Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone (8 page)

Mr Laidlaw appeared as the coffee was being served and took a cup with him as he walked about the room. He had ditched his dinner jacket at last, into a normal suit although rather light for the country, but looked no less of a head waiter as he made his circuit, stopping to chat, beaming, evidently entertaining since gales of laughter met his every word. He did not neglect the tables of Addies, but here he modified his demeanour, bowing, murmuring, cocking his head and spreading a look of grave concern over his face as one dowager seemed to issue a complaint. Indeed, he went as far as to set down his coffee cup, extract a small notebook from his breast pocket and jot something down in it with a pencil. The dowager did not crack a smile but she nodded firmly and with a word he was on his way again. He was making his way towards our table and he caught me watching him. I was facing him head-on, no chance to dissemble.

‘Hello again,’ he said. ‘Hello, hello. Now, how are you settling in? Everything running smoothly? Feeling better already, are we?’

He was just the sort of man – hail fellow, well met – that Hugh normally cannot stand but there was no look of scorn or detestation here today although he did not go as far as to answer such inanity.

‘Jolly good fodder,’ said Teddy. ‘I don’t wonder people get better, sir, if you feed them like this every day.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Donald. And I was torn between feeling fond pride at their manners for once and smarting at the sideswipe to Gilverton’s kitchens.

‘And your medical chores will all be over by tea,’ said Laidlaw. ‘Ginger snaps and cherry cake, I believe. But I did just want to warn you of the fire drill.’

‘When is it?’ asked Hugh, getting out his watch and flipping it open.

‘Over the course of the next few days,’ said Laidlaw. ‘A better drill if we don’t know exactly when, eh? But it’ll be in the night, save anyone clambering out of a bath and shivering on the terrace in a towel.’

Hugh looked understandably disgruntled at this news but I knew he would not lament to me. He had been so pleased at besting me and escaping Auchenlea House that he would not for a pension admit he had let himself in for inconvenience and that I, tucked up alone in the room he had spurned, might have the better of it.

‘Very sensible,’ I said. ‘What’s a fire drill if everyone knows it’s coming?’

‘But you’re not actually staying in the Hydro, madam?’ said Laidlaw. ‘Nor the young men?’ He was giving me a sharper look than I had yet seen upon his face. I offered a faint smile in return. ‘And your husband tells me you made quite a recent booking. I see, I see. Well, welcome one, welcome all.’ He tipped me a salute and moved away.

I roundly hoped that he did
not
see and I did not think that he could, for neither Alec nor I had done a single thing to raise suspicion of our intent. Still, I worried because his words were puzzling.

‘What a peculiar person,’ I said, falling back on my grandmother’s way of dealing with puzzlement: stake a claim to sense and normalcy and blame the other party for any troubled feelings or confusion they might have caused. ‘Finished, boys? What shall we do?’

‘I’m awfully tired,’ said Donald. ‘Like a pit pony at dusk.’

‘Like a python who’s just eaten an antelope,’ I corrected, looking at the crumbs on his cheese plate. ‘I’m not surprised. Why don’t all three of you tuck up on some of those nice deckchairs out on the terrace and I’ll tell the doctor where to find you.’

‘There’s a croquet lawn,’ said Teddy, hopefully.

‘Rest first,’ I said. Even Hugh agreed, to my surprise, and so I accompanied them out there, a deep terrace facing the lawns where the afternoon sun warmed the stones and released billows of scent from the stands of jasmine which stood like sentries outside all of the french windows. The deckchairs were filling fast, with the bright young things – not so young, all of them, but very bright – from the dining room, and I was forced to walk at an unseemly pace to secure three together from under the nose of another party.

‘Hmph,’ said one of these, a woman in her forties with the naked look of one who normally wears a great deal of paint but is currently doing without any. Perhaps such a look could not possibly be; it might come down to the over-plucking of eyebrows or the sheen of the wrinkle cream such women trowel on out of the same vanity that leads to the painting.

‘Awfully sorry,’ I said. ‘Were these yours?’

‘Come on, Pegs,’ said one of the men who was with her. ‘Let’s go and float in the swimming bath and call that our day’s treatment.’

‘Pegs’ giggled and turned with a swish of her pleats to follow the men back along the terrace.

‘We’re going to float,’ she called, waving at some swaddled nappers she was passing. ‘No contraptions for us today. Yah-boo! Sucks to you!’

There was a wave of laughter at this wit. We four Gilvers pretended not to hear her and instead made ourselves busy with pillows and rugs and cranking the backrests up and down until the angles were agreeable.

