The Edinburgh Dead

by Brian Ruckley

  John Ruthven advanced and extended a hand, which Quire duly shook.

  “Sergeant Quire, was it my wife said?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good. This”—he stood aside and indicated the older man just behind him—“is Monsieur Durand. A house guest of mine.”

  Quire hid his surprise at finding himself in the company of a Frenchman, and they exchanged nods. Ruthven flicked a casual hand in the direction of the seated man.

  “And that is Mr. Blegg, my assistant. A factotum, you might call him.”

  Quire duly gave another nod of acknowledgement, but there was only the most miserly of responses. Blegg barely stirred, other than a slight upward tilt of his chin and a little twitching bounce of that raised foot. One less inured to the sour eccentricities of the human spirit than Quire might have taken offence at such want of common courtesy. He, though, turned his attention back to Ruthven.

  “I have a snuff box of yours, sir,” he said. It was not his custom to delay in reaching the nub of any conversation.

  He drew the little silver casket from his pocket and held it out on the palm of his hand. Ruthven bent forward a touch, tapping his lips with an erect forefinger as if pondering some weighty puzzle. Then, quite abruptly, he took up the box and closed his large hand about it, almost entirely hiding its silvery gleam.

  “Now here is a mystery,” he said with a thin smile. “Quite a mystery, eh, gentlemen?”

  He cast an inclusive glance towards Durand, who gave a snorting half-laugh, which made Quire think that the Frenchman was a trifle overeager to find humour in his host’s words.

  “How does a silver snuff box with my name upon it come to be in the possession of the police?” Ruthven said, turning back to Quire and becoming wholly, heavily serious.

  “It was found in the pocket of a corpse in the Old Town, sir. A man a little older than me, perhaps, with dark hair, clean-shaven. I thought at first that that name might be the dead man’s, but it is evidently not so.”

  “Indeed not. Did you have my address from the Antiquaries, then? They will have embroidered it with some unkind words, no doubt.”

  “No, sir. There was no need for that. The Town Council records were enough.”

  “I see. The Antiquaries and I did not part on the best of terms, but this trinket is a token of happier times. A gift in acknowledgement of some donations I made to the Society and its collections.”

  “And this dead man had it from you? Stole it?”

  “Stole it,” Ruthven said sadly. “Yes, so it appears. I confess: I did not know it was missing. But yes, certainly it was taken without my leave, as were some few other small items and coin.”

  “All of it gone, no doubt, save this. Most likely he thought better of offering the uncles something that would so clearly betray his guilt and the identity of his victim.”

  “Uncles?”

  “The brokers, sir. Pawners of stolen goods. The thieves call them uncles. Like to think of it as a family affair, perhaps.”

  “Ah. Well, as you say, officer. As you say.”

  Ruthven appeared bored now. He had not looked at the snuff box since taking it from Quire. He gave no sign that being reunited with it brought him any satisfaction.

  “I would be grateful for his name, sir,” Quire said. “From what you say, it seems you knew him.”

  “Does it?” The momentary flutter of discomfiture, perhaps even irritation, did not escape Quire, though it was ruthlessly extinguished almost as soon as it was born. “Well, yes, I did know him. He was in my employ, in fact, for several years. Edward Carlyle. I was recently forced to dismiss him over some minor matters, and before departing he saw fit to help himself to certain of my possessions.”

  “I will need to find any family he might have had.”

  “I cannot help you there, Sergeant,” Ruthven said, pressing his lips together in regret that Quire found not entirely convincing. “He had no family that I knew of. A solitary man, at least in all the time he worked for me. He came from Glasgow originally, though. Perhaps that would be the place to look.”

  There would be no effort to find any of Carlyle’s relatives so far afield, Quire knew. A thief dying alone in the Cowgate would not merit it. But still: thief or not, it had been the kind of end few men deserved, and it troubled Quire. As did Ruthven’s lack of curiosity as to the manner or circumstance of Carlyle’s death.

  “Where did he live then, sir?”

