I was silent after that, thinking it through without ever being able to frame a question to put to Regina. Before long, she finished me off with a percussive set of blows all up and down my spine from nape to waist and then wiped me with a warm cloth and patted me nicely dry. It was an effort to peel myself up off the couch after the way she had tried to press me into it like a flower after a nature walk, but once I was up I felt quite wonderful and I thought to myself that I really had to try to run into her sometime when I had my bag with me so I could tip her. She did not loiter hopefully, to her credit, but bustled off and left me to wriggle back into my robe and make my own way to the cubicle and my clothes.
I dressed quickly and did not fuss with my hair, eager to get to what I was going to do next. In the dining room – it was comfortably luncheon-time now, although rather early for the bright young things – I scanned the tables for a likely party. Before I spotted one, though, Hugh spotted me and waved me over to make up a fourth with the boys and him. Odd, I thought, waving back and moving towards them. I was not puzzled for long.
‘Teddy tells me you’ve driven poor Osborne off already,’ he said, while pushing in my chair. ‘Back to Edinburgh on the noon train.’
‘Briefly,’ I said. ‘And nothing to do with me. He had some business or errand of his own to see to. He’ll be back tonight, he said, if he can possibly manage it.’ Hugh grinned.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said. ‘And you’ll be taking the boys back to the house after tea? You’re not staying here for dinner, are you?’
I surveyed the luncheon menu: tomato soup, calf’s head brawn, roasted mushrooms, cauliflower cheese, pickled cabbage, loganberry pudding, mint creams.
‘I shan’t be staying for dinner,’ I said firmly. ‘In fact, since I’m walking down to the town and the town is so very well served with tea shops and I’m not actually hungry at the moment, I don’t think I’ll stay for luncheon. Nice to have seen you and said hello, though. Four o’clock in the lobby, boys.’
‘I could walk down to the town with you, Mummy,’ said Teddy. ‘Donald’s having his seat in the electric chair.’
‘Please don’t call it that,’ I scolded. ‘Not even in jest. I’m going to the lending library, you can certainly come there with me and choose something to read. And then I need to find a hat shop where they do repairs and cleaning, and Mrs Tilling wanted me to track down a florist since the gardens are so bare. You’re more than welcome-’
‘Never mind,’ said Teddy. I had named three of his least favourite establishments. The hat shop alone would have been enough to send him packing. ‘There’s a little lending library here. I’ll see what they can cough up for us.’
‘Don’t say “cough up”,’ said Hugh and I almost in perfect unison and we parted on good terms, as always when we agree on something.
On my way out of the dining room I had another scout about for a likely table. Of course Hugh, if he saw me, would withdraw from our shared view of Teddy’s vocabulary into his more usual disapproval of me and all my works, but that was not to be helped. Almost at the door, tucked away to the side of the serving table, I saw what I was looking for. Three of the most overdressed, over-coiffed, over-maquillaged women I am sure the Hydro dining room had ever contained: one of them had lace mittens on and yet was spreading brawn onto a cracker. One of the others had a hat perched on her piled-up hair, with so many greenish-black feathers I had to squint to make sure it was not a whole crow.
‘Good afternoon,’ I said, sidling up to them and standing with my hands on the back of the free chair. ‘I’ve only just found out that you’re here. I hope you don’t mind me stopping by to say hello.’ I was scanning all three of them, and I spotted one preening herself slightly. I stuck my hand out to this one. ‘Dandelion Gilver,’ I said, thankful for the first time in my life that my parents had given me such a ridiculous name.
‘Petrushka Molyneaux,’ she said, with a bow which made the feathers catch the light and gleam greener than ever. A likely story, was what I thought. Patsy Miller, probably.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘How exciting to have you here. And so unexpected. I’m here with my husband and sons who’ve all been ill with this wretched flu. I had no idea. Does Moffat have lots of ghosts then? I’ve never heard of any.’
Mrs Molyneaux’s face snapped like a rat-trap and her companions recoiled from me.
‘A handful,’ said the one with brawn in the lace of her mittens. ‘The usual number. For the tourists.’ She did not say ‘such as yourself’. She did not need to.
‘That is not why we’re here,’ said the third of the coven, a young white-faced woman with thin pale hair and enormous pale green eyes like gooseberries. ‘And certainly not why Madame Molyneaux has left her consultancy and come all this way.’ After a few further pleasantries had been rather stiffly exchanged I left with a flea in my ear (but thinking ‘consultancy, indeed’). What charlatans!
Charlatans or no, however, they had given me an idea. If Mrs Addie had conjured a ghost for herself it was more than likely one of the handful laid on for the tourists, and what better way to learn of those than to visit the public library after all.
The rain had let up and although the going was unpleasant, especially as the wind had shaken free the first of the leaves which were now lying sodden underfoot, the air was clear and sparkling and I strode out with a light heart and an empty stomach. This is my favourite internal arrangement if I can manage it, so long as there are pots of tea and buns at my destination; and there were. If Alec could confirm that Mrs Addie believed in ghosties and ghoulies and I could find some witness to place her at one of Moffat’s haunted spots, then we could add our voices to the chorus singing ‘heart attack’ and file the case under jobs well done.
There was no public library in Moffat town, I soon learned, but the reading room in the bath house included, as well as the circulating library, a large reference collection and in one corner, better all the time, a wooden sign hanging on chains and reading ‘Local History: please enquire here.’ At a desk under this sign, which swung gently in the breeze as I closed the outside door, was the perfect person, just who I wanted to see. She was sixty if a day, high-coloured, dressed with a little more panache than one might look for in a librarian, and she had the round bright eye of one who is interested in all that passes around her. The town gossip, in short, or rather one of the no doubt dense tangle of them; and with those bright gold chains around her neck and that enormous brooch of unlikely blue stones, she did not look the sort of devout little body who would be shocked to speak of the things I was going to ask her.
‘Good afternoon,’ I said, sitting. Those bright eyes took in everything about me, head to toe, in an instant.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘How may I help you?’
‘I have rather an odd request.’ I delivered this with a little wriggle and a titter. Neither of these came naturally to me and so I hoped she believed them. ‘I’m interested in the… folklore of your delightful town. Folk tales, you know.’ From the way she kept peering at me, politely enquiring, no sign of a nod or a smile, it appeared that she did not. I tried again.
‘Fascinating, these old superstitions. One wonders how they begin.’ She blinked but otherwise her face remained, as before, polite, interested and utterly devoid of any signs of understanding. ‘I was in Alloway, recently. Most interesting, the bridge and the kirkyard and all of that…’
‘Oh, ghosts!’ she said in tones one might have expected to be drummed out of a librarian by years of whispering. The very lampshades rang above our heads.