The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 3 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  The drinker toasted Bonnie Prince Charlie; another lawyer, whose name was Urquhart, now turned to Gisborne with his usual complaint to Englishmen. “ ‘Rule Britannia,’ ” he said, “was written by a Scot. John Bull was invented by a Scot!”

  He slumped back, having to his mind made his point. Master Gisborne looked like he had tumbled into Bedlam.

  “Now, now,” Scott calmed. “We’re here to celebrate montgolfiers.” He handed Gisborne a stemless glass filled to the brim. “And new arrivals. But you’ve come to a dangerous place, sir.”

  “How so?” my master enquired.

  “Sedition is rife.” Scott paused. “As is murder. How many is it now, Cully?”

  “Three this past fortnight.” I recited the names. “Dr Benson, MacStay the coffin maker, and a wretch called Howison.”

  “All stabbed,” Scott informed Gisborne. “Imagine, murdering a coffin maker! It’s like trying to murder Death himself.”

  As was wont to happen, the Monthly Club shifted to another howff to partake of a prix fixe dinner, and thence to another, where Scott would drink champagne and lead a discussion of “the chest”.

  The chest in question had been found when the Castle’s crown room was opened during a search for some documents. The crown room had been opened, according to the advocate, by special warrant under the royal sign manual. No one had authority to break open the chest. The crown room was locked again, and the chest still inside. At the time of the union with England, the royal regalia of Scotland had disappeared. It was Scott’s contention that this regalia – crown, sceptre, and sword – lay in the chest.

  Gisborne listened in fascination. Somewhere along the route he had misplaced his sense of economy. He would pay for the champagne. He would pay for dinner. A brothel was being discussed as the next destination . . . Luckily, Scott was taking an interest in him, so that Gisborne’s pockets were still fairly full, though his wits be empty.

  I sat apart, conversing with the exiled Comte d’Artois, who had fled France at the outset of revolution. He retained the habit of stroking his neck for luck, his good fortune being that it still connected his head to his trunk. He had reason to feel nervous. Prompted by events in France, sedition was in the air. There had been riots, and now the ringleaders were being tried.

  We were discussing Deacon Brodie, hanged six years before for a series of housebreakings. Brodie, a cabinetmaker and locksmith, had robbed the very premises to which he’d fitted locks. Respectable by day, he’d been nefarious by night. To the Comte (who knew about such matters), this was merely “the human condition”.

  I noticed suddenly that I was seated in shadow. A man stood over me. He had full thick lips, a meaty stew of a nose, and eyebrows which met at the central divide the way warring forces sometimes will.

  “Cullender?”

  I shook my head and turned away.

  “You’re Cullender,” he said. “This is for you.” He slapped his paw onto the table, then turned and pushed back through the throng. A piece of paper, neatly folded, sat on the wood where his hand had been. I unfolded it and read:

  “Outside the Tolbooth, quarter before midnight.”

  The note was unsigned. I handed it to the Comte.

  “You will go?”

  It was already past eleven. “I’ll let one more drink decide.”

  The Tolbooth was the city jail where Brodie himself had spent his final days, singing airs from The Beggar’s Opera. The night was like pitch, nobody having bothered to light their lamps, and a haar rolled through from the direction of Leith.

  In the darkness, I had trodden in something I did not care to study and was scraping my shoe clean on the Tolbooth’s corner-stone when I heard a voice close by.

  “Cullender?”

  A woman’s voice. Even held to a whisper, I knew it for that. The lady herself was dressed top to toe in black, her face deep inside the hood of a cloak.

  “I’m Cullender.”

  “I’m told you perform services.”

  “I’m no minister, lady.”

  Maybe she smiled. A small bag appeared and I took it, weighing the coins inside.

  “There’s a book circulating in the town,” said my new mistress. “I am keen to obtain it.”

  “We have several fine booksellers in the Luckenbooths . . .”

  “You are glib, sir.”

  “And you are mysterious.”

