by David Ashton
‘I do not.’
‘Gilbert Morrison!’
Try as she might, the Countess was unable to suppress the fleeting stab of relief which left a mark on the heart-shaped face, the visage changing from cloudy confusion to a sharp focus of concentration.
‘Mister Morrison. I know nothing of his death.’
‘Whit about Logan Galloway?’
McLevy shot out the other name like a bullet into her face and despite herself, she almost blinked recognition.
Then recovered.
And he knew he would get little more for his pains.
But he also knew that she was complicit, if not the fons et origo of events surrounding Jean Brash.
How to prove it was another matter.
‘Who might that be?’ she queried finally.
‘Another deid body. Jist thought tae throw it in.’
The inspector grinned somewhat foolishly as if the drink was leading him by the nose, but although she had smelled the whisky as soon as he walked in and sought to augment the effect, the Countess bore in mind that every member of the fraternity she had so far encountered had described McLevy by various detrimental adjectives, but stupid was not one of them.
‘I have not heard or met with this…Mister Galloways,’ said the Countess carefully.
‘Galloway.’
‘Yet Mister Morrison, how sad. A good client.’
‘Dead as a doornail,’ said McLevy cheerfully. ‘Oh, here…’ He hauled from the deep poacher’s pouch in his coat the quirt Ballantyne had unearthed and which he had stuffed in his pocket before parting from the station.
An act which might indicate that, whisky or not, he had intended to come a-visiting.
‘Ye recognise this artefact?’
Her eyes, narrow at best, became slits.
‘It is for horses,’ she said.
‘And other beasts of burden.’
The Countess shrugged as if the matter had nothing to recommend further discussion.
‘I respect the privacy of my clients. Especially when dead. Let us leave them in peace.’
‘Not if they’re murdered. No-one gets any peace if there’s a murder in Leith.’
McLevy slugged back his drink and noticed that the Countess did not rush to replenish the libation.
‘Then how can I help you?’ she asked with a hint of frost in the tone.
‘I’m looking for a motive,’ said McLevy artlessly. ‘In my opinion, murder always has a motive. Revenge often.’
‘Revenge?’
‘Aye.’
The inspector scratched his head absent-mindedly with the tip of the quirt. ‘Someone suffers loss or pain, they wish the downfall of the one they blame for that. Next thing ye know, death on the carpet!’
This all-embracing concept found little favour with the Countess.
‘Morrison liked to leather hell out of women, perhaps someone took exception?’ the inspector continued.
‘Not in this house. You pay for your pleasure. A business transaction.’
‘Whit about wee Simone? Did she not flee the nest because of such transaction?’
‘Simone had her own reasons,’ the Countess responded cautiously; as was common with McLevy the conversation was veering all over like a coach with a headless driver.
‘And then she ends up wi’ acid poured down her back, does that not suggest revenge to you, Countess?’
She waited with ready answer should he accuse her but he sniffed appreciatively at his whisky and tilted the dregs down his gullet. It was not an elegant gesture and for some reason annoyed her.
‘What has this to do with Mister Morrison?’ she questioned abruptly.
‘Who knows? I’m jist asking round the doors.’
McLevy held his empty glass up to the light and squinted through it. The Countess sighed and poured again but only half way, and then the inspector rocked back in his chair as if settling in for the night.
‘My head is fair birlin’ with the events of the last few days,’ he remarked equably.
She made no reply. They sat in silence. Her drink was almost untouched and she glanced back to her pile of papers, which had suddenly assumed a revitalised importance.
The music wafted over them once more and McLevy bobbed his head rather foolishly to the notes.
‘Is that Chopin?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered a little surprised. ‘The Etudes. Most nights I have a classical pianist in the main salon. It adds quality.’
‘I like Chopin,’ remarked McLevy. ‘He has never to my knowledge murdered anybody.’
She once more made no response and for a moment it seemed oddly peaceful in the room as they both appreciated the beauty of a fragile melody.
The Countess looked into the inspector’s eyes and was disturbed by the depth of understanding in his gaze.
‘Gilbert Morrison died because past action called for a retribution that has only now surfaced in the present,’ he said quietly. ‘I will find it out. Do you know this man?’
He held out the rough likeness of Alfred Binnie, the very fellow to whom the Countess had recently paid further gold coin as a mark of appreciation for a task accomplished.
Binnie had followed her plan to the letter, killed Galloway, left the man’s blood on Jean Brash and had one more deed to perform before he would vanish back to London.
Meanwhile he perched in a room three storeys above.
This she knew, but discretion was paramount. What was good for clients was surely good enough for Binnie.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I have never seen him.’
So be it. One crime spills into another and the lies mount up.
McLevy thought such, put away the drawn likeness with the quirt then slugged back the rest of his whisky.
The Countess relaxed a little thinking this strange and contradictory fellow was about to take his leave, but not quite yet.
Not quite.
‘Ye didnae ask,’ he stated, thumping down the heavy tumbler.
‘What?’
‘Why I showed you that portrait. Ye didnae ask the reason.’
