“Excuse me,” he said to Macdonald, and moved away, weaving through the throng, letting the hum of genteel conversation wash over and around him.
He drew a number of curious, sometimes disapproving, stares as he went. That did not surprise or concern him. He was hardly dressed or prettified appropriately for the occasion, after all. A mongrel intruding upon a pedigree herd.
Ruthven stood with a glass folded into the crook of his elbow, and a snuff box in his hand. Between thumb and forefinger he pinched up some of the brown, dusty powder and raised it to his nose, the other three fingers delicately fanned. He sucked it into the nostril with a single sharp sniff. The snuff box was not, Quire noted, the silver one Shake Carstairs had liberated from Carlyle’s corpse.
Durand stood at Ruthven’s side, his air that of a man craving anonymity. Nothing like the robust, insistent presence of Isabel Ruthven, who was drinking deeply from her own glass and scouring the room at the same time with a lively gaze. She wore a red gown with a great cascading bustle at its back like a crimson waterfall sculpted in cloth. Her hair was coiled up atop her head, and pinned there with an ivory comb.
She was the first to see Quire as he approached, and she lowered her glass slowly from lips already easing into an anticipatory smile. Ruthven followed her gaze, and his response was of an entirely different sort.
“Can I be free of this irritant nowhere?”
“Do try not to cause a scene, dear,” his wife murmured before Quire could reply. “I am sure the sergeant has no wish to spoil the evening for everybody.”
Her voice had the liquid ease and looseness of one who had already greatly enjoyed the Institution’s hospitality.
“And I am equally sure he is not here to speak with you, my dear,” Ruthven said. “I would not have thought you a patron of the arts, Mr. Quire.”
“Sergeant,” Quire corrected. “And you’re right. I’m not here for the paintings.”
“No, indeed,” smiled Ruthven. “Your dress evidences that rather clearly. Come, your face is thunderous, man, but surely you should be in good humour? I’d have thought you in the mood for celebration, as a former foot soldier in the Duke’s army, now that he’s risen to the highest office in the land.”
Quire looked away. The Duke of Wellington, victor of the Peninsular War and of Waterloo, had become prime minister just a week or two before, but whether that should count as advancement, or cause for celebration, was not obvious to him. He did not have the highest opinion of politics, or its practitioners, since it seemed an underhanded art to him. Still, it interested him that Ruthven knew of his army past; the man had evidently been making enquiries.
“Your Mr. Blegg is not with you tonight?” Quire asked.
“Of course he is not. This is hardly the sort of occasion…”
“No. Perhaps he has other business to be about once night has fallen?”
“I’m not sure I follow your…”
“Other matters to attend to,” Quire said. “Did he mention that he and I met the other night? He must have done, I suppose. We didn’t have the chance to exchange as many pleasantries as I’d have liked.”
“You are a slow learner, Mr. Quire. One lesson in the costs of making baseless accusations not enough for you?”
“Oh, when it comes to threats and the like, I’m the slowest of learners. But if I was after a schooling in slander, you can be sure you’re the very man I’d come to. Would you rather discuss Edward Carlyle? I’ve learned one or two things about his concerns, and his employment with you, since last we spoke. No? Perhaps I could speak with Mr. Durand, then, if you’re not feeling talkative?” Quire suggested, switching his gaze to the Frenchman, in whose eyes he saw quite plainly the alarm the very notion awoke.
“Leave my guest out of this,” snarled Ruthven.
Quire drew considerable satisfaction from the fury boiling up through Ruthven’s veneer of restraint. He would goad the man to the point of eruption, if he could. If that was what it took to let a little light in on the secrets Quire could smell hidden away in there.
“Do keep your voice down,” Isabel Ruthven said, never losing her grip upon the elegant smile she wore like paint.
“If I need advice on comportment, I will find it elsewhere, beloved,” Ruthven hissed at her.
But he did take a couple of breaths to compose himself, and smooth the anger away from his features. Quire was more interested for now in Durand, who was, with the utmost discretion, edging behind and away from Ruthven. Removing himself from the fray.
