by David Ashton
The Painted Lady
( Inspector McLevy - 4 )
David Ashton
David Ashton
The Painted Lady
The judge’s wife looked at the portrait of herself hung high on the wall. In the painting she stood by a long French window that allowed a sliver of moonlight to enter, and wore a purple gown — the colour indicating love of truth even unto martyrdom.
The expression on canvas was in contrast to the one upon the pale flesh of the observer. The depicted lips had the hint of a smile with subtle warmth in the direct gaze; the present face displayed to the world, had humanity been attending in the drawing room, was equally beautiful but tightly contained.
Behind glass.
Like a butterfly in a case — such specimens as festooned the walls in their caskets, splayed out in bright colours that belayed their expiry at the hands of his honour.
Such a pretty death.
The door opened and the butler entered carrying a tray precisely laid with a pot of tea, toast and two soft-boiled eggs, the judge’s invariable breakfast.
“I can take that,” she said abruptly. “The master has been ill. It will be my pleasure.”
The butler nodded with a frigid movement of his head, and exited.
Opening the bedroom door while clutching a tray was a difficult task but if servants can accomplish such, surely a judge’s wife may succeed?
As indeed she did. She entered, laid down the tray on a small bedside table, and finally twitched back the counterpane.
He lay on his back, mouth open, eyes staring, pinned to the pillow and most obviously bereft of life.
She took a deep mouthful of air and let loose a single piercing scream.
This was not a pretty death.
Diary of James McLevy
The heart is an intricate contrivance. The seat of mortal courage and source of all affections. Love, they tell me, dwells there and desire prowls like a hungry beast. I am not such an idiot that I cannot experience within myself the darkness of the human heart, its violence and anger, plus the impulse to murder and destroy, but I find love a trickier proposition.
A knock at his attic room door interrupted James McLevy in mid-meditation and the voice of his landlady, Mrs MacPherson, a stalwart Dundonian in foreign climes, accompanied the sliding of a letter under the portal.
“This came through the letterbox, Mister McLevy. “Your name upon it, your business I would wager.”
With that she stumped off back down the stairs while he carefully blotted the page, put aside the pen and then crossed to pick up the missive.
It was addressed to Inspector James McLevy, and as he stuck a stubby thumb under the envelope flap he pondered who would hand-deliver at this time of night.
The devil maybe?
But no, it was not Auld Hornie — not that name at the bottom of the page.
I am falsely accused of a crime I did not commit. Spied upon; my own servants look at me with sly accusing eyes. I have no friends, no one to turn to, but let me plead my case.
It was I who insisted on a post-mortem on my husband’s body because of the sudden advent of his death. Why would I do that if I had poisoned him? I was shaken to the core at the findings of arsenic in his remains and fainted to the floor. Is this the action of a guilty woman?
“Uhuh, Mrs Pearson?” he muttered. “It’s easy to faint, ye just close your eyes and fall over.”
My husband was a great admirer of your tenacity of purpose and scrupulous presentation. I fear the Haymarket police will slant the evidence against me and I have no one on my side. Please help me. If not, then Justice will not be done upon this earth.
Yours in desperation and hope,
Judith Pearson.
McLevy walked to the large window that overlooked his city, deep in thought. He had been reading Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, and this provided a deal of contrast. The inspector was acquainted with the salient facts of the case but no official charge had as yet been laid by Haymarket police.
Of course it was none of his business, out of his parish, he didnae even know the woman. But Leith was quiet at this moment and he was aye itchy in the quiet.
He slurped cold coffee from a tin mug that had its domain on the rickety table, which sufficed as a desk when writing his diary, and made a face.
A terrible brew.
Pity he’d fallen out with Jean Brash but the woman had the morals of an alley cat. Mind you, her coffee came all the way from the Lebanon and was a sore loss.
McLevy looked over his beloved Edinburgh to witness the lights shine in the dark.
One needs the other — light the dark, God the Devil, birth death, and policemen need crime.
It was a love of sorts, he supposed.
Constable Mulholland had much on his mind as he loped along with his inspector. Normally he relished being on the saunter, pacing his one long stride alongside McLevy’s two short footfalls, but the quest so far had been a fruitless trek and his thoughts shifted back to the station.
Lieutenant Roach’s long snout had twitched excitedly as he pored over his morning edition of the Leith Herald.
“One moment Judge Pearson is donning the black cap and the next? Dead as a doornail.”
“I often wondered about that,” Mulholland said, who did not possess the Calvinist undertow of prurience.
“Body riddled with arsenic! Inspector Adam Dunsmore hints at imminent arrest.”
“Why a doornail?” asked the constable. “Why should that be deader than any other nail?”
As Roach gazed somewhat blankly in response, McLevy entered, late as usual, nodded briefly to the portrait of Queen Victoria on the wall and tuned in effortlessly to the lieutenant’s abiding interest.
“So the wife is suspect, eh?”
“Vile rumour has it so,” replied Roach happily. “And it is also hinted that the marriage bed was by no means sacrosanct. Only a hint, mark you!”
