The Mortsafe
Book six of the Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery series
Lillian Stewart Carl
Smashwords Edition
This book is also available in print.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Copyright 2011 Lillian Stewart Carl
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This is an original, never-before-published novel.
DEDICATION
For Garda, founding mother of the muses.
Chapter One
Jean Fairbairn handed her section of The Scotsman across the table, then snatched it back, just missing the teapot and the toast rack. “Whoa,” she said.
Alasdair Cameron didn’t look up from his own carefully folded page. “Eh?”
“Wow!” She angled the newsprint toward the lamp, since precious little light was leaking through the window this drippy, dreary—dreich, in Scotspeak—Edinburgh dawn.
“Aye?”
Jean peered over the edge of the paper, and over the rings on her left hand holding the paper, at her husband. Her new, improved, husband. Who’d have guessed that her first marriage would turn out to be a twenty-year-long beta test? What his first marriage had been … Well, no point in going there, not again.
“Alasdair, we haven’t been married long enough to talk to each other in monosyllables.”
“Right.” His keen blue eyes sparked above the rims of his reading glasses. “I might as well be asking what you’ve found in yon paper, then, as you’ll be telling me about it anyway.”
“Come on. You’re as curious as a cat.”
Removing his glasses, he turned his gaze toward the gray fur lump on the window seat that was Dougie. The sleeping cat looked like a frayed sweater, carelessly abandoned. Alasdair swiveled back to Jean, one brow cocked in his best Mr. Spock impersonation.
Since Jean had read in a psychology magazine that rolling your eyes at your significant other meant problems in a relationship, she focused steadily on a small block of type at the bottom of the page beneath the transcript of some arcane political discussion in the Scottish Parliament. Parliamentary fog no doubt explained the weeks of cloud and drizzle, just as the hot air emanating from the Texas Legislature, back on her native turf, explained summer heat waves.
“Protect and Survive has a contract with the owner of that new pub on the South Bridge, doesn’t it? You know, the one going into the old Playfair Building, across the street from Lady Niddry’s House?”
“We’ve got contracts with half the businesses in that area, not to mention the university. I don’t doubt the pub’s one of them, aye. Why? Did they have a breakin?”
It had taken her an entire year to get it into her head that “I doubt” sometimes meant “I suspect”, and then he threw the usual meaning at her. “They had more of a break-out. A couple of plumbers were doing their thing in the cellar and part of the wall collapsed into one of the vaults beneath the street.”
“There’s—what? Eighteen vaults? Nineteen? And only the arch over the lower street, the Cowgate, not invisible.”
“In the strict sense of invisible, yes, in that with all the buildings along the top of the bridge and down the sides there’s only one place you can tell that the South Bridge street is really that, a bridge. But vaults don’t swim in and out of the space-time continuum.”
Crinkles were forming at the corners of his eyes, complementing the one at the corner of his mouth and making him look more like a low-key Captain Kirk than Mr. Spock. “Depends on who you’re asking, eh?”
“Well, yeah. It does. Anyway, the plumbers, being a heckuva lot braver souls than I am, climbed through the gap in the wall and found a chamber containing two dead bodies. Although in this context, ‘bodies’ would imply dead.”
“How dead?” The crinkles went lopsided. He reached for the page with his left hand, its plain gold band glinting in the lamplight, and with his right hand replaced his glasses.
Jean handed the page over. “It doesn’t say, but I doubt—I don’t think—they’re recent. Not that the environment of the vaults and how it affects human decay is anything I want to consider over breakfast.” She spread the last piece of toast thickly with butter—when in Scotland, butterfat wasn’t calories, it was insulation—and heaped on strawberry jam.
Alasdair said, half to himself, “The bodies were found late yesterday afternoon and Lothian and Borders Police is investigating. They’ll not yet have removed them, I reckon …”
The electronic melody of “Hail to the Chief” interrupted him. Abandoning her toast, Jean went to find first her mini–backpack and brain storage unit, and then, inside it, her phone.
From the second floor of the apartment came the double bleat of Alasdair’s ring tone. Abandoning the newspaper, he headed off toward the room that Jean called his man-cave but that he, dignity affronted, referred to as his study. A good thing they’d bought the flat next door to the one where she’d been living alone. Two tiny apartments combined into a small-to-medium one equaled enough space they could live together, independent but contiguous entities.
Jean switched on the phone and pressed it to her ear. “Good morning, Miranda.”
“Good morning to you.” This time of day Miranda’s voice was smoky from Lapsang Souchong tea served in fine china, not from single-malt served in cut glass. “You’ve seen the paper, then?”
Miranda’s ESP, Jean thought for the hundredth time, was much more useful than her and Alasdair’s ghost-activated sixth senses. “The article about the workmen breaking into the vault beneath the new pub? Oh yeah, I’ve seen it.”
“No flies on you, Jean. Got it in one. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Of course I am. Since it all seems to be more historical than contemporary, it might in due course make a fine article for Great Scot. Just as long as I don’t have to spend too much time blundering around in the South Bridge vaults.”
