“My pleasure to be of assistance,” George said, lowering his voice so as not to aggravate the woman.
“I must be off now.”
“Shall I bring you the books tomorrow? The ones I spoke of earlier?”
“But tomorrow is Saturday,” Hamilton replied. “Surely you’re not open?”
“Quite right—I had forgotten. I can meet you somewhere at your convenience.”
“Well, I . . .”
“What about the White Hart Inn? They do a fair steak and kidney pie.”
Hamilton studied him for a moment as though sizing him up, and then nodded. “Very well—shall we say around seven?”
“Capital. I shall bring the books.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pearson. I am in your debt.”
“Think nothing of it. Until tomorrow, then.”
He watched the detective walk away, lost in thought—no doubt thinking about the case. A regular chap, George thought, and a damn fine-looking fellow, if a bit absentminded. Oh, well, perhaps he, too, would be preoccupied if he were trying to solve a murder case. A thrill of adventure shot through his spine as he turned to shelve a pile of books in the stacks. His life had never been particularly exciting, but he saw his future unfolding before him like a beautiful pink blossom—sweet, soft, and inviting.
He hummed a little tune as he slid the books into their proper places. The sharp-faced woman glared at him, and George had an impulse to stick his tongue out at her. Instead, he smiled sweetly and gave a little nod. He could afford to be gracious—after all, he was about to aid in the capture of a murderer. For the first time in his life, George Pearson felt truly important.
As he stood lost in dreams of an exciting future, a clean-cut young man with pale eyes slipped into the room and slid into a chair at one of the long tables, across from the sharp-faced woman. Looking up from her copy of Shield, the Anti-Contagious Diseases Acts Association’s weekly circular, she couldn’t help gazing at his arresting face and elegant clothes. The look he gave back cut through her like a blade. She shivered and drew her wool cardigan close, returning to her magazine. When she looked up again, he was gone.
CHAPTER NINE
“Why bother t’strangle someone if you’re gonnae push ’em off a cliff anyway?” Sergeant Dickerson panted, struggling to catch up as they clambered up the hardscrabble path to the top of Arthur’s Seat late Friday afternoon.
“Excellent question, Sergeant,” Ian replied, leaning into the sharp wind blowing in from the Firth of Forth. The sky was threatening, the clouds glowering darkly overhead, but the rain had retreated, at least for the time being.
“The fall alone would kill a bloke,” Dickerson continued, breathing heavily.
“It is curious,” Ian said, slowing his stride. For every one of his steps, Dickerson took two, and Ian took pity on him—the sergeant was panting heavily as he trundled behind. “Perhaps this killer had a need to strangle his victim.”
“An’ maybe he thought th’ fall would disguise the cause of death,” Dickerson said, squinting against a gust of wind that nearly blew his cap off his head, “makin’ it look like suicide.”
“Or the place had some symbolic significance for the killer, beyond providing a convenient way to dispose of the body.”
“Pity there were no witnesses,” the sergeant called out over the increasingly stiff wind. “I s’pose that’s because it were nasty day for a walk.”
Ignoring the barb—this was hardly an ideal day, either—Ian contemplated Dickerson’s remark. Did the killer bank on that fact, knowing that on a rainy day, few people were likely to scale this trail for the love of it? Or was he simply lucky? Ian still wasn’t sure if it was a premeditated crime or one of opportunity, though he leaned toward the former.
“Sir,” said Dickerson, “what d’you s’pose DCI Crawford meant when he said we ‘deserved each other’?”
“He was just having his fun,” Ian said, picking his way around a stone cairn someone had placed in the trail. He shivered a little—cairns always reminded him of tombstones, used since prehistoric times as grave markers.
“I don’ s’pose it were a compliment, then?”
“The chief inspector has a lot on his mind, and that makes him irritable.”
“Aye,” said Dickerson. “D’you think he planned this all owt, sir? The murderer, I mean?”
“I don’t know, Sergeant.”
“But why strangulation, sir? Why not just push the poor blighter and be done wi’ it? He’d be right dead enough either way.”
