Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (22 page)

‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the ground.

The grass was long and lush and all around it was flattened by footprints. They circled the clearing and criss-crossed it and appeared to converge on a spot towards the faraway end just before the trees began again. I made my way over.

There was no cairn, no marker of any kind, nothing to say that this was the very place which had given the hill its name. I suppose it was the highest point – at least, looking around, I saw none higher – but if I had had to guess at where the gallows would be, I would have plumped for the middle, not here almost under the lee of the nearest beech.

‘Was this the gallows?’ I asked. Alec walked over.

‘Seems likely,’ he said. ‘I wonder what all the feet were milling around for? A Sunday school picnic maybe?’ I shrugged. ‘Well, let’s look for the bag, the watch, the lock of hair, the precious letters and the proof that Mrs Addie died here, eh?’

Within minutes I could be sure that the trampling feet were no Sunday school picnic, for there was not a sweet wrapper, a lemonade bottle nor an apple core anywhere in the undergrowth around the clearing. There was nothing. Even Bunty failed to snuffle up so much as a peanut shell.

‘Any luck?’ I called to Alec. He had gone further than me into the woods, to examine a fallen log about ten yards from the edge of the clearing. He ducked down behind it and I made my way towards him. ‘Any luck?’ I repeated, looking over. He was bent double scrutinising the bare brown earth, but as far as I could tell there was nothing to see.

‘None,’ he said. ‘I think we’re wasting our time, Dandy.’ He looked around himself. ‘What would she be doing here?’

‘If we believe her daughter that she had no time for spooks?’ I said. ‘An assignation? A widow in her sixties would hardly go to the winter gardens to bat her eyes at some man who took her fancy.’

‘Or,’ said Alec, taking the baton, ‘perhaps Mrs Addie was interested in nature, or local history, or just wanted some—’

‘Fresh air and exercise!’ I said.

‘Quite,’ said Alec. ‘But why declaim it that way?’

‘It’s Dr Laidlaw’s favourite cure,’ I said. ‘She told me so. Oh, Alec, this is good. If Mrs Addie was
sent
out – sent as part of her treatment regime – and then she saw a ghost and got her blessed fright and dropped dead, then the doctor who sent her might well not want the family to know!’

Alec was nodding.

‘After all,’ he said, ‘nothing
old
Dr Laidlaw prescribed ever killed her.’ We beamed at one another for a bit. Eventually, Alec drew breath to continue but caught it again. I turned slightly towards the clearing and saw him do the same. From the way we had come a murmur of voices had arisen, but they were not speaking words. Instead, the sound was of a whispering, rhythmic chant, very quiet but growing louder. I clicked my tongue to Bunty to follow me, stepped over the log, and joined Alec, crouching. My lips were dry, and as I tried to lick them I found that my tongue was too.

‘Guess who!’ said Alec. ‘Goodness, it sounds like all of them.’

‘All twenty?’ I whispered.

‘Are there twenty?’ he whispered back, looking astonished.

‘Well, seven already and many more expected,’ I said. ‘Surely you remember.’

Alec’s eyes danced and, although he kept it in, the laughter bubbled through him.

‘Dandy, you goose!’ he said. ‘I meant the mediums. It’s the mediums coming chanting up the hill. You thought it was the ghosts? Really?’

‘Of course not,’ I said, reddening and dipping my head to hide it. ‘I misunderstood you. Now, shush, before we’re heard.’

We crunched ourselves down even further behind the log, I sending a silent apology to Grant for the fate of my skirt, and waited. The voices grew louder and before too long we caught sight, through the trees, of half a dozen figures, all moving slowly in loops and crosses, passing one another and repassing, gathering – with many feints, but gathering all the same – on the well-trodden spot just at the edge of the trees. In the centre of them all was Loveday Merrick, his bare head thrown back and his hair streaming down. He was muttering under his breath just like the rest of them and as the crescendo swelled, he lifted his silver-topped cane and banged the tip of it hard against the lowest branch of the beech tree. One of the younger mediums uttered a small shriek and then there was silence except for the rattle and rush of a few beech cobs falling through the boughs and dropping to the ground.

‘Do you feel anything, Loveday?’ said a woman’s voice.

‘They are not here,’ said the great man. It was a pronouncement of some authority and I could see shoulders slumping and faces falling even from my hiding place yards away.

He pounded his stick on the ground.

‘But they are close!’ A little thrill passed through the group, made up of whispers and darting movements, as the mediums clutched one another. ‘They are all together in a warm place very near here.’

