I blamed this unwrapped, unfettered heap of toffee pieces for the thick buttery sweetness in the air, almost heavy enough to taste. It was either that, the tray of toffee-apples sitting on top of the counter, plump and shining, or possibly the neat packages of tablet, tied with string, and showing with a slight translucence in their paper that they had been wrapped very recently, while still warm.
‘A quarter of your famous Moffat toffee, please,’ Alec said to the woman behind the counter. She was dressed in an apron and cap which mirrored the company livery of black and white with bright red trim and looked, therefore, like something from a pantomime. Fifty if a day, she nevertheless dimpled a little at Alec’s voice. I decided to hang back and let him have his way.
‘Right you are, sir,’ she said. ‘And is that what brought you here to Moffat?’ She must have noticed my arched brow, for she gave me a cold look before turning back to Alec and switching on the twinkle again. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ she confided.
‘I’m sure,’ Alec said. ‘No, I’m at the Hydro for a few days, but a late friend of mine told me to be sure and stop by.’ He had let his voice fall and now his head drooped a little too.
‘A Moffat man?’ asked the shopkeeper, busily trying to think what gentleman had recently been called to his rest, I imagine.
‘An Edinburgh lady,’ Alec replied. ‘And a great devotee of yours. A Mrs Addie. She was often at the Hydro. I wonder if you know who I mean.’
‘Mrs Addie?’ cried the shopkeeper, pressing a hand to her breast. ‘A late friend, did you say, sir? Oh mercy, I’m sorry to hear that now!’
‘As am I to have broken sad news in such an unfeeling way,’ Alec said. The undertaker was back at his post.
‘Not at all,’ said the shopkeeper. She rummaged under the counter and brought up a doilied plate with a small heap of toffees on it. She took one for herself, her manners all departed with the shock of the news perhaps, and then held it out to Alec the way one would offer a cigarette. He took one and unwrapped it as solemnly as one can.
‘It should be tablet, really,’ said the shopkeeper with a sad smile. ‘Mrs Addie was a one for my mother’s tablet. She’d take a toffee if one was offered but it was tablet she bought for herself and tablet she always sent to her daughter.’
‘Ah, dear Mrs Bowie,’ Alec said. ‘She’s bearing up well but she feels it.’
‘I never met the young lady,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Mrs always came in alone.’
‘And when was it that you last saw her?’ Alec said. The door behind us had tinkled and he spoke rather quickly in case she was about to dismiss him and all his questions and go back to plying her trade.
‘Oh, the last time she was here,’ came the reply, spoken at a very comfortable pace; there was all the time in the world to discuss poor Mrs Addie, no matter that even now the door tinkled again. ‘Last summer. I did wonder if she wasn’t coming back again – changed days up there since the old doctor passed – but there! If she wasn’t well that’ll have been at the bottom of it.’
Here Alec had no choice but to turn to me, even if my insinuation into his tête-à-tête was not to his new friend’s liking, for he had not been in Scotland long enough to navigate his way to an understanding of ‘last summer’ spoken in October. I, in contrast, knew right away that we had scored a crucial point in our game. ‘Last summer’ to this Moffat worthy could not include the most recent September; it was over a year ago. ‘This summer past’, ‘that summer there’ and ‘summer just gone’ would have answered the case, but ‘last summer’ was unequivocally nothing to do with Mrs Addie’s final trip to the Hydro.
‘She was back, though,’ I said. ‘The dear lady.’ I should not try that stuff; it does not come naturally and I saw Alec biting his cheeks to hear me. ‘Just for a couple of nights, mind you. I wonder that she didn’t make it into the shop. I’m sure I would have made a beeline.’ I looked around the place and tried to make my eyes shine with greed, or at least to look as though my stomach were not roiling.
The shopkeeper decided to forgive my sin – which was, I expected, chiefly made up of my not being Alec – since I had brought hard news, and she gave a chuckle.
‘Oh, Mrs Addie never came to the shop until she’d been a good week with the doctor,’ she said. ‘She came and did her treatments and as soon as she was able she came down here and undid them all again.’
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Alec said.
