by David Ashton
‘Did you also see the dead man?’
‘Alive. And only for a moment.’
‘Recognise him – from the past, say?’
‘We have no past here. Not long arrived in your fair city, sir.’
Magnus’s face was open and friendly with no shadow in his eyes. His teeth flashed in a winning smile, shining like moonlit tombstones.
‘I have just been to your Tanfield Hall to arrange for Sophia’s mesmeric demonstration. Facilities are excellent. A splendid establishment.’
‘Aye. It’ll do her proud,’ said McLevy dryly. ‘It’s where the Great Schism took place.’
‘Schism?’
‘The Church divided. A long story.’
‘Then I must leave it with you.’
‘Aye,’ said McLevy dryly. ‘Ye have your own religion.’
‘Indeed we do. This will be the last demonstration, and the day after we will sadly take our leave from your Bonnie Scotland.’
Conan Doyle’s face fell. Sophia had made no mention of such.
‘Where do you travel, sir?’ he asked.
‘A short tour of Europe and then…America calls! We must spread the gospel in our own land.’
‘Have ye no’ spread it already?’ McLevy asked.
‘The seeds have been scattered. Now we must reap the harvest.’
Having divested himself of this arable metaphor and noted Doyle’s crestfallen air, Bannerman shook his mane of hair with added vigour.
‘Well, you must excuse me, gentlemen. Supper calls, and Miss Adler has a keen appetite which must be satisfied.’
For a moment there was the slightest hint of earthy satisfaction in his eyes and then he bounded up the hotel stairs without a backward glance, leaving a trace of the damp evening air like a spoor of sorts.
‘Did ye notice aught about Mister Bannerman?’ McLevy asked almost idly, while part of his senses concentrated on something else.
‘I noticed many things,’ replied Conan Doyle somewhat stiffly.
‘I’m talking about murder.’
Doyle thought for a moment, recalling the whole exchange in every detail.
‘The killing,’ he said slowly. ‘It hardly seemed to register with him.’
‘Uhuh. Most folk, even at second or third hand, are impacted by murder, even a medicinal ghoul like yourself, but Mister Bannerman sailed on past. Unaffected. As if he’d just wiped it off the slate.’
McLevy sniffed and seemed in no hurry to move.
‘What do you conclude?’ asked Doyle.
‘Some folk avoid death like the pestilence. Could be as simple as that.’
This cryptic statement made, McLevy began to go but Doyle had a question of his own which had been niggling at him for a length of time; but he was almost afraid of the answer and so had long delayed the query.
‘What Seth Moxey implied about Mistress Grierson. Do you believe it to have credence?’
‘Seth had no reason to lie. Silver Sam did. He was shielding her.’
McLevy took a last sniff.
‘It’s aye a mistake tae protect women. They’re perfectly capable of fending for themselves.’
By this time they were out in the street and both men fell silent for different reasons.
Conan Doyle because, if what the inspector said was true, then Mister Grant had performed a gallant act, though perhaps the circumstances were a little on the sordid side. Also it meant that Muriel Grierson was part of that seamy situation.
Being around the inspector seemed to provoke complexity of motive and behaviour. Nothing could be trusted but by God it was fascinating stuff.
McLevy meantime was processing the faint odour that Magnus Bannerman had left behind with the evening damp.
A pomade with a sweet smell, though so faded it was like an impression rather than reality.
But it might possibly match the aroma he remembered from the murder scene.
And Bannerman’s hair was dark in colour. That matched also. And long. You could even say wavy.
Nothing you might lay before a judge, and the faintest of indicators; most likely a figment of wishful imagination.
A straw in the wind.
But he began to whistle nevertheless as he and Big Arthur walked down the street together.
Who knows? This large lump beside him might yet be a lucky charm.
‘Charlie is my darling, the young Chevalier.’
26
A strong nor-easter’s blowing, Bill;
Hark! Don’t ye hear it blow now!
Lord help ’em, how I pities them
Unhappy folks on shore now!
WILLIAM PITT, ‘The Sailor’s Consolation’
Lieutenant Roach was waiting like a lighthouse keeper when McLevy walked slowly into the station.
The inspector had much on his mind. Fragments of thought, half-remembered scraps of conversation, an odd nagging feeling that he had missed something somewhere, some connection. But his mind was cloudy, possibly to do with the fact that he had forgotten to eat since his breakfast cup of coffee. The inspector had been tempted to call in at his favourite tavern the Auld Ship for a bowl of sheep’s heid broth but denied himself the relief because he felt he had prevaricated long enough.
Accordingly he ignored his rumbling belly, bade goodbye to Conan Doyle, promising the great deductor that he would keep him in mind for future developments or if he ran out of inspiration, and trudged back to face the music.
The tune was not as expected.
Roach being often dragged to the opera by his culture fanatic of a wife, McLevy had braced himself for a full-blooded aria of remonstrance backed up by a wailing chorus of constables.
But no such thing.
In fact a wintry smile of sorts, which immediately alerted the inspector that something was lurking.
Something up the sleeve.
‘Well, well,’ Roach announced to the world at large. ‘The native returns. Wandering Willie.’
