Edinburgh Twilight

by Carole Lawrence

  “I have never allowed it to interfere with my work.”

  “Surely you can see how a man in your situation could be . . . sensitive, shall we say, inclined to look for foul play everywhere.”

  Hamilton’s hands tightened into fists at his side. “My suspicions about Stephen Wycherly have nothing to do with the fire that killed my parents.”

  “‘Suspicion is a heavy armor—’”

  “‘And with its weight it impedes more than it protects.’ I don’t believe Robert Burns was talking about police work when he wrote those lines, sir.”

  Crawford’s jaw went slack with amazement at Hamilton’s audacity. It was well-known around the station house that the chief inspector was fond of quoting Burns, and no one had dared interrupt one of his recitations. It was even more irritating that Hamilton actually knew the blasted quote.

  DCI Crawford rose from his chair, the movement rather like a whale breeching the surface of the waves.

  “Sergeant Dickerson!” he bellowed.

  A short, flame-haired young officer with chin whiskers and a burgeoning potbelly appeared at the door. He was like a fledgling version of Crawford himself, but with more hair.

  “You called, sir?”

  “Will you be kind enough to escort DI Hamilton to the morgue?”

  Dickerson shuffled his feet and coughed. “What about th’ matter of Mrs. McGinty’s pig, sir?” His accent was decidedly North Yorkshire, the vowels twisted and wrung out before finally being released from servitude in his mouth.

  “I suppose her pig can look after itself for a while, Sergeant.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  Though the City of Glasgow Police had the distinction of being the first of its kind in Britain, the Edinburgh City Police had already produced several distinguished members, notably famed detective and author James McLevy. However, the constabulary duties included such things as “Regulation of the Keeping of Pigs, Asses, Dogs, and Other Inferior Animals.” Mrs. McGinty’s pig was a habitual offender, and the job of keeping the good lady and her porcine cohort in line had fallen to Sergeant Dickerson.

  “Never mind the blasted pig,” Crawford said. “DI Hamilton here wants to look at a body. I want you to go with him.”

  Hamilton looked at DCI Crawford. “Sir?”

  “See here, Hamilton, I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste the coroner’s time. However, I will allow you to view the body in the company of Sergeant Dickerson here, if you promise to be quick about it.”

  “But—”

  DCI Crawford narrowed his eyes, a scowl tugging the corners of his mouth. “Be grateful I’m in a generous mood,” he said, doing his best to sound fierce.

  Hamilton blinked and saluted. “Thank you, sir.”

  Crawford glared at him before casting his small blue eyes upon Sergeant Dickerson. “Mind you keep an eye on him in the morgue, Sergeant.”

  Dickerson looked puzzled. “Sir?”

  Crawford sighed. “He’s liable to go wonky. Doesn’t like enclosed spaces.” Hamilton stiffened at this, but they both knew he was in no position to deny it. “Tag along and keep him steady, eh?”

  Dickerson’s pudgy body snapped to attention. “Right you are, sir.”

  “Be gone, both of you, lest I change my mind.”

  They obeyed, and DCI Crawford turned his attention back to the stack of paperwork on his desk, sweat pricking his forehead. If only his subordinates knew how much of his famous irritability was an act, calculated to intimidate. The effort to project a cantankerous persona often had the effect of making him truly cranky. He gazed glumly at his cold tea, the cream condensing on top in a thin, unappealing swirl of white. He stretched his six-foot-four frame and lumbered over to the center window, its iron crosshatched panes splattered with rain.

  Outside, an anemic drizzle speckled the cobblestones. People hurried along High Street, hunched against a cold, damp wind that managed to thread its way through the thickest cloak. Even the horses looked miserable, their hooves sending sprays of water in all directions as they landed in puddles. A lone ragpicker huddled over his heap of clothing, face hidden beneath the broad brim of his oilcloth hat.