‘I’ll tell someone to let Dr Laidlaw know where you are,’ I said. ‘And I’ll see you later. Now, be brave boys when the time comes, won’t you?’ I was looking at my sons but thinking of Hugh, naturally.

‘Brave?’ said Teddy. ‘There won’t be needles, will there?’

‘Not a one,’ I said. ‘I’m sure the doctor will be as gentle as gentle can be.’ I might have given Hugh a gleaming look of my own, something for him to ponder. Then I kissed all three of them on their foreheads and withdrew.

I told a passing maid – she might have been a nurse-orderly; the uniform made it hard to say – that Dr Laidlaw’s afternoon’s patients were on the terrace and then set about the task of finding Alec. There was no reception desk or lobby as in a normal hotel and there did not appear to be an internal telephone system either. I was loitering with no firm intent near the door which led to the men’s treatment rooms when I heard heels clip-clopping rapidly across the parquet and caught sight of the matron-like figure from the morning whisking across the end of a passageway dressed in outdoor clothes. I shot after her.

‘Mrs Cronin?’ I said.

She stopped and turned. ‘Mrs Gilver?’

‘I was just wondering,’ I said. ‘Is there a … well, on a cruise it would be a passenger list. One of my sons thinks he spotted a neighbour.’

‘Very possibly,’ she said, and I was at a loss to explain the dryness of her tone. ‘Name?’

‘Oh, but with the Hydro so full, you couldn’t surely …?’

‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘It depends if he’s one of Doctor’s or one of Master’s.’

‘I understand,’ I lied, hoping that my face betrayed nothing. ‘It’s a Mr Osborne. A young chap. Bad back.’

‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘I put him down as Master’s but I was wrong. He’s one of the doctor’s after all.’

‘And how would I find out where his room is?’ I asked. She blinked. ‘So I can slip a little note under the door.’

‘I could deliver a note,’ she said. ‘Or you could pop it in the bag in the entrance hall.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘But as it happens, there’s no need. I’m glad you hailed me, Mrs Gilver.’ There was a dramatic pause. ‘I was looking for you to give you this.’ With quite a flourish she produced an envelope she had been holding behind her back. My name was written on it, in Alec’s hand. ‘He thinks he spotted you too,’ she said with a smile which lifted one side of her mouth, but left the other and both of her eyes unchanged.

‘Ha!’ I said. ‘Gosh, what a— How—’ I cleared my throat. ‘Thank you.’ I took the envelope.

‘Don’t mention it,’ she said. ‘We don’t get many folk from Perthshire, what with all the hydros up there, right to hand. Two at once is very remarkable.’ The rat-a-tat-tat of her heels on the polished floor began again and she was gone before I could shut my mouth, much less open it again to answer.

‘Matron’s onto us,’ I said, slipping into Alec’s room a few minutes later. It was another of the white chambers, with a metal bed-frame and an enormous bare window taking up most of one wall, but the view was across the valley and so the room was flooded with afternoon light. It was so warm, with the sun beating in, that the paint, distemper and wood varnish, the very soap which had been used to wash the floor, were releasing their pungencies to mix in the stifling air. Alec sat in the room’s only armchair, a wicker one, looking stupefied.

‘I have a hearty appetite, Dandy, as you know,’ he said. ‘But that luncheon and this sunshine have almost done for me. Could we take a turn about the gardens?’

‘Hugh and the boys are on the terrace,’ I said. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘I did, but all my blood’s in my middle dealing with the apple charlotte. None left in my brain. Onto us how?’

‘How disgustingly detailed,’ I said. I crossed the room and after a moment’s wrestling with the unfamiliar catch I threw open the window. ‘I’m not sure, but she certainly hasn’t swallowed the notion of our just happening to meet here.’

‘Oh.’ Alec was taking deep gulps of fresh air but was still not exactly sparking.

‘I hope she hasn’t twigged that we’re detectives. If she’s neck deep in Mrs Addie, anyway.’ I turned away from the breeze to light a cigarette. ‘Odd about the food, after what Mrs Bowie said, isn’t it?’

‘We haven’t started detecting yet,’ said Alec. He hauled himself to his feet and joined me, looking down over the grounds, and farther out across the valley. ‘With any luck she only suspects us of an assignation.’

I coughed out a puff of smoke.

‘In any case, we need to box shy of her,’ I said. ‘Pity. Because she gave an interesting little view of the Laidlaws just now. There’s a split down the middle of this place as far as Mrs Cronin’s concerned. There’s them as is here for the doctor and there’s them as is here for the master.’

