His Father's Ghost (Mina Scarletti Mystery Book 5) Read online

‘As it is,’ said Mina, ‘on your own admission, I look all the better for it.’

  He sat down once more, controlling his irritation into calm and practicality. ‘Very well. I will not prevent you from receiving visitors, which I can see will only make you more agitated, and even if I try, I suspect that you will still manage to find a way to flout my instructions, but I need to guard against your doing anything more dangerous than you have done so far. Please at the very least, promise me that you will obey very strictly all the most important rules that I have set for your recovery.’

  Mina capitulated. ’I promise,’ she said.

  ‘First, and I insist on this, you must not go outdoors until I say that you are well enough to do so. The weather is still very inclement, and a chill may cause a serious relapse. Do I have that promise?’

  Mina nodded, meekly.

  ‘You will not try to get out of bed unassisted, and in any case not at all until both I and Miss Cherry agree that it is in order. Then, you will go no further than a chair beside the bed.’

  She nodded again.

  He took a deep breath. ‘If you obey, but only if you obey, I will, within what is permitted by the rules of my profession, assist your enquiries. I will do so mainly because I think that you will become distressed if I prevent you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mina, relieved. ‘Does that mean you can tell me something about Dr Crosier?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to go into this now?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘The name is familiar to me, but I will say no more of him until I am sure of my ground. I assume that Mr Holt was given a certificate of good health, or he would not have been granted the policy.’

  ‘Yes, he was insured by the Brighton and Hove Insurance company, after being examined by Dr Crosier but he only paid one instalment before he disappeared.’

  ‘I remember the scandal, of course. The company refused to pay. Quite rightly, too.’

  ‘But he told the boat owner, Mr Sutherland that he had been advised by his doctor to take the sea air for his health.’

  ‘That would not be unusual. Men of business who overwork themselves are often so advised. All they require is peace and quiet to restore themselves. It does not necessarily mean that he was suffering from any disease. It would not prevent him being granted the certificate for the insurance company.’

  ‘I see. That does explain it. And as it later transpired, Mr Holt had serious business troubles he had confided to no-one, so he may well have been working hard, and must surely have been unsettled in his mind. Mrs Vardy told me that the family doctor is called McClelland and he called in a Dr Fielding from London to examine the son.’

  Dr Hamid nodded thoughtfully. ‘I know Dr McClelland; he is a highly regarded practitioner in Brighton. Fielding of London, you say? There is a doctor of that name who has a clinic for the treatment of insanity. He is considered a great authority on the subject. Given the nature of the son’s indisposition, I am not surprised that a man of his expertise was consulted. But these are all medical matters. I really don’t think it is a situation in which you can provide any advice or assistance to Mrs Vardy.’

  ‘It may just be that having a sympathetic ear will bring the lady some comfort,’ said Mina.

  Dr Hamid considered her again. ‘You do look and sound much more like your usual self, and I am pleased with your progress, but I am not yet ready to allow you more freedom of movement. Too much exertion could prove harmful. Your lungs are not yet fully recovered. I will, however, advise Miss Cherry and Rose that some easing of the regime I prescribed is in order.’

  ‘Thank you. I would like to be allowed to see any reading material I require.’

  ‘You shall.’

  ‘But I do miss my visits to the Baths. And I am afraid — ‘

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have heard of people who spend much time in bed and forget how to use their limbs which are almost wasted away from lack of use. And my limbs were never very large to begin with.’ Mina looked at her hands, which now she thought about it were even thinner than she remembered them, like the claws of a small bird.

  ‘A week or two of rest will not harm you, but if you are concerned, I will ask Anna to come and see you tomorrow morning and bring her massage oils.’

  With that promise, Dr Hamid departed, but he was shaking his head as he went.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dinner was in preparation, but instead of Richard coming to see Mina after the meal, looking well fed and in good spirits, he arrived before it was announced, his expression piteous, and his posture suggesting the most profound fatigue.

