Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (26 page)

I had had no intention of venturing into the steam room or plunging pool, but by a chance as I was entering the cool room someone was leaving and in the warm room someone else was moving up again and so, for just a moment, there was a clear view right through the two sets of curtains all the way to the end, where who should be standing and wiping perspiration from her forehead but Mrs Petrushka Molyneaux herself, along with a quorum of underlings. I supposed that she had to come to the Turkish baths to lord it now; everywhere else she was merely one of Loveday Merrick’s minions.

Would they go straight to the sprays? I wondered. Or would the whole pack of them venture into the Turkish? It was worth finding out and so I doubled back and sprinted along the side of the pool, past the marble temple and into the steam. I climbed to the top shelf and lay down, trying to breathe silently and become invisible.

It was then that I found out just what a worthy system the cool, warm and hot rooms are, for sprinting straight from the changing cubicle to the steam was a very different matter. Within minutes I was feeling giddy, a few minutes more and I felt as sick as I ever had, Channel crossings included. I told myself to leave, but could not summon the momentum to push myself up and begin moving. I decided instead to have a little snooze and hoped to wake feeling better.

Thankfully, Regina was the sort to face trouble head-on and get it over and she did not give me anything like fifteen minutes before she came to summon me for my rubbing. As a consequence I had not quite slipped into a stupor and I heard her clearly when she opened the door.

‘Mrs Gilver?’ she said.

‘Ssh, Regina,’ I replied. Through my groggy stupor, it seemed terribly important and absolutely real. ‘They’ll hear you. And close the door. You’re letting the steam out and they’ll see you too.’ There was a scraping noise as she pulled a heavy iron doorstop forward to prop the steam room open.

‘Come out, madam, do!’ she said. She came and shook me and then lifted my feet down onto the shelf below and tugged on my arms to sit me up. ‘How could you be so silly? How
could
you let yourself get in this state? I told you how to go the baths that first day and don’t say I didn’t. Don’t you dare get me into trouble now.’

We were out into the cool air, or what was left of it with all the steam pouring from the open door. I could see Mrs Molyneaux and the other mediums walking shoulder deep in the plunging pool, but in my mental fog I was sure they were wearing their cloaks and coats and that the hat with the raven feathers was perched on Mrs Molyneaux’s head in place of her turban.

Regina sat me down on one of the marble slabs and kicked away the doorstop, closing the steam room off again. She helped me out of my robe and pushed me down until I was lying supine, staring up at the rose of the spray above me.

‘Please don’t turn the cold water on,’ I whimpered.

‘I most certainly won’t,’ Regina said, twisting the lid off a jar of some unknown substance. ‘You need to cool down slowly.’

She rubbed her hands together in that powerful way of hers and then began slapping me all over, the rough salt from the jar causing the very last of my torpor to leave me.

‘Did Mrs Addie do something silly like that?’ I said. Regina’s face puckered and I was sure that I could see tears glinting in her eyes. She rubbed the back of one hand roughly across her face and then set it to work on me again.

‘I do wish to goodness you would stop about Mrs Addie,’ she said. ‘It was a very sad day for the Hydro. The first time a patient has ever died and even though it was her own— Well, I won’t speak ill of the dead.’

‘Her own fault?’ I echoed. ‘If she went out instead of sticking to her treatment? I suppose if she had stayed in the Hydro and had her heart attack here the doctor would have got to her sooner. But it’s rather a harsh judgement.’

‘I’d never say anything half so heartless about a dog in the street!’ Regina said. ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’

‘So … you mean if she had left the spirits alone she wouldn’t have been scared out of her wits?’ I asked. It was a guess, but a good one. Regina left off slapping me and sank down onto the marble at my side.

‘I just don’t know what’s happening here,’ she said. ‘First Mrs Addie saw a ghost and then you saw
her
ghost and there’s all these funny folk that came to see it too, talking about Old Abigail and Big Effie as if there’s spirits and spookies all over the place. I don’t like it, madam, and I can’t pretend I do.’

