Fall From Grace im-2

by David Ashton

  The inspector was not optimistic about the finding part but who knows?

  In any case, McLevy had quite another venue in mind. He doubted he would catch the man there either but he might uncover a relevant fact or two.

  And play merry hell.

  The rest of the crew he dispatched with the body of Forbes to the carry waggon and thence the station.

  Now, the room was empty save for himself, Roach and the stag’s head.

  The lieutenant picked up a picture frame from a small table beside the desk and regarded the depiction of the wife of Robert Forbes.

  He had met the woman a few times at official functions and exchanged some polite words such as one does. She had seemed a decent sober soul, quite properly dedicated to her husband and taking great pride in his achievements.

  What would she think now?

  It often perturbed Roach, the idea in some quarters that those in heaven were still able to witness the exploits of those left behind on earth.

  If so, it must put quite a damper on the paradisiacal bliss.

  And where would Robert Forbes end up?

  The word suicide did not even occur in the bible but it was a safe bet that God the Creator who giveth and taketh away, would frown upon his function being pre-empted.

  Though if he knew and performed all things, did that not make Him a part of this unfortunate event?

  The pulley rope, the stag’s head and the bare feet?

  All gifts from God.

  McLevy had been standing by in silence while Roach was struggling with these unfamiliar notions; the inspector was deliberating on his own behalf and, not for the first time, was caught between the fierce impetus of investigation and the disquiet of what it might uncover.

  So be it, however. No mercy.

  Roach voiced a thought that had never been far away from his mind since the news had been broken at the station.

  ‘For the moment,’ he said quietly, ‘there is no need to make this public.’

  ‘Not until Oliver Garvie is caught,’ came the obdurate response. ‘But I will lay my hands upon him.’

  McLevy could see which way the wind was blowing but it wasn’t going to whisk anything under the carpet.

  Roach changed the subject.

  ‘This girl, Rachel Bryden, would she be one of the magpies of the Just Land?’

  ‘I believe it may be so,’ said McLevy.

  ‘Then your friend Jean Brash comes into the picture?’

  ‘I believe she may.’

  Roach had long considered that his inspector’s relationship with the bawdy-hoose keeper would one day see McLevy compromised beyond his control.

  However he contented himself with a sly dig.

  ‘A woman of influence, eh?’

  For a moment the inspector’s mind flashed back to a lighted window beneath which he sat like Humpty Dumpty while passion raged above.

  ‘Uhuh,’ replied McLevy with a hard glint in his eye, ‘but as regards that influence, it is a question of how far and how deep it goes.’

  Roach nodded, and for a moment the two men stood in the silence of the room, which was finally broken by another muffled howl of grief from the lower reaches.

  ‘I take it,’ said McLevy, who had noticed the shaken state of Mulholland’s earlier return, ‘that love has not conquered all?’

  ‘I am afraid not,’ was the sober reply. ‘In fact I fear that it may have gone up the chimney.’

  They both looked in the air towards the stag but it was just another victim.

  32

  Mine is the most plotting heart in the world.

  SAMUEL RICHARDSON,

  Clarissa

  If Hannah Semple had been conscious, she would have derived a deal of bleak amusement over the undignified squabble in progress next door.

  But the old woman lay in Jean Brash’s boudoir in the midst of the peach-coloured chiffon and gauze reflecting back and forth from the mirrors, like a character in a fairy tale waiting for the kiss of a prince to jolt her into life.

  She was flat on her back, not an unknown position, her hands clasped together over the sheets.

  Hannah had not stirred since the giant Angus had lain her gently down on the bed the previous night.

  The doctor had come and gone, diagnosed concussion from a blow to the back of the head, cleaned then dressed the wound and prescribed a strong opium-based medication. Then the man of medicine had left, advising rest, prayer and patience.

  And so Hannah rested, her breath shallow but regular; unlike the rammy going on in the next room.

  Jean Brash and James McLevy; hammer and tongs.

