Hugh was nodding in that way of his when he is only half listening to me. Then, still not paying full attention, he turned and spoke.
‘Can’t you use the brochure?’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ I looked at his breast pocket, from where as ever the folded catalogue of delights was peeping out. He removed it and handed it over.
‘If you went through the brochure and cross-checked it with the typed sheet they hand out to the day-guests to say what’s on offer, wouldn’t that tell you what they’ve ditched?’
I was aware of the flush rising up through my neck and settling in two spots on my face.
‘Didn’t you think of that?’ Hugh said. ‘I hope you’ve not been chasing around on needless adventures, Dandy, when the answer was right here in my breast pocket.’ I said nothing. He looked more closely at me. ‘You’ve got a little blemish on your cheek,’ he said. ‘I can see it quite clearly now that you’ve – ahem – got your colour back.’
Ah yes, I thought. A blemish on my cheek. Or rather a graze from hugging a tree when I almost fell out of it because I did not think to look in the usual place for a key to open a door. ‘As I say, though,’ I told him, with an attempt at dignity, ‘it wasn’t equipment gone wrong at all.’
‘Still,’ said Hugh. ‘Worth it, perhaps. Just to be thorough.’
‘Oh, I suppose so,’ I said, with little grace. At least if I stayed there humouring Hugh I would be far away from the apple house.
‘I shall go and fetch today’s sheet for you right now,’ Hugh said, unwinding his blanket and standing. ‘Glad to help when I can.’
I had started in on the easy ones before he returned. The Turkish and Russian baths were available, as I knew only too well. Salt rubs, oil rubs and mustard wraps too.
‘Here we go then,’ he said, striding along the terrace towards me. He looked in peak form again, although whether from rest and hydropathy or from besting his wife at her own business it was hard to say. ‘You read them off, Dandy, and I’ll see if they’re on here.’
‘Electric heat baths,’ I began. ‘Faradaic, galvanic, diathermic, ultraviolet and ionised.’
‘All present and correct,’ said Hugh. ‘Speak up though, won’t you?’
‘No, dear, I won’t,’ I said. ‘We are trying to catch a possible murderer, remember? Nauheim, including nascent carbonic and Schott exercises, plombiers, pine bath – at last something one can understand: although how one bathes in pine…? – Aix douche and Vichy douche.’
‘All here,’ said Hugh. ‘And the pine bath is quite lovely, I can tell you.’
‘Hydropathic baths then,’ I said, turning the page. ‘Or what you and I would call water at home. Needle, spray, sitz, long. Is a long bath just a bath?’
‘In the waters,’ said Hugh.
‘Head, eye, ear and nose sprays, ugh. Ascending sprays.’ Hugh cleared his throat and frowned. ‘Wave baths, Turkish baths, steam baths, plunging pool, swimming baths – we knew about all of these – and that’s just about it.’ I turned another page.
‘And that’s it here too,’ Hugh said. ‘Now, at least you can discount the theory of a treatment gone wrong. I still say this was well worthwhile, don’t you? Dandy?’ He turned to look at me. ‘Dandy?’
‘There’s one more,’ I said. I had let the brochure fall open on my lap.
‘You’ve gone pale again,’ said Hugh. ‘Shall I fetch you a glass of water?’
‘Not Moffat water,’ I said. ‘That smell.’
‘What have you read that’s upset you so?’ Hugh said. He went as far as to reach out a hand towards me.
‘Mud,’ I said. ‘A mud bath. Not… what I imagined at all.’
‘Ah, I asked about the mud bath,’ said Hugh, taking the brochure and flipping through its pages. ‘They’ve only got one in the ladies’ side, since it’s mostly good for shedding weight, I believe. And even the ladies’ one is-’ He broke off.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a little barrel sort of thing about three feet square and four feet tall, and one sits in it, up to one’s neck in sulphurous mud. And I would imagine one comes out really quite filthy so that even if one washes and washes one would still have dirt under one’s nails and so on.’
‘Hmph. Sounds nasty,’ said Hugh, ‘but I don’t quite see why it’s upsetting you so. Not really.’
‘It’s the smell,’ I said again. ‘Imagine sitting in a stinking vat of sulphurous mud, and dying there.’ Hugh looked up sharply and his face, as mine had, turned pale. ‘What could anyone ever have done to deserve to die in a place like that?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ Hugh said. He remained pale but he stood up very decisively and looked around him, like an officer surveying a battlefield, or a matron a ward. ‘Will you be all right for a bit, Dandy my dear?’ I nodded. ‘I’m going to find the boys and take them away,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I really believed it until now.’
‘Shall I just come too?’ I said. ‘If we’re leaving.’ He wheeled round and fixed me with a look which would have done either matron or officer proud.
‘We’re not leaving,’ he said. ‘You and Alec are staying to solve this outrage and I shall help you. But it’s no place for the boys. Only I don’t like leaving you alone when you look absol-’ He stopped, with his mouth open, staring into the open french window of the drawing room. ‘Is that Grant?’ he said. ‘What on earth is she doing here? And what on earth is she wearing? She looks as though she’s joined a nunnery.’
‘She’ll be very pleased to hear that you think so,’ I said. ‘It’s exactly the impression she was hoping to give. Fetch her, would you, if you can do it discreetly, not if she’s with the mediums. She can sit with me while you get the boys to Auchenlea. We can always pretend just to have started chatting.’
‘Did you say “mediums”?’ asked Hugh. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Oh, that’s quite another part of the forest,’ I said. ‘Or possibly another forest entirely. At least I think so.’
‘Spirit mediums?’ said Hugh. ‘Oh, she’s seen us. She’s coming over.’
‘Madam, sir,’ said Grant. She would say no more until she knew for sure whether Hugh was to be trusted with whatever she had to tell me.
‘I know what’s going on, Grant,’ Hugh said. ‘Or at least I know that something is.’
‘Mr Merrick has offered up a sprat to catch a mackerel, madam,’ she said. ‘He wants me to ask if there’s a James here. Someone almost said the full name but he shushed her. I think they’re testing me.’
‘Grant,’ said Hugh, ‘please sit down and tell me what is going on. You are here disguised as a nun’ – Grant beamed – ‘to be tested by spirit mediums? I’m not sure I follow you.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I was exhausted by it all suddenly. ‘There’s some kind of ghost hunters’ gathering going on. There’s a centennial anniversary of… something bad and the ghosts are amassing.’ Grant had sat down on the edge of Hugh’s deckchair so he had no choice but to sink down beside me on mine. ‘Various people have reported being contacted by an assortment of ghosts but they’re still short of the number they’re expecting which is either fifteen or seventeen depending how you count them. Don’t look at me like that, Hugh. I’m only reporting what I’ve been told. Or what I’ve overhead, mostly.’
‘Now, some of the ghosts have names, sir,’ Grant chipped in. ‘And some of them don’t. So Madam’s idea was that I would think up a common name and say I’d been contacted and they’d believe it was one of the nameless ones introducing himself at last.’
‘I see,’ said Hugh. ‘Fifteen ghosts with names.’