by David Ashton
Another bellow resembling something that might have greeted Perseus from the middle of the Labyrinth came from the unseen presence, followed by some alarmed female shrieks a little further away.
Roach’s face was ashen.
Ballantyne’s strawberry red.
The sonorous baritone of the butler sounded, trying to calm the situation.
More shrieks in chorus.
The high tenor of outraged authority.
The Countess laughed softly.
‘Just like the opera,’ she murmured.
Meanwhile James McLevy had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had found the room, he was certain of that. It bore the marks of sequestered occupation – a single mattress bed jammed into a corner, a glass with dregs of stale beer, biscuit crumbs, a cheap case with a few items of male clothing – but nothing else.
The bird had flown.
He hauled up the window and looked down into the back garden where the snarling yelps of dogs could be heard.
Mulholland plus a few men were milling around in uncertain fashion and the constable looked up at McLevy with annoyance on his face,
‘That was the very devil!’ he shouted up. ‘Getting these dogs back in their kennel. Two of the men got bit.’
‘Never mind that,’ the inspector bawled back. ‘Did ye corner him?’
‘Binnie? No – do you not have him?’
‘No. Are ye sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’
‘Bugger!’
McLevy slammed the window shut again and scrabbled in the suitcase to see if there might be some clue as to where the fellow had gone.
But there was nothing but dirty underpants and smelly socks. The man was not house-proud.
And this was not proceeding according to plan.
Ballantyne came though the open door, which bore the mark of a hefty boot that McLevy had dealt the lock before charging in to find nothing behind it.
‘The lieutenant wishes your presence downstairs, sir.’
McLevy thought to ask why but decided to find out for himself; one thing for sure, it would not be congratulations on a job well done.
In fact he met Roach part way up the stairs, the lieutenant trying to put some distance between himself and looming catastrophe.
Just before they began talking there was the crash of china and a muffled cry from the Countess.
Roach was hissing like an angry alligator.
‘McLevy! I have just left a senior high court official in the downstairs salon, half-dressed, at least his wig restored, and not a happy man. Please tell me there is a successful conclusion to all this.’
‘Not so far,’ responded McLevy cheerily.
The lieutenant fixed him with a cold, saurian eye.
‘I authorised this raid against my better judgement and I now –’
‘Lieutenant Roach!’ a voice was calling angrily.
‘– regret it bitterly.’
The Countess suddenly appeared on the scene, eyes bright with fury.
‘Your men have just upset a most valuable antique!’ she cried in piercing tone.
‘Is it the court official?’ asked McLevy, just for devilment. When things were at their worst the imp of mischief often took a bow in his psyche and life became a sight more adventurous.
‘It is a Persian vase!’
‘An unfortunate accident,’ said Roach.
‘I demand compensation!’ she wailed, all calmness fled at the broken artefact or perhaps just using it as an excuse to let rip at the law.
McLevy meanwhile had been searching in the melee for a face he knew and thought to glimpse it in the main salon.
Mulholland came through the back door to join the burgeoning kerfuffle and the inspector saw his chance.
‘Ah, constable, no doubt you have important tidings!’ he boomed, crossing past the other two and heading for Mulholland.
McLevy beckoned the constable close as if they were exchanging significant news.
‘You know my tidings,’ muttered Mulholland. ‘They’re not worth a damn.’
‘I must search out someone,’ McLevy said urgently. ‘You must assuage the Countess.’
‘Assuage?’
While Mulholland puzzled out the exact shade of meaning to this word, McLevy turned towards the others.
‘Constable Mulholland is an expert on Persian crockery,’ he announced grandly. ‘He is your man!’
With that he shoved Mulholland towards the Countess and slid past her and the baleful glare of Roach into the main salon, followed by Ballantyne, who had sense enough not to want to stay where he had been which was stuck part way up the stairs and an easy target.
Inside the main salon some of the younger policemen were trying not to stare too obviously at the presented décolletage of the assembled belles de nuit while they asked after the whereabouts of a wee plump man.
The court official and his wig had removed to another room. McLevy looked around in vain for his objective yet saw nothing.
Then he noticed that one of the curtains by the window was swaying gently as if someone had slipped behind.
He moved over to stand in front.
‘Ballantyne,’ he whispered. ‘Put your body atwixt me and the rest of the room.’
‘Whit for, sir?’
‘Do as you’re damned well told!’
The constable hopped to it and stood rather awkwardly but served as a barrier between the others and McLevy.
A voice sounded behind. Low enough just to hear.
‘You’re too late, inspector.’
‘I gathered that.’
‘A while before ye arrived. The Countess got a letter. Hand-delivered. Upstairs she went like a shot frae a gun.’
McLevy frowned. Had they been betrayed? But how? Surely not. Unless someone at the station or sheriff’s office had tipped the nod?
That was not possible. Surely.
Yet it would seem as if Binnie might have left because of that delivery.
Or was it all just bad timing?
‘Where is this letter?’ he asked under his breath.
