Alec was nodding. ‘You’re right, Dan. She’d have loved to have thought up a good passage to go along with a spell in the Hydro. Something with a bit of anointing, perhaps. Or even “Physician, heal thyself” at a pinch.’
‘So why didn’t she do it?’
‘Maybe… if she died of natural causes,’ Alec said. ‘If we’re wrong about murder and misadventure and it was all perfectly innocent… maybe she was already feeling rotten on Monday morning, which is why she didn’t eat or drink anything, and she felt too bad to pore over a Bible. They’ve always got such tiny print. If it was a sick headache…’
I had already had one beam of sunshine and choir of angels in this case. As Alec spoke, the beam of sunshine returned and threatened to blind me. The choir thundered and bellowed until I was deafened too.
‘I know how she died,’ I said. ‘I know what killed her. And, Alec, it’s beastly.’
Alec started up with a jolt. ‘I got some brandy sent up,’ he said. ‘Only I forgot to offer you one with all the excitement of the bag. Have one now, Dan. You’ve gone an awfully funny colour.’ When he had given me a large glassful and I had taken two sips I felt rather better again and I laid out my revelation.
‘She didn’t write in the diary on Monday morning because she was in the mud bath,’ I said. ‘She went in the mud bath on Sunday. She even said it to Mrs Bowie on the telephone. She was ringing off because she was going for her bath. And I thought she meant a bath with ducks and bubbles. But everything is a bath here. Hot lamps and salt is bath. Faradaic rays is a bath. She went in her bath on Sunday evening. And by Monday evening she was dead. Dehydrated, empty, starved and thirsty, and finally dead.
‘And the point of planting toffees in her bag wasn’t to make us think she’d been out – not particularly – it was to make us think she had been around at all on the Monday when the shops are open and had some sort of ordinary day.’
‘Dear God, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘I’m very sorry to say I think you’re right.’
‘What a horrible, wicked way to kill someone. What a wicked, wicked thing to do. And to this woman.’ I waved the diary at him. ‘A woman who helps out at jumble sales and buys lace for her daughter. A woman who makes daring little jests with Bible passages that no one except herself will ever see. How could anyone have done that to her?’ Alec refilled my glass even though it was hardly started. I think he had to do something.
‘We will avenge her,’ he said. ‘At least whoever it was isn’t going to get away with it, eh?’
I took another swallow – one really could not call it a sip – and nodded.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just all of a sudden…’
‘I know,’ said Alec. ‘So. Who was it?’
‘We agree that it wasn’t Regina?’ I said. ‘She’d never have left the bag in the locker if she had known Mrs Addie died in the mud room.’
‘Agreed,’ said Alec. ‘And not the doctor. Apart from the fact that she is a doctor, she’s too upset about it. Horrified. I mean if you murder someone you don’t go and weep in the room where you did it, do you?’
‘One might want to,’ I said, ‘but one would probably resist, it’s true. But why would Tot kill a blameless Edinburgh matron like Mrs Addie? I can imagine him doing someone down for monetary gain. I can imagine him shoving a girl off a cliff if she had got her hooks into him. But why would he pick one of the Hydro guests and kill her?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Alec. ‘Mrs Cronin?’
‘Yes,’ I said, nodding slowly. ‘There’s something about Mrs Cronin. Something about whether it was Sunday or Monday or…’
‘She doesn’t approve of treatments on Sunday,’ Alec said. ‘Is that it?’
‘So it couldn’t have been her, you mean? But could someone plan a murder but not want to do it on the Sabbath day? That’s an odd conjunction of sin and piety, surely.’
‘And besides,’ Alec said, ‘Mrs Addie had been coming to the Hydro for years. Why would Mrs Cronin suddenly kill her now?’
‘Tot, then,’ I said.
‘Maybe. Mrs Addie could have found out about the casino and threatened him.’
‘But how could Tot get a woman like Mrs Addie – any woman really – into a mud bath? She’d shriek the place down.’
‘Well, it had to be someone who could get in and out of that mud room,’ said Alec. ‘Someone with a key.’
‘Only if she died in the bath before it left the mud room,’ I said. ‘What if she was waylaid in the grounds and dragged off to the apple house and killed there? What if the bath had already been moved by the time Mrs Addie died in it? It could have been anyone in that case. It could have been a wandering maniac.’
‘But the Laidlaws covered it up and got Regina to wash her and got Dr Ramsay to sign a certificate,’ Alec said. ‘Why would they do that if she had been murdered by a wandering lunatic?’
‘To save the reputation of the Hydro while continuing to run a casino that destroys it? I don’t understand their feelings about the Hydro at all. Dot wants to run it and Tot wants to sell. Then Tot wants to keep it and Dot wants to sell. What changed? And now they seem to be in agreement that their time here is almost done, but they’re still arguing as much as ever.’
‘I think the moment has arrived,’ Alec said, ‘to hand all of this over to the police. We’ve got plenty of evidence now. If I telephone to the Edinburgh pathologist tomorrow and tell him about the mud bath he’ll be on to the Fiscal like a bullet. He hated having to conclude “natural causes”, you know, but there was nothing else he could do.’
‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow we hand it all over. To the Edinburgh Fiscal, via the pathologist. Agreed. Just one thing I want to do tonight, though. I’ve got a padlock on my spare wheel. I’d like to go and padlock up the apple house. Just in case. Just to be on the safe side.’
Alec stood and held out a hand to me, smiling with great affection – perhaps I still looked ghastly – and then jumped clear into the air at the sound of a knock on his door.
‘Who is it?’ Alec said, opening the door just a little.
‘Ah, Mr Osborne,’ said the oily, chuckling voice. ‘Good, good. We’re missing you downstairs, you know. The poker table’s not the same without you and I knew you weren’t away on another of your mysterious jaunts tonight again. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t asleep. Make sure you were coming.’
‘I’m not sure, Laidlaw,’ Alec said. ‘I’m rather tired this evening.’
I saw a quick movement as Laidlaw darted to the side to see past Alec into the room. I do not think he saw me; it was just a flash of the side of his head that I caught before Alec pulled the door to.
‘Not going to bed, are you?’ Laidlaw said, with another burbling chuckle in his voice. ‘What a waste of an evening that is! Come on down, old chap, and I’ll stand you a round. I shan’t be there myself tonight – well, off and on, you know – but I just wanted to see that everything’s shipshape. Come on down, eh?’
‘I’ll see,’ Alec said. ‘I’ll sit and read awhile and then I’ll see.’
‘Ha-ha-ha,’ said Laidlaw. ‘Yes, nothing like a spot of “reading”.’ Even able to see only a slice of his shoulder, still I knew he was winking. Alec was flushed dark when he closed the door and turned to me.
‘Odious creature,’ he said.
‘Have you been losing lots of money?’ I said. ‘Why is he so desperate for you to be there?’