by David Ashton
‘The Old Ship?’ he said. ‘I know that tavern well, a good place for a wee dram.’
His tone was warm enough but his eyes were watchful. All friends together, eh? he thought to himself. The mistress and the servant.
‘And he told you so? He confided that much in you?’
‘Yes. But not the extent of his desires,’ she replied dryly. ‘Not what he wished for in his heart.’
‘Peace and quiet, probably,’ said the inspector, a trifle sententiously. ‘Well, he’s found it now.’
‘Can murder bring you peace and quiet?’
She bit the words off somewhat tightly and McLevy was happy enough inside himself; getting the truth out of the respectable classes was a fiendish job, you had to catch them on the hip, or was it the hop?
‘And when did he usually get back at night?’
‘Late. And sometimes – slightly the worse for wear. I often heard the key scraping in the lock.’
Affection in the voice but the inspector had picked up on something else.
‘Ye heard? Late at night? How so, if I may ask Mistress Bouch, to be alert so deep into the dark?’
‘I sleep badly.’
‘So do I,’ said the inspector. ‘I put it down to conscience.’
He smiled at her like a wolf in a nursery book illustration. Not chasing after Red Riding Hood or three smallish pigs; just a wolf in a green field, with all the time in the world. He often regarded himself so, and Margaret Bouch did not seem at all uncomfortable with this prospect.
Perhaps, she was part wolf herself, thought McLevy.
‘So, did ye hear a scrape last night?’ he continued. ‘Or something else perchance?’
‘I was not here, last night.’
The inspector raised his eyebrows the merest fraction and his mouth drooped slightly like a puzzled child; it was what Mulholland would recognise as McLevy’s idiot look, and often drew response like a poultice.
‘This is my husband’s place of work, his office and study are set here on Bernard Street. The family home, his country retreat, is in Moffat.’
‘That’s border folk,’ said McLevy. ‘Sheep stealers and the like!’
He laughed loudly. She permitted herself a faint smile at this presumed witticism, but had Mulholland been on hand his long nose would have twitched in recognition that the inspector was up to his tricks.
‘A fair distance.’ McLevy’s eyes widened at the thought. ‘Back and forward all the time, eh?’
‘Sir Thomas spends the week on the premises here and then at weekends, he does not. He returns.’
‘To the bosom of his family?’
‘That is correct,’ she responded evenly.
‘And you, Mistress Bouch?’
‘I reside there. The Moffat house demands much of my attention.’
‘But it didnae in former times, did it?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Because, as you told me yourself, you’d lie awake in this place at night and listen to the key scraping in the lock.’
For a moment she did not answer and in the silence, a ship’s horn from the Leith docks sounded in the distance like a lost soul.
‘That is correct. In former times.’
‘Yet, here you are today!’
McLevy beamed at her as if they had both reached a satisfactory conclusion to the exchange and Margaret Bouch shook her head as if it was spinning a little.
‘I – I had some shopping to do in Edinburgh and took our carriage, we have a carriage you see, and arrived in the early morning to find this – catastrophe.’
That would mean, the inspector surmised, she had left Moffat before the break of dawn. Why such an hour? Was her arrival unannounced? Unexpected? What had she hoped to find, a house full of licentious women?
Under his scrutiny, Margaret Bouch suddenly pushed forward one of her dainty boots with the toe pointing up towards the ceiling. It was like a gesture of defiance.
‘I dare say you would like to talk to my husband about all this, inspector.’
‘I dare say I would.’
‘Then, let me oblige you,’ she said, walked to the study door, knocked sharply upon it then thrust it open.
6
And see ye not yon braid, braid road,
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the Road to Heaven.
BALLADS,
Thomas the Rhymer
Dean Village, 8 November 1880
McLevy watched as Margaret Bouch picked her way down the curving cemetery path, her slight figure cutting through the rain like a shark’s fin. Everyone else had quit the brow of the hill, save for three figures under a black umbrella observing her passage.
