Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (37 page)

‘Not bribery,’ said the doctor. ‘He was going to write off my losings.’

At last, I remembered the other mention of a respectable man. Hugh had said that Tot’s casino attracted them.
That
was who I had seen slipping into the Hydro by the smoking-room door. He was on his way to the poker table or roulette wheel, where he would not have to pay his debts, at least not at twenty shillings to the pound.

‘And I wouldn’t have done it if there was a mark of violence on her,’ the doctor said. ‘She died of natural causes. She must have. Heart failure was the truth after all.’

‘She died as you were going to,’ I said. ‘Only without the fire to make it quick for her. Now, duck under! Alec, please! Alec,
hurry
!’

There was a huge creak and as I took in an enormous breath and let myself sink, I saw the ceiling above us give way and let a ball of yellow fire, ragged with grey and orange fringes all around, come rolling down towards us and then I was under the cold water and the silence filled my ears. I had lost Dr Ramsay. I felt for where he should be, but there was only the swish of empty water there and I knew that I would be able to hold my breath much longer if I kept from moving. So I crouched down as low as I could with my eyes shut and prayed and prayed, until my chest was searing with pain and my head was pounding.

When I could not hold on another second, I pushed off the bottom and came up through the warming water, letting my lungs empty and then filling them again as soon as my mouth broke the surface. It was hot and bright, filled with the sound of breaking timber and shattering glass, a nightmare place. I dragged in another breath, looking all around for Alec or Dr Ramsay, but the surface of the water was blocked with sizzling debris and I could see nothing. I closed my eyes, gulped as much air as I could and went under again.

I counted to two hundred before I felt myself begin to swoon and pushed upwards the second time. Up in the air, the nightmare was worse than ever. The ceiling was gone and a black chasm with fire at its edges rose above me. All around, pyres of broken timber and plaster were crackling like bonfires and belching smoke up into the air. Someone was screaming with pain nearby.

‘Alec!’ I tried to call out, but my voice was no more than a ragged whisper. ‘Oh, Alec.’ I looked up and saw a shard of floor beam coming straight down towards me like a burning arrow. I dragged in a breath and sank again.

It was warm all the way to the bottom this time, and I felt sluggish and heavy in my clothes and shoes. Odd objects bumped against me, but when I reached out my hand it was pieces of plaster, turning to mud in the wet, and I pushed them away.

I knew that my lungs gave in more quickly this third time. It seemed hardly a moment before I was rising again and when I got to the surface I lay back weak and panting, before I dared open my eyes.

The fire in the resting room was still crackling and leaping, but in here the flames were mere flickers and the smoke had cleared. I lifted my arms and let them float on the surface of the water, then shrieked as someone clutched my hand.

‘Dan!’ I turned and there was Alec, surging towards me through the debris in the pool. His face was shining red, his lips blistered, but he was alive and he was smiling at me. ‘She wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get to you for all the burning rubbish but I’ve been shouting and shouting.’

‘I was under the water,’ I said. ‘Holding my breath.’

‘What a good idea,’ Alec said, touching his lips and wincing. ‘I’m going to look like a toffee apple tomorrow.’

‘Where’s Dr Ramsay?’ I said. Alec nodded to a spot behind me but then tightened his grip on my arm.

‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘He tried to get out and a piece of the ceiling fell on him.’

‘I told him to hold his breath and duck!’ I said. ‘Is he dead?’

Alec raised his eyebrows and then winced again as his wrinkling forehead stung.

‘He’s very very dead,’ he said. ‘Please don’t look, darling. Now, I reckon since we’re soaking wet, if we go the way we came we’ve got a fair chance of getting out of here. What do you say? We can always come back if it gets sticky.’

I shook my head, feeling the rat’s tails of my hair lashing back and forth. With every gulping breath I was taking in more of the sulphurous burning stink.

‘I’m never coming back to this bloody place ever again,’ I said and began wading to the edge of the pool to haul myself out. ‘I understand now why fire and brimstone are such an effective threat, I can tell you.’

We sizzled a bit in some of the corridors on our way to the outside and the floor felt hot through my shoes now and then, but we met no serious harm and when we emerged and came reeling out onto the lawns, we might not have looked as beleaguered as we felt for the crowd gathered there ignored us absolutely. They were all looking upwards to exactly the same spot on the first floor, some with their hands clasped over their mouths and some with their hands clasped for praying. I cast my gaze to where they were facing and saw Alec, from the corner of my eye, do the same.

