by David Ashton
A Trick of the Light
‘McLevy is a sort of Victorian Morse with a heart’
Financial Times
‘McLevy is one of the great psychological creations, and Ashton is the direct heir to Robert Louis Stevenson’ Brian Cox, star of the BBC Radio 4 McLevy plays
‘You can easily imagine the bustling life of a major port, and the stories are alive with a most amazing array of characters’
BBC Radio 4
‘David Ashton, like Robert Louis Stevenson or Ian Rankin, is inspired by the beauty-and-beast nature of Edinburgh. His interpretation of James McLevy is worthy of the original man’
Sherlock Holmes Society
‘Ashton’s McLevy … is a man obsessed with meting out justice, and with demons of his own’
The Scotsman
‘An intriguing Victorian detective story … elegant and convincing’
The Times on Shadow of the Serpent
’Dripping with melodrama and derring-do’
The Herald on Fall from Grace
A Trick of the Light
An Inspector McLevy Mystery
DAVID ASHTON
TO
SONJA
Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The McLevy Mysteries
About the Author
ALSO BY DAVID ASHTON
Copyright
1
One of my cousins, long ago,
A little thing, the mirror said,
Was carried to a couch to show,
Whether a man was really dead.
JAMES THOMSON, ‘In the Room’
Leith Docks, Edinburgh, 1864
The man had been running for his life. A shaft of light from one of the creaking ships moored in the harbour caught his face like a lover’s hand and tilted it to the side as he came to a juddering halt in one of the narrow wynds; the stone passages that spread like broken veins from the main artery of the Old Docks.
Breath jagged in his throat, heart jumping as he listened. Nothing. Good. He had lost them.
The face was almost petulant, a drooping full lower lip somewhat redeemed by the bony hooked nose and flecked hazel eyes. He had lost his hat in the chase and his golden hair glinted treacherously like a beacon in the stray beam of light. It flopped over one eye in a manner some might describe as affectation but his wife thought most becoming. Like a true plantation owner. A shadow in the sugar cane.
A bitter smile crossed the man’s face. His name was Jonathen Sinclair. He was an officer in the Confederate Army and a measure out of his depth as a clandestine agent beyond the battlefield.
And his wife? She was far away. Lost in a dream.
The silence was profound; just the soft hissing of the rain, hardly audible, a saturating, insidious blanket of moisture that seeped into his very bones.
Melissa. Sweet Melissa. They had married with the approaching Civil War as best man. Since then, only snatched moments of marital bliss where the grim spread of death and blood did not stain her pretty dress nor lessen the desire that her husband must acquit himself a hero.
But that was before Cemetery Ridge, and before the Alabama was sunk in Cherbourg breakwater with thousands howling on the shore as the ship went down. How many men swam under the sea that day? How many brave sailor boys? What songs were they singing?
Jonathen Sinclair realised – approaching midnight in the Leith docks, in a foreign land, in a damp, dank climate where the sun seemed to grudge each moment in the sky – that he was not a hero. Not by a long travail. He was capable of heroic deeds most certainly, but he could not hammer through the long pain. A real hero endures.
And when he dies, angels lead him to heaven where a white house stands upon the hill with a woman looking out the window. A farmer’s girl. Her face always the same. Loving and full of welcome. Waiting for him.
He almost burst out in a reflex of laughter but that small moment of release was strangled by a sound somewhere in the dark empty space that unrolled in all directions before him; one of which was out past the nudging ships and into the blank pitiless ocean.
Footsteps. Certain in pursuit. The fixed betrothed, coming for her ravaged bridegroom.
A sudden shriek on high and he clapped his hand over his own mouth to forestall startled response.
As if he had divided into two parts; one the grim guardian who had watched his own men, under the merciless hail of Union artillery, splinter into the sky, grey uniforms spouting red. And the other?
A young officer stands looking at himself in the mirror, slouch hat firmly upon his head, cord with acorn tassels stitched in place, travelling cape over his shoulders. A handsome dandy.
It was a seagull. No more. Damned bird. Screeching like a lost soul in the black sky above.
And the footsteps had stopped. Perhaps they had never existed. A figment of his guilty conscience.
Sinclair removed a hand from lips that had tasted forbidden fruits and puffed out a short breath.
He had learned the value of stillness, waiting in the reeds by the river to surprise a Union munitions column; arms so badly needed that they might justify the inglorious action about to be taken. Early morning, the sun new-risen, clouds like cotton, as if the world has just been born.
‘When I was young I us’d to wait
On Massa and hand him up his plate;
Pass down the bottle when he got dry,
And brush away de blue-tailed fly.’
Abe Lincoln’s favourite song they said. A minstrel song. A slave’s song. Of revenge.
