Trick of the Light

by David Ashton

  And James McLevy still hadn’t made it into the Arms of Morpheus. Too much on his plate.

  The unconscious could wait its hurry.

  18

  One day Massa rode aroun’ de farm,

  De flies so numerous they did swarm;

  One bit his pony on the thigh,

  De devil take dat blue-tailed fly.

  TRADITIONAL, ‘The Blue-tailed Fly’

  Glasgow, 1864.

  My Dearest Melissa,

  I feel as if I am embroiled in a world where nothing can be trusted and to be truthful I am not certain if this letter will ever reach you without being tampered with, opened, read, and perhaps destroyed.

  In that case it will never accomplish its mission. But I must write as if it does, as if it will.

  It is as if I have become a shadow, as if the life I have led up until now has no meaning, insubstantial, and I hunger for one moment that might give it significance.

  As if my identity, what I call myself, Jonathen Sinclair, is losing shape. I am becoming…indistinct.

  I fear that the fever which struck after Gettysburg is still hectic in my blood and I cannot trust my own thoughts, as if I am being manipulated by someone else who pulls the strings to make the puppet jump.

  When I asked Secretary Mallory why he would delegate such an onerous responsibility to a soldier who lacks all experience for such a task, he answered, ‘Because you are an honest man.’

  I would have thought honesty to be the last attribute necessary for this damned business.

  There is a deadly game of hide and seek being enacted in the docks of Glasgow. Lincoln’s Federal agents know a messenger has arrived with bonded certificates to purchase ships for the South and run the blockade that strangles our Confederate forces. It is their intention, by fair means or foul, to stop me in my tracks.

  The British Government is now turning against us and the local Emancipation Societies, no doubt whipped up by the Federals, are delivering petitions to the Foreign Office.

  Liverpool and Birkenhead are closed to us now and this is one of our last ports of call.

  Our own agents have contacted the shipping magnates but the usual conduits have been forestalled.

  They are watched. Known. We must go further afield.

  Meanwhile my men guard me like jealous bridegrooms, ring me round to protect that precious honesty.

  One of our meetings was betrayed, by whom I cannot tell, and two of our men wounded in the ambush.

  I myself shot at the assailants and believe I winged one, or perhaps even killed him, who knows?

  Do you remember John Findhorn? I spoke of him when I rode day and night to lie by your side just before that bloody battle.

  Remember? I left in the morning and you cried me to fight well for the South. I shouted back that John and I would whip them blind.

  It was I who was blind. Blinded by glory.

  He died of his wounds, the flies around him where he lay, with the cries of those in agony rising to the sky.

  His last words to me were, ‘I wish I was home.’

  He was a good comrade and before death claimed him, bequeathed me his revolver, oiled, cleaned and true if the aim was such. His father was a gunsmith and had made it for John to keep him safe.

  It was with that I fired in the Glasgow docks. I now have only three bullets left. I have been offered other weapons but I shall stay with my bequeathment. Three bullets should be enough.

  I glimpsed my main adversary. He wears a black oilskin cape, a man of sense given the unremitting rain, and goes by the name of William Mitchell.

  For a moment our eyes met. I saw belief in his and trust he saw the same in mine. Then I let fire but he ducked back out of sight, the man behind him fell and the rest of the night was spent on the run from our pursuers.

  The Federals outman us and are well organised. We rely on our native wits.

  It is like a small version of the war itself.

  I will send this letter by our next departing messenger and ship. Arrangements have been made for me to move cities. I shall not be sorry to leave Glasgow.

  A low place, to be sure.

  When I wheeled my horse on the ridge, you were standing in front of the house in the early summer blossom.

  I am sure I cut a romantic figure.

  If you receive this, think of me kindly. That is all I would wish from you. It is all we can do until this carnage is over and we all come home.

  Your husband,

  Jonathen

  19

  L’homme est, je vous l’avoue, un méchant animal.

  Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature.

  MOLIÈRE, Le Tartuffe

  Lieutenant Roach rubbed a furry tongue over his snaggled teeth and reviewed the events of the previous night in his mind. The onions had finally stopped repeating upon him at the hour of midnight with the aid of some powders but his wife unfortunately was not so easily neutralised.

  She engaged him in an intense discussion – intense, that is, on her side – which ranged from some unexpected accidents that had befallen members of her family – ergo, was there some curse or evil spirit on her familial trail? – thence to the idea that the ether might be jam-packed with whirling ghosts jostling impatiently to get a word in edgeways and full of as many complaints as they had enjoyed in real life.

  Mrs Roach had a somewhat sporadic, impulsive mind which, when activated, was capable of jumping from one subject to the other with no discernible link or lack of pace. For some reason her thoughts had ended up in a whist game where her partner Muriel Grierson, whom they had seen at the gathering and barely acknowledged, had played a card so bereft of intelligence that she cost their side the game.

  A certain coolness had existed between the ladies since then but when Roach reluctantly vouchsafed the information that the woman had been burgled, he was subsumed in a welter of demand for details and a sudden gush of sympathy for the dear soul; not one of nature’s brightest creations but undeserving of rapine and pillage or whatever had been visited upon the poor creature.

