‘Nothing grubby about it,’ Hugh said, showing me which of my barbs had wounded him. ‘Rather disappointingly respectable, in fact. The Moffat bourgeoisie come out to play. Isn’t that right, Osborne?’
‘We don’t get shackled to the couches, Dandy,’ Alec said, hurrying past any hint that he had joined Hugh in the casino. ‘And there is nothing electric attached to one. Just lamps shining down. Anyone could get up and hop it if he felt he wanted to.’
‘I can’t believe you’re being so cavalier,’ I said to Hugh. ‘But since you are… I will allow them to stay as long as they stay together and don’t go into any little treatment rooms on their own. They can play golf and croquet and billiards and rest on the terrace.’
‘I can’t allow you to suspend the treatments, Dandy,’ Hugh said, meeting my glare with that unconcerned look of his. ‘Look at Donald! Just look at him and then tell me his baths aren’t helping him.’ He tapped his pocket where the brochure, now looking very well thumbed, was still folded. ‘I’m thinking of going in for a few more. I feel better all the time.’
For two pins I would have told him the whole story, of Dr Laidlaw’s swooping in to use the spoils of her father’s beloved Hydro for her own cold scientific ends, of her cynical division of hopeful invalids into groups of guinea pigs and controls and of how she only cared about The Lancet and was not worthy of the name of doctor at all. For two pins I would but I had forgotten what it was called – that resort on the Mediterranean sea – and so I sat silently fuming instead and let him laugh at me.
Matters were not improved by the arrival in the drawing room at that moment not just of Tot Laidlaw coming out like a famous chef from his kitchen after pudding and walking amongst the tables gathering laurels, but today of his sister too, padding along just behind him like a hand maiden and peering intently at all the faces of the guests for all the world as though she were a proper selfless doctor with the Hippocratic oath on her lips and a black bag in her hand. If it had been rock buns instead of meringues that teatime, I might well have shied one at each of them.
So it was with no great surge of welcome that I agreed they could join us. Several of the other tea-takers scattered around the room looked with envy as dear Dr Laidlaw and good old Tot sat down with Hugh, Alec and me. I found myself thinking, briefly, that they were welcome to them, before reminding myself that this pair were at the very heart of the puzzle of the Hydro and I should be glad of the chance to study them at close quarters. I began with Tot, ready to whisk my eyes away if he caught me looking, but to my surprise he did not. He nodded at Alec and Hugh, gave his sister a glare and ignored me completely. I thought, besides, that there was something rather brittle about his air of jollity today, his winks less languid than usual, his preening more like fidgets than before.
‘So,’ he said as he settled down, with much plucking at his trousers and shirt cuffs. He was as dapper as ever in his too-light flannels, cut to flatter a figure in which, the more I saw it, the more I could trace the marks of dissolute living. He was certainly wearing worse than his sister, although I thought he could easily be younger than her. She had the pale cheeks and dark eyes of a dedicated scholar but also the smooth saintly look which they sometimes develop, untouched by the trials of husband, home, servants and children. That was it, I thought, looking at her. Even though thirty if a day and perhaps a good deal more, she looked a girl still. She looked unmarried. It is a look one is well accustomed to these days, when there are still so many of what I cannot bring myself to call ‘surplus women’.
‘Wonderful fire drill,’ Tot was saying. ‘Fastest yet. Of course, it helps when not absolutely everyone is upstairs in bed, eh?’ He jerked his elbow at Hugh although he was too far away actually to nudge him. Of course! The middle-of-the-night fire drills would not discommode Tot’s bright young things, who would still be at the tables and only needed to step outside with their drinks in their hands. I wondered what Dr Laidlaw’s patients in their pyjamas made of it all. ‘I’m discounting you, Dottie,’ he said, giving his sister a penetrating look.
Dr Laidlaw winced but then managed a smile. Alec recrossed his legs and regarded Laidlaw coldly.
‘My sister, Mrs Gilver,’ Tot went on, turning to me at last. He was grinning his wide grin but I was almost sure I could see a sheen of sweat on his high brow. ‘Can you believe she just worked right through the clanging? I had to go and fetch her. If that had been a real fire, Dot, we would both have been in trouble.’
‘I’m sorry, Thomas,’ she said. ‘I’ve apologised already. I had cotton wool in my ears.’
‘Is your study noisy?’ Alec asked, with an air of pitching in. ‘It’s nowhere near- I mean, there’s no source of any noise, surely? Foxes? Owls? I haven’t heard them.’
‘It helps me concentrate,’ she said. ‘When I’m writing. It gives me the sense of a cocoon, with everything shut out, you know.’
‘Oh, yes, we know,’ Tot said. He spoke lightly but from the way his sister shrank from his words he might have been grinding his teeth and glowering at her. ‘We know all about your tremendous feats of concentration.’ He turned again to take us all in. ‘Absent-minded professor. Like our father. Not me! I’m the black sheep that was never going to come to any good, isn’t that right, Dottie?’
I turned a little in my chair and looked hard at Hugh. How could he stand this odious person? How could he bear him, airing his family’s cruel little sayings that way? I was gratified to see Hugh assume the distant look he affects when trying simply to pretend that what is passing before him is not.
‘Still,’ Tot said. ‘It’s all good fun and what else is life for, eh?’
No one managed to summon a reply and so he spoke again.
‘Everyone settled? No thoughts of leaving? I’d be sorry to see you take off, old man. And if that business in the steam room is all squared away for your good lady…?’
In other words, I thought, Hugh was having his usual run of luck in the casino and Tot didn’t want my encounter with a ghost to cause him to cash his chips before the luck turned and the casino could win it all back again. I caught Alec’s eye and a thought passed between us. Had it been Tot who planted the toffees and told Mrs Cronin to make sure we saw them?
‘How are your sons, Mrs Gilver?’ said Dr Laidlaw, rather blurting it out to change the subject.
‘I’m very glad you asked,’ I said. I pointed over to where Donald and Teddy were lounging on the window seat. ‘Their posture is not what one would hope for, but they seem markedly improved. Thank you.’ I took a deep breath and plunged on before my nerve failed me. I had only just remembered an odd little moment Dr Laidlaw and I had shared that very first day and I wondered if alluding to it would shake something loose that might be useful. ‘Knowing that you – their doctor – are taking a close interest in their convalescence is most reassuring. We mothers, as I’m sure you know, are rather fierce on the subject of harm coming to our young. I think that almost more than any treatments they might undergo or not undergo it’s wonderful to think that they are in safe and caring hands and will not come to any harm here.’
Half of my audience shifted uncomfortably. Hugh was unsettled by this sickly display of sentiment as he would be by any. Alec was trying not to laugh; he knew exactly what the act had cost my dignity. I carried on regardless, for it was the other half I had in my sights and thus far I had only taken aim.
‘I blame my own mother, of course,’ I said. ‘And my nanny too. But I’m sure you won’t mind me asking.’ I simpered a little here, or tried to, and dared not look at Alec or Hugh. ‘I suppose you do drain and clean the plunging pool regularly, don’t you? You didn’t quite answer when I asked before, Dr Laidlaw, but surely you do.’