‘All of them, Loveday?’ asked a man. It might have been one of the tall hats with satin piping. ‘Can you feel all of them?’

Mr Merrick drew in an enormous breath, all but snorting, and closed his eyes. He began to sway gently. ‘Mary and Lizzie and Peggy are here,’ he said. ‘And the dear old grandmother and the poor blind child. Joseph the Miller is here.’ The crowd thrilled to hear it. ‘Abigail Simpson, Ann Dougal, Marjorie Docherty too.’

‘What about Old Donald?’ That was Mrs Molyneaux. ‘Is he with them? If we could answer that question, Loveday …’

‘There is an old man,’ said Mr Merrick. He was swaying so far from side to side that the mediums nearest him began to ready themselves to catch him if he fell. ‘A Mr Higgins and his Christian name begins with the letter D. Is it Donald? Donald Higgins? Is that you?’ He was rocking front to back now too. ‘I cannot hear him. Donald Higgins! Come to me! You are with friends. You are safe here. Is it— Is it—’

The cane toppled, the great man crumpled, the companions rushed forward and stopped him from falling. Behind our log Alec and I turned flabbergasted faces to each other. I started to whisper but Alec held a finger to his lips. Out in the clearing, Mr Merrick had recovered. He picked up his cane, swept his hair back into some kind of order and took a flask out of his inside pocket. After a good swig from it, he spoke in what passed for his normal voice again. Still rather grand but not absolutely set to part the clouds and bring God’s ear to the opening.

‘Now then, my dear friends, what did I say?’

There was a clamour of voices, shouting the names. Loveday Merrick counted them off on his fingers. Hastily scrabbling in my bag for a slip of paper and a stub of pencil, I jotted them down too, as best I could.

‘Ten,’ he announced at last when he was finished counting. ‘Ten of them. This is inarguable evidence, my dear friends. This will set the world on its ears. And those who have laughed will be humbled and those who have scorned will be filled with awe.’ He looked around at the upturned faces and clasped hands all about him. ‘Now, let’s go back to the Hydro for a nice cup of tea.’

Alec spluttered, the inevitable consequence of holding one’s breath and then suddenly laughing.

‘What was that?’ It was the gooseberry-eyed girl. She turned those pale green orbs towards the log where we were hiding and all the others followed, swivelling and craning and making me feel like a hare sitting up in a field. I ducked, waiting for the shot to ring. Loveday Merrick strode to the edge of the trees and, shading his eyes, looked straight towards our hiding place.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘A bird turning the litter. Nothing at all.’ Then he strode off, his little band of acolytes following after. We waited until we could no longer hear even the echo of their tramping feet before we moved.

‘Did he see us?’ Alec said.

‘I’m not sure,’ I answered. ‘He certainly made that up about the bird anyway. But why would he not stride over here with his big stick, demanding to know what we were doing?’

‘Because it’s common land and he wouldn’t have the authority?’ Alec screwed up his nose even as he said this. ‘Not that he’s a man who has trouble assuming authority. What on earth
was
all that?’

‘Poppycock and tommyrot,’ I said. ‘I’m ashamed of myself for being rattled earlier. What an old fraud.’

‘I agree, naturally,’ Alec said. ‘But what in particular is it that’s riled you?’

‘The initial D!’ I said. ‘It’s a music hall trick. Someone here has lost a loved one. Name begins with D. “Oh, that must be old uncle Deuteronomy” pipes up a voice from the second row. “That’s right, lovey. Deuteronomy. He’s looking for his niece.” Sensation all round. I’m just surprised he had the gall to wheel it out amongst his own people. One would think they’d see through it, since they must use exactly the same stuff in music halls of their own.’

‘The excitement seemed genuine enough,’ Alec said. ‘And they seemed to recognise the names he was spouting.’

I read them from my slip of paper, once out loud and once to myself.

‘They don’t mean anything to me,’ I said. ‘But one thing does strike me. I don’t see how they could be the ghosts of people who were hanged here.’

‘Oh?’ said Alec.

‘Too many women. Not to say that no women were ever executed but they were the unusual cases. If these ghosts were the spirits of the hanged there’d be Williams and Georges and Jameses to spare instead of all these Anns and Lizzies – I mean, you know, not that we actually believe any of it.’

