Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘And what did Dr Laidlaw say?’ I asked them. ‘What regime has she decreed for the pair of you?’

  ‘Rest for me,’ said Donald, very gloomy. ‘Rest on the terrace with a hot bottle at my feet. Rest in some vibrating electric contraption with bright lamps shining on me – I’m sure to be seasick – and rest while wrapped up like a mummy in hot towels and camphor.’

  ‘Camphor?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Might have been menthol,’ Donald said. ‘Mustard even. Something pretty smelly anyway.’ Then he brightened. ‘She did say I was to have port wine at lunch and at dinner and red meat too.’

  ‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘Not a drop of water in any of that anywhere. I’m beginning to wonder how hydropathy got its name.’

  ‘Plenty of water for me,’ Teddy said. ‘I’m to swim in the bathing pool every morning. Breaststroke, she said. Loosening, whatever that means. And then the hot towels and mothballs, like Don. For expectation.’

  ‘Expectoration,’ I said. ‘At least, I would have thought so. Well, how gruesome. I hope you’re being mummified in a private room.’ Of course, what I really hoped was that I would not encounter someone, nicely loosened and now expectorating, in some shared part of the women’s accommodations. ‘No breaststroke for you then, Donald dear?’

  ‘No, I’m being thrown to the rubbers,’ he said. ‘Those burly men in blue overalls we saw in the hot rooms yesterday. One of them is supposed to pound me in between the lamps and the menthol.’

  I did not much like the sound of that, some thug with big red hands setting about my poor diminished boy, but that was not why my face fell. His words had suggested something far worse to me. If the people dressed in blue in the hot rooms were dedicated, trained ‘rubbers’ – I supposed that plain term was just about preferable to ‘masseur’ with its whiff of decadence – then Regina was most likely to be found all day and every day in one place only, and there was only one way to fall in with her. Grant, I realised, was going to kill me.

  In the end, I managed to get away with only the briefest stop in the coolest room before I caught sight of a blue sphere flashing past the opened velvet curtains leading to the rest beds. I shot to my feet, belted my robe firmly and scuttled after her.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Mrs Gilver,’ she said, turning as she heard her name. ‘Back again, eh? I thought so.’ At my look (I hoped it was only puzzled and not actually guilty) she explained. ‘I can always tell who’s going to take to it and who’s not,’ she said. ‘You might have grumbled a bit when you hit the cold water, madam, but it’s nothing to what some of them let out. One lady once said a word I’d never heard in my life, and that’s me as used to pull pints in the public bar at the Annandale Arms to help out in the Tup Fair.’

  ‘Well, to be honest, Regina,’ I said, ‘I was rather hoping to run into you. I’ve got the most fearful crick in my neck – I think I must have wrenched it in the shock of the plunge, you know – and I wondered if you could help. Unless one has to book an appointment.’

  ‘Depends on the season and how busy we are,’ she said. ‘But you’re in luck this morning, madam. Slab and salt or warm oil?’ At my expression, she laughed and explained. One could either lie naked on one of the marble slabs beside the cold sprays and be doused with water and rubbed with rock salt then rinsed off, which sounded more like the beginning of a recipe to cure meat than anything one might visit upon one’s own person, or one could be taken to a quiet room, lie down on a couch and be rubbed with warm oil.

  ‘Only that’s extra on your bill, madam,’ Regina said. ‘And a salt rub on the slab down here is included. As many as you feel like.’ It was ‘first glass sixpence, second glass free’ all over again: I was willing to bet that the offer of endless time on the slab with the cold water was not going to ruin the Hydro in the immediate future.

  I made my unsurprising choice and Regina steered me up a narrow set of wooden stairs at the side of the changing cubicles and into one of a number of small rooms which led off the upper landing. There was more of the dark wood and red velvet here, and with the couch – even if it was draped in white towels instead of silk shawls – the overall effect was that of a miniature boudoir. I lay down on my front and she expertly shrugged me out of the robe.

  ‘Now then,’ she said. ‘Crick in your neck, you said? Hmph. I see what you mean.’

  I did not need to force rigidity into my muscles, for the novelty of suddenly having someone who was not Grant lay hands upon me and immediately comment on her findings caused an automatic tension to spread through me.

