Edinburgh Twilight (Ian Hamilton Mysteries Book 1)

by Carole Lawrence

  “What d’ye have in mind, then?” he said as the sweet, sickly smell of opium drifted in from the narrow corridor leading to the back room. “Sure you don’t want ta go to th’back?”

  “Quite sure,” Harold replied, taking his elbow. “Why don’t we leave this den of iniquity and find somewhere more secluded?”

  Kerry shrugged, trying to appear unconcerned, though he felt anything but. Spots danced before his eyes, and his cheeks burned with the heat of desire and adventure.

  “I’ve got this covered,” Harold said, tossing a few coins onto the bar. “Come along, let’s go.”

  Kerry slid off his stool, a bit unsteady on his feet, but Harold’s firm hand on his arm guided him across the room, through the door, and into the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “Very well, I shall simply wait until he returns,” snapped Chief Inspector Louis Valeur Gerard, crossing his arms over his compact torso. He had appeared early Friday morning at the Edinburgh police station, asking to speak with Detective Hamilton, who hadn’t yet arrived. Sergeant Dickerson’s attempts to placate the Frenchman met with firm Gallic resistance. The sergeant stood, hands dangling helplessly at his sides as he tried frantically to think of something to appease Gerard’s mounting displeasure.

  “Per’aps you would like a cup of tea—”

  The French policeman gave a dismissive wave of his hands, elegantly clad in impeccable white gloves. “Non, merci—I do not see how you British can drink of this—this dishwater you seem to so much enjoy. Why do you not enjoy the far superior café, eh?”

  “We do enjoy coffee, but it’s more expensive and harder to come by,” Dickerson explained. “And I’d advise you not t’call the lads here ‘British.’ They’re most of them Highlander Scots, and they won’t take kindly to it.”

  A frown spread over Gerard’s long face. With its high cheekbones, heavy-lidded eyes, and protruding lips, it was a caricature of a classic Gallic countenance. “Hmm!” he said, pulling at the thin mustache that emphasized the thickness of his lips. “Scottish people are also British, are they not?”

  “It’s a bit more complicated,” Dickerson replied. Feeling a sneeze come on, he tried to stifle it, but it exploded from his nose just as DI Hamilton entered the station house.

  “Are you quite all right, Sergeant?” Hamilton said, hanging up his cloak.

  “I’m ’fraid I might be allergic to dogs, sir.”

  Hamilton frowned. “Dogs?”

  “I took Prince—that’s the dog at Mrs. Sutherland’s—home wi’ me, remember?”

  “Perhaps not the wisest thing if you’re allergic.”

  “I’ll get used to it, sir,” Dickerson replied, stifling another sneeze.

  “Which reminds me, I don’t recall requesting a feline companion.”

  Dickerson felt himself redden. “Beg pardon, sir, but you mentioned having a mouse problem, and I thought—”

  “Never mind; I know it was well intentioned.”

  “Yes, sir. Meanwhile, this is Inspector Gerard—”

  “Chief Inspector Louis Valeur Gerard,” the Frenchman interrupted, stepping forward. “À votre service.”

  “Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton,” Ian said, extending his hand. “I hope you had a pleasant journey.”

  “No journey can be pleasant when such sauvages are abroad,” Gerard replied sternly, giving his hand a stiff shake.

  “Well said, Chief Inspector. Shall we get down to business, then?”

  “I perceive you are somewhat lax in discipline,” Gerard said with a glance at a pair of constables strolling into the station house, laughing and joking between themselves. They stopped and stared when they saw the Frenchman, before continuing, snickering and murmuring to each other. Chief Inspector Gerard frowned. “You allow your officers to wander in whenever they feel like it?”

  Sergeant Dickerson’s ears buzzed. The impudence of this French fop! Why, if he could only speak his mind, he’d show him a thing or two . . .

  To his surprise, Hamilton just smiled. “I’m sure there are many differences between us, but I hope that doesn’t mean we can’t work together.”

