by David Ashton
The little boy floated towards her. Jamie McLevy, he would save her, everything would be fine, they would be happy and she would smile and hold him close.
Except that his mother had rarely smiled and never held him close.
No matter. Jamie would save her anyway.
He was no longer afraid of the water. See? He could move, breathe, his body was weightless and he twirled round like a seal for the sheer joy of motion.
She was vertical, standing on the bottom of the sea, as he approached and gently touched her shoulder to let her know that the saviour was at hand.
The contact from the tip of his finger spun her round and he looked into her countenance.
The red bloodline was still etched across her throat but other than that her face was peaceful.
Except for the eyes. The sockets were empty and, as he watched, a small black eel slipped out of one, with another wormy creature following.
They chased each other, in and out of both sockets and the horrified little boy realised that the eels were playing hide and seek.
Life and death.
Hide and seek.
James McLevy let out a fearsome roar, opened his eyes and found himself looking up at Lieutenant Roach.
The inspector was somewhat reassured. Roach might bear a passing resemblance to various sea monsters but his eyes, though bloodshot, were firmly in their sockets.
The lieutenant suddenly whipped out a handkerchief to let loose an explosive sneeze.
‘I hope I’m not catching a cold from you, McLevy,’ he admonished the still figure in the hospital bed. ‘Proximity to dampness is a dangerous pastime.’
The inspector nodded. It was about all he could manage.
Roach accepted such as a signal of health.
‘I have passed this time composing a funeral oration just in case,’ he announced. ‘Would you like to hear it?’
‘No thank you,’ McLevy croaked faintly.
Roach walked away from the bed and winced as stiff joints cracked accompaniment; he had been sitting in a chair for more hours than he cared to bring to mind, until the inspector’s muffled yelps had brought him to the bedside.
There was a high window in the room and the officer peered out through it on to the street below. He sniffed at some flowers in a vase on the windowsill, scratched a fingernail upon the glass, and threw some words over his shoulder.
‘A fishing boat came upon an object floating in the sea. Dragged you aboard like a beached whale.’
McLevy said nothing in reply; other than lingering facets of the dream, his thoughts were lucid enough as he recollected the events aboard the ship and on the pier but the rest of his animal functions seemed to be in some state of suspension.
‘The boat had been out all night for a poor harvest,’ Roach continued. ‘Then they found you. A prize catch, eh?’
The lieutenant’s dry laughter hung in the air like a line of washing and McLevy discovered a raging thirst.
‘Could I have some water, please?’
‘Have you not had sufficient of that substance?’ Roach muttered as he walked back to pour into a tumbler from the jug, which lay on a small table beside the bed.
McLevy levered himself up, jammed a pillow behind for support then took the tumbler and slowly sipped at what had nearly killed him.
‘Like a beached whale,’ said Roach with satisfaction.
‘When did they find me?’
‘First light.’
‘What hour is it now?’
‘Middle afternoon.’
That meant the Dorabella was long gone.
‘Of the second day,’ the lieutenant added.
Long, long gone.
‘Second day?’
‘You have been lost to the world for more than thirty hours. A relief for many.’
McLevy’s eyes were beginning to focus and for the first time he noted that his normally immaculate lieutenant had grown some stubble on his long chin and the stiff white collar was somewhat crumpled.
‘How long have you been here, sir?’
‘Too long for my comfort.’
The idea that McLevy might glean a smidgeon of solace from his concern and possibly use it one day to advantage sent Roach into total disavowal of any affection.
He straightened up into official posture and blew his nose reprovingly.
‘I am assuming inspector,’ he said with another sideways twitch of the jaw, ‘that you have an explanation for this maritime farrago?’
McLevy closed his eyes somewhat wearily.
‘I have indeed, sir. But it’s nothing that cannot wait until tomorrow.’
‘That is a decision for me to make not you. By the way a passenger has been reported missing from a boat bound for the New World, his wife is in a terrible state. Would this have anything to do with yourself by any chance?’
‘She is not his wife,’ McLevy answered obliquely.
‘How would you know?’
‘It’s a long story, sir.’
McLevy’s head drooped on to his chest and Roach grunted at the sight.
‘You were making a terrible noise before you honoured us with your waking presence.’
‘I was dreaming.’
‘About what precisely?’
‘Hide and seek.’
Roach shook his head, strangely relieved that things were getting back to normal.
‘I shall hear the tale tomorrow, inspector. It had better be good.’
Hercules Dunbar was at the bottom of the ocean; the lovers would no doubt be discovered, freed, and then sail on for Argentina where there was no treaty of extradition and all policemen have moustaches and gold teeth.
Would this make a good tale? McLevy wondered.
The lieutenant would not be best pleased but a mitigating factor might be that the Forbes case would not therefore have to be reopened and the man’s reputation could remain intact and free from shame.
After all, like Dunbar, he had paid for his sins with his life, the insurance company was not out of pocket and the only person who had lost materially was a certain bawdy-hoose keeper.