“Perhaps the answer will help lead us to the motive,” Ian suggested, “and if we’re lucky, maybe even the killer.”
Dickerson paused beside a windblown gorse bush, hands resting on his knees. He removed his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead.
“You might want to step up your fitness regimen, Sergeant,” Ian said, pulling a canteen of water from his rucksack and handing it to him.
Dickerson drank deeply before returning it. “Right you are, sir,” he said gamely, settling his cap back on his head. “You seem quite well prepared—d’ye hike often?”
“I’ve been known to roam a glen or two.” Ian’s longing for the mossy green hills and deep valleys of his native Highlands had only grown stronger with time. The landscape of Lothian had its appeal, but nothing could compare with the stark grandeur of Invernesshire. His desk was full of fevered, passionate poems scribbled late at night when he was seized by fits of longing—odes to the romance and beauty of the Highlands. His nostalgia was deepened by the memory of those early days as a time when all was right between his parents. The trouble came later; in his mind, it was synonymous with the move to Edinburgh.
“What do you s’pose he used—the killer, I mean?” said Dickerson.
“Any number of weapons might be used in strangulation: a cravat, a belt, a scarf. Your hands might do the trick, provided you were strong enough, but he preferred to use a ligature.”
“So does it mean he were weak—or jes prepared?” said Dickerson.
“Another excellent question. Stephen Wycherly’s attire suggests he wasn’t expecting a vigorous climb. He was dressed for the office.”
“I wonder what lured ’im up ’ere?” Dickerson mused.
“Another key question,” said Ian. “We’ll make a detective out of you yet, Sergeant.”
Glancing at the rapidly darkening sky, Ian quickened his pace. Night would soon be upon them, the February sun barely pulling itself from its slumber before slouching back to bed. Pushing onward, they climbed the final stretch to the summit, the wind whipping their shins like an angry dog. The only vegetation up here was ground cover like gorse and heather, brittle and brown in the wintry air.
To the northeast, the Firth of Forth glimmered dimly in the fading light; below them lay the sweeping rise of the Salisbury Crags. Beyond their rocky slopes, the spires of the city reached skyward into the dim twilight as the gaslights went on, one by one. Pockets of yellow light glimmered in the gathering darkness as Edinburgh’s “leeries,” or lamplighters, tended to their evening duty.
“Where d’you s’pose he were standin’ when he were pushed?” said Dickerson, coming to stand beside Ian on the windswept hillside.
“The body was found directly below here. Look around and see if you spot something. Look sharp, Sergeant—anything at all.”
“Right you are, sir,” Dickerson replied, and began dutifully scouring the area, bent over, nose close to the ground, like a ginger-haired bird dog on a scent.
Ian did the same, peering at the ground for anything unusual or out of place. A sense of stillness descended upon him, as it often did around dusk, a feeling at odds with the knowledge that a murder had taken place upon this spot. Just when he was beginning to think the entire expedition was foolish, Dickerson called out to him.
“Sir! Over here!”
Ian hurried over to where he stood, on the other side of the stony promontory. “What is it, Sergeant?”
“There
.” He pointed to the ground.
Ian peered at the spot indicated. Something in the muddy ground caught his eye. Plucking it out of the dirt, he held it up so Dickerson could see it.
“The missing button, sir?”
It was indeed the matching leather button missing from Stephen Wycherly’s jacket.
“Well done! We’ve been rewarded more than I hoped for,” Ian said, tucking the button into his rucksack as a few drops of rain leaked from the sky. “We’d better be off—I have a feeling the heavens are going to open up again.”
His prediction was accurate. They had hardly gone a hundred yards when a clap of thunder shook the skies and a deluge of biblical proportions loosed itself upon the citizens of Edinburgh. By the time they reached the foot of Arthur’s Seat, both men were drenched to the skin. Ian sent Dickerson home in a hansom cab, though it was a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.
When Hamilton reached his own flat on Victoria Terrace, the first thing he did was draw a deep, hot bath. He dragged himself out of it, too tired to eat, and threw himself into bed, where he dreamed of a dusky hillside populated by two faceless men locked in mortal combat at the edge of a precipice. The harder he tried to make out their faces, the more inscrutable they became. He tried to call to them, but no sound came from his throat.
