Edinburgh Twilight (Ian Hamilton Mysteries Book 1)

by Carole Lawrence

  Monsieur Le Coq smiled. “And what might your name be?”

  “Phillip!” the young man replied, his voice faltering as people twisted around in their seats to get a good look at him.

  “A name fit for a king,” the hypnotist remarked drily, his audience responding with a burst of nervous laughter. The young man joined in, but his eyes showed more apprehension than amusement.

  “Would you like to help me demonstrate the power of the human mind, Phillip?” Monsieur Le Coq inquired genially, rubbing his hands together.

  “I should be delighted!” Phillip responded a bit too loudly, his voice tight and high with tension.

  “Very well,” the hypnotist replied, rewarding the ladies with another dazzling smile. “Come right on up here, if you would, Phillip.”

  Phillip rose from his seat, straightened his cummerbund, and drew a hand over his already impeccably combed hair. Seizing his young lady’s hand, he kissed it with a flourish before squeezing between the seats of the other patrons to get to the aisle. Some of the ladies around him sighed at the gallant gesture, while their husbands frowned at its theatricality. He was a nice-enough-looking young man, if a bit slight, with a firm chin and a fine, aristocratic nose. As he ascended the steps to the proscenium, he caught the toe of his shoe and tripped, but quickly regained his balance, climbing briskly to the stage.

  Monsieur Le Coq met him with a firm handshake and a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Ladies and gentlemen, our first brave volunteer of the evening—Phillip!”

  The audience responded with a smattering of applause. Tension hung in the air, thick as an Edinburgh fog. The audience leaned forward, a great curious beast, its attention focused upon the proscenium, as a stagehand carried a simple, straight-backed chair onto the stage. Monsieur Le Coq nodded, and the stagehand withdrew silently into the wings.

  Next to the hypnotist, with his powerful shoulders and leonine mane of dark hair, Phillip looked spindly and ill-nourished. Lillian thought that some of Monsieur Le Coq’s effectiveness derived from his impressive, muscular build. He seemed to dwarf the young man who stood before him, gaining in stature as the other appeared to grow smaller.

  “Now then, Phillip,” he declaimed in his deep, resonant voice, which carried with ease to the back stalls, “how are you this evening?”

  “Very well, thank you,” the young man replied, though he was looking less well by the minute. His left knee was shaking, and his jaw was clenched; beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

  “Relax!” Monsieur Le Coq commanded, clasping both hands upon Phillip’s shoulders. At first the gesture appeared to startle him, but as the hypnotist’s eyes met his, all the tension drained from the young man’s body. Lillian feared he might fall if not for the firm grasp of the hypnotist holding him upright.

  He continued to gaze into Phillip’s eyes, until the young man’s face relaxed and his eyelids began to droop. His eyes closed and his body went limp as he fell forward. A gasp rose from the audience, but Monsieur Le Coq caught him, adroitly lowering his insensate form into the chair. The hypnotist turned to the audience, ignoring the seemingly unconscious Phillip, who sat slumped over as if asleep.

  “The power of the human mind is a wondrous thing. Even now, we can only begin to imagine what it is capable of.”

  In the third row, the young woman in the blue dress and light brown curls bit her knuckles, but Monsieur Le Coq gave her a reassuring smile.

  “I assure you, no harm will come to the young man you see before you. He is neither asleep nor unconscious; he is merely in a state of deep relaxation. In such a state he is highly open to suggestion. Allow me to demonstrate.” He turned to the man in the chair. “Phillip, do you know any poetry by heart?”

  Phillip nodded, his eyes still closed.

  “Would you mind reciting it for me?”

  Without opening his eyes, Phillip raised his head and recited in a loud, firm voice.

  “That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,

  And the blue eye

  Dear and dewy,

  And that infantine fresh air of hers!

  To think men cannot take you, Sweet,

  And enfold you,

  Ay, and hold you,

  And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!”

