‘No idea,’ said Alec. ‘And there’s something up with him tonight. He was doing his act, but the strain was showi-’ He was interrupted by a second knock at the door, this one very different from the first: timid and soft.
‘And now Dorothea!’ I said. But I was wrong. When Alec opened the door a crack this time he said a startled hello, then swung it wide and pulled Grant inside.
‘Oh, sir!’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry to-’ Then she saw me. ‘Oh, thank goodness you’re here, madam. I don’t know what to do.’
‘What is it, Grant?’ I said. ‘Alec, give her a brandy.’ Grant took the glass and swallowed a goodly measure without so much as blinking.
‘It’s tonight, madam,’ she said. ‘The anniversary. The centennial. That Loveday Merrick has decided it’s tonight and it’s all my fault!’
‘The Big Seance?’ I said. ‘How is it your fault? They’ve been talking about it since before you got here. Donald and Teddy overheard about it days ago.’
‘But I gave them the last name,’ Grant said. ‘Mr Gilver told me another one – Mrs Ostler – and I said she’d come to me and that’s it. Fifteen of them. Joseph the Miller, Old Abigail Simpson, Mary Patterson, Big Effie, the grandmother, the blind child, Ann Dougal, the Haldane sisters, Marjorie Docherty, Daft Jamie, one man nobody knows, two nameless women and now Mrs Ostler and that’s the lot.’
‘You’ve been doing your homework,’ I said.
‘It was the master,’ said Grant. ‘He told me all about it and made me learn the names.’ I could believe it too. ‘And now they want me to go up the Gallow Hill with them and be the channel!’
‘You could always say that a sixteenth has been in touch,’ Alec said. ‘And then wait around for the seventeenth who never shows up.’
‘Mr Merrick doesn’t think the last two are coming,’ Grant said. ‘He reckons if corpses who’d never been buried right made ghosts…’ She flushed, darted a glance at Alec and then looked away again. I did not follow her but he seemed to.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘No one would get a night’s sleep in Flanders, eh?’
‘That makes sense,’ I said. ‘It’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard out of any of them. How would you feel about going if you knew Mr Osborne and I were nearby, Grant?’
‘Nearby where?’ she said.
‘In the trees, in earshot,’ Alec said. ‘Hiding behind a fallen log on the far side of the clearing. And if you start to worry then just say a word… pick a word, Dandy.’
‘Resurrection,’ I said.
‘A word that wouldn’t happen to come up any other way,’ Alec said patiently.
‘Oh. Yes, I see. Mohair.’
‘Perfect,’ said Alec. ‘If you feel frightened, Grant, or just want to stop, say “mohair”, loud and clear, and we’ll swoop in and get you.’
‘Thank you,’ Grant said. ‘That’s a great comfort, sir. Can we make it cashmere, please?’
The Big Seance, as I could not help calling it to myself, was set for midnight – of course – and so Alec and I had plenty of time to unfasten the padlock from my spare wheel and make our careful way over the dark lawns to the apple house. The key was where we had left it above the lintel and I had remembered correctly that there was a hasp set into the edge of the door.
‘It doesn’t smell nearly as bad,’ I said. ‘I wonder why.’
‘Familiarity breeding the contempt out of us,’ Alec said.
‘I do know I’m probably being silly,’ I went on. ‘It’s sat there for over a month. There’s no reason to suppose it won’t sit there overnight until the police can come.’
Alec nodded absently but he also reached the key down and turned it in the lock. He opened the door. I held my breath for a wave of stink which never came.
‘Your instincts are sound, Dandy,’ he said. ‘But your timing is terrible. It’s gone.’
He struck a match and held it up and we looked together at the inside of the little room, empty except for an elderly apple crate or two. The floor was rather dusty, but for all ordinary purposes quite bare.
‘Someone’s onto us,’ I said. ‘Did Tot Laidlaw drum up that silly excuse to come to your room just so he could sniff you?’
‘Possibly, possibly,’ Alec said. ‘I wonder where they took it, whoever spirited it away.’
‘Back to the place it came from,’ I said. ‘To make us look like idiots when the police come.’
‘But who knew that we were getting close?’ Alec said.
‘Well, I was fairly outspoken to Mrs Cronin this morning. Good God, Alec, I said I was going to Dr Laidlaw to complain that patients were not taken care of. Was that it?’
‘Whatever it was, we can’t do any more here tonight,’ Alec said. ‘We can confirm one another’s stories if it comes to that anyway. Why on earth would we lie? And unless Mrs Tilling or Mr Pallister has been feeling very assiduous…’
‘Oh wonder of wonders! Of course. All the dust. No, I’m pretty sure they’re leaving our clothes tied up in sacks in the stables until Grant can cast her expert eye. And we have the ribbon and the key.’
‘So let’s get up the hill and behind our log before the crowd starts to gather,’ Alec said. ‘I suppose we had better walk all the way. Hugh’s Rolls-Royce pulled onto the verge would attract comment.’
‘And nothing would persuade me back into my poor little motorcar until Drysdale has had a go at it,’ I said. ‘We’re walking.’
One would have thought we would be talking nineteen to the dozen as we tramped along the lanes and onto the dark path through the trees, but the prospect facing us had perhaps begun to needle Alec as it certainly had me. I do not believe in ghosts, not even a little, that one lurid episode under the trees notwithstanding, and I knew that the portents leading to this seance of seances were all dropped in by Grant at Hugh’s prompting and were counterfeit to their core. Except that the mediums and the murder had to be connected. It was simply too much of a coincidence for the Laidlaws to cover the tracks of a murder with talk of a ghost and then for mediums to gather from all the four corners with talk of more. No, it was perfectly clear: a man – a gentleman or professional man, a respectable sort anyway – had sent a letter to the mediums’ magazine right at the beginning and a gentleman had asked at the library for all the grisly details of Burke and Hare. It was Tot Laidlaw, it must be. Starting rumours and planting clues. To shore up the story of Mrs Addie’s death? But he had suppressed that story, got the doctor to all but lie on the death certificate, told her family nothing. Why would he hush it up and then turn around and start to shout it from the rooftops? Embellish it, even?
‘You’re blowing like a whale, Dandy,’ said Alec softly. ‘Shall I slow down?’
‘I’m thinking,’ I said. ‘I hope Tot Laidlaw has something planned for this jamboree and we catch him at it.’
‘You’re still sure it’s him then?’ Alec said.
‘More and more. But don’t ask me why. Or why he killed Mrs Addie.’
‘What sort of thing do you see him planning?’ Alec said.
‘Ghostly lights?’ I said. ‘Blowing in bottle tops to make spooky noises, I don’t know. But he did say he wouldn’t be at the casino much tonight. Maybe he’s up the hill already.’
‘We should stop speaking then, and tread very softly,’ Alec said.
Accordingly, we crept up the rising path as quiet as two ghosts ourselves. It was possible that Tot Laidlaw was hiding behind one of the trees, I supposed, but the darkness was so complete and the silence so deep that I felt sure we were here alone. We reached the clearing and crossed it, picked our way through the trees and settled down behind the fallen trunk. No mackintosh squares today, but if Grant found the heart to complain about some earth on the knees of my stockings considering what was waiting bundled up for her in the stables I should take my scolding in honour of her dedication.
‘Have you ever been to a seance?’ Alec said, presently. I heard the familiar sound of him taking out his pipe and settling it in his mouth, even though he could not light it.