  He had arrived with blood in his eyes, been taken aback to witness the recumbent Hannah, expressed brief but sincere enough sympathy and then asked bluntly what had transpired.

  It was to his mind suspicious happenstance that Hannah had been struck to the ground the night before Robert Forbes was about to launch himself off into the air.

  One up, one down.

  Jean, riven with guilt about her part in Hannah’s bad fortune, answered truthfully enough that she did not know.

  He then queried the whereabouts of Rachel Bryden.

  Jean flinched; could he already have cognition of her humiliating loss of face and property?

  She waited for him to drop a further remark to indicate such but he did not; merely stared at her through slate-grey unfriendly eyes.

  Again she answered truthfully, she could not help. The girl had disappeared.

  What Jean did not add, however, was that her people were searching the nooks and crannies of Edinburgh to track down Rachel Bryden and, once found, there would be hard questions as regards certain missing valuables.

  McLevy sensed that she was hiding something and it fuelled his own dark doubts.

  He went for the kill, stuck his face into Jean’s, related the facts of the insurance swindle, the death of Robert Forbes, blackmail originating from the Just Land, and after naming Rachel’s part in it all, hammered her with the name of Oliver Garvie.

  For Jean the last was like a kick in the stomach.

  Made worse when McLevy more or less accused her of being part, if not author, of this conspiracy.

  Thus the rammy began.

  ‘What do I know of Oliver Garvie?’ she lashed out.

  ‘Ye were his fancy woman,’ was the brusque response.

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How so?’

  McLevy had no wish to bring Humpty Dumpty astride a damp wall into the equation.

  ‘Garvie was put under observation after the warehouse fire; a woman of your description was seen entering his lodgings out of a carriage also identified.’

  ‘From the horses no doubt?’

  ‘From the coachman, Angus Dalrymple.’

  ‘A social visit,’ was the response.

  ‘That’s a bare-faced lie.’ McLevy was hot and bothered; this was getting near the knuckle.

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Ye were seen from the back window in flagrante!’ he bawled, a flush creeping up the back of his neck.

  ‘Flagrante?’

  ‘On the verge of it!’

  ‘Who did all this seeing?’ she bawled back, equally embarrassed.

  Humpty Dumpty was unavoidably revealed.

  ‘I did,’ said Inspector James McLevy.

  Jean’s mouth fell open and, for a moment she resembled a virgin nymph disturbed at her morning ablutions.

  ‘Ye – ye – dirty old beggar,’ she finally gasped.

  ‘I performed my duty,’ was the stern rejoinder.

  McLevy was certain that he had nothing more than observation and incipient piles on his mind the night in question, pure as a newborn lamb.

  However, they were both deeply discomfited as if coming upon each other naked in a biblical situation.

  Adam and Eve.

  The side room, into which Jean had ushered McLevy, to spare the comatose Hannah from his intrusive prese
nce, had a small dressing table with a three-sided mirror, below which on a smooth white marble surface lay a dainty confection of colognes, sprays and various unguents.

  There was another door which no doubt led to a room where other feminine mysteries were lurking but upon being tugged into this adjoining one, McLevy, after a swift glance round, thanked his lucky stars there was not a commode in sight.

  You never can tell.

  The inspector was squeamish about matters feminine latrinal; the only regular woman in his life, Bathsheba the cat, did her business on the slates, which suited him fine.

  But now he had other things on his mind.

  ‘Never mind all that,’ he accused. ‘Were you in cahoots with Oliver Garvie, partners in all things?’

  ‘Go to hell, I was not!’

  ‘But you would confirm that Robert Forbes was a client of the Just Land?’

  ‘He had his requirements.’

  ‘And his chosen magpie was Rachel Bryden?’

  Jean sniffed and made no answer. McLevy probed further.

  ‘Whit about this Rachel Bryden? She worked here, you must have known the goings on, eh?’

  ‘That bloody girl, I’ll wring her neck.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘She stole from me!’

