Fall From Grace im-2

by David Ashton

  The sky was clear, the stars were out and a crescent moon smiled aslant in the cold, salty night.

  The stray beam of a nearby street lamp caught the high cheekbones and, even at this distance, he could discern the gypsy eyes weighing him up like a slaughterhoose attendant would an Aberdeen Angus.

  ‘Whit are you doing here?’ he blurted out.

  Margaret Bouch laughed, a silvery sound like manacles clinking in a holding cell.

  ‘I’m looking at the ships, inspector. Surely that is not against the law?’

  He muttered something under his breath then trudged over to glower down at her.

  ‘This is no place for a respectable woman.’

  ‘Perhaps I am not respectable.’

  Her small, gloved hands lay quietly in her lap, the dark outdoor coat was wrapped round her like a soft fur and for some reason he was put in mind of Bathsheba, the cat.

  McLevy cast a quick wary glance to left and right, but this part of the harbour area was uninhabited, possibly because the taverns were situated further along the old quayside at the Shore and the graving docks behind them had no ships laid up at present.

  He sat on another bollard close by hers, leant forward, clasped his hands together and puffed out a breath that took the form of smoke in the cold night.

  ‘Where’s your bonnet?’ he asked suddenly.

  She reached down beside her, picked up the hat she had discarded to feel the air on her skin, shook it at him as if it were a tambourine, and then replaced it on the ground.

  That took care of that, then.

  ‘I’ve just left your house,’ he said.

  ‘It is not mine,’ she replied dryly. ‘And you are welcome to it.’

  They both looked over towards the Old Docks where the small lights on the various masts glowed like Jack o’ lanterns, flitting in and out of sight as the ships rocked gently in the waves.

  A few creaks and plashes occasionally disturbed the silence but, for the most part, it was as if the whole scene were an artist’s rendition.

  Two figures in a world that held its breath.

  ‘I may have my hands on the killer of your butler,’ remarked McLevy in the stillness.

  ‘I am pleased to hear that.’

  ‘The candlestick stolen from your husband might well be the weapon of destruction.’ McLevy smacked his lips together as if tasting the crime. ‘Though that is still a matter of debate. It might have just been a push, a thin skull and a sharp edge. Fragments of blood and bone on the stairs but the candlestick was wiped clean. Pity that.’

  She made no answer and he warmed further to the theme.

  ‘But even if the implement were covered in blood, we cannot yet compare or identify the type. Science has not advanced thus far. But it will. One day. I have no doubt.’

  ‘Must we talk of murder?’ she remarked quietly.

  Without that subject the inspector seemed a trifle lost for words. He shuffled his feet together like a little boy and whistled tunelessly under his breath.

  Margaret shot him a look and he stopped whistling.

  ‘I thought you were in Moffat?’ he muttered, somewhat aggrieved.

  It would seem as if the nuances of the night were somewhat beyond McLevy’s ken. Will o’ the wisps, crescent moons, mysterious women on iron bollards, all wasted on a man whose only concerns seemed to be geography and homicide.

  ‘I have had to remain here in order to recruit some domestic staff for Sir Thomas,’ Margaret replied evenly. ‘And I have been helping Mister Gourlay’s family with the funeral arrangements.’

  ‘See now? We’re back to murder!’ he responded with a gleam in his eye.

  She shook her head though there was an unwilling smile, tugging at the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Are you expert in funerals then?’ he asked.

  ‘My parents died in quick succession,’ she replied crisply. ‘One acquires a facility.’

  ‘I’ll do my own, thank you,’ was his riposte.

  But all this time the inspector had been glancing over at her from below his brows, while she favoured him with her profile, staring straight ahead.

  Somewhere in the sky above, a seagull emitted a series of melancholic, high-pitched calls. They echoed then faded in the stillness, leaving only the muffled sound of the ships creaking and swaying with the swell of the sea.

  Margaret’s gypsy eyes were fixed far beyond the horizon and McLevy shifted uneasily as if he sensed her drifting away with the waves.

