The Dancing Horse

by Angus MacVicar

  ‘Yes. But just for a minute to get our hats. Mr. Grant and I would like a walk. It was damned stuffy up there.’

  ‘That’s a’ richt, sir. The wee floor at the back is always open. Ye can go out that way.’ He paused, then added quietly: ‘And get in later — same as ye did last nicht, when Jimmy was on duty.’

  His voice was slightly blurred and thick, and he kept his eyes lowered. There could have been a hidden meaning in his words and behaviour. On the other hand his sourness might have been the result of too much beer, or simply of boredom after a long spell on duty. In any case, nothing more was said. As Donald and Bulldog went upstairs they heard the front door being pulled to, then locked and barred.

  They went into the News Editors room, where they had left their hats earlier in the evening. Donald was about to comment on Jock’s final remark when Bulldog hurriedly moved across to the dressing-table opposite the bed.

  ‘I say, have you been messing about with my copy-paper?’

  ‘No. When had I the chance? Why?’

  ‘I left it in a pile here, under my briefcase. Now it’s on top.’

  The curtain on the window, which was open at the bottom, billowed on a light breeze.

  Donald went and stood beside his boss. ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely. Not only that. The catch on my case is loose.’

  ‘Anything missing inside?’

  Bulldog examined the contents and shook his head. ‘No. Even your sketch of “The Dancing Horse” is still there.’

  ‘It could have been the chambermaid.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The bedclothes were turned down before we joined the party. I remember distinctly.’

  ‘I believe you’re right. In that case — ’

  ‘In that case it’s a pound to a penny that someone’s been through this bedroom with a toothcomb!’

  ‘But the door was locked. You had the pass-key.’

  ‘Plenty of master-keys in the office downstairs.’

  ‘That’s true. Then it must have happened during the ceilidh and with the help of — ’

  ‘Wait a minute! What’s this?’

  Bulldog cut into the other’s speculations. He went stiffly on his knees and stretched a hand beneath the dressing-table. It came out holding a scrap of paper.

  ‘This is new as well.’ He jerked himself to his feet. ‘The maids are reasonably efficient. They wouldn’t leave rubbish lying about.’

  ‘Looks like a message of some kind?’

  ‘Yes. In pencil. Well, I’m damned! Listen to this. “Please meet me tonight — usual place” Then the paper’s torn right across the signature.’

  ‘It begins with “My”,’ said Donald, who had been peering over his companion’s shoulder. ‘And Kenyon’s girl is called Myra.’

  They looked at each other. The street outside and the hotel itself lay under the habitual heavy silence of a small town after midnight, and the only interruption was an occasional flutter of the window-curtain which sounded like the anxious wing-beats of a caged bird.

  ‘Could it have been Kenyon?’ said Donald, at last.

  Bulldog shrugged. ‘Possibly. But there’s a fishy smell, boy. A fishy smell. I have a feeling.’

  ‘You mean it’s all far too obvious? The note, for instance.’

  ‘That idea had occurred to me, though of course we can’t be sure. Let’s have a look at your bedroom.’

  Nothing there had been disturbed, however. They came back and put on their hats.

  ‘I take it,’ said Bulldog, ‘that the “usual place” means Cooper’s Close.’

  ‘Yes. But what if it is a trap? Your “fish fishing for the fisherman” angle.’

  ‘We can’t afford to shy clear of it.’

  ‘Right, boss. Come on.’

  Downstairs the hotel was in darkness, though a small blue light showed them the way to the back door. They saw or heard no one. Outside in the lane a cold wind funnelled between the buildings on either side. As they set off along the granite setts they put their feet down quietly, instinctively assuming the tread of those who hunt — or are hunted. Soon, however, recognizing the futility of such a performance, they swopped slightly shamefaced grins and began to walk more naturally.

  ‘Shows how damned suggestible we are!’ growled Bulldog. ‘We’ll be going on our hands and knees next!’

  ‘Rendering us liable to be arrested by the first of MacNiven’s policemen we come across!’