  Jean had been hugging this bitter grievance to her bosom since she made discovery, not able to confide in anyone save Hannah who was unable to respond and Mistress Brash could not now restrain her anger any longer. Bad enough to lose her property without being roped into a blackmailing ring.

  ‘All my jewels, the skinnymalinkie whoor!’

  This childlike but heartfelt insult caused McLevy to jerk his head back a little.

  ‘How does that occur?’

  Jean caught sight of herself in the dressing table mirror. She had waited up all night by Hannah’s bedside, and at least managed to change her clothes and underthings, but the plain grey gown she had thrown on made her appear to be a mortuary attendant.

  She had also scrubbed her face, put nothing back on and my God, to her unblinking eyes, she looked her years and many more this November morning.

  ‘It must have been her,’ she muttered. ‘Rachel. Before she left. All my jewels, my beautiful pearls. Robbed.’

  One thing a woman will rarely lie about is the state of her missing jewellery.

  McLevy came to the conclusion that Jean might well be innocent of the conspiracy, though it was still possible that she had taken a part and then been double dealt when the plan fell to pieces.

  So he fished further in deep waters.

  ‘All this took place under your nose, eh?’

  ‘Right under the very nostril,’ was her grim reply.

  ‘How was that possible?’

  Was there cruel pleasure in this pursuit? Jealousy getting its own back for a scene in a lighted window?

  ‘That’s not like you Jean, the mistress of the Just Land twisted and turned like a fool.’

  ‘I was in love.’

  This flat statement silenced the inspector for a moment and Jean, who had spoken to herself as much as to him, chewed a bitter cud, her thoughts lining up to torture their creator.

  All this under her nose right enough, betrayed by her own paramour, the two of them laughing at her, ardent lovers themselves no doubt, sporting in the bed, laughing at her.

  The older woman.

  Twisted and turned. Humiliated.

  She became aware of other laughter, the source of which was James McLevy.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he spluttered. ‘Oh dearie me. Oh dearie, dearie me.’

  Now truth to tell, though there may have been an element of malicious enjoyment in this reaction, it was also the product of contradictory emotions. Something had been stirred by these four simple words.

  I was in love.

  All his life McLevy had defended himself against madness and was not the passion of love a version of that?

  Or madness an offshoot of love?

  Whatever. In common with most men when faced with feelings that conflict like two boxers in the ring, he took refuge in laughter.

  The splutter became a guffaw.

  ‘But you’re a bawdy-hoose keeper, love is what you buy and sell. That’s your stock in trade!’

  ‘Lust is my stock in trade,’ she answered, angered and rubbed raw by his apparent hilarity.

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Nothing you could recognise,’ she replied scathingly. ‘The only love you possess is for yourself and justice.’

  McLevy’s eyes glistened with merriment; it was an aggravating sight.

  ‘Aye, you might well be correct there. Oh, dearie me.’

  Of course incidental to all this was the fact that the inspector had now accepted that Jean was not part of the blackmailing plot.

  But she did not feel in the least grateful at this deliverance and came at him savagely, claws unsheathed.

  ‘What woman would want you anyway? She’d have to be desperate and half blind.’

  ‘Only half?’

  This caustic observation came from neither but the voice was unmistakable.

  Hannah Semple stood in the doorway, hands clasped around the knob to steady her. She was arrayed in one of Jean’s nightgowns; big Annie Drummond and the mistress having eased her out of the previous night’s damp and dirty clothes into something less soiled.

  Hannah also caught sight of herself in the mirror; the nightgown was perhaps more suited for Sleeping Beauty rather than her stocky frame.

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘Mutton dressed as lamb.’

  ‘Hannah,’ said Jean, all anger forgotten as relief flooded through her very being. ‘You’ve come to life.’

  ‘You two would waken the dead,’ replied the old woman with spirit, but then her hand slipped from the doorknob and she fell towards them to be caught up in both their arms.

  It was a considerable weight borne mostly by the inspector who was scrabbling for purchase on the smooth slippery material of the nightgown.