A reference to Willie Steenson, the blind fiddler who narrates the tale in Redgauntlet. A story of abject failure; Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites scarcely covering themselves in glory.
‘It aye amazes me how familiar you are wi’ the works of Wattie Scott, sir. I bow before such erudition.’
‘Sir Walter Scott paid his debts and did his bounden duty,’ replied Roach to the other’s sally. ‘Would that we all performed so.’
Out of the corner of his eye, McLevy saw Mulholland emerge from the direction of the cells and almost leap in the air at the sight of his inspector.
Was it a jump for joy? Or a guilty start?
‘I take it all the prisoners I sent are locked away safe and sound?’ he asked, trying to decipher the enigmatic smile on his lieutenant’s physiognomy.
Whatever was up the sleeve was tickling the bugger pink.
‘All safe and sound,’ replied Roach. ‘With a few additions.’
McLevy ignored the invitation to bite at that trailing hook. Mulholland had busied himself at the front desk with Sergeant Murdoch, which was an act suspicious in itself.
‘Ye didnae lodge Samuel Grant wi’ the Moxey gang, I trust?’
‘Not at all. Constable Mulholland and I, in consultation with Ballantyne, have arranged the cells to what I am sure will be your satisfaction.’
‘Full tae the brim, I’m sure,’ muttered McLevy.
‘Oh…always room for one more.’
Another hook unbitten.
‘Well, well,’ said Roach, almost hugging his thin arms about his immaculately uniformed self. ‘Have you made progress with the Morrison crime?’
‘Things are on the move,’ McLevy said, hoping he didn’t have to go into too much detail. ‘Shifting.’
‘I hope so,’ replied Roach. ‘Ballantyne!’
The lieutenant, having bawled out the name as if to draw the attention of everyone in the station, carried on talking as the constable rose above his midden of a desk like Venus from the waves and came eagerly in respons
e, his mark of birth pulsing with excitement.
‘Because inspector,’ Roach continued. ‘We have another murder on hand but, unlike yourself, Constable Ballantyne has brought in the guilty party.’
Ballantyne caught the tail end of that remark and didn’t know where to put himself.
‘Another murder?’
‘The body lies in the cold room.’
Roach waved a hand at the constable as if inviting contribution.
‘I was on patrol,’ said Ballantyne, in what he hoped was a formal tone of report. ‘I found him dead. On the floor. Wi’ a knife stuck in him, inspector. Stuck right in.’
‘Did you touch it?’
‘Aye. I pulled it out.’
‘Why?’
‘In case he was still alive. Ye never know.’
McLevy closed his eyes for a moment.
‘Did ye do anything else, Ballantyne?’
‘Aye, I blew my whistle. Naebody stole it this time.’
Ballantyne stood proudly and the inspector just didn’t have the heart to tell him that he should have left the damned knife in the damned body.
McLevy marched away from both lieutenant and constable to the cold room door which he wrenched open.
Then he stopped.
A body indeed lay on the slab.
Logan Galloway had not been handsome in life and death marked no improvement.
His long horsey countenance faced mournfully towards the ceiling, the eyes shut, the mouth closed and his thin corpse made little impression under the covering as if shrinking already into oblivion.
McLevy twitched the sheet aside to reveal a neat wound on the right hand side of the waxy body.
‘Between the third and fourth back rib,’ Roach announced from behind, having followed with Ballantyne tagging along. ‘Straight into the heart. We await Doctor Jarvis for further elucidation.’
Jarvis was the police surgeon, a man McLevy did not admire and who more than returned the compliment.
The good doctor had examined the Morrison cadaver and come to the profound conclusion that the murder weapon was the poker and the force used excessive.
‘He’ll be on his second bottle of claret by this time,’ McLevy rejoined, bending over the cadaver, which, other than the wound, seemed remarkably untouched.
‘Drunk or sober,’ Roach said grimly, his face changing to reflect an inner resolution. ‘He does his job. What more can you ask of a man?’
The murder weapon lay on a shelf, also waiting for the doctor’s visit. McLevy picked it up and slid the blade gently into the wound. Fitted well enough. Slid in, slid out.
Professionally executed.
As the inspector put the knife back and replaced the sheet, Roach finished his train of thought.
‘And now inspector, you must do yours.’
‘My job?’
‘Indeed.’
‘That’s no great exertion. Whit I’m paid for.’
McLevy caught a glimpse of ironic amusement in his lieutenant’s eyes, plus a keen curiosity as to how his inspector would play out the hand.
‘Ballantyne,’ said Roach, quietly, ‘you have acquitted yourself well, so far as becomes an officer of the law. Now show the inspector the fruits of your labour.’
‘The guilty party?’ asked McLevy.
‘Red-handed,’ Roach replied with a lopsided smile.
McLevy followed the embarrassed Ballantyne who found the idea of leading his inspector anywhere excruciating, especially through the station where it seemed every eye was upon them.
As they passed Mulholland he murmured, ‘I have the interview room entirely prepared, sir.’
The inspector grunted in annoyance. All this secrecy was getting on his nerves; who did they have in there, Pope Leo the Eighth?
