The Unbelievers

by Alastair Sim

  Looking around, he saw that while most of the clients were in the simple outfits of sailors or stevedores there were a handful of gentlemen. As he reached the bar he looked to the right and his eye briefly caught the squinting gaze of a moustached gentleman in evening dress, his arm round the waist of slim, blond young man in a white calico shirt.

  Damn, thought Allerdyce, it’s Jarvis. By some bizarre misfortune Inspector Jarvis of the City of Edinburgh Police, the man who’d informed on Sergeant Baird and who ‘always got his man’ whether or not the accused was innocent, was in the same bar at the same time.

  Allerdyce turned round to McGillivray.

  “Get out of here now,” whispered Allerdyce. “It’s for your own safety. I’ll explain later.”

  “No,” said McGillivray, standing still behind Allerdyce.

  “Please, just go,” said Allerdyce. “You could lose your job if you stay. I can make enquiries on my own.”

  “Sir,” whispered McGillivray, “I believe you may be in grave danger here. I choose to stay.”

  Allerdyce looked along the bar. Jarvis had disappeared, but he couldn’t be far away.

  He ordered two whiskies and passed one back to the sergeant.

  “I’m looking for Willie Burns,” he shouted to the barman. “I was told I might find him here.”

  The barman winked at him peculiarly, then glanced at a sailor who was standing three places along to the left at the bar, his tattooed arm muscles bulging prominently below the short sleeves of his sailor’s shirt.

  The sailor pressed his way through the crush to stand alongside Allerdyce. He put his arm around Allerdyce’s waist.

  “Looking for Willie Burns are you?”

  “Yes.”

  Allerdyce tried to shift his body from the sailor’s grip, but found himself clasped tighter.

  “You’re in the right place. There’s a lot of gentlemen looking for willie here and you’ve just found it.”

  He kissed Allerdyce on the cheek.

  “For a guinea you can have whatever you like, all night. I’m yours.”

  “You misunderstand me,” said Allerdyce, struggling against the sailor’s vice-like grip.

  McGillivray was standing immediately behind the sailor. He put his arm around the sailor’s neck and squeezed. Allerdyce heard a throttled sound from the sailor’s throat and felt a haze of spittle on his face. The sailor fell gasping to the floor.

  Allerdyce felt his arms clasped by McGillivray and his feet lifted from the floor as the sergeant pushed him through the crowd towards the door. He was thrust past the doorman into the darkness and landed at Warner’s feet.

  “I did try to warn you,” said Warner as Allerdyce picked himself out of the dirt.

  McGillivray had turned back. He pushed the doorman aside and stood in the doorway as the sailor, now with a bottle in his hand, rushed at him. He waited until the sailor was practically upon him before punching him hard in the face, sending him flying back into the crowded bar.

  “Run, sir,” said the sergeant, coming back into the darkness.

  “Follow me,” said Warner.

  As they started to run, going back through the arch and onto the Shore, they heard angry voices behind them. They doubled left then right, before Warner led them up some tenement stairs.

  “Where are you taking us?” gasped Allerdyce.

  “I don’t think they saw us come up here,” panted Warner. “I think they’ll run past.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  McGillivray stationed himself below them on the narrow stairs. The angry voices below them grew louder, then more distant. Allerdyce found himself starting to breathe more easily.

  “Do I get my two pounds now?” asked Warner.

  Allerdyce’s look was entirely wasted on the valet in the darkness.

  Chapter 7

  Allerdyce had only been at work for ten minutes, his head aching from last night’s drinking and his shoulder and back aching from a night spent twisting and turning on the sofa after being thrown out of the public house, when he was summoned to see Burgess.

  As he entered the Superintendent’s office he wondered whether Jarvis had already spoken to him. Maybe he was about to be dismissed as summarily as Sergeant Baird.

  He stood in front of the great teak desk while the Superintendent sat with his head in his hands looking at some papers. His face was invisible, apart from the lined forehead which receded back towards his tight black curls. After thirty seconds Burgess looked up at him, and Allerdyce saw his superior’s face, its complexion ruddier than he had ever seen it.

  “The Duke of Dornoch,” said Burgess.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have we found him yet?”

  “No sir. I spent yesterday making enquiries and have found some leads. As yet, I have not physically located the missing person.”

  “Missing person? Blast, Allerdyce, can’t you just leave your misplaced egalitarianism out of this? We are looking for the richest man in Scotland, a personal friend of the Lord Advocate, the Secretary for Scotland, the Chief Constable, and of anyone else who may choose to kick us arse over tip down the Canongate if he comes to any harm. He’s not just a missing person, he’s our personal nemesis if we don’t find him.”

  “I will be pursuing further enquiries today, sir.”

  “You bloody better had. I’ve already had a message this morning from the Duchess enquiring about our progress. I don’t have much to say to her, do I?”

  “You can say that we conducted enquiries right into the night.”

  “I suppose that’s something. If you can find the old sod I don’t care how you do it.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  “If anyone can find him, Allerdyce, I believe you can. But God help us all if he comes to any harm.”