  February was a foul month, and Crawford was in a foul mood. He pulled the gold-plated watch from his breast pocket and flipped open the cover. The watch had belonged to his grandfather, his namesake and one of the founders of the Edinburgh City Police. Much as he tried, Robert Lyle Crawford never felt up to following in his august ancestor’s footsteps. He tucked the watch back into his pocket as he returned to his desk. He wanted nothing more than to be at Moira’s side, to stroke her hair, and hug her to him. It was a gloomy day, and the sooner it was over, he thought, the better.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Edinburgh city morgue was dark and dank; it smelled of mildew and lost promise. Ian heard the scuttling of rats and the slow drip of water from an unseen source—a steady, hollow sound, like the slow knelling of a church bell. The more he tried to ignore it, the more the sound wormed its way into his brain. Drip, drop, drip, drop.

  Sergeant Dickerson crept along behind him, noiseless as a cat—he didn’t appear to like the place any more than Ian did. Leading the way through the stone corridor, lantern held high in front of him, was the attendant on duty, a short, bushy-haired Welshman by the name of Jack Cerridwen. Ian had crossed paths with him before, and though Cerridwen was an ill-tempered little man, a fifth of single malt did much to soften the rough edges of his personality. Ian had plied him with a bottle of Cardhu, which cost half a week’s wages. He hoped it would be worth the investment.

  Ian felt as if the walls were closing in as he followed the Welshman down the dank corridor. He forced himself to take deep breaths to stave off the dread simmering in his stomach. He did not care for anything that reminded him of the basement he had been trapped in all those years ago. The passage of time had done little to dim the terror of confinement. Cold sweat prickled on his forehead, his hands and feet tingled, and his heart thumped like a kettledrum in his chest. The slow drip of water continued relentlessly. Drip, drop, drip, drop. Taking a deep breath of musty air, he willed himself to put one foot in front of the other.

  Cerridwen opened an imposing iron door that appeared to have been hewn in the Dark Ages. It clanged shut behind them with a hollow shudder reverberating through the cavernous building. He led them through to a large room with a tiled floor and stark brick walls, thick with decades of paint. Ian couldn’t help thinking about what those layers of paint had covered up, what misery these walls had seen. Gaslight flickered from sconces hanging from the muddy-colored brick walls; a single bank of long, narrow windows let in what little light managed to struggle through the wet winter haze. Ian relaxed a little, more at ease in the spacious room with its high ceiling and tall windows.

  A row of stone platforms on steel supports bolted to the floor lined the room’s far wall. Each was just long and wide enough to support the body of a man. On the third platform lay a body covered by a dingy, stained sheet.

  Cerridwen whipped off the sheet covering the body with a flourish, as if he were a magician unveiling a trick. “Here ye go. Poor bugger’s just waitin’ for someone to come claim him.”

  Ian stared at him. “No family, no fiancée—nobody?”

  Cerridwen shook his head, the smell of stale alcohol wafting from his grizzled whiskers. “Nope. Could be someone came around on the night shift, but I don’t think so.”

  Ian gazed down at the young man on the slab. He was still fully clothed, and his head lay at an odd angle—it was evident his neck and possibly several vertebrae had been broken in the fall. But in spite of considerable bruising, contusions, and other injuries, in life he appeared to have been fit and well-groomed, even rather handsome. Thick blond hair framed an oval face with regular, clean features. His clothes, though also damaged, were moderately expensive and of good quality. Ian thought it highly unlikely such a person would have no friends or family to mourn his passing.

&n
bsp; “I see you have not yet removed his clothing. What was in his pockets?”

  Cerridwen shifted his feet and cleared his throat. “Naught much—a soiled handkerchief, a set of keys, and—oh, yes, a single playing card. The three of clubs it were, sir.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Hang on a minute—think I’ve still got it,” he said, fishing around in his lab coat pockets. “Ah, here it is!”

  Ian took the card and studied it. The design was unusual—it featured dancing skeletons, each wearing a jaunty red fez. Each of the three clubs was incorporated into the body of a skeleton, forming part of the torso.

  “That’s an odd-lookin’ card, sir,” Sergeant Dickerson remarked, peering over his shoulder.

  “Indeed it is,” Ian replied, sliding the card carefully into the breast pocket of his jacket. “You found no wallet or personal effects such as rings or watches?” he asked Cerridwen.