Dirty deeds in high society would seem to get folk going like nothing else, however, the lieutenant swept concupiscence aside along with the paper. “Well, it’s Haymarket’s case, Adam Dunsmore in particular. We have more important things on hand.”
Of course Roach was well aware that there had been a lack of murderous activity in the parish, not a decent robbery to be seen, no fearsome assaults in the wynds, no inexplicable bodies in the harbour; paradise to the pure at heart but anathema to men who breathed in the fumes of deep criminality like a pig after truffles.
“McMunn’s Elixir, the infant pacifier,” McLevy pronounced without noticeable relish.
“Exactly!” answered Roach with enthusiasm. “Sold on a street corner to a witless nursing maid who administered it copiously to the respectable twins in her charge and due to the excess of cheap laudanum in the mixture?”
“It near pacified them off the planet,” Mulholland threw in, while Victoria frowned at such malfeasance.
The lieutenant, trying to generate an appetite for the chase, banged his fist down on the desk causing one of his inkwells to jump like a rabbit. “You claim to know the wynds and back doubles of Leith better than any living being, McLevy. Find this man and find him quick!”
The inspector knew that these street corner Johnnies were notoriously hard to pin down but nodded obediently enough as he turned to go.
“C’mon, Mulholland, crimes of state wait for no man.”
Had Roach been more alert he might have wondered at the dutiful tones of his subordinate but the lieutenant was anxious to get them out the office so that he might rifle the middle pages of the newspaper and search out additional salacious titbits on the Pearson case.
The constable however, had been struck by the inspector’s compliant
response, and after a futile trawl through the harbour streets and wynds of Leith, pondered further why they had ended up at a tavern called The Salutation, which though not in the Haymarket itself was a favourite haunt of their police force.
“We’ll hae some belly-timber here,” declared James McLevy. “I’m starvin’ hungry.”
As he followed his inspector inside, Mulholland had his own thoughts as to the precise nature to this sudden need for sustenance.
Adam Dunsmore’s opinion of himself had seldom been higher. He pressed his back against the bar, lifted a glass in acknowledgement of the glory to come and saw nothing in the faces of his cronies to contradict this masterful conclusion. He was a small man with a big nose and a loud voice to which he now gave issue.
“Well, gentlemen, there’s nothing like getting your name in the paper and nothing like the prospect of a pretty woman dancing the Perth two-step in the morning air.”
A gale of boozy laughter greeted this callous statement as regards a future hanging but then Dunsmore’s somewhat fishy eyes spotted two newcomers fighting their passage through the smoke, a fair deal of which was caused by the large cigar clenched in his fist.
“McLevy! Whit’re you doing in this neck o’ the woods?”
“I am conducting a wide reconnaissance,” was the stolid response.
“Searching out what?”
“A nostrum salesman,” said Mulholland rather unwisely, but in truth his attention had been taken by a huge slice of goose pie on a plate further down the bar.
“A nostrum salesman?” repeated Dunsmore to universal sniggers. “Ye have to admit, Jamie boy, you’re small fry these days.”
McLevy ignored the provocation. “The Pearson case. Ye have a suspect?”
“And a motive!”
“Such as?”
Dunsmore affected a mysterious air. He relished the knowledge only he possessed, not even passing such to his colleagues apart from the odd insinuation. “Ever hear of Jardine Boothroyd?”
“A painter of sorts, I believe?” Mulholland contributed, stomach growling like a hound on the scent.
“Aye. Handy wi’ a brush.”
More sniggers. McLevy was unimpressed. “I’ve heard the whispers. They mean nothing.”
Dunsmore decided to add some spice to the mix. “The night the judge died, he had a heavy cold. The wife was observed to serve him up a potion.”
“The function of a faithful spouse.”
“Faithful?” Dunsmore drew out the word as he puffed at his cigar. “That remains to be seen.”
McLevy waited further but the little man had vaunted sufficient, kept what he knew up his sleeve, and snapped his mouth shut.
The inspector realised he would get little more at this juncture and signalled to his constable who had leant over the bar and craned his neck to see into the bustling kitchen beyond at the back premises.
“Come away, Mulholland, we’ll leave these birkies tae their important pursuits.”
As they left, Dunsmore, never a man to let well alone, jeered a farewell. “Get after the quack medicine man, Jamie boy. Quack, quack!”
At the laughter McLevy turned and for a moment there was a gleam of animal ferocity in his eyes that stilled the sound and had Mulholland instinctively reaching for his hornbeam stick.
He’d never cracked the skull of a fellow policeman before but there was always a first time. If McLevy went for blood he would follow — that was how they played the game. Both had survived many a vicious battle by holding to that rule. One for the other, no matter what.
“Quack, quack indeed, Adam,” replied the inspector quietly. “You would know. Ye have a face like a duck’s arse.”
And they were out through the tavern door leaving silence behind.
In the street Mulholland took a deep breath — how close he had come to an affray he would never know but one thing was certain. .
“That provender was sore tempting.”
“I lost my appetite,” said James McLevy.
If a passer-by had glanced in the window of Milady à la Mode in Princes Street, they would have glimpsed inside the shop two very contrasting individuals.
