The Edinburgh Dead

by Brian Ruckley

  The dead man’s jacket had fallen open a little as Quire moved his arm. A flap of material there caught his eye now, and he reached gingerly in, felt the loose ends of torn stitching. He had to bend his weaker left hand at a sharp angle to do so, and felt a twinge of stiff pain in his forearm. His old wounds misliked the cold.

  “Did you find anything in his pockets?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Lauder grunted.

  “Did you ask Shake if there was anything?”

  Lauder shrugged, his cape shifting heavily. Standing watch over a corpse, on a cold dawn at the end of a long night, in the Cowgate where the city’s police had no surfeit of friends… these were not the ingredients of contentment. At the best of times, few of Quire’s colleagues—the miserably paid nightwatchmen perhaps least of all—shared his notions of justice and dignity for the dead. Those things could be hard to find in the Old Town, even for the living. Easier not to try, sometimes.

  “Just wait here until I get you some help,” Quire said as he rose to his feet. “It’ll not be long.”

  He began to ascend the stinking ravine of Borthwick’s Close, pushing through the knot of onlookers that had gathered a short way up the alley.

  “Anyone know him?” he asked as he went, but no one replied. They averted their eyes, on the whole. Only a child, holding the rough linen of his mother’s skirt with one tight hand, yesterday’s dirt still smudged over his cheeks, met Quire’s gaze fully. The boy parted his lips in an unappealing grin, and sucked air in through the corners of his mouth. It was an idiot sort of sound.

  Quire was jostled as he made his way through the crowd, but no more than he would have expected. He was a big man, wide-shouldered and wide-chested, and he knew that his angular face, framed by dense, wiry hair, suggested ill humour more often than not. Though that appearance—enhanced by his grey greatcoat, the baton at his belt and the military boots he often wore out of ancient habit—deterred most troublemakers, no assembly in the Old Town was without one or two who thought themselves above such concerns. The place had a truculent state of mind.

  Quire climbed up and up the close, careful on the rough and uneven cobbles, passing dozens of small windows, only a few of them lit by oil or candle or fire. He heard someone above him, leaning out from the third or fourth storey, hawk and spit; but when he looked, there was no one to be seen, just the man-made cliff faces blocking out the sky. The close narrowed as it rose towards the High Street—if he had extended both arms, Quire could have encompassed its whole width—before burrowing through the overarching body of a tenement to disgorge him on to the Old Town’s great thoroughfare.

  It was akin to emerging from the Stygian depths of some malodorous tunnel into another world: one filled with bustle and light and all the energy and breezes that the closes did not permit within their tight confines. Scores of people moved this way and that, avoiding the little mounds of horse dung that punctuated their paths, flowing around the hawkers and stall-holders readying their wares, dodging the carts and carriages that clattered up the cobble-clad road. The air shivered to a cacophony of trade and greeting and argument.

  Quire advanced no more than a pace or three before a salesman sought to snare him.

  “A tonic of universal efficacy, sir,” the man cried, with an excess of unsolicited enthusiasm. He swept up a small, neat glass bottle from his barrow and extended it towards Quire. “No affliction of the lung or liver can withstand its beneficial application.”

  Quire paused, and examined the dress of the man who thus accosted him. A short stovepipe hat, a neat and clean waistcoat tightly buttoned over a paunch of some substance. The loose cuffs of an expensive shirt protruding from the jacket sleeves. Clearly the uniform of one who made a tolerable profit from the ill health and gullibility of others.

  The bottle Quire was invited to examine held a pale liquid of yellowish hue.

  “Looks like piss.”

  “Oh no, sir. Not at all,” exclaimed the affronted hawker, peering with a disbelieving frown at the flask in his hand. “A miraculous elixir, rather.”

  Quire leaned a touch closer, gave the tonic his full attention.

  “Horse’s piss,” he concluded, and left the man, still protesting, in his wake.

  The police house was very near, on the far side of the High Street at Old Stamp Office Close. Quire cut across the currents of humanity towards it. He refused a flyer advertising a course of phrenological lectures that someone tried to thrust into his hand; narrowly avoided a crushed toe as a handcart piled high with half-finished shoes ground past.