  ‘Oh, how exhausting work is!’ he exclaimed, throwing himself onto the coverlet beside Mina with such a heavy thump that she almost bounced bodily out of the bed. He stretched out, sighing with relief.

  Mina put aside her newspaper. ‘Richard, please take your shoes off, or you will dirty the coverlet and Miss Cherry will be very cross with you.’

  He pulled himself into a sitting position and obeyed, puffing with the effort, then tossed his shoes onto the floor and fell back again. ‘Miss Cherry is a tyrant and I would dislike her very much indeed except that she has nice eyes. They are a very pretty sort of green.’

  ‘But what can you tell me about your day? I would have thought photography was not to be numbered amongst the most arduous of occupations.’

  ‘Oh it is, it is, far worse than anything that involves a desk. You would think it ought to be possible to make one’s mark in the world without having to slave away for hours!’

  ‘One has to be very rich in order to make money without labouring for it. Has your new employer been imposing upon you by making you work for your wages? How very cruel of him!’

  Richard waved a languid hand. ‘Of course, I knew I would have to do something, but I just thought it would be more fun, and less effort, especially as we are friends.’

  ‘And what are friends for other than to appoint you to a well-paid sinecure?’ she taunted.

  ‘Well exactly!’

  ‘But was the work not interesting at all? I can imagine it would be.’

  ‘Sometimes it was,’ said Richard, grudgingly. ‘I’ll say this for Beckler, he is always looking for the newest thing in photography. Did you know that there is a way of making the darkness as bright as day so one can take pictures where there is no light? Soon there will be no need at all to wait for the sunshine. There is a kind of ribbon, but it’s made of metal, and you set fire to it. He showed me some. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I had seen it demonstrated. It was just a tiny bit but the light it cast was extraordinary.’

  ‘That should make séances more challenging,’ said Mina with a smile.

  ‘No, because Beckler says you could not use it in a drawing room, at least not for long enough to take a photograph, because it makes a lot of smoke, and everyone would choke on it, and then the carpet would be covered in ash which would not please anybody.’

  ‘Were you not hoping to receive some lady customers so you might talk to them and brighten your wearisome day?’

  Even this thought did not cheer her brother. ‘There were some, yes, but the pretty ones mostly came with their husbands and armfuls of crying babies. I have found, however, that Mr Beckler is very adept at making portraits in which plain ladies look much better than they are, and so they are flocking to his door like an army of lost souls begging to be saved.’

  Mina looked at him reproachfully. ‘Richard, I hope you are not so shallow as only to find pretty ladies good company? There are many ladies who have not been blessed with beauty who are delightful companions, so much so that with better acquaintance they will become beautiful in your eyes.’

  He pulled a sulky mouth. ‘You can’t blame me for my preferences. I am just a weak man and can’t help but admire beauty in a female. It inspires me to gallantry, and poetry too, or it would if I only had the time to write it.’ He rolled onto his side and gazed up at Min
a. ‘Mr Beckler thinks you are pretty, you know.’

  ‘We won’t discuss that.’

  ‘And clever. And quite alarming, too. He said you threatened to hit him.’

  ‘Richard!’

  He sighed. ‘All right, but you will come around in time I know you will.’ He rolled onto his back and lay like a fallen marionette, gazing at the ceiling.’ I think I may have made a conquest, but it is not one I would boast of,’ he said gloomily. ‘A Mr Hartop came in with his daughter to have her portrait made. She is shaped like a guinea-pig which she closely resembles. The lady is very excitable about everything, declares all she sees to be quite wonderful and expresses this emotion with a sound like the whistle on a railway train. It is a train that threatens to crush the spirit of any man foolish enough to linger in its path. She is single, which came as no surprise to me, although she must be thirty-five if a day, and I think her father hopes to entice a suitor with a flattering portrait. The portrait at least will be silent. When I wrote her name in the register of customers, she gazed at me as if I was a roast joint and made a strange little squeak. Before they left, her father asked for my card.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a card.’

  ‘I don’t, I just gave him one for Scarletti Publishing.’

