A Mask of Shadows: Frey & McGray Book 3 (A Case for Frey & McGray)

by Oscar de Muriel

  McGray was already rummaging through the man’s desk drawers, but found nothing. It did not surprise me: if Dyer had been carrying anything gory he’d probably just dropped it on the street.

  His expression, though blank, did tell me that he must be an expert at concocting lies on the go. I tried to throw him off balance with my next question. ‘Mr Dyer, have you been to London recently? Within the past week, to be precise?’

  The man looked at me intently, a slight quiver in his pupils. He moved slowly, reached for a pencil and began tracing shorthand characters on a notepad. McGray snatched it from his hand and threw it into the mess of paper next to me. ‘Answer the question!’

  Dyer held his open hand in the air. ‘I have not,’ he said with mocking deference – and a challenging spark in his eyes.

  ‘Can you prove it?’ McGray pressed.

  ‘Aye. I’ve been at work every day for the past fortnight.’

  ‘No breaks, laddie?’

  ‘News never stops. I take no breaks. Everyone here can confirm that.’

  Or lie for you, I thought, and moved on to a more promising lead.

  ‘Who is your source?’ I asked, nodding at the newspaper.

  ‘That’s confidential.’

  I chuckled. ‘Would it still be confidential after you spent the night in a cell?’

  ‘Oh, Inspector, I would hate having to write a story about how I was victimized by the police.’

  I could not believe how much I welcomed McGray’s presence. ‘Nine-Nails, this man is being uncooperative.’

  I might as well have thrown a bloodhound on to Mr Dyer. McGray strode ahead, lifted him by the collar and pinned him against a wall, as if he were one more note on the crammed corkboards.

  ‘Talk, ye bastard!’ McGray roared. ‘Who’s the bloody whistle blower?’

  Dyer could barely speak, McGray’s hands pressing his chest mercilessly.

  ‘This will be on the front page tomorrow!’ he managed to hiss.

  ‘Aye, ye publish that, ye bastard! I want to read it, so I can make ye eat every single copy with a knife and fork!’

  ‘He means that,’ I told Dyer. ‘And once he is done with you we can also prosecute you for obstructing police affairs.’

  I realized I was developing a disturbing affinity for Nine-Nails’ methods.

  ‘And our superintendent is crazy about Ellen Terry,’ McGray said. ‘He’ll see that ye go down and deep.’

  Dyer shook his head in despair. ‘Put me down!’ he snorted.

  ‘Nae.’

  ‘I need to reach my papers!’ he insisted, now rather pleadingly.

  McGray pressed him a little harder. ‘All right. But if ye don’t tell us what we need I’ll pluck out yer silly tash hair by hair.’

  He put Dyer down. The man rearranged his shirt and adjusted his tie, trying to erase any trace of rough handling. He began searching in one of his drawers, produced a piece of paper and shoved it in his breast pocket.

  ‘I will tell you everything … but not here.’

  To my dismay, McGray decided to take us to the Ensign Ewart, which was within a ten-minute walk.

  ‘I assume Irving was nowhere to be found,’ I said as we headed to the public house.

  ‘Course not,’ said McGray. ‘The bastard vanished. But I didnae spend much o’ this time looking for him. I’m on something else. Tell ye as soon as we get rid o’ this wag.’

  Fortunately, the establishment was deserted at this hour. The only person around was Mary, still sweeping last night’s wreckage, but as soon as we arrived she brought two ales and for me a whisky.

  Dyer had lost his bravado, and he stared at his drink with trembling hands.

  ‘I lied to my chief editor,’ he whispered as soon as the ginger landlady was at a prudent distance. ‘I said I had the story from a very reliable source who wished to remain anonymous. The truth is …’ he looked around again, and his voice became even softer as he pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘The truth is – I only received this.’

  I unfolded it. It was a rushed letter written in spidery, smudged lines. I struggled to make out some of the sentences, but it was definitely a detailed, accurate account of the sighting under Regent Bridge.

  ‘This was written by a very eloquent pen,’ I said. ‘It has all the drama and embellishment of a gothic horror.’

  ‘Who gave ye this?’ asked McGray.

