Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (18 page)

When I emerged, it was to the clearest possible sign that Regina had indeed been watching me. She was gone, but in her place Mrs Cronin, the matron, had come and was busily fiddling with the roses on the spray baths in the most unconvincing way.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘You look rather warm.’ Anyone else I should have expected of making fun of me, but Mrs Cronin’s face was set like the marble behind her, her mouth a grim line, her eyes cold stones, her voice a monotone.

‘Nothing a dip won’t see to,’ I said. I strode through to the pool, wrenched off my robe and then my courage deserted me. I could not, simply could not, jump in again, not now I knew how bad it would be in there. I walked along to the steps and started down them gingerly. I was out of view of Mrs Cronin but the locked door lay dead ahead of me. Blessing my cowardice, I realised that if a ghost really did come floating through the keyhole, I should see it as plain as day and so I could ‘see’ one as soon as I cared to, before I was in beyond my knees.

My plan went awry in a way I really should have foreseen. Cringing on the steps, staring at the door, I essayed a little start of surprise, in case Mrs Cronin was peeping at me through one of the Turkish archways. My feet were numb, the steps were slippery, in short, I overbalanced and not only ended up completely submerged in the icy sulphurous depths again but this time I cracked my back on the edge of a stone step too. When I rose spluttering, Mrs Cronin was standing looking down at me, her eyes colder and harder than ever.

‘Did you see that?’ I said.

‘You slipped, madam?’

‘I nearly broke my neck!’ I said. I was dog-paddling back to the steps.

‘There is a handrail,’ Mrs Cronin said, just as I reached out for it to haul myself up.

‘You didn’t see?’ I asked again. I was out now and sprinting along the side of the pool to the door.

‘Here,’ she called after me. ‘Where are you going?’

I tried the handle and found it locked as I had expected to. Then I whipped round and scanned the room. ‘Does … steam escape from in there?’ I said. ‘I suppose it might have been steam.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Mrs Cronin.

‘I could have sworn I saw someone coming out of there,’ I said. ‘But the door didn’t open.’

‘Steam, as you say,’ Mrs Cronin said. ‘And you were overheated. Your eyes might have misted over.’

‘And what about my ears?’ I demanded. It was only then when I put my hands on my hips to make my point with more force that I realised I was having this conversation quite without clothes. Mrs Cronin was no doubt used to such things, but not I. I faltered, turned away and snatched up my robe.

‘How do you mean, madam?’ the matron asked me. ‘Did you hear something?’

‘She spoke to me,’ I said. ‘She said she had a message for her daughter and her son. And she said she was cold.’ Mrs Cronin’s eyes were not hard little pebbles now. They looked enormous in her white face.

‘Her daughter and her son?’

‘Who was it?’ I said. ‘You know, don’t you?’

‘It can’t be,’ said Mrs Cronin.

‘Who?’ I said, opening my eyes very wide.

‘No one,’ she said. ‘Regina told me you’d been asking about her. That’s what’s put it in my mind. Nothing else.’

‘Mrs Addie?’ I asked.

Mrs Cronin’s eyes flashed with panic and her face drained of yet more colour until it was grey and wretched. She turned, slipping a little on the wet floor, and blundered away.

I belted my robe and made my exit calmly. Regina was waiting for me by the cubicles. She held out her hand to give me something and when I caught it I was astonished and, frankly, offended to see that it was my two shillings back again.

‘I’ll not be bought, madam,’ she said. ‘I work for Dr Laidlaw and I’m proud to say so.’

‘I have no idea what you mean, Regina,’ I said. ‘I certainly didn’t mean to imply anything beyond a tip. But I shall tell Dr Laidlaw what a loyal servant she has in you when I see her. And I shall be seeing her very soon. I have just had an extraordinary experience in the plunging-pool room, one I need to discuss with Dr Laidlaw right away.’

‘She’s very busy,’ Regina said.

‘Unless
you
would like to tell me what’s behind that locked door.’

‘How did you—’ she said. ‘What locked door?’

‘And why Mrs Cronin guessed right first time who might be in there.’

‘Is she?’ Regina turned as if she could see into the room. ‘She sometimes goes in there to cry.’ Perhaps it was the after-effects of the cold plunge but to hear this said so matter-of-factly made me shiver.