  ‘That may have been unwise. They must now imagine that you are the heir to a thriving business. It makes you very eligible.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Richard.

  ‘And what does Mr Hartop do?’

  ‘I think he owns a number of lodging houses in Brighton.’ Richard sat up and pulled a card from his pocket. ‘Hartop and Co. North Street, Brighton. Superior accommodation. Unmarried daughter free on application.’ He groaned and replaced the card. ‘I should have told him I was penniless with no prospects.’

  ‘Given what you have told me about Miss Hartop, he might not feel that to be an obstacle to the match,’ said Mina, teasingly.

  Richard groaned again.

  ‘But apart from that, I can’t imagine that your work was as arduous as you pretend. You are not frail. You have plenty of energy when you choose to employ it.’

  ‘I suppose it was tolerable enough when I dealt with the clients,’ he admitted, ‘and I spent some time outside, handing out advertising cards to passers-by.’

  ‘You didn’t take any photographs?’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t let me. I wasn’t allowed to touch the camera or anything!’

  ‘That was probably very wise on your first day.’

  Richard sat up again and gulped water from the carafe without troubling himself with a glass. ‘Did you know the shop used to be the business of Mr Simpson the portrait photographer? Wasn’t he the man who took the pictures at Enid’s wedding? I thought it looked familiar. How mortifying it must be to have one’s mistakes recorded for posterity. He passed away at the end of last year, and his son has just sold the whole business to Mr Beckler, including a great many old photographs. Oh, and there is a ghost as well. In Brighton every house of the slightest antiquity has to have one. It is the fashion. Old Mr Simpson is supposed to wander about the premises looking for something and muttering to himself.’

  ‘I take it you have not seen him?’

  ‘No. Beckler is hoping to capture his spirit in a photograph in order to please Mr Hope, but he hasn’t succeeded so far. He is trying to mix new chemicals which the ghosts will find more to their taste. But it must be hard to photograph a ghost because you have to have a lot of light to make a portrait and everyone knows that ghosts only come out in the dark. As soon as you put the light on, they go away. He did it by accident once, but he doesn’t know how it happened and he hasn’t managed it since. His new idea now, is to leave the camera out all night with the lens cap off and hope to capture the ghost that way.’

  ‘If he succeeds, I would like to see the picture,’ said Mina, ‘if only to find out how I might judge it to be genuine.’

  ‘In the meantime, would you believe, he has tasked me with looking at all of Simpson’s stock of photographs. There are whole boxes of the blessed things in the attic. Duplicates, I suppose, or ones that were never collected. I am to compose a list of the names of the subjects which are written on the back. Some of the portraits are very old, and I feel sure most of the people depicted are long dead. But Beckler thinks he can sell them as mementoes to the families. If you were to see them, you would think them a dreary assortment. The gentlemen in particular. It is a perfectly horrid display of beards and I would be ashamed to own up to any of them.’

  ‘A beard is thought to be a very manly thing,’ Mina objected. ‘I admire a good beard myself if it is not over-large and tidily kept.’

  ‘One like Dr Hamid’s, you mean?’

  ‘Something of that nature.’

  ‘A large beard is only good to hide a weak chin,’ said Richard, stroking the blond side whiskers which were all that adorned his face. ‘And I think I have a rather good chin, which the world ought to see. But if I was to find that Miss Hartop detests beards, I will gladly grow one.’ He lay back on the bed again. ‘There must be easier paths to fortune. Are there no more rich widows in town? Do you know of any, Mina? They should be very old and easily flattered.’

  ‘Only Mrs Bettinson,’ said Mina, mischievously, naming a friend of her mother’s whose main pleasures in life were gossip and consuming cake. ‘But I don’t think she is looking for another husband.’

  Richard winced. ‘Mrs Bettinson is a mountain I would rather not climb.’

  ‘Then your future is clear. You must either work for a living or marry Miss Hartop.’

  Richard buried his face in the pillow and whimpered.