The Fates perhaps? Best keep eyes peeled for Atropos, the one who brandished the scissors for cutting the thread of life, or was that who was on the approach?
These eleven months ago, when she had opened the door to disclose her husband and his private secretary, the men had been bowed, heads together, over the drawings of the projected crossing for the Firth of Forth, the foundation stone of which had already been laid. It was an undertaking which would make Bouch’s previous achievement, the Tay Bridge, seem mere child’s play.
A panoramic photograph of that same bridge, upon the wall behind his desk, had towered above them all. Taken on a sunny day.
The images and conversation of the encounter raced through McLevy’s mind as he watched the widow walk towards him; her figure flickered before his vision like a magic lantern show as a shaft of pale ruined sunlight broke through the clouds for a brief moment to light up the sheets of heavy, driven raindrops.
Sir Thomas Bouch had been bearded, his eyes wide set, face impassive, the grey hair at the side of his head rising like cherub’s wings. He had to his credit 300 designed miles of railway track and had built more bridges than any man of, or in, his age.
Flying high.
Alan Telfer shaved close, a thin face, pale eyes. In the Vatican he would have been private secretary to one of the Monsignors, carrying mysteries inside a scarlet sleeve.
There was also a military air to him, a straight back hinting at generations who had rushed into the cannon’s mouth to die for king and country.
Here, his fanaticism had fixed itself upon one object only.
Both men had seemed oddly uninterested in the murder, as if it had happened in China.
They had been asleep, heard nothing, and would be grateful when this disturbance was over. There was much work to be done.
McLevy had been conscious of under-currents as deep and treacherous as the winter confluents of the River Tay itself.
Dark forces swirling over a bed of mud, sand and stone.
When Telfer had suggested that that the old man had in some way provoked the inconvenience of his own death by blundering in the worse for drink and grappling with the intruder instead of raising the alarm, Margaret Bouch drew in her breath as if struck to the core.
Seeing McLevy register this, the secretary, with a sideways flick of a glance and a faint dismissive smile, consigned such reactions to female irrationality and misplaced emotions. Her response had been a sudden gleam of hatred in the dark eyes, which then disappeared like lightning swallowed up in a storm.
Sir Thomas, on the other hand, had seemed to have no emotions at all. His whole being appeared to have withdrawn to a loftier plane, where great enterprises were being structured in the high reaches of his mind.
All grist to the mill.
A comical aspect had been unwittingly added to the situation when Mulholland joined the party; all five crammed within the small airless study.
The constable stood beside Margaret Bouch, nearly one foot and a half of height between them, and for a second there was a glint of humour in her eyes as she stared up at the lanky frame of Mulholland before she met McLevy’s gaze and schooled her features back to dutiful serenity.
A blast of rain in h
is face brought McLevy back to the present moment. Perhaps he should walk up the cemetery path to meet the woman halfway. That’s what a gentleman would do. But would a gentleman be lurking under a tree in the first place?
Better stand his ground.
Back to the grist.
The maid had contributed little save an ill-disguised desire to find further acquaintance with the constable in an unofficial setting, but Mulholland was somewhat sniffy about romance with kitchen maids.
When McLevy had asked the company if anything was missing from the house to support the idea of a possible burglary and also perhaps provide him with something more positive to go on than an uncommunicative corpse, Alan Telfer assured him that everything was in place.
It would seem that the investigation, hardly yet begun, was deadlocked. However, the inspector had remarked upon something.
Arranged on a long shelf running along the side of the study were the various awards and plaques that Sir Thomas had garnered during his so far meteoric career. Not at all a prideful display, the shelf somewhat tucked away in a recess, but the arrangement was disposed in orderly fashion and the inspector’s sharp eye had noticed a gap in the assembly.
