‘Are you the attending doctor for the Hydro?’ I asked. ‘If that is the correct expression.’
‘They have no need of one,’ he replied. ‘Hydropathy is…’ He drew a deep breath and opened his eyes very wide. ‘… a specialism beyond the norm, but Dr Laidlaw is a medical doctor.’
‘But Dr Laidlaw is dead, isn’t he?’ I said.
‘Dr Laidlaw Jr, I should say,’ he replied.
‘Ah!’ I said. ‘The King is dead, long live the King.’
‘Almost,’ said Dr Ramsay with a slight smile.
‘But then,’ I began, for this was puzzling, ‘if Dr Laidlaw is a real doctor and was in attendance…’
Dr Ramsay had been reclining as far as his chair would let him, as though to take a long view of me, but now he sat up straight.
‘Attending whom, Mrs Gilver?’ he said.
‘A friend of mine,’ I lied in response. ‘She was staying there recently.’
‘What a remarkable coincidence,’ he said.
I did not see what made it so, since I had sought him out. Different if we were in London and had bumped elbows at a party. My sense was growing that something was amiss here.
‘Yes,’ I said, making sure that none of that sense showed on my face or in my voice. ‘A Mrs Addie, you might remember.’ He sat up even straighter and became even more remarkably still. ‘And her daughter is so very distraught. It often happens, doesn’t it, with a sudden death when the loved one is far from home. I said I would have a word while I was down here, just to be able to reassure her that there was no need to worry.’
‘And you are able to do so,’ he said, sitting back again. ‘There isn’t. You have my word.’
‘But why yours?’ I asked him, innocent tone and expression going strong. ‘Why didn’t Dr Laidlaw sign the death certificate, Dr Ramsay? I always thought it was preferred for a doctor who knew the patient to take care of these things.’
‘It is, it certainly is,’ said Dr Ramsay. ‘In this case, Dr Laidlaw chose not to.’
‘But why?’ I said.
‘You would have to ask Dr Laidlaw that,’ he said. I was surprised to see that there was a glint of amusement in his eyes. He put his foot up on the bar of his desk and leaned further backwards than ever.
‘It didn’t worry you to be asked?’ I said. ‘You didn’t hesitate?’
‘Clearly not,’ said Dr Ramsay, with a smile. ‘I was happy to help.’
‘Of course,’ I said, smiling back and hoping he would not see past it. Dr Laidlaw could not possibly have any innocent reason for refusing to sign a death certificate of a patient actually living at the Hydro. Far from Dr Ramsay’s word being an assurance, the very fact that he was dragged into the business was extremely fishy. ‘Well, acute heart failure is probably something you cover in chapter one,’ I went on breezily. He frowned. ‘Of your big red book of medicine.’
‘Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘What laymen such as yourself often seem to forget is that everyone dies of heart failure in the end. That’s the only cause of death there is, really, when you strip away all the secondary considerations.’
I nodded slowly for a bit as though digesting this. In truth, my thoughts were rattling about like those Mexican jumping beans one sees in the little snippets between the newsreel and the main feature.
‘You are right, of course,’ I said at last. ‘I think my friend, Mrs Addie’s daughter, would have preferred one of these secondary considerations, that’s all. She was sure that her mother’s heart was fine.’
‘If her heart had been fine she would still be with us,’ said the doctor. He spoke kindly as though to an imbecile. ‘Healthy hearts don’t just stop beating, you know.’
I could barely contain my astonishment. Healthy hearts stop beating all the time. They stop when someone jumps off a cliff, for instance, or drinks a bedtime cup of strychnine. Contain it I did, though, and forged on.
‘I suppose – forgive me for this – there’s no chance that you missed something, is there?’
‘None,’ said the doctor. ‘She bore all the signs of having suffered a severe heart attack. And do you know what the chief of these is?’ He was truly patronising me now. Had I been twelve and in cotton socks and had he been sixty and grizzled I might have been able to stomach it. As it was, it took all my effort not to draw myself up and squash him. With difficulty, I kept the annoyance off my face and simply shook my head.
‘Being dead,’ he said, very proud of the sound of it. ‘It’s a sad fact that dying of a heart attack is often the first clue that your heart wasn’t healthy. And the last one.’
I nodded and even managed another smile, in acknowledgement of the clever points he was making, but inside I was reeling. Nonsense that a woman who had just been carefully attended through a bout of crippling back pain would not have had her heartbeat listened to! Nonsense that it would not, under the strain of illness, show signs of the weakness which was going to overcome it only weeks in the future! I could not understand why no one had thought it except me. He was speaking again and I snapped my attention back to him.
‘I’m sure if you go to the Hydro,’ he was saying, ‘you’ll soon be able to fill in any troubling little details. Beyond the medical facts, I mean.’
‘Troubling little details’? Had the man any idea how suspicious he seemed? I supposed not or he would surely have shut up, and yet he was still talking.
‘What she’d been up to,’ he was saying. ‘How she spent her last hours. All that – very soothing to the family that’ll be.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Dr Ramsay,’ I said. ‘Thank you for speaking to me.’
‘Happy to help,’ he said. It appeared to be his response to anything. A fellow doctor asking for his signature after a death with no visible cause? Happy to help! A perfect stranger asking questions about it? Happy to help her too. The man was a fool.
So I took my leave, descended the narrow stairs, hurried down the narrow street and emerged into the blustery morning again, just in time to see Hugh and the boys coming out of the bath house and beginning to look around for me. I waved and picked my way across the road between carts and bicycles and a motorbus which was wheezing away from the stop. I could not wait to get to the Hydro now. I had half thought the Addies were simply baulking at unwelcome reality, setting their faces against a natural death because they would rather it was not so. Dr Ramsay had changed everything.
It was with some initial difficulty that I put it out of my mind and tried to concentrate on my family as we drove from the High Street up out of the town towards the Hydro, but we were all impressed with our first sight of the place. Even Donald, who had been rather white and preoccupied-looking on the journey, as might be expected of someone who suddenly found himself two pints of sulphurous warm water the better just after breakfast one day, was distracted from his suffering. It was quite simply huge, much bigger than the place in Crieff and dwarfing Peebles’ effort, more like a Russian palace than something Swiss-trained doctors would dream up to plant on a Scottish hillside, and as ornate as a Russian palace too. It was missing the onion domes and stained glass, but more than fully compensated with turrets, moulding, escutcheons, and the like.
The drive led along the hillside and behind the building, meeting it halfway up, and I assumed that there would be garden floors below with windows opening onto the terraces the brochure had promised. I had been right about the situation, though. It might be pleasant later if the clouds cleared before the sun went down but on a typical autumn morning it was gloomy beyond belief and, looking up at the forbidding bulk of it, counting the windows and considering how unlikely it was that any boiler known to man could heat so many rooms well enough to call them cosy, I was suddenly glad of my fox fur and drew it closer around me.