‘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.
The round little person reappeared like a jack-in-the-box. She held out a velvet bag, somewhat bigger than a boxing glove to look at and much bigger on the inside, having no padding, with a hinged wooden half-moon clasp, like a broken embroidery ring. ‘For your jewels and things, madam,’ she said. I scooped them up along with my bag and dropped them in. She snapped the half-moon closed, turned a little key and held it out to me. It was a silly little thing on a silk ribbon and I could not see the point of it when the velvet bag could be cut through with a pair of nail scissors anyway, but I dutifully held out my hand and allowed her to put the key around my wrist.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, ‘but feel it.’ I took the bag out of her hands and had to tighten my grip before it fell.
‘What on earth?’ I said. ‘Why is it so heavy?’
‘It’s lead-lined,’ she replied. ‘Safe as houses. Some of our guests use these instead of the hotel strongroom. And the key locks the cubby hole too.’
I followed her to the end of the cubicles where she deposited my clothes on a shelf and I locked the boxing glove into a tiny cupboard above.
‘Now, on you go, madam, and have a lovely bath.’
‘I’ve never…’
‘Slowly does it,’ she said. ‘Cool to warm to hot, steam if you like, and into the pool to refresh again. Just ring a bell if you feel like a rub-down. It’s Mrs Cronin’s afternoon off but we’re quiet enough.’
I wanted to tip her but my bag was under lock and key so I determined to learn her name and leave an envelope for her later.
‘Thank you…’
‘Regina,’ she said.
‘Gosh,’ I said, unable to stop myself.
‘That’s being polite about it, madam,’ she said. ‘On you go.’
The cool room was about half full, the slatted cedar chaises covered over with towels and on the towels, a mixture of solid matrons and daughters swathed in their lawn shifts, heads wrapped in turbans, and brighter younger things swathed in… I took a closer look… nothing at all! Like one of the Old Masters come to life, they lounged singly, in pairs and threesomes: Susannah without the elders, the rising and the setting sun together, Venus, Minerva and Juno awaiting Paris, all set for the judging.
I sank down onto the nearest couch, loosened the cord of my robe and stared steadily ahead, unsure whether I was blushing or whether the flood of heat into my head was the beginning of this ridiculous process by which I would boil myself, like a lobster, gradually, avoiding any pain.
Conversations were all around me as they often seem to be when one is alone – desultory remarks batted back and forth at full volume and other, more hushed and hurried exchanges, the sort where illicit knowledge changes hands. Usually it is an effort not to eavesdrop, today I was engaged in the slightly different effort of listening to all of them whilst appearing not to listen to any.
‘Dear Tot, but what a stickler he is!’
‘You should have had a pummel instead, my love.’
‘My second daughter, now, she had ever such a bad’ – whisper – ‘but she’s through it now.’
‘-had heard that the’ – whisper – ‘were called in, but it came right in the end.’
‘Fiend! That woman terrifies me. Pummelling indeed.’
‘-carries on like this, we might have to make other arrangements. I mean to say’ – whisper – ‘even if she didn’t understand what it meant.’
‘-wouldn’t like to upset the poor dear. I was always so very fond’ – whisper – ‘but it’s only common decency.’
‘That’s enough for me! My hair will never be the same again and my face will still be red at midnight.’
‘Tot doesn’t count the cool room.’
‘Tot needn’t know. I’m going to have a bath and a rest, darling. Knock on your way down, won’t you?’
This last speaker rose from her chaise and walked, as naked as the day she was born, trailing her shift and robe behind her along the floor as though she were laying a scent to train a pack of puppies. I caught the eye of the swaddled and be-turbanned woman opposite me and could not keep my eyebrows in place. She took this as a cue for speech.
‘If this is your first time, dear, you’ll doubtless be surprised at the sights you’re seeing. It’s changed days, I can tell you.’
‘You know the place well?’ I asked.
‘Been coming here for years with my chest.’
‘Ah, just like my dear friend Mrs Addie,’ I said. ‘Mrs Enid Addie? Have you ever bumped into her?’
‘Is it her chest, dear?’
‘Her back.’
‘It’s my chest, see.’
Could the clientele possibly be organised by body parts as well as being split into two teams under Doctor and Master? Judging by the way the chest woman’s attention had strayed when I said back, it appeared so.
I gave her a meaningless smile and stood up to move away. Of course, the only place to go was the warm room. I parted the velvet curtain and slipped through.
There were even fewer shifts in here, and those that were worn were useless, transparent with perspiration and leaving their wearers looking more like Old Masters than ever, given the way that the clothes of the ancients, at least as rendered in oils, are always diaphanous and slipping off at one shoulder. It was undoubtedly warm too; even the tiled floor was hot under my bare feet and, while there was a smell of fresh linen rising from the towels, the base note was of humanity, only just mild enough not to be troubling.