by David Ashton
‘Life is cheap,’ replied Stevenson sombrely.
‘Aye. And it willnae gang on forever.’
The inspector watched as Robert Louis took another deep drag of smoke down into his lungs.
‘Ye’re about tae bury your father?’
‘That would seem to be the situation.’
‘I read about his death in the papers. Mind you they often lie.’
‘Not this time.’
A burst of fiddle music from a well-lit tavern signalled that there might be more to existence than a father’s demise or lying on the dirty planking with someone about to kick hell out of you.
‘The Old Ship,’ Stevenson announced. ‘A fine establishment – tell me, does it still have private booths?’
‘If you’ve onything to hide.’
‘I am an open book, sir. But I was wondering, given that I am chilled to the bone by Auld Reekie’s dismal inclemency – if you might join me in a hooker of whisky?’
Of course the correct and proper procedure would be a stern shake of the head and a course set for Leith Station, but McLevy had a deal of wild thoughts careering through his mind and no wish to catalogue a mob of boisterous, drunken students in the cells.
Plus he’d have to explain how his quarry had slipped out from under the long arm of the law.
So he nodded assent and de’il tak’ the hindmost, though he put in a caveat.
‘I cannot linger long, though.’
‘Excellent!’ cried the writer. ‘We can lift a toast to the female of the species no matter how much trouble they may bring to a quiet life.’
Rumour had it that Stevenson’s own wife Fanny was a handful and McLevy had his personal besom riders whirling in the air.
So he nodded again. Robert Louis took his arm once more, and the two men walked through the swinging doors of The Old Ship to disappear into the generous light and leave the darkness behind.
Indeed. Let the devil take the hindmost.
Chapter 14
Now is the woodcock near the gin.
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
The birds were miserable as they endured the cold dripping night, the sheen of the males dulled and tawdry, the smaller females making a slightly better fist of it, pecking around inquisitively, while their erstwhile lusty overseers shivered feathers and wailed like a tribe of lost souls.
Of course this shivering with wings outstretched at other times was intended to hypnotise the female, until a precarious mounting and mating had been accomplished, but for now the wings were clamped close to keep the cold at bay.
Not intelligent at the best of times, the peacocks lamented being so unexpectedly tethered together in the garden of the Just Land in the middle of the night.
Who might save them from this fate?
Where was the hero?
In the shadows, Hannah Semple, Jean Brash, and her taciturn Aberdonian coachman Angus Dalrymple waited by the back of the gazebo, hidden from sight, each perched on a wooden kitchen chair.
Angus was a giant and the small shot firearm looked like a toy in his beefy hands.
Jean held a smaller version, but both guns were capable of scattering a stinging fusillade of pellets that could give a painful wound even from a distance.
The victim would then, if lucky enough to find a physician, spend an excruciating passage getting the flinty missiles extracted from beneath his skin.
They may not be cannon fire but could cut and gash with the best of them.
Behind the watchers the Just Land itself was suspiciously placid, while at the back of every curtain the magpies rested, ready to play their part.
Lechery had been given the night off.
A sacrifice must aye be made.
Jean was fretting at the inaction.
She imagined what if it was McLevy out there, come to pay one of his late night visits to scrounge a cup of the best Lebanese?
How justified would it be if, in the course of defending her property, as is the right of every law-abiding citizen, she put a load of buckshot into his fat backside?
Hannah mistook Jean’s silence for disquiet, and whispered encouragement regarding the motionless Angus.
‘He used tae be a poacher, mistress. He will not gang agley.’
‘Good,’ muttered Jean grimly. ‘I don’t want my birds in jeopardy.’
‘Whit about your own aim?’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘Black as the devil’s hint-end out there,’ Angus suddenly grunted.
‘Wait!’
Jean’s delicate ears, admired by many a suitor, had other functions such as acute perception.
They all listened as a faint tinkling registered through the mournful ululation of the tethered targets.
‘Might be a fox,’ Hannah offered.
Then there was a louder jangle, followed by a mumbled curse.
‘That’s no’ a predator,’ Jean concluded with a wicked smile. ‘That’s an idiot.’
She called back softly to the house.
‘Girls – at my command.’
Excited giggles came in response as more bells rang and more muffled profanity followed in the darkness.
‘One, two, three!’
As Jean’s voice rang out, every curtain in the Just Land was jerked back to reveal an artillery of oil lamps, which shot illumination into the garden like a lightning flash.
It revealed a bunch of young men, feet trammelled by the trip wires, panicked at the sudden exposure and terrified by the wild screams coming from the magpies, who sounded like avenging Valkyries girding up to choose the slain.
In a blind funk, the Scarlet Runners kicked off the encircling ropes and ran to scale the walls – thus presenting a tempting target.
‘Like heidless chickens.’
While Hannah delivered this verdict, Jean and Angus were sighting with great care.
‘Careful of the peacocks,’ warned Jean. ‘Backsides if you please.’
‘They’re well enough presented,’ answered the coachman.
‘Then fire and be damned!’
A roar of small shot from him, followed a moment later by Jean letting fly, screams of pain, cat-calls from the girls, another discharge, frantic scrabbling at the garden wall, then the last of the Scarlet Runners yelped over the top and all was quiet except for distant sounds of limping agony.
