The Strings of Murder

by Oscar de Muriel

  ‘Good lord! What happened to your eye?’

  Larry laid the tray on the bed. I saw that half his eyeball was bright red; a blood vessel in his eye had burst.

  ‘It was my dad. He got drunk with the money I begged yesterday …’

  I felt a pang of guilt in my chest, thinking how detached I was from that poor boy’s world. How charitable I’d always felt, tossing shillings and farthings around, not knowing that perhaps they did more harm than good.

  ‘I see … McGray is letting you stay, I suppose?’

  ‘Aye.’

  I was going to tousle the boy’s hair, but the poor soul was startled when he saw my hand rising. I shook my head indignantly.

  ‘Does your father know where you are?’

  Larry looked away. ‘N-no, no, master, I left when he was sleeping. But please don’t send me back to him!’

  I nearly laughed. ‘Send you back! Why, on the contrary.’

  I pondered my situation. If my permanent lodgings in Edinburgh were indeed to be arranged soon, I would probably need a second servant to give Joan a hand – she’d always hated to set the fires and, quite frankly, she was not getting any younger.

  ‘If McGray already let you stay,’ I said, ‘I do not think he will mind me employing you. How would you like to become my footman? You would also have to help my maid with some domestic chores.’

  Tears pooled in the boy’s eyes, and he turned swiftly to run towards the door. Just as I thought I’d offended him I heard his proud voice even through the walls: ‘He says I can stay! ’

  I also heard a loud ‘shhhhhh’, undoubtedly uttered by Joan. She’d surely thought that sending the boy to serve my breakfast would touch my heart. A part of me felt somewhat manipulated, but the sight of the boy’s face would have shaken the toughest of men.

  I then dug into the breakfast tray with particular gusto, suddenly realizing how hungry I was. As I chewed buttered toast my mind went back to the case and all the questions I urgently needed to ask – I did not even know how I’d ended up back in my own bed … or what had ultimately happened to that thing we’d chased.

  Half an hour later Larry came back to pick up the tray. His wide smile now contrasted with his ugly bruise. ‘Ye need anything else, master?’

  ‘Oh, yes, fetch McGray. I need him to tell me what happened last night.’

  ‘Och, Master McGray left early. He got a summons from some grand man asking him to go to the City Chambers.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ I muttered. ‘Was the message from a man called Campbell?’

  ‘Erm … Aye, I think so.’

  ‘Oh Lord! ’ I jumped out of the bed. ‘Did you hear anything of what happened last night?’

  ‘No, sir. But master McGray jumped up just like ye when he read the note … also when he saw the newspaper …’

  ‘Oh Lord! ’ I shrieked again. ‘Did you know what was in the headlines?’

  ‘Nae, I cannae read, sir.’

  ‘I need Joan. Either she or George must have squeezed every last bit of information out of McGray. Joan! Joan! ’

  ‘I’ve not seen her since I brought yer tray, sir.’

  ‘Typical. When one needs that bloody pair, they vanish!’

  My only choice was to go to the City Chambers myself. I went through the room looking for clean clothes, and found a filthy bundle by the foot of my bed. It turned out to be the suit I’d worn the night before: bloody, soiled and torn beyond redemption.

  ‘Good grief! This is the fifth fine suit that has been ruined since the Mary Jane Kelly case!’

  I would have to wear the infamous navy suit I’d worn to Lady Ardglass’s ball – creased and muddy as it was.

  I looked at the mirror and found myself decidedly appalling: stubble, pale cheeks, messy hair sprouting from under the bandages, and dark bags under my eyes.

  ‘Elgie was right,’ I sighed. ‘This place is eating me alive.’

  I told Larry to throw away the ruined suit and then made my way to the entrance. The house appeared to be deserted so I had to go to the cloakroom and grab my own overcoat. When I hastily opened the wardrobe my eyes almost ached from what I found.

  George and Joan!

  Locked in a tight embrace and kissing wildly!

  Joan’s hair was an utter mess and one of her chubby legs was bare and stuck up in the air.

  My voice came out weary rather than anything else: ‘Ohhh! Just when I though my eyes could behold nothing more gruesome!’

  ‘But sir –! ’

  ‘I’ve no time for this, woman!’

