Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (2 page)

‘Not like you, my love,’ I said, letting her step ahead of me into the breakfast room, off which my sitting room opens. ‘You are as beautiful as ever. Aren’t you, my darling? Hm?’

‘Oh, madam!’ Becky had entered the breakfast room by the other door. ‘She is that but she’s awful stiff in the mornings. And when you think!’

She referred to an incident early in Bunty’s life when she had just grown from a fat bundle of puppy to a lolloping, seemingly boneless creature with easily eight enormous paws, three tails and half a dozen affectionate tongues. Becky had opened the garden door at dawn one day and Bunty had jumped clean over her head to escape, knocking Becky flat on her back and out cold when her head hit the flagstones. This was better than the garden, of course, and Bunty wheeled round to make the most of it – a human who lay there obligingly to be trampled over and saluted with the moistest kisses a dog could muster. When Becky came round she was bruised but giggling.

‘I can’t bear to contemplate it,’ I said. ‘Well, Becky, it looks as though you’re in charge. I won’t be in for dinner, so eggs on trays or whatever seems best, and no visitors, I’m afraid. There’s scarlet fever in the village.’

‘I’ve had it,’ said Becky.

‘Good. I’ll cancel all deliveries and perhaps you could go down in the dogcart and collect them instead.’

‘It’s just the fish tomorrow,’ said Becky. ‘Will I tell Miss Grant you’re away a walk then, madam? She was getting ready to come up to you.’

‘I shan’t be dressing,’ I said. ‘Tell Grant she’s free.’

Alec Osborne rarely uses his dining room. It’s a miserable crypt of a place (even as dining rooms go, and they are, to my mind, the least inviting chamber of any house) with dark oak panels to its ceiling, mossy green wallpaper all round, and only two small windows facing due east on its short side. Add to that the usual measure of ancestors in oils and sideboards like mastodons, and a party would be stone dead before it had half begun. For that reason, Alec times what few dinners he cannot escape hosting for the summertime and spreads his board in a little temple by a pond with room to seat twelve in comfort and a fireplace which throws out heat like a steam engine. (I wish the mason who built that summerhouse chimney had built a few of ours, is all I can say.) Out of season he restricts himself to cocktails in his drawing room and on ordinary evenings Barrow, his valet, sets a table for one or two in the library as cosy as cosy can be.

‘Still,’ Alec said, as Barrow withdrew and left us with the soup, ‘I usually manage to wriggle out of my tweeds, Dandy. Are you making a point?’ He raised his eyebrows at my coat and skirt and then at his own smoking jacket.

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘When did I ever do anything so mealy-mouthed as that? I’ve just crossed some kind of Rubicon. Be glad I crossed it after tea or I might be here in my bedroom slippers and nightgown.’

‘Better than poor Miss Havisham at least,’ Alec said. ‘She’d have been much more comfortable over the years if the clock had stopped when she was in her nightie. What’s shoved
you
over the line then?’

‘Scarlet fever,’ I said. ‘The boys haven’t had it and it’s all over the village, so the butcher and baker are forbidden the gates and I’m going to have to go shopping for pounds of tea and legs of lamb like a housewife.’

‘Is every maid down?’ said Alec.

‘Not quite but they always make such a jaunt of it whenever they get away and Pallister and Mrs Tilling have got the flu.’

He dropped his spoon, but it was a plum-coloured smoker and Alec’s valet-cum-cook doesn’t allow so much as a sprig of parsley into the consommé so no harm came to him.

‘Remus and Romulus have crumbled?’ he said. ‘You seem remarkably calm.’

‘Yes. Good soup.’

‘You can take it home in a jar if they haven’t finished it up in the kitchen.’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ I agreed. ‘The kindness of my neighbours is all that stands between me and destitution now. I only hope the range doesn’t go out because no one left standing knows how to relight it.’

‘Mrs Tilling won’t be off her feet for long,’ said Alec. ‘She’s an ox. And Pallister …’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Pallister ill is so far outside human understanding that no one could hazard a guess as to
how
it might go. Like those tiny objects the physicists keep falling over that are never doing what they ought to be. My worry is that as soon as they’re better the winter will set in and you know what that house is like in winter.’

‘Bracing,’ said Alec.

‘Bracing to the hale and hearty,’ I said. ‘Flattening to the convalescent.’

‘Are you thinking of going away?’ Alec had an odd tone in his voice, hopeful-seeming in a rather unflattering way. ‘Taking them off to the seaside and building them up with salt air and beef jelly?’