Framed in one of the windows, a figure stood with a bundle of papers in its arms. The papers were on fire but she – it was a woman; it was Dr Laidlaw – threw them out anyway.

‘Stamp on them!’ she said. ‘Don’t use the hose. My work! My life’s work!’

‘Never mind your life’s work,’ shouted one of the firemen. ‘Save your
life
, you silly lassie. Jump and I’ll catch you.’

She bent and picked up another armful of paper folders and notebooks, casting them out of the window and then screaming as she saw them start to burn while they fell. Her hair was on fire now and one sleeve of her dress too, and yet no one turned away. We simply stood there, horrified, watching.

‘Jump and I’ll catch you!’ called the fireman again. Three of his colleagues came, running heavily in their boots and helmets, and the four of them stretched a tarpaulin sheet under the window.

‘Jump, Dr Laidlaw,’ someone else cried.

‘Do what your father would tell you!’ It was Mrs Cronin, standing wringing her hands, gazing up in horror.

‘Dorothea, for God’s sake!’ It was Alec’s anguished voice beside me.

She seemed to look at him for a long still moment in the midst of all that chaos and confusion and then slowly she turned away, walked into the fire and was gone.

Then from all around came shrieks of disbelief and sounds of weeping as though, with that one last horror, this dreadful night had undone everyone.

‘All for nothing,’ said Mrs Cronin, beside me, still staring. ‘All for nothing after all.’ Then there came a cry of ‘Nurse!’ from over by the benches and Mrs Cronin gathered herself and turned away.

‘I was going to propose,’ Alec said, once she had gone. He spoke quite calmly, as though of some small matter which had slipped his mind. I turned and regarded him, realising only now how many little signs I had missed and how unknowingly cruel I had been, teasing him. Now it was time to be kind.

‘I don’t think you would have if you had really known her,’ I said. He did not turn. He was still looking up at the window, but he cocked his head a little my way. ‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. Right now we need to get you some ointment for your face. I can’t believe you didn’t think to go under.’ I turned away, hoping to see an ambulance man who might help with some first aid, but what I saw was Grant, barrelling towards me with tears pouring down her face. She stopped dead three feet short and curtsied.

‘I’m very glad you’re all right,’ she said. ‘Madam.’

I felt my lip begin to wobble and held out my open arms. She stepped into them and hugged me so hard that drips of plunge-pool water were squeezed out of my clothes and fell into my shoes. Over her shoulder I saw Hugh, whose face was a battleground of at least four different emotions: shock at Grant, disgust with me, and horrified interest as to what had happened to Alec’s face; what was filling his eyes and making him sniff, though, was something it made me smile to see. He nodded and then turned and walked away. I would never allude to the fact that I saw his shoulders shaking as he wept out his feelings quietly for no one to witness.

‘I’m so glad to see you safe and well, my dear Mrs Gilver,’ said Loveday Merrick. He took off the magnificent astrakhan overcoat and gave it to me. ‘I can’t imagine why that woman told me the doctor was in the mud room. I would never have forgiven myself if you had come to harm because of me.’

‘Who
are
you, Mr Merrick?’ I said. ‘I know you’re not who everyone believes you to be. And how did you know what that little room
was
?’

But he saw me swaying on my feet and made the same decision I had for Alec moments before.

‘I shall call upon you tomorrow, if I may,’ he replied, ‘and tell you the whole story.’

‘You can come tonight and sleep in an armchair, if you like,’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying to think how many refugees we could take in.’

He bowed his acceptance. ‘More than I deserve after I put you in danger.’

‘But a doctor
was
in the mud room,’ I said. ‘Just not Dr Laidlaw. One of the local men. He didn’t escape, I’m very sorry to say.’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Right enough, she didn’t say a name. Just “the doctor”.’

‘Who was it who told you?’ I asked him.

‘I didn’t catch her name either,’ Merrick said. ‘A stout lady in a robe and turban. I haven’t seen her again since she spoke to me.’

The police, in the persons of Sergeant Simpson and the same smooth-cheeked boy I had met before, were on the scene now and, although all I wanted to do in the world was peel off my soaking, stinking clothes and fall into my bed with my arms around Bunty, I veered over to the sergeant on my way to the drive and Hugh’s motorcar and stood squarely in front of him.