  “No, of course not,” the Frenchman replied stiffly, with a brisk tug at his crisp uniform. His brass buttons were polished to a bright sheen, the crease in his dark blue trousers razor sharp. Most amazing to Dickerson were the creamy white gloves, without a single stain upon them. He didn’t know how anyone could pass through the streets of Edinburgh without attracting any of the soot, grime, and filth spitting forth daily from its chimneys, foundries, and slaughterhouses.

  Gerard glanced around the room at the constables seated at their desks or loitering about the tea station. “Is it possible to speak somewhere more private?”

  “Voudriez-vous passer à une autre chambre?” Hamilton said.

  The Frenchman’s face cracked into a stiff smile. “Vous parlez français?”

  “Un petit peu.”

  “I am glad to see the language of philosophers is not entirely without representation among the barbarians.”

  Sergeant Dickerson glared at their visitor. He was about to regale Gerard on the subject of Scottish philosophers, when Hamilton threw him a warning glance. Dickerson pursed his lips but remained silent.

  “I daresay you may be surprised by what you find here,” Ian remarked calmly.

  Dickerson was amazed at Hamilton’s composure in the face of French insolence as he followed them to the small room at the back where the lads enjoyed the occasional furtive nap. Dickerson himself had fallen asleep on the little cot more than once.

  “Here we are,” Hamilton said, offering Gerard a chair while he perched on the side of the room’s only desk. “We can talk here undisturbed.” Sitting on the cot was out of the question, so Dickerson had to content himself with leaning against the wall, which only increased his rancor toward the Frenchman.

  “Bon,” Gerard said, removing his gold-braided cap before lowering himself into the chair. “I see no reason the entire constabulary of Edinburgh need hear our conversation, n’est-ce pas?”

  “I understand that you have a series of crimes bearing a striking similarity to our recent stranglings.”

  Removing his gloves, Gerard smoothed a hand over his perfectly oiled hair, giving off a whiff of peppermint pomade. “I have studied your newspaper accounts, and they bear every mark of ours as well. I must say, your journalists are given to rather—baroque expressions.”

  “Do you believe the Paris and Edinburgh crimes to be the work of one man?”

  “C’est possible. Perhaps two men—or women.”

  “Ye can’t be serious,” said Dickerson. “A woman’s not capable of—”

  “One must never come to a premature conclusion,” Gerard responded, pulling a small notebook from his jacket pocket. “I have here the details of our murders—there were three in all, within the space of two months, last autumn.”

  “And then they stopped?” said Ian.

  “Complètement. We hoped the perpetrator had died or been imprisoned for another crime. Alors, I am sorry to learn he may have simply crossed the Channel.”

  “May I see that?” asked Dickerson. Gerard raised an eyebrow before handing it to him. Seeing to his dismay that the writing was of course in French, the sergeant handed the notebook to Detective Hamilton. “Can ye translate this, sir?” he asked as he failed to ward off another bout of violent sneezing.

  “You might want to reconsider your dog acquisition, Sergeant,” Hamilton remarked as he gazed at the document. “I see one of the crimes took place in the neighborhood known as Pigalle—the red-light district?”

  Gerard nodded. “Any manner of dissipation or vice you wish can be found there for a price.”

  “Men as well as women?”

  “Bien sûr,” Gerard replied, his face expressing distaste. “But the victims were respectable men, one of them a banker with three children, another a well-known doctor of medicine.”

  “The French newspaper
accounts make no mention of playing cards left at the scene of the crimes.”

  Chief Inspector Gerard smiled. “Ah, yes—some information must always be kept from the public, do you agree?”

  “Indeed.”

  “So did he leave cards?” Dickerson asked, about to burst from curiosity.

  The French detective gave a secretive smile and reached into his inside breast pocket, drawing forth two playing cards, which he placed on the desk: the ace and two of clubs. The design was identical to the ones in their evidence room—the same leering skeletons, one for each number on the card.

  “Et vous?” Gerard said. “What do you have?”

  Ian’s unsmiling eyes met his. “The three and four of clubs.”

  “And the design?”

  “The same.”

  Chief Inspector Louis Valeur Gerard threw up his hands. “C’est ça. It’s the same killer.”

