Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (30 page)

‘My thoughts exactly, Grant,’ I said, hoping that I sounded convincing. They had been my thoughts, my whole life through, up until that morning. ‘What has he been up to?’

‘He sat me in a chair and chanted at me until my eyes were crossed. It didn’t do any good, because I was reciting poetry in my head all the time and he’d no chance of mesmerising me.’

‘Just as well. Did you pretend?’

‘Of course,’ said Grant. ‘What was William’s surname, he wanted to know. And where did he die and what was his message for his mother?’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I didn’t venture so much as an initial for the surname,’ she said. ‘I said he’d died in Scotland and that he wanted to tell his mother he was sorry.’

‘They can’t have liked the “Scotland” bit,’ I said, chuckling.

‘Not much. Anyway, madam, I’ve managed to find out a wee bit more than I’ve given away, if you’d like me to tell you.’

We were at Auchenlea now and I urged her to accompany me to my bedroom and discuss things as I changed.

‘Why’s that then?’ she asked with a touch of the old Grant. ‘Madam.’ She had chosen my clothes that morning.

‘Smell,’ I said, shrugging out of my coat and handing it to her. She sniffed very gingerly.

‘Just smells like the well, but worse,’ she said. I sniffed at it again. Was she right? The morning’s sudden rush of terror had receded even further and I was almost ready to dismiss it as pure fancy. Still, the smell was real. I shuddered and set a good pace upstairs to get rid of it.

‘Here’s what I’ve found out,’ Grant said, as I was undressing. ‘All the while saying I don’t want to know and it’s wickedness and why won’t the good Lord take this curse off of my head.’

‘Which I did think was jolly clever, I must say. You seemed absolutely not one bit as though you were trying to find things out from them.’

‘And so I found out all the more,’ Grant said. ‘And here it is. It started about a month ago.’ That was no surprise. ‘And it started in a very small way too. The usual thing; a snippet in
Spiritualists’ Weekly
’ – it appeared that such was indeed the name of the coloured paper Mrs Scott had been reading – ‘saying that a lady had died of fright at the Moffat Hydro after seeing a ghost. It was just a report, a letter from a respectable person, a professional man, and they get them all the time. Who would have thought it, eh?’

‘Not I.’ I picked up a tea dress but at Grant’s frown and small shake of the head I put it back again.

‘So one medium came to the Hydro to see what she could see. Very discreetly.’

‘Not discreetly enough though, I’ll bet. Do you think if I rub my hair with lavender it will do?’ Grant sniffed my head and stood up sharply.

‘I see what you mean, actually, madam,’ she said. ‘That’s really quite nasty. Anyway, to go on with my report, it was when this first medium was here that one of the other guests mentioned a second ghost, and this one by name, and it was a name the medium knew. So she ups and writes to that Mrs Scott who is a very big noise in Glasgow and by sheer chance Mrs Scott has had a letter of her own, quoting the name of a third ghost, and she was just on the point of trying to decide whether to pack her traps and come to investigate it.’

‘Ah yes, I think I heard a veiled mention of that,’ I said.

‘And by the time she got here, there was another of her acquaintances just arriving – it’s a small world I daresay – because she had actually been rung up on the telephone all the way in Carlisle by someone who had been staying here and had left early because Lizzie Haldane was in her bedroom and wouldn’t go away even when she – the guest this is – shook a Bible at her.’

‘How did you get all of this out of them, Grant?’

‘Och, they’re trying to convince me to stay and be part of it,’ she said. ‘They’re talking about the centennial and how it’s the biggest thing there’s been in spiritualists’ circles since that automatic writing in America that got them all birling.’

‘Now that is very interesting,’ I said. ‘A centennial, eh? I think I had only heard the word anniversary up until now. A centennial of what, I wonder.’

‘Not the last hanging at the Gallow Hill anyway,’ Grant said. ‘I made sure and asked about that on account of what “William” is saying. They stopped hanging in Moffat a lot of years ago. It’s all down in Dumfries now. I’ll run you a bath, madam, and tell Mrs Tilling to hold back luncheon.’

I dropped Grant at the end of the Hydro drive in the afternoon and watched with wonder as she assumed the character of the devout little mouse who was cursed with a gift of seeing. She put her head down, clasped her hands in front of her and managed to shrink her shoulders until they were almost gone completely. She turned her toes inwards from their usual confident ten-to-two and began to creep towards the hotel.

I was there to try to decide my next step. If Alec had been around, perhaps I could have summoned the courage to return to the apple house and face whatever was waiting for me. As it was I ended up back on the terrace again, sitting with Hugh.

