‘Never mind, Mummy,’ said Teddy. Then he ruined it: ‘No one knows us here.’
True enough, there had been no looking glasses in that little changing cubicle and when I put my hand up to my hair what I felt there was far from usual, but the wonders of the steam bath were more than skin deep and my serenity, though dented, was not cracked and sprang back as I smiled down at them.
‘How did you get on with the doctor?’ I asked, sitting on the edge of Teddy’s deckchair and nudging his feet out of the way.
‘Never saw hide nor hair of him,’ said Hugh, his choice of pronoun confirming as much. ‘Suits me.’ He stretched his arms and put his hands behind his head. ‘I’m perfectly capable of deciding what I fancy from the brochure.’ He patted his breast pocket, from which I could see a folded catalogue peeping out.
‘But I must insist when it comes to the boys,’ I said, thinking again of Regina’s look of alarm as I thrashed in the icy water of the plunge pool. ‘They are not to be electrified or… pummelled unless the doctor says so.’
Hugh nodded absently.
‘Hot salt bath, galvanic wrap, dab of mud, spot of ultraviolet heat,’ he said. ‘And a quiet game of cards in the evening.’
‘Starting tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Have dinner with us tonight, dear, and then come back before bedtime.’ Of course, I needed a little time with him to finesse the Alec problem. ‘And now I must just go and see what’s kept the doctor.’
‘Oh, don’t make us see him, Mummy,’ said Teddy. ‘I’m not going to do all that salty, muddy nonsense anyway.’
‘Don’t be impertinent,’ I said, for I had noticed Hugh’s brows twitch down at the word ‘nonsense’. ‘I shall remake your appointments for tomorrow morning. Meet me in the hall in ten minutes, please, and we shall drive back in time for tea.’
‘Mr Laidlaw said there was cherry cake here,’ said Teddy.
‘Cinnamon toast and maids of honour at home,’ I said. ‘Donald?’ Donald opened his eyes which had fallen shut again.
‘I’m not hungry,’ he said, so languidly that Hugh caught my eye.
‘I’ll speak to the doctor,’ I repeated. ‘Ten minutes, please.’ And I hurried away.
Dr Laidlaw’s office was on the ground floor at the drive side of the house, unspeakably gloomy, but I supposed it was inevitable that all the west-facing rooms were reserved for guests. There was a little ante-room lined with those tall wooden cabinets for holding files of papers and in the middle of the floor one of the four-sided settees I had seen in the drawing room, a very practical way for four strangers to await their consultations without having to look one another in the eye or breathe one another’s germ-ridden air. At the moment, all four seats were empty. Nor was there anyone at the little desk with the telephone and type-writing machine. I passed to the inner door and knocked.
‘Oh! Who-? Come in.’ Dr Laidlaw’s voice came in a series of chirps and, when I entered, it was to find her peering up from behind a fortress of papers on her desk, with a startled look on her face, like a baby bird in the nest when it hears its parents’ wings.
‘Mrs… ah,’ she said.
‘Gilver. You arranged to see my husband and sons this afternoon, Dr Laidlaw. I wonder if it would be convenient for us to leave it until the morning?’
The baby bird appeared to realise that the wing beat was that of a marauding hawk, not its parent at all. She ducked slightly and almost disappeared behind the wall of articles, books and files she had built around her. I walked closer to the desk, not to seize her in my talons, but from the look of her one would not know.
‘I am so, so, so very sorry,’ she said. I moved another pile of dusty paper, made up into bundles with pink tape, and sat down. The furniture in the room comprised the desk and chairs, the bookcases lining the walls, an examination couch with a curtained screen half pulled around it and upwards of a dozen wooden crates, all packed with books, all standing open, all thick with dust. In fact, the whole office was lavishly untidy, its good glass-fronted bookcases stuffed to bursting with books not only in rows but jammed in horizontally on top of the rows too. I saw that the doors of one case, particularly under strain from its contents, were held together by more of the same pink tape threaded through the handles and tied in a bow. Buff-coloured files with carbon papers frothing out of them like coxcombs were stacked along the windowsill, bunching and pulling the grey-yellow lace curtain which looked as though it had not been washed since it was first hung there many years ago. On the chimneypiece there was a perfectly conventional clock flanked by two perfectly conventional vases, but behind the clock, numerous bills and chits threatened to push it forward to smash in the grate, and more of them bloomed in the vases instead of posies. A bunch of keys and a couple of syringes, still with their needles attached, threatened to crack a delicate Staffordshire bon-bon dish with their weight, or at least scratch its beautiful pattern with their sharp edges.
I turned my attention away from the disorder and back to Dr Laidlaw again, thinking that although my impression had been that she was dowdy, seeing her in her lair like this she seemed a daisy on a dung heap. She had noticed me looking around and apologised again.
‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘They’ve been wrapped up and snoozing in deckchairs all afternoon. I’m sure it’s done them a world of good to rest without interruptions.’
‘I- You are very gracious,’ she said. ‘But it won’t do. I could see them now. My consultation hours are over, but to make it up to you – a shocking lapse. That is to say, there was an emergency. But I should have sent a message. I could see them right now.’
I considered it. Specifically, I considered Donald’s lungs breathing in the dust and dirt of this frowsy chamber and, although I truly did think she was making a fuss over nothing, I decided to turn it to account.
‘What would make up for it,’ I said, ‘would be if you could manage a house call instead. Might I trouble you to examine the boys at home in the morning? Come and have coffee,’ I finished lamely. I can sometimes manage to be grand, but not often.
‘Most gladly,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
‘I see that the emergency ended well,’ I said. I am not naturally Machiavellian, never was, but detecting has changed me.
‘It did,’ said Dr Laidlaw. ‘Thankfully, yes it did. But how did you guess?’
‘Just that surely you would not be back in your study absorbed in reading had it not,’ I replied with a smile.
‘Of course, I see, yes of course,’ she said. ‘Yes, my work is absorbing. Not that the patients are not my work. What I mean to say is that when a paper comes under review and the reviewer…’
‘Gosh, so you are a researcher, Dr Laidlaw, are you?’
‘I am,’ she said, gesturing around the piles of books and scribbled-on papers.
‘Do you then not do house calls?’ I said. ‘I mean to say, you are a doctor, aren’t you? Hydropathy being your specialism?’
‘My poor father would turn in his grave to hear it,’ she said, ‘but no. Hydropathy is not exactly… that is to say… on the Continent…’ She cleared her throat. ‘I have an MD from Edinburgh, Mrs Gilver. In short, yes, I certainly am a doctor and as for your house call I certainly shall do it. Happy to.’
‘Excellent,’ I replied. ‘It’s good to know that there is someone right here on the premises should anything go wrong. Moffat is a step away and – between you and me, my dear – I’ve heard some things about one of the local doctors, from a friend, you know.’
Her face, blanching to the colour of putty, told me that she did indeed know. I felt a heel but I did not let that stop me.
‘A friend who used to come here. Before she died.’ Dr Laidlaw considered this, as one would consider a rattlesnake in one’s bed with one.