‘Have you seen her?’ I asked. This was quite at odds with Regina’s robust denials of all ghostliness the day before.

‘I told you,’ Regina said. ‘I work for her, not you.’

It took me a moment to understand what she was saying.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘You thought I meant Dr Laidlaw was in there?’ She frowned, as confused as I was. ‘I meant Mrs Addie,’ I explained. ‘Her ghost, trapped in that room, behind the locked door.’

Regina was made of stern stuff and she did not pale or tremble, but only grew very still while she composed her reply.

‘There’s no such thing as ghosts,’ she said at last.

‘You might be in the minority at the Hydro these days,’ I said, ‘holding hard to that view.’

It was not difficult to account for the loyalty of Mrs Cronin and young Regina when I entered the doctor’s study moments later in response to her low ‘Come in’. She looked like a child who had been sent to sit in a grown-ups’ toyless room and wait for its punishment there. Her head shrank down between her shoulders when she saw that it was me.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, managing a faint smile which did not quite banish the troubled look behind it. ‘I’ve just had a very pleasant talk with one of your neighbours. Did you know he was here? A Mr Osborne of Perthshire.’

A dozen quick thoughts chased one another around my head like little fish. I did not know whether to admit to knowing Alec or to deny it. Had he claimed acquaintance of me? In spite of our agreement, had he gone ahead for some reason and told the tale of the visiting ghost instead of leaving it to me? If he had, then his handling of Mrs Bowie yesterday paled into oblivion beside this, for Dr Laidlaw had a soft look in her eye when she spoke his name. Thankfully, she wanted the pleasure of saying it again and she went on, not noticing that I had not answered.

‘Mr Osborne is very interested in my work here. Rather unusual.’ She lifted a hand to her throat and moved the locket on a chain which sat there. ‘I’m hardly ever lucky enough to have a willing audience these days,’ she said. ‘Since my dear father died. And even he … well, we disagreed. Profoundly. Which made for interesting exchanges but I rarely got the chance simply to air my ideas and see what I thought of them.’

Bravo, Alec, I thought to myself, understanding now what he had been up to. Quite simply, he had softened the doctor up for me.

‘Yes, he is a pleasant young chap, isn’t he?’ I said. ‘I’ve often thought so when we’ve run into one another at parties.’ That was a nicely judged compromise between an implausible lack of acquaintance – Perthshire is not so populous as all that – and the sort of intimate friendship which would have to be explained. ‘Well, I hope you don’t mind a second interruption of your morning’s work, Dr Laidlaw, but I have a matter of great urgency to discuss with you.’

She looked at me for the first time then, I think, and looked as a doctor would, taking in my flushed face and dishevelled hair.

‘Are you feeling all right, Mrs Gilver?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘That is, I would have said so and yet I hope not. It would be much better to put it down to illness really.’

She had risen and approached me at this less-than-certain assurance and now she laid a hand against my forehead, felt gently under my jaw with the tips of her fingers, and finished by cupping my face in her hands and turning it up to hers, looking very intently into my eyes. It was a curiously intimate gesture, and not one that any doctor had subjected me to before. I looked back at her quizzically.

‘Perhaps you’re tired after your disturbed night,’ she said.

‘I don’t follow you,’ I said. My sleep
had
been restless; Bunty, taking her time to get used to the new surroundings, had shifted and snuffled and pawed the counterpane every two hours. I, also still getting used to them, had woken each time and taken much longer than her to settle again.

‘The fire drill,’ Dr Laidlaw said. ‘I have no earthly idea why my brother thinks it’s a good idea to have them in the middle of the night. Such confusion, everyone rushing around in their dressing gowns.’

‘Have you forgotten, Dr Laidlaw,’ I said, ‘that I’m not staying in the hotel?’ The stricken look she gave me was so far beyond what my mild rebuke deserved that I almost reached out and touched her arm, to try to comfort her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I did. I forgot. I’m so very sorry.’

I laughed lightly to cover the awkwardness.

‘Not at all. Think nothing of it. Am I ill then? Is that what caused the strange experience I just had?’ She lifted one of my hands to take my pulse, only realising when she lifted her own arm that she was not wearing a watch. She looked instead at the clock sitting in the middle of the jumble of objects on the crowded chimneypiece. It seemed more likely to topple than ever today, from the pressure of the bills stuffed in behind.