  “I’m afraid not—p’haps it were already taken by those who found the body.”

  “No doubt,” Ian remarked drily. Edinburgh morgue attendants were notorious for relieving the dead of unattended property, but they were difficult to prosecute, being adept at hiding evidence. The city’s numerous pawnshop owners and “resetters” were always eager to fence stolen goods before they could be traced.

  Cerridwen shuffled his feet again and coughed, no doubt impatient to get to the bottle waiting for him in his tiny office. “Will you be needin’ me further, gentlemen?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cerridwen; I think we’ll be fine on our own,” Ian replied.

  “Right, then, I’ll leave you to it. Just give me a whistle when you’re ready to leave.” He turned and strode briskly from the room, his footsteps fading rapidly down the stone corridor.

  Sergeant Dickerson scratched his chin. “Shouldn’t he remain here while we examine th’ body, sir?”

  Ian looked after the rapidly retreating Cerridwen. “It won’t be the first time a morgue attendant has skipped his duty for the lure of a bottle, Sergeant.”

  Dickerson snickered, the sound oddly out of place in the solemn surroundings. He quickly choked back his inappropriate response and looked down at the dead man before them.

  A human corpse is a curious and somber sight. First, the observer feels an instinctive physical aversion to death and dead things. That is followed by a kind of sickened curiosity, wonderment—and finally, sadness. If the body is in good condition, there is sometimes the odd expectation that the person is not dead after all, but will, at any moment, sit up and open his eyes.

  Ian was no stranger to dead bodies, yet every time he was in the presence of death, he went through all of these stages. Young Wycherly’s body had already begun to bloat as the gases in his digestive system expanded. His skin had the mottled gray pallor of death, as the blood seeped from his tissues to collect on the underside of the body, in the process known as lividity. And yet in spite of that, his face in repose suggested some of the man’s gentle, unassuming personality. Perhaps Ian was prejudiced in this opinion by what Wycherly’s landlady had told him, but he thought it was a damn pity that such a boy should die so suddenly and violently. A stanza from one of his early poems popped into Ian’s head.

  We meet again at death’s dark door

  you have quit this world

  with its untidy yearnings and disappointments

  all joy and sorrow drained from your pale face

  Dickerson shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. “Right, then, sir, what’s next?”

  “What do you make of young Wycherly, Sergeant?”

  Dickerson wiped sweat from his forehead—in spite of the cold, damp room, his face was flushed. “He’s—dead, sir.”

  “Well done, aye—but apart from that.”

  “I don’t quite take your meaning.”

  “The dead can’t speak for themselves, so we must speak for them.”

  “Right y’are, sir.”

  “So . . . ?”

  “Uh, what exactly d’you mean, sir?”

  “Every crime is a narrative, a story told backward. We know the ending, and it is our job to discover the beginning and middle.”

  “How d’we do that?”

  “Look at him, Sergeant—describe what you see.”

  Dickerson peered down at Wycherly’s body and swallowed hard. “Well, he’s quite young, I s’pose.”

  “What else? What do you notice about his person—his grooming, his manner of dress?”

  “His nails are well tended.”

  “Good. What else about his hands?”

  Dickerson suppressed a shudder and lifted one of the dead man’s arms, turning it over so he could study the hand. “Very smooth skin, I’d say, sir.”

  “What does that tell you about him?”

  “He’s definitely not laborer. I’d say he’s spent most a’ his life indoors.”

  “Excellent!” Ian said. “Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Dickerson replied with a little cough. Ian knew well enough that DCI Crawford’s men anticipated little in the way of commendation, and they were rarely disappointed in their expectations.

  “If you view his life as a narrative, the moment where it intersects the life of the criminal, a new story begins.”

  “And that’s the story we’re int’rested in?”

  “Precisely! Now, what about his clothing?”

  Dickerson straightened his spine and crossed his arms. “He’s dressed like merchant, or per’aps business clerk. Pro’bly works in office.”

  “That’s the stuff,” Ian said. “Now you’re thinking like a detective.”

  Dickerson frowned. “His landlady could ha’ told us that, sir.”