‘Because I assumed you would tell me.’
‘Uhuh?’
A good answer, but not sufficient good.
‘He’s the one who poured the acid down Simone’s back. Bad wee bugger, eh?’
McLevy had still made no mention of the obvious correlation between the war waged and events unfolding so the Countess thought she might beat him to the punch.
‘I hope you don’t connect me with this dreadful act?’
‘Not at all. Ye don’t look anything like the mannie.’
He laughed loudly at his own joke and she managed a small twitch of a smile.
‘She screamed like a witch on the bonfire. The French girl. So they say. I wisnae there.’
McLevy stood up, low-brimmed bowler hanging loose in his hand.
‘Jist as well Simone had Jean Brash tae fall back on, eh?’ he muttered. ‘Be in a fine state else.’
The Countess hesitated and then nodded in a non-committal fashion. Binnie had inveigled the young policeman to enter the house in Iona Street and heard a whistle blow.
After that, he’d made himself scarce. Left it in the lap of the gods.
‘Except that Jean is in the police cells now.’
The inspector having dropped this bombshell put on his hat as if to go but a newly enlivened Countess forestalled the anticipated departure.
‘Jean Brash. But how is that?’
‘She stands accused of murder; all the rage and she likes tae be in fashion,’ he remarked dryly.
‘My God. But who was the victim?’
‘Your Mister Galloways.’
‘He is not mine!’ she cried.
Indeed the Countess was struggling to control a feeling of exultation. The gods were most definitely upon her side.
But as mankind has so often experienced, the gods are on no-one’s side but their own.
‘What a terrible thing!’
‘But I would not wish…even an enemy.’
‘Wouldn’t you? You’re nicer that me. I would. Every time. Anyway she stands accused. Her knife in his body.’
McLevy made sudden stabbing movement with his hand towards the Countess who flinched for a moment.
His face registered an evil, murderous smile then returned to a soggy repose.
‘That’s what it looks like, anyway,’ he said.
‘Do you believe her guilty?’
A shrewd question. Worth a decent response.
For a moment it seemed as if the inspector’s body was charged with a strange energy that vibrated in the very air of the room. The study itself was dark, with pools of light from various table lamps, but he had stepped back so that the white face hung in the gloom like a Halloween ghost.
He rendered then with great formality, a statement of intent.
‘I believe I will find out the truth,’ said James McLevy. ‘No matter how many lies I am told, how many misdirections, how many secrets kept. If you have broken the law, I will find you out. It is my profession, my life’s work, and I am good at my job.’
Then he eructated softly as the whisky came back to haunt him, and grinned like a wolf.
‘So, Countess, if you have told truth ye have nothing to worry about.’
‘My conscience is clear,’ she replied demurely.
The music next door came to an end with a final subtle chord and as if taking cue, he let out a roar of laughter.
‘Whit a merry-go-round it all is, eh? But the best way not tae get dizzy, is to stand in the middle and watch the wheel go round. Stand in the middle.’
A curt nod and he was gone.
The Countess pulled at a bell rope to signal the butler, returned to her desk and thought for a moment. Then a sly, malicious smile came to her lips and she pulled a sheet of paper towards her and began to write.
The inspector observed her through the keyhole; it always amazed him how many folk never thought to keek in by this aperture.
He straightened up just in time as the servant came out from a side room to escort him back towards the door.
‘Whit is your name?’ he asked in friendly fashion.
‘James Feeney,’ the other answered.
‘Feeney? That’s Irish.’
‘I am of that extraction, sir.’
‘Ye’d never guess,’ said McLevy as they walked down the long corridor, staggering a little as if losing his bearings. ‘But the Irish, they’re everywhere, eh?’
As they passed the door to the main salon, the inspector suddenly lurched and sprung open the portal with a thump. Only a momentary glimpse before the butler rushed to close it again, but enough for McLevy to see some women in décolletage fussing around two bald heads that mercifully were facing away lest they be Masonic panjandrums that the inspector might have seen in Roach’s company.
That, however, was not what held his interest. One of the girls he recognised, Maisie Powers; he winked at her and she scowled when she saw his face; a hefty specimen and one that he might try to intercept on another occasion.
He turned from the newly closed door with an affable smile.
‘Night night, Mister Feeney,’ he said cheerily. ‘Don’t let the bugs bite.’
And with that, he stepped out into the night.
A scratching at the glass brought McLevy back to the present of a hungry cat at his attic window.
He let Bathsheba in to snash at the scraps he had deposited in the chipped saucer and walked back to the frame, which he had left open.
The dank October air made him shiver, but he enjoyed the dampness on his face.
The inspector decided he might have been a bit hard on himself. Normally it was not a good idea to see suspects with drink taken but perhaps that may have worked in his favour. Had he been bristling with sobriety, perhaps the Countess would have been even more defensive.
Perhaps it was not such a foolish move. But the second action was definitely daft.
On his way home, the weight of the world upon his shoulders, he had chanced to run into three young hoydens, out late on the streets, dressed as Halloween hell-hags, one a besom rider with broom, the others ripe for mischief.
