‘And be assured,’ said Alec, taking up the baton, ‘that we will do our utmost to assuage your concerns about the manner of your dear mother’s passing.’ It was his ‘endeavour to give satisfaction’ speech, tinged with a little undertaker’s mummery as this occasion demanded. I cannot deliver it with a straight face, but Alec is a marvel.
‘I shall take you at your word, Mr Osborne,’ said Mr Addie. He looked rather sharply at me and then back at Alec. ‘As one gentleman always can for another.’
‘Mrs Gilver,’ said Mrs Bowie, as one lady to another perhaps, hoping to smooth the slight away. ‘Do sit down and I’ll ring for tea.’
Before the pot was empty we were well acquainted with the late Mrs Addie. She had been a widow of the sort that always makes me imagine she viewed the marriage itself as an irksome hors d’oeuvre. She had sewn hassocks, bred Sealyhams, terrorised troupes of little girls through their Brownie badges and generally kept a good slice of the world around her bowling along in proper order. When she had put her back out pitching tents at a Brownie camp in the Pentland Hills she had, according to her practical nature, taken to bed with unguents and embrocations to spare; and when these had failed her, she had rung up that nice Dr Laidlaw at Moffat and booked her usual room.
‘For she was subject to it,’ said Mrs Bowie, ‘but Dr Laidlaw always cured her before.’ She rose and came to stand behind my chair to look at the portrait photograph which had been fetched for us. Mrs Addie had been a solid woman of strong features and very smooth skin. These attributes, along with her little dark eyes, lent her what can only be described as a porcine countenance. Her children had inherited her looks, as is always the way when a parent is as plain as pudding, and Mrs Bowie had, besides, come in for her mother’s scant and colourless hair. (Mr Addie had got himself a head of thick dark locks, but had let most of them go.)
‘So your mother knew and trusted this doctor?’ I said.
‘She did,’ said Mr Addie, darkly. ‘She was quite taken in by it all. Always running off there.’ He caught himself just before he absolutely started speaking ill of the dead. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘Dr Laidlaw is gone.’
‘And the place came under new management?’ asked Alec.
‘His children,’ said Mrs Bowie. ‘They inherited it. His daughter…’
‘Oh, he died,’ I said and, although there is no shame in dying, for it happens repeatedly in the best of families, one could not help seeing a little unflattering light cast on the spa.
‘And they’re… what? Attempting to run the place without his medical know-how?’ Alec said. ‘That should have caused questions to be asked, surely.’
‘From what my mother said,’ Mrs Bowie volunteered, ‘it seems to be going along the same as before. After a little initial… They had opposing views on whether to sell up but their father’s will split everything two ways and so they carried on. Some of the treatments had changed, but that’s progress, I suppose.’ She lifted her chin and gave her brother a defiant look as she spoke. I noticed it and Alec did too.
‘They still have a hydropathic doctor on the premises then?’ he said. ‘Overseeing the… what have you… that goes on.’
‘They do,’ said Mrs Bowie.
‘Of sorts,’ said Mr Addie.
‘What do you mean, sir?’ I asked. ‘Do you have reason to doubt the man’s credentials?’
He stared at me, breathing out and in as if it cost him some effort.
‘I couldn’t say,’ he said. ‘Besides, it was a local man, a Moffat GP, who signed the certificate. Then the police, as we said. And the Fiscal. Passed the buck all the way. And now, sir,’ he turned to Alec again, ‘it falls to you.’
‘And stops here,’ Alec assured him. Then he added firmly, ‘With Mrs Gilver and me.’
‘Now, Mrs Bowie,’ I said, ‘you mentioned just now that your mother reported continued satisfaction with the Hydro. Did she write to you? Might I see the letter if you’ve kept it? Or the relevant portions if there are private matters therein?’
‘She rang me,’ Mrs Bowie said. ‘On the Sunday. A very quick word, after her supper and before her bath.’
‘Did she now?’ I said, sitting forward and readying myself to take notes. Alec is wont to smile at my little block of paper and my pencil, but my notes have helped us many times. ‘On the very last evening? What – to the best of your remembering, Mrs Bowie – did she say?’
The poor woman tried her best but, having retrod the ground countless times in the weeks of mourning, she remembered it only too welclass="underline" the portents unleashed by the very ringing of the telephone bell; the darkening tone in her mother’s voice; the sudden chill as they said goodbye. I managed to glean that Mrs Addie had reported a comfortable journey down in the train, had been pleased to be shown to her favourite room and happy that it had not been redecorated since her last visit. She had detected a falling off of quality in the cooking, with a greater emphasis on grated raw vegetables and lemon juice than she could greet with enthusiasm, but overall she was home-from-home again and her back was aching a little less even before the first splash of magical water was felt upon it. By that Sunday bath-time she was already anticipating putting on her outdoor shoes and taking a stroll into town for a cup of tea in the near future. Not on the Monday, because of her ‘treatment’, but very soon; and she would buy a picture postcard of the well or the bath house and send it to her daughter with her love.
‘And she said she would post me off a box of tablet,’ said Mrs Bowie. ‘From the toffee shop.’
‘What treatment would that have been?’ I asked, with my pencil poised.
Mrs Bowie stared at her brother with wide eyes.
‘Oh, I’m not an educated woman,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t tell you all the fancy names and what they mean.’
‘But nothing, one assumes, that would have put her heart under strain,’ I said. ‘Surely the Fiscal must have considered that.’
‘We shall ask him,’ said Alec, rather grandly. I resented a little the air of him sweeping in and summing up after his secretary had fussed on with her questions and her pencil. On the other hand, it was a competent way to bring matters to a close and one should be glad, I daresay, whenever Gilver and Osborne or either of its parts looks competent. Lord knows, we display other qualities often enough.
Our decampment to the Moffat hills was not as orderly as one might have hoped. My packing caused Grant no trouble, for she is an old hand, and with almost a whole motorcar at her disposal – since Hugh was neither hunting nor dancing and needed only tweeds, flannels and something for dinner – she did not need to pare her selections down. Indeed, I noticed three hatboxes being carried downstairs but said nothing. Donald and Teddy, along with Bunty, were going by train; Donald because he had never grown out of his childhood’s carsickness and Teddy to keep him company. They were recovered enough to pack their own trunks with Becky’s help and I kept them on their honour by requiring them to tick items off a list and sign it at the end. It had worked while they were at school and continued to work now; they are good boys really. The problem arose with Pallister and Mrs Tilling, for he could no more imagine serving us dinner without his silver spoons, wine without his decanters or tea without his pot than she could envision a distant kitchen having its own sharp knives, fish kettle and marble pastry board. When I saw her wrapping a rolling pin in brown paper, though, I had to protest.
‘I like my own pin, madam,’ she said. ‘That there pin might be wood. There might be weevils.’
I declined to point out that weevils do not bore into wood and set up home there.
‘We could run to a new one if so,’ I said. ‘Or – the cook at home when I was a child used a wine bottle filled with crushed ice. I used to help fill it. You really can’t take everything, you know.’