The Darker Arts

by Oscar de Muriel

  ‘Does she mention the séance? Her grandmother?’

  ‘Aye, but she was very secretive about it. She even brushed off a couple o’ people who wanted to assist – see this one here. A lady from Lincolnshire is begging Leonora to let her come, and in her next one she’s moaning ’cause the lass told her to sod off.’

  ‘Did Leonora at least tell them why they wanted to talk to Grannie Alice?’

  ‘Nae. That name never appears. Not even in her private journal. Although …’ He showed me those sheets, lined in succession. ‘There were missing pages. I found entries for the ninth and the tenth of September. Then the eleventh and twelfth were clearly ripped out, and on the thirteenth – the day they died – there is only a wee note about her getting up early, to go and buy a boxful of photographic plaques.’

  McGray had left empty spaces where those pages should fit.

  ‘Do you think she tore them out herself? Realising she’d written too much?’

  ‘Herself, somebody else … Who and why is impossible to tell.’

  ‘So … is there anything new here?’

  ‘Och, aye! And yer goin’ to love this. A week before the séance, Leonora listed all the guests. Guess what?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘She does nae mention her cousin Bertrand at all. Instead …’ he pointed at the page on the wall, ‘Here. Aunt Gertrude.’

  ‘The woman at the Sheriff Court?’ I mumbled, astounded. ‘She was supposed to be at the séance?’

  ‘Aye. Leonora says here she’s so happy ’cause everyone had confirmed they’d be there.’

  ‘And for some reason that woman swapped places with one of her nephews … Did Leonora mention why?’

  ‘Nah.’

  I nodded. ‘Well, that is interesting. Are you thinking that—?’

  ‘That fatty Gertrude set the whole thing up and then swapped places to save her neck? Aye, but then I remembered that Gertrude’s daughter died there too. Mrs Grenville.’

  ‘True,’ I said, recalling the family tree. ‘Still, we’ll have to question her.’

  ‘Aye. She’ll be our very next—’

  Then we heard hurried steps from the stairs.

  ‘Inspectors,’ said McNair from the door. ‘There’s a man at the courtyard. He insists he needs to see youse. He’s making a scandal with the newspaper folk.’

  ‘Call some other lads and kick him away,’ said Nine-Nails. ‘Truncheon him up the arse if ye have to. I’d help youse, but we’re very busy.’

  ‘Erm, it’s the lad I saw at the Sheriff Court,’ McNair added. ‘That Walter Fox.’

  McGray and I exchanged looks at once.

  I turned to McNair. ‘Let him in. This might save us some chasing.’

  A moment later we were joined by the man himself, a very haughty chap in his late thirties. He was very thin, not particularly tall, and more ravaged by the sun than I’d guessed from a distance : the creases on his forehead and in-between his eyebrows in fact looked like pale streaks against his otherwise orange, leathery face.

  ‘I hear you two were sneaking at my cousin’s house,’ he snapped as soon as he stepped in. ‘You have no right to do that. I’ve just told the papers so.’

  The man barely matched McGray’s height with his top hat on, and his arms were like sticks of liquorice, yet he still grinned most insolently when Nine-Nails stepped towards him. I prepared myself to mop up his blood.

  ‘Say all o’ that again, laddie. All o’ that. Word by word.’

  The orange man was impervious. ‘My cousin and uncle were the victims! It is not their house you two should be investigating.’ He looked at the walls, his face contorted with indignation as he pointed at them. ‘And those are my cousin’s belongings!’

  ‘We are carrying out an investigation, Mr Fox,’ I grumbled, noticing the man wore a huge, most vulgar diamond ring on his right index.

  ‘You need warrants for that! You don’t just step into people’s homes and help yourselves to whatever you fancy. I demand you give me a detailed list of everything you took.’

  McGray looked at me, pointing at Fox and sniggering. ‘Och, he’s demanding, Frey! So sodding sweet.’

  Fox raised his chin a little higher. ‘If you don’t, I shall tell every newspaper in Great Britain that the CID are plundering the houses of poor innocent victims.’

  Nine-Nails stepped a little closer. He had the expression I tend to show when about to devour a plateful of Joan’s scones. ‘What else will ye tell them, laddie?’

