Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (34 page)

‘I think I prophesied red ribbon though,’ I said, ‘and this is blue.’

‘Sherlock Holmes would be ashamed of you,’ Alec said. ‘Now, let’s see. What else is in here? Oh, my word! Is it? It is. This might be something useful.’

He held up a small, narrow black book, with gilt edges to its pages and a pencil with a tassel fitted down its spine. It was a diary.

‘In which I very much hope Mrs Enid Addie wrote down all her suspicions about the individual who had threatened to do her harm,’ Alec said.

‘Oh, you’re in favour of women scribbling lots of silly notes now, are you?’ I said. Alec was riffling through it, squinting. ‘Can’t you read her writing?’ I guessed. ‘Oh well then. I suppose you’d better give it to me.’

It was not the prize for which I had been hoping. Mrs Addie was a woman of orderly mind who used her diary to record appointments and anniversaries and to remind herself to pay bills. The only longer items than these were Bible passages, entered each Monday as she turned over a new page, anything from ‘A faithful friend is the medicine of life’ to ‘Better a dinner of herbs’ which was hard to take from a woman of her size.

‘Hmph, nothing on the last day,’ said Alec, looking over my shoulder. I had gone quickly, of course, to September and the clues I hoped to find there and it was troubling indeed to see the blank pages after all the luncheons and dinners and meetings at clubs. She had jotted down her daughter’s birthday in December. ‘Lace?’ she had written, and had marked the day of her Ladies’ Circle Christmas entertainment in good time too. ‘King’s Theatre!’ she had written, but nothing could have spoken more eloquently of a life snuffed out than the way the pencilled notes got to September the eighth and then all but stopped.

‘I wonder why she didn’t put in the Bible passage on the last Monday,’ I said.

‘Maybe she did it in the evening,’ Alec said. ‘And she was dead by then.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to write something in your diary every week when you turn over the fresh page, you’d do it on Monday morning when you sat down at your writing table to prepare for what was coming.’

‘Well, perhaps it was because she was away from home,’ Alec said.

‘Perhaps,’ I said. I continued turning the pages. ‘Look here though. In June she was at a friend’s in Inverness. Look, all week. But she still filled in her passage. “The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Doesn’t seem as though she expected to enjoy the visit much if she needed that to comfort her. And look again in February. She was in the sleeper train coming back from London. “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way” etc, etc. Oh Alec, look at this one! “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” For the week of the church jumble sale. It’s priceless. I like Mrs Addie more and more.’

Alec was nodding. ‘You’re right, Dan. She’d have loved to have thought up a good passage to go along with a spell in the Hydro. Something with a bit of anointing, perhaps. Or even “Physician, heal thyself” at a pinch.’

‘So why didn’t she do it?’

‘Maybe … if she died of natural causes,’ Alec said. ‘If we’re wrong about murder and misadventure and it was all perfectly innocent … maybe she was already feeling rotten on Monday morning, which is why she didn’t eat or drink anything, and she felt too bad to pore over a Bible. They’ve always got such tiny print. If it was a sick headache …’

I had already had one beam of sunshine and choir of angels in this case. As Alec spoke, the beam of sunshine returned and threatened to blind me. The choir thundered and bellowed until I was deafened too.

‘I know how she died,’ I said. ‘I know what killed her. And, Alec, it’s beastly.’

Alec started up with a jolt. ‘I got some brandy sent up,’ he said. ‘Only I forgot to offer you one with all the excitement of the bag. Have one now, Dan. You’ve gone an awfully funny colour.’ When he had given me a large glassful and I had taken two sips I felt rather better again and I laid out my revelation.

‘She didn’t write in the diary on Monday morning because she was in the mud bath,’ I said. ‘She went in the mud bath on Sunday. She even said it to Mrs Bowie on the telephone. She was ringing off because she was going for her bath. And I thought she meant a bath with ducks and bubbles. But everything is a bath here. Hot lamps and salt is bath. Faradaic rays is a bath. She went in her bath on Sunday evening. And by Monday evening she was dead. Dehydrated, empty, starved and thirsty, and finally dead.

‘And the point of planting toffees in her bag wasn’t to make us think she’d been out – not particularly – it was to make us think she had been around at all on the Monday when the shops are open and had some sort of ordinary day.’

‘Dear God, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘I’m very sorry to say I think you’re right.’