  ‘I never saw the person. I was working very late in my office. Other than the chaps in the presses I was the only person there. Someone slid this underneath my door, knocked and then ran away.’

  ‘And ye saw nothing?’

  ‘I tried. I looked everywhere, but whoever left it was gone – and we don’t have eyes on every corridor.’

  ‘Youse leave all yer doors open at night?’

  ‘Yes. The newspaper never closes.’

  ‘Such an important story,’ I said, ‘yet all you had was an unsigned note as evidence. How very professional!’ I looked at McGray. ‘If the office never closes somebody else might have seen that messenger, either another employee or people on the adjacent streets. We could start an inquiry –’

  McGray snatched the message from my hands. ‘We’re seizing that note, laddie. And this conversation never happened.’

  ‘That is exactly what I was going to suggest.’ Dyer made to stand up, but McGray pushed him back on to the seat.

  ‘Frey, what d’ye think we should do with this one? Put him in a cell anyways? Just to keep him safe from his own eagerness, of course.’

  I knew he was only joking.

  ‘We’d better let him go,’ I said, knowing that McGray would be thinking the same, ‘so he can tell us if another note like this should arrive.’

  Nine-Nails nodded. ‘Ye heard the dandy?’

  ‘Yes. I –’

  ‘Ye publish nothing. Did ye hear me? Ye come to us immediately and show us anything they send ye.’

  I gave him my card. ‘Here, and if you cannot reach me –’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Dyer, taking the card as he left, ‘everybody in Edinburgh knows the house of Nine-Nails McGray.’

  ‘Ye happy?’ McGray asked me.

  ‘Why, not at all. I am none the wiser than an hour ago.’ I was going to have a sip of whisky, but the murky glass, now under the clear daylight, put me off. I put it back on the table. ‘What was it you said you were on to?’

  McGray savoured the moment along with a swig of ale. ‘I can tell ye, no clairvoyants involved, that there will be two more banshee sightings. And very soon.’

  13

  ‘Without omens! Nine-Nails, I am astonished!’

  McGray was searching his pockets and produced a transcript, in his own shabby hand, of the banshee’s two warnings. He had memorized them.

  ‘It’s going to be a very fancy riddle,’ he said. ‘Look at the first warning. It’s a two-line rhyme, as a pentameter.’

  I looked at him with amazement. ‘McGray, how is it that you know the meaning of the word pentameter?’

  ‘Och, don’t ye give me all that condescending shite as if ye had no passage to fart through! I don’t speak like youse all-michty Southrons – as if I had a boiling spud in my gob – and ye just assume I cannae enjoy some culture.’

  As soon as he said that he downed his pint and let out a loud belch.

  ‘It is not only the speech,’ I said laconically. Then I recalled McGray misquoting Hamlet at this very table last night, and that was not the first time I heard him bastardize Shakespeare (he’d once done it whilst facing an actual witch).

  ‘Well, I used to read a lot o’ poetry,’ he said, ‘before I –’ he halted and bit his lip, looking at what remained of his ring finger.

  I realized I had never stopped to wonder what he’d been like before becoming Nine-Nails. The obvious struck me all of a sudden: McGray had had a childhood, a youth, an entire life before his family tragedy. Now I knew he had enjoyed poetry, but how many other things I’d never be even close to
finding out?

  I tried to lighten the mood. ‘Say what you may, I will never be able to picture you walking around turning the pages of a little sonnets book. At best I expected you to believe that Titus Andronicus was some kind of chest disease, or that Coriolanus is something you get after – never mind. Now, let me see …’

  I leaned over the paper and counted the syllables in the first verse. I remembered Elgie seeing him counting with his fingers as he left the theatre. ‘Pentameters,’ I said, ‘ten syllables in each line, yes. What about the second warning?’

  ‘It’s the same. All lines have ten syllables.’

  ‘But the second is a four-line stanza. Could it be …?’

  McGray smiled. ‘Aye, these are part of a sonnet, Frey. In Shakespearean style.’

  I sat back. ‘It has been a while since I last read my Shakespeare. Remind me of the sonnet’s metrics.’

  ‘Four stanzas. The first three with four lines. The final one with two.’

  ‘So you think the first warning was, in fact, the final stanza?’