  ‘That you returned us six mangled bodies. I’ve just been at the undertaker’s. They were embalming them when they saw – oh, this is so disgusting … They tell me their insides were a mess ; missing chunks and everything. You’re a bunch of savages!’

  ‘Anything else, sir?’ McGray asked.

  Fox eyed Mackenzie. ‘That dog was my uncle’s. I’ll take it right now.’

  There was a moment of utter silence, like that before thunder strikes. McGray then took a hissing breath through his teeth, and I slowly brought a hand to my brow, unsure whether or not I wanted to look.

  ‘That’s too fucking much,’ he said, his voice sizzling like hot oil, and in a flashing movement Nine-Nails seized Fox by the hand, doing something to his fingers that sent the man to his knees, as he let out such high-pitched wails the dogs’ heads perked up at once.

  ‘Nine-Nails, is this really—?’ I waved dismissively. ‘Oh, why do I even bother?’

  McGray bent down, talking sweetly. ‘I won’t demand, laddie. I’ll ask ye very nicely if ye can take yer sorry arse to our questioning room. We’d like to ask ye a few wee questions. Only if that’s nae too much sodding trouble.’

  ‘You bast— Ahh-ha-harrghh!’

  By that point Fox had dropped his top hat, was shouting all manner of insults and kicked his legs about. He babbled something that involved McGray and hell, and I could only sigh.

  ‘I shall wait in the questioning room,’ I said, already heading there and bringing a file with my notes.

  ‘All right, Percy. We won’t be long.’

  And he kept his word. I’d not been five minutes in the claustrophobic chamber when Nine-Nails and McNair came in with a bedraggled Fox. The man was pressing a chunk of ice wrapped in rags (most likely borrowed from the morgue) onto his hand, and his mourning jacket was torn at the shoulder. He and Nine-Nails sat down, and McNair carefully placed the black top hat on the table – it was now a crumpled accordion and bore a stamp the exact shape of McGray’s boot.

  Fox glared at me. ‘The fiscal will hear of this.’

  McGray shifted on his chair, making Fox jump.

  ‘The sooner you answer our questions, the sooner you may go and talk to him,’ I said. ‘I assume it was your cousin’s housekeeper who told you about our visit?’

  ‘Yes. I went there to dismiss Mrs Taylor and pay her a settlement. Not that you need to know that.’

  ‘Ye looking for anything there?’ McGray probed.

  ‘If I was, that is none of your business. I am now Leonora’s closest living relative.’

  ‘Aye. Bet ye cannae wait to put yer wee carroty hands on the house she—’

  I slammed the file on the table. ‘Nine-Nails, do shut up. I beg you.’

  I must have uttered that really harshly, for McGray, miraculously, did shush. I looked back at Fox.

  ‘Mrs Taylor told us you were very close to your cousin.’

  ‘We saw each other frequently, yes.’

  ‘Good. We are trying to find out why she organised that tragic séance. She must have told you why.’

  Fox shrugged. ‘Leonora was always doing that sort of thing. Ever since she was little, she fancied she had a certain gift. Some sort of clairvoyance. She said our grandmother had it too, that it ran in the family.’

  ‘Did she tell you why she wanted to talk to your grandmother?’

  Fox answered a tad too quickly to my taste. ‘No. Nothing specific, I mean. I assumed she simply wanted to commune with her.’r />
  ‘We are under the impression she – and all the others who attended – wanted to find something. Do you have any idea what that might have been?’

  Like his now deceased uncle, Fox frowned very deeply. No wonder the sun never reached those creases. ‘Find something? As in … an actual physical object?’

  I studied his expression before answering. He seemed more curious than concerned.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  ‘And she was asking the dead?’

  ‘Indeed,’ I answered.

  He sneered. ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘Did she tell you—?’

  ‘No, she didn’t! Are you happy? I have no idea what you mean or what she – they might have been looking for.’

  I exhaled wearily and moved on. ‘Was Miss Leonora in the habit of inviting her close relatives to that sort of evening?’

  ‘No, not that I know of. It was usually random swindlers she kept in touch with.’

  ‘Is there any reason you think it was different this time?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell.’

  I looked at him carefully as I asked the following. ‘Did she invite you to attend?’