A large horsefly with a blue-black belly had landed on the back of his hand where he gripped the revolver. It was searching out blood and stung through just as the ragged volley of shots rang out and the dark uniformed Union soldiers fell from their horses into the yellow waters.
His own soldier boys whooped and screamed as they waded out, bayonets fixed, knives in hand, to finish off the few survivors. The blade driven deep, cut and drown rather than waste a bullet, savages in threadbare Confederate grey; the war had turned them all into barbarians.
As they hauled the plunging horses with their precious cargo back towards the riverbank one of the floating bodies suddenly sprang to life and a terrified young Union soldier ran towards what he hoped might yet be safety amongst the long rushes, not seeing in his blind panic the still figure of the officer standing there.
Then he did. Halted. His mouth opened as if to say something in explanation before the back of his head exploded and he toppled to lie in the shallow water, fragments of bone and blood swirling forlornly around Sinclair’s muddy boots.
Corporal John Findhorn, who had fired the shot and would die of his wounds on the long retreat to Virginia after, like Sinclair, surviving the slaughter of Gettysburg, looked down at the corpse and shook his head. ‘That man should have stayed dead,’ he pronounced.
Findhorn, a Baptist from Arkansas, tended to the laconic. Sinclair found him a great relief. Most people, including himself, talked too damned much.
He sucked the back of his hand where the insect had drawn blood and spat it out to join the rusty streaks in the yellow water.
He and the corporal looked across and read death in the other’s eyes. Then Sinclair gazed up to where the sun burned with fierce indignation above in the powder blue sky.
The South had no base from which to build. Their only ironclad, the CSS Virginia, had been scuttled to prevent capture. No ships or guns; the Confederates could only steal or buy and the Union naval blockade was strangling them like an anaconda.
The blockade must be broken.
A sound jerked him back to the present. In front of his retreat, ships creaked quietly in the harbour like docile beasts of burden. Behind though. Surely he had not been outflanked? He turned slowly, hand sliding into the folds of a thick coat where his revolver had its resting place.
He had but three bullets remaining.
His eye caught a flicker of movement in the darkness. Low down. A crouched shape. Too small for a man, too large for an outcast dog.
Sinclair lunged with his free hand, the other gripped to his gun, and his clawed fingers found purchase on hair. Human hair. He hauled up, backwards to the faint light and looked into the feral, terrified face of a young boy.
‘Don’t mark me, sir,’ the captive whimpered, face crunched up in pain. ‘I’m no’ harmful.’
‘What are you doing here, eh?’ Sinclair spoke softly and dragged the boy close by to muffle the exchange, only too aware that more dangerous foes might lurk in the shadows.
‘Where I sleep,’ replied the other with muted indignation. ‘A’ right for some.’
This pallid show of gumption brought a brief smile to Sinclair’s lips.
He chose his words carefully. The Scots valued consonants more than vowels at times and he had mitigated his accent accordingly.
Light and clear. Keep it so.
‘What is your name?’
‘Samuel Grant.’
‘Not Ulysses S.?’ he asked with a bitter smile, reminded of the Union General who was a thorn in the flesh of the South and had driven the Johnny Rebs from Tennessee to open a route through Atlanta into the heart of the Confederacy.
‘Ulysses?’ The other screwed up his face at the unfamiliar name. ‘That’s foreign.’
Sinclair laughed softly and a glint of animal cunning showed in the boy’s eyes as if he thought there might be some advantage to be taken.
‘I’ve seen you, sir,’ he whispered.
‘Where?’
‘At the Happy Land.’
The man’s own eyes hardened. Lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. It was indeed true that after dark the streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow were littered with the poverty-stricken discards of society but some were thieves, some were dishonest whores and many took the guise of helpless victim. And then struck.
Sinclair realised that his fingers were still entwined in the boy’s greasy hair. He spread and released them, then stood back a little to fish in his pocket, producing a coin held up before him. Forbidden fruits.
‘How would you like to earn this?’ he whispered.
‘Whit do I have to do?’
‘Close your eyes – and open your mouth.’
A look of sullen resignation came over Samuel’s face and he swallowed hard before performing as commanded.
Sinclair grasped him by the back of the neck then popped the coin in and jammed the jaws shut as the boy’s eyes shot open in surprise.
‘Now leave and forget me,’ said Sinclair, coldly. ‘Before I cut your throat and feed you to the buzzards.’
The coin was almost gulped down at this but then spat out into the hand and Samuel Grant fled silently into the darkness of the nether wynds as if the hounds of hell were on his trail.
Sinclair took his pocket watch from a high waistcoat pocket where it exchanged beats with his heart, and squinted in the faint light.
Quarter before midnight. His grandfather’s gold timepiece rarely lied.
Rendezvous was the hour itself. Now or never.
He took a deep breath, replaced the watch and sauntered out into the docks like a man without a care in the world.