  It was all a little too much for one who had already been awake for longer than he would have wished, and he entered the abode of Edinburgh’s city police with a certain relief.

  The cells that packed the ground floor of the main police house were unusually quiet, even the three—the “dark” cells—reserved for the most troublesome, or troubled, guests. Perhaps the cold of the last few nights had discouraged those given to misbehaviour. The place still had its familiar stink, though: a unique medley that never seemed to change, no matter how its component parts might vary. Quire suspected it was founded on a fog of human sweat, piss and vomit that had settled into the walls. There were smaller watch-houses scattered around the city, but somehow none of them had acquired quite the depth of odour that attached itself to the Old Stamp Office Close building.

  Though the place was quiet, the comparative peace had not done anything to lighten Lieutenant Baird’s mood. Quire’s immediate superior disliked him, and never troubled to disguise the fact. He also disliked his current duty. The three lieutenants of police each took their turn as officer in charge of the police house, a task that combined tedium and unavoidably close acquaintance with the city’s least appealing inhabitants. When his turn came about, Baird’s manner seldom did anything but sour. All of which led Quire to expect a gruff welcome, which he duly received.

  “Took you long enough,” Baird grunted, barely lifting his gaze from the ledger in which he was scratching away.

  “Would you send some men to the body in the Cowgate, sir?” Quire said as politely as he felt able. “Get them asking around. There’s one of our night men down there who needs to be away to his bed.”

  Baird put an arch of irritation into his eyebrows as if consenting, solely by dint of his own near-saintly nature, to an outrageous request.

  “Is the superintendent about?” Quire asked.

  “He’s occupied. In the court. What is it you’re wanting to trouble him with?”

  Belatedly, Baird looked Quire in the eyes, and bestowed upon him a suspicious glare.

  Quire shrugged.

  “I was told he wanted a word with me, that’s all,” he lied.

  Baird looked doubtful, but directed Quire with a flick of his head towards the staircase.

  Two creaking flights carried Quire up to the little courtroom where justice was applied to those charged with minor crimes. There, amongst the benches, the Superintendent of Police, James Robinson, was in conference with a clutch of judicial clerks. They spoke softly, as if to protect the dignity of the chamber, with its wood-panelled walls and leaded windows and buffed floorboards.

  At Quire’s approach, Robinson dismissed the others with a nod and a murmur. They filed quietly out, and the superintendent rose a little stiffly from his seat and regarded Quire, his eyes narrow and inquisitive. He was a man of calm authority, with grizzled sideburns, a handsome face weathered by experience—he was a good deal older than Quire’s thirty-seven years—and a deliberate manner. It imbued his gaze with a certain weight.

  “You look like a man in want of sleep, Sergeant,” Robinson observed. “An early start for you, I hear.”

  Quire nodded.

  “A body, sir. In the Cowgate. Foot of Borthwick’s Close.”

  “Ah. Is that beer I smell on you? I hope you are not testing your constitution too severely, Quire.”

  The superintendent’s tone was almost casual, but carried a touch
of circumspect concern. He knew more of Quire’s history than most, and that history was not one of unblemished restraint and good judgement.

  It was only the patronage of James Robinson that shielded Quire against the worst effects of Lieutenant Baird’s antipathy. And, indeed, against the wider consequences he might have suffered for his occasional past infringements of law and discipline, from which that antipathy sprang. He and Robinson, bracketing Baird in the hierarchy of command, shared something the other lacked, something that inclined them towards a certain mutual regard: they had both been soldiers.

  There was more to their relationship than that, though. For Quire’s part, he had a vague, imprecisely formed notion that Robinson had been a saviour of sorts to him. At his first admittance to the ranks of the police, Quire had been something of a lost soul, and a drunken one at that. The years following his departure from the army had been turbulent and troubled: peace could be testing for one schooled in nothing but war. He had carried within him a certain restless anger and rebelliousness that should, by rights, have cut short his tenure as an officer of the law. That he had avoided dismissal was due solely to Robinson’s patient, stern tutelage. For that, and the measure of purpose and worth his continuing employment had slowly brought him, Quire owed the man a debt of gratitude.

