‘Well, I’ve heard everything now!’ said a voice behind me. I jumped and turned around, flushing to the roots of my hair (I could feel it from the inside, as though I had walked into a steam-bath). One of the three ministers I had met at Buttercup’s cocktail party had opened the door of the bar without a sound and was standing in the threshold twinkling at me. A very useful little knack for a minister to have, I thought to myself.
‘What would this be, then?’ he said, advancing. ‘The Ladies’ Intemperance League? That’s a new one.’ He stopped at the bar, gave Rearden, still slumped face down on the counter, a shrewd look, then gave Brown an even shrewder one which made the landlord shuffle his feet and almost out-blush me. Ah, I thought, this must be Father Cormack. I could relax.
‘He’s only had beer, Father,’ said Brown. ‘And all on the house.’ I should have thought that made it worse: Rearden must have had to absorb simply buckets of the stuff to get this drunk on only beer.
‘Well, I’m not averse to a glass of beer,’ said Father Cormack, ‘although it can be filling and Miss Patterson was busy making dumplings when I left.’ Brown took a small glass from under the counter, polished it vigorously with a corner of his apron and poured a large tot of clear liquid from a bottle behind him.
‘Can I get you anything, madam?’ he said. ‘On the house, since I’m closed, of course.’
‘Sherry?’ I said, but at Father Cormack’s chuckle, I gathered my wits. ‘Or lemonade?’
‘I can heartily recommend the damson gin, Mrs Gilver,’ said Father Cormack, lifting his glass to hold it against the gas light and swirling it gently. ‘William here has his own recipe.’
‘Och, Father,’ said Brown. ‘You’re an awful man. It’s hardly worth callin’ it a recipe. You jist put a few damsons in a bottle o’ gin and wait.’
‘Of course,’ said Father Cormack. ‘What was I thinking? Ah, but lovely stuff it is once the wait is over.’
‘Well, you’ve persuaded me,’ I said. ‘I’m very partial to sloe gin and I’d like to try a new variation.’ Father Cormack chuckled again for reasons best known to himself, and Brown poured me a tot. It was, indeed, quite delicious; fragrant and spiced but with a kick like an angry donkey.
‘Gosh,’ I said, feeling as though flames were licking my toes. ‘Hoo! Well, here’s to Robert Dudgeon, gentlemen, wouldn’t you say?’ We raised our glasses, Brown lifting a beer tankard of his own, and drank.
‘And here’s to the Ladies’ Intemperance League,’ carried on Father Cormack. ‘Power to their elbow. I’d hate to see those Turnbulls cut the heart out of our little Burgh, Mrs Gilver, and that’s what it would do, make no mistake, if we lost our distilling and brewing. Wouldn’t it, William? You must know the old stories about the Hawes Inn.’
‘Smuggling?’ I said. ‘Pirates? Surely that doesn’t go on any more. And there’s no actual distilling either, is there? It’s just a bottling hall.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Father Cormack again. ‘What was I thinking?’ He paused and then continued in a much more serious voice with his twinkle turned down to a peep. ‘I missed you on Sunday, William,’ he said, putting down his empty glass and wiping his lips with a handkerchief as Brown refilled it. ‘You and Josephine. Friday too.’ Then he excused this public dressing down by turning to me and saying, cheerfully: ‘Aren’t you glad, Mrs Gilver, not to be one of my flock, to be chased up and ticked off like a lost lamb when it’s no one’s business but your own what you do on a Sunday morning? It’s a terrible burden, is it not now, William?’ Mr Brown looked miserably ill at ease in the face of this bantering, but I answered the priest like for like.
‘Certainly, I’m glad to be walking the broad path between such persecution and the absolute fire and brimstone on the other side. I was born in Northamptonshire, you know, where there is a happy third option.’
‘Ah, the Church of England,’ said Father Cormack, twinkling again, and putting his hand across his heart. ‘Will I tell the lady what we call them when there’s no one but us to hear, William? Will I, now.’
‘Father,’ said Mr Brown again. ‘You’re an awful man.’
I rather wanted to hear, but he was not to be persuaded – a terrible tease, it seemed – and instead he started again gently mocking me for my paean to the demon drink.
‘And you’re preaching to the needy, telling William here,’ he said. ‘Don’t let all these bottles here fool you, my dear lady. He’s on the slippery slope, aren’t you, lad? Started out working for a distillery, moved to work for a brewery, and now he’s only running a pub and selling the stuff; the poor man could end up with a lemonade stall if he’s not careful.’ He threw back his head and laughed and I joined in, not because any of this was particularly witty, but he was just such a dear little man with his twinkling eyes and his tuft of hair sticking out in a spout at the front with a gleaming bald head behind it. William Brown though, I noticed, did not laugh along with us, and I wondered after a moment if Father Cormack was not just a little cruel, a little cold, underneath his bonhomie; I was glad indeed not be one of his lambs.
Not long after this, a couple of heads were glimpsed bobbing along the street, just visible above the half-blinds in the windows, and we heard the clang of a shop door being opened along the terrace a-ways. The curfew, evidently, was over and Queensferry was coming back to life so I bid Father Cormack goodbye, thanked Mr Brown for the gin, causing yet another eruption of chortling, and patted Mr Rearden’s shoulder in farewell. Then I opened the door a crack and looked carefully up the street and down before sidling out and beginning to walk back to my motor car trying to look as though I had just done no such thing, which was more of a challenge than one would have imagined as the fresh sea air mingled with the unaccustomed mid-morning gin and made me feel more like waltzing in circles and singing.
After the ribbing I had given Alec about his inebriation the day before I felt most concerned to be myself again before we met and so on returning to the castle I went to my room and rang for more coffee even though there was barely an hour until luncheon. I was growing rather fond of my corner of the castle keep and, although I still wished for a few more windows about the place, for some reason it made me feel extra-specially studious to sit writing at my little desk with a lamp lit. I did spend quite a bit of my free time day by day doing just that, having learned the lesson well on my first case that one cannot guarantee to remember all that one has heard unless one writes it down immediately. Furthermore, it is no good simply sifting through and deciding what one thinks are the nuggets because, when one is detecting, the snippets one thinks are chaff often turn out to be pure gold, and the nuggets one hugs to one’s breast as treasure just as often reveal themselves to be utter clinker in the end. This, I often thought to myself, would be one of my most fiercely held detecting maxims if only I could resolve the metaphor into some respectable whole.
Accordingly, I wrote down as much as I could remember of the visit to the Turnbulls, the cart-hunt along the Back Braes and of course the drinking session in Brown’s Bar, and after two cups of strong coffee and some plain biscuits, I had filled six sheets and was ready to face the others in the Great Hall. I shrugged off my dark frock and chose a pearl-grey and pink stripe which Grant is very fond of and always packs even though, to my thinking, it has a little too much of the sailor dress about it for a woman of my age; if I wore it today and tried to drop something dark down the front, it would be safely hors de combat for the rest of the visit (Grant never attempts complicated laundering procedures away from home if she can help it).