by David Ashton
The Countess was now so close to her that Jean could discern a faint straggle of hair just below the thin nose as she spoke.
‘The woman is a sensitive. A bridge to the future.’
‘The future?’ Jean looked dubious. ‘I have enough mischief in the present.’
‘Indeed you do,’ said the Countess and the beady eyes found purchase, hooking into the green gaze opposite.
‘The French girl. I want her back.’
‘That is not possible.’
This uncompromising retort was accompanied by a dazzling smile and nod of the head as if they had reached an agreeable solution.
‘She’s settled in nicely and they’re all cosied up.’
‘Cosy?’
‘Her and Francine.’
‘Francine?’
‘She’s French as well. They’re all over the place.’
Jean let out a silvery peal of affected laughter, which would have appalled anyone of her intimate acquaintance, one police inspector in particular.
‘Francine dishes it out though. There’s not a tiger born can match her stripes.’
Before she might confide further titbits from the boudoir of applied as opposed to received flagellation, the Countess reached across and laid her hand upon the back of Jean’s, nails resting lightly upon the other’s bare flesh.
There was something invasive in the gesture, penetrating, as if it contained the seeds of violence, and Jean felt a shiver run up her arm like the electric current of a primitive defence mechanism.
She had wanted to meet this woman face to face to gauge the opposition. Well, she had gauged and there was something evil behind the unassuming façade that could not be ignored or underestimated.
An enemy. Lethal, equal and opposite. For Jean Brash was also a dark and dangerous creature. And the shiver was as much in recognition of her own propensity for visceral and bloody conflict.
Nor had the woman been fooled by the vacuous act. Jean could read it in her face.
‘I want the French girl back.’
‘That is not possible.’
Almost identical statements, but this time the claws were unsheathed on both sides; Jean calmly removed her hand from under that of the Countess and rested it some inches away.
‘I never force people against their will,’ she remarked, quietly. ‘It just brings grief.’
‘Don’t make an enemy of me, Jean.’
‘I hope you enjoyed the tea,’ came the response. ‘That coffee was a disgrace.’
The Countess laughed and leant back to gather her possessions as if accepting dismissal. As she did so, she spoke almost casually, drawing on a pair of black leather gloves, which encased the small hands like another skin.
‘But of course I know your history,’ she murmured as she prepared to rise. ‘For you everything must be a fight. You dragged yourself from the gutter, and the habit remains. To provoke, antagonise. From the gutter. How sad.’
‘You’d best depart,’ said Jean. ‘Before I burst into tears.’
The Countess stood, fished in her handbag to find a small purse from which she extracted some coins and then laid them carefully on the table.
‘For your trouble,’ she remarked.
Then she waited for a moment, gazing thoughtfully down at the seated woman.
‘I have always considered,’ she said finally, her eyes resting on the contours of Jean’s gown, ‘the show of colour to be somewhat vulgar.’
‘I like to be noticed,’ was the retort.
A shake of the head as if taste was a subject wasted on the garish, then the Countess’s face once more set itself in concerned sympathy.
‘Don’t go beyond your class, my dear,’ she announced gravely, ‘especially if you wish to avoid pain.’
And then she was gone.
As Jean sat alone toying with her teaspoon, stirring the coffee to see if it might alter the taste, a woman who had been sitting at a distant table walked across, dainty cup and saucer in a stubby-fingered hand, to seat herself heavily in the chair previously occupied by the Countess. Her name was Hannah Semple. The keeper of the keys of the aforesaid Just Land, loyal to her mistress unto death.
The death of others, that is. Hannah had a cut-throat razor and it was her boast that she rarely snapped it open without drawing blood.
Not in a Princes Street tea room, of course.
The clothes of respectability sat somewhat uneasily on her solid frame. By her own admission Hannah Semple was no beauty; a squashed pug-like physiognomy contained round deep-set eyes to echo the canine theme. Broken veins, which age and bitter experience had etched into her cheeks, added to the fine mix.