‘It’s a thought,’ I replied. ‘It would get us away from the scarlet fever and actually it might go along very well with what I was intending.’

‘Which was?’

‘Although we’d have to go a long way south to find seaside that wasn’t a trial in October. France, perhaps? The mountains? But I’d spend all the money I’m hoping to use for my grand idea.’

‘Which is?’

‘Central heating,’ I proclaimed. ‘A boiler and pipes and radiators and every room in the house like a fireside nook from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.’

‘Hugh
must
be ill,’ said Alec.

‘Hugh doesn’t know,’ I told him. ‘So you see, getting him out of the house would be pretty handy.’

‘Can you afford it?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the thing is, you see, that Hugh has just offloaded some shares.’

‘Really?’ Alec cocked his head. ‘He’s selling? Everyone’s buying.’

‘That’s what Hugh says too, but he won’t tell me what. What are
you
buying?’

‘Oh Dandy, join the modern age,’ Alec said. ‘One doesn’t buy shares in
things
any more. One buys securities on margin with a broker’s loan.’

‘What does that mean?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Alec. ‘I think it’s an American invention.’

‘Aha! Then you
are
both at the same game. Hugh offloaded these shares, as I said – ancient old things he’s been holding for sentimental reasons more than anything; I think his father first bought them – and he offloaded his London broker too and got one in New York.’

‘Sounds like it then,’ said Alec. ‘Good for Hugh.’

‘So we’re sloshing in actual cash for a change, until he spends it on these New York securities. Only with the flu and bronchitis it’s been the last thing on his mind. Or maybe he thinks I’ve done it for him. I couldn’t say.’

Alec’s face betrayed a not uncommon mix of emotions; he is my friend – mine, not ours – and his loyalties lie properly with me, but every so often when it comes to such things as farming, shooting and evidently money too some deep masculine chord begins to thrum in harmony with Hugh.

‘You can’t possibly be serious, Dan,’ he said. ‘Hugh thinks you’ve stepped in and carried out his business for him whilst he was ill – as he has every right to expect you to, by the way – and instead you’re planning to fritter away shares in a gold mine just so you can waft about in backless frocks and not get gooseflesh?’

‘I don’t see it that way at all,’ I said. ‘I think if I choose to spend money wisely on solid goods instead of gambling on ticker-tape fairy tales Hugh should be thankful for my sound sense.’

‘Sound sense?’ Alec cried. ‘Dandy, this is the biggest year the stock market’s ever seen!’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Alec. ‘But the brokers and bankers do. That’s good enough for me.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I hope your trust in them is warranted.’

We tore bread, drank soup and glared for a minute. Alec gave in first.

‘The mountains? The Alps, you mean? For the air?’

‘The mountain air does the same job as ozone, doesn’t it? Not to mention all the clinics and tonics and what have you.’ I hoped he would not notice the inconsistency of my advocating cold mountain breezes while I was plotting to banish the fresh air of a thousand draughts from Gilverton for ever.

‘And I’d take over Gilver and Osborne, would I?’ said Alec. ‘While you’re away.’

‘If a case comes in,’ I said. ‘It’s been rather quiet.’

‘Only …’ He drank soup, then sherry, then a mouthful of water. ‘I might be busy.’

‘I can always have my post forwarded,’ I said. ‘If I go at all, darling. It was only a thought.’

‘The thing is,’ said Alec, ‘I’m thinking of taking a wife.’

To my great satisfaction I did not drop my spoon, inhale a crumb or utter a gasp. With perfect honesty, however, that was because my thought when I heard him was ‘Whose wife? Take her where?’ and by the time I had properly parsed his odd phrasing I was past the danger.

‘Well, let me be the first to offer my congratulations,’ I said.

‘And so I’m going to have to put a bit of effort into finding one.’

‘You— You mean— You’re planning to marry someone but—’

‘I need a wife,’ he said, like someone telling a waiter he needed a fork. ‘I need an heir. I’d quite like a daughter or two. A family, I suppose you’d say.’

‘You’ve picked a funny time to start the auditions,’ I said and my tone of amusement, my air of calm interest, was quite a feat, even though I myself say so. ‘Why not wait until next season? You’d not get in the door of the first ball before one of the mammas picked you off.’

Alec shuddered.

