Trick of the Light

by David Ashton

  Midnight had come and gone; some snatches of smoke from a distant bonfire that had not yet expired also swirled at their feet; and Doyle was reminded of a scene from Hamlet when the ghost appears on the battlements. It had been at the Lyceum in London, he was fifteen years of age and staying a most glorious three weeks over Christmas with his uncles and their families.

  The great Henry Irving had played the Dane.

  Tall, slim, a handsome brooding presence with a shock of dark hair, quietly spoken but with the impression of a superb intelligence, black glittering eyes and a long nose that sniffed out corruption in the state of Denmark.

  And when his father’s ghost appeared, it seemed the prince’s very soul was split in twain.

  It had been the happiest time Conan Doyle had enjoyed in England since being sent at the age of nine to the tender mercies of the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College.

  His wild, adventurous spirit had collided head-on with the spartan discipline hammered down upon him and though there had been moments of gratification and scholastic success, he had felt, not unlike Prince Hamlet, suffocated and beaten down by an authority he did not at times recognise or respect.

  Arthur had felt almost betrayed by his mother but now realised that she had sent him away to protect the young boy from the worsening state of his own father.

  An alcoholic ghost.

  Still residing in the institution where he moved between sweet clarity and dangerous fits of violence. A madness to be feared lest it travel in the blood.

  All this had passed through Doyle’s mind; there was little else to do huddled in a doorway, watching the roof-tops for a murderous beast to take its bow.

  A bang on the door of his mother’s house.

  Doyle had thought one of the lodgers had forgotten his key but there on the threshold was James McLevy.

  ‘I’m going hunting, Mister Doyle,’ he said, face white in the dark outside. ‘You were on my way.’

  No more needed to be said. Arthur had bolted for his old sailor’s coat, stuck on the cap, shouted upstairs to his puzzled mother that he would be a time or so, and then was off into the misty night for adventure.

  Though it did not seem much of an exploit so far.

  They had relieved the shivering constables stationed on watch outside the house of Walter Morrison and then McLevy had hunkered down like an animal settling into its den, tipped his hat over his eyes and not uttered a word or moved a muscle since that moment.

  Arthur was restless. He took out one of his pipes and thought to light up and puff some comfort but then worried that it might signal occupation and so replaced it.

  Once more he scanned the rooftops where he had been instructed to fix his eagle eye.

  Nothing. A few seagulls wheeling despondently, pale shapes in the leaden sky.

  ‘Ye see any fiendish ogres?’ asked the inspector from under the brim.

  ‘Nary a one,’ replied Doyle.

  ‘Ah well. Time yet.’

  Anxious that McLevy might disappear once more into the land of Nod, Doyle threw a question at him.

  ‘‘What makes you think this killer will appear tonight, inspector?’

  ‘Jist a wee intuition.’

  And in fact, it was no more than that. But on the way to Doyle’s he had stopped off at the banker’s house. The man, in the midst of Halloween celebrations, a bonfire in the back garden, festooned with overexcited grandchildren, had not welcomed the intrusion but supplied what information he had gleaned on the Morrisons’ finances.

  An interesting harvest. It chimed with a picture that was beginning to build up at the back of McLevy’s mind.

  And if he was correct, this might be the last night possible for murderous excursion.

  If he was wrong, a watch had still been kept according to plan. Though, as opposed to obvious constabulary on the street, he and Doyle were well tucked out of sight.

  So to enquiring eyes, it might appear as if the castle were unguarded and the drawbridge down.

  Both men were hidden in the crevice of a small wynd running off Henderson Row, a stately street of terraced-houses where fine respectable folk had their dwelling.

  McLevy had made himself comfortable against the wall, leaving Doyle to stand guard. Now the inspector, refreshed after a catnap of sorts, levered himself up and glanced at the large form beside him.

  Had Mulholland not been indisposed, the man might not be here but McLevy had a feeling that this medical colossus had yet a part to play in the drama.