  I pushed George aside, grabbed the nearest coat and quickly shut the wardrobe again.

  On my way to the City Chambers I saw a newspaper boy crying out the day’s headlines on Princes Street. I could not make out a word over the road’s bustle, so I simply tossed him a sixpence and snatched a copy from his hand without even slowing down my mount.

  The enormous headline was like a drill poking into my eyes:

  THE RIPPER IS IN LOTHIAN!!!!

  I yelled, groaned and thrashed about, abandoning myself to the most enraged fit and receiving the dazed stares of everyone around me. I crumpled the filthy paper and hurled it in front of me, ensuring that Philippa’s hooves trampled on it. I thought that I could not possibly feel angrier, little knowing that the worst was about to come.

  When I made it to the City Chambers I saw a gaggle of reporters crowding the courtyard. As soon as I dismounted, a man emerged from the crowd and approached me.

  ‘Inspector Frey! ’ he babbled. ‘Was it you who discovered the desecrated grave? Did you really fall on the ice while chasing the Ripper?’

  I felt like punching his nose and kicking his crotch, but that would only give him more scandal to publish.

  ‘Get out of my way, you rancid piece of dung!’ I said, elbowing the reporters aside as I made my way in.

  McGray was not in the basement, but I found him waiting by the door to Campbell’s office. He was gripping a copy of the newspaper and I could tell that he’d been crumpling it for a while.

  ‘Och, there ye are! I thought ye’d be knocked out ’til next week! Ye all right, yer highness? Ye look awful.’

  ‘I know … but it is not from the fall. Believe me.’

  He showed me the dreadful front page. ‘Och, so ye’ve read the papers, have ye? What d’ye think o’ this?’

  ‘Four exclamation marks are overexerting. Pray tell me what happened last night.’

  ‘The scandalmonger Joan didn’t tell ye?’

  ‘No. She was … otherwise engaged.’

  ‘Well, I laid there on the rails for a wee while before goin’ after ye, but I still lost yer track. Ye ran like the wind, Frey! When I didn’t see ye I thought I’d better go to the City Chambers to get reinforcements, but when I made it to the Royal Mile there was already a commotion there; some peelers found ye lying on this huge frozen puddle. I cannae believe ye didn’t see that on yer way!’

  ‘Oh, do excuse me! I was busy trying to catch that bloody thing that nearly slashed your jugular!’

  ‘Anyways, some peelers and me took ye to the house and I asked George to fetch a doctor for ye. Then we went back to Calton Hill and found poor Reed still lookin’ after the grave. He couldn’t avoid some children seeing the bloody mess, and when we were bringing the body here for a proper post-mortem, a damn bunch o’ reporters caught us.’

  ‘Damn it …’

  ‘I also had a few peelers looking around the area where we found ye. There was a trail o’ blood from where ye lay; they followed it for a couple o’ streets but then it just disappeared. Can ye guess where it ended?’

  That was not difficult. ‘By a sewer?’

  ‘Indeedy. Another bloody sewer. I sent one o’ the laddies to fetch the blueprints and we were trying to plot a track ’til the small hours but we never found’ – his face darkened – ‘that thing.’

  I drew a bit closer so that I could whisper as softly as possible. ‘Then you do not know yet what t
hat … thing was, do you?’

  McGray allowed himself a bitter smile. ‘Ye tell me. Ye saw it too.’

  ‘I do not know what I saw …’

  ‘Och, don’t gimme that crap, ye sissy sod! Ye saw the five eyes didn’t ye? When it kicked the lantern off yer hand? I had a better view when it was tryin’ to butcher me.’

  I could not deny it. That image was imprinted in my memory. ‘I … I have never beheld anything like that.’

  McGray sighed and lowered his eyes; he was looking at the void where his fourth finger should have been.

  ‘I have,’ he said, after a painful gulp. ‘Once.’

  He said no more. I wanted to ask what he meant, but Campbell’s assistant came out of the office right then. ‘The superintendent is waiting for you.’

  ‘This is not going to be easy …’ McGray grunted.

  More than ever, Campbell looked like an angry lion waiting for us in his lair: silent, drumming his fingers on the pristine newspaper that lay on his desk. We walked in, bowed, took our seats, and I believe it took him another full minute to finally utter his most despicable words: ‘I must congratulate you, gentlemen; both of you!’

