‘One thing one of them did say,’ Alec went on. ‘One of the young ones – such a waste of a pretty little thing who could get a job in a hat shop if she clicked her fingers-’
‘Yes, all right, all right,’ I said. ‘I understand perfectly. A pretty little thing liked the look of you and dropped hints by way of flirting. You’re making conquests all around.’
‘Yes, well, never mind all that, but she did say,’ Alec resumed, ‘that they are trying to calculate an anniversary.’
‘An anniversary of what, I wonder. The death of Yellow Mary? Some black day amongst the Johnstone devils? I wonder when they stopped the hangings at Gallow Hill. Hugh would know.’
‘Well, a good while ago,’ said Alec. ‘Surely. Even here. Public hangings had been held decently in town squares in Dorset for years before they finally stopped them.’ It is a curious thing, but whereas normally I am the greatest champion of Northamptonshire in particular and England in general, whenever Alec starts on the wonders of Dorset and the sins of Perthshire, I feel my hackles start to rise. It is most disconcerting to think that I am growing a layer of Scotch inside me and so I have never breathed a word of it to him and certainly not to Hugh who would be enchanted. Alec was speaking again.
‘Who else have I conquered?’ he said.
‘Good Lord, the doctor!’ I said. ‘Didn’t you try to? Didn’t you know?’
‘Really?’ he said and then he rose and went to tap out his pipe into the earth around a potted laurel. ‘Right then, Dan,’ he said upon returning. ‘Never mind conquests and for heaven’s sake never mind ghosts for a while. What about Mrs Addie? How did the poor woman die?’
‘A heart attack, following a fright, following an imagined sighting of a ghost on a country walk. Perfectly simple.’
‘Only the Laidlaws didn’t tell the police about the walk, the police didn’t tell the family about the fright and no one seems to have told Dr Ramsay about the ghost.’
‘I understand why anyone with compassion would edit out the ghost and the fright,’ I said. ‘But I don’t at all understand why the same people – the Laidlaws, this is – who drafted in a second doctor to put some distance between themselves and the death, also – at the same time – hid the real distance. She wasn’t here. It was nothing to do with them since she didn’t die in the Hydro. Or at least didn’t collapse here. It’s all very puzzling, I must say.’
‘Well, what about this?’ Alec said. He was beginning to smoke in that committed way which heralds clear thoughts, and I was ready to welcome them. ‘The Hydro is struggling. The Laidlaws are getting desperate. A patient dies, so Tot – it must be Tot – turns the death to account in the cleverest way. The Haunted Hydro, you know. So they don’t want any of the mediums to know that she wasn’t here at the Haunted Hydro when she got the fright that killed her. But if she dropped her bag and went back for it and if we find it then we’ll have proved that she was out and about and they’ll have to drop all the ghost stories and tell the truth to the Addies.’
‘What makes you think it’s Tot?’ I said. ‘He seemed rather horrified by the mediums as far as I could see.’
‘All part of the act,’ Alec said.
‘And anyway, it seems a bit unlikely. A patient dying is far more likely to harm the Hydro with the general public than give it a leg up. How many mediums can there possibly be?’
‘You’re right,’ said Alec with a defeated sigh. ‘It would harm the place less if she died of a heart attack out in the open air miles away.’
‘Fresh air,’ I said.
‘Same thing. Don’t quibble.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to remember something…’
‘I say!’ Alec said, very loudly. ‘I’ve just thought of this. Someone dropping dead on a lonely hillside has a post-mortem and a full inquiry, doesn’t she? So perhaps saying she died here when she didn’t is their way of avoiding both. That would make the lie a great big black one and only worthwhile if it was covering something blacker. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘It certainly does,’ I said. ‘I wish you hadn’t started yelling it at me when I was trying to remember a crucial detail, though.’
‘Only… where does the locked room come into any of that?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘Unless I hit on the truth by chance. Perhaps it really was a favoured place of old Dr Laidlaw and young Dr Laidlaw goes there to cry, and since a patient died in her care she’s just been crying more.’
Alec gave me a long and uninterpretable look.
‘Oh, Dandy,’ he said, then he shook himself. ‘Those aren’t bad shoes. Would you care to join me on a country walk before luncheon?’
‘I would not,’ I said. ‘Have you looked at an ordnance survey of the countryside around here? Contours like thumbprints in every direction. But I wouldn’t mind going back to Auchenlea, asking Mrs Tilling for a picnic and setting off in my motorcar.’
‘And where shall we try first?’ Alec said. ‘I’m for the well, because take this Yellow Mary you mentioned. Who’s to say that her full name isn’t Yellow Mary Patterson? Repenting of her sins and all that?’
I asked a maid to tell Drysdale to bring the motorcar round and then there was just one small matter to see to before we could depart. It had occurred to me as Alec and I were talking that I could drip another cold drop of fear into Dr Laidlaw’s ear and so I steered him along the corridor leading to her study en route to the front door. Luck was with me, however, and an even better chance happened along. Not only was the doctor herself outside her study, where I could more easily pretend to run into her, but with her, heads together, shoulders hunched as though against a storm, was her brother. They looked up as they heard our footsteps approach along the passageway. Dr Laidlaw’s face fell and Tot missed his usual bumptious good cheer by close to a mile too.
‘Mr Osborne,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Gilver.’ He took a breath to deliver a witticism but none came.
‘I’m so glad I ran into you again, Dr Laidlaw,’ I began. I felt Alec shift away from me and turn a little. ‘The coincidence grows and grows. I’ve just heard from one of the maids that Mrs Addie did indeed have two children. A son and a daughter, exactly as the ghost told me. What do you make of that?’
‘I – I cannot account for it,’ she said, with her voice breaking.
‘What’s this?’ said Alec, the traitor.
‘Oh, no doubt nothing,’ I replied, with a careless wave of my hand. ‘Perhaps I remembered reading something about it in the newspapers, subliminally, you know. Or whatever.’
‘Subconsciously,’ the doctor corrected.
‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘Was the death in the papers?’
Tot Laidlaw rubbed his hands together, a meaningless gesture just then, and laughed with a very dry barking sound.
‘Good heavens, I should think not,’ he said. ‘Good Lord! It was a heart attack that carried the poor woman off, you know. Long history of heart trouble, didn’t stick to her treatment diary. Well, one doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead…’
‘In that case, I really am puzzled,’ I said. ‘Although, as you said, Dr Laidlaw, the mind is a wondrous thing. But why on earth should I see the poor woman’s ghost floating out of an unused room in the Turkish bath of all places? Where did she die, by the way?’
‘In-’ the doctor began, but her brother cut her off smartly.
‘Safely in her bedroom attended by not one but two doctors,’ he said. ‘We’ve all got to go sometime.’
‘Indeed,’ I said.
‘And now we must stop bothering you,’ said Alec, ‘and get along.’ He gave a short nod to Tot, a more courtly bow to the doctor and gripped me firmly above my elbow to drag me away.
‘They didn’t like me asking where she died, did they?’ I said, when we were safely out of earshot. Alec finally let go of my arm.