She reached across and munched into an untouched slice of Dundee cake. Jean said nothing. Hannah munched on.
Neither had noticed a small portly man who had slipped out from a table near the window and followed the Countess as she made her dignified exit. He had not paid his bill but that was not unusual for Alfred Binnie; his function was more a matter of exacting what was due and punitive.
He had paid keen attention to Jean Brash, weighing her up with dispassion as a poulterer would a live chicken.
Calculating which way the feathers would fly.
Upwards usually, as the blade came down.
Binnie left unseen. His speciality.
‘No’ bad cake,’ pronounced Hannah, sending a few crumbs flying to scatter like birdseed on the table. ‘Too dry, though. Lacks moisture.’
She knew her mistress well. Jean Brash had that broody look upon her face. Things had not gone to plan.
‘I am afraid, Hannah,’ said Jean, ‘that the Countess and I did not find a measure of agreement.’
‘Over that wee French trollop?’
‘A bruised and innocent lamb.’
‘She hasnae the pox, right enough,’ replied Hannah, helping herself to another slice. ‘The doctor confirmed same. Clean as a whistle. I meant tae tell you.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’
‘She’ll be useful, no doubt,’ was the stolid summation. ‘Innocence is aye useful.’
‘The Countess wants her back.’
‘Uhuh?’
‘I intend to keep her.’
Hannah shook her head gloomily. She had a bad feeling about all this; mind you she had a bad feeling about most things most mornings.
‘Did ye offer payment?’
‘Did I hell.’
That took care of that then. Trouble would ensue. For certain sure. Sharpen up the cut-throat.
‘The other yin’s a menace.’
‘Jessie?’
‘None other. Lippy. A menace.’
‘She has a deal to say for herself,’ agreed Jean. ‘But we may knock her into shape.’
Jessie Nairn, a pert wee magpie who had found her way over from Paisley to the Countess’s establishment, had also flown the coop. Her reasons were not scored so deep and Jean suspected a restless temperament allied to an eye for the better chance, the Countess being allegedly mean of payment and disposition. Jean had seen many such types as Jessie pass through her hands, but the girl had spirit.
Besides she had arrived with Simone. Justice for all.
‘She stays as well?’ muttered Hannah.
‘She does.’
‘Your decision, mistress.’
‘It is indeed.’
There was a gleam in Jean’s eye Hannah recognised. A fancy name for it would be the light of battle. Looking for a face tae punch would be another.
Jean’s own nose had been out of joint since the Countess had opened up a rival establishment in Leith and the fact that the boy Cupid had not been hanging round her skirts of late did not help.
Ah well, whit’s fur ye will no’ go by ye, Hannah resolved, even if it’s warfare and violence.
She joined her silence to that of her mistress.
They made an odd pairing: a dumpy thickset creature and the refined woman of fashion.
Both were warriors.
However, what was co
ming would be a cruel reminder that no-one is as strong as they hoodwink themselves to be.
A universal truth. Rarely realised.
For Sophia Adler, across the room, waiting patiently for a slow-witted local lassie to emerge from the depths of the kitchen with a pot of your finest Scottish brew as Magnus had commanded, it was a different contemplation.
She had been content to watch her companion wreak havoc amongst the plump pigeons of the tea room with his hawk-like demeanour, but then her attention had been drawn towards the two women sitting diagonally opposite.
One was beautiful, one was not.
Sophia had the fleeting image of a dark shape shifting between them. Death perhaps. It was much on her mind.
Of course – the moment was broken by the thud of the teapot as it landed on the table, spilling some brown liquid out of the spout to stain the white covering like dirty blood on an altar cloth – of course, and her lips twisted in a smile of wry amusement as she watched the scared waitress scuttle back to the safety of the kitchen, it could have just been…a trick of the light.
Now you see it. Now you don’t.
4
I think for my part one half of the nation is mad
– And the other not very sound.
