‘They want me to stay, madam,’ she said. Her eyes were as round as beads. ‘They’re going to pay for my room so I can stay and go to their seance. It was Mr Merrick’s idea.’
‘You don’t have to do it,’ I said. I had misunderstood the round eyes.
‘But may I?’ she said.
‘Certainly, you may,’ I replied. ‘But you must promise me that you will not put yourself in any danger, Grant. Remember that Mr Osborne and the master are both here. I shall give you the numbers of their rooms and you are not to hesitate to go there.’
I fished in my bag for a slip of paper. Grant was fishing too.
‘I think it’ll be just one day, madam,’ she said. ‘So here’s what to lay out for yourself for tomorrow and if you decide to change for dinner, wear the peacock blue, and your Turkish slippers are in the airing cupboard. I steamed them after your game of rugby football the other night.’
‘I was working on the case, Grant,’ I said. ‘I did mention that they weren’t a suitable choice, if you remember.’
We swapped slips of paper and I went on my way. The voice from the depths of an armchair in a dark corner by the door surprised me.
‘She said she was a maid, right enough.’ A great leonine head of silver hair bent forward around the wing of the armchair. It was Loveday Merrick. ‘To a woman staying in town. I never put her together with you, Mrs Gilver.’
‘It’s Mr… Merrick, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That’s not my maid. My maid’s name is Palmer and she’s at home sewing. That girl promised to give me the recipe for a hair lotion she uses. I overheard her talking about it in the steam baths one day.’
‘Ah, the steam baths are indeed a wonderful place for overhearing,’ he said. ‘Good day, Mrs Gilver.’
‘Good day, Mr Merrick,’ I said. It was not until I was halfway to town that I thought to wonder how he knew me.
The librarian was closing up for the day when I pulled in at the kerb and hopped down.
‘Tch,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry to have missed you, but if you don’t mind answering questions while you lock the door, you could help me out a little.’
‘Happy to oblige, madam,’ she said. There was no sign that she remembered me.
‘I suppose I could ask in the Black Bull but a library is much more to my taste,’ I went on, buttering her up for no reason except that I had planned to. When I rehearse a conversation ahead of execution I very often cannot amend as I go. ‘It’s about the Black Bull as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘My husband and I are having one of these little disagreements. I say that William Hare stayed there and he thinks it was Deacon Brodie.’
‘Oh, no, no, no,’ said the librarian. She had finished with her locks and bolts now and she stowed her bunch of keys away safely in a large bag with a stout clasp, snapping it tightly and checking it twice before she put the handle over her arm. I could not drag my eyes away from it although I had no idea why. ‘Deacon Brodie was never in Moffat, madam, I’m glad to say. But William Hare was and no two ways about it. And you’re the third one to ask about him this last weather, you know.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘A lady was in the other day asking about ghosts and ne’er-do-wells and I told her. Drew her a map and everything. And then a gentleman was here too about a month ago. Almost the same thing. All the ghosts of Moffat. He didn’t need a map though.’
‘I see,’ I said. It did not seem worth telling her that the lady from last time was me.
‘Now, ordinarily,’ I said to Alec on the telephone that evening, ‘I’d think it couldn’t have been Tot Laidlaw because she said she didn’t know him, but if she’d forgotten me after three days then it certainly could be.’
‘Ordinarily I’d think it wasn’t Tot because she said “gentleman”,’ Alec replied.
‘Ah yes, but to the librarian “a gentleman” is anyone who isn’t wearing boots,’ I said. ‘And what it made me think about was the letter to Spooks’ Monthly that Grant heard about. That was a “gentleman” too – a respectable sort, a professional man I think she said. And someone else at some time during this case has spoken of a respectable man… I wish I could think who it was and what we were speaking about.’
‘And you’re sure it must have been Tot?’ Alec said. ‘Because I was wondering about Loveday Merrick. If he’s a fraud – and he must be, mustn’t he? – then wouldn’t he have to mug up in advance?’
‘But this gentleman didn’t need a map,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it was Tot. His latest wheeze, you know. Give the place the reputation for being haunted and get some extra business that way. I mean to say, any man who’s running a casino… he can’t hope to get away with that indefinitely.’
‘Far from it,’ Alec said. ‘Two young oafs were talking in the hot room-’
‘Aha!’ I said.
‘And one of them happened to say to the other that he would miss it when it was gone. That it was such a fag having to drag himself all the way through France for the same terms.’
‘Well, there you are then,’ I said. ‘Tot’s been whispering stories into just the right ears to get the Hydro started on its career as a haunted house. Or writing letters to the right magazines anyway.’
‘You don’t mean to say that he killed Mrs Addie to get the ball rolling?’ said Alec.
‘I don’t know. I hope the PM turns up something. Or Grant does. Oh, by the way, don’t jump out of your skin if there’s a knock at your door tonight, will you? Grant’s staying to do a seance and I’ve told her to come to you if she gets in any difficulties. I don’t trust that Merrick at all. And I’d hate anything to befall her.’
‘I saw her in the dining room,’ Alec said. ‘She had them all eating out of her hand. I think she’ll be fine.’
Saturday, 26th October 1929
But when I next saw her she was not fine at all.
I had decided to have one last crack at Regina or Mrs Cronin, whichever one I ran into first. They both knew more than they were telling, and for some reason I could not get Regina, especially, out of my mind. She had been in my thoughts since my conversation with the librarian the afternoon before and she had walked through my dreams too. I had been in one of the little cubicles, sitting on the velvet bench, quite naked, waiting for her to come to me. My pose must have been, I imagine, similar to the way Grant held herself when I caught sight of her in the resting room the next morning. She was perched on the edge of one of the couches, still dressed in her grey pinafore and outdoor coat and still with her hat on and her bag clutched on her knees.
‘I’m waiting for Dr Laidlaw,’ she said. ‘She was supposed to be assessing me for the galvanic baths. I’m sure she said it was here I was to wait.’
‘The Turkish and Russian resting room?’ I said. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘An hour, madam, and it’s very hot.’ I did not alarm her with news of how hot it got once one started through the velvet curtains.
‘Is that all that’s troubling you, Grant?’ I said. ‘You seem rather forlorn.’
‘I’d have liked to press that shirt before you wore it, madam,’ she said. ‘That’s not the one that was on the list I gave you. And I’m tired too. It was gone three before they let up last night, with their moaning and swaying.’
I bit my cheeks so as not to smile. The mediums would be mortified if they could hear this depth of scorn.
‘I could do with just sitting in the drawing room with a weekly paper and a pot of tea, madam, I can tell you,’ Grant went on, ‘but if you’re staying here you have to have treatments. It’s the rules.’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘And it’s always puzzled me. I mean, some of the treatments are free and so you’d think it would make sound business sense to restrict them, not shove them down everyone’s throats this way.’ Grant looked uninterested in the profits and losses of the Laidlaws’ Hydro and so I changed the subject to one where I expected she would shine. ‘How did you acquit yourself last night?’ I asked her. ‘Could you tell what they made of you?’