by David Ashton
‘I admire the way they shiver their feathers to attract the females,’ said Jean thoughtfully. ‘It’s about all they’re good for. Men.’
‘Shivering accessories?’
She made no answer, an impudent smile upon her face, and McLevy calculated that now was as good a time as any to break the news.
Mulholland after the funeral had headed off to take tea with the lusty widow, more in pity than love, and this despite his inspector’s injunction that it never worked to try to save people from their own foolishness, never in a month of Sundays.
In fact Jean Brash had said these words some time past, staring right into McLevy’s face. Funny that.
Roach was on the golf course at Leith Links, and if he saw a horde of semi-naked bloodthirsty females heading in his direction, the man would at least know better than to shin up a tree.
The inspector was on his own. As per usual.
‘I have to thank you, I suppose,’ Jean declared, reaching at the coffee pot. ‘For proving my coachman innocent and not pressing charge for your bloody nose.’
McLevy nodded. Aye, well. Time now. Try not to take too much pleasure in it.
‘Jedburgh,’ he remarked idly. ‘Ye know a woman there – Minnie Moncrieff?’
Jean sniffed. ‘A sordid type. Keeps a low bawdy-hoose.’
‘She’s trying to raise standards, my police colleagues tell me’ he replied dryly. ‘Bought a new carriage, been driving round the town like the Queen of Sheba. Seen by one and all.’
‘Scruff. No changing that.’
To this magisterial rebuke from the mistress of the Just Land, the inspector nodded meekly, and then added a mild rejoinder.
‘With a fine big coachman. A giant of a man in fine livery, whipping up the cuddies in grand style.’
There was a moment of frozen silence.
‘Angus?’
‘None other than.’
Jean nearly spat out the coffee as her mind struggled to deal with this betrayal.
‘So that’s where he got the money?’
‘The wages of sin,’ was the urbane response.
‘Everybody knows he’s my coachman. What a showing up. I’ll wring his bloody neck!’
So saying she leapt to her feet and headed off to the stables whence, not long after, there came the sound of raised voices, or rather, to be more accurate, one loudly raised female voice and a cowed masculine rumble.
As Hannah gazed suspiciously at him, James McLevy smiled guilelessly and poured himself another cupful.
For a sophisticated woman, Jean could at times bear more than a passing resemblance to a fishwife.
The inspector sighed, leant back in his chair and let the images of this recent case flicker in his mind.
One by one they registered as if projected on a screen: the contorted body in the carriage; the lined faces of the two old ladies; the lusty widow who had just left black behind; Angus at bay like a dumb animal; Hannah with her cut-throat razor at the ready; Jean’s face as she promised a shotgun reprisal and French aroma; Mulholland trying not to shudder as McLevy scoffed his eighth sugar biscuit; Roach reading the daughter’s letter in a moment that oddly moved the three of them in that office; then the sight of Pettigrew staring glumly through the gate of a bawdy-hoose and the savage picture of the proud smile upon his face as he fell like Icarus to a certain doom.
That brought a sombre cast to McLevy’s features, but then his lips twisted in humour at the last picture from the recent funeral.
The minister had done his bit, the daughter, with an aunt on each side, bowed her veiled head, and the mourners were about to reach for the ropes to lower the coffin down when – from long distance – the sound of a train whistle came blowing down the wind.
To a person, the railway men took out their watches, looked upon them, and nodded their approval.
The train was punctual in passing.
The timetable safe for another day.
The McLevy Mysteries
Shadow of the Serpent
In Edinburgh,1880, election fever grips the city. But while the rich and educated argue about politics, in the dank wynds of the docks it’s a struggle just to stay alive. When a prostitute is brutally murdered disturbing memories from thirty years ago are stirred in McLevy who is soon lured into a murky world of politics, perversion and deception – and the shadow of the serpent.
Fall from Grace
Based around the terrible Tay Bridge disaster, the story begins with a break-in and murder at the Edinburgh home of Sir Thomas Bouch, the enigmatic, egotistical builder of the bridge. With the help of brothel madam, Jean Brash, McLevy finds the murderer but much more is yet to unfold – arson, sexual obsession and suicide.
Trick of the Light
After Confederate officer, Jonathen Sinclair, arrives in Edinburgh to purchase a blockade-runner from Clydeside shipbuilders he is betrayed to the Union forces and shot dead. McLevy teams up with Arthur Conan Doyle to find the agents responsible and Sinclair’s missing money. Meanwhile, a beautiful young spiritualist, Sophia Adler, is the toast of Edinburgh with her dramatic séances. However, she could yet prove to be the deadliest woman McLevy and Conan Doyle will ever encounter.
Available from www.polygonbooks.co.uk