  ‘Aye. It sounds odd, but there’s two hints at that. First, if they’re following the classic structure, the rhymes in the long stanzas are A-B-A-B.’

  ‘Freely – rage – infamy – stage. I see.’

  ‘Aye, they alternate. But in the first warning they put Macbeth and death together.’

  ‘Very well, Nine-Nails, that sounds reasonable. What is the second clue you mentioned?’

  ‘In a classic sonnet the final stanza is … how can I say it … the conclusion. The punchline. The twist.’

  ‘In this case, somebody’s death.’

  ‘Aye, perhaps delivered first for more impact. And it means that, if these two are part of a sonnet, there are two missing stanzas.’

  ‘To be delivered by the same banshee.’

  ‘Aye. Ye finally listen!’

  ‘I shall not wait on the edge of my seat, McGray. If anything, you have strengthened my case. The theatrical effects, the showmanship, the melodrama – it is all in there.’

  ‘I kent ye were –’

  ‘Excuse me, you what?’

  ‘Kent! Knew! Knew ye were going to say that. And next yer going to ask why all the riddles; why not a plain statement.’

  I would have, had I not heard Elgie’s words at the theatre. Someone striving to throw attention away from themselves for some dubious, unknown purpose, was not entirely irrational. I thought McGray would entertain the same theory, but as usual he had something more extravagant in mind.

  ‘Now, this is speculation,’ he said, ‘but I think the other two missing stanzas will give us the final, crucial clue, about who’s going to snuff it. Unfortunately, I fear we won’t get the true meaning ’til it’s too late.’

  ‘Do you mean, after the death has taken place? Like your ridiculous Madame Katerina suggested?’

  ‘Aye.’

  I laughed. ‘A prophecy that is evident only in hindsight is not worth the ink it is penned with.’

  ‘My point precisely, Frey. Banshees don’t warn. They announce.’

  Bram Stoker’s Journal (continued)

  Should have told the inspectors about the dog. I mentioned it to Florence on the night but she mocked me – the woman can be rather cruel sometimes. Now I fear to bring it up.

  […]

  Something wrong with Irving. I can tell. I know his face so well. I have seen it so perpetually, under almost all possible phases of emotion – the weakness of Charles I; the vulture grip of Shylock; the fossilized age of Gregory Brewster; the asceticism of Becket – that I can now notice any twinge, any tension, any sign, no matter how insignificant, that is not related to his acting.

  […]

  Must leave. Note from Irving arrived.

  Wish I’d heard from him sooner. I cannot even guess what he has to tell me, if he asked me to meet him at [line completely obscured with ink]

  14

  Irving was now my prime suspect, and even McGray agreed he could well have sent the note to Dyer. Rather than chase him, we decided to leave him a message at the Palace Hotel: if he did not come to our office at eight o’clock the following morning we’d send a team of officers to fetch him at gunpoint – the latter McGray’s idea.

  The Palace Hotel housed the most fashionable lodgings in all of Edinburgh, and its location was certainly advantageous: the six-storey building graced the corner of Princes Street and Castle Street, the upper rooms looking directly over the castle and the most transited road of the city. Within easy distance from the train stations, the wealth of New Town and the road to the harbours, the hotel was also very close to a crucial landmark: Regent Bridge.

  I took note of it, and calculated that it would take but a few minutes to walk there and back. Very handy if one wanted to impersonate a banshee in the middle of the night, even if carrying a bundle of blood-dripping rags.

  I whispered this thought into McGray’s ear as we walked into the lobby. In the same way that I wrinkled my nose at his beloved pub, he frowned in disgust at the well-appointed room. The lobby was a grand hall with red velvet carpets and large oil paintings depicting idealized Scottish landscapes: romantically ruined castles and implausibly sunny lochs. All those lavish frames led the eye towards a grand mahogany staircase.

  The rather snobbish manager immediately came to us, perhaps to throw McGray out, but his attitude changed as soon as we showed our credentials.

  ‘I do not know Mr Irving’s whereabouts,’ he said, somewhat offended. ‘It is not my place to question my guests as to their daily plans.’

  ‘Fetch us pen ’n’ paper, will ye,’ McGray told him, visibly annoyed by the man’s conceit. I nearly blushed as I read the words he wrote for Irving.