“You should be aware, Quire, that I will take it as the most grave personal insult if you persist in your harassment,” Ruthven said.
“Well, that’s what it would be, right enough,” Quire said, watching Durand sink into the throng. He knew a man desperate to escape a trap when he saw one.
“Ah, there’s the Sheriff Depute,” Ruthven said, suddenly bright and loud. “Do you know him? Shall I introduce you? He might be glad to discuss the proper conduct of police affairs with you.”
That, Quire recognised very clearly as the cue for withdrawal. His sense of caution was not so entirely withered as to blind him to the dangers of sparring with those whose reach he could not match.
“Not leaving already, are you?” Mrs. Ruthven said, evidently reading some preparatory shift in his posture. He was at a loss to know how she layered such simple words with so many flavours: regret, protestation, suggestion. Appeal, perhaps.
“There’ll be another occasion, I’m sure,” he told her, and took one sharp step closer to Ruthven, dropping his voice to a rasping whisper.
“You’ve picked the wrong man for a fight, Ruthven. I thought you should know that. If you think you can tangle me up in enough knots to keep me away, you’ve misjudged me, much to your disadvantage.”
Ruthven gave him a chill smile, and his eyes carried an animosity that Quire found surprisingly steady and calm.
“I promise you, Mr. Quire, that the error in selection of opponent lies entirely with you. I have a great deal more weapons in my armoury than you would imagine, and after tonight’s performance, I think I can promise you an education in the matter of disadvantage that you will not soon forget. Now go. I do not think we will meet again, and for that I am entirely glad.”
XIII
The Hounds of the Old Town
Quire did not know whether or not he should regret his actions at the exhibition of the American Woodsman’s paintings. He knew what Robinson’s judgement on the matter would be, if news of the encounter between Quire and Ruthven at the Royal Institution found its way back to him, but that could not be helped. What was done was done, whether it was ill done or not. He spent the better part of two days expecting repercussions. There were none. Perhaps on this occasion that anger he had brought home from the wars, and which it had taken him so long to set reins upon, had not done his cause too much harm.
He sought to lose himself, for a few hours, in more normal and less contentious duties. It seemed wise to avoid the main police house, so he went round half a dozen watch-houses—the generally grubby, rather gloomy little posts the men of the day and night watches used for shelter and sustenance and storage—checking that there was nothing needing his attention.
He chased a lad who stole a loaf of bread from a baker’s window right before his eyes; chased him all the way from the well at the east end of the Grassmarket, up Candlemaker Row and through the works for the new George IV Bridge over the Cowgate. And then gave up, for his legs were sore and the boy looked like he needed a good feed in any case.
He spent the better part of an hour trying to persuade a drunk youth to come down from halfway up the cliffs beneath the castle walls, fighting to get himself heard above the cheerful throng gathered to see what happened. Eventually, the boy fell asleep up there, sitting on a narrow ledge, bathed in sunlight. It looked, Quire conceded, a rather pleasant perch, but he sent some men to bring the sleeper down in any case.
A day spent in such a way se
emed almost restful to Quire, in comparison to his recent experiences. It left him, if not exactly contented, certainly restored to a kind of calm.
He stopped, on his way down towards the Canongate, to buy an apple from a stall. As he walked on, crunching through the hard, sour flesh, he watched the evening sun light up the roofs of the tenements on either side. The High Street was in shadow, but up there every chimney, every roof tile, was washed with a sheen of gold, as if each dour building had been crowned.
He stopped in at Calder’s before climbing the stair to his apartment. A pint of ale and a thick slab of bread were enough to carry him through to the fall of night. He found a not unpleasant weariness settling over him, a gentle weight in his limbs and a stillness into his thoughts.
As he sat on his bed, pulling his stiff boots from his feet and setting them side by side on the floor, his mind, of its own accord, settled upon the notion that he would have done better to leave Ruthven to enjoy the paintings in peace, but that if no harm came of it, he need not condemn himself too harshly.