He followed Ballantyne, not to the main cell quarter but to a door which led to a smaller, more secluded part of the jail for the more delicate, highborn prisoners.
Perhaps it was the Pope.
Ballantyne went ahead inside and then pointed vaguely at someone who rested behind bars.
‘There ye are, sir,’ he announced. ‘Found on the scene. Recumbent.’
But unless the supreme pontiff had red hair, green eyes and female form, McLevy had guessed wrong.
‘Jean Brash,’ he said softly.
She had been lying down on a hard bunk, sleeping or pretending so.
The Mistress of the Just Land behind bars.
A sight to behold.
No wonder the lieutenant was laughing up his sleeve.
27
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
JOHN MILTON, Aereopagetica
McLevy and Mulholland had broken many suspects in the interview room.
It was a cold, bare chamber with incriminating smears on the walls; the only furniture was a single unsteady table, which had been hammered on so many times by the inspector’s fist that the legs splayed and were almost coming off their mastic moorings.
Two chairs of the same ilk faced each other under and across the table. Jean Brash, composed enough but a little shaken from events so far, sat in one of them.
McLevy was in the other with Mulholland occupying the usual place, leaning against the wall by the door.
He and the inspector swapped positions, depending on the suspect. This time there had been a tacit assumption that McLevy would be a close, if not intimate, interrogator.
For this was no normal interrogation.
It was a well known fact that McLevy and Jean Brash were companions in coffee and rumour had it more than that in past times, though Mulholland had never seen evidence of such. But there was an undeniable connection.
She was queen bee of Leith and McLevy was king of the streets. A compromised royalty between them.
Whether love or congress had ever taken place, was no business of anyone’s save the two who faced each other.
So far the interview had been conducted in a civilised manner; Jean had calmly explained the circumstances right up until, according to her version, the lights went out.
‘I was hit on the head, that’s all I know,’ she ended the tale. Then I woke up and saw that boy’s face staring down at me. Poor soul.’
‘Poor soul?’ asked the inspector.
‘Wi’ that mark on him.’
‘We all have them. Some show, some don’t.’
Jean made no response to that portentous statement but unconsciously her hand massaged at the nape of the neck.
‘Aye, you’ve a wee bruise on the back belfry,’ said McLevy brusquely. ‘But nothing that would contradict the known facts.’
Mulholland altered position at the door as if he had received a hidden signal.
‘And what are these facts?’ Jean asked quietly.
‘You and Galloway quarrelled, the knife was drawn, he turned to flee –’
‘You stuck him in the rear side, direct into the vital organs,’ Mulholland chimed in, coming away from the wall, while McLevy stood up from his chair.
A well-worn routine but no less effective for all that.
‘Your hand was smeared with blood,’ McLevy stated.
‘Galloway’s blood,’ from Mulholland.
‘With his dying breath he lashed out.’
‘Knocked you over. You hit your head. Down and out.’
‘Until Ballantyne found you. Lucky that,’ said the inspector.
‘Lucky? I don’t see how,’ Jean muttered. She was beginning to develop a savage neck ache and these two big baw-faced policemen looming over her did not help.
‘Lucky for us, Mistress Brash. The unconscious part,’ answered Mulholland.
‘Otherwise you’d have retrieved the knife and made off, free as a bird,’ the inspector added.
‘But not this time,’ Mulholland ventured.
McLevy put his hands on the table and leaned in towards Jean to emphasise the words.
<
br /> ‘This time, you’ve come to earth.’
Jean clasped her own hands in front of her like a pious churchgoer and looked coolly into McLevy’s grim face.
‘I deny everything you say.’
He swung away as if in disbelief at her bare-faced repudiation and Mulholland took over the frame.
‘We checked the house. Belonged to a crony of Galloway’s. For their wild rants and suchlike. Why were you there, Mistress Brash?’
‘I told you. He wrote me a letter. To meet together.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps he wished…to apologise.’
‘Where is this letter?’
Jean closed her eyes for a moment trying to concentrate her very being; the ground was sliding beneath her feet.
‘In my…travelling bag.’
McLevy spoke, examining one of the smears on the wall, back turned as if he had lost interest.
‘I took the liberty of examining the contents of your reticule. There is no such thing.’
‘You rifled my belongings?’
‘You are in custody now. You belong tae us.’
‘Anyone else see this disappearing letter?’ asked Mulholland sceptically.
Jean sighed. ‘No.’
‘And you went tae meet this man on your own?’ McLevy said to the smear. ‘No Hannah Semple? No Angus?’
‘They were busy, and I can look after myself.’
‘That’s what it looks like,’ Mulholland commented. ‘What with your knife planted in his corpse.’
‘Things are not always what they seem. He may well have been dead when I arrived.’
‘You couldn’t see?’
‘The room was dark.’
Jean sighed again. It wasn’t so much a matter of how she had got into the mess; there had been time to think on the hard bunk and she had a deep suspicion about who was behind all this. The problem was how to get out of it.
There was nothing she could do stuck in jail and Hannah Semple, redoubtable though she might be, did not have the wherewithal to untangle this web of deceit.
