Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

by Catriona McPherson

  From their quarters in one of the Fifth Avenue apartment hotels, Philip wrote letter after furious letter and stormed the agents’ offices, pored over street plans and maps, and even did his best with what scant volumes of American law he could lay his hands on, trying to find a hole through which he could wriggle. The names of the four railroad companies who owned one each of the hated tracks grew into a kind of bitter chant for him: Hudson, Central, Newhaven, Harlem, he muttered to himself as he scratched out another rage-filled letter. Hudson, Central, Newhaven, Harlem – that was the worst of the difficulty. There were four of the damned things and he was shoved around among them like the hot potato in the party game and could never pin down any one of the four owners or any one of their many managers and state his case fairly.

  Actually though, Philip Balfour was not the only one inconvenienced by the four separate railroads passing one another in mid-town; it was becoming intolerable to everyone (except the hansom-men who shuttled passengers back and forth between the lines), but it took a man of immense riches, with an entrepreneurial vision greater even than that of the first James Balfour himself, to set matters straight. Mr Vanderbilt saw what was needed and Silk House, Philip Balfour’s Valhalla, into which so much of the Balfour fortune had been poured, was a mere gnat to be swept away before the building of the Grand Central Terminus could begin.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Alec. ‘So it’s Vanderbilt money that’s furnished the twelve servants?’

  ‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘There’s one more chapter to go. Balfour was still angry enough to drive a flinty bargain with the great man and he did recoup more of his outlay than he could possibly have dreamed of, then – so Lollie told me – they left New York with the laughter of all the Manhattan sophisticates still ringing in their ears and took themselves southwards to what – in April – must have seemed like a soft and balmy land where they could finally start up their life of lotus-eating as planned.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Somewhere in the vast southern territory,’ I replied. ‘Not a state as such.’

  ‘Chumps,’ said Alec.

  ‘Indeed. They bought a huge spread with a white Palladian mansion on it, returned to New York to buy everything they needed to make life perfect there and arrived back neck and neck with the first heralds of summer – to wit, a swarm of biting insects of a size and ferocity never known in Calcutta. These were soon joined by things Lollie didn’t know the name of but which sound like flying leeches if you can imagine anything so horrid, and black flies that followed them around in a column above their heads in the open air, and little fat things that flew in battalions all around their heads in the shade. Makes one almost glad of midges.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Alec. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Alexandra, exhausted and dejected, refused to leave. She shut the doors on the wildlife and stayed there until she died. Philip travelled around a good bit, doing nothing very useful, and his son – our Philip’s father – stuck it out until both parents were gone, planning to get shot of the place and come home to Scotland, which his mother had always made sound like absolute heaven to him.’

  ‘So when did they leave?’ Alec asked.

  ‘1871,’ I said, wondering if he would catch the significance of the date. He did not. ‘Philip and Alexandra died and Alexander, their son, was just getting around to offloading the place when matters became rather more interesting.’ Still Alec said nothing. ‘Can’t you guess? It’s poetic really – an echo of Robert Balfour with all his subterranean adventures.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ said Alec. ‘Oil?’ I laughed along with him.

  ‘The hundreds of thousands of sun-baked, yellow-grassed, insectiferous acres which were no good for anything except getting lost in happened to be smack on top of a perfect magic treacle pot of oil, that’s still gushing out plumes of the stuff every day. So you see, twelve servants in an Edinburgh town house are really nothing.’

  ‘And what does the current Pip Balfour do with the rest of it?’

  ‘Counts it from time to time, I think. Too terrified by all the near misses to try anything more risky. Lollie says he felt the run of Balfour luck had to give out sometime and he doesn’t want to be the one who finally lets it slip through his fingers on some wild scheme.’

  ‘Well, that’s a pretty poor show,’ said Alec. ‘He’s hardly carrying the torch aflame, is he? Sounds like a bit of a ninny.’ He paused. ‘If ninnies went in for strangling their wives, that is.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, agreeing with what he had not quite said. ‘It’s hard to come to a firm view from what we’ve been told, isn’t it? I can’t quite put him together somehow. I’m very much looking forward to meeting him for myself.’