Something in his demeanour set them to caper; they were masked and much mischief can be done behind the visor.
They linked hands to surround him and demanded a golden apple or he must pay forfeit.
McLevy had been put in mind of Paris with the three goddesses and see what happened to him.
The Trojan War.
He had no apple to hand in any case and demanded to know the forfeit.
And thus he could be witnessed in Constitution Street, a fine respectable thoroughfare, dancing a highland fling, arms aloft, in the middle of three giggling females.
The inspector shook his head at the attic window, while the lights of Edinburgh blinked in admonition.
Like many a man before him, he blamed the whisky for this wild cantrip; the resemblance to his dream of some nights ago did not escape his notice.
And like the dream, it had a strange aftermath.
No tunnels or spectres in a red cloak, just the glimpsed sight of a face looking out of a passing carriage.
A moment only, but surely it was the visage of Sophia Adler?
Or was it hallucination brought on by whisky, the highland fling and unaccustomed exertion?
The face jerked back inside, the carriage flung round a corner and was gone, the muffled figure of the coachman no help to identification.
McLevy stood frozen with raised arms until a sharp pain in his side caused them to lower. He broke through the chain of witches with a muttered excuse and walked swiftly home without once looking back.
And now he was. Home.
He mused upon these strange events. This mesmerism was catching – was the dream a premonition and if so, was there more to follow?
All his life he had balanced the gut instinct of a policeman with sudden shafts of intuition.
Earth and heaven.
He valued both.
Somewhere in the dark night there was a high-pitched squealing noise along the rooftops. A breaking hinge or a dying animal.
Take your pick.
McLevy thought back to that face in the carriage. Was it Sophia Adler and if so, what did it signify?
And what would she have observed? A man with his arms in the air. Surrender or the highland fling?
Take your pick.
A foolish move indeed. He had exposed himself to some unknown forces but what did it all signify?
Bathsheba jumped up onto the table and out of the window to terrorise the rodent population and McLevy was suddenly overcome by a feeling of utter helplessness.
Four cups of strong coffee had raised him to a plateau from which there was only one way to go.
Down.
A crash. As if he had lost control of everything. A feeling of dark panic, not unlike the death dream but this was waking consciousness.
His diary lay open on the table but what could he write?
Two murders, one burnt body, two cut bellies, one assaulted music box, a jail full of slinkers, Silver Samuel, and Jean Brash, well-known bawdy-hoose keeper; a madman on the loose, mesmerism, pools of blood, dead spirits talking in your lughole, Big Arthur, wee Muriel, the Countess and Roach laughing up their sleeves, strawberry birthmarks and hornbeam sticks. A cross-segment of the lunatic planet. Yours truly, James McLevy, Inspector of Police.
‘That takes the biscuit,’ he declared aloud. ‘That is quite sufficient!’
Oddly enough, it was.
The recitation of these bizarre events had calmed him down.
His mind began to work again, sifting through it all and coming to certain conclusions.
The key to the Morrison murder was Sophia Adler.
How, he did not yet surmise and her connection might even
be innocent and tenuous but she contained something.
Spirits or earthbound, she was a key.
Something she had said, in his litany he had named it. A pool of blood. Not on the carpet but on the street, she had said. On the stones.
On the slab?
He had mentioned it to Mulholland, a random slice of the brain but now it had returned with a vengeance.
A case some eighteen years ago, he had been a young constable only fit for investigation of minor criminality but his sergeant George Cameron had brought him into the cold room.
A body on the slab.
‘I’m doing this for your own good, Jamie,’ he said and pulled the sheet aside.
The young constable looked and said nothing.
‘This is violent death,’ Cameron declared. ‘Ye don’t get much worse. We found him down by the docks.’
Where the man’s face should have been was a bloody mess. As if a giant fist had smashed down to obliterate all traces of self.
Just like Gilbert Morrison’s.
The case was never solved and he was a lowly constable only fit for day patrol then with a sergeant who, despite his rough ways, looked after him like a son.
The cold room was as near as he got to that particular investigation.
But he seemed to remember they discovered the man to be American. Was that the body she had seen in her vision?
Was there a connection?
A constable then but now he was inspector. He would examine the records of the case. Might yield nothing but he would look anyway.
On the financial side, a banker, who owed him his son’s reputation, had promised to move heaven and earth to delve deeper into the monetary affairs of the Morrison Brothers.
Hopefully the man would deliver soon.
Walter was the surviving brother, but how long would he last?
McLevy had stationed a watch on the man’s house; part protection, part surveillance. So far there was nothing to report. Walter was lying low.
As regards Jean Brash, he had no doubt now that she had walked into a trap.
The knife. A professional job.
The barman in the pub where the sharpers were sliced remembered the little man complaining about the beer. The London ale was better, he had said. Shoreditch stout put the Scots beer to shame.
McLevy had sent a cable to a good police friend in that dungeon of a city, describing in as much detail as possible the wee acid-pourer and mentioning the Shoreditch connection.
