my blood was thumping and my hair hanging in rat’s tails to my chin.