  Time would tell and though Roach would have a blue fit at a member of the public being involved at a potential crime scene, what the lieutenant didn’t know would not hurt.

  From Conan Doyle’s point of view, this was the perfect opportunity to delve into the mind of a successful detective.

  A character was taking shape in his imagination that he had explored in rough-and-ready fashion in a story delivered by his own hand to Blackwood’s Magazine in Edinburgh and never heard about again.

  Perhaps it had been murdered and the body buried in a file marked ‘Too Many Ghosts?’

  Doyle frowned. That title wasn’t any better than the original tale.

  The Haunted Grange at Goresthorpe. Not good enough by a long shot, and he had one published in an Edinburgh weekly that he had set in South Africa. The Mystery of Sassassa Valley. Another cumbersome title. Rough efforts.

  But there was more to come.

  Writing is like a fever in the blood cells.

  ‘D’ye peruse Edgar Allan Poe?’ McLevy asked, as if he knew which way Arthur’s mind was running.

  ‘I consider him to be a supremely original writer of the short story,’ Doyle replied somewhat stiffly, because the thought of Poe’s genius only threw his own efforts into an unflattering relief.

  ‘Aye. Every one like an open wound.’

  McLevy, having summed up the master of the macabre with this pithy phrase, whistled softly under his breath as he risked a quick glance up and down the thoroughfare.

  In the distance he could hear the faint sound of carriage wheels but other than a few bedraggled Halloween revellers making their way home, the streets were empty.

  ‘How did you know I was thinking of literary matters?’ asked Doyle suddenly.

  ‘Your fingers were twitching.’

  The inspector let out a short bark of laughter and Doyle took this as a sign that communication was in order.

  ‘At our first meeting, sir,’ he began, as if making formal examination, ‘you deduced certain facts about me that were not noticeable to the untrained eye. What is your method of procedure, if I may so ask?’

  McLevy thought to make more mischief in Doyle’s mind but decided that Big Arthur deserved a bit more – at the moment the young man’s intelligence was somewhat tramlined, but the policeman could sense what he would term activity at the back of the hoose. Intuition. The acumen of nerve ends.

  However as regards his ‘deduction’ in the station, it had only too mundane a source.

  ‘I saw ye,’ he said simply.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I like the boxing. I was informed there might be a good contest up at the university. I saw you in the ring.’

  Indeed it had been a fine contest. McLevy stood well to the back as the students cheered on one side against another. The final bout had been Conan Doyle contra the squat form of a burly Welshman, the visiting college being St David’s from the land of leeks.

  Doyle at first had found it hard to lay a glove on the man who was built like a small bull, had a low centre of gravity, and was crafty withal according to the popular conception of his race.

  Arthur had hurt his hand punching down and a roundhouse swing from his opponent had hit him flush under the eye. The second round was more even but in the third, as the Welshman ran out of steam, Doyle finally landed a straight right that put the man on the floor and ended proceedings.

  The winner was cheered on especially by the medical students, an unruly lot and more so by d
int of some being recently qualified.

  All this McLevy had observed, so when Doyle came charging into Leith station the next morning, his card was already marked and accounted.

  The purveyor of the straight right had his guard down and jaw dropped.

  ‘So your deduction was completely false?’

  ‘Not at all. Completely true. I jist knew the facts before. Not after.’

  Doyle gave the unperturbed inspector what could only be described as an old-fashioned look.

  ‘I might beg to differ with you on the matter of truth here.’

  ‘Differ away.’

  ‘You deceived me.’

  ‘Not at all. Had ye asked I would have told you. Ye didnae think tae ask. You were too caught up in the process tae consider otherwise. The mind is full of such traps.’

  They had been speaking softly enough for such a potentially barbed exchange and McLevy hung his head out again to scan the street and rooftops.

  Nothing. Silence. Back to Big Arthur. He had a disappointed expression; a dog lost its bone.

  ‘And your deductions of the Grierson burglary?

  ‘Based on experience. I told you.’

