‘Thank you,’ I said, and then hesitated. How could I add my morning’s nightmares to his own? And besides, now that I had got away from the place I was beginning to doubt the truth of it, hoping that if I hugged the horrid facts to myself they might go away. ‘And look – never mind my stuff just now. You catch your train and we can discuss it later.’
‘All right,’ Alec said. ‘Was it Grant who turned it up for you?’
I laughed. ‘Oh, Grant!’ I said. ‘Grant was wonderful. She thought up the perfect thing to say to be taken right into the mediums’ bosom. She’s having a whale of a time. All news later, darling, hm? Safe journey.’
I went back to Auchenlea then, missing the Hydro luncheon and looking forward to pot luck from Mrs Tilling. She was beginning to settle into this novelty of a ‘holiday’ but even taking things very easy she is still rather marvellous and there were no such horrors as shop bread or tinned soup coming into the dining room. She had dispensed with savouries and it was true that she had asked me only that morning if I would prefer salmon or lamb for dinner when, at Gilverton with Hugh of course, there would be the one and then the other. Besides, I could not possibly stay for the Hydro’s midday feast because I was crawling all over with an itch to be rid of the clothes which had soaked up the smell and I needed to rub my hair with a lavender cloth at least, if not stand under the spray bath and wash it.
The chances of that ending well were greatly increased by my coming upon Grant on the road out of town, clearly heading back to the house herself despite being told she could have the day for her spiritualist venture.
‘I needed a rest from it, madam,’ she said, when she had climbed in and we were under way again. ‘They’re very tiring people to spend your time with, those mediums. And that Loveday one… Loveday!’
‘My thoughts exactly, Grant,’ I said, hoping that I sounded convincing. They had been my thoughts, my whole life through, up until that morning. ‘What has he been up to?’
‘He sat me in a chair and chanted at me until my eyes were crossed. It didn’t do any good, because I was reciting poetry in my head all the time and he’d no chance of mesmerising me.’
‘Just as well. Did you pretend?’
‘Of course,’ said Grant. ‘What was William’s surname, he wanted to know. And where did he die and what was his message for his mother?’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I didn’t venture so much as an initial for the surname,’ she said. ‘I said he’d died in Scotland and that he wanted to tell his mother he was sorry.’
‘They can’t have liked the “Scotland” bit,’ I said, chuckling.
‘Not much. Anyway, madam, I’ve managed to find out a wee bit more than I’ve given away, if you’d like me to tell you.’
We were at Auchenlea now and I urged her to accompany me to my bedroom and discuss things as I changed.
‘Why’s that then?’ she asked with a touch of the old Grant. ‘Madam.’ She had chosen my clothes that morning.
‘Smell,’ I said, shrugging out of my coat and handing it to her. She sniffed very gingerly.
‘Just smells like the well, but worse,’ she said. I sniffed at it again. Was she right? The morning’s sudden rush of terror had receded even further and I was almost ready to dismiss it as pure fancy. Still, the smell was real. I shuddered and set a good pace upstairs to get rid of it.
‘Here’s what I’ve found out,’ Grant said, as I was undressing. ‘All the while saying I don’t want to know and it’s wickedness and why won’t the good Lord take this curse off of my head.’
‘Which I did think was jolly clever, I must say. You seemed absolutely not one bit as though you were trying to find things out from them.’
‘And so I found out all the more,’ Grant said. ‘And here it is. It started about a month ago.’ That was no surprise. ‘And it started in a very small way too. The usual thing; a snippet in Spiritualists’ Weekly’ – it appeared that such was indeed the name of the coloured paper Mrs Scott had been reading – ‘saying that a lady had died of fright at the Moffat Hydro after seeing a ghost. It was just a report, a letter from a respectable person, a professional man, and they get them all the time. Who would have thought it, eh?’
‘Not I.’ I picked up a tea dress but at Grant’s frown and small shake of the head I put it back again.
‘So one medium came to the Hydro to see what she could see. Very discreetly.’
‘Not discreetly enough though, I’ll bet. Do you think if I rub my hair with lavender it will do?’ Grant sniffed my head and stood up sharply.
‘I see what you mean, actually, madam,’ she said. ‘That’s really quite nasty. Anyway, to go on with my report, it was when this first medium was here that one of the other guests mentioned a second ghost, and this one by name, and it was a name the medium knew. So she ups and writes to that Mrs Scott who is a very big noise in Glasgow and by sheer chance Mrs Scott has had a letter of her own, quoting the name of a third ghost, and she was just on the point of trying to decide whether to pack her traps and come to investigate it.’
‘Ah yes, I think I heard a veiled mention of that,’ I said.
‘And by the time she got here, there was another of her acquaintances just arriving – it’s a small world I daresay – because she had actually been rung up on the telephone all the way in Carlisle by someone who had been staying here and had left early because Lizzie Haldane was in her bedroom and wouldn’t go away even when she – the guest this is – shook a Bible at her.’
‘How did you get all of this out of them, Grant?’
‘Och, they’re trying to convince me to stay and be part of it,’ she said. ‘They’re talking about the centennial and how it’s the biggest thing there’s been in spiritualists’ circles since that automatic writing in America that got them all birling.’
‘Now that is very interesting,’ I said. ‘A centennial, eh? I think I had only heard the word anniversary up until now. A centennial of what, I wonder.’
‘Not the last hanging at the Gallow Hill anyway,’ Grant said. ‘I made sure and asked about that on account of what “William” is saying. They stopped hanging in Moffat a lot of years ago. It’s all down in Dumfries now. I’ll run you a bath, madam, and tell Mrs Tilling to hold back luncheon.’
I dropped Grant at the end of the Hydro drive in the afternoon and watched with wonder as she assumed the character of the devout little mouse who was cursed with a gift of seeing. She put her head down, clasped her hands in front of her and managed to shrink her shoulders until they were almost gone completely. She turned her toes inwards from their usual confident ten-to-two and began to creep towards the hotel.
I was there to try to decide my next step. If Alec had been around, perhaps I could have summoned the courage to return to the apple house and face whatever was waiting for me. As it was I ended up back on the terrace again, sitting with Hugh.
‘Feeling better, Dandy?’ he asked. ‘You look it.’
‘Mrs Tilling has cured me,’ I said. ‘With clear soup and cold chicken.’
‘Ah,’ said Hugh. ‘Yes, it was mutton stew and batter pudding here. It wouldn’t have been good for you.’ We sat a while. ‘So,’ he continued at last, ‘how’s it all going?’
‘It’s very hard to say,’ I told him. ‘The family exhumed the body and tested it for poison but thus far there’s nothing doing.’ He looked somewhere between startled and flabbergasted at this news. I am sure he put my detecting down under ‘dabbles’ for the most part and so hearing that doctors and Fiscals and pathologists jumped when Alec and I clicked our fingers – or so it might have seemed – was an arresting idea. ‘And I thought I had tracked down a missing piece of equipment which might have gone wrong and caused the death even if the body didn’t show signs of violence. But it turned out to be… something else.’ I could not possibly tell him, but if I did not tell someone I would burst with it.