  “But you said you had three victims—yet only two cards?”

  “He left nothing on the first victim. And yet all of the other aspects of the crimes are identical.”

  “I believe you are correct, Chief Inspector, in believing it is the same perpetrator.”

  “But why leave no card on the first victim?”

  “It may be he was in a hurry, fearing discovery. Or perhaps he had not yet conceived of leaving his ‘calling cards,’ as it were.”

  The conversation continued, but Sergeant Dickerson barely heard them. He was too busy staring at the cards on the desk in front of him, the skeletons dancing and cavorting as he tried to imagine what kind of fierce joy this fiend found in the strangling of young men.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  There existed in Edinburgh a tribe of men and women who plied their trade in darkness, whose livelihood depended upon the setting of the sun. Their movements were illuminated by gaslight, half in shadow, glimpsed from the corner of the eye by their fellow citizens, as in a dream. They had their own rules, regulations, and rituals, known only to them; secrecy was their constant companion, silence their motto.

  They were the lamplighters and night watchmen, thieves and brigands, pickpockets and prostitutes, and they lived in the spaces between waking and sleeping, their existence as deep and still as a held breath.

  Jamie McKenzie was a member of this tribe, having at least a nodding acquaintance with many others. One of Edinburgh’s vast army of leeries, he ventured forth upon the heels of daylight, tramping through the town as twilight deepened into dusk, the instrument of his trade held aloft as he approached each gas lantern atop its cast-iron post.

  The sun was just slipping behind Castle Rock as Jamie set out from his home in Craig’s Close, past the Isle of Man Tavern, where poet Robert Ferguson once rubbed shoulders with the notorious Deacon Brodie, as members of the famed Cape Club. Jamie wasn’t much given to socializing. The left side of his face was disfigured, making him wary of encounters with his fellow man. He had been so since the age of six, when he wandered too near to a horse his father was shoeing. The gelding was skittish and delivered a kick to the side of young Jamie’s face, caving in his cheekbone and leaving him blind in one eye. He had developed a preference for nighttime; for him, the lamplighting profession was ideal.

  But Jamie was well-known around town, regarded fondly by citizens accustomed to his familiar figure as they trudged home from their day’s labor. There was something comforting in the sight of his long, spidery form wending through the alleys and wynds, his flint held aloft, a scarred but stalwart Prometheus. They called him Long Jamie, for he was well over six feet and as thin as a parson’s gruel. Children sometimes danced behind him, making up rhymes and songs about him. Sometimes they were cruel, children being what they are, but most often they were stories of his nightly adventures—which, seen through a child’s eye, were romantic indeed.

  On this night, no packs of children followed him; though the rain had abated, a stiff wind whistled along Cockburn Street. Jamie didn’t mind—he enjoyed solitude, and if the cold wind caused the denizens of Edinburgh to hide behind closed shutters, so much the better.

  He spied Sally McGrath huddled beneath the eaves of the Hound and Hare. Though the fancy ladies of the New Town referred to her as a “fallen woman,” Sally was lively and kind, often sharing her profits with her fellow night travelers. On more than one occasion she had treated Jamie to a bowl of stew or tatties and neeps at local eateries.

  But Sally was well past her prime, and times were hard for an aging prostitute—dangerous, too. Jamie imagined she needed the money badly to venture out on such a chill night. He tipped his hat, indicating there were no policemen nearby—had he seen a copper, he would have whistled. She smiled at him and drew her cloak closer.

  As he trudged up the hill, Jamie sang a popular ballad, “My Highland Laddie.” Enjoying the sound of his own voice, he stopped to light the lamp at the intersection of Cockburn and Lyon’s Close. He was just about to begin the second verse when something lying in the alley caught his good eye. Thinking it was one of the town’s many inebriates overcome by alcohol, Jamie ventured into the narrow passageway to rouse the man.

  “Oiy!” he said, prodding the still form with his toe. “Git up wi’ ye—time t’gae home.”