Unless, of course, you count Mulholland’s loss of his one true love.
Is love material?
The suicide was already hushed up due to the deft hand of the Masonic Brotherhood and now the whole mess could be swept under the carpet.
Respectable houses are full of such cover.
McLevy became aware that Roach was still there, though he had moved to the door and opened it.
‘You were lucky to survive, James. A guardian angel must have been flying on the waves.’
The lieutenant looked across, a wry, baffled twist to his long snout.
For a moment McLevy met his gaze, then both men looked away in some embarrassment.
‘Close your eyes and it might be she will appear,’ said Roach in a rare burst of poetic imagination.
‘Who will?’
‘Your guardian angel. Goodbye,’ was the cryptic response as the lieutenant shut the door to dream of his own heavenly guide who might cure a vicious slice that had appeared lately on the course to plague him.
It might be connected to the fact that Mrs Roach was talking of taking in lodgers. Young men, preferably.
The lieutenant stopped and swung his arms slowly.
A slice was the very devil.
He walked through a swing door; nodded to someone he knew and departed the scene.
McLevy as instructed replaced the tumbler and closed his eyes.
He dozed off into a fragile, broken slumber but mercifully without images thrown up from the deep and later he could have sworn to hear the door click open again.
Surely Lieutenant Roach had not returned to vex him further over protocol?
As he struggled once more back to consciousness he sniffed a vaguely recognised fragrance.
Rosewater maybe?
Did guardian angels use such?
He risked a squint hoping perhaps to see a resplendent be
ing with golden wings, radiance manifesting from every orifice, but instead he saw a woman in a long black coat with what looked like a peacock feather sprouting from her head. It turned out to be stuck upon a fashionable hat.
‘You look a sight,’ said Jean Brash.
McLevy stuck out his lower lip like a little boy.
‘Whit are you doing here?’ he muttered.
‘Lieutenant Roach sent word you were at death’s door. I came to help you through.’
He wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that, but nodded as if it made sense.
Then he remembered something that might take the sour look off her face because they had parted on bad terms last meeting, and Jean, like most women, could hold a grudge till hell froze over.
Behind her, McLevy had just noted, hung up to dry on a stand in the corner, was his greatcoat.
‘Were ye ever a pocket delver?’ he asked.
‘A girl has to live,’ she answered tersely.
He had just about enough strength to raise his arm and point a finger at the coat.
‘Try your skill.’
Jean Brash crossed to the coat and slipped an adroit hand into both outer pockets.
She came up blank but on running her hands like a caress down each side, found a promising bulge, slid her fingers inside, undid the securing flap and the digits emerged holding the pearl necklace; more than a little damp from its ordeal but once carefully dried and lightly caressed with the finest cloth, the delicate greeny black would glow like a panther’s eyes.
Jean’s own green eyes sparkled with delight. This was her treasure beyond all riches; Tahitian pearls she had paid a king’s ransom to own, the seller being a villainous South Sea smuggler who had landed up in Edinburgh because of the number of throats he had cut in exotic climes.
She’d had them certified genuine by no less that the Royal jewellers themselves, cashed in everything she possessed to buy them and sent the smuggler sailing to cut more throats.
The French Empress Eugenie had once owned such a necklace, though the pearls were twice as numerous and twice as big but then she’d had to sell them when the Empire fell.
Twice as big.
But then Eugenie had been an Empress.
Jean was merely a bawdy-hoose keeper.
She had relished wearing the necklace at the Just Land, holding to herself its great value, the subtle unassuming beauty of the gems nuzzling next to her skin.
Her heart had near broken at their loss and now she had them back thanks to this awkward bugger on the bed.
‘Oh James McLevy!’ she exclaimed. ‘You are a wonder of the world!’
He blinked. Women, in his opinion, were often simple creatures. A few wee pearls cheered them up no end.
The peacock plume dipped approvingly as Jean fastened the necklace once more round her neck, safer there than anywhere. Then she came over and sat on the bed facing the inspector who tried to look as if this happened every day.
‘Tell me the story, James?’ she inquired tenderly.
And he did. Keeping it brief for his strength was not great. The salient points, naked backsides glossed over.
She was silent when he concluded but her mind was racing like a blood-horse. Rachel Bryden had obviously worn the necklace because she aped her mistress but luckily the tawdry bitch had not realised the true value or she would have hidden it up the leg of her drawers.
That was to Jean’s good fortune but not quite enough compensation; there was the small matter of Hannah Semple’s injury, now mercifully healed, and Jean’s own humiliation, not healed remotely.
McLevy meanwhile was dying for a cup of coffee but hospitals were not noted for such a remedy.
‘Buenos Aires?’ Jean murmured.
‘Uhuh.’
‘I have a friend there,’ said Jean. ‘She keeps a bordello.’
‘That’s a surprise.’
‘It is a low-class establishment down by the docks, my friend has always enjoyed the rougher end of trade.’
‘Unlike your braw self.’