‘In her dress. I saw her stash it there. A hidden pocket just under the bosom.’
The inspector was momentarily disquieted.
‘The bosom?’
‘Aye.’ There was a hint of laughter in the hidden tones. ‘Ye surely know where such has its position.’
McLevy nodded.
‘I owe you for this, Maisie.’
‘I tellt ye. I do it for Jean, not you. Besides, the Countess is an auld bitch.’
McLevy moved away abruptly, followed again by the bewildered Ballantyne who had witnessed his inspector talking to himself and being answered from the ether in the best traditions of mesmerism.
As Maisie emerged from the curtain she caught the eye of Feeney the butler who was standing across, having emerged from the side room.
The woman had no idea whether he had twigged the exchange or not but better safe than sorry.
And anyway she had now nailed her colours to the mast.
She walked over to stare him straight in the eye.
‘If you so much as open your mouth, you will find your means of manhood bouncing before your very eyes. And after that my good friend, Mister McLevy, will throw you in jail for the rest of your life. This is Leith.’
Feeney made a silent resolve to quit the place as soon as possible.
Back to the Earl of Essex. The man was a wastrel and paid badly but castration was low on the agenda.
Mulholland had been discounted as a Middle Eastern specialist by the time McLevy and Ballantyne rejoined the fray, and Roach was getting an earful of condemnation from the Countess to which he had little defence.
‘You have upset my establishment,’ she almost spat at him, ‘destroyed my possessions, and for what? The stupid idea of a stupid man!’
‘And here I am!’
McLevy appeared suddenly with a face like fury, then went on the attack, grand opera
style.
‘In the room at the top of your house is a suitcase with clothes of a male persuasion. Who is their master?’
‘They have been so for a good long time. A client left them,’ replied the Countess quickly.
‘Liked tae dress up in smelly socks, did he?’
‘All sorts make the world.’
‘For a good long time, eh?’ McLevy came towards her with what seemed violent intent. ‘And whit about the dregs o’ beer and bits o’ biscuit, are they from long ago as well?’
‘One of the girls perhaps. They are wilful creatures.’
This insouciant response angered the inspector even more, it seemed, and he moved as if to confront the Countess face to face. But as he did so, he caught his foot on one of Mulholland’s large policeman’s boots and tripped headlong to send himself and the Countess crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs and rustle of garments.
Her modest dress, by appearance more suited for a sewing circle than a bawdy-hoose, was jerked at rudely by McLevy’s digits as he scrabbled for purchase.
She let out a violated squeak.
‘Remove your hands, sir!’
‘No’ my fault,’ replied McLevy. ‘Mulholland’s feet.’
‘I was nowhere near,’ protested the constable, which in fact was the truth of the matter.
Roach was horrified at the apparent ravishment beneath as McLevy slid on top of the woman.
The hidden bosom-pocket was very well hidden.
‘McLevy. What in God’s name are you doing?’
A high-pitched scream from the Countess came in answer, and then the inspector wrenched back with a folded letter in his hands.
‘Extrication only, sir,’ he explained, and then clambered to his feet as the gallant Ballantyne helped the Countess to hers. Her eyes widened when she saw what McLevy held.
‘Give that back –’
‘Why so?’
‘It belongs to me!’
‘Does it? Let me see.’
He stood at a distance away and stepped back from the tiny hands of the Countess, which were stretching out like talons to reclaim her property.
‘Oh aye. Right enough. Here’s your name at the top.’
The writing was in a bold, childlike fist and when he saw a name at the bottom, the whole thing fell into place.
And a death was surely on the cards.
‘Now I know where Binnie is,’ he muttered. ‘Come on Mulholland, and pray that we’re not too late –’
As the inspector made for the door followed by his two constables, Ballantyne not wanting to be left out and having the time of his young life, Roach gave voice.
‘Where are you going, McLevy?’
‘Tae find you proof, sir,’ the response came as the party disappeared through the door. ‘Hold that harlot till then. All will be clear. All will be well!’
Then there was the sound from outside of one of the police wagons being whipped into motion and clattering off into the night.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Roach thought grimly.
He smiled at the Countess who looked as if she would like to bite out someone’s throat.
‘Let us sit down somewhere, madam,’ he said in an eerily tranquil tone. ‘And discuss the opera. To tell you the truth, it is more my wife’s passion. I often find the stories rather dismal.’
He looked around at the chaos, closed his mind to consequences for the moment and continued to think through his theme with some words that he decided to keep to himself lest they prove an unfortunate augury.
The reason why dismal?
They rarely have a happy ending.
33
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Urn Burial
The body at his feet still had a vestige of life left, but that soon would disappear in flames. And who knows, he might have a little fun just before the main event?
Alfred Binnie pulled down the gauze curtains and threw them to join the pile he had gathered in the middle of the room. He liked this house. From what he could see with the furnishings and such, a few broken oil lamps thrown in, the Just Land would go up like a tinder-box.
And Jean Brash’s boudoir was the perfect place to start the conflagration.
