Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone Read Free Page A

of making straight for my sitting room.
    ‘How would you like to go away for a bit?’ I said. ‘A change of air, build you up again.’
    ‘Bournemouth kind of thing?’ said Hugh. ‘Rather late in the year, isn’t it? Last thing Donald needs is a sea fog seeping in at his bedroom window. I just paid him a visit and I see what you mean.’
    ‘How about mountain air?’ I said. ‘Some crisp mountain air and those clever doctors?’
    ‘Germans?’
    ‘Swiss, I was thinking.’
    ‘Same thing,’ said Hugh. ‘Can’t say I could face the journey anyway.’
    ‘Then put it out of your mind,’ I said, bending to peck his cheek. ‘Goodnight, dear.’
    ‘Are you all right, Dandy?’ he said, understandably startled. ‘I didn’t mean to shoot the idea out of the sky, you know. I’m with you as far as the clever doctors anyway. Marvellous what they can do with salts and hot towels and electrical currents these days.’
    By which I took it that Hugh had been reading the back pages of old
Blackwood’s Magazine
s again. I left him to his amusements and retired to mine, and to my daily duties too.
    It was a good thing that Gilver and Osborne
had
been enjoying a peaceful spell because this evening, when I did not even open my correspondence until bedtime, was typical. We had caught a thief in March, unmasked a poison pen in June and then apart from Alec tracking down a bad debtor in August – this being quite a speciality of his these days, much less sordid to have someone like him tap the shoulder and ‘old man’ and ‘dear chap’ his way to a settlement than to have bailiffs calling – our little operation had been in dry dock. That was about to change.
    ‘Dear Messrs Gilver and Osborne,’ the letter began. ‘We would like to engage you to solve a murder which has been grossly mishandled by the Dumfriesshire Constabulary and scandalously hushed up by the Dumfries Procurator, leaving our dear departed mother without justice and letting a brutal killer go free.’
    I turned up the lamp and put my feet back down on the floor; I had tucked them under me, but this letter needed a straight back.
    ‘Our mother was a guest at Laidlaw’s Hydropathic Establishment in Moffat during the late summer, there to take the waters for a recurring back complaint. She was recovering nicely and was otherwise in excellent health, being a sensible lady of quiet habits. Her heart was perfectly sound. The doctor’s diagnosis of acute heart failure was nonsense and the Fiscal’s capitulation is an outrage. We await notice of your terms and remain, sincerely yours, Herbert Addie and Mrs Jas. Bowie (née Addie), “Fairways”, Braid Road, Edinburgh.’
    Well.
    On the one hand, murder is the gold standard for a detective and any of that ilk who says otherwise is afraid of sounding callous and so is lying. On the other hand, these Addies – or rather this Addie and Bowie née – sounded like the very worst sort of client. They had already made up their minds and looked to Gilver and Osborne for corroboration; I would be forced to warn them, along with sending our terms, that we were servants of truth and that our fee only paid for us finding out
whether
, finding out
what
. No treasures on earth could buy our agreement to finding out
that
, dear dead mother or no.
    However, the Addies were only part of the picture here. Fate, or coincidence as she is known in these rational days, had painted rather more, in the form of a hydropathic hotel with, one assumed, salts and hot towels and electrical currents, whither a loving wife and mother could remove her convalescing household while the plumbers were in. So long as she did not mention the brutal killer still at large, anyway.

2
    Of course, I did not mean actually to deposit Hugh and the boys in the Hydro itself to take their chances; I am far from the doting domestic angel of popular imagining but there are limits. Besides, Hugh would not stand for it. He detests hotels and since I guessed