‘Nor do I, Regina,’ I said. ‘I wish I could convince you I was on your side. You can talk to me, you know.’ She shook her head, but she had already told me more than she knew. For one thing, Big Effie was a new name. As Regina resumed her ministrations with a fretful sigh, I determined to write it on my growing list as soon as I had my notebook near me. For another, it was interesting to know that the ghost Mrs Addie saw was the first and all the others, Big Effie included, came after. Perhaps Alec was right and Tot Laidlaw had made up the first ghost to cover the murder.

‘So the strange people—’ I said. I lowered my voice, conscious that four or five of them were wading about in the cold pool a few yards from where I lay. ‘—came to see the same ghost Mrs Addie saw? How did they know it was here?’ Regina shook her head. ‘Who knew that Mrs Addie had seen one?’ She shook her head again. ‘The word must have spread from someone.’

‘I never told a living soul,’ Regina said.

‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘Might I turn over, by the way? This is very refreshing but I’m beginning to feel rather flayed. I trust you, Regina, and I wish you would trust me.’ I gave her a piercing look and then turned over onto my front. The marble was unforgiving but the salt on my back felt wonderful.

Regina said nothing, but it was an inviting silence, I thought, instead of a repressing one. I answered the invitation.

‘That room over there,’ I said. ‘The locked one? What’s in there?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied loud enough for it to reverberate around the room.

‘What is it used for?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s empty. There’s absolutely nothing in there.’

‘Since when?’ I asked her. She did not answer and her hands fell away from my back. I was aware of a nasty creeping feeling as the wet salt slid off down my sides and dripped onto the marble below me. I raised myself on one elbow and looked over my shoulder. Regina stood with her arms hanging at her sides and more of the salt rub dripping from the ends of her fingers. She was staring at the door and then she raised her hands and stared at them.

‘Since Mrs Addie died?’ I asked. Regina blinked and the colour which had drained from her came flooding back. ‘You’ve just realised what happened, haven’t you? Tell me!’ I was speaking in a fierce whisper, but nothing like as fierce as the one she fired back at me.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you nothing. It’s always been empty. There’s never been anything in there. It’s never been used for anything.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘And why would that be?’

She shook her head and, wiping her hands on her apron, she ran away. She did not hurry or trot or bustle: she ran.

I was left cold, covered with salt and lying on a marble slab – all in all much more like an item of stock in a fishmonger’s than I ever thought to be – but more determined than ever to get into the locked room and see whatever Regina had just realised was in there. The door was partly glass and so I supposed I could wrap my hand in a scarf and break it, but that would put them all on their guard. I wasted a moment wishing I knew how to pick a lock and wondering where I could learn to do so. Finally, I returned to the more sensible question of who would have a key and how I could lay my hands on it. I had far too much respect for Mrs Cronin even to consider her; she popped up whenever one most needed her not to, even – apparently – taking notes from guests in the middle of her afternoon free. (I wished I knew why the sound of her outdoor shoes, every time I remembered it, bothered me so.) Neither did I much fancy trying to find Tot Laidlaw’s private rooms and let myself in there. That left Dr Laidlaw. I was in the changing cubicle by now, dressing and trying to ignore the uncomfortable scrape of salt against my skin, but the thought of searching for anything in that chaotic hovel of an office was enough to make me sink down on the velvet bench with shoulders drooping. Then my head snapped up. There would be no searching. I kicked myself for not thinking of it before. Dr Laidlaw’s keys were sitting out for all to see in a Staffordshire sweet dish on her chimneypiece. Now, all I had to do was think of a way to get her out of her room without pausing to lock it.

It would have to wait until evening, naturally, when the Turkish and Russian baths were empty; and so, long after dinner, I left the boys playing cribbage by the fire and Bunty already retired to the middle of my counterpane and drove my little motorcar back over the valley. I wondered how Alec had got on with the Addies and whether Hugh had begun his evening’s entertainments. Specifically I wished Alec were here in Moffat to help me and wondered if I could pretend to be joining Hugh if someone saw me – I had overdressed a little for dinner, to Grant’s satisfaction, and was just about swanky enough to walk into a casino without attracting attention. (Rather depressing when that is the highest aim of one’s toilette, but for this evening anyway I was thankful.)

Hoping to get away without having to make an entrance, though, I parked my motorcar in a passing place halfway along the drive and made the rest of my approach on foot, cursing the shoes Grant had persuaded me into, which had long, pointed toes, slightly turned up too, after the manner of a Turk’s slippers, and were very tricky to walk in without kicking gravel up in spouts before one.