  Dismissed, Allerdyce walked back to his room. His relief that Burgess had done no worse than bark at him faded when he saw Inspector Jarvis standing in the corridor.

  “Come into my office for a second,” said Jarvis.

  Allerdyce went in. Jarvis checked up and down the corridor to see whether anyone else was around then entered and shut the door. The two men stood facing each other.

  Allerdyce felt his pulse race. If the Chief Constable thought either he or Jarvis were frequenting places of ill repute – on the Sabbath of all days – without good cause they’d be finished. He tried to calm his breathing, reasoning that Jarvis was the one who should worry since he didn’t have any obvious police reason for being in the sailors’ bar. But it felt as if each of them had their hands round the other’s neck.

  “I don’t think we need to say any more about last night, do we, Allerdyce?”

  “No.”

  “I was conducting a clandestine investigation, of course. I presume that you and your man were doing likewise.”

  That’ll be right thought Allerdyce, remembering Jarvis’s embrace of the blond youth.

  “Yes.”

  “So we understand each other then, Allerdyce? In the current climate merely visiting such places on business can give rise to mistaken inferences. But we can’t all afford to be holy if we’re going to do this job. Neither of us will have any occasion to mention it to the Chief, will we?”

  “No, Jarvis.”

  “Fine. I appreciate your discretion. It’s so important that we can trust each other.”

  Jarvis opened the door and Allerdyce left. Going down the corridor he looked back and saw that Jarvis was standing looking at him. Trust, he thought. Not a word that sits easily with Inspector Allan Jarvis.

  He walked down the stairs into the duty room. Sergeant McGillivray was sitting in uniform at his small desk. Three constables were hanging around waiting for their orders – one of them sitting on a hard chair reading a newspaper, another polishing his boots and a third studying the noticeboard. At the far side of the room the desk sergeant, Henderson, was leaning against the public counter filling in a ledger while he waited for business.
r />   “A word in my office please, Sergeant McGillivray.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The sergeant followed him back up the stairs to Allerdyce’s cramped office. Allerdyce shimmied neatly between the filing cabinets and his desk and sat down. The sergeant stood to attention on the other side.

  “Please, Sergeant, take a seat.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And thank you, Sergeant, for your courage last night.”

  “No more than my duty, sir.”

  “But our Duke is still missing.”

  “I was thinking, sir. If we could find the telegram which the Duke received before he disappeared we might learn something.”

  “Yes. I was thinking the same.”

  “Failing that, sir, I suppose we’ll have to spend another night in bad company in Leith.”

  “Perhaps, Sergeant. But before we pursue either course there is one other enquiry I want to make.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “I’m afraid it’s an enquiry I have to make entirely alone.”

  Allerdyce got down from the omnibus at Stockbridge. He looked over his shoulder as the driver whipped the horses and the wheels rumbled away over the cobbles. There was no reason why anyone should be following him, but the chance encounter with Jarvis last night had shaken him. He was relieved to see no-one he recognised.

  He crossed the Water of Leith – running fresh and clear here as it tumbled out of the Dean gorge three miles upstream from the mills and harbour of Leith – and walked under the trees of its left bank for a hundred yards before turning into the handsome Regency terrace of Danube Street. Each house proclaimed wealth and respectability from its sober, classically-proportioned frontage, but Allerdyce knew that at least one of the front doors, its brassware gleaming like its neighbours’, hid a secret life.

  His hand was shaking as he pulled the doorbell. Every time he came here he felt himself drawn back towards those awful months after Helen had gone, when he’d doubted whether he was in fact sane. But, by some luck or miracle, his visits here had started a healing which would never be complete but which had at least stopped him from losing his mind.

  After a few moments the maid opened the door.

  “Mr Allerdyce? We weren’t expecting you.”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you. Is Miss Antonia at home? I need to speak to her.”

  “Yes, I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  The maid asked him to sit in the parlour while she went upstairs to announce Allerdyce. He sat in the familiar chair beside the brandy decanter, looking up at the same paintings of nude gods and goddesses, and entwined nymphs and satyrs, which had blended themselves into his dreams and nightmares when he’d first come here. Even the smell – a rich blend of pot-pourri, polished mahogany and faintly lingering cigar smoke – was as it had been then.

  “Miss Antonia is ready to receive you in her boudoir,” said the maid.

  “Thank you.”

  He went up the stairs, feeling the deep red pile of the carpet springing under his feet, and along the landing to Antonia’s room. As he stood at her door he inhaled the unique blend of wood-polish and musky perfume and felt his pulse quicken. He knocked gently and let himself in.

  Antonia was sitting in front of the mirror at her dressing table, tossing the long curls of her blonde hair over her shoulders as she dabbed perfume under her ears. A book was open in front of her. She had an embroidered silk Chinese dressing gown on, birds and the figures of little men against a sky-blue background. The gown fell loosely open at her throat, exposing the dark golden cleavage which disappeared into the lacy whiteness of her undergarment.