TOBIAS SMOLLETT, The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves
Lieutenant Robert Roach clove easily to moral indignation, long upper lip swirling in ethical distaste as he heaped scorn upon the luckless Constable Ballantyne.
He had found the young man in the small cubbyhole of a room set aside for the lesser beings of the station to store their spare boots, waterproof capes and whatever other paraphernalia made up the office of constable; a room that Roach rarely ventured within, it being subject to the unwholesome odour of a leaky water closet and the fetid smell of discarded footwear; a room that should not have contained the spectacle of a policeman gazing earnestly at his own image in the cracked mirror and waving his hands in what he imagined to be a gamut of spellbinding gestures.
Mulholland watched with some sympathy as the strawberry birthmark that spread from Ballantyne’s neck to at least half way up one side of the face, pulsed with shame.
The constable himself, none other, in his own identity, had once been caught by Roach staring into that very same cracked mirror, but he had been in love at the time and that made it, to his mind, a slightly less heinous misdemeanour.
The fact of that once precious love being now dust in the wind, and his prospects of making sergeant blown to hell along with it, seemed to be of no concern to his superiors.
Roach had buried the matter like a bad drive in a bunker and McLevy, a man for whom Mulholland had risked life and limb on more than one occasion, had the cheek to look aggrieved when recently informed that he, the inspector, was making an eejit out of himself by reason of hanging a tea towel round his neck like a washing line.
A bitter residue still lingered in Mulholland’s heart from that unlucky time of lost emotion. He had been unjustly castigated for inadvertently causing the father of his budding beloved, Emily Forbes, to hang himself by the neck with a pulley rope as a by-chance of trying to solve a case all on his own and therefore gain promotion with the welcome addition of a blushing bride; something any red-blooded young fellow would surely attempt. Surely.
But it put somewhat of a damper on the wedding prospect because, as McLevy had remarked at the time, it is difficult for a father to give away the bride with his neck at a funny angle and his tongue hingin’ oot.
Hilarious.
Anyhow, it was a bitter residue.
And not his fault.
The welter of self-justification has ensnared many a stalwart man but Mulholland was sprung like Perseus from the labyrinth when Roach turned and asked, ‘Well constable – and what is your opinion?’
Mulholland had drifted away on the tide and so missed the previous part of Roach’s diatribe but he had enough on hand to take refuge in ancestral wisdom.
‘Terrible, terrible, sir,’ he avowed. ‘My Aunt Katie always says that a man who looks into his own face overly much often, is looking at catastrophe.’
‘Does she indeed?’ muttered Roach, who considered Mulholland’s Aunt Katie an Irish myth whose effect was not unlike the sea haar that descended on a clearly defined golf course and fogged up a perfectly decent approach.
He turned his baleful gaze back onto Ballantyne who, in truth, was a harmless, innocent soul and totally unfitted to be a policeman.
‘I will not have mesmeric conjuration within the legal boundaries of the Leith police station,’ Roach thundered like some prophet from the Old Testament. ‘I will ask you once more, constable. Was there, at any given moment, demonic intention in your mind?’
The young constable blushed anew and struggled for words, which were never his friends at the best of times.
‘It wisnae the devil, sir.’
‘Then whom were you regarding?’
‘Me. Jist me.’
‘And the gesturing of your own appendages?’
Ballantyne looked down at his hands, the long and finely tapered fingers at odds with rest of his awkward body, as if they might supply an answer.
‘Have a life of their own sometimes, sir.’
‘And what was in your mind?’
Ballantyne bit his lip and almost swallowed the words rather than let them see the light of day.
‘Jist – hocus-pocus.’
‘Hocus-pocus?’
Roach let out a baffled growl and Mulholland who, in truth, was wondering why the lieutenant was getting himself into such a twist over a piece of daft behaviour, decided to bring some much needed intelligence into the situation.
‘This mesmerism stuff is all over the city now, is it not constable?’ he asked with a friendly smile.
