Trick of the Light im-3

by David Ashton

  Sophia said nothing. He had by now reached the outside door and she would be glad to see the back of him.

  His hand touched the knob to throw it open and then he hesitated.

  ‘Jonathen Sinclair,’ he shot the words out suddenly. ‘Whit does the name mean to you?’

  For a moment it was as if her whole body froze and then an instant later, she had recovered.

  ‘It means nothing at all.’

  ‘Ye sure?’

  ‘I am certain.’

  But he had seen the shock and aftermath.

  She knew. Bugger your certainty. She knew.

  Like the cricket ball of Conan Doyle, a long shot had hit the mark.

  ‘A pool of blood,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘When ye had a wee confab with Mister Doyle and myself, you mentioned the sight of a man in such a state.’

  ‘I did. A vision. But I know nothing more.’

  ‘In a street, not a room. You said.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Eighteen years ago. In the Leith Docks. A man was shot, his head obliterated, bones and flesh. I believe that to be your pool of blood.’

  ‘Anything is possible.’

  ‘He was a Confederate Officer. Jonathen Sinclair.’

  Sophia’s face was like a mask now. ‘What was he doing here?’

  ‘Buying ships for the South, I believe. You hail from the South, do you not Miss Adler?’

  ‘I am not alone in that.’

  He nodded acceptance of this point and opened the door as if to finally leave, then turned to stare back at her.

  ‘The case was never solved. Now we have another. Twa pools of blood.’

  ‘If true. If it…was this man. Sinclair. I do not see the connection. To Mister Bannerman. Or his actions.’

  McLevy smiled.

  ‘Neither do I. Quite. Yet. But I will find it. That’s my job.’

  As he moved out through the doorway he threw some words casually over his shoulder.

  ‘Find, kill, destroy,’ he remarked cheerily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The beast that was once Magnus Bannerman. He said these words. Do you recollect them?’

  He wanted her to know that however she twisted and turned, spirits, visions be damned. He was on her trail.

  She registered that but shook her head anyway.

  ‘It is all a mystery to me.’

  ‘That’s my meat and drink,’ said McLevy, ‘mystery.’

  He closed the door but just as she breathed a sigh of relief, it popped open again and he stuck his head in like an ogre from some fairy tale, the gaps in his teeth showing from a troll-like grin.

  ‘Don’t forget my ticket.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The box office. At the Tanfield Hall. Wouldnae want to miss your last show.’

  ‘I have not yet decided.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be there,’ said James McLevy. ‘I feel it in my bones.’

  The door finally closed and Sophia moved swiftly to turn the key in the lock lest another visitation occur.

  Then she leant her back against it and let the hot scalding tears flow down her face.

  The vision she had seen. The pool of blood, the body in the street – had it been the good man?

  Grief and rage.

  One dead, one still alive.

  37

  There’s nothing of so infinite vexation

  As man’s own thoughts.

  JOHN WEBSTER, The White Devil

  The Diary of James McLevy

  It is a rare event for me to feel tired but I am driven to that conclusion this hour of four in the morning.

  No wonder, however, I am exhausted.

  In one day I have been near brained to death by ravening beast, watched a young woman breathe her last, shot the aforesaid beastie, rescued a bawdy-hoose keeper from a doom she brought upon herself, stuck another in jail for much the same thing, hammered a knifeman, been delivered by a projected cricket ball, near disgraced myself by passion inappropriate and forgot to feed the cat.

  Indeed McLevy had returned, heated up a pot of coffee as best he could on the embers of the big late-night fire his landlady had left burning in the grate, then opened the attic window to scan the rooftops for Bathsheba.

  But she was not to be seen. In the huff, probably. The inspector had then commenced to sit at his table and write.

  A good way to get things out of the system.

  The birdies are beginning to chirp away at the dawn chorus and I am too tired to go to bed.

  Sophia Adler is a powerful creature and you may only wonder what would happen if such power were used for malevolent ends. As I believe it has been.

  I have read a deal about mesmerism in my scientific journals and though there is great debate over the merits, there seems little doubt over its capacity to influence others through the medium of such power. Whether this triggers a kind of autosuggestion or is imposed from without, one of its striking offshoots is the ability to control the minds of others.

  Hypnotic trance. Witchcraft by any other name, according to the good Christian folk who burnt those accused of sorcery right, left and centre to preserve the faith.

  There is no doubt Sophia Adler has that power, I could have lost my very essence in her violet eyes.

  Luckily, as in my dream, I was able to wrench myself to safety.

  But what if you did not have the strength?

  What if she was able to control Magnus Bannerman and then unleash a primitive anger and violence such as we all have lurking in the depths of our being?

  It’s never far away. See what happens in war.

  Civilisation. Skin deep.

  I believe Magnus Bannerman to have been her instrument of destruction so she didnae get her hands dirty.

  A perfect crime.

  How do I therefore find her out?

  She is like an amphibian that slips from one world to another. I am on dry land, she in the waters. By the time I get the boat launched, she’s back on shore.

