Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (20 page)

‘Mr Osborne,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Gilver.’ He took a breath to deliver a witticism but none came.

‘I’m so glad I ran into you again, Dr Laidlaw,’ I began. I felt Alec shift away from me and turn a little. ‘The coincidence grows and grows. I’ve just heard from one of the maids that Mrs Addie did indeed have two children. A son and a daughter, exactly as the ghost told me. What do you make of that?’

‘I – I cannot account for it,’ she said, with her voice breaking.

‘What’s this?’ said Alec, the traitor.

‘Oh, no doubt nothing,’ I replied, with a careless wave of my hand. ‘Perhaps I remembered reading something about it in the newspapers, subliminally, you know. Or whatever.’

‘Subconsciously,’ the doctor corrected.

‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘Was the death
in
the papers?’

Tot Laidlaw rubbed his hands together, a meaningless gesture just then, and laughed with a very dry barking sound.

‘Good heavens, I should think not,’ he said. ‘Good Lord! It was a heart attack that carried the poor woman off, you know. Long history of heart trouble, didn’t stick to her treatment diary. Well, one doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead …’

‘In that case, I really
am
puzzled,’ I said. ‘Although, as you said, Dr Laidlaw, the mind is a wondrous thing. But why on earth should I see the poor woman’s ghost floating out of an unused room in the Turkish bath of all places? Where
did
she die, by the way?’

‘In—’ the doctor began, but her brother cut her off smartly.

‘Safely in her bedroom attended by not one but two doctors,’ he said. ‘We’ve all got to go sometime.’

‘Indeed,’ I said.

‘And now we must stop bothering you,’ said Alec, ‘and get along.’ He gave a short nod to Tot, a more courtly bow to the doctor and gripped me firmly above my elbow to drag me away.

‘They didn’t like me asking where she died, did they?’ I said, when we were safely out of earshot. Alec finally let go of my arm.

‘And Brother Tot told an out-and-out lie,’ he said. ‘Long history indeed.’

‘So no matter what you think, I’m rather proud of that little ruse.’ We stepped out of the front door and I carried on down the stone steps and onto the gravel. Alec had stopped at the top of the steps and was staring down at me.

‘What do you mean, no matter what I think?’ he said. ‘I said not a word against it.’

‘I assumed you were annoyed with me, grabbing me and marching me off that way,’ I told him. He gaped.

‘I was worried
for
you,’ he said. ‘He lied right to our faces, Dandy. It’s not a misunderstanding or the Addies’ wishful thinking – Tot Laidlaw is lying. And you didn’t see his face when you mentioned that the ghost came through that locked door. I don’t think his sister had told him that bit.’

‘I think we should go to the police station,’ I said.

‘Anything to avoid tramping through the muddy lanes, eh?’ Alec said. This was not entirely fair, but not entirely groundless either and so I said nothing. ‘Nothing Tot or Dorothea have said so far suggests more than the cover-up job Sergeant Simpson already admitted to.
We
know that there’s something extra up – they’re too worried, too anxious – but it’s nothing one could explain to a policeman. We need to find the bag, charge them with telling the Addies where their mother died and then flatten them when they admit that they’re too scared to risk a PM.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘But before we go sleuthing about in the brambles and nettles for naught, shouldn’t we ask at the police station if there has been an unidentified bag handed in in the last month or so? After all, if we think we might find it then why shouldn’t someone else have done so already?’

‘It wouldn’t be unidentified,’ Alec said. ‘Wasn’t it full of letters?’

‘The ink might have run in the rain,’ I said. ‘Oh good, here’s the car.’ Drysdale rolled very slowly along the gravel and stopped with the back door exactly opposite where I stood; it is a talent of his. Alec opened up, handed me in, and went around to join me.

‘Home, please,’ I said. And then, because even if we were to make a visit to the police station there was no need to let Drysdale know it, I closed the window between us before picking up where we had left off.

‘And unless the watch had a full name engraved on it,’ I said, ‘there could easily be nothing in the bag at all to say it was Mrs Addie’s.’

‘Don’t you have your names stitched onto the lining?’ Alec said. ‘Like hats.’

‘Good grief, no,’ I said. ‘Not these days when everyone has latch keys. Imagine what a find it would be for a thief to have a latch key and an address and a diary saying just when the owner was due to be from home.’

‘A latch key?’ Alec said. ‘For Gilverton?’

