‘Do you?’ Alec said. ‘Not I. She’s a game girl, your Grant. She’ll be there.’
‘I wonder if they’ll check behind fallen logs for spies,’ I said. Bunty was standing in the doorway peering at me from under her brows with her head down. She had taken great offence to the smell I had brought home with me and had abandoned me for Mrs Tilling and the hope of pastry scraps in the kitchens but she looked almost ready to forgive me now.
‘What would you do if the ghosts really came?’ Alec said. ‘What if a spectral gallows appeared and the ghost of William Hare materialised hanging from it?’
‘I’d be glad to have something to tell the Addies,’ I said. ‘Even if I had to forfeit our fee to excuse the nonsense.’ I clicked my fingers and Bunty took another couple of steps towards me. Rather a nerve to be so princess and pea-ish when one considered what she rolled in on walks if I did not manage to stop her. ‘That’s a thought though, Alec, isn’t it? How exactly were fifteen – or even seventeen – ghosts supposed to lay their hands on enough good timber and nails to make a gallows? How would they hold the hammer? That seems rather a weak point in the argument, if you ask me.’
‘Oh, that seems weak,’ Alec said, laughing. ‘If they persuaded a living carpenter to take the job you’d think all questions were answered then?’
‘I suppose they could have scared William Hare to death the way they’re supposed to have scared Mrs Addie. But how would they have buried the body? I’m doing it again.’
‘Speaking of bending workmen to your will,’ Alec said, ‘how goes Gilverton?’
I shook my head. The last time I had spoken to Gilchrist he had talked vaguely of one of the houses being finished and looking very good but when I asked if it was Gilverton or Benachally which was ready he had somehow managed not to answer.
‘And Hugh hasn’t been in touch with his American broker?’
‘I don’t think he’s given it a thought,’ I answered. ‘I’m not sure he’s even looking at the newspaper now. Why?’
‘Oh, rumblings,’ Alec said. ‘I’ve sold this and that actually.’
‘At last!’ I said as Bunty crossed the final few feet of carpet and put her head on my lap. ‘Good girl. I’m sorry about that nasty smell. Who’s a good old girl then?’
‘I miss Millie,’ Alec said. ‘I’d have brought her and left her here if I’d thought Hugh would be in on it. I really do hope we get this thing solved and off our hands soon, Dandy.’
‘A rough draft of a blackmail letter in Mrs Addie’s handbag would be good,’ I said. ‘And then the police would have the trouble of finding out how it was done.’
‘Or an empty poison phial marked “untraceable”,’ Alec said. ‘And then the police could try to find out why.’
‘Fingers crossed,’ I said. ‘We’ll know soon enough.’
He waited for me in his room, in the end, judging it too risky to be found in the ladies’ Turkish after hours, so it was I alone who slipped in and, with an ear cocked for anyone else who might be skulking where she had no business to be, flitted along the cubicle corridor to the little square room at the end where the lockers were. The clothes shelves were open – Mrs Addie’s things could never have languished a month there – but there were two rows of little cubby holes with doors and locks running along above them. My key, Mrs Addie’s key, was number twenty-three and I struck a match and peered at the brass numbers on the little doors. It was only a minute before I had the door open and was reaching for the familiar lead-and-velvet boxing glove. I grabbed it, locked the door, dropped the key in my pocket and fled to Alec’s room, praying that none of the Hydro staff would see me.
None did. I was only seen by one person the whole of the way. He was standing at a landing window on the second floor looking out into the night. It was Loveday Merrick, without his entourage for once, just standing there staring out at the Gallow Hill, all alone.
‘Mrs Gilver,’ he said, touching his temple with his finger. ‘We meet again. I in the calm before my storm, you in the thick of yours.’
‘Good evening, Mr Merrick,’ I said and scuttled past him. I repeated it word for word to Alec but he was just as stumped as me.
‘Never mind him, anyway,’ he said. ‘Did you get it?’ He locked the door behind me as I opened my coat and let the lead-lined bag fall onto his bed.
‘Of course I did,’ I said. ‘I don’t generally walk around clutching my middle like that. Now, since you missed out on fetching it, you are to open it up. I insist. You have had the short end of every stick so far. Time for a lollipop instead.’
Alec gladly took the key from me and opened the clasp. He wrenched the hinge open and peered inside.
‘One very small brown bag, good quality but mended in the handles,’ he said. ‘At last. And inside…’ He fumbled a little with the fastening, being unused to opening women’s handbags, I presume, but got there in the end. ‘Inside, for example but without prejudice to the generality: Father’s watch.’ He sprang the casing and tipped the watch itself forward. ‘Complete with lock of hair.’ He delved back into the bag again. ‘And a bundle of precious letters, tied up as you prophesied, Dandy, with ribbon.’
‘I think I prophesied red ribbon though,’ I said, ‘and this is blue.’
‘Sherlock Holmes would be ashamed of you,’ Alec said. ‘Now, let’s see. What else is in here? Oh, my word! Is it? It is. This might be something useful.’
He held up a small, narrow black book, with gilt edges to its pages and a pencil with a tassel fitted down its spine. It was a diary.
‘In which I very much hope Mrs Enid Addie wrote down all her suspicions about the individual who had threatened to do her harm,’ Alec said.
‘Oh, you’re in favour of women scribbling lots of silly notes now, are you?’ I said. Alec was riffling through it, squinting. ‘Can’t you read her writing?’ I guessed. ‘Oh well then. I suppose you’d better give it to me.’
It was not the prize for which I had been hoping. Mrs Addie was a woman of orderly mind who used her diary to record appointments and anniversaries and to remind herself to pay bills. The only longer items than these were Bible passages, entered each Monday as she turned over a new page, anything from ‘A faithful friend is the medicine of life’ to ‘Better a dinner of herbs’ which was hard to take from a woman of her size.
‘Hmph, nothing on the last day,’ said Alec, looking over my shoulder. I had gone quickly, of course, to September and the clues I hoped to find there and it was troubling indeed to see the blank pages after all the luncheons and dinners and meetings at clubs. She had jotted down her daughter’s birthday in December. ‘Lace?’ she had written, and had marked the day of her Ladies’ Circle Christmas entertainment in good time too. ‘King’s Theatre!’ she had written, but nothing could have spoken more eloquently of a life snuffed out than the way the pencilled notes got to September the eighth and then all but stopped.
‘I wonder why she didn’t put in the Bible passage on the last Monday,’ I said.
‘Maybe she did it in the evening,’ Alec said. ‘And she was dead by then.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to write something in your diary every week when you turn over the fresh page, you’d do it on Monday morning when you sat down at your writing table to prepare for what was coming.’
‘Well, perhaps it was because she was away from home,’ Alec said.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. I continued turning the pages. ‘Look here though. In June she was at a friend’s in Inverness. Look, all week. But she still filled in her passage. “The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Doesn’t seem as though she expected to enjoy the visit much if she needed that to comfort her. And look again in February. She was in the sleeper train coming back from London. “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way” etc, etc. Oh Alec, look at this one! “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” For the week of the church jumble sale. It’s priceless. I like Mrs Addie more and more.’