  “He had a room here, until I turned him out. After, I have no idea.”

  “Did he leave any belongings?”

  “Nothing of consequence. I believe my wife sent it all along to the charity workhouse, Sergeant. She has a most generous soul.”

  “Oh?” Quire raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That seems a little… premature, sir. To dispose of his property, I mean.”

  “Does it?” Ruthven frowned, and he barely troubled to conceal his irritation this time. “I can assure you, we were in no doubt that he would not be returning. He made that abundantly clear, and had ample opportunity to clear out his room before he left.”

  Ruthven’s ill temper was not matched by the other two men. Durand had more the retiring air of a servant than that of a welcomed house guest, though a charitable interpretation might ascribe his reticence to a limited command of English. Blegg, by contrast, was all still, passive observation. It was, Quire thought, a peculiar manner for a servant. The man’s face did, though, have an unhealthy, colourless sheen to it. Perhaps the sign of some malady.

  Quire’s gaze drifted as he puzzled over the disjointed, odd feel of this house and its inhabitants. He found himself staring at an object unlike anything he had ever seen before: an animal’s horn of some sort, as straight as a rod, almost as long as the span of his arms, tightly spiralled and coming to a sharp point. Like a lance. It rested on a wooden stand atop the mantelpiece.

  “Striking, is it not?”

  Quire nodded in agreement.

  Ruthven carefully lifted it from its stand, holding it horizontally before him. He did not offer it to Quire.

  “It is,” Ruthven said gravely, “the only unicorn’s horn in private possession in Edinburgh.”

  Quire blinked in surprise, and looked to Ruthven’s eyes for some clue as to his sincerity, but the man was gazing down at the artefact with fascination, as if encountering it for the first time himself. Only slowly did he lift his eyes to meet Quire’s silent enquiry. Then he laughed.

  “No, Sergeant. Of course not. It is the horn of a whale from the icy northern wastes.”

  Quire, normally sure of his ability to read another’s nature, could not tell how much of that laugh was shared mirth and how much mockery. It seemed an untrustworthy, malleable sound.

  “Forgive me,” Ruthven said as he returned the horn to its wooden cradle with precise care. “It is a flaw in my character to find the credulity of others a source of amusement. But I imagine one cannot be both credulous and an officer of the city police, eh?”

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wished Mr. Carlyle harm, sir?” Quire asked.

  Ruthven gave a mildly exasperated sigh.

  “Quite the dog with the bone, aren’t you, Sergeant? Are all our officers of the law so persistent, or is it merely our good fortune to be visited by the most tenacious?”

  “A man’s dead, sir,” said Quire flatly. “I’m required to understand how, and why. It’s not a matter of choice.”

  “No. Well, I cannot be of further assistance, I’m afraid. I was not privy to Carlyle’s private dealings. He was merely an employee, you understand. A low sort of man, as it turned out. Untrustworthy. Just the sort to make enemies, and come to an unfortunate end.

  “Well,” Ruthven said with an air of brisk finality, clasping his hands, and glancing towards the Frenchman as if to solicit agreement. “Our business is done, I suppose. We are rather busy, as it happens, Sergeant, so you will forgive me if I ask you to leave us to our deliberations. Thank you again for your dili
gence. I have some acquaintance with one or two members of the Town Council, and I will be sure to convey to them my appreciation of our police force’s efficiency.”

  “No need,” said Quire.

  He allowed himself to be escorted out, back into the long hallway. His business here felt unfinished, but he could summon up no plausible reason to outstay his welcome, which for all Ruthven’s restored mask of geniality had very clearly expired.

  “Your Mr. Blegg,” Quire said as Ruthven accompanied him to the door. “Is he unwell? There’s a pallor to his face and demeanour, and the gloves…”

  “Oh no, Sergeant.”

  Ruthven took Quire’s coat down from its hook and held it open for him. Another oddity, thought Quire, as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. Where were the servants, other than Blegg? For a man with such a house to be helping his guests into their coats himself… Quire was no expert in the manners of New Town society, but that seemed unusual.