  As Robinson regarded him now, his gaze wore a faintly paternal sheen.

  “A night of indulgence, was it?” the superintendent enquired. “With that lackey of yours, I suppose… what’s his name? Dunbar?”

  “Nothing excessive, sir,” Quire said, smothering a wry smile at the thought of Wilson Dunbar being anybody’s lackey. “I’m well enough. The drink’s not been my master for a long time now.”

  The assertion was accepted without comment.

  “So, this corpse,” Robinson said. “Are you done with it for now?”

  “That’s the thing I wanted to ask you about. I’ve a mind to send him to the professor.”

  “Why?”

  “The man was… savaged. It was bloody work. Entirely out of the ordinary. I’d like to know what Christison has to say about it.”

  “I’d not want him bothered without good reason,” said Robinson. “Man’s got a fair few demands upon his time, you know. I’ll not have his willingness to aid us exhausted by too many requests.”

  “I’d have asked Baird, but he’d only tell me that: not to waste my time—or Christison’s—on some nobody dead in the Old Town.”

  “Lieutenant Baird,” Robinson corrected him. “You might make at least some pretence at observing the proprieties of rank, Quire.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re sure you’re not, are you? Wasting time, I mean.”

  “No such thing as a nobody, sir. I’ve seen—we both have—enough folk of the sort Baird would call nobody die for King and Country to know that. Every man deserves a name putting to him, a bit of time spent on the explanation of his dying. The wars taught me that, and you too, I know. A man like Baird doesn’t…”

  “Don’t test my patience, Quire,” Robinson muttered, grimacing. “You’re the best man I’ve got when there’s rough business to be conducted, and sharper than most, so I’ve never regretted any allowances I’ve made you, but I’m not in the best of tempers. The Board of Police are trying me sorely these days, and the gout’s got a hold of my leg something fierce.”

  “I’d never want to add to your troubles, sir,” Quire said quickly. “This is the only work I’ve ever found myself good at, outside the army. I owe that to you, I know. It’s just I can’t abide the notion of one man being less worthy of our efforts than another.”

  “Just tell me you’re sure this needs Christison’s attention, that’s all.”

  “The body’s a mess, sir. Like nothing I’ve seen in years.”

  Robinson looked dubious, but there was a foundation of trust between the two of them to be drawn upon.

  “I’ll arrange for him to take a look then,” he said. “Don’t go making an issue of it with Lieutenant Baird, though.”

  “No, sir,” Quire agreed with what he hoped was appropriately meek humility.

  III

  The Scavenger and the Professor

  Quire found Grant Carstairs—Shake—waiting for him in the entrance hall of the police house, two days after the discovery of the corpse in the Cowgate. The scavenger sat on a three-legged wooden stool, slumped down into himself like a loose pile of clothes. When Quire appeared, Carstairs looked up with rheumy eyes that betrayed both relief and anguish.

  “I’ve been asking after you,” Quire said before the scavenger could speak.

  “Aye, sir, aye. I heard as much. I’ve no been well.” Carstairs extended a trembling hand, regarding it with a sad, piteous gaze. “The palsy’s on me something dreadful, and my chest…”

  He gave a thick, richly textured cough by way of illustration and bestowed upon Quire a mournful smile.

  “Is it your body that’s ailing or your conscience, Shake?”

  “Oh, sir. You may have the right of it there. They say you’re a sharp one, and so you are. Body and conscience, and wife too. There’s the truth. D’you ken my wife at all, sir?”

  “I don’t.”

  “No, of course not. Well, have you a wife yourself, then, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Well, my wife is a wife of a certain sort, sir. A righteous sort. A righteous woman, and not blessed with great patience for a poor sinner like myself. But for her, and for my conscience—but for the needles of the pair o’ them—I’d be in my sickbed still, not come here seeking after yourself.”