‘Well, not me,’ I admitted. ‘But one moves with the times.’

‘Would Mrs Addie move with them?’ Alec asked. He was becoming quite dogged on the point.

‘I’m not trying to wriggle out of going looking,’ I said. ‘By all means, let’s search first and ask the police if we turn nothing up, if that’s what it takes to convince you!’

Mrs Tilling rose to the occasion of an impromptu packed lunch with her usual mastery. She had been sitting on the lawn outside the dining-room windows with Pallister and Grant as we rolled up the drive, all three in deckchairs and rugs just like the Hydro inmates across the valley. On the grass at their feet, Bunty lay on her back with all four paws waving. It is an attitude I know very well and it speaks of having been fed many titbits and being in hopes of more, even though she is stuffed to bursting. I affected not to notice them; I would not put it past Pallister to ban any further deckchair sitting if he thought it had been marked by a member of the family and met with disapproval. He might even take it out on Bunty and shut her in the boot room for the rest of the day to consider her shortcomings. Still, I thought I could discern an extra stiffness to his neck and chin and a slight cast of colour across his cheeks as he padded into the drawing room moments later, with Bunty bounding – arthritically but still just about bounding – behind him.

‘Madam,’ he said. ‘Mr Osborne.’

‘Please tell Mrs Tilling to pack luncheon for two, Pallister, and put it in the Cowley,’ I said. ‘Anything at all. Boiled eggs, bread and jam – I fully appreciate that she is not in her own kitchen. And she needn’t trouble herself with drinks because we are going to the well.’

‘I shall inform you when the motorcar is ready,’ he said. It had taken him a few years to stop asking whether Drysdale was needed. I know it still troubles him to see me racketing about behind a steering wheel, but he is just as good at affecting not to notice things as am I.

Not so Grant, who came in as he was leaving.

‘A picnic, madam?’ she said. ‘Let me see. Yes, I think that can be managed. Shall I wait for you upstairs or will you come now?’

‘I’m not changing, Grant,’ I said. She frowned deeply and looked at my skirt, which was a very pale dove grey and fashioned in a series of loops, rather like opera house curtains. ‘I’ll make sure Mr Pallister packs the mackintosh squares,’ she said. ‘If you can sit on one and keep off the grass that would be lovely.’ She started to leave, then turned back again. ‘Walls too,’ she said. ‘Madam. Lichen.’

Alec laughed, but softly so that Grant would not hear him. He is a kind man.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But we are used to one another and I only have myself to blame. She was twenty when she came to me, you know. I thought she’d be less terrifying than some of the more experienced women my mother interviewed. So all of
that
has happened with me watching. Anyway, I prefer it to Pallister’s rectitude sometimes.’

Pallister’s rectitude was strained to its limits when he returned.

‘All ready to go, madam,’ he said and then cleared his throat, lifting a ceremonial hand to his mouth as he did so. ‘Mrs Tilling asked me to tell you, madam, that she has packed a small bottle of lime to be used in solution in case you are determined to drink the well water, but also a flask of coffee which she recommends instead.’

‘Ah, Mrs Tilling has tasted it then,’ I said. ‘But I’m hoping that the well water might be less revolting than the stuff at the bath house.’

‘It is exactly as unpleasant, madam,’ Pallister said. ‘And not helped by tin cups.’

‘You’ve been?’ I asked. Pallister cranked his back to a pitch of stiff attention that looked likely to break it and then nodded.

‘Mrs Tilling, Miss Grant and I took the liberty yesterday,’ he said. ‘A very pleasant walk, and the well-keeper was most obliging.’ It was torturing him to be forced into such intimacy, but I was not done with him.

‘There’s a well-keeper?’ I said. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Yes, madam,’ he said. ‘To prevent—’ At this his collar appeared to choke him. ‘I hope you have an enjoyable outing,’ he said. ‘Madam. Mr Osborne.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ I said, as we drove away. ‘If there’s a well-keeper we can ask him whether Mrs Addie visited. And about Yellow Mary too.’

Alec was twisted round poking about in the hamper, aided by Bunty who stuck her nose in close and began beating her tail.

‘God bless Mrs Tilling,’ he said. ‘This looks a lot like pigeon pie. And’ – there was some rustling as he opened a wrapped package – ‘gingerbread. It’s hotpot and junket at the Hydro today, I happen to know.’