  “Robert Browning, if I’m not mistaken?” the hypnotist asked with a smile.

  Phillip nodded.

  “Well done, Phillip,” said Monsieur Le Coq. “Would I be correct in assuming that these lines apply to your charming young lady?”

  Again Phillip nodded without opening his eyes.

  Lillian gazed down at the young woman in the third row, who was blushing furiously, trying to hide her face with her handkerchief.

  “You may open your eyes now if you wish,” said the hypnotist. The young man did so, staring blankly in front of him, his gaze unfocused, as if he were in a trance. “Very good so far, Phillip—you are an excellent subject. Would I be correct in assuming that you are able to bark like a dog should the occasion arise?”

  Phillip nodded.

  “Would you be so kind as to do so?”

  Without hesitation, the young man emitted a series of short, percussive barks, such as might be made by a terrier or a spaniel. Several people in the audience tittered.

  “And might you also cluck like a chicken?” inquired Monsieur Le Coq.

  The young man immediately favored the onlookers with an imitation of a chicken, clucking and cooing quite credibly.

  “I should like to see you move like one as well—can you do that?” asked the hypnotist.

  Phillip sprang from his chair and moved about the stage in a crouched position, waving his arms like wings, pecking and scratching at the stage as if it were the dirt floor of a chicken coop. The audience roared with laughter as the hypnotist pretended to feed him a fat, juicy worm, which Phillip sucked greedily into his mouth, swallowing it with gusto. The young woman in the third row was not so amused, however; she wore an expression of astonished horror.

  “Well done indeed!” said Monsieur Le Coq. “And now, one final test, with your permission.” He withdrew a long, thin needle from his frock coat. “Would you allow me to insert this into your arm?”

  A gasp arose from the crowd—several women cried, “No!”

  The hypnotist raised his hand for silence. “I promised earlier that Phillip would come to no harm, and I beg you to trust me.” He turned back to the young man onstage. “Do I have your permission to insert this needle into your flesh?”

  Still staring straight ahead, Phillip nodded. The hypnotist whispered something into his ear, and he nodded again.

  “What I have just told him,” Monsieur Le Coq said to the audience, “is that this will not hurt one bit. And now allow me to demonstrate the power of the human mind. Phillip, would you mind removing your coat and rolling up your sleeve?”

  The young man did as he requested, exposing a thin white forearm. The hypnotist said firmly, “As I said, you will not feel this at all.”

  With that he brandished the needle with a flourish, the thin steel flashing silver in the bright stage lights. A murmur went up from the crowd as he carefully inserted the needle into Phillip’s forearm. To Lillian’s surprise, there was no bleeding save for a tiny droplet of blood that the hypnotist wiped away with a clean white handkerchief. He pushed farther until the needle went clear through Phillip’s arm and out the other side. All the while, the young man’s face remained passive and his body showed no signs of distress. He neither flinched nor grimaced as the needle pierced his flesh.

  “Now then,” said Monsieur Le Coq, “how do you feel?”

  “Fine, thank you,” he replied in a flat but clear tone.

  “Very good, Phillip—well done,” said the hypnotist, drawing forth the needle carefully. He turned to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm round of applause to our brave volunteer, Phillip!”

  The ovation was loud and sustained, an expression of relief as much as approbation.
People grinned and elbowed one another, glad to be rid of the anxiety of worrying about the man onstage, the surrogate for everyone in the room.

  The rest of the act was variations upon the initial demonstration. Monsieur Le Coq called up volunteers, singly and in groups, to recite poetry, sing songs, or do various foolish things. Occasionally he had someone stand on a chair and pretend it was a cliff, demonstrating how the person experienced real fear.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, these are not actors—they are people very much like yourselves. What you are witnessing is the untapped power of the human mind. If you believe something is so, then it is so.”