‘Feeling better, Dandy?’ he asked. ‘You look it.’

‘Mrs Tilling has cured me,’ I said. ‘With clear soup and cold chicken.’

‘Ah,’ said Hugh. ‘Yes, it was mutton stew and batter pudding here. It wouldn’t have been good for you.’ We sat a while. ‘So,’ he continued at last, ‘how’s it all going?’

‘It’s very hard to say,’ I told him. ‘The family exhumed the body and tested it for poison but thus far there’s nothing doing.’ He looked somewhere between startled and flabbergasted at this news. I am sure he put my detecting down under ‘dabbles’ for the most part and so hearing that doctors and Fiscals and pathologists jumped when Alec and I clicked our fingers – or so it might have seemed – was an arresting idea. ‘And I thought I had tracked down a missing piece of equipment which might have gone wrong and caused the death even if the body didn’t show signs of violence. But it turned out to be … something else.’ I could not possibly tell him, but if I did not tell someone I would burst with it.

Hugh was nodding in that way of his when he is only half listening to me. Then, still not paying full attention, he turned and spoke.

‘Can’t you use the brochure?’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ I looked at his breast pocket, from where as ever the folded catalogue of delights was peeping out. He removed it and handed it over.

‘If you went through the brochure and cross-checked it with the typed sheet they hand out to the day-guests to say what’s on offer, wouldn’t that tell you what they’ve ditched?’

I was aware of the flush rising up through my neck and settling in two spots on my face.

‘Didn’t you think of that?’ Hugh said. ‘I hope you’ve not been chasing around on needless adventures, Dandy, when the answer was right here in my breast pocket.’ I said nothing. He looked more closely at me. ‘You’ve got a little blemish on your cheek,’ he said. ‘I can see it quite clearly now that you’ve – ahem – got your colour back.’

Ah yes, I thought. A blemish on my cheek. Or rather a graze from hugging a tree when I almost fell out of it because I did not think to look in the usual place for a key to open a door. ‘As I say, though,’ I told him, with an attempt at dignity, ‘it wasn’t equipment gone wrong at all.’

‘Still,’ said Hugh. ‘Worth it, perhaps. Just to be thorough.’

‘Oh, I suppose so,’ I said, with little grace. At least if I stayed there humouring Hugh I would be far away from the apple house.

‘I shall go and fetch today’s sheet for you right now,’ Hugh said, unwinding his blanket and standing. ‘Glad to help when I can.’

I had started in on the easy ones before he returned. The Turkish and Russian baths were available, as I knew only too well. Salt rubs, oil rubs and mustard wraps too.

‘Here we go then,’ he said, striding along the terrace towards me. He looked in peak form again, although whether from rest and hydropathy or from besting his wife at her own business it was hard to say. ‘You read them off, Dandy, and I’ll see if they’re on here.’

‘Electric heat baths,’ I began. ‘Faradaic, galvanic, diathermic, ultraviolet and ionised.’

‘All present and correct,’ said Hugh. ‘Speak up though, won’t you?’

‘No, dear, I won’t,’ I said. ‘We are trying to catch a possible murderer, remember? Nauheim, including nascent carbonic and Schott exercises, plombiers, pine bath – at last something one can understand: although how one bathes in pine …? – Aix douche and Vichy douche.’

‘All here,’ said Hugh. ‘And the pine bath is quite lovely, I can tell you.’

‘Hydropathic baths then,’ I said, turning the page. ‘Or what you and I would call water at home. Needle, spray, sitz, long. Is a long bath just a bath?’

‘In the waters,’ said Hugh.

‘Head, eye, ear and nose sprays, ugh. Ascending sprays.’ Hugh cleared his throat and frowned. ‘Wave baths, Turkish baths, steam baths, plunging pool, swimming baths – we knew about all of these – and that’s just about it.’ I turned another page.

‘And that’s it here too,’ Hugh said. ‘Now, at least you can discount the theory of a treatment gone wrong. I still say this was well worthwhile, don’t you? Dandy?’ He turned to look at me. ‘Dandy?’

‘There’s one more,’ I said. I had let the brochure fall open on my lap.

‘You’ve gone pale again,’ said Hugh. ‘Shall I fetch you a glass of water?’

‘Not Moffat water,’ I said. ‘That smell.’

‘What have you read that’s upset you so?’ Hugh said. He went as far as to reach out a hand towards me.

‘Mud,’ I said. ‘A mud bath. Not … what I imagined at all.’

