Fall From Grace im-2

by David Ashton

  She looked at the candlestick with no great affection.

  ‘I had forgotten. There is a great deal to forget.’

  He stuffed the canvas bag back into his coat pocket, muttering to himself as it refused to fit neatly.

  Margaret smiled. For a moment, she thought that he looked like a little boy, but it is always a dangerous sign when a woman takes a man for his younger version.

  ‘So, you’ve come?’ she said.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘It is a long distance to venture.’

  ‘Uhuh. Here and back. Very long.’

  ‘You intend to go back this day?’

  ‘The coach returns within the hour.’

  ‘Then we don’t have much time.’

  ‘No.’

  She suddenly smiled at some inner thought and a glint of mischief showed in her eyes.

  ‘Are you married, Mister McLevy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Betrothed?’

  ‘I certainly hope not.’

  Her gypsy eyes measured him up and down, leaving the inspector to feel like a prize bull at the cattle fair.

  ‘Your note mentioned that you had something to tell me?’ he asked.

  ‘Indeed I do.’

  ‘I assume it is to do with the case?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  At her remark, he stepped back and raised his hand, palm upwards, as if about to take an oath in court.

  She stepped forward so that they were out of sight from the garden, took that hand, and laid it lightly round her waist.

  A simple enough gesture but within it the seeds of a passion that could destroy both of them.

  What kind of women were they serving up these days?

  But as McLevy thought so, he could feel the pull of an attraction that had been there from the moment they had met.

  He stood like a statue, knowing what was right but mightily magnetised to the opposite proposition.

  She moved in close so that his hand slipped further round her back, her face tilted up towards him.

  He could smell her breath, violets and a strange peaty fragrance, the merest hint of alcohol perhaps?

  Must get closer, investigate further, after all he was a policeman was he not? These things must be investigated.

  A harsh screech from the garden broke the spell as a large black crow swung down from the naked branch of an oak tree, landed on the neglected grass of the lawn and hopped towards the chilled numb figure of Sir Thomas, sitting in the wooden chair as if composed of the same element.

  The aftermath of heavy rain had left a puddle in a small depression in the earth, near to the man’s feet and this was the crow’s target.

  It was thirsty. So it dipped its beak.

  One week past. Offer and rejection. Margaret shivered, filled the glass again but sipped more cautiously this time. She knew the dangers of whisky. It promoted a certain careless quality to the limbs and inflamed other parts, especially the tongue. She still had a part to play of the sorrowful widow, sea-shanties notwithstanding.

  The family would leave tomorrow, and then she would be free. Unlike James McLevy.

  She remembered how the spell had been broken. That damned crow. The inspector stepped back, a look of almost comical terror on his face and had bolted from the room. Then he darted back in again to retrieve a forgotten hat, jammed it on his head and fled the scene.

  It would have been funny, had it not been so painful.

  Her heart was hammering in her chest with the humiliation of that rejection. As if it would jump into her mouth, as if it would jump the confines of her body.

  That damned crow.

  She had watched it fly off croaking in satisfaction as the outside door of the house slammed shut and the inspector no doubt shot up the high street towards the marketplace where the statue of a ram celebrated the town’s reliance on the wool trade.

  The ram, however, had no ears. It had arrived that way and the sculptor, according to legend, committed suicide because of that omission.

  Like Alan Telfer. A suicide of omission.

  Margaret had been witness to so many things.

  After the inspector had scuttled off like a frightened rat, she had walked to the French windows and called her husband’s name. He had best come in. It was cold out there.

  Sir Thomas had risen, turned, and looked at her like a dumb animal, a thread of mucus finding its way from his nose down on to his shirt front.

  A mute and suffering animal. Like herself. Something they could both share.

  Thomas Bouch died the next morning from a heavy cold, which had plagued him for all of that month.

  He had no will to resist death.

  For the faults in design, he was entirely responsible.

  For the faults in construction, he was principally responsible.

  For the faults in maintenance, principally if not entirely responsible.

  That was the final verdict of the Court of Inquiry.

  And it killed him.

  Rain, rattling on the window brought her once more back to the here and now. She rose from the armchair, walked to the window and pulled back the curtains. It was dark outside, the street lamps throwing light upon the hunched figures of the passers-by and the wheels of the carriages spraying devious spouts of water from the torrential downpour, which was lashing on to the cobblestones.

  Margaret nursed the whisky glass against her body and looked out into the night.

  At least at the cemetery, she had the last act. She had laughed in the inspector’s face and left him to the wind and rain.

  He desired her. She knew that. He was a coward to his own heart.

  She would find another, a sailor perhaps.

  Damn that crow.

  15

  The breezes and the sunshine,

  And soft refreshing rain.

  JANE MONTGOMERY CAMPBELL,

  Hymn

  McLevy meanwhile was cursing himself and the precipitation as he trailed a certain quarry through the drenched and sodden streets of Leith.

  After a most unsatisfactory meeting with Robert Forbes where the adjuster had not only confirmed the certification for warehouse cargo to be genuine but informed McLevy that the claim was already forwarded to head office with his stamp of approval, the inspector’s efforts to hint at possible arson were met with a blank stare.