  ‘Wee drop eucalyptus oil,’ she said, and then bracing her feet hard, one knee bent and one straight, as I could see perfectly well over the side of the couch, she set about my neck and shoulders like a master baker with a batch of dough.

  ‘Golly,’ I said presently. ‘Oof. Gosh.’

  ‘This,’ she panted. ‘Will do you. The world. Of good. Madam.’

  ‘I can see why people come back year after year,’ I said, beginning to feel my way.

  ‘They have. So far. Anyway,’ Regina said.

  This was an opening indeed, if I could just decide how best to use it.

  ‘It must be odd for your old regulars suddenly to have Dr Laidlaw Sr gone and so many changes,’ I said. Regina said nothing. She poured on a little more oil, smacked her hands together and set about a different bit of my back, somewhat towards the sides and threatening to be ticklish if I did not try hard to avoid thinking of it in that way.

  ‘Unless you mean something else?’ I said. I waited for a while. There was no sound except the unlovely one of oily hands smacking against oily back as she pitched herself with gusto at her task. ‘You don’t mean that Mrs Addie will cause a scandal, do you?’ Her hands lifted off my skin and there was silence except for her fast breathing. I craned round trying to see her and, at the sight of her patient twisting about that way, she was spurred back into action. She laid her hands rather tentatively on my skin, but did not move them.

  ‘I never said that,’ she whispered. ‘How did you even know about poor Mrs Addie? I never said any such thing.’

  ‘Of course not, my dear,’ I said. ‘One hears gossip, but not from you. Most commendable.’

  ‘I was fond of her,’ Regina said. ‘I’d not make tittle-tattle out of her going off that way.’ Rather uncertainly, she recommenced her pummelling. ‘Anyway it was her heart. It could have happened any time and anywhere. At home, in the pictures.’ The rhythm was back to normal, the slaps ringing out again.

  ‘But it happened here,’ I said.

  I must say, if it could be arranged, it would be splendid to have every interview in every case accompanied by a vigorous back-rub. I could tell from the faltering of her hands again that what I had just said was troubling, could tell it as plain as day before she spoke a sound. And then her words when they came said the same.

  ‘That was the story,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t true.’ I am sure that she must have felt my muscles turning to iron but she made no reference to it. ‘She went out, madam. She collapsed away out somewhere. And that right there’s enough to stop any nasty talk. She wasn’t supposed to be out. She wasn’t supposed to go out traipsing for another week. Dr Laidlaw had a full regime all drawn up. If she’d stuck to it, she might be here today, because it was working. You could tell already it was. So as to any scandal sticking to the Hydro, I should say it’s the other way on. Vice versa.’ As she became more adamant in her words so did she in her rubbing. By the end of this speech I was being thrown about like a cork in the tide and had to grip the couch to hold on.

  ‘She wasn’t here?’ I said. ‘Well, in that case, I agree. Nothing for the Laidlaws to worry about. But why would they say she was at the Hydro if she was out on the town?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Regina. ‘I can tell you that, hand on heart. I don’t know that I’d say she was in the town, mind you. I thought maybe the woods. The hills, you know.’ Privately, I agreed. If she was going t
o see a ghost and collapse then a lonely spot seemed much more like it. There were only two problems: what had an Edinburgh matron who thought the world of the Hydro been doing in the hills or woods instead of availing herself of the many facilities and diversions for which she had come all this way? That was one. The second problem was even more thorny. If Mrs Addie was out on a wooded hillside in the dark, how exactly had Dr Laidlaw managed to find her there?

  I was silent after that, thinking it through without ever being able to frame a question to put to Regina. Before long, she finished me off with a percussive set of blows all up and down my spine from nape to waist and then wiped me with a warm cloth and patted me nicely dry. It was an effort to peel myself up off the couch after the way she had tried to press me into it like a flower after a nature walk, but once I was up I felt quite wonderful and I thought to myself that I really had to try to run into her sometime when I had my bag with me so I could tip her. She did not loiter hopefully, to her credit, but bustled off and left me to wriggle back into my robe and make my own way to the cubicle and my clothes.