  “I’d not expend any concern on Blegg’s account, if I were you,” Ruthven went on. “An illness a year or two ago left him somewhat diminished, but he is well enough in himself these days. And the gloves… an affectation, that is all. He has his little peculiarities, as do we all.”

  With the door closed behind the police officer, John Ruthven stood for a few moments in his hallway, looking down at the silver snuff box in his hand, turning it slowly over and over. He grunted, and closed his fingers so tight about the box that his knuckles whitened. Anger put an arch into his tight lips. He spun on his expensively shod heel and strode down the hall.

  Quire walked slowly along Melville Street, head down, dissatisfied. He disliked being lied to, having things kept from him, particularly by those who thought themselves his better. And though he could not say precisely how, or when, he had little doubt that he had been mocked, or deceived, or in some way gulled by the performance he had just witnessed.

  He was, too, unsettled by the presence of the Frenchman Durand. It had called forth memories—seldom far from the surface, often in his dreams—that made his left arm ache, and his mood darken still further. He remembered, despite all his efforts to put it from his mind, Hougoumont.

  V

  Hougoumont

  Nr Waterloo, Belgium, 1815

  A rattle of shots greeted the dawn. It had rained heavily in the night, and they wanted to be sure that their powder had not been spoiled. Doubts dispelled, each man reloaded his gun and settled in to wait for the day’s bloody business to begin.

  Adam Quire was twenty-five years old, and had known two things in his life: the farm in the Scottish Borders where he grew up, and war. A war that had been fought and won once already. Uncounted thousands had died on the battlefields of Europe to curb the imperial ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte, but now the Corsican who would be emperor was returned, escaped from his imprisonment and leading his doting soldiers into battle again. So the men who had thought their task done—and Quire had spent the better part of six years fighting his way through the Iberian peninsula to earn his small claim upon that victory—were summoned once more to give of their flesh and their blood. To make another offering to the ravenous martial gods of the age.

  These times, on the cusp of battle, had always seemed distinctively strange to Adam Quire. The certainty that horrors were shortly to be released should have engendered fear, but he often felt a kind of morbid eagerness. An awful storm awaited, just over the horizon of the next minute or the next hour, and until it broke there was no way to see beyond it. The sooner it broke, therefore, the better.

  Today, though, there was fear as well, settled deep into Quire’s bones. He was in the final year of his service in the Foot Guards, sated to the point of sickness with death. Tired, in the very depths of his spirit, of watching men die upon the whims of the great and the powerful, for reasons that seemed ever more unclear. He had thought himself done with it, but instead Napoleon had come back, and now there was no future to reach for, save this one day and its inevitable savageries.

  He was not the only one possessed of dark premonitions. The red-jacketed soldier at his side was clumsily crossing himself.

  “You’re no papist, Jamie,” Quire muttered. “Not last I heard. All that crossing’ll not serve you.”

  “Who knows?” Jamie Boswell said indignantly. “I’ll take anything I can get today. It’s going to be a bad one. I can feel it in my bowels.”

  “If you’re feeling it in there, that’s fear, not foresight. Don’t shit yourself, for Christ’s sake. There’ll be stink enough about here soon, without your adding to it.”

  “Craigie’s at it already,” Jamie observed, nodding along the wall.

  One of the men had broken away from his post and was squatting in a corner of the neat garden, his trousers round his ankles.

  “Aye, well,” said Quire. “It takes everyone a wee bit different. You just think on keeping yourself alive, and making a few Frenchmen dead.”

  Jamie Boswell was young, barely a year into his uniform. Quire liked him. He was soft, untarnished and straightforward, as Quire imagined he himself must have been when so freshly come to this cruel calling, though his memories of those first months were all but buried beneath the weight of what had happened since. As was the sense of any point or purpose to all the slaughter.