The woman pulled her face out of its grin and lowered her eyes. ‘I meant no disrespect, sir.’
‘I shouldn’t imagine it for a minute,’ he assured her. ‘But how could your toffee undo a cured back?’ I kicked him gently and he took his cue and changed course like a dressage pony. ‘Ah, well. Water under the bridge. Let’s just both be thankful we knew her and let’s never forget her, eh? Now, to business.’ He rubbed his hands together and began a protracted series of negotiations into the differences between toffee, tablet and fudge, the comparative ‘nippiness’ of pan drops, oddfellows and humbugs and an enquiry into the healthful properties of liquorice sticks which only ended when the queue which had built up behind him reached the door and was letting a draught in.
I bought sugar mice for Donald and Teddy, who would be mystified by my nostalgia, I was sure, and a quarter-pound of comfits for Hugh who is fond of them, and we left at last.
‘Well?’ said Alec, shifting a large piece of toffee into his cheek and carefully closing the wrapping on the remainder (thus does one try to pretend one is not going to eat the lot and have to sip warm water and baking soda later).
‘I think we can take the bad back as a politeness,’ I said. ‘Mrs Addie came to the Hydro for some “banting”.’
‘What?’
‘A reducing diet. I always think it’s a most expressive word.’
‘A reducing diet?’ said Alec. ‘Ah, I see.’
‘Which explains why her daughter would be so sure she wasn’t off the Hydro grounds within a day of getting there. The Old Doctor must have kept her captive until he had helped her shift a few pounds.’
‘It also explains why she was moaning about the food,’ Alec said. ‘Dorothea – Dr Laidlaw must have had her on a special menu, not the pies and custards the rest of us are wading through.’
‘I wonder if knowing that helps us?’ I said. ‘Let’s go back to the house and drop off Bunty. She’ll have had enough of the back seat by now.’
‘It might do,’ Alec said. ‘I can see why Dr Laidlaw would be interested in her anyway. I mean to say, standing someone on a set of bathroom scales is pretty black and white, isn’t it? There’s no way to disguise the fact that something’s working. Or not. And I happen to know from our discussions that Doroth— Dr Laidlaw’s biggest bugbear is that asking people how they are feeling is a hopeless way of finding out how ill they are.’
‘What is the work she does?’ I asked. ‘Doroth— Dr Laidlaw?’ I was not exactly sure why I was teasing him; sometimes I think it has simply become a habit as it was with my brother and sister and me. ‘What is it that absorbs her so that she ignores her appointments with her patients?’
‘Fascinating stuff,’ Alec said. He had coloured a touch at the teasing but let it go by unremarked, which was most unusual. ‘And she’s an expert in the field. More learned papers than you could shake a stick at and the Hydro is the perfect place to study it.’
‘Study what?’ I said. We were back at the motorcar and right enough, Bunty was standing up on the back seat with her head out of the side window flap, playing to a crowd of children who were taking turns to pet her. She grew excited enough when she saw me to drive them back a little, just enough to let us through.
‘Bonnie doggy, missus,’ said a grubby little sort in a tattered dress and a ribbon which only added to the tangles in her hair and did nothing for decoration. ‘She looks like a bag ae toffees.’ I laughed; it had not struck me before but the black-and-white patterned toffee shop did have a faint air of Dalmatian about it.
I decided to spare myself Donald and Teddy’s looks of scorn at my sentiment and handed the urchin the bag of sugar mice, calling to her departing back that she should share them.
‘Snake oil,’ Alec said, once we were in and Bunty had recovered from the joy of reunion. ‘Faith healing. Mumbo-jumbo. Only she calls it the Placebo.’
‘Sounds like a resort on the Mediterranean,’ I said. ‘“Come to the Placebo – white beaches and dancing every night.” And she studies it at the Hydro?’
‘She thinks it’s the perfect place,’ Alec said again. ‘Promise you won’t tell Hugh.’ Light was beginning to dawn upon me. Alec grinned. ‘She doesn’t believe a bit of it. Not a jot. Not the sitz baths or the sun lamps or anything.’