  “Then I’ll be plain. I know of only one copy of this book, a private printing. It is called Ranger’s Second Impartial List . . .”

  “. . . of the Ladies of Pleasure in Edinburgh.”

  “You know it. Have you seen it?”

  “It’s not meant for the likes of me.”

  “I would like to see this book.”

  “You want me to find it?”

  “It’s said you know everyone in the city.”

  “Everyone that matters.”

  “Then you can locate it.”

  “It’s possible.” I examined my shoes. “But first I’d need to know a little more . . .”

  When I looked up again, she was gone.

  At The Cross, the caddies were speaking quietly with the chairmen. We caddies had organised ourselves into a company, boasting written standards and a Magistrate of Caddies in charge of all. We regarded ourselves superior to the chairmen, mere brawny Highland migrants.

  But my best friend and most trusted ally, Mr Mack, was a chairman. He was not, however, at The Cross. Work was nearly over for the night. The last taverns were throwing out the last soused customers. Only the brothels and cockpits were still active. Not able to locate Mr Mack, I turned instead to a fellow caddie, an old hand called Dryden.

  “Mr Dryden?” I said, all businesslike, “I require your services, the fee to be agreed between us.”

  Dryden, as ever, was willing. I knew he would work through the night. He was known to the various brothel-keepers and could ask his questions discreetly, as I might have done myself had the lady’s fee not been sufficient to turn me employer.

  Me, I headed home, climbing the lonely stairs to my attic quarters and a cold mattress. I found sleep the way a pickpocket finds his gull.

  Which is to say easily.

  Next morning, Dryden was dead.

  A young caddie called Colin came to tell me. We repaired to the Nor’ Loch, where the body still lay, face down in the slime. The Town Guard – “Town Rats” behind their backs – fingered their Lochaber axes, straightened their tall cocked hats, and tried to look important. One of their number, a red-faced individual named Fairlie, asked if we knew the victim.

  “Dryden,” I said. “He was a caddie.”

  “He’s been run through with a dagger,” Fairlie delighted in telling me. “Just like those other three.”

  But I wasn’t so sure about that . . .

  I went to a quiet howff, a drink steadying my humour. Dryden, I surmised, had been killed in such a way as to make him appear another victim of the city’s stabber. I knew, though, that in all likelihood he had been killed because of the questions he’d been asking . . . questions I’d sent him to ask. Was I safe myself? Had Dryden revealed anything to his killer? And what was it about my mistress’s mission that made it so deadly dangerous?

  As I was thus musing, young Gisborne entered the bar on fragile legs.

  “Did I have anything to drink last evening?” he asked, holding his head.

  “Master, you drank as if it were our last day alive.”

  Our hostess was already replenishing my wine jug. “Kill or cure,” I said, pouring two glasses.

  Gisborne could see I was worried and asked the nature of the problem. I was grateful to tell him. Any listener would have sufficed. Mind, I held back some. This knowledge was proving dangerous, so I made no mention of the lady and her book. I jumped from the messenger to my words with Dryden.

  “The thing to do, then,” my young master said, “is to track backwards. Locate the messenger.”

  I thought back to the
previous evening. About the time the messenger had been arriving, the lawyer Urquhart had been taking his leave of the Monthly Club.

  “We’ll talk to Urquhart,” I said. “At this hour he’ll be in his chambers. Follow me.”

  Gisborne followed me out of the howff and across the street directly into another. There, in a booth, papers before him and a bottle of wine beside them, sat Urquhart.

  “I’m pleased to see you,” the lawyer announced. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose like a stoned cherry. His breath I avoided altogether. Aged somewhere in his thirties, Urquhart was a seasoned dissolute. He would have us take a bumper with him.

  “Sir,” I began, “do you recall leaving the company last night?”

  “Of course. I’m only sorry I’d to leave so early. An assignation, you understand.” We shared a smile at this. “Tell me, Gisborne, to which house of ill fame did the gang repair?”

  “I don’t recollect,” Gisborne admitted.