  Lillian watched the entire performance with interest, though to her nothing had quite the power of the needle going through a man’s arm without his seeming to feel any pain at all. She wondered if there might be an application in the field of medicine, to lessen the suffering of patients in pain. But then, she reasoned, the whole thing might very well be a trick, with a fake needle, and Phillip could be an accomplice. Still, she was sorry when the show was over, and applauded enthusiastically with the rest of the audience, feeling that it was indeed a pity her nephew had to miss this . . .

  Back in his dressing room, the hypnotist’s shoulders drooped as the fervor that had animated his body drained away, leaving him limp and pale with exhaustion. He removed his elegant frock coat, loosening his cummerbund, soaked with sweat. Unbuttoning his damp shirt, he peeled it from his body and tossed it upon the green velvet love seat in the far corner of the room. He sank into a chair in front of the dressing room mirror, lit a cigarette, and stared at his own reflection. His eyes were dead; he could see no soul behind them.

  Oh, there was so much evil in a man, one hardly knew where to begin . . .

  He sucked on the cigarette, inhaling deeply and closing his eyes as the drug flooded his system. Tobacco was his one consolation, his sole comfort in a wicked world. There was a knock upon the door, and he took another deep drag before answering.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Calvin, sir.”

  “Go away.” The French accent was gone, replaced by a north-London dialect.

  “But you have some well-wishers waiting—”

  “Get rid of them.”

  “What shall I say?”

  “Anything—tell them I’m sick; tell them I’m dying. Whatever you want.”

  There was a pause, then the sound of retreating footsteps. He drew more tobacco into his lungs before leaning back in his chair, head thrown back, eyes closed.

  How could he be dying, he wondered, when he was already dead?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “I seem to have . . . an adviser, I suppose you’d have to call him,” Ian said to his aunt. They were having their usual Sunday afternoon tea in the parlor, in front of a roaring fire. Having gorged on roast beef, they were enjoying tea and shortbread while Lillian did Ian’s mending, which she insisted on doing for him once a month. He pretended to protest, and she pretended to believe him.

  “Oh?” Lillian said, peering at the needle she was attempting to thread. She was nearsighted but refused to wear glasses. Holding it up to the light, she squinted as she tried to push the thread through the tiny hole. Ian knew better than to offer to help. “What sort of adviser?”

  “He’s a librarian.”

  “How did you come to meet him?”

  Ian smiled; Aunt Lillian loved a good story. “I’m sorry to disappoint you with the rather unextraordinary fact that I met him at the library.”

  “Ah, well, these things can’t be helped,” she said, finally passing the thread through the eye of the needle.

  He told her about Pearson, carefully omitting their meeting the night before. But he did make the mistake of revealing that Pearson was English.

  “Ach, the English!” She spat the words out contemptuously. “They’re a pallid group o’weaklings. Can’t even manage to measure a proper mile.”

  Ian helped himself to more tea and shortbread. “Auntie, we’ve not had Scots miles since you were a girl.”

  “Because the English are too feeble to walk them,” she said, biting off the end of the thread after tying it up.

  Aunt Lillian seldom missed an opportunity to malign the English, whom she despised with a passion. The longer Scots mile—based on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh—was obsolete, having been replaced by the official English system of measurement for the last time in 1824 (though there were still places in Scotland where the residents obstinately refused to use the English system).

  “So your friend is English. I suppose we’ll have to forgive him for that.” She sighed.

  “How very kind of you,” he remarked drily. He sometimes wondered if her political attitudes were more pose than conviction.

  Lillian shot him a sharp glance as her fingers deftly whip-stitched a button on one of his shirts. “You missed quite an evening last night.”

  Ian frowned—did she know he had been with Pearson? “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d easily find a friend to join you.”

  “Well, I didn’t, and you would have enjoyed it, being ‘a student of human nature,’ as you like to call yourself.”

  “I should love to hear your account of it,” he said to mollify her. It was also unlike Lillian to get snippy like this.