  Where was the proof?

  When McLevy promoted the identity of Daniel Rough and his incendiary inclinations, he was met with an even blanker stare. Setting fire to a building was one thing, setting fire to yourself was surely carrying the process to an extreme.

  And where was the proof?

  Forbes spoke mildly enough but the look in his eyes suggested that he thought the inspector’s mind might need some adjusting never mind the claim.

  McLevy had slunk down the stairs from the Providential Insurance office feeling like a fool, only to run into Mulholland’s beloved Emily coming up the selfsame steps to visit her father. Her eyes had widened as she twitched her skirts aside and shrank against the wall as he grunted a good evening to slouch his way past.

  The cheerless evening matched perfectly with his mood, dank and clammy, with the rain beating down monotonously like a minister’s sermon.

  But then as he walked along Great Junction Street with a dampness spreading through his right sock to remind him that the hole in the boot needed mending, whom should he see? Unaffected by weather, debonair under umbrella, a long cigar raised to fleshy lips, none other than the bold boy, Oliver Garvie.

  He sauntered along as if it were the height of summer, a pleasant smile on his face and the inspector, on an impulse, followed like some humble retainer who had to maintain a certain distance between himself and his liege lord.

  A stray dog ran out from one of the alleys and began barking viciously at McLevy.

  He did not care for dogs especially wee snippy ones that might cause a mark to turn and see the cause of such a racket but, no, Garvie turned i
nto Bonnington Road and went on his merry way.

  McLevy contented himself with a well-aimed stone to send the animal yelping into the darkness and followed on.

  The road led past the Rosebank cemetery where Jean Scott was buried and he berated himself for not having visited her grave for a while to bring some flowers to the only woman he had ever put his trust in, and for a moment he was a wee boy looking up at her as she unwrapped a parcel and said …

  ‘There ye are, James.’

  And there they were. A pair of tackety boots, black and shiny. The toecaps had a piece of metal underneath which gleamed in the light like a knife blade.

  Jean watched on proudly as he eased his feet into them, carefully tied the long laces then walked around her living room, boots tapping on the wooden floor.

  ‘Don’t you scrape my furniture now,’ she warned.

  He shook his head solemnly and then stood completely still in the middle of the room, his eyes fixed on a distant reckoning.

  Where the boy’s mind travelled on such occasions, Jean had no way of knowing but she loved him anyway.

  She loved him anyway.

  The memory had warmed McLevy strangely and he began to recover his spirits.

  When Garvie turned into McDonald Road and flipped the cigar into the gutter, his shadow darted forward, picked up the butt and sniffed. Good quality. How many slaves had died to produce a leaf so fragrant and so fine?

  McLevy was acquainted with McDonald Road but it was not one of his haunts. A respectable enough and therefore to his mind uninteresting thoroughfare, the tall buildings housing a deal of rented accommodation.

  Garvie approached the door of one of the buildings, skilfully avoided a heavy drip of water from the leaking roof-gutter above, produced a key, inserted same in lock, and vanished from view.

  The inspector moved into a doorway opposite to shelter from the elements, and pondered the situation.

  He knew for a fact that Garvie’s domicile was in the New Town, what was the dashing Oliver doing with a key that fitted a lock that opened a door in Leith?

  The inspector checked the front windows for any sign of illumination but none came. The house was dark and had a faintly neglected air as if it had been left out in the rain. A lodging home of sorts, he would wager, where articled clerks and bank apprentices removed their stiff collars with a sigh and dreamed of a polished wooden desk between them and the rest of the world.

  A desk with their name upon it.

  McLevy’s stomach rumbled and he realised that he had, as usual, forgotten to replenish that particular cavity since the drappit egg at the Old Ship.

  Which seemed years ago; in fact the whole day was like an eternity besieged by deluge and memory.

  The street was deserted; anyone with any sense would be dry and cosy indoors like Oliver Garvie.

  Yet, what was the bugger doing here?

  At the warehouse when he had faced squarely on to the immaculate Oliver, he noticed that despite the swagger and confidence presented, a telltale little tic had pulsed at the side of the man’s left eye. Of course it could have been tiredness, a mote of dust, but it also could have been a sign of something suppressed. Guilt, for instance.

  And as much as McLevy sifted and analysed the material of criminality, evidence uncovered, a suspect past, the hard facts of implemented death, the grind of the streets, the cold slab and the interrogation room, he also put great store in these fragments of impression and thin slices of intuition that brought him home by a different path.

  But where had all this brought him?

  The downpour stopped suddenly and, in the silence, amidst the drips that continued to fall from the slates and drain pipes, he heard carriage wheels approaching from the opposite end of the road.

  And there it was, drawn by two horses he recognised and driven by a giant figure he recognised also as Angus Dalrymple.

  A decent blacksmith once, but now his twin daughters hammered out sin on the anvil of the Just Land while he was both coachman and guardian to Jean Brash.