Ballantyne cheered up at the encouragement, little suspecting what might be behind the façade; the boy was, as has been noted, too trusting for his chosen profession.
‘Aye. Everybody’s talking.’
‘And you thought to have a pass, eh?’
‘Aye.’
‘A bit of innocent fun?’
‘Uhuh.’
‘Not a thought in your mind.’
‘No’ really.’
A hesitation, and the interrogator in Mulholland was onto it like a flash; it is astounding how often humanity begins with apparent intent to assist the afflicted and ends up screwing down the coffin lid.
‘But there was something, eh? Some little thing. What was it now?’
Roach watched in silence, instinctively sensing that Mulholland was close to something. The tall constable flicked a glance his way as if to acknowledge the subtle interplay between them.
Neither of these prescient beings noticed a figure slip in at the back and rest up against the wall.
Softly does it, thought Mulholland, not hammering in like a certain abject personage.
‘What was that little thing?’
Ballantyne hesitated once more, then looked up into the blue Irish eyes of his fellow constable and blurted out the pitifully painful truth of the matter.
‘They say it can make things disappear.’
‘So you looked in the mirror to put the ’fluence on and do a vanishing act?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And what would you want to make disappear?’
This was the moment when the lieutenant might re-evaluate his promotion prospects if Mulholland displayed a continuing talent for such fine-milled investigation.
Ballantyne fell silent.
They waited. Hounds on the trail.
One of Ballantyne’s hands, which indeed had a life of its own, crept unconsciously up to touch the livid birthmark that disfigured his face.
It was as if something had kicked Mulholland hard in the pit of his stomach; in the name of his own cleverness, showing off in front of his lieutenant he had humiliated a fellow constable, a fellow human being, and if the ground had swallowed him up like another vanishing act,
he would have accepted it as part of his just desserts.
Lieutenant Roach though was made of sterner stuff. He searched in his mind for a phrase to indicate that whatever mitigation of physical defect, he, as premier authority in the Leith Police station, could not allow mystic influences of any kind access to a cracked mirror.
Strangely enough, nothing much came to mind.
Out of the ether, however, a voice sounded forth.
‘Away ye go, constable,’ said James McLevy. ‘And tidy up your desk, it looks like a midden.’
As the grateful Ballantyne quit the scene, the lieutenant reflected, not for the first time, how his obstreperous, noisy subordinate had the ability to ghost up out of nowhere.
At the most inopportune moments.
McLevy shot the shamefaced Mulholland a look to blister tarmacadam, and then turned to gaze enquiringly at Roach.
The lieutenant found he had an obscure need to defend his actions, but why should he? He was the superior and he had no need to vindicate his conduct.
‘I caught Ballantyne in the act of gazing wilfully into his own personal likeness,’ he vindicated, nevertheless.
‘I gathered that,’ was the terse response.
‘Mesmerism has no place in my station!’
‘It’s all the rage,’ said McLevy, annoyingly. ‘I’m sure Mrs Roach is intrigued, is she not?’
‘It is superstitious drivel,’ Roach retorted, but was aware of the ground underneath his feet shifting as ’twere in a sandy bunker at the mention of his wife who was, in truth, intent upon dragging him shortly to some society cabal on the subject. For some reason arguing with his inspector often had this effect; the man instinctively perceived a weak point and then poked it with a sharp stick.
McLevy adopted a mild, even more irritating tone.
‘There is a measure of scientific doubt, sir. And while science doubts, we must all hold our breath.’
‘I shall hold my breath for no-one. The pernicious influence of spiritism is creeping round this city like a pestilence. Like some sort of…Catholic plot.’
‘Oh, you blame the Pope, do you?’
‘I would not be surprised,’ expostulated Roach, who suspected his inspector of ultramontanist leanings; no-one knew where McLevy worshipped, if he did so at all, and the man was known to whistle seditious Jacobite airs to boot.