  “Well, you’ve found me now.”

  “Aye, sir. That I have.”

  The scavenger rose unsteadily to his feet, one arm reaching for the wall to lever himself up, the other dancing at his side. Quire clenched his own left hand to still a sympathetic tremor; one infirmity called up by another. He grasped the old man’s elbow, taking what little weight there was to take.

  “Can we speak, the two of us, somewhere a wee bit more private?” Shake asked, casting nervous glances around.

  There were watchmen and policemen passing to and fro, and a steady traffic of townsfolk in search of succour, or delivering accusations, or asking after relatives. And there was Lieutenant Baird, standing in the doorway. He was deep in conversation with one of the members of the day patrol, but his eyes were drawn to Quire and to Carstairs.

  “I can’t speak easy unless I ken it’s just you that’ll be hearing me, d’you see?” Shake murmured.

  “Come, then,” said Quire, and gently guided Carstairs into a quiet side passage.

  Shake’s hands began to leap and flutter with unease when he saw where he was being taken. The dark cells stood open and silent, like waiting mouths.

  “Best place, if you don’t want to be seen or heard,” Quire said reassuringly. “That’s all.”

  He closed the iron-banded door behind them, and the bustle of the police house was suddenly no more than a murmur. Quire could understand Shake’s reluctance to take up such quarters, however briefly. It was a miserable place, redolent of the troubles of those who had inhabited it. The dark cells were only used to hold those likely to harm themselves or others, and thus contained the equipment of restraint and of punishment. The door was heavy, with just a small grille of bars to admit light. There were iron rings in the wall for the attachment of bonds. And a flogging horse—a narrow four-legged bench, with leather straps by which a man’s wrists and ankles might be secured—bolted to the floor. It was there that Quire settled Carstairs to sit.

  “You’ve a reputation as a fair man, sir,” the scavenger said. “A man less given to hasty judgement or condemnation than most of his fellows, when it comes to those of lower station than yourself. I’m hoping that’s true.”

  “Aye, well maybe I am and maybe I’m not, but we’ll not know unless you tell what you came to tell, Shake.”

  “I’d not have come at all otherwise, if I’d not thought you’
d give me a fair hearing. It’s a terribly thin life, sir, the scavenger’s. Needs doing, right enough, the cleaning of the streets, the carting off of the muck and the city’s sheddings. But it’s a thin life.”

  “It’s hard work,” Quire said. “I know it. And I know the pay’s meagre.”

  “Aye, sir. Meagre. That’s the word. So the temptation’s something fierce. You find a body, and there’s none but yourself about…”

  “You go through the pockets.” Quire nodded, taking care to keep his voice free of accusation, leavening it with understanding.

  “Oh, you do, sir. You do if you’re a poor sinner. Then, if you’re a poor fool of a man, you tell what you’ve found to your good wife. And she’ll not be having it, sir. Not at all. There’ll be no rest in my house until I’ve put it right, and that’s the truth.”

  “What did you find?”

  A trembling hand brought forth a small object and offered it to Quire.

  “Only this, sir. Only this. Inside, in a hidden pocket. Not a thing else.”

  A small silver snuff box. Quire took it and lifted it to one side, the better to see it in the dim light. A thing of exquisite beauty, shaped like a tiny chest with fluted edges of silver rope, and with a dedication engraved upon its flat and polished lid in a flowery hand. Quire had to narrow his eyes and hold the box still closer to the grille in the door before he could make out the words.

  Presented to John Ruthven

  by his colleagues in

  The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

  1822

  “Get yourself home, Shake,” Quire said quietly. “You’ve done well. Done it late, but better than never, eh? Tell your wife I said so.”

  The Royal Infirmary was an imposing structure: two wings projecting forwards from the grand central span of the building, the whole array adorned with a strict grid of tall rectangular windows. Quire passed through the gateway, flanked by pillars upon which sculpted urns rested, but turned aside from the steps leading up to the main entrance. His path took him instead to a side door, and down secluded passageways to the place where the corpses resided.