  Though there had been certain rumours of her being seen with a mysterious man in out-of-the-way places, these were only stories and it was ever a widow’s fate to have insinuations follow her, which Mrs Roach hoped would never be her own doom.

  Roach agreed somewhat dryly and finally the woman ran out of steam. Just before they closed their eyes in the bed of matrimony, however, she had one more shaft of intuition.

  ‘Robert,’ she asked, in the merciful darkness. ‘Have you anything you would wish to tell me?’

  ‘About what?’ Roach responded tersely.

  ‘Anything…shameful. That might have been witnessed from above?’

  The lieutenant was not sure whether his wife was referring to an all-seeing God or the swirling spirits and hoped sincerely that the balance came down on the Christian side. But then he had to consider the question.

  Do we all not have something so petty and shameful hidden away as to make us cringe within?

  Not a huge offence such as regicide or bank robbery and the like – these can be dealt with by the authorities – but something so small and so morally miserable that not even our worst enemy could conceive that we might sink so low as to commit this act.

  And the one who cannot forgive us or forget is not the Almighty or a plaintive spectre but ourselves.

  In Roach’s case, inevitably, it had to do with the game of golf.

  From an early age the prospect of a green fairway and a white ball curving in a graceful trajectory to land and then skip like a free man onwards to a destination marked by a red flag, only the top of which was visible waving in the breeze above the undulations of green hills – this vision had taken root in his soul.

  Late spring in the President’s Cup, however, while searching amidst the early morning heather for his chief constable’s misdirected drive – a man who had distracted him the year before by jingling coins in his pocket while Roach contemplate
d then missed a tricky putt, a man who was a fellow Mason to boot and higher in the golden chain than his lowly lieutenant and therefore should know better, a man who puffed cigar smoke so that it drifted across the line of a complex mashie niblick shot – Roach rested his case there – but the memory of his own heinous offence against the gods of golf almost set off the onions once again.

  He had stood on the man’s ball while it nestled in the wiry gorse. Not only stood but with full weight bore down.

  There was the excuse of a whipping east wind stinging at his eyes and fooling his feet, he not seeing the ball buried like a murder victim in the bonny blooming heather.

  It was his heel however that did the damage. And having done so, Roach did not say a word until Sandy Grant, the aforementioned chief constable, stumbled upon the impacted body himself. Under Roach’s watchful eye, of course, lest the ball in some miraculous fashion be resurrected into a decent lie.

  It took Sandy three hacks to dislodge the thing and by that margin he lost the round.

  Of course the man could have taken a drop. But that was not in his character.

  And what of Roach’s own persona?

  What is the fine line between accidental mishap and a cognisance that refuses to cognise itself?

  While the lieutenant had thus pondered he realised that his wife had fortunately gone to sleep.

  And when he uncloaked his guilty eyes in his station office, these thoughts having flooded inappropriately into his mind, he found himself staring at Constable Ballantyne.

  ‘I knocked the door, sir,’ stammered the young man, his birthmark already a rising tide of red. ‘Ye didnae answer.’

  Ballantyne indeed, having tapped timidly to no response, had pushed gently at the door, which had to his dismay sprung open like a yawning pit.

  He had received a summons at his desk and expected the worst even though he had avoided mirrors like the plague.

  Roach frowned. It came easy to his countenance.

  ‘Ballantyne,’ he announced severely. ‘I have decided to overlook that unfortunate happening in the uniform quarters and trust it will not be repeated.’

  The constable nodded gratefully.

  ‘We all make mistakes,’ said Roach. ‘Now, go away and make yourself useful somewhere.’

  He closed his eyes but when he prised them apart once more, Ballantyne was still in the office.

  ‘I was wondering, sir,’ declared the constable, emboldened by reprieve. ‘If I might have another try at the patrolling?’

  The last venture on the streets had ended somewhat ignominiously; a female pocket delver had dipped his police whistle and when Ballantyne had raised hand to lip in order to signal alarm, he found it empty of purpose.

  ‘I will consult the inspector,’ said Roach, who felt an irrational anxiety suddenly seize him. ‘Now, go away.’

  This time when he shut his eyes the door closed with a satisfying thud but after a few moments it banged open once more. Roach was irritated beyond his usual level because the events of last night, not to mention the recalled Incident of the Golf Ball in the Heather, had set his nerves a-jangle.

  ‘Whit do you damned well want now?’ he snapped.

  ‘Ye need tae get that door fixed, lieutenant,’ said James McLevy. ‘It runs the risk of unwarranted entry.’

  Roach sighed and blinked open weary eyes to see his inspector, glowing with health and efficiency, standing at what even might have been claimed as attention before him.

  Just behind McLevy on the wall, Queen Victoria also stood with her hand resting on the back of a chair.

  It was said she had attended a séance at the Royal Palace to contact her beloved, deceased Albert. Sadly the departed consort had failed to put in an appearance, which might explain the disappointed look on her face as she gazed out of the portrait photograph, which Roach himself wiped clean every morning with averted eyes, lest her Majesty think him intrusive.

  Intrusive, however, was exactly the word for McLevy.