“Ah, the tourist companies have those vaults mapped out like interchanges on the M6. Lights, cameras, action, the lot. No need for your claustrophobia to go acting up.”
“And how about my …” She wasn’t going to use the word fear, even to one of her best friends, and her only employer and business partner. “… lack of interest in blundering around in the dark? There’s many a story of tour groups getting down into those vaults and the lights going off.”
“And ghosties and ghoulies pinching and scratching. Oh aye.” Paper rustled and china rang.
Jean strolled back to the table and refilled her mug. “This part of Edinburgh’s teeming with so many ghost stories the poor souls would have to take numbers and wait their turn before saying boo. The Castle, the Vaults, Mary King’s Close, Greyfriars Kirkyard across from the Museum.”
“Are there that many poor souls still out and about, Jean?”
“A few, yes, but they’re outnumbered by the story-mongers and the gullible. And there are none right here in Ramsay Garden, let me hasten to add, any more than there are in the office.”
“Makes no matter to me. I’m not sensitive. Few to none of the tourists are, either, but there’s no need for such tales to be true to come a treat to them. A good shiver and a nice wee dram afterwards, part of the Scottish experience. The owner of the new pub likely ordered the tradesmen to ca’ down the wall, the better to increase his trade. He’s named
the place The Resurrectionist Bar.”
“The Resurrectionist?”
“Not the best name, from a marketing standpoint.”
“Well, it’s a bit more elegant than Body Snatchers Are Us.” Jean laughed, if wryly. How many of Scotland’s darkest moments, even body snatchers or resurrection men like Burke and Hare, were now no more than scenic overlooks along the historical trail?
Through the arched opening between her old living room—now the dining room—and the new one echoed Alasdair’s voice: “The city’s honeycombed with forgotten passages and cellars. Dozens of bodies are likely moldering away in obscure corners. If I was owner of The Resurrectionist, I’d be more concerned about living bodies breaking, entering, vandalizing—the lot.”
Ah, so someone had contacted Protect and Survive, the agency specializing in security for historic properties that Alasdair was now heading up. Was the owner concerned about concealed postern gates below his property? Or did Lothian and Borders, the local cop shop, want ex-cop Alasdair’s opinion on the convergence of history and—well, no one had suggested any crimes, not yet.
“We’ll see how wedded Vasudev is to The Resurrectionist when we’re interviewing him the day,” Miranda was saying. “He might be taking suggestions, still.”
“Who?”
“Vasudev Prasad. He’s by way of owning the property, though my own Duncan holds a high enough percentage that Vasudev was quite obliging when I rang him up and suggested he call at the office soon as may be.”
“No flies on you, either, Miranda. Barely nine in the morning and you’re hard at work.”
“As am I.” Alasdair walked back into the dining room, carrying not his cell phone but his toothbrush. “Herself is sending you to the scene, is she? You might as well have a wee dauner down that way with me, then. I’ve been called out as well, Lothian and Borders rang Ian at the office, saying a D.I. Knox wants a word.”
“There’s a good Edinburgh name, Knox. Any relation to the sixteenth-century theological gadfly, I wonder?” Jean turned back to her phone. “Miranda …”
“Well done,” Miranda told her. “You and Alasdair can be interviewing the police as a team, see what sort of mystery’s been brought to the light of day, eh?”
“Or whether there’s any mystery at all,” Jean replied, well accustomed to playing the damp blanket to Miranda’s commercial exuberance. “The bodies are probably those of some poor—literally poor, as in low or no-income—people who didn’t have anywhere else to live, or die, for that matter, and when the vaults were walled up so were their bodies.”
“Oooh. There you are. What’s that story by Edgar Allan Poe about the jester bricked up in the wall? ‘A Cask of Amontillado?’ A grand sherry, Amontillado.”
“So would this be ‘A Cask of Single Malt?’”
“If you’re turning up a whisky-distilling angle, better and better. I’ll have a look amongst our advertisers, see who was in business—when were the vaults closed up?”
Jean quelled her laugh. She had to stop teasing Miranda—it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Although why you would want to shoot fish in a barrel, she had no idea. “Late 1800s, depending …”
Using the heel of the toothbrush to point to his watch, Alasdair called loudly, “Later, Miranda.”
“I’ll be waiting at the office, Jean,” Miranda said, “with bated breath and hot coffee. Cheerie-bye.”
“Bye-bye.” Jean switched off the phone, inhaled the last bite of toast—even preserved in thick syrup, the strawberries hinted of summer fields warmed by sunshine—and washed it down with tea.
Chapter Two
Within moments, she and Alasdair had shoveled the dishes into the dishwasher, made themselves both presentable and weatherproof, and set out into the mizzle. The flowerpots beside the porch held no spring tulips for them to tiptoe through, but they did tread quietly past the flat next door. Since its curtains were still tightly drawn, musician Hugh Munro was no doubt sleeping off a late-night gig.
Ramsay Garden was set just below a corner of the castle esplanade, the parade ground before the castle gates. Next to the grim medieval fortress, the whimsical, whitewashed, turn-of-the-last-century buildings looked like a parade of garden gnomes. Since the first rule of real estate was location, location, location, the apartments were both desirable and expensive. They were also noisy, especially when multitudes of tourists and battalions of marching bands occupied the esplanade during the summer months.