  ‘I’m not looking forward to you meeting him,’ Alec said. ‘Promise me you’ll be careful, Dan.’

  Tender concern for one’s safety is always gratifying to behold. Hugh, in marked contrast, barely raised his head when he heard I was going.

  ‘On Monday,’ I added. ‘To Edinburgh. I can’t say for how long.’

  ‘Good, good,’ he said and turned the page of his newspaper. I poked a hole in the top of one of my poached eggs and dabbed a piece of toast into it. I had only had one letter in the morning’s post and was shamelessly lingering, putting off the evils of the coming day.

  ‘You might know them,’ I said. ‘The people I’m . . . going to stay with.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Hugh. Then he added: ‘Hah!’ I waited. ‘They’ve locked them out. Should have done it nine months ago. This’ll bring them to their senses.’

  ‘The miners?’ I hazarded.

  ‘I knew this would happen,’ said Hugh, looking up at me at last. ‘I predicted it from the start if you remember, Dandy.’ I did not remember, but nodded anyway. ‘There’s no talking to these people and goodness knows how much money has been poured down the drain while everyone bent over backwards trying.’

  It was my understanding – not firm but far from hazy – that both sides had their arms folded and their chins stuck out refusing to listen, but it was not worth starting an argument over it.

  ‘Will the coal run out?’ I asked.

  ‘No, they’ll be back at work before there’s any chance of that,’ Hugh assured me. ‘And should think themselves lucky to have work to go back to. If I were a mine-owner, I should sack the lot and give their jobs to someone a bit more grateful.’

  I judged another silent nod to be the best response to this. Hugh had never sacked anyone in his life, not even the mole-catcher who had once ruined Gilverton’s lawns when, pushed beyond his limits by the little devils, he threw down his patented fumigation pump and testing rods and started digging wildly, swearing at the top of his voice and scattering divots of turf and sprays of soil for yards around him. Besides, the coal crisis was one of the few affairs of the day upon which Hugh and I saw eye-to-eye, or rather where our views happened to coincide: Hugh’s view that the mine-owners could do what they jolly well pleased with what was theirs and my view that the wages one read about in The Times always seemed generous enough, pounds and pounds a week, and many of the families had half a dozen wage packets all told, between father and sons, and then they always lived in those dear little rows of cottages built for the purpose and enjoyed, one assumed, free coal.

  Hugh turned another page and breathed in sharply, then started coughing to expel the inhaled toast crumbs. After a minute, I half stood to go round and bang him on the back, but he waved me into my seat again.

  ‘Listen to this,’ he croaked, eyes still streaming. ‘The extraordinary conference of trade unionists currently convened in London will vote this afternoon upon whether to take sympathetic action in support of the miners.’ He took a gulp of tea and cleared his throat in a final-sounding way. ‘The day is upon us. I always said it would come.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘A shutdown,’ he said. All news was bad news with Hugh and his fears of an uprising were so o
ft expressed that I had ceased taking any notice of them. He had, for instance, continued to mutter darkly about Lenin even after he was dead and gone. This, however, sounded more definite than usual.

  ‘Shutdown of what?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything,’ Hugh told me with a thrill of angry pleasure. ‘The whole country held to ransom, Dandy. No food in the shops, gasworks stopped, electricity dried up, hospitals in darkness, fires raging with no firemen to put them out, no teachers in the schools, factories silent . . .’

  ‘But they can’t do that,’ I said. ‘There must be laws.’

  ‘Laws!’ said Hugh, with a very dry laugh. ‘The overthrow of the rule of law is the whole point, my dear. That’s what they want and they’ve been champing for a chance to get started on it. The miners are just the excuse they’ve been waiting for.’

  ‘But that sounds like . . .’

  ‘A revolution,’ he thundered. ‘Which is exactly what it is. A workers’ revolt.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I said, feeling genuinely scared now. ‘That could never happen. Not here.’