  Who stepped out of the coach, opened the door of the same house and slipped inside.

  The carriage drove off. McLevy, if he had been able to see his own countenance, would have roared with laughter.

  The mouth, half open, lower lip protruding like a fish, a look of puzzled disbelief slapped across his face.

  But few of us can see ourselves.

  He closed his mouth and, while his mind raced with questions, ignored the queasy feeling in his belly.

  Jean also had a key to the place, eh? An assignation, a partnership, or both?

  No hesitation, in like a whippet, so was this a long-standing practice?

  She had once led a life of crime, never been caught, claimed to have mended her ways, that desperate necessity had been the root of her knocking lumps out of the law, but he knew her to have a network of informers on the street and once a thief, the habit sticks.

  Had she returned to felonious activities?

  Had she ever left them?

  What in hell’s name were she and Garvie up to?

  And, most importantly, why was he standing here like some gowk in the street?

  He launched himself across the road and hurtled down a narrow side alley which he had noted earlier, the ground under his feet treacherous and slippy, the faint light from a street lamp revealing that the side wall which enclosed the garden or back green, was too high for him to scale.

  Part way down was a wooden door, rusty and firm-locked, but if he could just get his foot on the handle and lever himself up? He cursed Mulholland’s absence; the constable’s height was invaluable at moments like these but he would be lost in love’s dream or sookin’ up to the lieutenant – aghh!

  Somehow, McLevy managed to get a hand on the rough surface at the top of the wall and haul himself up so that he sat astride.

  Below him were what looked in the gloom like some sharp-thorned and inhospitable gorse bushes, no point in dropping to earth and anyway he had good vantage from here.

  And, what was on offer?

  Most of the curtains at the back of the house were drawn but there was one lighted window and standing framed as if for a photograph, was Oliver Garvie.

  The man was looking sideways at something.

  A woman moved into the frame. Jean Brash, bonnet and outdoor coat already removed, red hair flowing, fingers busy at the top of her gown. Garvie reached out a hand and moved the dress aside to display the top of one bare shoulder.

  As he caressed that, she threw back her head to expose the throat.

  McLevy’s groin was killing him, the wall was wide and he was sitting atop like Humpty Dumpty.

  The woman was desperate, no doubt about it, she grabbed at Garvie and hauled him in to nuzzle at the bottom of her neck.

  Things went from bad to worse.

  This was terrible. McLevy wanted to shout out, that’s quite sufficient! But the words stuck in his gullet and anyway he was an investigator, an observer, an eye-witness.

  Garvie stopped suddenly and moved to the window to mercifully blot out the sight of Jean Brash unbuttoned. The man looked through the glass and McLevy instinctively ducked down. When he glanced up again, the curtain was drawn and the play was over.

  Two shadows flickered for a moment by candlelight, two silhouettes which fell to earth and disappeared from view.

  That left McLevy on a damp wall, with only the night and an empty belly for company.

  16

  It was a lover and his lass,

  With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

  As You Like It

  Lieutenant Roach was not a happy man. Indeed he rarely approached that blissful state and possibly would not have been familiar with the feeling, unless it was a moment from his golfing memory where he had skimmed his gutta-percha ball on to the water hazard of a small dam and watched in astonishment as, instead of sinking, the ball had skipped over the water like a spring l
amb, touching the surface at least three times before coming to land on the green. At that second, Roach knew the strange trembling in his heart of momentary joy.

  But that was then, and this was now. A small side room of the Freemason’s Hall in George Street, where, the worshipful meeting of the lodge over and the sowing of seeds amongst his fellow members as regards the perfidious conduct of a certain chief constable in the President’s Cup carried out with scrupulous nicety, he had decided to place the suit of Constable Mulholland in front of Robert Forbes.

  They were both still dressed in Masonic regalia, the silver sashes adding a layer of formality to the occasion.

  Forbes sat at the end of a long table and Roach, not wishing to seem invasive of the man’s territory, found himself at the other extremity so that he was forced into speaking rather loudly, as if selling wares at the market.

  So far the insurance adjuster’s face resembled that of a man staring at a blocked water closet.

  Roach took a deep breath and tried not to bawl down the distance between them.

  ‘The constable does not lack culture.’

  ‘I’ve heard him sing.’

  Mulholland had a reasonable tenor voice. He and Emily had performed some duets together at a musical evening chez Roach. The lieutenant hated these soirées but his wife was in her element, weaving romance like a spider’s web.

  ‘His promotion prospects are … reasonable.’

  ‘Seems diligent enough.’

  ‘More than that.’

  ‘Nothing wrong wi’ steady.’

  ‘No. But, it makes him sound rather dull.’

  ‘Vanity is not welcome in my house.’

  Roach was beginning to feel obscurely annoyed with his petitioning role and the granite responses spearing up the table towards him.

  He found an unexpected dignity and firmness of tone; perhaps it was the Masonic carvings in the surrounding wood panelling which provided the support.

  ‘Mister Forbes I am not quite sure how I ended up as advocate for the constable’s case but here I am, and I require from you, like Solomon, a judgment.’