  Quire looked out over the wall. The woods to the south, and the orchard to the east, were quiet. Beautiful, in fact. The trees were heavy with leaves, shifting slightly in the breeze like verdant clouds tethered to the ground. Here and there beneath the canopy of the woodland, Quire could see men moving. There were Hanoverians and Nassauers out there in the plantation, which pleased him considerably. They were decent soldiers, and more importantly they were between him and the French. Whatever pose he might strike for Jamie Boswell, Quire shared all the younger man’s instinctive trepidation. This day just begun had the feel of a bad one, without doubt.

  As it turned out, the day meant to be a great deal worse than merely bad, but it was in no hurry to reveal the true extent of its horrors. The morning ground slowly and dully along, and nobody came to kill the men in the walled garden, or amongst the trees outside, or in the great complex of farm buildings.

  It was a farm unlike anything Quire had known in Scotland: a manor—or château as the officers insisted upon calling it—known as Hougoumont, with barns and sheds and workers’ houses all laid out around two yards. And the great walled garden in which Quire and his fellows grew increasingly restive as uneventful hour followed uneventful hour. They warmed themselves about fires, and shared meagre rations of bread, and spoke little. A pall of unreality, an inexpressible feeling of the world being adrift in a formless void between consequential moments, settled over them.

  But the storm did break, in time, and it did so with fearful wrath. It began with thunder, of the cruel sort made by men and their machinery of war. The boom of cannon rolled across the fields, like waves crashing on an unseen shore. It quietened the garrison of Hougoumont, each man looking up and out by instinct, searching for the telltale pall of smoke, or the black blurs of cannonballs in flight. But they were not the target of the barrage; not yet.

  The Foot Guards, Quire amongst them, had spent the evening before digging out loopholes in the walls of the garden with their bayonets, and constructing crude firing platforms behind them from whatever material they could strip from the houses and outbuildings. They stood there now, peering out through the holes punched in the wall, leaning over the top of it, listening to the dull, endless peals of cannon, and knew they would not have long to wait.

  The real killing started in the woodlands to their south. They could not see it, but its signs were clear. The rattle of musket fire amongst the trees; smoke boiling up through the canopy; shouting, and screaming, and the beating of feet upon the soft earth.

  “They’ll hold them,” Jamie breathed.

  He was crouched down behind the wall, hugging his musket to him. His voice was unsteady, trembling with that fretful b
lend of hope and fear that Quire had heard in so many others over the years.

  “Maybe,” Quire muttered.

  He stared out towards the trees. He could imagine what it was like in there, how foul it would be. Fighting close, seeing the eyes of the man who meant to kill you. Bayonet work. Muskets wielded as bone-breaking clubs. Too much of the fighting he had done all across Portugal and Spain had been like that: chaotic, hand-to-hand, merciless. He excelled at it, the savage business of killing, but the burden of it, the misery of it, had only grown over time. A pity, that a man should be so good at something he loathed.

  The battle in the woods came closer. Men were spilling back out from the plantation, scattering towards the gates into the farm complex, or around it entirely, hurrying back towards the main lines. It went on and on.

  “Oh fuck,” Jamie murmured over and over. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Shut up,” Quire said eventually, softly, “or I’ll fuck you myself.”

  And then it was the French, streaming out from under the trees in their dark jackets, shouting, running across the narrow stretch of open ground beneath the walls. The Foot Guards spat fire and musket balls at them, flames and smoke churning along the top of the wall as volley after volley went out, laying down men like so many windblown trees. Quire fired once, twice, thrice. Jamie never rose from his crouch. The wave of the attack broke on those rocks of lead and fire.

  A pause. A space between furies. Men laughed. A few dared to imagine they had already faced the worst, and would be spared now. Somewhere, someone was crying, but Quire did not look to see who it was, or why. You did not seek out such sights.

  From that moment, that quiet interlude, the day raced down into the darkness. Across a great stretch of land eastward from Hougoumont, titanic battle ranged. Armies tore at one another, charged and counter-charged. War swallowed up that one piece of the world and carried it off, for a span of time, to its own place where all else was in abeyance and nothing of any consequence existed save the clash of wills and of bodies and of flesh and steel.