  ‘How’ve you found yourself here?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Do you mean in this world, or the Leith docks?’

  ‘The docks.’

  ‘I was on my way back from the Gourlay family, I did not wish to return directly to Bernard Street. I often come to this place.’

  ‘It is dangerous,’ he warned.

  ‘I have never found it so.’

  ‘You might be mistaken for a lady of the night.’

  ‘I like the night-time,’ was the cryptic response.

  She sat there like a graven image but McLevy thought he could sense a compulsive yearning to be free, to break all bonds. It might be he felt this because he possessed the same. Buried deep. Just beside the madness.

  ‘When I was a little girl,’ she murmured, ‘I dreamt of being a pirate.’

  ‘A pirate?’

  ‘Yes. A sword between my teeth.’

  ‘I had you down for a sheep stealer.’

  ‘Nothing on land.’

  The inspector pondered this for he loved the earth.

  ‘I don’t like the sea,’ he muttered.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s too deep.’

  Margaret laughed once more and wondered why she felt so comfortable in his presence. The thought came to her that perhaps they might have known each other in a previous existence. Ancient Egypt seemed to be a popular venue and she tried to imagine herself decked out in the robes of a temple princess. But what of McLevy?

  ‘Were there policemen in Antiquity?’ she asked.

  ‘I expect so. Man was born criminal.’

  ‘Criminal?’

  ‘I am as great a wrongdoer as any such I catch.’

  This change of subject intrigued her.

  ‘It is your contention, then, that we are born to guilt?’

  ‘That is my contention.’

  ‘I might take issue with you there.’

  McLevy waited for her to elaborate on that issue, but she smiled then lifted her face up towards the moon. As she did so, the hand nearest to him swung free and hung down by her side. It occurred to the inspector that if he touched across it would be his to grasp; but it also occurred that she was married and respectable was she not? Out of reach.

  ‘Do you have offspring?’

  This somewhat brutal inquiry jolted Margaret from the alternate reality of moonlit piracy, Egypt and original sin, causing her to blink a moment before response.

  ‘Three. Two girls. One boy.’

  ‘Three? You don’t look it.’

  ‘It was long ago,’ she retorted dryly. ‘They are grown now, out of my hands.’

  ‘Do you love them?’

  ‘They respect me,’ was the elliptical response.

  ‘What about their father?’

  The inspector may well have meant, ‘Do you love him?’ but Margaret chose to answer the other possibility.

  ‘They respect him also,’ she replied.

  However the mood was broken now; the crescent moon reflected itself on the water in vain, sewage broke the surface and rats lurked in the shadows, tails entwined.

  ‘Tell me about your killer,’ she asked, pulling the hand back into her lap and turning to face him.

  So the inspector did and she paid heed.

  Of course Margaret Bouch knew nothing of Hercules Dunbar, he would have been an anonymous face in the crowd of workmen when she sat on the train making the first official crossing in September 1877.

  The Tay Bridge.

 
Completed near to time, dead riveters notwithstanding.

  Her husband of course had been at the front with the other dignitaries while she had sat with the ladies. While some of the delicate creatures paled at the enclosed roar and the sinister shadows of the iron lattice whipping past the carriage windows, Margaret had looked down at the russet colours of autumn which bedecked the fields on each side of the expanse of water, and wondered what it would be like to launch oneself into the air to land like a graceful leaf amongst the yachts, wherries and fishing boats which filled the river below.

  The band played, but no one had danced in her carriage as they arrived at the other side; the crowds beneath watching as the train moved along the bridge like a giant shiny insect.

  The sun shone. It was a beautiful day. Surely God was on the board of the North British Railway.

  Thomas Bouch was the hero of the hour. He had travelled on the footplate of the engine, holding tightly to his hat and smiling awkwardly at the cheering throng.

  When asked to say a few words, he had said very few.

  And after lunch, they all went home.

  To Bernard Street.