When he had brought it to the man’s attention, Telfer was honour bound to agree. A silver candlestick, part of the gifts bestowed upon Sir Thomas when given the Freedom of the Ancient Burgh of Dundee. It was missing. No longer to hand. An oversight on the secretary’s part.
Had it by any chance been inscribed? Indeed so: ‘31st of May, 1878. To Sir Thomas Bouch from the grateful Burghers of Dundee.’
The inspector’s first clue. He had not known then that it would lead him eventually to the mouth of hell.
A voice broke in on these ramblings.
‘You might have joined us on the hill,’ said the lady of the house.
Margaret was now standing in front of him and though garbed for deep mourning, was fashionably enough sculpted into her attire, the tiny waist, a dimension with which he had been granted some unexpected experience, accentuated by the sweep of her coat. She looked like a little doll, all dressed up for the funeral, bearing the weeds patiently enough but dying for a change of costume.
She would be the dancing lady to McLevy’s hardy tin soldier, both perishing in the flames.
‘I prefer to observe from distance,’ he replied.
‘From distance. How like the thing.’
She crooked her elbow and laid right hand upon her waist in an oddly provocative gesture. Behind the veil that hung from her daintily perched hat, the gypsy eyes looked him up, and looked him down. Behind the veil.
‘Ye resemble a bee-keeper,’ he remarked.
She laughed suddenly but there was a harsh edge, so much unspoken, she thought, so much water under the bridge. For instance, a moment in a room in Moffat when he had jammed his hat upon his head and ran for dear life.
Yet, why was he here, Margaret wondered?
Hope springs eternal.
With a swift incisive gesture, she threw back the veil to reveal her face, high cheekbones marble white amid the November gloom in a landscape of tombstones.
‘And you look like …’ she began.
Margaret collected and arranged her impressions as if seeing him for the first time.
A heavy-set man with thick stubby arms; the hands small and strangely feminine possessed a grace of movement that contrasted with the rest of his constitution. The legs short, the feet small also, but planted firmly to the ground.
A somewhat comical assemblage until encountering the face. The lupine slate-grey eyes pierced a hole through to find the most secret, shameful thoughts, and behind the flesh of his cheeks, hard bone, chiselled by the east wind.
The mouth was curiously shaped, pouting almost. He wore a dark blue topcoat, collar turned up against the rain and a low-brimmed bowler, which sat somewhat uneasily on the wiry, pepper and salt hair.
His skin was parchment white, as if the sun had never troubled its surface.
‘You look like an undertaker,’ she concluded.
‘I’m in the right place, then.’
A sudden blast of wind and rain swept in upon them and she seemed to lose her balance, toppling towards him.
His hands reached out to take her by the elbows, then arrested their motion. She regained her equilibrium close to his chest and lifted her face. The drips from the brim of his bowler fell on to her cheeks and chin. Her tongue reached out to savour one.
She let the liquid linger upon that fleshly organ, and then swallowed.
‘I have come to say goodbye,’ McLevy announced, his voice somewhat hoarse but he blamed it on the weather.
‘Then say it.’
‘Goodbye Mistress Bouch. The case is over.’
She laughed into the teeth of the wind, turned abruptly, pulled down her veil and marched off and back up the hill to where the Furies still stood and waited, under the umbrella.
McLevy felt an emptiness inside, but he could fill that up with coffee.
7
If with me you’d fondly stray
Over the hills and far away.
JOHN GAY,
The Beggar’s Opera
Mulholland gazed with some admiration at his reflection in the cracked mirror. It was a trifle distorted but beauty is forever in the eye of the beholder.
Love makes a fool of us all and the constable was no exception to that rule.
Therefore he gazed fondly at his own image.
Who could not fail but be impressed by the sincerity in his clear blue eyes, light brown hair neatly parted to the side, and skin like a milk cow?
Profile, now. He turned to observe same; a trifle sharp in feature but had his own Aunt Katie not often remarked that her nephew had the sideways apparition of a Roman emperor? Mind you, Mulholland wasn’t so sure about that assertion. The ones he had witnessed in the Museum of Antiquities seemed to have badly broken noses and his own was straight as a Presbyterian pew.