‘Ah, I asked about the mud bath,’ said Hugh, taking the brochure and flipping through its pages. ‘They’ve only got one in the ladies’ side, since it’s mostly good for shedding weight, I believe. And even the ladies’ one is—’ He broke off.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a little barrel sort of thing about three feet square and four feet tall, and one sits in it, up to one’s neck in sulphurous mud. And I would imagine one comes out really quite filthy so that even if one washes and washes one would still have dirt under one’s nails and so on.’

‘Hmph. Sounds nasty,’ said Hugh, ‘but I don’t quite see why it’s upsetting you so. Not really.’

‘It’s the
smell
,’ I said again. ‘Imagine sitting in a stinking vat of sulphurous mud, and dying there.’ Hugh looked up sharply and his face, as mine had, turned pale. ‘What could anyone ever have done to deserve to die in a place like that?’

‘I can’t imagine,’ Hugh said. He remained pale but he stood up very decisively and looked around him, like an officer surveying a battlefield, or a matron a ward. ‘Will you be all right for a bit, Dandy my dear?’ I nodded. ‘I’m going to find the boys and take them away,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I really believed it until now.’

‘Shall I just come too?’ I said. ‘If we’re leaving.’ He wheeled round and fixed me with a look which would have done either matron or officer proud.

‘We’re
not
leaving,’ he said. ‘You and Alec are staying to solve this outrage and I shall help you. But it’s no place for the boys. Only I don’t like leaving you alone when you look absol—’ He stopped, with his mouth open, staring into the open french window of the drawing room. ‘Is that Grant?’ he said. ‘What on earth is
she
doing here? And what on earth is she wearing? She looks as though she’s joined a nunnery.’

‘She’ll be very pleased to hear that you think so,’ I said. ‘It’s exactly the impression she was hoping to give. Fetch her, would you, if you can do it discreetly, not if she’s with the mediums. She can sit with me while you get the boys to Auchenlea. We can always pretend just to have started chatting.’

‘Did you say “mediums”?’ asked Hugh. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Oh, that’s quite another part of the forest,’ I said. ‘Or possibly another forest entirely. At least I think so.’

‘Spirit mediums?’ said Hugh. ‘Oh, she’s seen us. She’s coming over.’

‘Madam, sir,’ said Grant. She would say no more until she knew for sure whether Hugh was to be trusted with whatever she had to tell me.

‘I know what’s going on, Grant,’ Hugh said. ‘Or at least I know that something is.’

‘Mr Merrick has offered up a sprat to catch a mackerel, madam,’ she said. ‘He wants me to ask if there’s a James here. Someone almost said the full name but he shushed her. I think they’re testing me.’

‘Grant,’ said Hugh, ‘please sit down and tell me what is going on. You are here disguised as a nun’ – Grant beamed – ‘to be tested by spirit mediums? I’m not sure I follow you.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I was exhausted by it all suddenly. ‘There’s some kind of ghost hunters’ gathering going on. There’s a centennial anniversary of … something bad and the ghosts are amassing.’ Grant had sat down on the edge of Hugh’s deckchair so he had no choice but to sink down beside me on mine. ‘Various people have reported being contacted by an assortment of ghosts but they’re still short of the number they’re expecting which is either fifteen or seventeen depending how you count them. Don’t look at me like that, Hugh. I’m only reporting what I’ve been told. Or what I’ve overhead, mostly.’

‘Now, some of the ghosts have names, sir,’ Grant chipped in. ‘And some of them don’t. So Madam’s idea was that I would think up a common name and say I’d been contacted and they’d believe it was one of the nameless ones introducing himself at last.’

‘I see,’ said Hugh. ‘Fifteen ghosts with names.’

‘Seventeen possibly,’ I said. ‘Big Effie, Marjorie Docherty, Old Abigail Simpson. I’ve got them written down but I can’t remember them all. Mary Patterson who repents of her sins. Lizzie and Peggy.’

‘Haldane,’ said Hugh. ‘Elizabeth and Peggy Haldane.’

‘That’s right, madam,’ said Grant, boggling at him. ‘That’s what Mrs Scott said this morning. Haldane.’

‘How in the blazes do you know that, Hugh?’ I said. ‘Good God, don’t tell me they’ve appeared to
you
.’

‘Merciful heavens,’ said Grant.

Hugh shook his head at both of us. ‘I know the name because I study my Scottish history,’ he said. ‘Or rather in this case because I listened to the ghost stories at my nurse’s knee. Those people you mentioned and several more were killed in Edinburgh by Burke and Hare. Almost exactly a hundred years ago.’