  “It was most extraordinary,” she said, brightening. “He really did seem to have the power to make people ignore pain. He had them do silly things as well, but it was the needle through the arm that really impressed me.”

  “Tell me about it,” Ian said, intrigued.

  She recounted the hypnotist’s act from beginning to end, and when she had finished, he leaned back in his chair.

  “Such abilities could be a wonderful or terrible thing,” he said. “To have such power over people could be a source of great good or great evil.”

  “He insisted that he was doing nothing save ‘liberating’ the person’s innate abilities, but I’m not sure that’s accurate. In every case, they did as he suggested.”

  She went on about Monsieur Le Coq’s presence and charisma, until Ian had to smile. “Why, Auntie, I do believe you are smitten.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped. “At my age—really!”

  But her eyes sparkled, and the color in her cheeks was more than just the heat cast off by the fire in the grate. Ian regretted his decision to forgo the performance—anyone who could make his aunt Lillian blush like a schoolgirl was a man to be reckoned with.

  “I’m glad the citizenry has a distraction. The papers are outdoing one another to cause mass hysteria over these murders.”

  “I heard there was a brawl in front of the police station.”

  “Where did you get that information?”

  She put down her mending. “I assume that’s where you received that bruise on your forehead.”

  “The editors of the Scotsman took it upon themselves to give the killer a lurid name,” he said, ignoring her remark.

  “Ah, yes—the ‘Holyrood Strangler.’ You must admit, it does have a certain ring.”

  Ian groaned. “Not you, too!”

  “I’m only pointing out it’s an appropriate name. Did Chief Inspector Crawford like my photographs?” she said, adroitly changing the topic.

  “Yes, and he wanted me to give you a message.”

  “Yes?” she said, biting off the end of the thread. Aunt Lillian constantly misplaced her sewing scissors, using them to cut peonies and twine and to do numerous other household tasks. Ian had offered many times to buy her a second pair, but she always refused, insisting that she liked the ones she had. But they never seemed to land in her sewing kit, so she invariably resorted to biting off the ends of the thread.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Crawford asked if you would consider working with the Edinburgh City Police as a photographer.”

  “Did he, now?” she said casually, a little smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Fancy that.”

  “Would that interest you
?”

  “I never thought about turning my talents to crime solving—but then, neither did you, until . . .” She bit her lip and looked away. “But that’s all you seem to think about now. It wouldn’t kill you to have a lady friend, you know.”

  “‘Love is a smoke raised with the fumes of sighs.’”

  Lillian wrinkled her nose. “I hope you don’t do that in front of your superior officer.”

  “What?”

  “Quote Shakespeare.”

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

  “I’m sure he finds it very irritating.”

  “And I enjoy irritating him.”

  “It sounds like an ideal relationship,” she said, selecting a new spool of thread from her sewing kit.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” she said, pouring herself another cup of tea.

  “Were my parents . . . happy together?”

  She rose stiffly and fetched a torn tablecloth from the bottom drawer of the rosewood armoire. “I don’t suppose you’ll take some advice from your old aunt Lillian.”

  “Ah, Auntie, we should all be as young as you.” It was flattery, and he knew it—and knew she thrived on it.

  “Oh, gae on with ye,” she said, reverting to her Glaswegian roots.

  “What’s the advice?”

  “Let the dead rest in peace. You’re only tormenting yourself with it.”

  “You sound just like DCI Crawford.”

  “Then he’s a wiser man than I gave him credit for.”

  He stood and went to the window, pulling back the curtain to gaze at the cold, heartless moon grinning down at him from its remote perch, high in the night sky. “You may as well ask the moon not to shine, Auntie.”

  She shook her head. “You’re Emily’s boy, bless her soul. She was as stubborn a Scot as ever lived.”

  He turned to face her. “And you?”

  She raised an eyebrow and drew herself up in her chair. “I’m persistent. There’s a difference.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I know you don’t believe in God, but God bless you all the same.”