This was not his speciality but he was adroit enough in the mechanics of fire-raising; it was a matter of draught and fierce combustion. Luckily he had opened the windows to find a breeze of sorts blowing in.
Indeed he had already seen some Halloween bonfires dotted at points over the city.
But this would top them all.
He giggled a little at that thought. A fitting way to leave his mark on Edinburgh.
A scorched trail.
He had kept to the shadows on the way here, conscious that the night had many eyes, but with the streets alive with Halloween-garbed figures had availed himself of Satan’s image in the form of a livid red mask.
The Countess supplied it. She thought of everything.
The woman on the floor groaned and he wondered about a momentary diversion but decided against. No time.
He could of course put her out of misery but decided to let the flames have their way. In any case Alfred always disliked a second plunge of the knife. Sloppy. Once should always be enough.
Should have been.
Yet the woman had caught his movement out of the corner of her eye and twisted away.
Not far or fast enough, however.
She deserved what she got. Should have known better.
He surveyed the scene with proud satisfaction; Alfred was a craftsman after all, even if it was in death.
His bowler hat lay on a table neatly to the side and he must remember to reclaim it as the flames leapt up.
A neighbouring church clock began to toll the hour and he took that as a good omen.
On the ninth bell, then.
But as he put his hand inside his coat to find the lucifers, the door burst open and two policemen appeared.
One tall and lanky, the other with a red mark on his face. Young. Easy meat.
Mulholland took a firm grasp of his hornbeam stick and motioned Ballantyne to stay in place behind him.
‘You will come with us, Mister Binnie.’
Alfred smiled disarmingly, at the same time slipping the knife out of its sheath pocket of his coat and holding it low to his side.
‘You know my name? That’s good.’
‘You will come with us accordingly and release your weapon. At once, if it please you, sir.’
Mulholland’s accent had thickened with the tension and Binnie frowned in displeasure.
‘Oh…a stinking Irish, eh? Right out of the bog.’
As Mulholland moved slowly in, the woman whimpered once more and Alfred kicked at her.
‘These sluts. Noisy bitches, eh?’
Another whimper and Mulholland’s face tightened in anger, which was Alfred’s intention.
Angry people make mistakes.
‘Come and get me, bogman.’
The constable raised his stick in response and Alfred grinned like a cesspit rodent.
‘Come on, bogman. I’ll slice up your potatoes.’
Mulholland was angry but he had channelled the feeling into his right arm. He knew the man would be fast but backed his reflexes against some sewer rat from Shoreditch.
However Fate and Ballantyne took a hand.
All the inexperienced young fellow saw was a slimy, corpulent man, slow-moving, eyes twitching. Easy meat.
He made a rash move from the side and while Mulholland’s attention was distracted by alarm for his colleague, Alfred moved with blinding speed.
His knife shot out at Mulholland like a snake’s tongue.
The constable was alert too late to the danger but managed to wrench away; the blade cut deep into his side and he gasped in pain to fall stunned to the floor, the stick falling to land a distance away.
Ballantyne was stricken, Alfred grinned some more and James McLe
vy burst finally upon the scene.
As he had been about to follow the constables up the stairs to the top of the house, the other rooms found empty, McLevy heard a noise from below in the cellars.
The inspector hesitated a moment then decided his men were big enough to look after themselves.
He moved swiftly down the stone steps to the cellar and stepped cautiously inside.
Was the killer here?
It was dark, but enough light from the hall above the stairs was coming down to show the implements for inflicting a piercing pleasure hung neatly in rows on the wall.
The noise was coming from a closed door at the other end, where the Berkley Horse stood.
A muffled thudding came from this portal, a large iron key in the lock.
Mindful it might be a trap, McLevy grasped his heavy revolver in one hand, turned the key with the other and sprang the door.
A frightened Lily Baxter almost fell into his arms.
She took a deep breath, mimed someone pushing her in, then pointed urgently upwards.
McLevy cursed to himself. This was the wrong place to be for a policeman searching out a murderer.
Now, moments later, after heaving himself up the stairs, he was in the right place. At the wrong time.
Two bodies lay on the floor. One Mulholland, the other Jessie Nairn.
A cold light came into his eyes and he raised the revolver to point at Binnie.
‘Give me an excuse,’ said the inspector of police.
But the little man had one more trick up his sleeve, darting to the side behind the paralysed Ballantyne and putting the sharp edge of his knife against the red patch that signalled a beginning to the birthmark.
‘I’ll cut his throat,’ he said softly. ‘No problem.’
McLevy sighted down the barrel but Binnie ducked behind Ballantyne and started edging towards the door using the other as cover, dragging the young constable like a dumb animal to slaughter.
‘Keep well back,’ he warned. ‘Or his head falls off. That’d be fun.’
The inspector performed as bidden. The little man’s calmness was oddly unnerving but that was not the reason.
McLevy had noted, as they shuffled past Mulholland, that the constable’s hand had wrapped itself once more around his stick. Good that the man wasn’t entirely dead.