  ‘Sure. It’s childish.’

  ‘At the same time I’m glad we posted that letter to the London office last night.’

  ‘M’m. So am I.’ Bulldog’s voice was sombre. ‘This is one occasion when we want to mind our step.’

  Nevertheless, they took no obvious precautions. As they turned into Castlehill, their footsteps echoing from shop doors and the dark entrances to tenement buildings, Donald felt extraordinarily naked. But the object of the exercise was to move in the open, apparently without guile. Bait, after all, is never camouflaged.

  Few people were abroad. In the Longrow an oldish man with a stick emerged from a closemouth and crossed the street towards a side-alley. He passed under a solitary lamp-standard, his shadow shooting forward like a gigantic cut-out. Then he disappeared, and the tapping of his stick faded into the background hush of water against the Old Quay. A car went by, speeding towards the west end of the town; but though the driver’s window was open, they failed to make out his features. It might in fact have been a woman.

  Everything became quiet again. Blank impassive windows — some curtained, some not — looked down on them from above shuttered shops. On a roof-top near the Gazette office a tom-cat howled.

  Cooper’s Close was only a hundred yards away. Donald said, quietly: ‘All this seemed a pretty good lark in London. Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Humility is the foundation of wisdom. You could still go back.’

  ‘I’d get my books if I did.’

  ‘And you’d deserve them!’ Suddenly, unexpectedly, Bulldog gave a short chuckle accompanied by a sigh. ‘Mind you, I’m not feeling so brave myself!’ he said; and Donald realized that his boss’s nerves, though now better under control, were still as jumpy as they had been in the Glasgow train.

  The moon was hidden by cloud, and the entrance to Cooper’s Close lay in deep shadow. They approached it with apparent casualness, and only for an instant did they pause outside. Then they turned into it, tension stiffening their muscles.

  Their action brought no catastrophic result. The high, covered-in tunnel was as impenetrably dark as a burial vault: but it seemed to be empty and innocent. A little breeze ran through it, whispering among the rusty iron beams above their heads: beams which were relics of the cooper’s trade and which had once supported heavy barrels slung on hooks and chains.

  They went farther in and waited in the dark, listening. Their nerves were taut. Some yards away, at the back of the Close, they heard a soft gurgle of water. It came from the cistern beside which they had concealed themselves some twenty-four hours before. At that time, waiting for Nellie’s sister, Kenyon had stood only inches from where they were standing now.

  Donald’s hand went to his pocket, heedlessly coveting a cigarette. Almost at once, however, Bulldog’s warning fingers clamped on his arm. He withdrew his hand. Calming nicotine was out.

  The minutes passed. There was no sound, no movement, with the exception of a quiet tap-tapping somewhere close. Possibly the loose end of a rope hanging from the iron beams. They made no attempt to talk, even in whispers. A faraway clock-tower chimed one.

  The tap-tapping became as persistent as the breeze which was probably its cause. Now that it had fully registered on their minds it seemed to grow louder. A slither and tap. A silence. A slither and tap.

  It was made by no animate object — of that Donald was certain. Curiosity burgeoned in his thoughts, and he wanted to see the answer. It seemed, however, that Bulldog w
as against the striking of a match.

  Still there was nothing. Then Donald imagined he heard the sound of running feet in Kinloch Road, beyond the cistern and the furniture store. A woman’s feet, he could have sworn. But presently silence fell again, except for the tap-tapping that was surely much heavier and more solid than the flutter of a rope’s end.

  The sound began to worry him; and at last fear came prickling into the back of his neck. Sweat oozed on his hands. Once, long ago, he had been marooned by a faulty carburettor on his motor-bike at the entrance to a Highland churchyard. Waiting for help in the dull moonlight, he had felt much the same as now. His imagination had opened the graves, and the shrouded bodies had appeared in ranks of terrible silence.

  Soon it became apparent that Bulldog was worried, too. Though it was pitch dark, Donald could sense his anxious stirring, his vain attempts to pierce the gloom and find out what was happening across the Close and slightly above them.