He awoke to a great clap of thunder, jolting him into sudden alertness. Dragging himself from bed, he padded to the kitchen and brewed a cup of tea. He sat with it in front of the cold grate in the parlor, inhaling its warmth, while the storm raged outside his windows. As jagged streaks of lightning surged across the sky, his hands found paper and pencil. Still lost halfway between the world of dreaming and waking, he scribbled a few lines of poetry.
Crossing the Canongate
Ancient footsteps echo through corners of a town
accustomed to bloodshed
Suffering carved into paving stones
The cries of victims seep from its fortressed walls
falling like rain upon sleeping inhabitants
unwary and snug in their deep unknowing
His breathing relaxed as he wrote—committing his darkest thoughts to paper always seemed to ease his mind. Ian sat with his tea until the thunder and lightning subsided, slowly giving way to the steady thrumming of rain upon the rooftops. Returning to bed, he fell asleep to the rhythmic pounding of rain, sliding into a deep, dreamless slumber.
CHAPTER TEN
Bobby Tierney was ready for a fight. Stepping into the early winter twilight from his tiny flat on the London Road, he took a deep breath of fetid air and swaggered down the street, his head ringing with a thirst for violence. He was twenty-three, a member of Edinburgh’s vast underclass of the underpaid, underfed, and overworked, and his limited brain contained but one desire on this fetid Friday: to pound someone. Anyone would do—Bobby held no particular personal grudges, only overriding malice toward all. His body surged with the kinetic energy of a young man in his fighting prime, in the most dangerous of circumstances—he had nowhere to go, no money to spend, and no one to check his wilder impulses. He had only his fists for entertainment, and tonight was not the first on which he had sauntered forth looking for trouble. He usually found it—in Edinburgh, trouble was not hard to find.
Robert James Tierney was an Irishman, part of the vast, desperate diaspora that dumped citizens of the Emerald Isle on the shores of any country that would take them during the devastating potato blight of the 1840s. In Ireland, it was referred to as simply the Great Famine, and those too poor to afford transatlantic passage to America tumbled onto boats headed for neighboring Scotland—only to find that country suffering its own crisis from a similar disaster in the Highlands. Proud sons of farmers whose families had tended the same land for generations streamed into the cities, inspiring anti-Irish sentiments from resentful Scots who feared their livelihood would be snatched by invading hordes of Hibernians.
Bobby was just about fed up with the attitude of the citizens of Edinburgh, as well as the squalor of life in “Little Ireland,” the warren of crumbling and crowded tenements along the Cowgate. A good fight would clear the air, and clear his head, he thought as he strode into the center of the Old Town, headed for the Hound and Hare, where the ceilings were low, the conversation loud, and the beer flowed freely. He was sure to find some kindred souls there—angry young men spoiling for a brawl.
He threw open the door to the sound of alcohol-fueled conversation, laughter, and the clinking of glassware. The voices were loud and coarse, overwhelmingly male, the beer mugs thick and sturdy, made to survive long nights of heavy drinking. He looked around for his mate Mickey, a bullet-headed Irishman from Dublin with a foul mouth and a talent for head butting. Spotting him at the other side of the room, Bobby began shouldering his way through the press of bodies. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and beery breath, and Bobby’s eyes burned as he pushed his way toward his friend.
He felt his foot tread upon another person’s, and before he could see who owned the offended appendage, a hand clamped hard upon his shoulder. He turned and looked into the coldest pair of eyes he had ever seen. Anger Bobby could understand—rage smoldered in his own gut, an unquenchable flame born of injustice and social inequality. But these eyes did not burn with anger; they seemed to be of pure blue ice, immoveable as a frozen lake.
Before Bobby could murmur an apology, the man leaned in to him and whispered in his ear. “Meet me out back.”
