‘You’re kidding!’ said Alec. ‘Oil?’ I laughed along with him.
‘The hundreds of thousands of sun-baked, yellow-grassed, insectiferous acres which were no good for anything except getting lost in happened to be smack on top of a perfect magic treacle pot of oil, that’s still gushing out plumes of the stuff every day. So you see, twelve servants in an Edinburgh town house are really nothing.’
‘And what does the current Pip Balfour do with the rest of it?’
‘Counts it from time to time, I think. Too terrified by all the near misses to try anything more risky. Lollie says he felt the run of Balfour luck had to give out sometime and he doesn’t want to be the one who finally lets it slip through his fingers on some wild scheme.’
‘Well, that’s a pretty poor show,’ said Alec. ‘He’s hardly carrying the torch aflame, is he? Sounds like a bit of a ninny.’ He paused. ‘If ninnies went in for strangling their wives, that is.’
‘Yes,’ I said, agreeing with what he had not quite said. ‘It’s hard to come to a firm view from what we’ve been told, isn’t it? I can’t quite put him together somehow. I’m very much looking forward to meeting him for myself.’
‘I’m not looking forward to you meeting him,’ Alec said. ‘Promise me you’ll be careful, Dan.’
Tender concern for one’s safety is always gratifying to behold. Hugh, in marked contrast, barely raised his head when he heard I was going.
‘On Monday,’ I added. ‘To Edinburgh. I can’t say for how long.’
‘Good, good,’ he said and turned the page of his newspaper. I poked a hole in the top of one of my poached eggs and dabbed a piece of toast into it. I had only had one letter in the morning’s post and was shamelessly lingering, putting off the evils of the coming day.
‘You might know them,’ I said. ‘The people I’m… going to stay with.’
‘Mm,’ said Hugh. Then he added: ‘Hah!’ I waited. ‘They’ve locked them out. Should have done it nine months ago. This’ll bring them to their senses.’
‘The miners?’ I hazarded.
‘I knew this would happen,’ said Hugh, looking up at me at last. ‘I predicted it from the start if you remember, Dandy.’ I did not remember, but nodded anyway. ‘There’s no talking to these people and goodness knows how much money has been poured down the drain while everyone bent over backwards trying.’
It was my understanding – not firm but far from hazy – that both sides had their arms folded and their chins stuck out refusing to listen, but it was not worth starting an argument over it.
‘Will the coal run out?’ I asked.
‘No, they’ll be back at work before there’s any chance of that,’ Hugh assured me. ‘And should think themselves lucky to have work to go back to. If I were a mine-owner, I should sack the lot and give their jobs to someone a bit more grateful.’
I judged another silent nod to be the best response to this. Hugh had never sacked anyone in his life, not even the mole-catcher who had once ruined Gilverton’s lawns when, pushed beyond his limits by the little devils, he threw down his patented fumigation pump and testing rods and started digging wildly, swearing at the top of his voice and scattering divots of turf and sprays of soil for yards around him. Besides, the coal crisis was one of the few affairs of the day upon which Hugh and I saw eye-to-eye, or rather where our views happened to coincide: Hugh’s view that the mine-owners could do what they jolly well pleased with what was theirs and my view that the wages one read about in The Times always seemed generous enough, pounds and pounds a week, and many of the families had half a dozen wage packets all told, between father and sons, and then they always lived in those dear little rows of cottages built for the purpose and enjoyed, one assumed, free coal.
Hugh turned another page and breathed in sharply, then started coughing to expel the inhaled toast crumbs. After a minute, I half stood to go round and bang him on the back, but he waved me into my seat again.
‘Listen to this,’ he croaked, eyes still streaming. ‘The extraordinary conference of trade unionists currently convened in London will vote this afternoon upon whether to take sympathetic action in support of the miners.’ He took a gulp of tea and cleared his throat in a final-sounding way. ‘The day is upon us. I always said it would come.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘A shutdown,’ he said. All news was bad news with Hugh and his fears of an uprising were so oft expressed that I had ceased taking any notice of them. He had, for instance, continued to mutter darkly about Lenin even after he was dead and gone. This, however, sounded more definite than usual.
‘Shutdown of what?’ I asked.
‘Everything,’ Hugh told me with a thrill of angry pleasure. ‘The whole country held to ransom, Dandy. No food in the shops, gasworks stopped, electricity dried up, hospitals in darkness, fires raging with no firemen to put them out, no teachers in the schools, factories silent…’
‘But they can’t do that,’ I said. ‘There must be laws.’
‘Laws!’ said Hugh, with a very dry laugh. ‘The overthrow of the rule of law is the whole point, my dear. That’s what they want and they’ve been champing for a chance to get started on it. The miners are just the excuse they’ve been waiting for.’
‘But that sounds like…’
‘A revolution,’ he thundered. ‘Which is exactly what it is. A workers’ revolt.’
‘Stop it,’ I said, feeling genuinely scared now. ‘That could never happen. Not here.’
‘They’re voting this afternoon,’ said Hugh, tapping a finger on the newspaper where he had read it. I let my breath go in a great rush and shook my head at him.
‘Well, exactly!’ I said. ‘They’re voting on it. They’ll never do it, Hugh; you’re a fearful dramatist sometimes.’
‘I shall remind you that you said so,’ he said, much on his dignity, and with that the conversation was at its close.
‘Grant,’ I said, sidling into my bedroom again after breakfast. Grant started violently, and she and I both winced as her knuckles rapped against the inside of the drawer where she was carefully laying out newly ironed underclothes.
‘Nothing wrong is there?’ she said. ‘Madam. Why aren’t you out on your walk?’ She glanced out of the window where the weather was as fine as could be hoped for, for May in Perthshire, that is, chilly and gusty but, for the moment, almost dry. I felt a small slump at the thought of my predictability, but I rallied myself before she could see it and set a bright smile on my face.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘What are your plans for the day?’ Grant frowned at me, more perplexed than ever.
‘My plans?’ she said. ‘I was going to start on changing over your wardrobe, laying away your winter things and seeing if any of your summer frocks from last year are worth airing out again.’
‘I see. Well, I’m going to have to ask you to leave all that, I’m afraid, while I bend you to my will.’ I smiled even wider; Grant frowned even deeper. ‘I – I – I don’t quite know, Grant, how much of what I do,’ – I took a deep breath – ‘professionally, I mean, has come to your attention in the last while.’
‘You mean Gilver and Osborne Investigations?’ My mouth dropped open. ‘I thought you must be starting on a new case when I saw those shoes you dyed. How can I help you?’
‘I see. Yes. So you do know about it then?’ The name of Gilver and Osborne was pure servants’ hall fantasy of course (although it had a ring to it) and I could not imagine how the newly black shoes, hidden in my sitting room while they dried and smuggled up to an attic the previous evening upon Miss Rossiter’s return, had been rumbled but there was no question that Grant was fully informed.