The inspector must be recovering because he was beginning to look grumpy, but Jean paid it no mind. She would write to her friend who was also in cahoots with some of the most nefarious cut-throats of that lawless community.
The lovers would be found, if not the rest of her jewels. And after that?
‘I shall see about getting Rachel some employment. It is the least I can do.’
Miss Bryden could ply her willowy trade with the scum of the harbour, lascars, pirates, plus the odd slave dealer thrown in.
We’d see how long she kept her looks.
McLevy, exhausted or no, had not been fooled in the slightest by Jean’s apparent philanthropy. There was an evil glint in those green eyes.
‘What about Oliver Garvie, your demon lover?’
‘My friend has another establishment, equally squalid.’
‘For restless women?’
‘For hungry men.’
‘Oh, dear.’
It would seem love’s destination was fraught with woe, and Cupid might count himself lucky not to be in Buenos Aires.
McLevy felt a tide of weariness sweep over him, what was it the bible said?
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
‘I lost my revolver at the harbour,’ he remembered.
‘I’ll find it for you,’ promised Jean.
He nodded, then slid under the clean crisp sheets and brought them up to his nose.
‘I’m off to the Land of Nod,’ he announced, and promptly fell unconscious.
After a few moments he began to snore, another sign that he was returning to himself.
Jean hesitated for a second then bent down and kissed him gently on the brow.
‘Sleep well, James.’
On these words Jean Brash left, checking before she opened the door that her pearls were in place. A girl can’t be too careful.
McLevy slept like a child, a profound and dreamless slumber where his soul travelled to far-flung shores of the psyche and found there, rest and contentment.
For one brief instant, there may have been the merest flicker of Icarus in his mind but it was harmless, promptly banished, and did not reappear.
He was shaken into consciousness some six hours later to perceive not a guardian angel but a small starched figure, uniformed, ramrod straight, who then proceeded to light the lamp beside his bed.
‘I am Nurse Sheekey,’ she announced. ‘Are ye awake?’
‘I am now,’ he muttered.
‘Folk sleep their life away,’ she remarked cuttingly.
The woman bustled to the door and threw a command back just as she exited.
‘Pull yourself up, Mister McLevy. I have something on hand for you.’
Then she was gone and he, hoping that she had not been referring to a purge of some sort, groggily levered himself once more, stuck the pillow behind and sat there like a dog in a kennel, waiting for its bone.
And it duly arrived in the form of a tray with a steaming coffee pot, innumerable lumps of sugar in a bowl, a fine china cup and saucer with a plate of sugar biscuits on the side.
The tray was placed on astounded McLevy’s lap where he sat, then Nurse Sheekey stood back to admire her handiwork.
‘Don’t thank me,’ she declared before he could open his mouth. ‘The nice lady came back and arranged all this. I just heated up the coffee.’
The inspector sniffed at the spout of the pot. It was a Lebanese grinding. Jean Brash.
‘She paid for this single room as well,’ Nurse Sheekey further vouchsafed grimly.
McLevy had puzzled over this previously because he had been sufficiently compos mentis to notice that the room was well appointed, even a vase of flowers at the window.
He had wondered about that because he did not see either Lieutenant Roach or the police authority rising to such generous heights.
Probably why the lieutenant had informed Jean, to spare himself the expense.
‘I was wondering about that,’ he said.
‘Well now ye know.’
With this pithy rejoinder, Nurse Sheekey marched to the door where she turned to address him.
‘Are you James McLevy the thieftaker?’ she asked.
‘I am indeed.’
‘You’re a lucky man.’
On that remark she shut the door and was gone.
Maybe he was a lucky man. He should have known better than try to save his mother, she was dead and gone. Though it was a wound that would never heal.
Leave that be.
He had enjoyed, however, the feeling of freedom as he floated in the water.
Perhaps he would learn how to swim.
Leave that be, also.
James McLevy reached out and with trembling hand, poured the black and sacred liquor into the cup. Four lumps of sugar, a wee nibble on a biscuit to tantalise the taste buds and then?
He raised his cup to Jean Brash, and drank.
And it came to pass that nearly an hour later, the patients of the Leith Hospital, suffering under a variety of ailments, heard, drifting faintly from one of the upper rooms, fragments of a Jacobite melody.
James McLevy danced around the hospital room in his bare feet, nightgown billowing at his calves, fuelled no doubt by three strong draughts of the finest Lebanese, but also a weird elation as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
And as he danced he sang accordingly, lifting a dainty corner of the nightgown to allow the making of a leg.
‘’Twas on a Monday morning,
Right early in the year,
When Charlie came to our town
The Young Chevalier.
Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling,
Charlie is my darling, the Young Chevalier.’
Through the high window where the vase of flowers looked out into the dark, the night sky was clear and as he capered joyfully within, a shooting star fell from heaven to the earth below.
What goes up must come down. That is the nature of things.
But McLevy didn’t give a damn. The case was over.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 8cf84080-c85c-4fdb-b6c4-088c4079d4e1
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 9.6.2012
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