  Allerdyce reflected on how seldom he’d seen her in daylight. The cold winter light from the lace-curtained window showed the shadows of lines which were masked by the amber lighting she used in the evening, and her face seemed a little thinner, but overall the nine years of their acquaintance had been kind to her. She turned to him and smiled.

  “Archibald! An unexpected pleasure!”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Antonia.”

  “Not at all, Archibald. I was worried, you know.”

  “Worried?”

  “When you didn’t come to see me after your Speculative Society dinner. I’d been looking forward to seeing you, but I thought something must have happened to you.”

  “Some sudden business came up. I’d have sent my apologies if I could.”

  She stood up and took his hands.

  “I know you would, Archie, But I do rely on you to keep me in touch with the great current of ideas. You have no idea how isolated a woman in my position can feel from intellectual life. Come and sit by the fire.”

  They sat in silk armchairs at either side of the hearth. Allerdyce was uncomfortably conscious of Antonia’s large white-linened bed in the corner of the room, the bedclothes turned down to show the plump white pillows. It was years since he had lain there, not since those weeks of madness, but the temptation was still strong. There was no absolute moral reason why he shouldn’t yield, no vigilant and narrow-minded God who’d punish him, but his duty to Margaret was clear. It would also feel like a betrayal of Antonia – he told himself that they had discovered in each other a shared interest in the life of the mind and that it was through sustaining her in that intellectual life that he could best support her as a friend. It was almost like being a missionary for his sex, trying to show that a man could have a relationship with a woman which was neither carnal nor domestic. If he could hold to that belief he could persuade himself that continuing to see Antonia was the right and dutiful thing to do, but it didn’t feel sufficiently right that he could ever tell Margaret about it.

  “I ought to say,” added Antonia, “that I have a gentleman caller due in twenty-five minutes. I’d like to see you for longer, but I’m afraid this will have to be a rather short conversation.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “So how was the dinner? You told me that Alexander Bain was going to be speaking on criminal psychology. I was looking forward to hearing about it.”

  “I didn’t go.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “I know. He’s done some brilliant work. He’s bringing together social influences, observed behaviours and phrenological analysis to create a typology of crime. If he’s right, we’ll be able to diagnose the criminal character in early youth and treat – even remedy it – accordingly.”

  “Phrenology?” Antonia giggled behind her hand.

  “I know, practically everyone thought it was bunkum when I was at medical school.”

  “Maybe they changed their minds later? I mean, after you’d had to leave.”

  “It’s more recent than that. There’s been a lot of work to systematise it and relate it to what happens to patients when particular parts of their brains are destroyed by injury or disease. Bain’s even persuaded John Stuart Mill that the science is sound.”

  “A persuasive gentleman then. Something important must have happened to tear you away from hearing him.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about, Antonia. I was just getting ready to go when I was called to the Chief Constable’s house and told to look for a disappearing Duke. His wife is worried that he’s been away from home for a few days, and the Chief thinks it’s a matter of importance to the State that we find him.”

  “Not quite your usual calibre of business, Archie. One man temporarily missing, no-one injured.”

  “I know. Frankly, I resent being used as a private detective for the aristocracy. But the fact is he’s still missing. I’ve tried to track him down in the disreputable haunts he’s known to have frequented, but no-one’s seen him. I don’t think he wants to be found.”

  “And so you thought you’d ask me? In case he’d visited this ‘disreputable haunt’?” Antonia pulled her gown more tightly around her.

  “I have to ask you, Antonia. It’s important.”

  Antonia looked straight at him, her lips thi
n and her delicate hands clenched in her lap.

  “It hurts me, Archibald. It hurts me because it exposes the inequality in our friendship. You’re a policeman, I’m a whore. You could have me closed down or arrested if you chose. I want to be your friend, Archie, not your informer.”

  “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “But you’ll be in bad trouble if you don’t find this Duke?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right then. I’ll help if I can. Who is it?”

  “William Bothwell-Scott. The Duke of Dornoch.”

  Antonia breathed in sharply. She was holding her hands together, thought Allerdyce, as if she was trying to stop them from shaking. She stood up and went over to the window, the light bleaching the goldenness of her complexion. Allerdyce stood and went over to her.

  “Are you all right, Antonia?”

  She turned and smiled thinly at him.

  “Yes, Archie, quite all right.”

  “I thought you shuddered.”

  “Sometimes I wish you were a less acute student of human nature, Archibald. I confess that that name caused me a moment of pain.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “It is a pain which I buried long ago and which I have no wish to resurrect. But in answer to your immediate question, I have no knowledge of the gentleman’s recent whereabouts.”

  “I’m sorry to have upset you.”

  She touched him gently on the arm.

  “You were only doing your duty, Archie. But please, leave me to compose myself before my next visitor arrives. And Archie, next time you come please come as my friend and not as a policeman.”

  Chapter 8

  Allerdyce and McGillivray shared a second-class compartment on the Edinburgh to Queensferry train. The Inspector opened the window a few inches to let his pipe smoke out and to breathe in the fresh air, but as they went through the Haymarket tunnel more steam and smoke leaked in than out. He coughed and wiped a fleck of soot from his eye as the train pulled into Haymarket Station.