  “Ah! But we must sharpen our minds to a fine point so we may glean clues wherever we find them.”

  Dickerson pursed his lips dubiously. “If you say so, sir.”

  “Now, please help me remove his clothes.”

  “Sir?” Dickerson looked positively green.

  “We must examine the body.”

  Dickerson gulped and bit his lower lip, but soldiered on manfully in spite of his evident queasiness.

  Rigor mortis was already beginning to fade, and as they tugged at the sleeve of Wycherly’s jacket, his arm suddenly went limp. Dickerson nearly tumbled backward at the touch of the pliable flesh. His ruddy face turned an even darker shade of red. He took a deep breath and loosened the stiff collar of his uniform.

  “Are you quite all right, Sergeant?” Ian asked. He recalled his first dead body, as a young constable—a poor old wretch who froze to death in an unheated tenement in Skinner’s Close. His supervisor insisted he close the vacant, staring eyes, and Ian still remembered the marble coldness of the flesh under his fingers. The face haunted his sleep for weeks after; in his dreams, he was unable to close the eyes, no matter how many times he tried. They gazed up at him, pleading, accusing, horrible in their stillness. After that, he vowed never to be caught off guard by the presence of death again.

  Dickerson cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his upper lip. “Steady on,” Ian said, laying a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder.

  “I’ll manage, sir,” Dickerson muttered, reapplying himself to the task.

  There wasn’t much blood. The worst injuries must have been internal, Ian surmised as he and Dickerson began removing the dead man’s clothes, carefully peeling away the green tweed jacket. It bore a London label from a high-end tailor shop Ian recognized. Turning it over, he noticed the cuff on the right sleeve was missing a button.

  “What do you make of this, Sergeant?” he asked, holding it out.

  Dickerson squinted at the jacket sleeve. “Left arm has two leather buttons for decoration, but th’ right sleeve is missing one, sir.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “Could be Mr. Wycherly was in need o’ seamstress.”

  “But look at the rest of his clothes—except for the damage sustained by his fall, they are in perfect rep
air.”

  “So th’ button were lost—”

  “In a struggle, Sergeant—the one that took place on the top of Arthur’s Seat.”

  Dickerson scratched his head. “Beggin’ pardon, sir, but ’at’s hardly conclusive evidence.”

  “True enough. I’m looking for something else to confirm my theory.”

  “What exactly are ye lookin’ for, sir?” Dickerson asked, laying the jacket carefully on a nearby stool.

  “I wish I could tell you, Sergeant,” he said, unbuttoning the collar of the linen shirt beneath the jacket. “I am hoping I’ll know it when I see it.”

  And there, on the corpse of young Stephen Wycherly, was precisely what he had been looking for.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lillian Grey stepped from the butcher shop, treading with care on the uneven, rain-slickened cobblestones. She could call a hansom cab—several had already splashed by—but even at her advanced age, Lillian valued the effect of exercise on one’s complexion. Clutching a wicker basket containing a brown paper package, she threaded her way up the High Street in the direction of the High Kirk of St. Giles, to pay a wee visit before heading home. She tried to stop in for dear Alfie’s sake once a week. Lillian didn’t believe in any god of man’s creation, but Alfred had been a lifelong Christian, bless him, and she did it to honor his memory. After forty years of marriage, she owed him that much. He had left her a tidy fortune, for which she was grateful, but she would much rather have his warm body still next to her in bed on cold Edinburgh nights.

  She pulled her woolen cloak closer as a spray of water from the wheels of a passing carriage slapped against her cheek. The coach driver ignored her glare, snapping his whip smartly against the flanks of two matching dapple grays. Lillian wiped the rainwater from her face with her gloved hand, lifting her skirts to avoid a puddle. She had lived in this town half her life and knew the weather well enough, but it was one thing to know it and another to become accustomed to it.

  Even the sun misbehaved in Edinburgh. At the height of summer, it refused to retire at a reasonable hour, shining bravely on well after nine o’clock. In winter, the land descended into perpetual twilight, the sun barely scraping the horizon as it slunk across the sky in search of rest, as if exhausted by its summer excess.