  I dressed quickly and did not fuss with my hair, eager to get to what I was going to do next. In the dining room – it was comfortably luncheon-time now, although rather early for the bright young things – I scanned the tables for a likely party. Before I spotted one, though, Hugh spotted me and waved me over to make up a fourth with the boys and him. Odd, I thought, waving back and moving towards them. I was not puzzled for long.

  ‘Teddy tells me you’ve driven poor Osborne off already,’ he said, while pushing in my chair. ‘Back to Edinburgh on the noon train.’

  ‘Briefly,’ I said. ‘And nothing to do with me. He had some business or errand of his own to see to. He’ll be back tonight, he said, if he can possibly manage it.’ Hugh grinned.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said. ‘And you’ll be taking the boys back to the house after tea? You’re not staying here for dinner, are you?’

  I surveyed the luncheon menu: tomato soup, calf’s head brawn, roasted mushrooms, cauliflower cheese, pickled cabbage, loganberry pudding, mint creams.

  ‘I shan’t be staying for dinner,’ I said firmly. ‘In fact, since I’m walking down to the town and the town is so very well served with tea shops and I’m not actually hungry at the moment, I don’t think I’ll stay for luncheon. Nice to have seen you and said hello, though. Four o’clock in the lobby, boys.’

  ‘I could walk down to the town with you, Mummy,’ said Teddy. ‘Donald’s having his seat in the electric chair.’

  ‘Please don’t call it that,’ I scolded. ‘Not even in jest. I’m going to the lending library, you can certainly come there with me and choose something to read. And then I need to find a hat shop where they do repairs and cleaning, and Mrs Tilling wanted me to track down a florist since the gardens are so bare. You’re more than welcome—’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Teddy. I had named three of his least favourite establishments. The hat shop alone would have been enough to send him packing. ‘There’s a little lending library here. I’ll see what they can cough up for us.’

  ‘Don’t say “cough up”,’ said Hugh and I almost in perfect unison and we parted on good terms, as always when we agree on something.

  On my way out of the dining room I had another scout about for a likely table. Of course Hugh, if he saw me, would withdraw from our shared view of Teddy’s vocabulary into his more usual disapproval of me and all my works, but that was not to be helped. Almost at the door, tucked away to the side of the serving table, I saw what I was looking for. Three of the most overdressed, over-coiffed, over-maquillaged women I am sure the Hydro dining room had ever contained: one of them had lace mittens on and yet was spreading brawn onto a cracker. One of the others had a hat perched on her piled-up hair, with so many greenish-black feathers I had to squint to make sure it was not a whole crow.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said, sidling up to them and standing with my hands on the back of the free chair. ‘I’ve only just found out that you’re here. I hope you don’t mind me stopping by to say hello.’ I was scanning all three of them, and I spotted one preening herself slightly. I stuck my hand out to this one. ‘Dandelion Gilver,’ I said, thankful for the first time in my life that my parents had given me such a ridiculous name.

  ‘Petrushka Molyneaux,’ she said, with a bow which made the feathers catch the light and gleam greener than ever. A likely story, was what I thought. Patsy Miller, probably.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘How exciting to have you here. And so unexpected. I’m here with my husband and sons who’ve all been ill with this wretched flu. I had no idea. Does Moffat have lots of ghosts then? I’ve never heard of any.’

  Mrs Molyneaux’s face snapped like a rat-trap and her companions recoiled from me.

  ‘A handful,’ said the one with brawn in the lace of her mittens. ‘The usual number. For the tourists.’ She did not say ‘such as yourself’. She did not need to.

  ‘That is not why we’re here,’ said the third of the coven, a young white-faced woman with thin pale hair and enormous pale green eyes like gooseberries. ‘And certainly not why Madame Molyneaux has left her consultancy and come all this way.’ After a few further pleasantries had been rather stiffly exchanged I left with a flea in my ear (but thinking ‘consultancy, indeed’). What charlatans!

  Charlatans or no, however, they had given me an idea. If Mrs Addie had conjured a ghost for herself it was more than likely one of the handful laid on for the tourists, and what better way to learn of those than to visit the public library after all.

  The rain had let up and although the going was unpleasant, especially as the wind had shaken free the first of the leaves which were now lying sodden underfoot, the air was clear and sparkling and I strode out with a light heart and an empty stomach. This is my favourite internal arrangement if I can manage it, so long as there are pots of tea and buns at my destination; and there were. If Alec could confirm that Mrs Addie believed in ghosties and ghoulies and I could find some witness to place her at one of Moffat’s haunted spots, then we could add our voices to the chorus singing ‘heart attack’ and file the case under jobs well done.