The South Bridge carried, on its vaulting arches, the city’s life and traffic over the shadows of the Cowgate. The huge new bridge being built on a parallel course a little to the west would do the same, but for now it was barely begun. Its gigantic stone legs were sprouting from amongst the teeming tenements that they would in time merge with, or bury, or accommodate.
In the deepest part of the night, down there in the darkness of the lower city, a stillness reigned. There were no gas lamps here, as had sprouted on the streets of the New Town, nothing to blunt the severity of night’s grip. The last of the drinkers and the indigents had found shelter, and left the shuttered shops and dark doorways to the explorations of rats. The wynds were empty of sound, save some occasional cry or cough or curse emanating from within the towering tenements.
But the city had stiller, and darker, places yet. Up and ever up the buildings had soared, built one atop the other. Layers of rooms, of cellars, and of tunnels had been all but entombed. Dank and silent corners, nestled into the deep fabric of the city like ossified voids, had been consigned to the past by a populace that no longer needed them, and chose to forget them. Some could yet find a use for them, though.
In that deserted night, a lone figure came softly beneath an archway and into a tight, grimy quadrangle enclosed by tenements. The man turned to an old and scarred door that had been little enough used to allow dirt and straw and the droppings of rats to accumulate at its foot.
There was no handle or lock apparent on the door. The man pushed at it gently. It creaked back to give admittance to the bowels of the city.
The air within was fetid and heavy, hardly disturbed for years and grown old just as the crumbling walls that enclosed it had done. There was no light, not the slightest sliver. The man closed the door behind him, and advanced into the gloom.
Only the sound of his feet on dirt and stone dust gave some hint of the smallness of the passageway, and even those feeble echoes were dulled by the sodden air. He went carefully but without hesitation, unhindered by the utter darkness.
After a few paces he turned aside and ducked his head, avoiding the invisible lintel of an aperture that opened into a side chamber. And there, a new sound arose in response to his arrival. A shifting, a movement, a rustling. He stood quite still, and bodies brushed against his legs, pressing close. With unhurried precision he loosened each finger of the glove on his right hand and pulled it free. He reached down.
Matted hair greeted his touch. Coarse fibres crusted with grime and worse things. He ran his hand down the line of the backbone, then lifted it and stretched his arm further into the dark. A cold, dry tongue drew its rough surface over the palm of his hand, and he dipped his fingers to let it curl over the back of them. There was a crust of dried blood upon the harsh lips that couched that tongue.
“Be still, little brothers,” the man said, his voice gentle. “Be soft. I’ve something here for you.”
From an inner pocket of his coat came a scrap of material. A sleeve, torn from a shirt. He squatted down, holding the rag stretched between his hands, extending his arms so that the beasts could gather round it, and press their noses to it, and taste it.
“Do you have it?” the man whispered. “Do you have what you need?”
He balled the sleeve up and pushed it into each of the three mouths that opened, one after another, to greet it. He pressed its fabric against teeth.
Dim and distant sounds reached in, the creak of muffled wheels on cobbles, the tread of hoofs sheathed in cloth. The man rose to his feet, and folded the shirt sleeve away into a pocket once more.
“Your carriage is here.”
The shapes that shared that dark hiding place with him grew more urgent in their movements. Claws scraped on the floor.
“Hush,” he hissed, nothing gentle to his words now, nothing but the crack of the whip. “Not a sound, or it’s to the fires with you. The flames and oblivion for any who betray us.”
And they were still at that, cowed.
The man retraced his steps and opened the door to peer out into the night. A cart was drawn up on the street beyond the low archway, its driver already pulling back heavy canvas sheets to reveal the cages it carried.
The man turned back and spoke into the blackness of the undercity, where his beasts waited.
“Come, then. There’s work to be done tonight. It’s not far. Not far at all.”
Quire was torn from sleep by a pounding at his door. His waking was so abrupt and violent that for an instant he was bewildered, wondering what the noise was. Then the door shook again, beneath repeated blows, and he was scrambling to haul himself up out of the bed.
“Who’s there?” he called, but there was no answer.