  Urquhart enjoyed this. “Then tell me, did you awake in a bed or the gutter?”

  “In neither, Mr Urquhart. I awoke on the kitchen floor of a house I did not know.”

  While Urquhart relished this, I asked if he’d taken a chair from the tavern last night.

  “Of course. A friend of yours was front-runner.”

  “Mr Mack?” Urquhart nodded. “You didn’t happen to see a grotesque, sir?” I described the messenger to him. Urquhart shook his head.

  “I hear a caddie was murdered last night,” Urquhart said. “We all know the Town Rats can’t be expected to bring anyone to justice.” He leaned toward me confidentially. “Are you looking for justice, Cully?”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for, sir.”

  Which was a lie. For now, I was looking for Mr Mack.

  I left Gisborne with Urquhart, and found Mack at The Cross.

  “Yes,” he said, “I saw that fellow going in. A big fat-lipped sort with eyebrows that met in the middle.”

  “Had you seen him before?”

  Mack nodded. “But not here, over the loch.”

  “The new town.” Mack nodded. “Then show me where.”

  Mack and his fellow chairman carried me down the steep slope towards the building site. Yes, building site. For though Princes Street and George Street were finished, yet more streets were being artfully constructed. Just now, the builders were busy on what would be called Charlotte Square. We took the simpler route, down past Trinity Hospital and the College Kirk, then along Princes Street itself. There were plans to turn the Nor’ Loch into either a canal or formal gardens, but for the moment it was a dumping ground. I avoided looking at it and tried not to think of poor Dryden. Joining the loch to the old town sat The Mound, an apt name for a treacherous heap of new-town rubble.

  “All change, eh, Cully?” Mr Mack called to me. “Soon there’ll be no business in the old town for the likes of you and me.”

  He had a point. The nobility had already deserted the old town. Their grand lands now housed wheelwrights and hosiers and schoolmasters. They all lived in the new town now, at a general distance from the milling rabble. So here the foundations were being laid not for the new town alone but for the death of the old.

  We passed into George Street and the sedan chair was brought to rest. “It was here I saw him,” Mr Mack said. “He was marching up the street like he owned the place.”

  I got out of the chair and rubbed my bruised posterior. Mr Mack’s companion had already spotted another likely fare. I waved them off. I must needs talk to my mistress, and that meant finding her servant. So I sat on a step and watched the work carts grinding past overloaded with rocks and rubble. The day passed pleasantly enough.

  Perhaps two hours had passed when I saw him. I couldn’t be sure which house he emerged from; he was some way along the street. I tucked myself behind some railings and watched him head down towards Princes Street. I followed at a canny distance.

  He was clumsy, his gait gangling, and I followed him with ease. He climbed back up to the old town and made for the Lucken-booths. Here he entered a bookshop, causing me to pause.

  The shop belonged to a Mr Whitewood, who fancied himself not only bookseller but poet and author also. I entered the premises quietly and could hear Whitewood’s raised voice. He was towards the back of his shop, reciting to a fawning audience of other soi-disant writers and people to whom books were mere fashion.

  The servant was pushing his way to the front of the small gathering. Whitewood stood on a low unsteady podium, and read with a white handkerchief in one hand, which he waved for dramatic effect. He needed all the help he could get. I dealt daily with the “improvers”, the self-termed “literati”. I’ll tell you now what an improver is, he’s an imp who roves. I’d seen them dragging their carcasses through the gutter and waylaying hoors and scrapping with the tourists.

  The servant had reached the podium, and the bookseller had seen him. Without pausing mid-stanza, Whitewood passed the wretch a note. It was done in an instant and the servant headed back towards the door. I slipped outside and hid myself, watching the servant head as if towards the courts.

  I followed him into the courthouse. I followed him into one particular court . . . and there was brought up short.

