Then from all around came shrieks of disbelief and sounds of weeping as though, with that one last horror, this dreadful night had undone everyone.
‘All for nothing,’ said Mrs Cronin, beside me, still staring. ‘All for nothing after all.’ Then there came a cry of ‘Nurse!’ from over by the benches and Mrs Cronin gathered herself and turned away.
‘I was going to propose,’ Alec said, once she had gone. He spoke quite calmly, as though of some small matter which had slipped his mind. I turned and regarded him, realising only now how many little signs I had missed and how unknowingly cruel I had been, teasing him. Now it was time to be kind.
‘I don’t think you would have if you had really known her,’ I said. He did not turn. He was still looking up at the window, but he cocked his head a little my way. ‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. Right now we need to get you some ointment for your face. I can’t believe you didn’t think to go under.’ I turned away, hoping to see an ambulance man who might help with some first aid, but what I saw was Grant, barrelling towards me with tears pouring down her face. She stopped dead three feet short and curtsied.
‘I’m very glad you’re all right,’ she said. ‘Madam.’
I felt my lip begin to wobble and held out my open arms. She stepped into them and hugged me so hard that drips of plunge-pool water were squeezed out of my clothes and fell into my shoes. Over her shoulder I saw Hugh, whose face was a battleground of at least four different emotions: shock at Grant, disgust with me, and horrified interest as to what had happened to Alec’s face; what was filling his eyes and making him sniff, though, was something it made me smile to see. He nodded and then turned and walked away. I would never allude to the fact that I saw his shoulders shaking as he wept out his feelings quietly for no one to witness.
‘I’m so glad to see you safe and well, my dear Mrs Gilver,’ said Loveday Merrick. He took off the magnificent astrakhan overcoat and gave it to me. ‘I can’t imagine why that woman told me the doctor was in the mud room. I would never have forgiven myself if you had come to harm because of me.’
‘Who are you, Mr Merrick?’ I said. ‘I know you’re not who everyone believes you to be. And how did you know what that little room was?’
But he saw me swaying on my feet and made the same decision I had for Alec moments before.
‘I shall call upon you tomorrow, if I may,’ he replied, ‘and tell you the whole story.’
‘You can come tonight and sleep in an armchair, if you like,’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying to think how many refugees we could take in.’
He bowed his acceptance. ‘More than I deserve after I put you in danger.’
‘But a doctor was in the mud room,’ I said. ‘Just not Dr Laidlaw. One of the local men. He didn’t escape, I’m very sorry to say.’
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Right enough, she didn’t say a name. Just “the doctor”.’
‘Who was it who told you?’ I asked him.
‘I didn’t catch her name either,’ Merrick said. ‘A stout lady in a robe and turban. I haven’t seen her again since she spoke to me.’
17
The police, in the persons of Sergeant Simpson and the same smooth-cheeked boy I had met before, were on the scene now and, although all I wanted to do in the world was peel off my soaking, stinking clothes and fall into my bed with my arms around Bunty, I veered over to the sergeant on my way to the drive and Hugh’s motorcar and stood squarely in front of him.
‘This fire wasn’t an accident,’ I said.
‘No need to convince me, madam,’ said Sergeant Simpson. ‘A great white elephant like this going up just as business is going down. I wasn’t born yesterday.’
‘And two people at least have lost their lives in it,’ I said. ‘One was deliberately shut up so he couldn’t escape. Dr Ramsay from Well Street.’ The sergeant’s eyebrows rose and he swept off his cap.
‘Right enough?’ he said. ‘Well, that puts a very different face on things. By all accounts the Laidlaw woman was a suicide but what you’ve just told me is murder, plain and simple. If you’ll come down to the station and make a statement, madam.’ I could feel my face fall.
‘Could I do it tomorrow, Sergeant Simpson?’ I pleaded. ‘I’m dead on my feet. Couldn’t you just put Tot Laidlaw in jail tonight anyway?’ The sergeant was shaking his head. ‘Where is he?’ Simpson nodded over my shoulder and I turned. Across at the fountain, where the benches were set in rows with blanketed figures resting on them, Tot Laidlaw was very much in evidence, walking to and fro with towels and mugs of tea – I was right; someone somehow had got a kettle going – and stopping to lay his hand on shoulders and once even a brow.