There was also, of course, the Romanish aspect to be taken into consideration; to be sure he knew Aunt Katie was referring to the ancient empire rather than the Pope’s Tiara, but still, it left an uneasy swampy feeling like a cloud of incense.
Back to the nose.
A bit long maybe, but was there not a saying amongst the vulgar sorts that a man with a long neb and big feet had much to offer in other departments?
Not that he would ever dream of boasting about the primal parts but he was satisfied from boyhood comparisons with some pig farmer’s sons at the back of the barn, that he could more than hold his own.
His eyes glazed over as he dreamed of a divine consummation. He and his beloved like swans on the river; above them, blue skies and below, clear water.
However, into these sacred visions of the fragrant Emily, slid a depiction that, if not downright voluptuous, brought a definite tingle to the constable’s loins.
She lay on the marital bed, a four-poster with dark velvet curtains and lashings of moonlight. Her nightgown was chaste enough, white as purity with frilly bits, but her lips were moist and parted, breath on the short side, the pupils of the eyes dilated with anticipation.
He was standing beside the plumped-up pillows, also in a nightgown, not quite as white, smiling down at her, any manifestation of desire well hidden by the burgeoning folds of flannel, but manly as a bull in the heat of summer.
Emily’s bosom had found itself, perched above the level of the sheets. They were neat and starched but not the bosom. It was in motion trembling. Like the sea. Up and down. Up and down. A heavy swell.
There was a candle burning by the bed. He licked his forefinger and thumb, reached over, and put out the light.
Now they were free to wallow in the darkness.
Mulholland screwed up his face in sudden consternation. Wallow? That couldn’t be right, hogs did such in mud. No, wallow was out of the question. And there couldn’t be darkness, not with the lashings of moonlight.
He shut his eyes tightly a
nd brought his hands, palms together, up to touch his lips as if in meditation.
No. Wallow and darkness were not permissible; best concentrate on the moister, swelling aspects.
‘What in god’s name are you doing, constable?’
The young man spun round, eyes opened, face flushed, to meet the baleful scrutiny of his own and everyone else’s appointed superior in Leith police station, Lieutenant Roach. No one would want him leaning over their bedside, not unless they were dead.
The lieutenant’s resemblance to a crocodile was nigh uncanny, hooded membrane eyes slightly bloodshot, a jaw full of large teeth that he often jerked from side to side, and a long snout, which at this moment he was twitching in Mulholland’s direction.
‘And where is Inspector McLevy, if I may be so bold?’ Roach asked, his brooding gaze flitting round the room.
He had in truth been rather perturbed to open the door and find his constable in commune, apparently, with the occult. He knew Mulholland for a staunch Protestant, if Irish, and hoped the young man was not being religiously undermined by the wave of mesmerism, spiritualism, psychic phenomena and the like, sweeping the country. Had the Queen herself not been rumoured to have once taken part in a séance in order to contact her dearly beloved Albert?
In Roach’s view the whole thing was nothing more than Catholicism in one of its many guises, such superstitious drivel concealing the sly tendrils of ultramontanism.
Therefore his eyes bore into Mulholland’s searching out a shift in belief.
‘The inspector,’ replied the constable carefully, ‘mentioned to me that he may be a little on the late side this morning. A personal matter, sir.’
‘Indeed? It must have slipped his mind to inform me.’
‘That’s a mystery, sir. I know you are always foremost in his thoughts.’
What Mulholland did not add was that McLevy’s aforesaid foremost thought was how to keep Roach from meddling in his investigations, but there was not a trace of this privy information on his candid countenance.
The wave of love and desire that had swept through his vibrant organic parts was placed in restrainers for the moment. He was back to pragmatic self because he needed to have the lieutenant firmly in his corner. Just behind Cupid.