‘A cauld day in hell afore they come back.’
Jean nodded agreement to Hannah’s words.
‘They’ll be picking pellets out their rear-ends for weeks. Well done, Angus!’
The giant rose, flexed his limbs in satisfaction, then walked off to join Lily and Maisie, who had run out of the house and were freeing the peacocks, both being fond of the glaikit birds.
Jean and Hannah also stood. The garden was now peaceful and by some miracle the rain had ceased.
The Mistress of the Just Land sighed at a job well done and cast an appreciative gaze at the woman beside her.
‘I must confess, Hannah Semple,’ she said fondly. ‘You are aye my good right hand, but you have excelled yourself this time.’
‘And I must confess,’ replied Hannah, who never mind all the depredations life had visited upon her, still maintained a firm sense of right and wrong, despite the odd manipulation of a razor, ‘that it wasnae my notion.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Jean said warily as the peacocks filed past heading for their cages, with Lily in the lead and Maisie bringing up the rear.
Angus was picking up the bells from the grass with surprising daintiness.
‘The notion. It was McLevy’s,’ continued Hannah.
‘If I’d known that!’
‘Exactly. That’s whit he said.’
Jean felt a sudden rush of hot anger.
‘Oh that bugger of a man!’
Hannah sniffed. She had been about to suggest peaceful overtures but now was obviously not the time.
Twa wasps fighting over a dead worm.
Such was love in Hannah�
��s opinion.
‘A wee cup o’ coffee wouldnae go amiss, eh?’
On the nod from Jean, Hannah stumped off towards the Just Land, calling back over her shoulder as she disappeared, ‘Aye, some sore erses picked over the night. hell mend them. May they fester like the Canongate ripples!’
This pithy reference to a species of venereal disease, associated with a certain area of Edinburgh, that affected the back and loins, passed Jean by – her attention had been drawn to the massive Angus, who had found something at the foot of the garden wall and, like some well trained retriever, brought it back to his mistress.
‘It’s a photie,’ he announced. ‘Fell out the pocket mebbye. Nae blood though, nae holes shot through.’
Handing it over, Angus then headed for the stable to feed his beloved carriage horses. Each to his own.
A family photograph. The proud father in military garb and, with a young boy dwarfed by this giant, the mother in between them.
The boy looked angelic.
Jean was tempted to tear it up but stayed her hand.
Now all the action was over, she felt a curious emptiness.
What a pity it hadn’t been McLevy amongst the bells.
She looked out into the garden and then back to the Just Land where the peacocks rooted contentedly in their cages.
All this she had.
What more could there be?
Chapter 15
For it is your business, when the wall next door catches fire.
Horace, Epistles
The cells in Leith Station are not clean and neat like a honeycomb matrix. Some trace of every bedevilled felon that has fed the fleas and protested his innocence lingers in the lumpy bedding, in the very pores of the blank walls where initials are scratched, in the very dank and airless atmosphere that lies there inert – a prisoner behind the bars as much as any criminal.
One cell in particular was small like a square coffin, separated from its fellows at the end of a long, bare, winding corridor.
Those of a dismal disposition might think that here, hidden from sight, the police could wreak vengeance or wield violence in order to gain confession.
No-one would hear the cries of pain.
As is commonly perceived, all are innocent until proven guilty, and let us hope the forces of law and order are never too tempted to hurry the process along.
Such subtle discriminations were by no means running through the mind of Daniel Drummond.
The inhabitants of this cramped space were four in number. Two could leave, two could not.
McLevy and Mulholland, Daniel and Alan Grant.
Of course the policemen might have remained on the other side of the bars to post their questions through like letters, but they had preferred to squeeze inside and, as far as Mulholland was concerned, literally, for his head, minus helmet, scraped against the knobbly roughcast ceiling.
But he bore the unwelcome friction manfully, because it brought himself and the inspector into the very air the suspects breathed.
Nose to nose.
McLevy loomed in the centre, an immovable object, even with what might be the faintest odour of whisky fumes detected by the sensitive nose of Mulholland. The two young men, still with traces of white smears on their faces, sat on a crudely formed bench, pinned in the corner.
The policemen had been questioning the pair for near an hour, not yet getting to the nub, more concentrating on the petty acts of vandalism whilst cocking a snook at the law.
But imperceptibly, because the questioners were skilled in the black arts, the tension was growing.
Daniel was sweating like a Turkish Bath attendant, his voice more high-pitched by the minute; Alan Grant seemed a touch more in control, but he had his hands clenched between his knees, like a truant schoolboy.
Both were bruised, Daniel with a mouse under the eye where Roach’s bony elbow had made contact, and Alan Grant with a sore and stiff neck where an enthusiastic constable had hammered down his baton.
McLevy shook his head solemnly, a sardonic light in the eye. Time to raise the stakes.
‘Assault of a police officer, Mister Drummond.’
‘I didn’t know that!’
‘Well, ye know now.’
‘Twice as a matter of fact,’ Mulholland chimed in helpfully. ‘You also, Mister Grant. Naughty boys.’