‘So Mrs Cronin might only be neck-deep in factional loyalties – remember the Addies told us that one of the Laidlaws wants to sell up and one of them wants to carry on?’

‘But on the other hand she
might
know something about how Mrs Addie died,’ I supplied.

‘So Mrs Cronin’s card is duly moved to the front of the box with one corner turned down,’ Alec said.

‘And actually, I don’t know if you noticed it yourself but there do seem to be two distinct
sorts
of Hydro inmates. I thought so myself at luncheon.’

‘But which sort is Matron all for?’ Alec asked. I shrugged. ‘Master is the more respectful term. And don’t nurses tend to loathe lady doctors?’

‘But she’s a woman as well as a nurse,’ I said. ‘And Laidlaw is a bounder.’

Alec was lighting his pipe and he snorted and choked a little.

‘A bounder, begad?’ he said. ‘And a cad and a rotter?’

‘Oh all right then, a creep,’ I said. ‘As Donald and Teddy would say. Don’t you think so?’

‘Despite the fact that he’s latched on to me in a rather mysterious way,’ said Alec, striking another match and taking a second run at it, ‘I took his act to be tailored to ladies.’

‘Ugh.’

‘I went as far as to think it a shame that all the charm and frivolity came to him and none to the poor dear doctor when it was she who got the actual looks.’

I thought back to Dr Laidlaw, her floppy hat and drab dress, and could just about see what he meant. She had very large soft brown eyes, like a Labrador retriever, and good cheekbones. An elegant jaw too, whereas her brother had the pudgy cheeks and double chin of a bon viveur.

‘How do you mean, latched on?’ I asked.

Alec shrugged. ‘Seems to want to find something out without asking. Veiled remarks and all that, very tiresome. But probably irrelevant. Right,’ he went on, after one of the long series of puffings with which he gets his pipe going. I always want to make choo-choo noises as he does so. ‘Where do we start?’

‘We need to piece together Mrs Addie’s last day,’ I said. ‘See if we can find out where she was, what she did, try to fall in with the staff she’d have been seeing. You could cultivate any other long-term guests too.’

‘And you?’ said Alec, not exactly trustingly.

‘I shall have to go and talk to the police, I suppose. I don’t much care for them, you know.’

‘You care for Inspector Hutchinson.’

This was true. Inspector Hutchinson had treated Alec and me to an unrelieved diet of sharp questions, scornful remarks and deflating summations during the case we had worked together, but had somehow earned our undying devotion that way.

‘Not much chance of meeting his equal.’

‘What are you going to say?’

‘I have no idea. I’m hoping to hear more than I tell.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Alec. ‘Still, you have to keep busy somehow.’

I did not intend to steal his thunder. Nothing was further from my mind. Alec was here in the heart of things and, for once, I was not. It was no more than a redressing of the balance between us and at that it was long overdue. Nevertheless, when I left him, I found myself neither descending to the town nor returning to the terrace to see how my menfolk fared. Instead, I made my way back to the corridor of treatment rooms and to the Turkish baths at its end.

It was a very different place from the one Dr Laidlaw and I had walked through that morning. Almost all of the lounging couches in the resting room were occupied now, the occupants swaddled in robes and fanning themselves with paddles. I took no more than a couple of steps before I was accosted.

‘Here, miss!’ I turned. ‘Oh, madam, I beg your pardon.’ It was a nurse of some sort, a round little person in a blue uniform dress anyway, with the sleeves rolled high up on her reddened arms. She pushed a bale of white towelling cloth into my arms and propelled me towards one of the cubicles. ‘You’ll melt away if you come in here like that,’ she said. ‘Never mind ruin your fur. Lovely fur, madam, if you don’t mind me. Just you ring the bell when you’re changed and I’ll come and take your things.’ She banged the door shut on me and left me inside the tiny cubicle. There was a hook to hang one’s clothes on, a net to pull on over one’s hair lest it be disarranged upon undressing, and a bench with a velvet cushion to sit on while one unfastened one’s shoes. I ignored the net, blessing my shingle, but sat down and started unfastening. How far was one to go? How many of one’s things should one remove and how many retain? I unrolled the bale of towelling and found inside it a very fine lawn shift, armless and only a slit for a neckline like a partly unpicked pillow-case. It seemed to suggest that complete divestment was the order of the day, so after shrugging out of my tweeds and shirt, I peeled off my underthings too. I took off my earrings and wristwatch, my pearls and my bracelet and then wriggled into the shift, bound the robe tightly about me, and rang the bell.