  And underneath it all I sense the Imp of Vengeance. A livid presence, an opposite figure to the Christian God with his white hair or saintly son, crowned in thorns.

  Another primitive, dark force that dwells in the deep fissures of the psyche and cuts a swathe through any concept of morality or structured law.

  It will have blood.

  I am only too aware of this force in myself that I keep contained within the boundaries of justice.

  Without them I too might be a beast on the prowl.

  Seeking vengeance from the world for a wee boy who watched the blood drip from his mother’s throat onto the pillow where she laid her head.

  We all seek reparation for past wrongs.

  Or even present ones.

  But it must be done within the bounds of law, otherwise the world is mad and the savage beast within holds sway.

  Sophia Adler is such a beast. No matter how beautiful her face, how justified her cause – she has caused death for her own dark ends.

  And I must bring her down.

  But how?

  McLevy slowly shut his diary and let his mind drift this way and that with the current of his unconscious.

  What had she said?

  I do not see the connection.

  Was there a challenge in these words? A part of the wrongdoer seeks to be discovered. To sabotage the guilty self.

  For some reason Poe’s story of The Tell-Tale Heart came into his mind.

  A man kills another then buries his victim beneath the dead man’s own floorboards. The thud of the murdered heart haunts the killer, growing louder by the second until he screams out a confession to the police who are sitting in the very room come to investigate the disappearance but, in the main, probably just hoping for a cup of tea somewhere.

  McLevy could see little sign of weakness in Sophia save for the smallest crack when the name of Jonathen Sinclair was thrown in her face.

  But was something w
ithin working against her? A truth she refused to recognise, or perhaps did not even yet know?

  For instance, had she not mentioned the pool of blood in her vision being in the street, not the room, perhaps he might not have made – yes – made connection?

  Had she betrayed herself?

  And if you were to believe in her world of spirits and voices and God alone knows what whirling around in the ether – how would they feel about being party to murder?

  Because if she, using her ‘gift’, had split off or unearthed the beast in Magnus Bannerman, would that not perturb the spirit world?

  Power misused and abused.

  This was getting too deep for the inspector and he decided he’d better go to his bed no matter the hour.

  That deathly figure from his dream of some time ago still worried, however. And the pain he had felt on the rooftop didn’t make him feel too cheerful either.

  He patted his chest to feel the reassuring flesh and his own heart beat steadily under his fingers.

  Telling no tales.

  All was well.

  And he would have a decent breakfast for a change this day. At the Auld Ship.

  Drappit egg, his favourite, being an egg poached in gravy from the liver of a fowl. With a slab of pan bread and maybe a blood sausage on the side.

  Perhaps a kidney or two? Lamb, preferably.

  Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.

  McLevy might need sustenance because he would catch a reasonable amount of hell from Lieutenant Roach on account of Conan Doyle’s presence at the attempted murder of one Walter Morrison.

  And that’s another reason he was tired.

  Because after leaving the George Hotel, he had stopped off at the lodging house, hauled Walter Morrison from his bed and got some of the truth from the terrified merchant.

  At least as much as the man knew, for he claimed Gilbert to be the main protagonist, he being a good-natured type and his younger brother a grasping, treacherous fellow.

  For sure greed and treachery were in the story.

  A decent man betrayed and murdered.

  Some might say a casualty of war, but McLevy saw it differently. Just a cold-blooded killing.

  Betrayed for gain.

  For the filthy lucre.

  JUDAS. The name on the wall. It made some sense now.

  But what was the connection?

  McLevy decided that, after all, he would not go to his slumbers.

  If he closed his eyes, he might miss something.

  38

  Remember thee?

  Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat

  In this distracted globe. Remember thee?

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

  The day had been long but now Sophia had found peace, the demons no longer plagued her.

  She sat before his picture, the uniform grey, the tasselled hat at a rakish angle, blond hair curling out under the rim, teeth white in a smile of life and love as he stood under the full blossom of a sweet magnolia tree.

  The trip to the police station had been uneventful; she had made a formal statement as the inspector had warned would be necessary.

  The body she had identified also, its face carved by death into harsh lines, the bullet holes, two, just like before, but not one to the face to smash the bones to bits and pieces. No. To the chest, hidden under the sheet, to leave the face above a death mask, eyes closed, mouth twisted, soul departed, the form that had once been Magnus Bannerman now an empty ruin for winds to blow through.

  She had sat in the lieutenant’s office with a portrait of their gloomy English queen staring out at something no-one else could see and answered the questions quietly, the same, some of them, as had been asked by the inspector on their last meeting.

  Most of her answers were lies but she told the truth wherever possible.

  She knew nothing of the why of the crime, had rested all night at the hotel, was astonished by Bannerman’s actions, and cognised of no reason why he had ascended the rooftops to bring down murder.

  Those were the lies.

  She intended to leave the country as soon as possible, would give her last mesmeric demonstration at the Tanfield Hall despite the loss of her audience-conductor as she did not wish to disappoint her loyal followers, and trusted that the spirit voices would not forsake her in the hour of need.