‘What a horrible, wicked way to kill someone. What a wicked, wicked thing to do. And to this woman.’ I waved the diary at him. ‘A woman who helps out at jumble sales and buys lace for her daughter. A woman who makes daring little jests with Bible passages that no one except herself will ever see. How could anyone have done that to her?’ Alec refilled my glass even though it was hardly started. I think he had to do something.

‘We will avenge her,’ he said. ‘At least whoever it was isn’t going to get away with it, eh?’

I took another swallow – one really could not call it a sip – and nodded.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just all of a sudden …’

‘I know,’ said Alec. ‘So. Who was it?’

‘We agree that it wasn’t Regina?’ I said. ‘She’d never have left the bag in the locker if she had known Mrs Addie died in the mud room.’

‘Agreed,’ said Alec. ‘And not the doctor. Apart from the fact that she is a doctor, she’s too upset about it. Horrified. I mean if you murder someone you don’t go and weep in the room where you did it, do you?’

‘One might want to,’ I said, ‘but one would probably resist, it’s true. But why would Tot kill a blameless Edinburgh matron like Mrs Addie? I can imagine him doing someone down for monetary gain. I can imagine him shoving a girl off a cliff if she had got her hooks into him. But why would he pick one of the Hydro guests and kill her?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Alec. ‘Mrs Cronin?’

‘Yes,’ I said, nodding slowly. ‘There’s something about Mrs Cronin. Something about whether it was Sunday or Monday or …’

‘She doesn’t approve of treatments on Sunday,’ Alec said. ‘Is that it?’

‘So it couldn’t have been her, you mean? But could someone plan a murder but not want to do it on the Sabbath day? That’s an odd conjunction of sin and piety, surely.’

‘And besides,’ Alec said, ‘Mrs Addie had been coming to the Hydro for years. Why would Mrs Cronin suddenly kill her now?’

‘Tot, then,’ I said.

‘Maybe. Mrs Addie could have found out about the casino and threatened him.’

‘But how could Tot get a woman like Mrs Addie – any woman really – into a mud bath? She’d shriek the place down.’

‘Well, it had to be someone who could get in and out of that mud room,’ said Alec. ‘Someone with a key.’

‘Only if she died in the bath before it left the mud room,’ I said. ‘What if she was waylaid in the grounds and dragged off to the apple house and killed there? What if the bath had already been moved by the time Mrs Addie died in it? It could have been anyone in that case. It could have been a wandering maniac.’

‘But the Laidlaws covered it up and got Regina to wash her and got Dr Ramsay to sign a certificate,’ Alec said. ‘Why would they do that if she had been murdered by a wandering lunatic?’

‘To save the reputation of the Hydro while continuing to run a casino that destroys it? I don’t understand their feelings about the Hydro at all. Dot wants to run it and Tot wants to sell. Then Tot wants to keep it and Dot wants to sell. What changed? And now they seem to be in agreement that their time here is almost done, but they’re still arguing as much as ever.’

‘I think the moment has arrived,’ Alec said, ‘to hand all of this over to the police. We’ve got plenty of evidence now. If I telephone to the Edinburgh pathologist tomorrow and tell him about the mud bath he’ll be on to the Fiscal like a bullet. He hated having to conclude “natural causes”, you know, but there was nothing else he could do.’

‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow we hand it all over. To the Edinburgh Fiscal, via the pathologist. Agreed. Just one thing I want to do tonight, though. I’ve got a padlock on my spare wheel. I’d like to go and padlock up the apple house. Just in case. Just to be on the safe side.’

Alec stood and held out a hand to me, smiling with great affection – perhaps I still looked ghastly – and then jumped clear into the air at the sound of a knock on his door.

‘Who is it?’ Alec said, opening the door just a little.

‘Ah, Mr Osborne,’ said the oily, chuckling voice. ‘Good, good. We’re missing you downstairs, you know. The poker table’s not the same without you and I knew you weren’t away on another of your mysterious jaunts tonight again. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t asleep. Make sure you were coming.’

‘I’m not sure, Laidlaw,’ Alec said. ‘I’m rather tired this evening.’

I saw a quick movement as Laidlaw darted to the side to see past Alec into the room. I do not think he saw me; it was just a flash of the side of his head that
I
caught before Alec pulled the door to.

‘Not going to bed, are you?’ Laidlaw said, with another burbling chuckle in his voice. ‘What a waste of an evening that is! Come on down, old chap, and I’ll stand you a round. I shan’t be there myself tonight – well, off and on, you know – but I just wanted to see that everything’s shipshape. Come on down, eh?’