  He gave the man another poke, dislodging his coat collar and revealing his face. With a sharp intake of breath, Jamie McKenzie realized what he was looking at was not a drunken man, but a corpse. Jamie staggered backward, his knees turned to butter. Hardly aware of what he was doing, he flung down his pole and lurched down the street in the direction of the police station.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Ian returned to his flat on Victoria Terrace to find it dark and still. As he reached to light the flame on the gas lamp, something brushed against his leg. Startled, he gave a yelp. At that moment, it occurred to him his brother might be playing a trick on him, as he had so often when they were children. Donald loved to scare people, and Ian, two years younger, was his prime target. His heart leapt at the thought his brother had returned. Guilt had nagged at him all day for his treatment of Donald the night before. Ian knew he had allowed the years of worry and resentment to build up into the outburst against his brother. In spite of his intentions, his better self had not prevailed, and more than anything he wished he could take back every harsh word.

  “Donald?” Ian said, grasping for the matches he had dropped on the floor. His hand touched something furry, which began to purr loudly, and he realized what had rubbed against his leg. “Good Lord,” he said. “What are you doing scaring me half to death?”

  The cat responded with a plaintive cry Ian recognized as a demand for food.

  “Come along, then,” he said, finally managing to light the lamp. “Have you run out of mice to eat so quickly?”

  The cat looked at him quizzically. There was a black smudge on its nose, as if the feline had been poking around behind the stove. Ian had to admit there was something fetching about the animal’s aquiline visage, with its long nose and round eyes—it was a rather uncatlike face. Bacchus accompanied Ian to the kitchen, swerving back between his feet as though trying deliberately to trip him.

  “Steady on,” Ian muttered. “If I fall and break my neck, you won’t be having your dinner.”

  He pulled some meat from the previous night’s roast and put it in a bowl on the floor. Bacchus sniffed at it and crouched over the bowl, pecking delicately at the meat.

  “That should hold you for a while,” Ian said. “You’re not staying, you know,” he added. Candle in hand, Ian explored the rest of the flat for any signs of Donald. He was disappointed to find all the rooms dark and silent. He opened the closet in the spare bedroom, searching for his brother’s belongings, but he wasn’t sure whether Donald had arrived with luggage. His coveting Ian’s dressing gown was entirely in keeping with his character; Donald always enjoyed giving him a hard time.

  Finding a rucksack in the back of the closet, he pulled it out to examine it. Inside were two pairs of trousers, a handfu
l of shirts, and various toiletry items. Hope danced in Ian’s chest—perhaps Donald would return for his things, and Ian could apologize. As he lifted the pack to return it to the closet, a deck of cards tumbled out of the front compartment. He bent to pick it up but recoiled as if stung.

  The skeletal faces on the cards, by now too familiar, grinned up at him, mockery in their terrible, empty eyes. He counted the cards with trembling hands—to his relief, they were all accounted for. But the discovery was deeply troubling. He slipped the deck back into the rucksack, threw on his cloak, and set out in the direction of his aunt’s town house. Lillian would know what to do.

  She greeted him warmly as usual, a woolen shawl wrapped around her shoulders. He recognized the tartan as his uncle Alfie’s Clan Grey.

  “What brings you out on such a night?” she asked, drawing the curtains on the cold, thin rain spitting from the sky. “Come sit by the fire and have a wee bowl o’ leek and potato soup.”

  As they ate, he told her the story of Donald’s abrupt arrival and even more precipitous departure.

  “Dear me,” she said. “You were rather harsh with him, weren’t you?”

  “There’s more,” he said grimly, and told her about the pack of cards.

  Lillian shook her head. “Surely you don’t think Donald could—”

  “I don’t want to, of course! But is it mere coincidence that he shows up at the same time as the—”

  “The Holyrood Strangler?”

  “Blast the press,” Ian said, biting his lip. “Causing public hysteria with their sensationalistic claptrap.”

  “Did Donald mention being on the Continent?”

  “He’s not been especially forthcoming about his whereabouts, and I haven’t pressed him.”

  Lillian laid down her soupspoon. “Don’t you find it disturbing that we’re sitting here calmly discussing whether your brother is a murderer?”

  “As a policeman, I have to believe anyone is capable of anything.”