  This was the truth.

  McLevy asked the questions in a dull, uninterested monotone; they were conveyed to paper by a station scribe and at the end she signed her name.

  The police lieutenant, Roach, was a dry-skinned creature with eyes that seemed bloodshot but not from dissipation. He was tall and bore the imprint of someone whose expectations were confined to a limited horizon.

  A photo on the wall showed him dressed in golfing apparel with a club in his hand and a ball at his feet.

  The other photo was a collection of solemn-faced men in strange regalia, sitting in a row.

  The inscription below announced ‘The Grand Masonic Lodge of Leith’.

  The lieutenant sat at the end of the row.

  A narrow life.

  Between him and the inspector, a strange relationship existed. Both wore uniform, one buckled in by authority, the other bursting at the seams.

  A palpable tension.

  After signing and just before she left, Roach, who had been mostly silent save for formal greetings and expressions of sympathy, asked her a question that must have been annoying his mind during the whole interview.

  ‘If Mister Bannerman is in the world of spirits, will he not make contact with you?’

  ‘That is beyond my governance.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Roach muttered. ‘These voices come and go, you are merely the meeting point.’

  ‘Like Waverley Station,’ McLevy suddenly piped up.

  Roach paid no attention to this. They were all sitting at a table, which doubled as an official desk of sorts.

  The lieutenant leant forward and Sophia became aware that there was a hard intelligence in his eyes. It might be a narrow mind but this was not a stupid one.

  ‘I must inform you, Miss Adler,’ he remarked stonily, ‘that I find no accordance with your belief, which I think to be a dangerous delusion – no matter how sincerely felt. In my opinion it appeals only to the simple-minded amongst us.’

  Sophia said nothing but she remembered the woman sitting beside him in the audience who drank up every word when Magnus addressed the assembly.

  The lieutenant’s wife, perhaps.

  A husband and wife do not always believe in the same things.

  ‘However,’ Roach continued, grimly, ‘I can do little to stop the flight of the gullible towards manifestations outwith the proper bounds of the Christian Church. It is a free country.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ she replied quietly.

  ‘It would appear that your Mister Bannerman was a profoundly split person. One part human, one part monster, if what the inspector tells me is true.’

  ‘It would appear so.’

  ‘And yet someone with your – if I am to believe you – mystic abilities saw no sign of this?’

  ‘My point entirely!’ McLevy chimed in.

  ‘Great minds,’ said Roach, ‘coincide.’

  He gave his inspector a sharp look and McLevy sat a little back into his chair. Sophia had never seen the man so subdued and wondered for a moment at the cause.

  But then she had a response to find.

  ‘To be split is to be separated from the other. There is no connection. No trace between. Inside the one entity is another. Neither knows of the other’s existence.’

  ‘That is all you have to say?’

  ‘That is all I can say.’

  Then it was over. McLevy stayed slumped in his seat as if drained of pith, the lieutenant escorted her to the door where a gawky young constable saw her to the station exit.

  The constable had a livid red birthmark spreading up his face from the side of his neck and kept rubbing a
t it as they crossed the station floor.

  She was aware of all eyes upon her and a babble of noise coming from the outside.

  The young man kept his gaze averted till they got to the door then just before he opened, blurted out a question.

  ‘Can you cure people, like Jesus?’

  His eyes were innocent. Like a child’s. And it pierced her to the heart.

  ‘No,’ she answered softly. ‘I cannot perform miracles. It is not my gift. I am sorry.’

  For a second she almost reached out to touch the mark that lay upon his face but touching a policeman can often be misconstrued.

  He released the door and delivered her to the waiting journalists who were milling around in the street; the news had been at last officially broken to them of the murder of Gilbert Morrison and the death of a murderous American, and the Edinburgh press were hungry for blood.

  She stood helpless, pinned at the threshold as the questions rained in upon her; like stones thrown, sharp, cutting, insinuating, wheedling, each seeking to slice a headline from her body.

  Sophia knew a moment of panic as if she had been cast out, abandoned, then the door behind opened and a hand grasped her elbow.

  James McLevy, his face set in grim lines, steered her through the jostling horde and into her waiting carriage.

  He slammed the carriage door shut and leaned in with the voices calling like seagulls in the background.

  Her words of gratitude were beaten to the punch.

  ‘Don’t thank me too soon,’ he said.

  Then it was a race back to the hotel where more of the press waited, back to her rooms past the curious glances of the good citizens in the foyer, then close the door and pull the curtains.

  All that was past.

  Everything is in the past.

  Now she sat at the shrine. Safely locked away. No-one could touch her in this place. The small precious leather suitcase lay empty, the contents arranged as they were in every hotel, every lodging place. A secure room must be laid aside and there she had her peace.

  Where he watched over her.

  The good man.

  Tonight she would sit in front of an audience of hungry souls and inhabit the terrifying emptiness inside her mind before the voices began to announce themselves.