‘And surely if he says she wasn’t around then we can save ourselves the searching and go straight to the Beef Tub,’ I said. ‘Now how would you best describe Mrs Addie to bring her back to the mind of a man who must see strangers every day?’

Thrashing out a description which honoured her memory – one could not simply say that she looked like a piglet in tweeds – and yet served our purpose, took us through the streets of the town, along the broad roads of pleasant villas and out onto a little back way into the hills. ‘A well-set-up lady of sixty years with an Edinburgh accent and a fine strong face’ was what we settled upon, and I only hoped that there were not so many ladies who visited the well alone that ours could be lost in the crowd.

I should not have thought so, I considered to myself, looking around as we left the last farmhouse behind and bumped onto a rutted track. Moors on both sides rose gradually to form high hills, the Gallow Hill to the west and to the east the beginning of the Eildons which rolled on for many miles, stark and roadless.

‘No wonder the pump house does such a roaring trade,’ Alec said, craning to look out, ‘if this is the other option.’ I drew off the track beside a cottage and, following our noses, we crossed a small meadow towards a little three-sided stone bothy, its fourth wall open to the path, no bigger than a dovecote and not nearly so tall. I could see a railing across its open side, presumably guarding the well. Bunty went a short way into the trees to attend to her concerns of her own.

‘Reminds me of a crypt,’ Alec said. I could see a figure moving in the shadows and I shushed him.

‘Good afternoon,’ I cried.

‘Efternuin,’ said a voice. I had expected a well-keeper to be something out of Grimm, bent and ancient and not quite of this world (I have no idea why), but the figure emerging was a youngish man, neatly barbered, neatly dressed and neatly booted. ‘Come to tak the watters, have you?’ he said. He nodded towards a stone shelf set into the wall. ‘Aye well, there’s the cups and there’s the box for your pennies.’ The water at the well was a bargain compared with town prices, it seemed. I was just about to suggest that he might serve us our draughts – for what other purpose had he? – when I noticed that one sleeve of his coat was stitched shut at the elbow and tucked neatly into his pocket. Alec noticed at the same moment as did I and we both rushed forward to help ourselves, becoming a little tangled on the way.

It was not, anyway, a question of letting down a bucket into the depths and hauling it up again, for the well had steps leading down and the water was so high that one could fill a cup just by stooping, or if even that were too much like work one could hold the cup out to a pipe which stuck right out of a fissure in the rock. I tried not to wonder at the nature of the many deposits, black and shining with slime, which grew upon the rock, the pipe, the stopcock and even the steps. I just straightened, held my breath and drank. It was disgusting; not more disgusting than before, but in a different way. On the one hand, it was stronger, more disagreeably eggy, but on the other it was sparkling instead of cloudy and made one think of liver salts.

When I had finished, the well-keeper held out his hand for the cup, took it, held it against his body and wiped it vigorously with a cloth before setting it back on the stone ledge for next time. I dropped my penny in the wooden box which was nailed up by the shelf and then gave him a shilling too.

‘What about her?’ I asked. Bunty, after rejoining us, had lolloped down the steps and plunged her muzzle into the well to start lapping. ‘Stop it, B. Come away!’

‘Ocht, she’ll no’ drink ower much,’ said the well-keeper, and right enough Bunty lifted her head almost immediately and shook it, snuffling, trying I assume to drive out the nasty taste. She came back up the steps and sat down beside me, subdued and puzzled.

‘Where was that then?’ Alec said, as he handed back his own cup in turn. I took this to be a formulation familiar to soldiers for the young man glanced at his empty sleeve.

‘Amiens,’ he said. ‘You, sir?’

‘Missed that one, thank God,’ Alec said. ‘I was at St Quentin when the music stopped.’

‘Must have taken you a whiley to get hame fae there,’ said the young man. I was pretending to find items of endless interest in the rocky wall of the spring.

‘Well, you know,’ Alec said. ‘It wasn’t so bad once the rations started up again.’

‘Aye!’ said the young man with feeling. I had always rather scorned Alec’s deep and serious concern with the menu for every meal and with any opportunity to eat that came along in between them. If he had once been starving, though, I supposed it was a very different thing.

‘So will you sign the wee book?’ said the well-keeper. Alec caught my eye and I could see the flash even in the dim light of the well house. He seized the book eagerly from its place on the shelf and read down the page, turned back and read again.