One was the squat form of a far from fashionable old biddy who sat grimly upon a chair like some Chinese dragon guarding the gates of hell, and the other a slim female figure who slipped in and out of sight, each time festooned in a different guise of dress.
Jean Brash was in her element, green eyes hectic with choice, red hair ablaze, skin smooth as the silk she wore, not a trace of sin on either covering.
Hannah Semple, the grumpy guardian, loathed shopping in such genteel surroundings. A market stall was more her style: haggle and be damned.
One owned the premier bawdy-hoose in Edinburgh — the Just Land — and the ancient other held position as her right-hand woman, keeper of the keys and indeed a dragon with whom to be reckoned if wielding a cut-throat razor.
“Whit do you think to this?” asked Jean, twirling around in an azure blue gown.
“It’ll cover your nakedness.”
“A different colour — pink maybe?”
“No!” Hannah’s pug-face darkened as she glowered at a nearby assistant who had been dancing attendance. “I’ve been three solid hours in this skittery wee chair. Would madam like this, would madam like that, does madam’s backside stick oot like a coal bunker?”
“It certainly does not,” was the tart response.
“I know you, Mistress. Ye’re lacking diversion. First ye shop and then ye get up tae mischief.”
“Well, I’m still at the shopping stage.”
Indeed Jean had a diversion in mind that involved looking her best and displaying all possible charms to an admiring male gaze, but that would be her secret.
“I’d even welcome McLevy on the scrounge for coffee,” muttered the old woman.
“The inspector’s in the huff wi’ me.”
Hannah grinned. “That’s because ye took in that big boxing mannie. A fine muckle specimen!”
The man concerned had been the loser at a fighting match Jean attended and his plight touched her heart.
“I was helping him recuperate.”
“Is that whit they call it?”
Though the boxer had departed a while back to punch his weight elsewhere, McLevy’s nose was still well out of joint. Serve him right.
Jean looked at her image in the mirror and frowned to observe two small lines tugging down from each side of a generous mouth.
“I better try the pink,” she murmured. “Nail my colours to the mast.”
Another beautiful woman, Judith Pearson, looked down from her portrait at the two policemen standing like sentries in the judge’s drawing room.
A funereal butler had brought them in and then gone to fetch his mistress but before her advent Mulholland had a word to say.
“This is not a good move, sir.”
“Jist observe the butterflies, Mulholland.”
For want of better to do, the constable cast an eye on the meticulously mounted display around them.
“A fair collection,” he averred. “Swallowtail — we have those in Ireland. Purple Emperor — not easy to catch, spends its life high in the treetops.”
McLevy peered at a specimen with a white bar on the forewing. “Very dainty, this wee thing, eh?”
Mulholland had nodded grudgingly; he had been shown the contents of Judith’s letter but found it poor reason to be out of their parish courting nothing but trouble.
“A Painted Lady,” he identified.
And as if on cue the mistress entered, dressed in muted colours tending towards black but by no means a full widow’s regalia.
Introductions were effected, positions assumed and Judith formally thanked the inspector for his response to her plea. McLevy looked as if he had swallowed a frog.
“Mistress Pearson,” he announced abruptly. “Let us dispense with the politesse.”
“By all means.”
“The judge d
ied of arsenic poisoning.”
“Which might not have been discovered, had I not insisted upon a post-mortem,” she replied calmly.
McLevy grunted acknowledgement of the point but then launched into what his constable recognised as one of their favourite ploys — keep the suspect out of kilter.
“I did not like your husband.”
For a moment her eyes flickered, but with what?
“Might one ask why?”
“He enjoyed too much the punishment he meted out,” was the flinty response. “One young girl had tried to steal the wallet of a fine gentleman who was otherwise engaged with her. Whoring.”
This time Mistress Pearson did not blink.
“In the witness box she cried to break your heart. She had done it to feed her family, it was her first offence, she begged for the court’s mercy. The judge smiled and sentenced her to fifteen years.”
Mulholland put in an equalising aside. “We were the arresting officers, sir.”
“But I had no delight in it. The judge smiled.”
In the silence all three took stock. The officers saw a woman of singular beauty with a secretive quality, raven dark hair, near to violet deep blue eyes, alabaster skin. There was something both inviting and contained about her — a combination that might unsettle many a man.
Behind her, the portrait, its purple gown glowing in the subdued colours of the drawing room, provided an odd disparity as if one was more alive than the other.
She saw two equally contrasting creatures. The constable tall, somehow boyish, as if growing out of his clothes, the hair fair, the accent soft and Irish, the eyes light blue — an innocent face that might lull many a suspect into inadvertent confession.
The inspector was another proposition. James McLevy, thief-taker, a chunky, menacing figure in his dark overcoat and low-brimmed bowler. The face white and broken, eyes boring into hers like a wolf sizing up its quarry. By no means a butterfly.
Yet he was her last hope.
“My husband was a cruel man,” she murmured, eyes moving to the mounted display on the wall. “I often thought that the great relish he found in the collecting of these beautiful creatures was in the fact that once caught, he might stifle their senses and then put them in the killing jar. To watch them die.”