  ‘They’re voting this afternoon,’ said Hugh, tapping a finger on the newspaper where he had read it. I let my breath go in a great rush and shook my head at him.

  ‘Well, exactly!’ I said. ‘They’re voting on it. They’ll never do it, Hugh; you’re a fearful dramatist sometimes.’

  ‘I shall remind you that you said so,’ he said, much on his dignity, and with that the conversation was at its close.

  ‘Grant,’ I said, sidling into my bedroom again after breakfast. Grant started violently, and she and I both winced as her knuckles rapped against the inside of the drawer where she was carefully laying out newly ironed underclothes.

  ‘Nothing wrong is there?’ she said. ‘Madam. Why aren’t you out on your walk?’ She glanced out of the window where the weather was as fine as could be hoped for, for May in Perthshire, that is, chilly and gusty but, for the moment, almost dry. I felt a small slump at the thought of my predictability, but I rallied myself before she could see it and set a bright smile on my face.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘What are your plans for the day?’ Grant frowned at me, more perplexed than ever.

  ‘My plans?’ she said. ‘I was going to start on changing over your wardrobe, laying away your winter things and seeing if any of your summer frocks from last year are worth airing out again.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’m going to have to ask you to leave all that, I’m afraid, while I bend you to my will.’ I smiled even wider; Grant frowned even deeper. ‘I – I – I don’t quite know, Grant, how much of what I do,’ – I took a deep breath – ‘professionally, I mean, has come to your attention in the last while.’

  ‘You mean Gilver and Osborne Investigations?’ My mouth dropped open. ‘I thought you must be starting on a new case when I saw those shoes you dyed. How can I help you?’

  ‘I see. Yes. So you do know about it then?’ The name of Gilver and Osborne was pure servants’ hall fantasy of course (although it had a ring to it) and I could not imagine how the newly black shoes, hidden in my sitting room while they dried and smuggled up to an attic the previous evening upon Miss Rossiter’s return, had been rumbled but there was no question that Grant was fully informed.

  ‘Oh yes, madam,’ she said. ‘We were all very proud of you downstairs over that last business. Even Mr Pallister, now that the master knows all about it and has given it his blessing.’ Grant delivered all of this in her usual blithe tone, then finished it off with a belated and unconvincing: ‘If you’ll excuse the liberty.’

  ‘Right, well, good,’ I said. ‘In that case, what I’m about to ask you will come as less of a surprise. I’m going undercover, Grant. Do you know what that means?’ She nodded, looking thrilled.

  ‘What as?’ she breathed. ‘I can drop everything this minute and get a costume run up for you, madam. When do you need it?’

  ‘I’m starting on Monday. I’m going downstairs. I’m going to be a lady’s maid.’

  Grant’s lips twitched once, twice, then she bit her cheeks and pulled her eyebrows very firmly downwards.

  ‘And your “mistress”, madam?’ she said, with her voice under commendable control. ‘Is it her you’re investigating?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s she who has employed me.’

  ‘Oh, well then,’ said Grant, lifting her hands high and then letting them clap down softly against her skirt again, ‘in that case you’ll be fine.’ As votes of confidence go it was a stinker but, like most other people, I always claim to value honesty and so I could not refuse such a good dollop of it when it was served up to me.

  By the time I fell into bed on Sunday evening, my head was heavy with great spilling heaps of new facts and long lists of outlandish preparations and I had a thick notebook full of daily, weekly and monthly chores.