  There was no public library in Moffat town, I soon learned, but the reading room in the bath house included, as well as the circulating library, a large reference collection and in one corner, better all the time, a wooden sign hanging on chains and reading ‘Local History: please enquire here.’ At a desk under this sign, which swung gently in the breeze as I closed the outside door, was the perfect person, just who I wanted to see. She was sixty if a day, high-coloured, dressed with a little more panache than one might look for in a librarian, and she had the round bright eye of one who is interested in all that passes around her. The town gossip, in short, or rather one of the no doubt dense tangle of them; and with those bright gold chains around her neck and that enormous brooch of unlikely blue stones, she did not look the sort of devout little body who would be shocked to speak of the things I was going to ask her.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said, sitting. Those bright eyes took in everything about me, head to toe, in an instant.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘How may I help you?’

  ‘I have rather an odd request.’ I delivered this with a little wriggle and a titter. Neither of these came naturally to me and so I hoped she believed them. ‘I’m interested in the … folklore of your delightful town. Folk tales, you know.’ From the way she kept peering at me, politely enquiring, no sign of a nod or a smile, it appeared that she did not. I tried again.

  ‘Fascinating, these old superstitions. One wonders how they begin.’ She blinked but otherwise her face remained, as before, polite, interested and utterly devoid of any signs of understanding. ‘I was in Alloway, recently. Most interesting, the bridge and the kirkyard and all of that …’

  ‘Oh, ghosts!’ she said in tones one might have expected to be drummed out of a librarian by years of whispering. The very lampshades rang abov
e our heads.

  ‘Ghosts it is,’ I said. ‘Are there any materials I might consult which would cover—’

  ‘Oh, we’re very well off for ghosts!’ she exclaimed. I wished she would not keep declaiming the word at full volume. ‘That’s not an unusual request at all. Why it’s only a matter of weeks since I was telling the last reader who wanted to know all about them.’

  ‘Indeed? Are there many?’

  ‘Oh yes, madam. Well there’s the Haunted Ram, of course.’

  ‘A public house?’ I asked.

  ‘A ram,’ she corrected. ‘Haunted. And the Devil’s Beef Tub is notorious.’

  ‘Haunted cows?’

  She sailed on. ‘And then, let me see, there’s Yellow Mary at the well, although she’s not been seen so much since the new wee housie was built there. I always fret that she’s trapped underneath it, you know. And not a soul that belongs to Moffat would go up the Gallow Hill at the full moon. Will I write these down for you, madam? I could draw you a wee map too.’

  Fifteen minutes later, I came reeling out into the uncertain sunshine with my wee map in my hand and my head swirling with phantasms too many to number; Moffat most certainly was a place where the dead seemed to go about their business unimpeded by their change of state and with no thoughts of lying down quietly and mouldering.

  The Devil’s Beef Tub was not haunted by cattle after all, but by the spirits of the marauding Johnstone clan – the infamous Border Reivers – and by the spirits of such of their enemies as had tried and failed to besiege them there and grab the stolen herds back again. The problems of the Gallow Hill spoke for themselves. Apparently the earth turned red with the blood of the hanged in the light of the full moon each month (I had forborne to mention to the little librarian that hanging does not cause much bloodshed and that I happened to know that the dark of the moon is the time when nights get really tricky). Even leaving aside Yellow Mary at the well, since she had evidently been squashed, that still left quite a parade of the usual suspects. To wit: a century ago either William Burke or William Hare had stopped the night at the Black Bull Inn, a century before that Bonnie Prince Charlie had watered his horses and left a soldier to die on the banks of the stream. Bloody Mary, of course, had passed a few nights in a nearby castle and her grief and sorrow had seeped into its walls. Reaching back into history, Bruce and Wallace and even Malcolm had paused at Moffat on their travels, watering their horses again (a thirsty lot, the mounts of these Scottish warriors) and imbuing the hills and fields with the sort of vanquished hopes and tragic disappointment which inevitably end up as grey ladies and headless pipers.