‘Huh!’ I said. ‘She charges enough for it in that case.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Alec. ‘But she charges because it works. I tell you, Dandy, it’s a marvel. The theory is – Do-octor Laidlaw explained it all to me – that Donald and Teddy and Hugh will all get better even though it’s complete hocus-pocus. And they’ll all get better faster than if they just rested and let nature take its course, and they’ll all get better quicker with three different “treatment plans” than if they all did the same. And the more trouble it is the better it works.’
‘That must be why the patients who’re only there for the casino have to submit to treatments,’ I said. ‘Only … I wonder what she’s measuring if they’re not ill to start with.’
‘Could be any one of a hundred things,’ Alec said. ‘She’s working on an enormous review of it. Thinking about The Lancet, no less.’
‘She certainly seems to have convinced you,’ I said. ‘You don’t think that maybe if something went wrong – if one of her patients died, for instance – she would cover it up? With The Lancet in view?’
‘Not patients. Guinea pigs,’ Alec said. ‘That’s what she calls them.’
‘Such callousness doesn’t exactly speak to—’ I began. Then I stopped as a thought struck me. ‘Why did she tell you all of this? When she’d only just met you?’
‘I’m a control,’ Alec said. ‘She really does have a first-rate mind, Dan. She tells a select few to see if it still works when we know it’s all nonsense.’
‘Ah,’ I said. We were swinging into Auchenlea’s gate now. ‘So you’re a guinea pig too then, really. I thought for a bit she was taken with you.’ I did not turn my head since I was navigating a narrow drive, but I thought I saw him stiffen. ‘Won’t it muck things up rather – for The Lancet – that there’s nothing wrong with you? Will you pretend to get better or pretend to stay crocked? Can you even remember what it is that’s supposed to be wrong with you?’
‘Bad back, like Mrs Addie,’ Alec said in a distant voice. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘My bright idea about the Fiscal means that you’ll have to open your little cage and run away anyway. The experiment is over, at least for you.’
He did not take much convincing. Dr Laidlaw might see Alec as just another dead moth to be pinned but I was becoming ever more sure that he had failed to take a comparably professional view of her. All that choking on her name and letting me rib him. To me she was a suspect, like her brother and Mrs Cronin and even Regina. To Alec she was an innocent, sullied by the coarseness of Tot, and deserving, without question, of all the loyalty Mrs Cronin and Regina could give her. For that reason too I was not as loath as I normally would be to despatch him on an errand.
‘I prefer “mission”,’ he said. I was not going to quibble. Certainly I was not going to fight him for the opportunity to raise the thorny question of exhumation. It would take all of his charm to talk Mrs Bowie into anything of the kind and Mr Addie would not have let me get to the end of the first sentence before he paid his outstanding bill and showed me the door.
‘I’m sure I’m right,’ I said. ‘The family and the Fiscal. Sergeant Simpson repeated that twice or three times, lording it over us who are neither. But what he forgot is that the Fiscal who swallowed the story – the one in Dumfries – is not the Fiscal who’ll have to sign the order. He’s in Edinburgh. If you can persuade the Addies to ask him – and of course you can; they adore you – then surely … Well, I’m not sure, to be honest, but I’d wager a modest sum. He probably feels some professional loyalty, but he probably feels some rivalry too and when we get right down to it his first duty is to the citizenry under his care. To wit, Addie and Bowie née. I’ll bet you I’m right, Alec.’
‘And my job is to go to these respectable people and suggest digging the old girl up and having a poke about to see what we can see,’ Alec said. We were standing at the front door of the Hydro. He looked up at it, sighed and consulted his watch. ‘I wish there was a bar in there,’ he said. ‘I hope they’ll bring a whisky and soda to the drawing room. Meanwhile what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to get into that locked room if it kills me,’ I said. ‘I’m half convinced that’s where Mrs Addie died. There might still be clues.’
Before that, though, there was a very difficult conversation to be had. I begged Alec to be there and to promise not to leave no matter what happened. Quite simply, now that we thought Mrs Addie had been murdered I could no longer countenance Donald and Teddy spending their days at the Hydro. I could not claim to be too keen on the guinea pig end of things either, if it came to that, and it lent me the courage to speak, just not enough to speak without Alec there to protect me.