  ‘Congra–?’

  ‘You are the most infamous people in Scotland, and by this time tomorrow, will be the most infamous in the entire British Empire!’

  I clenched my fists. That brute could be the best of friends with my brother Laurence!

  ‘It is unreasonable to ascribe the desecration of Ardglass’s grave to Jack the Ripper!’ I said. ‘Ardglass was a completely different sort of victim; the crime took place under completely different circums–’

  ‘Do not try to preach to me, Frey! I know that journalists are but a bunch of brainless arses that can barely spell, but so are their readers! And now, thanks to you, I must liaise with the filthy cattle we have shouting in the courtyard.’

  ‘I can talk to them, if ye …’

  ‘I will deal with the press myself, McGray. The last thing we need now is your outlandish face on show.’

  ‘Sir,’ I intervened, ‘I believe I can handle –’

  ‘Frey, you can’t handle a teapot without a cosy!’

  ‘Sir, if I may –’

  ‘No, you may not! I want results and I want them now, before the bloody papers inflate this to uncontrollable proportions. I expect you to bring me an identified, charged culprit by this time tomorrow. Understood?’

  ‘What! ’ McGray howled, ‘Ye cannae possibly expect –’

  ‘You have spent enough time working on this case, have you not?’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘but you have read my reports: meagre evidence, unconnected deaths … until Ardglass died there was not a clear trail to follow –’

  ‘Excuse me, Frey, all I hear is blah-blah-blah, we are a pair of blithering idiots.’

  ‘Sir –’

  Campbell shrieked even louder than McGray: ‘Tomorrow, Frey! Or you two will be dismissed permanently. I shan’t take more chances for the sake of redeeming your pathetic career, and I am sure Sir Charles and the prime minister will agree. And McGray, whatever arrangement we had regarding your special subsection, consider it ended. I am sure your idiotic theories have done no good to the case, and I will not risk my own reputation to help you in your dim-witted obsession with your lunatic, murderous sister.’

  For an instant, McGray remained still like a statue, but then, in a startling move, he thrust an enraged fist straight into Campbell’s nose. I saw the splash of blood, and as Campbell’s head bounced backwards, McGray stood up, quick as a wolf, to seize him by the throat.

  ‘McGray!’ I gasped.

  Campbell was dazed. It took him a second to fully realize that he’d just been hit and that McGray was throttling him with both hands.

  ‘They say lunacy runs in the blood,’ McGray whispered, and then squeezed Campbell’s neck a little harder with each word. ‘Ye only need a wee – something – to – trigger it.’

  Campbell was choking. ‘H-help … Frey …! Help! ’

  Aghast as I was, I could not restrain my sarcastic self. ‘I would be most compelled to help you … but I am only a blithering idiot …’

  Out of pure self-indulgence, I sat back and let him suffer for a moment. Then I patted McGray’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Nine-Nails, there is no time to play! You heard the superintendent: we have one day to solve this mess.’

  McGray let go and Campbell fell onto his desk like a bundle of clothes. The blood from his nose artistically splattered the newspaper’s headline.

  McGray roared madly as he stormed into the basement office.

  ‘What a fucking pig! Blasted, goddamn-goddamn pile o’ shite! I could nail his fucking balls to the spire o’ Mercat Cross and have him pulled by two oxen!’

  ‘I could not have expressed myself more eloquently,’ I sighed, sinking on the hard wooden chair. I offered my handkerchief and McGray wiped Campbell’s blood off his knuckles. ‘I doubt we will manage to keep our jobs after that little scene … yet, I feel strangely … elated.’

  McGray lounged on his chair, raised his legs and put his boots on the desk. ‘I’m truly sorry things didn’t work out well for ye, Frey. I really am.’

  ‘Well, we still have to –’

  He clicked his tongue. ‘That’s how life works, ain’t it? Ye work and work like a bloody mule and when ye finally think ye’ve got something in yer hands, it all goes to Hell …’

  ‘I was going to say that we should act quickly, now that –’

  ‘Ye can leave if ye want, Frey,’ McGray added, his mind utterly adrift. ‘I need to fight my own battles … and I ken there’s nothing here for ye. Let’s face it; ye hate the sight o’ me and this place. If I’m to sink, I should sink on my –’

  I had to stand up and smack him on the side of his head. ‘Oh, will you let me bloody finish, you nine-fingered perch of moth clusters!’