  Fox snorted. ‘She brought it up a few days earlier, but I didn’t even let her finish. She knew I didn’t like her dealings with that nasty gypsy.’

  McGray inhaled with expectation.

  ‘You do not like her, I can tell.’

  ‘Of course I don’t! I always thought that the madwag simply humoured my cousin to squeeze as much money out of her as she could.’

  ‘I would not blame you for thinking that,’ I mumbled. ‘Did you ever mention that to her?’

  ‘Only a couple of times, a long time ago. The money itself didn’t bother me that much.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Fox shrugged. ‘Some people squander their earnings at the public house ; some at the dressmaker. My cousin did so at a fortune teller’s. At least it kept her entertained. Leonora wasn’t precisely … gregarious.’ He sighed then. ‘What did worry me was that the damn gypsy knew very well how to get under Leonora’s skin. Sometimes I’d visit and find her in a state because of some nonsense that woman had told her.’

  ‘What sort of nonsense?’

  He let out another snort. ‘Curses running in the family, foul humours haunting us …’

  ‘Can ye be more specific?’ McGray interjected.

  ‘Well, no! I never paid too much attention when she started gibbering about that. As I said, it was all nonsense to me, but Leonora was obsessed. She confided blindly to that woman. I’m afraid the fat harpy may have learned more about our families than she ought to.’

  McGray arched an eyebrow. ‘What sort o’ things?’

  Fox bit his lip and sat back, as if suddenly realising he’d volunteered too much.

  ‘I wish I knew. God knows how much Leonora told her.’

  ‘Anything yer afraid Katerina might’ve learned?’

  Fox tilted his head slightly backwards, his eyes for a split second burning as if McGray had just made the most obscene remark. All too soon he seemed to compose himself, and the indignation became wrath.

  ‘I hope she did.’

  ‘Wh-what?’

  ‘I hope your beloved fortune teller did find something scandalous. Shameful, even! And I hope – nay, I pray, she tells you before the trial, and that confirms what everybody is already thinking.’

  McGray was clenching both fists. ‘Which is?’

  ‘That the gypsy ensnared them only to get rid of them ; drug them or kill them and then take something from them. Perhaps that mysterious thing you say they were looking for.’

  ‘Can ye prove it?’ McGray hissed.

  ‘Of course I can’t, but I hope the fiscal can. I know I’ll get no justice from you. Like everyone in Scotland, I know your background, and I saw how passionately you two defended that woman at the hearing.’

  McGray was gnashing his teeth, one hostile remark away from tipping up the table and beating Fox to a pulp.

  I changed the topic before more of Fox’s limbs required ice.

  ‘Speaking of the court, we saw you next to Mrs Gertrude Cobbold. Your step-aunt, I believe?’

  Fox glared at me, and when he spoke, he showed most of his teeth. ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘What can you tell us about her?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  I sighed. ‘Was Mrs Cobbold close to Miss Leonora?’

  ‘What do you mean by—?’

  I slammed a hand on the table. ‘Will you give me a direct answer or shall I ask my colleague here to become persuasive again?’

  Fox did not seem to react, but he did tap his injured hand. The melting ice was now dripping on the table.

  ‘Closer than me, but not overly friendly,’ he said. ‘Leonora called on her every now and then, but I did not mingle much with that side of the family. They always looked down on us.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘That old man, Mr Shaw, was far wealthier than my own grandfather. We on the Willbergs’ side have always been the poorer relations.’

  ‘Ye seem quite well off now,’ McGray pointed out, looking at Fox’s vulgar diamond.

  ‘I made myself through hard work.’

  ‘Have ye! A tad too quickly, it seems.’

  Fox winced maliciously. ‘Yes. Like I’ve heard your own father did.’

  McGray at once raised his chin, clenching a fist. This man knew very well how to touch people’s nerves.

  I thought it better to move on. ‘I assume you and your step-aunt have discussed the matter at length.’

  Fox stared intently at me, as if trying to predict my next move. ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Has Mrs Cobbold told you she was supposed to be at the séance?’

  His eyes opened a little wider, and this time he did not attempt to conceal his surprise. ‘No. How … how do you know that? Leonora’s letters?’

  ‘Indeed. We believe she swapped places with your step-cousin.’

  ‘Bertrand,’ Fox mumbled. He looked at us, more and more alarmed as the seconds passed. ‘Did you … I mean … Have you talked to her?’