Jean peered through the moisture gathering on her glasses, tugged the hood of her coat further over her brow, and told herself there was one reason to like winter. It was quiet. Dark, wet, and cold, but quiet—if with the ongoing soundtrack from Hugh. A good thing he and his band played traditional-style music rather than heavy metal or jazz.
She stepped out both briskly and carefully, the first to keep up with Alasdair’s stride across the courtyard, the second to avoid a pratfall on the steep flank of Ramsay Lane with its picturesque but slippery cobblestones. When he offered her his arm, she grasped it. Standing on feminist principles worked better if she was standing, period.
At the High Street they turned away from the looming pile of the castle and headed east, down the fissure between tall medieval buildings that visitors knew as the Royal Mile. This time of year the tartanalia shops behind their contemporary ground floor facades claimed less territory, racks of polyester plaid, postcards, plastic swords and Loch Ness monsters stored inside. Above them dark, mossy stone walls rose like cliffs toward the gray sky. Only the occasional bright red hearts-and-flowers Valentine’s Day window display mitigated the gloom.
Jean glanced across at St. Giles Cathedral, large but only relatively stern with its decorative crown of a spire, today more damp than devout. “I hope John Knox’s grave is large enough for him spin efficiently—especially since it’s now beneath the car park.”
“There’s one historical figure,” Alasdair returned, “not rumored to be haunting.”
“He’s not glamorous enough. Not like the Catholic queens he loathed. I mean, it clearly says in the Bible that weak sissy females aren’t suppose to rule men, right?”
“And yet he favored democracy and universal education, if not by today’s definitions.”
“Another of Edinburgh’s Jekyll and Hyde figures.” Dodging an umbrella—fortunately she was so short an out-of-control rib was hardly likely to jab her in the eye—Jean considered the windows of the cafés and coffee bars. They were so smudged with steam the customers inside look like sea creatures under water.
The warmth of her breakfast was fading, and the chill breeze oozing up the street scoured her cheeks and nose. By the time they reached their destination her complexion, a shade of pale she thought of as belly-of-newt, would be pink and raw. She inhaled the aroma of hot bread, frying bacon, and, above all, coffee, the elixir of life. She might drink tea with Alasdair over breakfast, but that was only to sustain her long enough to get to the Great Scot coffee maker.
Alasdair gently but firmly pulled her back onto the straight and narrow of the sidewalk. “When I was at university,” he said, “I’d stop by a café on Argyle Street and have myself a bacon, egg, and bean pie for ninety-nine p. Made a grand breakfast.”
“Bacon, eggs, and beans in a crust? Only the British stomach could tolerate that.”
“Not so different from one of your breakfast burritos, I’m thinking, and here’s your lot adding hot peppers to boot.” His shudder was no doubt amplified for effect.
“Right,” she told him, and went on, “Were the winters this cold and dark in Glasgow?”
“Oh aye. Seems worse here, though, with the buildings frowning down like Knox himself.”
“John? Or D.I? Some of these detectives can be pretty harsh.”
“To go using your own words: You think?” Alasdair’s laugh was considerably drier than the air. “I’ve never met this chap. No need to go jumping to conclusions, never mind that’s your favorite exercise.”
�
�You think?” she returned with a grin.
Together they crossed the street and rounded the flank of the Tron Kirk, no longer a religious establishment but a museum. There they paused, at the junction not just of two streets but of two eras, gazing south down a busy avenue lined with foursquare classical facades. After over two hundred years of Edinburgh weather, the buildings of the South Bridge appeared as dark and inscrutable as those on the High Street, never mind the occasional pediment or porch and the dome of the old college rising in the distance.
For centuries the population of the city had huddled along the ridge running down from the castle, behind stone walls, building taller and taller tenements on either side of what was now the High Street. Jean hated to think what the place had smelled like. Even people of the time, whose noses had to have been considerably less delicate than modern ones, had complained.
Then, by the 1780s, not only all the local British wars but that pesky American Revolution had passed. England was so firmly in control that Scotland was just ‘North Britain’—which at least gave Edinburghians the chance to spill out of the old city, bridging the valleys to the north and south of the High Street with vaulted roads similar to viaducts.
Soon buildings lined the street atop the South Bridge, and more clambered down its sides, almost filling in the valley and leaving only the narrow street of the Cowgate, which passed far below the Bridge through its one exposed arch. The hidden arches supporting the bridge, the vaults, were originally used for storage, small shops, and work areas. But they were wet, lacked ventilation, and became slums where the poor had huddled hopelessly.
“The South Bridge vaults were evacuated and sealed off at the end of the nineteenth century?” Alasdair asked, always sure to double-check his sources.
“Yep” replied Jean. “They were—well, ‘rediscovered’ isn’t the right word—re-opened in the 1990s.”
“And now there are so many pubs and nightclubs both above and belowstairs, I’m thinking most of the spirits reported are less paranormal than high-proof. Shall we?”
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