‘Oh, they’d like to bottle me and keep me,’ Grant said. ‘They’re not safe to be out alone. That Loveday one tried to trick me again, right enough. He asked me if there was a Mrs A “amongst their number”. That’s how he put it.’
‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘What did you say?’
‘I put their eyes out on organ stops, I can tell you,’ said Grant, brightening at the memory. ‘I asked if they meant the large lady who was here but didn’t belong with the others.’
‘Oh, bravo,’ I said. ‘Grant, I was thinking in terms of a tip but I am beginning to wonder if you shouldn’t be on the payroll this time. Pro-rata.’
‘Not that I’ve found out anything much,’ said Grant. She and Hugh were both far too scrupulous about claiming their honours, compared with Alec and me. I said nothing about it, though, because I could hear someone approaching from the hot rooms.
Then the velvet curtains were opening and Mrs Cronin was by my side.
‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you this morning?’ She said it in the tone which would usually go better with the words ‘What do you want from me now?’ I decided to try to put her on her back foot.
‘It’s not me you need to think of,’ I said. ‘It’s this poor girl here. Do you know she’s been waiting for Dr Laidlaw for an hour to see to her treatment? She had a very bad night and now she’s just hanging around. People are supposed to come here to be made better, Mrs Cronin, not to be worn out from endless waiting.’
Mrs Cronin’s face was like a hatchet.
‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? The lady has come to no harm.’
‘The lady,’ I said, and I did not miss Grant’s look of intense amusement to hear the word coming out of my mouth about her, ‘can surely expect more for her money than to come to no harm. Good grief, if the Hydro is setting the jumps as low as that now!’ I changed tack, hoping to shake something out of her. ‘What’s keeping Dr Laidlaw, anyway? Where is she?’ I turned my eyes slowly and very deliberately toward the spray bath room and the locked door beyond it. Mrs Cronin flushed.
‘She’s in her study,’ she said.
‘Well, I think I shall go there,’ I retorted. ‘And see what exactly it is that’s so much more important than her patients today.’ Mrs Cronin made a move as though to follow me, but I turned and barred her way. ‘Oh no, my dear matron,’ I said. ‘You are here instead, as you say. You must take care of this’ – I turned to indicate Grant and, since Mrs Cronin could not see my face, I dropped a wink at her – ‘lady.’
I found it hard to account for myself, thinking it over as I stalked the halls and passageways en route to Dr Laidlaw’s study once more. I did not usually forget myself so far as to antagonise those who were either suspects or useful witnesses. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar demands placed upon me by Hugh, or perhaps it was Grant of all people, being part of the case this time. Perhaps it was a cocktail of guilt over dragging Donald and Teddy into it and guilt over then banishing them to the paltry entertainments of Auchenlea until we were done, although that was Hugh’s doing, to be fair. Or perhaps it was just understandable frustration that every time one question was answered in this puzzle the answer only led to seven more questions and Mrs Addie was still there right in the middle as dead as ever and with no one nearer knowing why.
Then I turned the corner to the passageway leading to Dr Laidlaw’s study door and smiled, for all the clouds were gone and the sun was bright again. There was Alec, standing like a totem pole in the middle of the passageway, staring with ferocious nonchalance in the opposite direction from the door. When he saw it was me, he stood at ease and then crept softly back and put his ear against the wood again. Setting all thought of Hugh, the boys and Grant far from my mind – they would have been horrified, and Nanny Palmer would have wept – I tiptoed over and joined him.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ Dr Laidlaw was saying. She sounded as though she had been weeping. ‘I’m not interested in your money!’
‘Your money, Dottie,’ her brother replied.
I put my mouth very close to Alec’s ear and breathed my words rather than whispered them.
‘What are they talking about?’
Alec turned back to me and placed a finger on his lips.
‘What money?’ wailed Dorothea. ‘What have you done now?’
‘I?’ said Tot. ‘I, sister mine? Not I. You should really look at the pieces of paper shoved under your nose before you sign them.’
‘But I can’t carry on with this… charade,’ she said. ‘I’m frightened. That dreadful woman knows something about Mrs Addie, I’m sure.’ I stiffened and Alec waggled his eyebrows at me.
‘She’s been listening to fairy stories. It’s the smooth young man you need to watch out for,’ said Tot. ‘I’ve met his type before.’ I waggled mine back. ‘Anyway, it’s not long now.’
‘Until what?’ said Dr Laidlaw, her voice rising.
‘Don’t you trouble your pretty little head about it, Dottie,’ said Tot. ‘Just make sure you keep your books up to date, eh? And don’t say I’m not good to you.’
‘I don’t say that,’ said Dorothea. ‘I know very well how good you have been, but you don’t understand my work and what I need. This can’t go on.’
‘And it won’t, Dot,’ her brother said. ‘It’s nearly over.’
‘But it’s getting worse,’ she said. ‘All those people. The London people were bad enough, but these new people, more and more every day. Who are they?’
‘Don’t trouble yourself about them,’ Laidlaw said. ‘They’ll get what’s coming to them. They all will.’
‘What do you mean when you talk that way?’ said Dorothea. ‘You sound dreadful. You’re frightening me.’
This outburst was greeted with silence. I drew away a little to ease the crick that was developing in my neck, but Alec stayed glued to the panelling. Then, all of a sudden, his eyes flared. He mouthed, ‘Tot!’, grabbed my arm and dragged me around the nearest corner, less than a second, it seemed, before the door opened and closed.
We waited with breath held and hearts hammering. If he came this way we would be undone.
‘Phew,’ I said at last, as the sound of his jaunty footsteps faded away in the other direction.
‘If people would only say “lovely chatting to you, see you at luncheon, goodbye, goodbye” at the ends of their conversations,’ Alec said, ‘listening at doors would be much less nerve-racking.’
‘So what was all that about?’ I asked.
‘Search me,’ Alec said. ‘I thought she wanted to keep going and he wanted to sell up and cut loose. In fact I know she did because she told me and then one of the rubbers told me too. But from what they were saying just now it sounds as though she’s for packing it in and he won’t hear of it.’
‘Yet,’ I said. ‘If he’s ready to sell what’s he waiting for? What bits of paper do you think he’s had her signing?’
‘He is a gambler,’ said Alec. ‘Perhaps he’s got the place mortgaged and he’s waiting to cash in his chips.’
‘Waiting for what?’ I said.
‘Well, the market to peak, I suppose,’ Alec said. ‘It’s tremendously exciting what’s happening in New York, Dandy. Did you read the newspaper yesterday? The busiest day on the stock exchange since its beginning. Hugh is going to kill you, you know.’