‘Would you have a man to spare to send over to Auchenlea?’ I asked. Sergeant Simpson thought a moment and then nodded. I crossed to Laidlaw and took him by the arm.
‘My dear Mr Laidlaw,’ I said. ‘I am so very sorry about your poor sister.’ Tot switched his expression from cod sympathy to cod anguish as though he had turned a dial. ‘Now, you must get some rest tonight somehow,’ I said. ‘Whenever you feel you can leave, I insist you come to Auchenlea and spend a few hours at ease. Tomorrow will be a trial and you need to prepare for it.’
‘Mrs Gilver, I couldn’t possibly,’ he began. ‘I have no means of getting there. My motorcar has taken some of the wounded to Dumfries to the infirmary already.’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ I said. ‘One of Sergeant Simpson’s men is going to drive you.’ His eyes flashed but he could hardly show his hand by refusing. Instead he gave me one of his sweeping bows.
‘If I can,’ he said. ‘And thank you.’
Then I saw Hugh standing waving at me from the rhododendrons which bordered the drive and, gratefully, I left it all behind me.
Hugh’s face was thunderous and what with the soot and the sheen of heat he looked like the very devil. Normal service had evidently been resumed.
‘Why are all those people in my Rolls?’ he said.
‘We’re taking them home and giving them succour,’ I told him. ‘It’s the least we can do.’
Somehow the word had got to Pallister and Mrs Tilling in advance of our arrival and, when we entered the hall at almost half past three, the fire was burning there and blankets were set ready in the armchairs. The drawing-room fire was just as high and there beds had been made on the sofas and footstools drawn up to the chairs to fashion more. In the dining room soup was keeping warm in an electric contraption and as soon as she heard us coming Mrs Tilling appeared with two tall jugs of cocoa.
Mr Loveday and the four elderly ladies we had brought along sank down into chairs and let Mrs Tilling and Grant begin to fuss over them.
‘How many guests, sir?’ said Pallister.
‘Five,’ said Hugh.
‘We’re ready for eleven,’ Pallister replied. ‘I took the liberty of asking Master Teddy to move into Master Donald’s room an hour or so ago. I’ve vacated my own quarters – I shan’t be retiring tonight, of course – and the female servants have managed to make room for three women in their quarters. So perhaps I could ask Drysdale to return for another carload?’
‘Very good, Pallister,’ said Hugh. He stalked off to the stairs and, I suspected, the bathroom, but not before Mrs Tilling called out.
‘I’ve put sacks for sooty clothes in all three of the bathrooms and laid out dressing gowns. It would help a great deal if you just used the sprays and don’t fill the bath itself and put the boiler under strain.’
Hugh stopped as though he had been shot in the back and when he began again climbing the stairs he was a broken man. To be forbidden a proper bath, and urged instead into one of these new-fangled operations so that a load of strangers could use his hot water was the final straw on this dreadful night.
‘Poor old Hugh,’ Alec said. ‘He didn’t cash his chips, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Or at least I’m not surprised. A gentleman doesn’t cash his chips until he’s leaving. But
money won and lost isn’t really money lost, is it? He’s finished no worse than he started, I daresay.’ I made a move towards the nearest armchair and then stopped myself. ‘Where can we sit when we’re so filthy?’ I said. ‘I feel as though I shall fall over if I try to stay standing.’
‘Let’s nab the bathrooms first while the guests are drinking their soup,’ Alec said. And dreadful hostess though it made me, I agreed.
Half an hour later, clean and warm, although oddly attired for a social gathering, Alec, Loveday Merrick and I had found a quiet spot and sat down at last to make sense of the puzzle as best we might. I was sitting on my bed with Bunty at my back like a pillow. Alec was on the dressing-table stool and Mr Merrick, the oldest among us, and the most undone by the night’s exertions, was in the little upholstered chair by the window, telling all and making Alec’s jaw and mine drop to our laps in wonder.