  ‘One more thing,’ McGray told the manager. ‘What type o’ bed sheets do youse put in the rooms?’

  The manager spoke proudly. ‘Egyptian cotton, of course.’

  ‘Right. Bring us one.’

  ‘May I ask –’

  ‘Ye may nae. Do as I said, else I’ll punch yer snooty face.’

  I feared what McGray was about to pull out of his pocket, and with good reason. He had cut out a corner of the bloodstained rags the officers had found nearby Regent Bridge.

  ‘We should not do that here,’ I said. ‘You might alarm –’

  Too late. The manager had returned with a clean, neatly folded sheet which he laid on the counter, but then his eyes fell right on the reddened cloth.

  ‘Give me that,’ said McGray, pulling the bed sheet.

  ‘Will you need a magnifying glass?’ I asked.

  He would not: the fine weaving, the small stitches, the neat way the edges were folded at the sheet’s corner, everything matched.

  ‘The bloody rags came from here,’ I mumbled.

  McGray took a deep breath and shoved the dirty rag back into his pocket. He looked at the manager. ‘What’s yer name?’

  The man gulped. ‘Cla– Clarke. Josiah Clarke.’

  ‘Hear me, Clarkie, we need ye to ask all yer maids if any o’ their sheets went missin’ in the last couple o’ nights. Don’t tell them the reason. If they did, find out from which room and when. As soon, and I mean as soon as ye get news, ye tell us. Frey, give him one o’ yer sissy cards.’

  I passed one to Mr Clarke, along with the note for Henry Irving.

  McGray then whispered harshly, poking firmly at the man’s chest. ‘Ye tell no one about this. Ye understand?’ The poor man only nodded. ‘And ye better see that Irving reads that note the minute he comes back.’

  Mr Clarke looked quite intimidated, but his countenance became illuminated all of a sudden, and as if we had vanished into thin air, he raised his hand and yelped most gleefully.

  ‘Oh, Miss Terry!’

  He ran like a dart towards the carpeted staircase, where a small crowd was gathering.

  An elegant hourglass figure, wearing a dress of white damask, was descending with slow, dignified steps.

  Miss Ellen Terry.
/>   An older gentleman offered her a rose, while others waved and called her name. A second gentleman planted himself at the foot of the stairs, babbling loud compliments. Miss Terry, used to the attention, returned the greeting and expertly glided around him, shielding herself behind the hotel manager.

  At some point she looked directly at us, her eyes perhaps drawn to McGray’s garish tartan trousers, and then Mr Clarke pointed in our direction, surely telling her who we were. Gracefully and kindly, she kept the people at bay as she approached us, a wide smile on her face, and I very soon had a close look at Britain’s most cherished living celebrity. I decided I’d block all my preconceptions of her; I could have never questioned her whilst thinking that she had performed for Queen Victoria not three months ago, or that in her younger years she’d posed nude for Watts’s scandalous painting The Wife of Pluto.

  With that canvas in mind, I soon realized that Miss Terry had to be seen in the flesh, for photographs and paintings did not do her justice. She could not be called classically beautiful, her nose rather large, her chin a little too manly, but there was an arresting quality to her; a certain radiance that made it difficult to look away.

  She had smooth, alabaster skin, and blonde curly hair framing her plump cheeks, but it was her pale blue eyes that set her apart. There was a sharpness, an intensity to her stare that invariably drew one’s gaze.

  Though she was not short, I had expected her to be taller, and although she looked her age (forty-two) she conducted herself with an elegance I could never expect to see in a twenty-year-old belle.

  The manager introduced us and Miss Terry offered us a magnolia-white hand to kiss.

  ‘Mr Clarke tells me you are looking for dear Irving,’ she said in a clear, musical voice, each consonant and vowel enunciated beautifully.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said before McGray could spit out one of his prosaic ayes. ‘We have left a message for him. It is urgent that he comes to see us.’

  ‘I am sure he will oblige,’ she replied, placing her light hand on my arm. ‘We are all so grateful you are involved. This ghastly affair is like poison poured on to our little play.’ She studied Nine-Nail’s attire, especially his tartan, but not once did her gestures show the slightest judgement. ‘That pattern is a brave statement, Inspector.’