  McGray half smiled. ‘Why d’ye ask? Afraid yer stories won’t match?’

  Again Fox’s eyes betrayed him for a split second, before he rapidly composed himself.

  ‘Leonora … did mention her as one of the people she might invite. But no, Mrs Cobbold never told me that.’

  ‘Do you realise that leaves her in a very uncomfortable position?’ I asked, and Fox chuckled.

  ‘More uncomfortable than your stupid gypsy? Why would my aunt want to kill her own daughter? Her father! And now she’ll be looking after the three poor children.’

  ‘Some quarrel against her son-in-law?’ I ventured.

  ‘I don’t know! I told you, I didn’t mingle much with them. I knew the colonel could be very difficult, but I hardly ever—’

  The door slammed open then, and we all startled as we heard a shout.

  ‘So there you are!’

  I first saw the glimmer coming from Pratt’s polished scalp. Beads of sweat made it all the shinier, glinting like his golden tooth.

  McGray stood up, nearly capsizing the table. ‘Get the fuck out o’ here, ye Pratt!’ he roared.

  Pratt hinted at a mocking smile. ‘I suggest you release this man, Nine-Nails.’

  ‘Get out!’ McGray repeated, grabbing Pratt by the tie and throwing him out of the little room. He shut the door, but then we heard Pratt’s voice from the other side.

  ‘Everyone in the City Chambers is talking of how you’ve persuaded this man to talk.’

  ‘Sod off!’

  ‘Release him now or the jury will hear how appallingly you’re treating the victims’ relatives. Do you think that will help your beloved gypsy?’

  McGray stared at the door, his chest swelling like bellows. I shook my head at him as a warning, just before McGray threw a few punches at the door. Fox was grinning.

  ‘Release him n
ow, Nine-Nails,’ Pratt said, an infuriatingly cheerful note in his voice. ‘Or you’ll mar the validity of your entire investigation.’

  McGray looked at Fox, then back at the door, snorted, and then let out a growl that grew loud and steady until he ran out of air. He punched the door one last time, so hard he nearly cracked the wood, and then opened it.

  ‘Get yer fuckin’ leather moccasins out o’ here.’

  Fox did not wait. He trotted his way out, pressing his injured hand against his chest and not bothering to take his ruined top hat. However, he allowed himself a sneer as soon as he was past the threshold. ‘I do want that dog back.’

  ‘Piss off!’

  And McGray shut the door, hitting the man right on his burnt orange nose.

  17

  ‘We have to talk to Gertrude Cobbold right away,’ McGray babbled, rushing to our office. ‘That Fox sod might go and meddle with things.’

  I checked the documents provided by Trevelyan and was happy to find all the addresses we’d need. McGray jotted one down and was calling for a cab before I could say a word.

  It turned out Mrs Cobbold did not live near her father and daughter. She owned a small yet sumptuous flat in New Town, her front windows overlooking the south-west corner of St Andrew Square.

  We were received by a young and fidgety scullery maid, who showed us the way to a well-appointed sitting room. Everything there spoke of wealth and comfort : sofas upholstered in mint-green damask, matching wallpapers under an exquisitely plastered ceiling, enormous china planters bursting with waxy foliage, and an ornate mantelpiece exhibiting all manner of expensive trinkets and family pictures. Those in particular caught my eye.

  The girl mumbled we should wait there and scurried away. I went to look at the portraits, which were a mixture of photographs and small oils. Especially detailed, and placed prominently at the centre, was the painting of a middle-aged woman, seated on a wicker chair and wrapped in richly embroidered blankets.

  ‘Is this Grannie Alice?’ I asked, and McGray came to have a look.

  The brushes were delicate and precise, clearly by a skilled artist, so I could assume it to be a reasonable likeness. The woman was very thin, with the dark, tight curls shared by her now dead granddaughters, and she was the one to blame for the family’s bulbous noses. However, there was a strange beauty to her features ; some sort of charm I am afraid none of her descendants had inherited. That fetching quality undoubtedly came from her eyes, painted with hair-thin traces that gave them a most vivid, entrancing effect. I felt as though a breathing person were staring back at me, with a stoic sadness that made my neck hairs stand on end.