  On it went. A slither and tap. A silence. A slither and tap. The breeze freshened and the tapping became louder.

  Donald forgot the reason for their presence in Cooper’s Close. He said: ‘What’s making that noise, boss?’

  ‘Damned if I know.’

  ‘There’s no one about, I’m certain. It can’t do any harm to light a match and have a look.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve got something there. All right.’

  They moved over the slippery cobbles and stopped when the sound was at a level with their eyes. Then Donald took out his matches.

  He turned his back to the breeze and lit one, carefully cupping the flame. He raised his hands and the flickering light fell first upon a pair of grey suede shoes, dangling and tapping against the brick wall. Then it travelled up over long legs clad in flannel trousers and over an open sports jacket with the buttons torn off. It came to rest on a distorted face — the face of a dead man whose neck was caught in a loop of rope.

  The match-flame died. But both Donald and Bulldog, though shocked and sick, were left in no doubt. The hanging corpse was that of Jim Kenyon.

  SEVENTEEN

  They stood there, cold and shaken, unable to decide what to do.

  Through Donald’s mind there flashed the thought that he and Bulldog, despite the tough sophistication they tried constantly to wear, possessed in fact singularly poor qualifications for the job they had taken on. They were too soft, too easily upset by nerves, too much lacking in the stuff of heroes. So far they had made only nebulous progress in their hunt for the Peter Street killer, and as they blundered on, blindly ignorant, events they couldn’t understand came crowding in on them. Were they now being manoeuvred into a position from which death might be the only logical means of escape?

  Bulldog, putting a hand against the cold brick wall, made an abortive effort to vomit. ‘God!’ he muttered. ‘Did he do it himself, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. What an end to a life! Drunk and in misery.’

  ‘He’s out of it. His wife and the girl are left to face the music.’

  ‘That note — it may have been genuine after all. I — ’

  ‘Wait! Cars, boy!’

  They pulled themselves together, calling on reserves of mental and physical stamina. Vehicles were approaching from either side — down the Longrow at one end of the Close, along Kinloch Road and through the open space at the other.

  ‘Police!’ said Bulldog. ‘MacNiven’s copped us this time!’

  There was no obvious means of escape. Whichever way they went they could be seen. Already under suspicion, they would have difficulty in persuading the Inspector of their innocence if they were discovered now at the scene of Kenyon’s death. Days and even weeks might pass before justice allowed them to go free again.

  For a moment Donald yearned towards the idea that they should stand their ground and leave the rest to fate. It would be an immense relief to give up their lonely struggle after truth and confide their fears and suspicions to the calm Inspector. Under the eye of the police they would at any rate gain peace and physical security.

  Then he became a newspaperman again; a newspaperman with red hair and a big, though crooked, nose. In such a case, he remembered, they would lose an exclusive story, and pride would take a tumble.

  He said, quickly: ‘When I used that match I saw a ledge, about twelve feet up. Level with the beam to which the rope’s attached. It seems to run into the wall. If we lie up there in the dark theyll never see us from the ground, even using torches.’

  ‘How do we get there?

  The cars were whining to a stop.

  ‘I’ll give you a leg up. Then you can lean over and help me climb after you. Plenty of footholds in this old brick wall.’

  ‘Right!’

  Bulldog’s weight was considerable; but Donald, commando trained, lifted him without effort. And the News Editor was game. He grunted with satisfaction as he caught an iron beam and hauled himself up on to the ledge.

  He felt around him. The ledge was spacious, though thick with dirt and grime. Under a low, vaulted roof, it promised adequate cover.

  ‘Come on, boy!’

  He leaned over the edge and offered his hand. Then as the others groping fingers contacted his he pulled with desperate energy. Donald came scrambling up the wall, toes finding momentary purchase where mortar had flaked away between the bricks.