  Mina had never given any thought as to whether Miss Cherry had nice eyes or not, but now that her brother had pointed it out, she supposed it must be true. When the nurse returned early the next day following an afternoon in the company of Mrs Phipps, she did so with a smile that brightened her whole face including her eyes, which did appear to be green, and assured Mina that her visit had gone very well.

  ‘At least that was my impression, but of course I have heard that the lady has in the past been considered hard to please so she may think differently,’ she added modestly.

  ‘I hope she enjoyed your readings.’

  ‘She did, very much. She particularly appreciated the portion on the domestic use of starch, which she asked to hear no less than three times.’ Miss Cherry took out the book, favouring Mina with an inviting smile, as if offering a great treat. ‘I will read it to you now, if you like.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mina, hastily, but I must reserve that pleasure for another time. Miss Hamid is coming here this morning to perform an oriental massage.’

  ‘Oh?’ Miss Cherry was taken aback. ‘Is that permitted?’

  ‘Yes, it is on the instructions and advice of Dr Hamid. But you need not remain here for it. In fact, I would appreciate it very much if you were to accompany my mother on a little excursion she has planned. She has been disinclined to venture out recently but feels a little stronger today. Her intention is to visit the shops in St James’s Street, and view the spring gardens in Old Steine. The fresh air will undoubtedly do her good, but I would feel so much happier if she was to be in sympathetic company, just in case it proves to be too wearying for her.’

  Miss Cherry could do no more than put away her book and agree.

  Mina did not mention this, but her mother, under the impression that Richard had been transformed almost instantly into an accomplished photographer, was considering paying an unannounced visit to his place of employment. It was therefore not entirely certain that the excursion would be an unqualified success, since it had the potential to reveal Richard’s lack of any knowledge of or competence in the art of photography, but Mina had seen him talk his way out of such situations before and she supposed that he would do so again.

  Miss Hamid arrived bringing a large stout leather bag from which she extracted a gift, a bottle of the herbal fruit mineral water that Mina
particularly liked. She also imparted some good advice. ‘There is too much emphasis on treating women as if they are made of something that will break if used,’ she said. ‘We need our vitality and our muscles just as much as men do, in fact sometimes I think we need them more. There are so many hard-working women and far too many idle men, who are only strong enough to lift a glass of beer but persist in thinking themselves the superior sex.’

  She donned an apron, folded back her cuffs and made short brisk work of examining Mina’s limbs. ‘I am here not a moment too soon,’ she said. ‘Women should not lie in bed too long when they are unwell, or when their children are born, they should get up and walk. You have lost flesh which you cannot afford to lose, and I suppose you have not been allowed any exercise.’

  ‘No, that is quite forbidden. I am hardly permitted to lift a book. Your brother said that I am not to get out of bed unassisted, and then I should only travel as far as the armchair, which is not a long journey.’

  Miss Hamid permitted herself an indulgent smile. ‘He means well, but he is a man. But he is right in one thing, you do need to take care. Work slowly and gradually, but you must work. I will show you some exercises which will firm your muscles, and which you can do very easily by yourself without any harm to your recovery.’

  She pulled some fresh soft towels from her bag and laid them on the bed. They had the clean slightly spicy scent that transported Mina as if by magic back to the Baths, and its delicious vapours.

  The simple act of being prepared for the massage was already making Mina feel better. She began to see the possibilities of writing a new story of adventure in which a humdrum item of textile was transformed into a flying platform by the application of special herbs and would take the inventor anywhere he or she pleased. Inevitably, since that was her usual way of thinking, she speculated on what might happen if the application dried out and lost its power during the flight.

  The next item to appear from Miss Hamid’s bag was a bottle of massage oil. It was one of Mina’s favourites, sandalwood with hints of jasmine and other fragrant flowers, which both relaxed and invigorated at the same time. The masseuse carefully oiled her capable hands, and Mina nestled into the soft towels in pleasurable anticipation. ‘I believe we have a mutual acquaintance, a Mrs Vardy,’ she said. ‘Your brother told me that she attends the Baths.’