‘This fire wasn’t an accident,’ I said.

‘No need to convince me, madam,’ said Sergeant Simpson. ‘A great white elephant like this going up just as business is going down. I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘And two people at least have lost their lives in it,’ I said. ‘One was deliberately shut up so he couldn’t escape. Dr Ramsay from Well Street.’ The sergeant’s eyebrows rose and he swept off his cap.

‘Right enough?’ he said. ‘Well, that puts a very different face on things. By all accounts the Laidlaw woman was a suicide but what you’ve just told me is murder, plain and simple. If you’ll come down to the station and make a statement, madam.’ I could feel my face fall.

‘
Could
I do it tomorrow, Sergeant Simpson?’ I pleaded. ‘I’m dead on my feet. Couldn’t you just put Tot Laidlaw in jail tonight anyway?’ The sergeant was shaking his head. ‘Where is he?’ Simpson nodded over my shoulder and I turned. Across at the fountain, where the benches were set in rows with blanketed figures resting on them, Tot Laidlaw was very much in evidence, walking to and fro with towels and mugs of tea – I was right; someone somehow had got a kettle going – and stopping to lay his hand on shoulders and once even a brow.

‘Would you have a man to spare to send over to Auchenlea?’ I asked. Sergeant Simpson thought a moment and then nodded. I crossed to Laidlaw and took him by the arm.

‘My dear Mr Laidlaw,’ I said. ‘I am so very sorry about your poor sister.’ Tot switched his expression from cod sympathy to cod anguish as though he had turned a dial. ‘Now, you must get some rest tonight somehow,’ I said. ‘Whenever you feel you can leave, I insist you come to Auchenlea and spend a few hours at ease. Tomorrow will be a trial and you need to prepare for it.’

‘Mrs Gilver, I couldn’t possibly,’ he began. ‘I have no means of getting there. My motorcar has taken some of the wounded to Dumfries to the infirmary already.’

‘I’ve thought of that,’ I said. ‘One of Sergeant Simpson’s men is going to drive you.’ His eyes flashed but he could hardly show his hand by refusing. Instead he gave me one of his sweeping bows.

‘If I can,’ he said. ‘And thank you.’

Then I saw Hugh standing waving at me from the rhododendrons which bordered the drive and, gratefully, I left it all behind me.

Hugh’s face was thunderous and what with the soot and the sheen of heat he looked like the very devil. Normal service had evidently been resumed.

‘Why are all those people in my Rolls?’ he said.

‘We’re taking them home and giving them succour,’ I told him. ‘It’s the least we can do.’

Somehow the word had got to Pallister and Mrs Tilling in advance of our arrival and, when we entered the hall at almost half past three, the fire was burning there and blankets were set ready in the armchairs. The drawing-room fire was just as high and there beds had been made on the sofas and footstools drawn up to the chairs to fashion more. In the dining room soup was keeping warm in an electric contraption and as soon as she heard us coming Mrs Tilling appeared with two tall jugs of cocoa.

Mr Loveday and the four elderly ladies we had brought along sank down into chairs and let Mrs Tilling and Grant begin to fuss over them.

‘How many guests, sir?’ said Pallister.

‘Five,’ said Hugh.

‘We’re ready for eleven,’ Pallister replied. ‘I took the liberty of asking Master Teddy to move into Master Donald’s room an hour or so ago. I’ve vacated my own quarters – I shan’t be retiring tonight, of course – and the female servants have managed to make room for three women in their quarters. So perhaps I could ask Drysdale to return for another carload?’

‘Very good, Pallister,’ said Hugh. He stalked off to the stairs and, I suspected, the bathroom, but not before Mrs Tilling called out.

‘I’ve put sacks for sooty clothes in all three of the bathrooms and laid out dressing gowns. It would help a great deal if you just used the sprays and don’t fill the bath itself and put the boiler under strain.’

Hugh stopped as though he had been shot in the back and when he began again climbing the stairs he was a broken man. To be forbidden a proper bath, and urged instead into one of these new-fangled operations so that a load of strangers could use his hot water was the final straw on this dreadful night.

‘Poor old Hugh,’ Alec said. ‘He didn’t cash his chips, you know.’