  ‘Crêpe de chine, satin, tussore – cold. Cashmere, chiffon, mohair – cool. Silk, faille, wool – warm. Lawn, cotton, linen – hot,’ I repeated to myself. ‘I’ve got it. And down again – wring, squeeze, press, drip. And up: sprinkle iron cool, sprinkle press cool, damp iron warm, wet press hot. It’s easy!’ I turned over, ignoring the crackling sound of the cold sugar-water waves in my hair; Grant had spent much of Sunday afternoon teaching me how to make them after a brief and alarming episode with the hot irons in the morning. I punched my pillow and clicked my tongue to make Bunty come up the bed a bit and let me put my arms around her. I had never been separated from her for more than a night or two since she had arrived – tiny, fat and wriggling – all those years before and I did not look forward to driving away and leaving her behind me. She would be quite happy with Alec and Millie, his spaniel, but I had slipped a photograph of her into my bag as a comfort to me. The bag was sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor with a plump black umbrella leaning against it and an extravagantly hideous hat balanced on top. The shoes, cleaned and re-dyed by Grant with much tutting, were lined up neatly under my chair, the grey serge suit laid out over its back. My tin trunk was already downstairs by the stable-yard door ready to be lifted onto the dogcart and taken to the station in the morning. I gave Bunty a squeeze, kissed her head and closed my eyes on it all, hoping that sleep would come swift and dreamless.

  3

  The train, at least the third-class part of it, was packed to the walls, every seat in every compartment taken, luggage racks bulging, corridors jammed tight and thick with pipe smoke. I had been banged on the elbow twice already by a sample case – I could not guess what its owner was selling but the case itself was painfully sturdy – and on shifting away from him had been dripped on by the melting iced lollipop of a child drowsing on its mother’s lap to my right. I tucked both elbows in tighter, hugged the plump umbrella and peered out to see where we had got to.

  ‘Today doesn’t suit me at all as it happens,’ said a woman opposite. She had been carrying on a conversation of loud complaint with her travelling companion since joining the train at Dunblane, or actually since joining the compartment at Bridge of Allan, after spending the first part of her journey standing in the passageway glaring in at two young men, silently demanding their seats. ‘Half-day closing Wednesday is my usual day for Edinburgh and this has thrown me right out for the whole week. I’d not be surprised if I got one of my sick headaches tonight.’

  ‘I did say that, Minnie,’ her friend put in mildly. ‘I was happy to wait and see what happened. I don’t think they’ll really stop the trains.’

  ‘Transport, building, printing and heavy works,’ said the salesman, in a thick Glasgow accent. ‘Of course, there winnae be trains.’

  ‘Och, they’ll sort it all before midnight,’ said an elderly man in the corner, speaking around his pipe. ‘Mr Baldwin and Mr Pugh’ll get it seen to between their two selves.’

  ‘They might try right enough,’ said the stout salesman, ‘but what about Red Bevin and that wee Churchill toerag – they’re just itchin’ for a dust-up.’

  With some relief I saw t
he large white lettering on the Jenner’s depository building go by outside the window and felt a jolt as the brakes gripped and the train began the long slow pull in towards Haymarket station. The young salesman stood up, giving me a farewell bang on the knees with his case, and talk of the strike sank under the shifting of bodies and parcels and the general struggle of departure.

  I was very glad to be leaving the train at its final destination, for I should have been at a loss on the question of how to extricate myself and my bag from a compartment and get my trunk out of the guard’s van during a short station stop. Did servants summon porters? Grant’s instructions had not covered this point but I hardly thought so, and even if a porter volunteered to help how was one to manage the tipping? As it was, I stood helplessly on the platform looking in at my trunk through the opened doors and wondering if I should try to shift it.

  ‘Needin’ a wee hand, hen?’ said a voice beside me and the two young men – apprentice boys, perhaps – who had been ousted by Minnie hopped up into the guard’s van and turned their caps backwards.

  ‘Which one’s yours?’ asked one of them and, when I pointed, they hefted the small trunk between them and leapt back out onto the platform again.

  ‘Where do you want it?’ asked the other.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I gazed about myself. Lollie had not gone into any details about my arrival and I had no idea if I was to be met. I could not, obviously, hail a cab but nor could I manhandle this trunk onto a bus and off again.

  ‘Startin’ in a new place, eh?’ said one of the lads, squinting at me past the smoke of his cigarette. I nodded. ‘Maids’ store, Sandy,’ he said, and they set off towards the station building with me trotting after.