He snatched his trousers up from where he had dropped them on the floor and clambered into them, almost toppling over as he hopped briefly on one foot. He pulled on his boots. The cold leather was not pleasant against his bare feet. He heard a heavy tread on the stair outside.
It was not quite fear that was in him, but it was something close kin to it. He shrugged his long coat on over his naked shoulders, and took hold of the door handle. Before he lifted the latch, he thought better of such incaution.
He unhooked his police baton from the belt draped over the back of a chair. He held it ready as he carefully lifted the latch and let the door come open just enough to give him a view of the stairway. Nothing but darkness there, a faint shaft of moonlight falling from a tiny window. But he heard those footsteps again; down below this time, retreating hurriedly.
“Who’s there?” he shouted again angrily, and began to descend the stairs.
He went cautiously, concerned to ensure that no ambush awaited him in the gloom. That was answered soon enough by ear, rather than eye: the slap of shoes on cobblestones told him his visitor was out of the stairwell and into the close.
Quire followed, but still did not rush. He saw a figure, difficult to make out clearly, making off towards the South Back of Canongate, the lane that ran along between a row of workshops and the small, walled fields that marked the edge of the King’s Park. He had suspected this might be some youth, drunk as likely as not, thinking it clever to play a prank on the sergeant who lived above Calder’s. Watching that figure vanish around the corner on to the South Back, he thought not. It was a full-grown man, clad in heavy coat and soft, formless hat.
Quire fastened a couple of the buttons on his own coat, closing it up. It was by no means cruelly cold, but nor was it the kind of night to be running around bare-chested. There was an eerie silence settled over the Canongate, he noted as he jogged down towards the South Back. That alone was enough to tell him that it must be the very dead of night, for it was only then that no one was to be found abroad.
He glanced up, found the moon high on its course, shining dimly through a sheet of thin cloud. Almost enough light to go chasing after whatever miscreant this was, but perhaps not quite. The last time he had
done something similar, he had ended on the ice of Duddingston Loch. That was not the sort of experience he longed to repeat.
He peered down the South Back. On one side of the lane, the high walls and locked gates of workshops and yards and small breweries; on the other, a much lower dry-stone wall, beyond which lay only a narrow field and then the great black natural fortress of Salisbury Crags. From where Quire now stood, those ramparts obscured a great swathe of the eastern sky, and hid their approaches in impenetrable night.
He could see a little further along the line of the South Back. There, just about to disappear from view, the man who had been beating at Quire’s door was moving steadily away. He was trotting down the centre of the lane. Not looking back, not running. Apparently not greatly concerned at the possibility of pursuit.
Quire advanced a little further. These circumstances were too strange for him to trust them entirely. He walked along South Back, drifting closer to the wall bounding the fields on his right, so that he could look over it and sweep his gaze across the open grass. Nothing. He looked back towards the man, and in that very moment the night closed about that retreating figure and hid him from view.
Quire stopped, and stood there staring. The cold was starting to get in and lay its fingers across his chest. He shivered. He would not sleep again now, he knew. Not with the memory of that sudden assault on his door so fresh. He would be relieved, though, if all this mysterious encounter cost him was the loss of half a night’s sleep.
Then he heard, faint, out there in the darkness that had swallowed the man, a soft cry. Not frightened, but pained. There was a muffled, indistinct thump, as of something falling to the ground. Quire took a few more steps in the direction of the sound, wishing the clouds would be kind to him and permit—even if only for a moment—the moon to throw its full light over this small portion of the city.
A part of him wanted to call out, but the greater part was too uneasy to accede. One more stride, and he could just make out, slumped in the middle of the lane, a prone form. He looked behind him. Still he was entirely alone. He frowned at the fallen man. Could it be, he thought, that this was nothing more than a fool, hopelessly drunk, beating at random doors in the Canongate and now overcome by his own excesses? That would be annoying, but at least he might get himself another hour or two of slumber, if there was no need to fret about what might happen as soon as he closed his eyes.
The Edinburgh Dead Page 13