‘I was trying to help Daniel get free – ’
‘Freedom is something ye will not contemplate for a good wee while,’ the inspector interrupted. ‘Ye face charges of vicious and premeditated assault with worse tae come.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me!’
This sudden roar from McLevy straight into Daniel’s face brought Alan off the bench. Mulholland was swift to shift also, the hornbeam stick out in a flash.
‘No physical violence, if you please, sir!’
Of course the constable knew there was little or no danger to McLevy, and he had no intention of unleashing the mighty power of the weapon on such insubstantial sprats, but the very fact of the movement ratcheted up the pressure.
He had also enjoyed the bellow, more like the old McLevy.
‘I – had no intention,’ Alan protested.
‘Then sit down,’ Mulholland said evenly.
Grant did so meekly enough, but Daniel was made of sterner stuff, at least in his own eyes.
‘All this will be resolved,‘ he protested. ‘No harm done.’
McLevy moved so quickly it was as if he had appeared like an ogre in the fairy tales, towering above the seated pair with hardly a span between himself and them.
‘Worse tae come,’ he repeated in a quiet controlled tone that was somehow more threatening than any roar.
The inspector dragged over a chair and sat so that he was on the same level as the other two.
‘Agnes Carnegie. Yester-night,’ he said gravely. ‘Whit really happened?’
‘Nothing,’ said Daniel quickly.
‘You’re a liar, sir.’
A simple enough statement, but the enormity seemed to take Daniel’s breath away. His face whitened under its layer of that same colour and his mouth opened and closed without sound.
At that moment he bore no resemblance whatsoever to his sister, and the inspector was grateful for that as he went in for the kill.
‘Beaten tae death. Her body – battered and bruised frae the blows. Lying there like a bag o’ bones.’
In the silence created by this macabre image, Daniel shook his head in denial, not, it would seem, trusting himself to speak.
McLevy suddenly turned on Alan Grant with a direct gaze, almost impersonal, that pierced into the fraught conscience of the young man.
‘Whit about you, Mister Grant? Do you still deny crossing paths with this poor woman?’
Alan replayed the moment when, pushed by Daniel, the old lady had toppled backwards into the dirty puddle – but that would not harm her surely? They had left her sitting, a crabbit old biddy but alive. Yet soon afterwards he and Daniel had become separated. But that was just happenstance. There was no way his friend could commit a gruesome murder ...
Yet they had not told the truth.
What was it Daniel had said?
More trouble than it’s worth.
But was it?
He glanced sideways at his companion in arms. Would it be classed as betrayal? Surely innocence can reveal itself just as readily as guilt?
Alan became aware that while these thoughts had passed swiftly through his mind, he was still under the scrutiny of the inspector’s gaze.
A moth trapped by candle flame.
How could the man know in any case?
But he did. He knew something was not being told.
‘I am waiting, Mister Grant,’ said James McLevy.
To the watching Mulholland, this was the moment; a moment he had witnessed many a time.
It teetered in the balance as the young man hesitated, the inspector held silence, the companion glanced sideways as if
to counsel against revelation. And from his great height, at the three seated figures, the constable looked down like a judge in court.
Or were he inclined to grandiose speculation, like Zeus from the heavens.
A voice broke the silence – however it was none of the aforementioned.
‘May I have a word, inspector?’
A sour-faced Lieutenant Roach had approached quietly up the corridor. Bad news often comes in silence.
McLevy almost growled in frustration, and snapped his head round as if to dismiss his superior officer, but one look at the lieutenant’s countenance put paid to that idea.
The inspector swung out of the cell, followed closely by Mulholland, who slammed the door shut with a clatter as if to promise that this was only a temporary respite.
But it was, in fact, a cessation.
Roach drew them both far enough away so that their voices could not be heard, and spoke in low, bitter tones.
Unlike the look of triumph with which he had greeted McLevy on his return to the station, jubilant that he had hooked his quarry while the inspector had come back empty handed, and commenting gleefully that McLevy had lost his touch compared to the street expertise of one Robert Roach, the lieutenant’s face now bore the appearance of a man who had swallowed a slug with his curly kale.
‘I have two of Edinburgh’s most notable lawyers in my office,’ he muttered bleakly. ‘And they have served me with judge’s papers demanding the release of all who were connected to the recent affray, most especially a certain Daniel Drummond and Alan Grant.’
‘Judge’s papers?’ said Mulholland incredulously.
‘One of the students has turned out to be the offspring of Judge Bennett,’ was the acid response. ‘He dotes upon the boy. And to save you further query, the lawyers have been retained by the Drummond family.’
‘How did they know we had them here?’ asked Mulholland like a dog worrying at a bone. ‘Hardly three hours gone.’
‘That,’ Roach replied, ‘as the inspector is often wont to remark, may be one of God’s little mysteries.’
The lieutenant noted that the man himself had become curiously silent and mistook this for disgruntlement.
‘Not my fault, McLevy,’ he admonished what he imagined to be a sulking subordinate. ‘It would always have been hard to hold these students for an affray, but I hoped if we kept them in the cells overnight it might at least have put the fear of God into them.’