  As McLevy described the possible circumstance of theft and murder, Margaret listened impassively. He made no mention of Beaumont Egg, what would a dainty woman know of such a thing, but when he portrayed his meeting with Alan Telfer, a somewhat coloured version it must be said, where his doughty investigative worth encountered evasive condescension, the bollard woman looked as if she would like to spit on the ground.

  ‘I would not believe a word the man says,’ she exclaimed, looking away. ‘He is despicable!’

  ‘How so?’ probed the inspector.

  For a moment it appeared as if Margaret would let loose a torrent from the fury of frustration she felt within, but then she bit down hard on her lip.

  ‘He is unhealthy,’ was all she added.

  That would seem to be that, then.

  ‘Does he have the pox?’ McLevy asked in apparent hope.

  She laughed at the remark and, as he had anticipated, the shift in emotion spilled out into more words.

  ‘His … influence is unhealthy. He separates Sir Thomas from the real world.’

  ‘Perhaps your husband desires that?’

  Her lips thinned.

  ‘It is unhealthy,’ she pronounced flatly.

  McLevy had a knack with women. Despite his seeming adherence to all things masculine in the patriarchal society of their glorious queen, he had an instinct for the broken glass of fractured pain that took up more than its fair share of the feminine psyche.

  Every morning a woman rises, and then bathes in the Lake of Disappointment.

  That was his insight.

  However, he wasn’t above abusing that intuition.

  So he slid the question in gently, but with a hunter’s gleam in the eye.

  ‘What form does this … infection take?’

  However Margaret Bouch had pirate blood and she could recognise the advent of a grappling iron.

  She turned once more to face him.

  ‘It’s time I went home,’ she said.

  McLevy stood abruptly as she rose and donned her hat.

  ‘I shall escort you.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘It is my duty.’

  She nodded somewhat curtly. They began walking down the Shore, a discernible distance between their bodies and a feeling of obscure irritation on both sides.

  ‘Ye don’t seem all that interested,’ grunted the inspector.

  ‘In what, may I ask?’

  ‘In your poor auld butler and who stove in his head.’

  There was enough truth in this dour assertion to bring a flush to Margaret’s face and she was glad that the dark hid the reaction. Indeed as soon as she had seen McLevy her thoughts had been not of death but life. Though why should she be ashamed of that?

  ‘I have helped his family.’

  ‘With the funeral. Ye told me.’

  ‘It is not my function to solve criminality, it is yours.’

  ‘That’s what Alan Telfer informed me.’

  Being twinned with the secretary irritated her even further and Margaret almost hissed through her teeth in annoyance.

  In stiff silence they walked onwards, there was no crooked elbow, no dainty gloved hand slipping into the provided space to tighten on a muscle at a pretended loss of footing.

  Any intimacy was long gone and they would have strode thus in a frozen mutual disdain all the way home, had it not been for an unexpected event.

  A giant of a man stepped out from the shadows and confronted them.

  Patrick Scullion: a bad sailor, just thrown off his ship for insubordination and general malingering. He had been drowning his sorrows in a low dive of a tavern and was in a most foul temper at what he regarded as the dirty tricks of a dirty life.

  This was a soft mark, he thought. A respectable couple out of place in such an isolated, run-down area of the harbourage, the woman tiny, and the man no great menace of a figure with a low-brimmed bowler, bulky and slow moving.

  Easy meat for a giant.

  He let out a roar and the whisky fumes from his rancid mouth caused Margaret to flinch back, which he mistook for fear whereas it was merely the result of a keen sense of smell.

  Patrick reached out and with one huge hand took the man by the lapels of his coat.

  ‘I’ll have yer money, my darlin’ gentry,’ he growled. ‘Or that pretty little wife will see your face crushed and broken and the blood like a fountain.’

  This threat provoked a strange response.

  ‘She is not my wife,’ said the bulky man.

  At that moment the crescent moon, perhaps not wishing to be called as witness in court, hid behind a cloud.