In spite of the din of the room, Bobby heard his words as clearly as if they had been etched in glass. There was something chilling in the man’s controlled tone. He didn’t seem to be especially upset, yet the words he spoke . . . Did he want to fight, or was this about something else? In any case, Bobby was ready for a fight, even though not yet primed with ale. So much the better, he thought; his reflexes would be keener, while his opponent’s would be slowed by alcohol.
He waved at his friend Mickey, who had caught his eye and was gesturing madly for Bobby to join him. Ignoring the puzzled look on his friend’s face, Bobby slipped through the crowd and out the side entrance. The pub was separated from its neighboring buildings by an alley—one of Edinburgh’s many wynds and closes—a wynd being wide enough to accommodate a cart, whereas a close was an even narrower passageway. This one was a close, judging by the distance between its stone walls, which felt barely wide enough to contain Bobby’s broad shoulders.
The thick stone walls filtered out much of the noise of the pub, the street curiously quiet as Bobby turned into the narrow passageway. The rain had temporarily abated, leaving only a thin, steady drip of water from the eaves into a rain barrel at the back of the building. The sound was rhythmic and mesmerizing—plunk, plink, plunk, plink—and somehow ominous. Somewhere a dog howled. A tightening in Bobby’s stomach and constriction in his throat sounded a warning in his head.
Bobby considered turning back. He might have returned to the pub, claiming to himself that the allure of alcohol was stronger than the need for a fight. But he did not turn back. He took a deep breath as he reached the end of the alleyway and turned the corner into the dimly lit rear of the building. He had come out tonight for a fight, and a fight he would have.
It was the last mistake he would ever make.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Derek McNair was in a bad mood. His friend Freddie Cubbins was late—again. Derek could see the faint glow of dawn in the eastern sky over Holyrood Palace. If the boys were to gather a decent Saturday breakfast from the rubbish bins behind Edinburgh’s restaurants and pubs, it was best to start early, before they had been picked over by the city’s army of street urchins and other vagrants. The storm that had pounded the city all night was lifting, the cobblestones glistening from days of rain.
Derek paced back and forth in front of the Tron Kirk, their appointed meeting spot, hands shoved into his makeshift trousers—a pair of men’s work pants, far too large for him, clasped round his thin waist with a piece of twine he had s
tolen from a ragpicker’s wheelbarrow. His shoes were equally ill-fitting, being several sizes too large, but they were thick-soled and in good condition. He had come by them through the Sisters of Charity’s annual jumble sale; he found if he lingered until the sale was nearly over, the nuns would take pity on him and give him free clothing—and cakes if he was lucky.
His short woolen jacket and cloth cap were also from the nuns; Derek’s clean features and keen, dark eyes made him a favorite of the more softhearted members of the gentler sex. He had learned what expressions to assume in order to wring pity and compassion from them, what to say, and how to say it. Indeed, there were many things a clever boy of ten might glean from a life on the streets.
Other boys of his age might have pondered the irony of living in a city boasting not one but two palaces scarcely a mile from each other and yet being forced to pick through trash bins in search of food. But Derek McNair was a practical sort of boy, not given to philosophizing or bemoaning his fate. His father was a drunkard and his mother a prostitute, and that’s all there was to it. He had never known a stable home or a new pair of trousers, so he couldn’t miss what he had never had. At least, that was the way Derek presented himself to the ragged set of urchins who also slept in alleys and doorways, living off what they could beg, borrow, or steal. If what went on in his head in quieter moments was somewhat more complex, he knew better than to share it.
Derek looked up and down the street, fingering the smooth stone in his pocket. He always kept a stone in his pocket. He never knew when it might be useful—in a fight, for breaking a shop window, or tossed to distract a fruit seller while plucking an apple from his cart. But mostly he kept it because he liked to roll it between his fingers when he was agitated or nervous.
He peered down the street again, but the only person in sight was Cob, the milkman, making his rounds with his big chestnut, Timothy. Derek liked Cob—he sometimes gave the boy a cup of milk in exchange for holding the reins—but the boy liked Timothy even more. Derek had a way with horses. When he stole apples, he would try to nab two—one for Timothy—and slip the horse the juicy treat while he held the reins as Cob delivered milk to his customers.
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