  James McLevy rarely explained himself; the way he saw things, the more folk knew about you the more they jumped to erroneous conclusions.

  However something about this young man dictated McLevy ignore his usual practice.

  And nothing was stirring out there. Not even a mouse.

  ‘There are three intelligences we must bring to a crime, Mister Doyle. Forensic, intuitive and experiential.’

  ‘Which is most important?’

  ‘That depends on the crime. Mostly they go hand in hand.’

  Doyle mulled that over. He had his own ideas. ‘Have you heard of Joseph Bell?’ he asked.

  ‘Uhuh. Even attended one his lectures. He’s a wee bit gabby but not daft.’

  This description of the brilliant lecturer and forensic surgeon that Doyle worshipped and admired above all men came up a little short in his estimation but he now knew enough about McLevy not to rise to the bait.

  ‘I serve as his clerk at the Edinburgh Royal,’ Arthur said quietly. ‘He is certainly not daft.’

  The lecture McLevy had attended by sneaking in at the back, having brandished his warrant card at a university porter, had been a bravura performance.

  Bell was a compelling orator and the students hung on his every word. His deductive forensic qualities were striking but, to the inspector’s jaundiced eye, it was all theory. Murder is not theoretical. It involves passion and blood.

  He could see how Bell would appeal to a hungry intelligence like Doyle’s and wondered if his niggling feeling of annoyance was jealousy of sorts.

  Bell was famous. Admired. McLevy was a policeman.

  He suddenly stiffened and put his hand warningly on Conan Doyle’s sleeve.

  For a moment the young man thought the inspector was trying to distract from an argument he might lose, then he heard what McLevy’s sharp ears had picked up a moment ago.

  A scraping noise, high above.

  They both peeped out like two boys hiding away in a child’s game.

  In the blackness, on the slates opposite, a dark shape was moving across the rooftops. Difficult to see in the mirk of this late October night but there was a moment when a shaft of pale moonlight pierced the sullen clouds and the shrouded figure of something showed for a second before the dark descended once more.

  ‘Come on!’

  McLevy darted across the road and rapped sharply three times upon one of the doors opposite. A moment later, the frightened face of Walter Morrison peeped out.

  The inspector signalled and a small horse and trap that had been parked out of sight, in fact a contrivance that Doyle had known nothing about, trotted up with a stolid driver who wore a cloth cap pulled over his eyes.

  ‘Take the gentleman to your mother’s abode, Murdo,’ said McLevy, urgently, ‘and wait till you hear from me.’

  He virtually bundled Morrison into the trap and just before Murdo set the horse in motion, McLevy fixed the scared Walter with a cold implacable stare.

  ‘Eighteen years ago,’ he declared. ‘I know the story. When I see you next, I want the truth.’

  Morrison’s face went a shade of sickly white as Murdo flicked the horse with a whip being used for proper purpose, and off they went.

  As McLevy and Doyle went through the house and up the stairs, the inspector explained events so far.

  ‘Murdo is slow-witted but trustworthy. He was once accused over the murder of a bairn, but I cleared him. His mother is forever grateful and runs a respectable lodging house.’

  They conversed breathlessly as they hurried to the top of the stairs where another small flight led upwards to the attic room.

  ‘I spoke tae Morrison some days ago and warned him that if he didnae wish to be slaughtered under his own roof, he should open the door instant to my signalled knock.’

  ‘You anticipated all this?’

  ‘It was a possibility. That’s the fourth intelligence I forgot tae tell you as regards crime. Predetermination.’

  They now entered the attic room with the skylight window letting in faint light from above; McLevy signed Doyle to a corner in the gloom, and stood back so that he had a clear view of the window above.

  He produced his old black revolver and took a deep breath.

  ‘You will observe only, Mister Doyle,’ he said softly. ‘With luck, the killer will be taken. Clean and simple.’

  That wasn’t, however, the feeling he had in his bones.