  As the light changed and the giant’s eyes took a moment to readjust, two things happened.

  Margaret put up a hand as if to steady her bonnet and McLevy exploded into savage action.

  Hit them first and hit them hard.

  The inspector’s boot thudded in between Patrick’s legs like a Bolt of Retribution and almost in the same movement, as the man keeled over in the most profound agony, McLevy turned away as if to shield himself from a retaliatory blow and swept back his elbow into the man’s face.

  Patrick was then brought up to the straight and narrow by the same elbow once more smashing upwards, jerking his head back so that he looked for a moment into the slate-grey expressionless eyes before another hammer blow, this time with the fist into a belly full of cheap whisky, brought him retching on to his hands and knees.

  McLevy whipped out a set of handcuffs, quickly and efficiently manacled the giant’s hands behind his back, and then stood away to scrutinise his handiwork.

  When he looked over at Margaret, her mouth was slightly parted, and for a moment the tip of a tongue passed lightly over her lips.

  ‘You are a man of violence,’ she observed.

  ‘It’s never far away,’ was the reply.

  She smiled and cast her eyes over the groaning ogre, apparently unperturbed at what she had witnessed.

  ‘I am reminded of a saying from Ephesians, “We are all children of Wrath.”’

  ‘Uhuh,’ said McLevy. ‘We get it from God.’

  Margaret laughed then turned to walk away at pace, leaving him caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

  ‘I cannot haul this behemoth and keep up with you,’ he protested.

  She swivelled and for a moment rested her heel on the ground so that one toe pointed up into the air.

  ‘I am perfectly capable of my own safe conduct.’

  Margaret put her hand up to the bonnet once more and drew out a lethal-looking hatpin, at least five inches long.

  ‘This would have gone into his eye,’ she declared.

  ‘What about the other eye?’

  She made a fencing motion with the hatpin to indicate a skewering of the second orb, replaced the implement with a flourish in her bon
net, and then marched off towards home and hearth.

  As she did so, the moon appeared through the clouds directly in front of her vision. She lifted her head to the sky and emitted a soft howl.

  Like a wolf. And then she was gone.

  McLevy also lifted his head, but he did not howl for fear of enchantment.

  He was even less enchanted when he lugged the giant sailor into the station a half-hour later, only to find that there had been a breakout from the cells.

  This was not good.

  Lieutenant Roach had been summoned from a Handel concert, which was no great loss to him since the number of notes made his head dizzy, and lurked remonstratively at the station desk along with a strangely, but a little late in the day, alert Sergeant Murdoch.

  Mulholland, having worshipped in song God and the buxom blue-eyed daughter of the manse, had been intercepted on his way home and already taken out a body of men to scour the streets.

  The circumstances, with which the good lieutenant was eager to acquaint his inspector, were as follows.

  Constable Ballantyne, the station being quiet, had visited the cells to give Hercules Dunbar his supper, a tin can of kale broth to be passed through the bars.

  He found the man convulsed upon the floor, slavering, apparently in the grip of some noxious seizure.

  A kind heart can get ripped to pieces in this harsh world.

  Ballantyne quickly unlocked the cell door and leant over the poor suffering soul. The man was face down on the floor but as the constable turned him over as gently as possible, the fellow made a miraculous recovery and hauled the young man over so violently that his shoulder snapped, then crashed four or five blows into him.

  While Ballantyne lay semi-conscious, a piece of torn blanket was stuffed in his mouth and another savage blow rendered him sufficiently comatose to take no further part in proceedings.

  Which were that Hercules Dunbar, taking advantage of the fact that the night shift had just changed over so the station was empty except for Sergeant Murdoch dozing over the evening newspaper, slipped away and vanished into the darkness of night.

  Mulholland, who had assumed the mantle of the man of the moment as Roach took great pleasure in telling the aggrieved inspector, was directing pursuit through the nooks and crannies of Leith and would no doubt return triumphant.