‘So I suppose the best sort of way to describe what I am,’ he said, ‘is a professional sceptic. I keep my reputation with the snake oil peddlers by dint of very cautious balancing. Someone has to be most egregious – most egregious indeed – before I’ll go all out and expose them. And even then I don’t do it myself. None of the debunking is ever traced back to me. On the other hand, if it’s just the usual comforting nonsense I have a quiet word and they respect me all the more for it. I couldn’t resist this Burke and Hare caper when it met my ears. Never thought it would end like this, I can tell you.’
‘I don’t actually think the ghosts and the fire are connected,’ I said. ‘Not closely anyway. The fire wasn’t started to kill Dr Ramsay, it was just a convenient way for him to go since it was planned.’
‘So Dr Laidlaw started the fire to kill herself?’ Mr Merrick said. ‘Such wickedness! She could have taken twenty souls with her.’
‘No, no, no,’ I said. ‘Dorothea Laidlaw would never have done such a thing. She didn’t start the fire at all.’
‘But you said something to me, Dandy,’ said Alec, ‘suggesting there was something about her I wouldn’t care to know.’
I submitted him to very close attention, trying to decide what to say. Unfortunately he caught me at it.
‘You’re not about to break my heart,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you listen to a thing I told you. I admired her, but that’s all.’
I was not half so sure as he seemed to be, but I took his words at face value.
‘Mrs Addie,’ I said. ‘It was Dr Laidlaw who killed her. She put the poor woman in the mud bath on Sunday evening and then went back to her study to her precious work.’
‘Oh dear God,’ said Alec. ‘She forgot?’
‘Not the sort of woman you’d want in charge of your children, eh?’
Alec took a mighty breath in, held it for a long moment during which Merrick and I watched him anxiously, and then let it go in a great rush which left him slumped against the dressing table behind him.
‘The prospect of marriage doesn’t seem to agree with me,’ he said. He was beyond being embarrassed by Merrick’s presence. ‘She seemed ideal. A rational, educated woman happy to pursue her own … I took to her at once. And it was hard to resist the prospect of slaying the dragon, of course. Or at least getting her away from that brother of hers. Ah, well.’ He grinned at us. ‘Onward and upward. Third time lucky maybe.’
‘It wasn’t the first time or the last that she’d forgotten a patient,’ I said. ‘Usually, Mrs Cronin checked and double-checked. But Monday was Mrs Cronin’s day off. I knew it was. I should have paid attention to the way her coat and outdoor shoes kept bothering me. So on a Monday the baths were very quiet. This was before Tot started the new regime of insisting everyone had treatments, you see.’
‘So she just sat there until Monday night,’ Alec said. ‘Forgotten.’
‘And I think somehow it was Tot who found her,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he went looking for Dorothea – she loved the plunging pool and only ever went in it when the baths were closed and empty. At any rate, it was Tot who thought up the cover story of the ghost and the fright and it was he who got Dr Ramsay to sign the certificate in return for forgiving the gambling debts. He washed the body. Perhaps he tipped it into the plunging pool and that’s why they had to clean it out all of a sudden. And he either told Dorothea, or she found out somehow. Perhaps she caught him at it even.’
‘I don’t suppose we shall ever know,’ Alec said.
‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘he gave the body to Regina to lay out and talked that fool of a sergeant round and the only way for Dorothea to have stopped it all would be for her to admit to something which would have her struck off and disgraced and prevent her from doing the one thing she cared about. Her damned precious working. That’s the main thing to remember. She was taking care of her own interests all the way.’
‘That’s not quite fair, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘That was when she started asking Tot to close the Hydro. She must have been terrified she’d forget again.’
‘Oh, Tot’s the real villain of the piece, I’ll grant you,’ I said.
‘Because the forms he made her sign were insurance forms, weren’t they? He insured the hotel to the hilt and started planning the fire. Planned it for the middle of the night when all his chums would be in the casino too and if some poor invalid slept through it and died – too bad!’
‘Why did he insist on all the treatments, I wonder?’ asked Merrick.