  ‘The morning had hardly started,’ Roach declared, ‘and I already received a complaint about you, inspector.’

  ‘Logan Galloway?’

  ‘The same. He claims you took Jean Brash’s part against him, his wallet rifled at the Just Land, his own well-being insulted and physically threatened by the police who are for the protection of respectable citizens –’

  ‘If he’s all that winsome, whit’s he doing at a bawdy-hoose?’

  ‘Exactly the point I made before I sent him packing,’ said Roach, surprising McLevy by a change of direction; now and again the lieutenant was capable of something that suggested his mind did not entirely run with the Masonic pack. Not often, but now and again.

  ‘I don’t like the stupid wee gomeril and I like his father even less,’ Roach continued, ‘but if you must side with a bawdy-hoose keeper can you do it in a way that doesn’t threaten the bedrock of society?’

  Now the lieutenant was back on track. He disapproved mightily of McLevy’s close entanglement with Jean Brash, believing there might be more to it than a love of coffee.

  But McLevy could deal with this in his sleep.

  ‘Galloway was rantin’ fou,’ he replied. ‘And I didnae lift a pinkie. It was Mulholland and some fish.’

  Roach knew better than to follow that trail.

  ‘What, I repeat, do you want in my presence?’

  ‘Morning report, sir!’

  McLevy straightened up in a parody of eager, soldier-like attention. In truth he was feeling spry as a mountain goat this day; he’d had five hours uninterrupted sleep and not one visitation from the weird sisters.

  ‘Report away,’ said Roach, also straightening up; business was business after all and he’d make a propitious offering to the gods of golf by deliberately missing a five yard putt the next time he played his chief constable.

  ‘Two sharpers sliced deep in the Rustie Nail.’

  ‘By the throat?’

  ‘Belly. They’ll live.’

  ‘God’s mercy knows no bounds,’ said Roach, a trifle enigmatically.

  ‘The perpetrator answers the description of the acid-pourer of Leith Market.’

  ‘A busy man.’

  ‘And elusive,’ said McLevy. ‘I may pay a visit to the Countess.’

  ‘You seem at home in these establishments.’

  McLevy ignored the caustic tone of his superior.

  ‘Also we had a few rammies on the streets between the rival clans.’

  Roach had been put in the picture as regards the conflict betwixt the Queens of Procurement, and nodded sagely. Then he put the knife in.

  ‘If all this escalates to proven violence, will you be able to discharge your duties?’

  The only indicator of a hit was that the slate-grey eyes darkened slightly.

  ‘The guilty will not evade me.’

  ‘Even Jean Brash?’

  ‘Justice has no favourites.’

  ‘I am glad to hear that. What about the Grierson robbery?’

  ‘An inside job, I believe. The widow woman has a secret she keeps close.’

  ‘I am sure you will find it out.’

  Roach was content to leave it there, because he knew McLevy would have covered all other avenues such as domestic staff with lovers and flapping tongues. He had a prurient curiosity as regards Muriel Grierson; perhaps his wife was correct, widows excite a strange inquisitory bent.

  In any case, let McLevy hunt it down.

  And then tell him about it.

  Roach folded his hands together indicating dismissal but the inspector had yet more to contribute.

  ‘Ballantyne tells me ye want him out on patrol.’

  The lieutenant was about to deny this indignantly when, on impulse, he decided to content himself with a nod of the head. If the constable was playing one off against the other then there was more to that boy than met the eye.

  ‘I don’t know if the parish is ready for Ballantyne,’ McLevy muttered dubiously.

  �
�How is the constable to develop else?’

  Now it was McLevy’s turn to leave it be. Far be it from him to mention that other than staring into cracked mirrors and waving his hands about, Ballantyne’s other pastime was collecting live insects from the busy horde that crept around the station, carefully depositing them outside lest a hobnailed boot curtail their existence.

  He nodded and turned to go but Roach had a question that suddenly popped into his mind.

  It had been bothering him since yesterday morning; the passing reference to widows with things to hide and the memory of last night when a giant form rose to apprehend the two capering demons brought it back into his mind.

  ‘Arthur Conan Doyle?’

  ‘Uhuh?’ McLevy stood by the open door, his face not easy to read.

  ‘How did you know all that…medical boxing palaver about him?’

  ‘Deduction.’

  Not easy to read had now become sphinx-like.

  ‘Deduction?’ Roach shook his head, obscurely annoyed as he often was at the outcome of certain conversations with his inspector. ‘I don’t remember you indulging yourself in that particular pastime before.’

  ‘Whit I do all the time. Scientific.’

  ‘You?’

  Here the lieutenant was being unfair because he knew fine well that McLevy kept surprisingly up to scratch with forensic developments, though he tended to hide that particular light under a large bushel basket.

  It is ever the Scots trait not to flaunt learning and give aye the appearance of someone who has stumbled upon erudition by accident, if at all.

  ‘Just got a fancy name, now.’

  But Roach was not completely accepting this; he had never heard McLevy launch forth in such flowery style to such devastating effect.

  ‘But how did you come upon all this deduction?’

  McLevy frowned for a moment, then his face lit up.