  At last they lay together in the stale darkness, some five yards distant from the body of Jim Kenyon. They eased themselves away from the edge, discovering that the space extended inwards for as much as six feet, and eventually reached a position behind the root of an iron beam. There was an unpleasant smell of bird-droppings and ancient filth, but they scarcely noticed it. The iron beam pressed into Bulldog’s side. He scarcely noticed that, either.

  Quick, heavy footsteps came into the Close. Like little searchlights, torch-beams flickered. A variety of Scots accents echoed roughly in the confined space. There were exclamations of surprise and horror.

  Sweat trickled from Donald’s forehead on to the dirt only inches from it. Bulldog was breathing quickly but quietly.

  Inspector MacNiven’s voice floated up to them: “Well, Doctor?’

  ‘Dead as a door-nail.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘At a rough guess about an hour.’

  ‘Suicide, you think?’

  ‘Looks like it, and there’s a strong smell of drink. But that’s your pigeon, Inspector.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Know who he is?’

  ‘One of the scientists from the station at the Mull. Name’s Kenyon, I think.’

  ‘M’m. Could there be political repercussions?’

  ‘Unlikely. Not a good type, I’m afraid. Married, but mixed up with a local girl.’

  ‘I see.’

  There was a long period of confused speech among the younger policemen. Then MacNiven called out: ‘Got your camera, Wilson?’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Take a few photos, will you?’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Sergeant Houston!’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘What’s your opinion? If he did it himself, what did he stand on?’

  ‘That’s just it, sir.’

  ‘We’ll make a thorough examination now — and tomorrow in the daylight — but I believe this is murder.’

  ‘Who was it phoned to tell us about it?’

  ‘That’s another conundrum. The station officer says it was a woman — not local by the sound of her. All she said was: “Cooper’s Close. You’ll find a dead man there!” Then she rang off.’

  ‘Could have been anybody. Someone who didn’t want to get mixed up in an inquiry.’

  ‘It’s possible. To me the whole thing stinks.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  There was a sudden flare from a flash-bulb. Then another and another as the police photographer did his work. The light penetrated even into the narrow space occupied b
y Donald and Bulldog. They hid their eyes from it, like ostriches burrowing in the sand.

  A young Highlander exclaimed: ‘What’s yon, sir?’ They recognized the voice. It belonged to the constable with whom they had spoken that morning at the head of the Old Quay.

  There was a pause. Then came MacNiven’s unruffled response: ‘Where exactly was this lying, McGregor?’

  ‘On the cobbles, sir. Immediately below the corpse.’

  ‘A woman’s handkerchief. Embroidered with the initials J.M. H’m. Well, take care of it, McGregor. Might come in handy.’

  Again a flash-bulb glared. Donald found Bulldog, inches away, looking directly into his eyes. Grimly he stared back. He felt heat in his body like a fire, and cramp was making his muscles tense and painful.

  Darkness again, then steady beams from the headlights of a police car. Men moved about, exploring the Close and its environs. Finally a mixture of muffled noises as one policeman climbed on another’s back and cut down the body. Then a shuffling and stamping, while along the street outside came tinkling the bell of an ambulance.

  Minutes later the ambulance left, accompanied by one of the police cars; but for what seemed a long time Inspector MacNiven and a few of his men remained pottering about in the vicinity. The iron beam to which the rope had been tied was closely examined, and a torch was actually flashed along the ledge on either side. But Donald and Bulldog were well hidden, and, in the end, soon after the distant clock-tower had struck two, there was silence in Cooper’s Close.

  They waited, for the Inspector might have left a policeman to keep watch. Soon, however, it became obvious that this hadn’t happened. They came out of hiding and made a stiff but careful descent to the cobbles. By the back ways which they had discovered on the previous night they returned to the hotel, meeting no one.

  It was silent and dead as they went quietly upstairs and into Bulldog’s room. There they relaxed a little and took off their jackets.

  Wielding a clothes-brush. Donald said: ‘Boss, that handkerchief could have belonged to anybody.’

  ‘Aye, but you heard what MacNiven said. ‘A woman’s voice on the phone. Not local.’