It only occurred to me when I had got to the front door and was lurking in the rhododendrons on its far side that I should of course have thought of a different way to enter the Hydro if I wanted to be truly incognito. In my mind’s eye I traversed the stone steps, the vestibule, the carpeted steps and the hall beyond. It had to be forty feet without any cover at all until the mouth of the nearest passageway and it did not lead to the Turkish baths by any quick route that I knew. Cursing myself now, I slipped along the front of the building, round the side, down the shallow steps to the terrace level and along past the drawing room to the small smoking room, thinking that with any luck all the smoking gentlemen would be combining their cigars with a game of cards by now and any who were too wholesome for the casino would be tucked up in their blameless beds. I sidled past the window and then put my eye to the gap in the curtain. The room looked empty as far as I could see, but just as I was about to try the handle, I heard a movement from behind me. Someone was coming up the stone steps from the lawn. I darted away into the shadow of a climbing jasmine, hoping that the beads on my dress or the gold buckles on my ridiculous shoes would not catch the light. The figure which appeared at the top of the steps, however, did not so much as glance to either side. He simply strode over the terrace, opened the french window and disappeared inside, drawing it close but not shutting it behind him. I stood for a moment, searching my memory, for I was sure that I recognised him. I had only got a glimpse of his outline, enough to know he was dressed for the evening, but still I had the niggling feeling I knew who he was.

The male members of the bright young set had not resolved themselves into individuals for me; they were still an undifferentiated mass of humanity inside a cloud of laughter and cigarette smoke. It might have been one of the few male mediums, I supposed. Not the unmistakable Loveday Merrick, but one of his lesser fellows. Or perhaps another of our Perthshire neighbours had come to take the waters as had we, far from home and the flu and scarlet fever which were rife there.

Whoever he was, his appearance had told me one thing: I could be sure there was no one in the smoking room, for I would have heard their manly hellos. So, before I could talk myself out of it, I slipped out of the shadow and in at the door, through the empty room and along the dim corridor beyond. I had my story all ready: Grant collapsed and labouring for breath, me thinking only of Dr Laidlaw and how she had helped Hugh and the boys.

Grant had agreed to let the doctor in when she arrived and to say that she felt much better.

‘I’ll tell her I coughed out a right big— I mean to say, I’ll tell her I enjoyed a productive cough and it cleared things,’ she said. I shuddered. ‘Like Master Donald that night, remember?’

‘How could I forget?’ I said. ‘But I’m hoping it won’t get as far as that.’

‘I’m ready to help if it does,’ Grant told me.

In preparation for my part in the charade, I made sure my face was troubled and my breath coming in gasps before I knocked on the doctor’s door. I was going to say that my little motorcar had run out of petrol and she should go on ahead, that I should get Hugh to ring for his chauffeur. I thought I could be fairly certain of pulling it off, although it did strike me now as tremendously complicated. I missed Alec again. I was sure he would have come up with a way of getting Dr Laidlaw out of her office without my dressing to the nines, roping in Grant and sprinting half a mile in these slippers. I shook the thoughts out of my head and knocked.

There was no answer, but I remembered that this was a woman who ignored fire bells. I knocked again. Still nothing. Feeling very bold, I grasped the handle, turned it and burst in.

‘Oh, Dr Laidlaw,’ I began, but the room was empty. My eyes darted to the chimneypiece and I saw the jagged shape of the keys in the bon-bon dish. In three strides I was there. I hid the key ring in the folds of my dress, thinking that Grant’s taste in flowing robes had its uses, and then I fled to the Turkish and Russian – more Turk than Cossack in my Ali Baba slippers – with luck on my side and not a soul to see me.

It was unsettling in the extreme to be there in the darkness when the place was empty, and none the less so for the sensation being so difficult to explain. Perhaps it was just that the rooms, unheated now, felt dead and much colder than in fact they were. The couches, without their towels, were funeral biers and the marble chamber a mausoleum. Even the pool room was changed by the quiet and dark. The water was a blank, black gleam, bottomless like the well, and the ferns and palms around it, in the dark, were moss and lichen and even reaching hands. I turned away and faced the locked door.