‘I can’t face a season and the mammas,’ he said. ‘Not to mention some drip of a girl making eyes at me. I’d like to marry a woman who wants a home and a family of her own and won’t pester me with a lot of silly nonsense beforehand.’

‘You want to marry Hugh,’ I said. ‘If only he had a sister. Or a niece, I suppose.’

‘Sister,’ said Alec. ‘Someone over thirty and past all the lovey-dovey stuff would be ideal.’

‘Well,’ I said briskly, ‘I shouldn’t have thought you’d have any trouble. A personable young man under forty, good family, nice estate, reasonable income.’

‘Would you like to tap my ribs with a rubber hammer, Dan?’ he said. ‘I told you I couldn’t face the mammas and you instantly become one.’

I laughed and he laughed with me and Barrow came in for the soup plates and the evening passed away on teasing and stock market gossip. It wasn’t until I was in my little motorcar driving home that I let the mask fall and plunged into mourning. It was over then, Gilver and Osborne, Alec and me. Whatever he said about a sensible girl and life going on as usual except punctuated by babies, there was not the faintest chance that our pleasant round would survive the advent of a wife. I could picture her already and, try as I might, I did not care for her.

So I stopped in on Hugh, instead of making straight for my sitting room.

‘How would you like to go away for a bit?’ I said. ‘A change of air, build you up again.’

‘Bournemouth kind of thing?’ said Hugh. ‘Rather late in the year, isn’t it? Last thing Donald needs is a sea fog seeping in at his bedroom window. I just paid him a visit and I see what you mean.’

‘How about mountain air?’ I said. ‘Some crisp mountain air and those clever doctors?’

‘Germans?’

‘Swiss, I was thinking.’

‘Same thing,’ said Hugh. ‘Can’t say I could face the journey anyway.’

‘Then put it out of your mind,’ I said, bending to peck his cheek. ‘Goodnight, dear.’

‘Are you all right, Dandy?’ he said, understandably startled. ‘I didn’t mean to shoot the idea out of the sky, you know. I’m with you as far as the clever doctors anyway. Marvellous what they can do with salts and hot towels and electrical currents these days.’

By which I took it that Hugh had been reading the back pages of old
Blackwood’s Magazine
s again. I left him to his amusements and retired to mine, and to my daily duties too.

It was a good thing that Gilver and Osborne
had
been enjoying a peaceful spell because this evening, when I did not even open my correspondence until bedtime, was typical. We had caught a thief in March, unmasked a poison pen in June and then apart from Alec tracking down a bad debtor in August – this being quite a speciality of his these days, much less sordid to have someone like him tap the shoulder and ‘old man’ and ‘dear chap’ his way to a settlement than to have bailiffs calling – our little operation had been in dry dock. That was about to change.

‘Dear Messrs Gilver and Osborne,’ the letter began. ‘We would like to engage you to solve a murder which has been grossly mishandled by the Dumfriesshire Constabulary and scandalously hushed up by the Dumfries Procurator, leaving our dear departed mother without justice and letting a brutal killer go free.’

I turned up the lamp and put my feet back down on the floor; I had tucked them under me, but this letter needed a straight back.

‘Our mother was a guest at Laidlaw’s Hydropathic Establishment in Moffat during the late summer, there to take the waters for a recurring back complaint. She was recovering nicely and was otherwise in excellent health, being a sensible lady of quiet habits.
Her heart was perfectly sound.
The doctor’s diagnosis of acute heart failure was nonsense and the Fiscal’s capitulation is an outrage. We await notice of your terms and remain, sincerely yours, Herbert Addie and Mrs Jas. Bowie (née Addie), “Fairways”, Braid Road, Edinburgh.’

Well.

On the one hand, murder is the gold standard for a detective and any of that ilk who says otherwise is afraid of sounding callous and so is lying. On the other hand, these Addies – or rather this Addie and Bowie née – sounded like the very worst sort of client. They had already made up their minds and looked to Gilver and Osborne for corroboration; I would be forced to warn them, along with sending our terms, that we were servants of truth and that our fee only paid for us finding out
whether
, finding out
what
. No treasures on earth could buy our agreement to finding out
that
, dear dead mother or no.

However, the Addies were only part of the picture here. Fate, or coincidence as she is known in these rational days, had painted rather more, in the form of a hydropathic hotel with, one assumed, salts and hot towels and electrical currents, whither a loving wife and mother could remove her convalescing household while the plumbers were in. So long as she did not mention the brutal killer still at large, anyway.