‘Hugh,’ I said, joining him at a tea table in the drawing room. He had a whisky and soda, I was interested to see, although the boys were tussling with a silver teapot and a three-tiered stand of bread-and-butter, griddle cakes and meringues.
‘Boys,’ I said. ‘Slop out that dishwater and let me pour you a nice hot cup then load up your plates and run along. I need to speak to Daddy.’ This was a great treat, for of course they had been trained from the days when their bread was served in soldiers to affect ignorance of the higher, sweeter tiers until the duller fare was gone. I was rather horrified to see them immediately build towers of cake on their tea plates, but I simply poured the tea, told them they could not have sugar in it and waited until they took themselves off to a window seat with a view of the bowling.
‘Now then, Hugh,’ I said. ‘How are you feeling?’
Hugh gave a quick glance towards Alec. It was low of me to force him to speak of his health in front of another man, and a neighbour come to that.
‘Perfectly well, Dandy,’ he said. ‘Thank you for asking.’
I sighed. ‘I mean are you feeling the better for having come here?’
‘Oh, tremendously so,’ he said. ‘I’ve been telling you for years that water treatment is the thing. The boys are vastly improved too.’ I smiled and tried not to think about how angry he would be if he ever found out about the snake oil.
‘Well, just remember that as you listen to what I’m going to tell you,’ I said. ‘And remember too that I rented a house. I didn’t suggest we stayed here. Remember that, please.’
Hugh took a contemplative sip from his glass. Alec looked away and ordered a drink of his own from a maid who was passing.
‘Go on,’ Hugh said.
‘Yes, now you see, the thing is,’ I said. ‘What I mean to say is – and you’ve probably already guessed because not much gets past you and I have seen you laughing once or twice and not sharing the joke.’ If I hoped to butter him up with this, I hoped in vain. All I did was make him suspect I knew about the casino. Not much gets past him, as I say. ‘The thing is that Alec and I are working.’
‘On a case,’ Alec said.
‘Fraud?’ said Hugh, quite loudly. I took it to mean that he had not cashed in his winnings and was trusting Laidlaw with whatever sum he had racked up to date.
‘Ah, no,’ I said. ‘Nor theft – which would be dreadful, nothing worse than a hotel where one’s belongings aren’t safe. Remember that terrible place in Paris? With the drains?’
; ‘Something less dreadful than theft then?’ he said. ‘I hope it’s going to pay enough to cover the cost of you both rushing down here. Or did it arise after we came?’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It was certainly partly responsible for my suggesting decamping to here. But mostly it was you and the boys. And Pallister and Mrs Tilling too.’
‘And what is this crime – if it even is a crime – that’s not so bad as maids pilfering cufflinks?’ he said.
‘An odd end to a patient’s treatment,’ I said. Did he know already? Had he guessed and begun toying with me?
‘Seems to me there are only two ends,’ Hugh said. He had guessed, damn him. ‘Recovery or … death.’
‘Yes,’ I said and then hurried on. I judged it best to keep talking and get everything out at once. ‘A death. A woman, though, a good bit older than you, and much, much older than the boys, with a very different complaint – bad back and a tendency towards stoutness which she was being treated for with surely completely different treatments from those you’d need if it were your lungs and a long illness like the boys and you. And besides I’m telling you today because I think the boys should leave now that we’ve decided that it’s … that is, now that there’s a chance that what happened was perhaps that she was … murdered. Weeks ago.’ I think it was that last point that pushed him over the edge. He set down his glass with a smack that drew attention from several of the other tea tables. I had to calm myself with a few very deep breaths before I dared to look him in the face and when I did it was to see that he was smiling. More than smiling; he was laughing. A silent laugh with shaking shoulders, which I had only ever seen before when he recounted stories from George at the club.
‘I actually thought we must be iller than the doctors would tell us,’ he said, ‘when you suddenly dragged us off down here. It kept me awake one night. But now all is revealed.’ All except the hot water and radiators at Gilverton, I thought, giving him a sickly grin. Hugh turned to Alec. ‘Are we in any danger, old man?’
Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone Page 19