It only took a dozen steps. Enough for him to observe the sailing ships close by with a few small steamers beyond not at all suitable for blockade running, not enough speed and backbone; the ladies he desired, iron-paddled, schooner-rigged, the Emily, the Charlotte, the Caroline, were already built or being so back in Glasgow.
But that city had become infested with Federal agents of the Union and so he must transact commerce where the power lay. Every lady has her price. And a respectable pimp to boot.
Brothers of the Gusset.
Edinburgh, He had spent a week here in sober negotiation and opposite pursuits. Now, it all must end.
While these thoughts ran through his mind, his senses had been preternaturally tuned to the surroundings. There was a dense, muffled quality to the air as if everything was held in suspension, but nothing behind. No footsteps.
He whistled a tune under his breath. Devil take the blue-tailed fly.
Then a figure detached itself from the shadows up ahead and stood directly in Sinclair’s path.
At least his equal in height, the face hidden, shrouded in a black oilskin cape which fell to ankle length; like a deadly shade the figure waited for a reckoning.
Sinclair had twisted and turned in vain; he knew both the identity and intention of his adversary.
A dull glint of metal showed as the man raised his arm to point directly at the target. Sinclair gazed down with regret at his own hand where all that glinted was a thin gold wedding ring; he would never get to his revolver in time and would die like a dog for a vanquished cause.
The South was doomed. And he was no kind of hero.
A dull explosion and then the bullet smashed into his body. Jonathen Sinclair fell back and then lay still, fair hair spilled over the one hidden eye.
No angels came to take him away to a house on the hill.
For him at least the war was over.
2
Warped and woven there spun we
Arms and legs and flaming hair,
Like a whirlwind on the sea.
WILLIAM BELL SCOTT, ‘The Witch’s Ballad’
Leith, Edinburgh, 1882
James McLevy awoke with a snort of fear, hair standing on end as he shot bolt upright in his lumpy bed. Of late his dreams had been giving him hell and this was no exception.
Now was he truly out of the Land of Nod? As a policeman he would demand of his senses proof. Pain. Pain is a great indicator of the conscious state. A pin. A pin would be irrefutable, stuck into the back of the hand, but where do you find a pin in the pitch dark?
He scrabbled for a phosphorous match, struck it up and lit a squat dismal candle that had its place by his bed on a small rickety table. As the candle coughed its way towards a feeble luminosity, McLevy regarded the still burning match.
Caught yet by the wild fancy of the dream, what followed made perfect sense to him. He extended his thumb and wafted it over the flame. A howl of pain followed, the match was blown out, and the inspector then stuck the fleshly digit into his mouth to suck upon it like a distraught child.
A foul nightmare. Buried alive.
He had found himself in a cavernous long passage that wriggled ahead like a worm, having been led there by a female form that he might only observe from the back; the presence was shrouded in a long scarlet cloak with the hood pulled up as to obliterate all recognition.
How he’d got there he had no idea but it was surely connected to a previous fantastick episode where he’d been dancing naked round a fire; no, not naked, not him, he was in coat and low-brimmed bowler, in his heavy boots, the rest were naked or damned adjacent – female naked.
Was Jean Brash one of them? S
urely not. She was a bawdy-hoose keeper with a fine taste in coffee, not one of these loose-lipped, loose-limbed wanton creatures capering round the flames. Their bosoms bounced with no regard for modest gravity and their rounded bellies heaved and shone through the draped shreds of discoloured linen that shook in ribald accompaniment to all this gallivantation.
The inspector should have arrested the sprawl where they pranced but what was he doing dancing in tune?
Then it was as if someone had drawn a curtain and the scene was blacked out.
And he was in the narrow tunnel, following the Red Figure – was it fatal? Had Edgar Allan Poe, a man McLevy found close to his own dark imagination, not penned The Masque of the Red Death?
The effigy did not look back and the passage became even more confined, with a glutinous creamy scum hanging from the curved walls.
This doesnae look good.
He remembered thinking that at the time and then the figure vanished from sight and he was left to stumble alone into the uncharted murky orifice insinuating onwards.
McLevy found himself upon his hands and knees, crawling like a Jerusalem traveller, the roof pressing down, the surface below a dismal brown claylike substance that clogged and sucked as he squelched forward. The creamy scum wasn’t much help either and some instinct told him that if any of that landed upon bare skin, it would scald a hole like hot fat through a stretched membrane.
His lungs were shuddering from lack of air as if a clawed hand were reaching through the wall of his chest and an impulse flashed into his head that he’d better get to hell out of this rat’s nest.
At the end of the passage was a small chink of light where an egg-shaped hole, too meagre for a man of his bulk to negotiate, indicated a possible source of succour. But how was he to squeeze through?