  McGray almost fell backwards, suddenly returning to reality. ‘Ye better have something absolutely crucial to tell me, lass; else I’ll do to ye what I just said I’d do to Campbell … And Mercat Cross is just across the road!’

  ‘Do you not see it? We are in the most advantageous position we have ever been.’

  McGray raised an eyebrow. ‘Are ye all right, laddie? I think ye hit yer head harder than we thought.’

  ‘Think about it,’ I insisted, looking fervently at him.

  Then, very slowly, McGray’s wrinkles deepened as his roguish smile came back. Somehow it was only then that I realized how young he actually was; perhaps a couple of years younger than me. ‘We’ve got the fiddle and we’ve got what’s left of Alistair’s body; the two things we needed the most.’

  ‘Indeed!’ McGray jumped on his feet, life running through his veins again. ‘All right laddie, let’s give it one last try …’

  It was late afternoon when Reed came into the office with a report in his hands. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as though he could faint at any moment – quite understandably, for he had not slept at all since our chase in the graveyard.

  ‘Here it is, Inspectors,’ he said, handing us the documents.

  ‘Was it a thorough post-mortem?’ I asked, and to my surprise Reed’s reply lacked his usual deference.

  ‘I checked every single inch of his big, fat body, and, by God, I swear my salary is not worth this!’ The poor chap shuddered. ‘I will demand a pay raise and Campbell can’t refuse.’

  ‘Right, but don’t talk to him today, laddie,’ McGray said. ‘Something tells me he won’t be in a good mood.’

  We gave the papers a swift scan.

  ‘Missing intestines …’ I read aloud.

  ‘Yes, almost seven feet missing, sir. They hardly left any …’ and then Reed gave into the widest yawn.

  ‘Ye saw that sack the beast was carrying?’ McGray asked, but he did not need me to answer.

  ‘The beast?’ Reed whispered.

  ‘Never mind,’ I told him. Then I went back to the report and, among the
hurried scribbles, a short phrase caught my eyes.

  ‘You mention hyperpigmentation in the neck …’

  ‘Yes, sir, concentrated on the left-hand side of the neck. A fair bit in the chin too, and to a lesser extent in the fingertips of his right hand.’

  His words immediately evoked my most glorious days in the CID and once more I felt that rush of adrenaline that only came when I hit upon the right answer.

  ‘May I see the body?’ I asked immediately.

  ‘But of course, sir.’

  Reed took a deep breath and drew the white sheet away. A nauseating whiff arose and even McGray squinted, for the corpse looked simply appalling: the flesh was beginning to swell and to turn a sickening greyish colour. Only then did I understand Reed’s indignation.

  ‘Very well, show me,’ I said. ‘I do not want to stare at this for too long.’

  Reed slightly tilted Alistair’s head, for the flap of his double chin was obscuring most of the mark. ‘There you have it, Inspector.’

  It was a mighty stain: dark brown, almost blackened at the edges, and that spot of flesh, compared to the rest of the decaying body, remained rather firm and elastic, as if no parasite dared to corrupt it.

  ‘Show me his fingers,’ I prompted, although I was already pulling the dead hand myself. Only the very tips bore a similar tint.

  ‘What is it, Frey?’ Nine-Nails asked. ‘Yer grinning like a constipated hag that’s just discovered prunes.’

  ‘I have seen this pigmentation before,’ I murmured.

  ‘Have ye, Frey?’ McGray asked, peering over my shoulder.

  ‘Yes! And more than once.’ I went from the neck to the fingertips several times, the epiphany taking full shape in my mind. Those were the glorious instants that had made me a slave to my profession. I turned back to Reed: ‘Do you have equipment to perform the Marsh test?’

  Reed looked blankly at me for a moment, but then his eyes widened with amazement. ‘Do you mean that …?’

  ‘I do.’

  It took him another moment to process my words, but then he hurled himself forward and leaned over the body: ‘Of course! Of course! I should have thought so! I saw a few cases like this at university.’

  ‘It was not entirely obvious,’ I said. If possible, my smile grew wider. ‘Not until now, at least. Do you have the equipment?’