‘Same reason he blew a gasket if one called the Hydro an hotel,’ I said. ‘Presumably the insurance for hotels isn’t as good as for hospitals. He needed all of his chums to say with their hands on their hearts that they had been undergoing treatments at the time of the fire. They knew the names and everything – heat lamps and sitz baths. I mean, even Sergeant Simpson knew that a huge hotel going up in flames must be an insurance job, didn’t he?’
‘Why did Laidlaw start the rumours about Burke and Hare?’ Alec said. ‘You’d think he’d want the death of Mrs Addie to die down, not to become notorious.’
‘Ah yes,’ I said. ‘You didn’t hear that bit. He didn’t start them. That was Dr Ramsay’s big tease. He was giving Tot Laidlaw a taste of his own medicine. At least, partly that and partly sucking up in a strange way. I think he always very much wanted to be one of Tot’s set, you know. And Tot was such a joker: the story of Mrs Addie dying of fright had at least a bit of a tease in it. But not only was Tot unwilling to take what he dished out, very soon it got completely out of hand. Especially after your entrance, Mr Merrick. Not to mention Grant’s.’
Merrick chuckled. ‘She was very good,’ he said. ‘For a minute, she almost convinced me. I mean, she wasn’t known in the trade and I couldn’t see what her angle was at all.’
‘You really don’t believe a scrap of it then?’ I said.
‘Good grief, of course not,’ Merrick replied. And because there could have been any number of women of any size milling about the grounds of the Hydro in robes and turbans after the fire, I did not tell him.
‘That sounds like a car,’ said Alec, cocking his ear. ‘It might be Laidlaw now.’ I stood and crossed to the window.
‘It’s Drysdale with the next batch,’ I said. ‘I should go down and see to them.’
‘Go to bed,’ Alec said. ‘Mrs Tilling is in her element down there. You’d only get in the way.’
I took no more than that rather graceless persuasion. I climbed under the covers, and I think I had fallen asleep before the door had softly closed behind them.
Sunday, 27th October 1929
It was Hugh who woke me, at daybreak, the blank grey light of steady rain falling from thick cloud, just the weather one would want to put out the last smoking ember of a fire.
‘Damn dog,’ Hugh was saying. I felt a tug on the covers as he tried and failed to make Bunty shift.
‘Good morning, dear,’ I said, sitting up. ‘Thank you for not waking me when you came up.’
‘A bomb wouldn’t have woken you,’ Hugh said. ‘I waited up until Laidlaw arrived, about five, but by th
en everyone was settled in their billets. It looks like a field hospital downstairs, Dandy. If we can’t get shot of them today, I’m for taking the boys and going home.’
‘I’ll go and see what’s what now,’ I said, carefully not responding to the suggestion.
The blankets were rolled and the furniture put back in the drawing room, but I could hear low voices in the dining room and so I made my way there with Bunty padding in her stiff morning way beside me.
Ten people were sitting at the dining table, eating porridge, while Pallister stood like a formal footman on one side of the door and the constable stood like a bad copy of him at the other. Some of the guests looked perfectly at home – the bright young things – but a few of the Hydro’s long-time patients were turning huge eyes on Pallister as though he was their headmaster and might at any moment decide to cane them. One could hardly blame them; even after all these years he sometimes produces just those feelings in me.
Alec was there, Donald and Teddy too, and Merrick, and at the head of the table was Tot Laidlaw, slightly weary about the eyes and blue about the chin, but holding his audience in the palm of his hand with all his usual brio.
‘My poor sister,’ he said, ‘my poor dear sister. Well, I hardly have to tell all of you who loved her too. She was just so very absent-minded. I’m sure when the firemen look through the wreckage they’ll find it started in her study. That paraffin heater of hers, probably. Poor Dot. But what she did to Dr Ramsay … Well, she must have lost her mind.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ one of the older women was saying. ‘A terrible shocking thing.’ But her eyes were wide with delight.
‘She loved him,’ Laidlaw said. ‘And he just didn’t love her back. Any excuse to get him up there and talk to him, you know. She even dragged him out of bed one time to sign a death certificate she could have signed herself. Poor Dottie. And poor Dr Ramsay. She must have tricked him into a windowless room and locked him there. She must have lost her mind.’
Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone Page 30