‘I’ll see,’ Alec said. ‘I’ll sit and read awhile and then I’ll see.’

‘Ha-ha-ha,’ said Laidlaw. ‘Yes, nothing like a spot of “reading”.’ Even able to see only a slice of his shoulder, still I knew he was winking. Alec was flushed dark when he closed the door and turned to me.

‘Odious creature,’ he said.

‘Have you been losing lots of money?’ I said. ‘Why is he so desperate for you to be there?’

‘No idea,’ said Alec. ‘And there’s something up with him tonight. He was doing his act, but the strain was showi—’ He was interrupted by a second knock at the door, this one very different from the first: timid and soft.

‘And now Dorothea!’ I said. But I was wrong. When Alec opened the door a crack this time he said a startled hello, then swung it wide and pulled Grant inside.

‘Oh, sir!’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry to—’ Then she saw me. ‘Oh, thank goodness you’re here, madam. I don’t know what to do.’

‘What is it, Grant?’ I said. ‘Alec, give her a brandy.’ Grant took the glass and swallowed a goodly measure without so much as blinking.

‘It’s tonight, madam,’ she said. ‘The anniversary. The centennial. That Loveday Merrick has decided it’s tonight and it’s all my fault!’

‘The Big Seance?’ I said. ‘How is it
your
fault? They’ve been talking about it since before you got here. Donald and Teddy overheard about it days ago.’

‘But I gave them the last name,’ Grant said. ‘Mr Gilver told me another one – Mrs Ostler – and I said she’d come to me and that’s it. Fifteen of them. Joseph the Miller, Old Abigail Simpson, Mary Patterson, Big Effie, the grandmother, the blind child, Ann Dougal, the Haldane sisters, Marjorie Docherty, Daft Jamie, one man nobody knows, two nameless women and now Mrs Ostler and that’s the lot.’

‘You’ve been doing your homework,’ I said.

‘It was the master,’ said Grant. ‘He told me all about it and made me learn the names.’ I could believe it too. ‘And now they want me to go up the Gallow Hill with them and be the channel!’

‘You could always say that a sixteenth has been in touch,’ Alec said. ‘And then wait around for the seventeenth who never shows up.’

‘Mr Merrick doesn’t think the last two are coming,’ Grant said. ‘He reckons if corpses who’d never been buried right made ghosts …’ She flushed, darted a glance at Alec and then looked away again. I did not follow her but he seemed to.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘No one would get a night’s sleep in Flanders, eh?’

‘That makes sense,’ I said. ‘It’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard out of any of them. How would you feel about going if you knew Mr Osborne and I were nearby, Grant?’

‘Nearby where?’ she said.

‘In the trees, in earshot,’ Alec said. ‘Hiding behind a fallen log on the far side of the clearing. And if you start to worry then just say a word … pick a word, Dandy.’

‘Resurrection,’ I said.

‘A word that wouldn’t happen to come up any other way,’ Alec said patiently.

‘Oh. Yes, I see. Mohair.’

‘Perfect,’ said Alec. ‘If you feel frightened, Grant, or just want to stop, say “mohair”, loud and clear, and we’ll swoop in and get you.’

‘Thank you,’ Grant said. ‘That’s a great comfort, sir. Can we make it cashmere, please?’

The Big Seance, as I could not help calling it to myself, was set for midnight – of course – and so Alec and I had plenty of time to unfasten the padlock from my spare wheel and make our careful way over the dark lawns to the apple house. The key was where we had left it above the lintel and I had remembered correctly that there was a hasp set into the edge of the door.

‘It doesn’t smell nearly as bad,’ I said. ‘I wonder why.’

‘Familiarity breeding the contempt out of us,’ Alec said.

‘I do know I’m probably being silly,’ I went on. ‘It’s sat there for over a month. There’s no reason to suppose it won’t sit there overnight until the police can come.’

Alec nodded absently but he also reached the key down and turned it in the lock. He opened the door. I held my breath for a wave of stink which never came.

‘Your instincts are sound, Dandy,’ he said. ‘But your timing is terrible. It’s gone.’

He struck a match and held it up and we looked together at the inside of the little room, empty except for an elderly apple crate or two. The floor was rather dusty, but for all ordinary purposes quite bare.

‘Someone’s onto us,’ I said. ‘Did Tot Laidlaw drum up that silly excuse to come to your room just so he could sniff you?’

‘Possibly, possibly,’ Alec said. ‘I wonder where they took it, whoever spirited it away.’