While the doctor was counting, I spoke again.

‘That treatment room which leads off from the spray baths?’ I said. I felt the pinch of her suddenly tightening her grip on my wrist, but it only lasted a moment and then she continued calmly counting. ‘What’s in there?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. She let my hand drop and went back to sit behind her desk, even going so far as to rearrange some papers in front of her as though all her reading and writing could defend her against me. ‘Just an unused room. It was never very convenient, what with the chance of someone slipping on the wet floor as she arrived or departed.’

‘Did someone slip?’ I said. ‘Did someone fall?’

‘No,’ said Dr Laidlaw. A blot of colour was beginning to stain her neck. ‘Why would you think so?’

‘Well, now,’ I said. ‘I don’t say that I believe it, but I can’t account for it exactly. The fact is, I think I might just have seen a ghost there.’

Dr Laidlaw froze and for a long empty moment there was silence between us, then she stood, quite roughly pushing her chair back out of the way, and walked over to the window. She could not see anything through that dingy lace curtain, surely, but still she stayed there facing away from me, her shoulders rising and falling as she fought to bring her breath back under control.

‘I know how it sounds,’ I said. ‘Too silly for words, but there it is. I saw something which might have been wisps of steam, coming from the door. Not from under it or from the keyhole, but just as though the steam were passing right through the glass and wood.’

Dr Laidlaw turned to face me again at last.

‘Steam,’ she said, with a great rush of breath released so that almost she was laughing.

‘At first I thought so,’ I said. ‘It formed … a shape.’

‘As steam will,’ said Dr Laidlaw, nodding.

‘And clouds and inkblots, oh absolutely,’ I agreed. ‘But the thing is, the shape was quite distinctly a woman.’

‘It may well have looked like one.’

‘And it spoke to me.’

Still nodding, she came back and took her seat behind the desk, smoothing her skirt and once again touching the locket at her throat.

‘You were in the plunging pool?’ she said.

‘On my way in.’

‘You had been in the hot room?’

‘The steam room.’

‘Ah,’ she said, sounding almost relieved.

‘I see what you mean,’ I agreed again. ‘I might have been swooning.’

‘It sounds that way.’ She was calm again now. She went as far as to sit back in her chair and fold her hands in her lap. ‘Perhaps you should move from the warm room to the sprays,’ she said. ‘I love the cold pool – always have done: it’s quite my favourite part of the Hydro – but the sprays are much less taxing.’

‘I suppose they would be,’ I said. ‘Shall I tell you what she said?’

Dr Laidlaw inclined her head and smiled patiently.

‘Please do. I’m very interested in the mind, Mrs Gilver. In the things it tells us. What words did your mind put into the mouth of this wraith?’

‘What a wonderful word,’ I said. ‘Although she was hardly wraith-like. Very considerable in outline, actually.’ I noted a pucker at her brows as she heard this. ‘And what this ample wraith said to me was that she had a message for her son and daughter.’ Dr Laidlaw drew breath to speak and then stopped, her eyes darting. ‘She also said that she was cold and asked where her clothes were. Isn’t that a curious thing?’

‘Her clothes?’ It was a ragged whisper.

‘Yes, she was naked. Or at least she might have had a shift on, it’s hard to say.’

Dr Laidlaw was shaking her head, just a little, and very fast.

‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘Impossible.’

‘I give you my word,’ I told her, making myself look affronted. ‘Why on earth would it be impossible for my mind to put those words in the mouth I was imagining? The message for her daughter and son sounds like standard seance fare – we used to have them at school you know: great fun, but the mistresses were very down on it always – and as for saying she was cold and wanted her clothes? Well, I was halfway into a bath of ice-water and wearing nothing myself. No, Dr Laidlaw, you have quite set my worries aside. I shall eschew the hot room and the steam room from now on and I shan’t think of it again.’ I gazed at her out of innocent eyes. She was still struggling, breathing hard and rather wobbly about the mouth, but she managed a nod and a bit of a smile.

‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m glad I could help.’

‘And I’m sorry if I upset you,’ I said. ‘I know that room is a treasured place for you.’

‘Treasured?’ she said faintly.

‘Regina mentioned it,’ I said, trying to sound airy. ‘That you go there to mourn your father. Was it his study? Surely not, opening off the ladies’ sprays that way.’