‘We really should just take that point as established once and for all,’ Alec said. ‘And not repeat it ten times a day. Of course, either someone is causing mischief or these mediums are just making it up entirely, but as to what Mrs Addie came in search of and what she thought she saw … I don’t agree that it couldn’t be the spirits of hanged men, just because so many of them are women.’

‘But—’

‘I think it strengthens the argument if anything. These are the wronged, Dandy. Not the murderers and brigands who deserved their fate, but innocents, wrongly convicted and wrongly hanged. Perhaps that’s why Mrs Addie wasn’t scared to come back for her bag – which I wish we’d found, by the way. So I should say of course lots of them are women. Perhaps they were wise women hanged for witchcraft.’

‘And children,’ I reminded him. ‘Would a blind child have been hanged with his grandmother?’

‘Certainly,’ said Alec. ‘If it was long enough ago. I’m not going to let you spoil my theory with that.’

I did not need to; its despoliation was waiting for us back at the Hydro.

Mrs Cronin must have been watching for our arrival for she was bearing down on us along the passageway when we climbed the steps into the hall.

‘Mrs Gilver, Mr Osborne,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to have run into you. Look what I’ve found.’ She was carrying some sort of bundle, laid across her arms the way that page boys carry cushions with coronets upon them. This was no velvet and gilt-braided object, though. It was a heap of brown tweed with a chamois leather shoe bag balanced on top. ‘Mrs Addie’s clothes,’ she said. ‘After what you told me this morning, I got to thinking.’ The colloquial phrase sounded wooden in her mouth, for her tone was very clipped and formal. ‘And it occurred to me that Mrs Addie’s things must have been sent to the laundry and maybe they’d got forgotten about there. It wasn’t the regular day, you see. And so I checked, and there they were! We can send them to her family now.’

‘Splendid,’ I said. I did not believe a word of it and felt embarrassed for her having to speak the lines.

‘I’m just going to tell Dr Laidlaw,’ she went on. ‘But I have patients waiting, as a matter of fact. So, I wonder if you would be so kind.’ With that she held out the bundle. We are brought up to accept whatever is offered – thus gypsies trick us into buying violets at the railway station and climbers we intended to cut manage still to give us their hands – and so, astonished as I was, I held my arms out like a godmother at the altar and accepted the bundle. Mrs Cronin thanked me, turned on her heels and hurried away. Alec and I were left gazing at the pleats and ruffles of her cap until she whisked around the corner and was gone. Alec was first back into the swing.

‘Quick, Dandy, before someone sees us!’ he said. ‘Let’s get the swag to my room.’

We hurried along the corridor to the stairs, up two flights and round to the west side, Alec fumbling his key out of his trouser pocket as we went along. Once inside his room I tipped my armful onto the bed and stared at it. Everything was there: shirt, petticoat, stockings, vest, chemise, brassiere and underdrawers – the lot.

‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Tweeds, cotton underthings and corsetry go to completely different bits of a laundry, as I well know.’ I had spent nine days on a case once pretending to be a lady’s maid, and none of the arcane lore I had amassed would ever desert me. ‘How could they all be lost together and then found again?’

Alec picked up the coat part of the tweeds and held it against him. It was gargantuan, looking as though it would wrap twice round Alec’s frame. He let it drop and lifted the skirt, which was easily a yard wide.

‘Everyone kept saying she was a sizeable lady,’ he said. ‘They were being kind.’

I was unfastening the drawstring of the shoe bag. I drew out one wide leather brogue, turned it up and peered at it.

‘Look, Dan,’ Alec said. ‘A walk up a hill could easily have killed a woman this size.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. I put the shoe down and took the skirt from Alec’s hands.

‘The woman who fitted these clothes should never have been sent out climbing hills for exercise,’ he persisted. ‘We’ve cracked it. Dr Laidlaw prescribed it and it did for her. That’s what they’re hiding.’

I was examining the skirt, rubbing the material through my fingers. I sniffed the cuffs of the coat too.

‘But it’s nonsense,’ I said.

‘They’re not hers?’ said Alec.

‘They might be,’ I replied. ‘I can telephone to Mrs Bowie and ask her what dress size her mother took. But these clothes weren’t worn outside on a muddy hillside. She had dirt under her nails, but her coat cuffs are clean and don’t smell of benzene. They smell of lily-of-the-valley cologne.’ I put the coat down and sorted through the pile of smaller garments, lifting a stocking. ‘She had dirt ground into her knees, Regina said. But look at this stocking. It should be torn, or snagged at least, and it’s perfect.’