  ‘Keep your hands tae yourself, McLevy,’ she informed him hoarsely. ‘I’m a clean-living girl.’

  Jean laughed and she hugged the old woman fiercely to her in spite of Hannah’s squawks of protest.

  McLevy somehow got caught up in all this and wondered how he always ended up in these straits.

  Like three drunks on a Saturday night, they staggered back into the other room and laid the old woman to rest once more upon the bed.

  Other than the one jaundiced glance towards McLevy, Hannah’s attention had been completely fixed upon Jean who was busy pulling up the sheets to cover the old woman.

  ‘I let ye down, mistress,’ she murmured.

  Jean shook her head.

  ‘More like the other way round,’ she replied softly.

  ‘It was the fault of both,’ McLevy butted in, anxious to get on with establishing facts. ‘What happened, Hannah?’

  Pausing for breath every so often Hannah Semple told the story, as far she knew it, lips twisting wryly towards the conclusion.

  ‘I should have cut her throat the first time she was hanging out the washing. That was my mistake.’

  ‘We’ll make it up to you,’ remarked Jean sweetly.

  ‘The sleekit bitch. I had her in front of me, but I didnae look behind.’

  McLevy and Jean exchanged glances: there could be no doubt as to the hidden assailant’s identity.

  ‘Not very gentlemanly,’ said the inspector.

  ‘If I get to him before you,’ Jean responded with a cold light in her green eyes, ‘Oliver Garvie will be a shadow of his former self.’

  ‘He will come to the arms of justice,’ said McLevy.

  The previous animosity between them began to bubble to the surface and Hannah’s eyes glazed over.

  ‘Whit’s the matter wi’ you two now?’ she mumbled. ‘Worse than a pair of weans.’

  Jean quietened the old woman down, tucked her in and promised to tell her the whole story in al
l its sordid detail at a later opportunity. As she and McLevy made for the door, and he about to open it for her in a parody of politesse, Hannah called from the bed.

  ‘I’ve been having some gey queer dreams, mistress.’

  ‘That would be the opium,’ Jean replied.

  ‘Opium?’ came the muffled retort. ‘I’ve aye fancied that stuff. Whit a way tae get there though.’

  As the door closed, Hannah was cackling softly under the covers.

  ‘Opium … Well, well. Fancy that now.’

  And drifted off into a dream where the Just Land was invaded by white unicorns crashing their hooves upon the stairs and sticking their heads out from every window.

  Beyond the door McLevy and Jean witnessed big Annie Drummond bidding an affectionate goodbye below to her wee shepherd, the man’s fiddle tucked neatly under his arm, blue eyes agleam with post-coital delight.

  Annie was accustomed to her vast form as a barrier to acts of passion but the wee fellow had leapt all over it like a mountain goat.

  For a good part of the night. A giddy goat.

  The Jew’s harp man had long since departed, his owner calling him to heel like a farm dog but the shepherd’s master was a kind soul and had left his man with these wise words.

  ‘Enjoy yerself Douglas. It’s a lang winter wi’ naethin but the sheep for solace.’

  It had been, unlike the fate of many others that night, the best time of the shepherd’s life.

  He closed the door after one tender kiss from Annie, her plump hands framing his face, and as he marched away up the gravel path towards the iron gates, he unslung his fiddle and played a jaunty air; the notes winging their way up into the sky above to give the larks some competition.

  Annie Drummond crossed back and disappeared into the main salon where a pile of cream cakes was waiting.

  Love’s appetite.

  James McLevy sang words to the faint tune from the vanishing shepherd.

  ‘And wasna he a roguie, a roguie, a roguie.

  And wasna he a roguie, the piper o’ Dundee.’

  Jean Brash looked at him and said nothing.

  ‘It’s a Jacobite air,’ he remarked.

  ‘I know what it is,’ she replied, her eyes steady on his face.

  He jerked his head in the direction of the departed fiddler.