  Lord Braxfield, the Hanging Judge, was deciding a case. He sat in his wig at his muckle bench and dipped oatcakes into his claret, sucking loudly on the biscuits as he glared at the accused. There were three of them, and I knew they were charged with sedition, being leaders of a popular convention for parliamentary reform. At this time, only thirty or so people in Edinburgh had the right to vote for the member of parliament. These three sad creatures had wanted to change that and a lot more besides.

  I glanced at the jury – doubtless hand picked by Braxfield himself. The accused would be whipped and sent to Botany Bay. The public gallery was restless. There were guards between the populace and the bench. The servant was nodded through by one of the guards and handed Whitewood’s note to Braxfield. Then he turned quickly and left by another door. I was set to follow when the Hanging Judge noticed me.

  “Cullender, approach the bench!”

  I bit my lip, but knew better than to defy Braxfield, even if it meant losing my quarry. The guards let me through. I forbore to look at the accused as I passed them.

  “Yes, my Lord?”

  Braxfield nibbled another of his infernal biscuits. He looked like he’d drunk well, too. “Cullender,” he said, “you’re one of the least honest and civil men in this town, am I correct?”

  “I have competitors, my Lord.”

  He guffawed, spitting crumbs from his wet lips. “But tell me this, would you have a man live who committed treason?”

  I swallowed, aware of three pairs of eyes behind me. “I might ask myself about his motives, my Lord.”

  Braxfield leaned over the bench. He was unquestionably ugly, eyes black as night. In his seventies, he grew increasingly eccentric. He was what passed for the law in this city. “Then it’s as well I’m wearing this wig and not you!” he screeched. He wagged a finger, the nail of which was sore in need of a trim. “You’ll see Australia one day, my friend, if you’re not careful. Now be gone, I’ve some justice to dispense.”

  It had been a long time since Braxfield and “justice” had been even loosely acquainted.

  Outside, the servant was long gone. Cursing my luck and the law courts both, I headed down to the Canongate.

  I engaged Mr Mack’s services regarding my lady’s book, warning him to be extra vigilant and telling him of Dryden’s demise. He suggested going to the authorities, then realised what he was saying. The law was as effectual as a scented handkerchief against the pox, and we both knew it.

  I sat in a howff and ate a dish of oysters. Having been to look at the university, Master Gisborne joined me.

  “It’ll be fine when it’s finished,” was his opinion.

  I supped the last of the juice and put down the platter. “Remember I told you about the se
rpent, Master?”

  His eyes were red-rimmed, face puffy with excess. He nodded.

  “Well,” I continued thoughtfully, “perhaps it’s not so far beneath the surface as I thought. You need only scratch and you’ll see it. Remember that, even in your cups.”

  He looked puzzled, but nodded again. Then he seemed to remember something, and reached into his leather bag. He handed me a wrapped parcel.

  “Cully, can you keep this somewhere safe?”

  “What is it?”

  “Just hold it for me for a day or so. Will you do that?”

  I nodded and placed the parcel at my feet. Gisborne looked mightily relieved. Then the howff door swung inwards and Urquhart and others appeared, taking Gisborne off with them. I finished my wine and made my way back to my room.

  Halfway there, I met the tailor whose family lived two floors below me.

  “Cully,” he said, “men are looking for you.”

  “What sort of men?”

  “The sort you wouldn’t have find you. They’re standing guard on the stairwell and won’t shift.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  He held my arm. “Cully, business is slow. If you could persuade some of your clients of the quality of my cloth . . . ?”

  “Depend on it.” I went back up the brae to The Cross and found Mr Mack.

  “Here,” I said, handing him the parcel. “Keep this for me.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. I think I may have stepped in something even less savoury than I thought. Any news of the List?”

  Mack shook his head. He looked worried when I left him; not for himself, but for me.

  I kept heading uphill, towards the Castle itself. Beneath Castle Hill lay the catacombs where the town’s denizens used to hide when the place was being sacked. And here the lowest of Edinburgh’s wretches still dwelt. I would be safe there, so I made my way into the tunnels and out of the light, averting my face where possible from each interested, unfriendly gaze.