  They waited in silence. Doyle thrilled to be a part of the murder investigation, McLevy as if carved out of stone.

  A creak on the roof above.

  Wait.

  Silence.

  Then the skylight began to buckle as if some force were pressing it out of shape. A slow protest of hinges being wrenched and suddenly the window was hauled bodily off its moorings and a rush of damp evening air announced that the room was now at the mercy of the elements.

  A grunting animal noise and then strangely a voice that was unlike any human sound but made words like an axe would splinter shards out of stone.

  ‘Find. Kill. Destroy.’

  The hairs on the back of Doyle’s neck prickled and he felt a primitive fear that urged him to run. Do not meddle with the beast. Run. Run for your life.

  McLevy was an immovable, shapeless mass in the opposite corner; his hand hung by the side with the dark metal of the revolver outlining the white skin where he gripped.

  Then a huge shape suddenly appeared, towering above, visible through the empty window frame; it was backlit by the dull sky and enveloped in a black cloak with the hood pulled over so that the face was obscured.

  For a moment it stood there and then jumped through the created aperture to land barefooted like a cat in the centre of the attic room.

  As it did so the inspector stepped forward, revolver rock-steady in his hand, raised and levelled.

  ‘I am James McLevy, inspector of police. I must ask you to come to the station with me, my mannie. You have murder on your mind and I must forestall that intention.’

  For a moment the beast was motionless under the muzzle of the revolver, the metal orifice ready to spit flame at the pressure of a finger. It had registered the sound of the words but not any kind of meaning; like any animal, however, it sensed danger and death at close quarters.

  ‘Turn yourself round, if you please. Extend your hands backwards towards me.’

  The monster suddenly grabbed at Conan Doyle, who could not resist a venture nearer to the action, and whirled him by the arm to crash into the inspector.

  As they both tumbled to the floor it leapt with incredible agility to hook its gauntlet hands like claws over the edge of the skylight window, haul itself up and then off into the darkness above.

  McLevy cursed to himself as Doyle muttered his apologies. Damned fool. Himself. To bring an amateur along. />
  ‘Give me a lift up!’ he commanded.

  Doyle knew at least the mechanics of such; he had given many hikes to the sailors on the whaler.

  Up the mast goes the jolly Jack Tar.

  He bent over to make a cradle of his hands and as McLevy lifted a stubby leg to place his foot on top, Doyle took a deep breath and thrust the policeman upwards with all the force he could muster.

  McLevy shot up towards the skylight and banged his head against the frame. Another muttered curse and then he scrambled out and for a moment stopped down on hands and knees to get his bearings.

  ‘What shall I do?’ Doyle called from below.

  The inspector fought back the temptation to say enough damage had been done. Besides the man might still have a part to play.

  ‘Get out on the street,’ he called back softly. ‘I shall keep my eyes peeled for you. If you see him, signal.’

  ‘Good luck,’ came in answer then Doyle bolted for the door and was gone.

  McLevy took stock. It was not luck he needed, just a primitive instinct to survive.

  The roofs were shrouded in darkness, some pale light coming upwards from the street lamps but dying long before it might become a messenger of hope.

  He must assume that the beast would return the way it had come so began to inch along in that direction, holding on to the crown of the roof with one hand, revolver in the other, trying to find purchase on the damp slates with his shoes, the soles of which slid alarmingly. The inspector had noted the beast was barefooted, another natural advantage.

  McLevy had also noted the heavy gauntlets on its hands, both to protect and leave no evidence. The feet were for grip, the hands did the killing.

  As he began to gain confidence and move more quickly, McLevy glanced down to see Doyle’s figure far below on the opposite side of the street. The young man pointed further on to indicate he had spotted something, so at least the inspector was on the right track.

  Towards getting his neck broken, no doubt.

  The chimneystacks stuck up into the night like assassins waiting to pounce. Behind any one of them the creature might lurk.

  McLevy sniffed the air. Acrid smoke and dank industrial dew. Auld Reekie.