Cameron explained his seal migration project to Owen, who countered with his own marine biology story—that of a shark in Australia who vomited up the tattooed arm of a murder victim, thus enabling police to solve the case.
Just as they were finishing their coffee, a sudden hush fell upon the restaurant as a tall young man in a vampire cloak swept into the room. His face was covered with white stage makeup, and his dark hair was slicked down like paint on a porcelain doll. One by one, the Witchery guests who had signed up for the tour left their tables to form a cluster around their strange guide. When everyone was ready, he led the gaggle of tourists out into the twilight and up the cobbled street to the castle esplanade.
In the gathering darkness the street seemed old and empty, hardly part of the present century at all. The group shivered with anticipation as they circled around the shadow man.
"My name is Adam Lyal," the guide said in a smooth Edinburgh accent. "Deceased," he added with a grin.
The crowd of tourists tittered nervously. The night air was chilly, and the deepening shadows heightened the effect of the ghoul makeup.
"I was a highwayman here in Edinburgh in the eighteenth century. Got hanged for it, too. But the devil has allowed me to come back to earth on the condition that I guide the living along the Murder Walks of Edinburgh's dark history. Every night I take groups like this one up and down the closes, searching out the darkest corners of Auld Reekie's grimy past."
"Will we be visiting the Merrett house?" someone called out.
Adam Lyal (deceased) frowned. "No, he's not on our tour," he answered. "It would be a considerable departure to get to his house. He's small potatoes anyway. Compared to some of us," he added menacingly.
At the mention of his latest crime obsession—by someone other than himself—Owen became instantly alert. "Another crime buff!" he whispered to Elizabeth. "I'll be back."
As the tour wound its way farther up the hill into the shadow of the castle to the spot at the barricade where the witches had once been executed, Owen threaded his way through the crowd and finally reached the side of the man who'd asked the question: a tall, stocky Englishman in a green anorak.
"I visited the Merrett house this afternoon," Owen offered as an opening gambit. "I don't think the people know it's a crime scene."
The older man nodded. "Not very dramatic looking, is it? Still, a black and white shot in the right light might set it off."
"Are you interested in murders?" whispered Owen, trying to appear casual.
"Well, it's a living." The man smiled, turning his attention back to the guide.
The young soldier on guard at the castle entrance had been listening to Adam Lyal's account of the witch-burning. "Looks like they missed a few," he remarked in tones suggesting that the banter was a nightly occurrence.
The deceased highwayman was ready with a reply. "And this young man," he said, pointing to the soldier, "will have to stay up here a-aaall night. . . a-aaall alo-oone."
"Right. Well, I'll stock up on holy water," the guard called out as the party trooped off.
Owen, still intent upon his private conversation, followed the Englishman. "Are you a detective, then?" he persisted.
"I suppose I am, in a way," the man replied. "I'm Kevin Keenan."
Owen knew that he was expected to recognize the name, but since he had only been in Britain a week, he hadn't a clue. Except that Kevin Keenan wasn't a famous murderer; he knew all of them. "Oh, really?" he murmured.
"Yes. Just thought I'd have a listen to this tour. It's good stuff. Well presented."
Owen decided that the man must be in show business, perhaps a writer for a BBC crime show. "Are you interested in Ian Brady?" he asked breathlessly. The Moors Murders were among Owen's favorite cases.
Keenan sighed. "Not particularly," he whispered. "But I know that Myra recently came up for parole. She thinks she'll get out, poor cow."
Owen nodded eagerly. He felt as if they were discussing mutual friends. "Do you know anything about the woman in the Crippen case?"
"Ethel LeNeve? Smith was her married name. Oh, she died in 1968," Keenan replied, edging away from Owen.
"It's really great to meet somebody who knows all this!" Owen said reverently. "All my friends think I'm crazy. Can we have a drink after the tour and talk some more?"
The Englishman shrugged. "If they haven't called time by then, I might," he said in weary tones suggesting that he didn't care one way or the other. Kevin Keenan didn't usually enjoy discussing crime with amateurs. They were always asking awkward questions about the Yorkshire Ripper, or wanting to know what it was like behind police lines at death scenes. He had a set of memorized answers that enabled him to hold such conversations without actually listening to them, but occasionally even that proved a bit of a strain.
Owen nodded happily and scurried back to tell Cameron and Elizabeth of his good fortune in finding another expert on crime. They shushed him, too, but he took it in good spirits and settled down to enjoy the remainder of the tour, his brain seething with plans to waylay his new friend immediately afterward and to find out just what his crime-related living actually was. Owen experienced a momentary qualm: suppose the stranger was a criminal? Was there a Mafia in Britain? But this anxiety soon passed. Owen was sure he would never be so lucky as to meet anyone that interesting.
Adam Lyal took them down a narrow cobblestone alley, which he said was haunted by the ghost of an old sailor. As he launched into an explanation of the sailor's ill-fated life, a "ghostly" apparition dashed out of the shadows in front of him and lunged at the startled audience, evoking screams from most of the ladies. After a few more menacing gestures
aimed at the loudest screamer, the figure ran back into the shadows of a side street. When the tourists had quieted down, the highwayman smiled. "Of course," he said, "I've never seen the ghost myself."
The party continued down the alley to the Grassmarket— the scene of Adam Lyal's demise, he told them. They clustered around the iron-railed plot of grass containing a circular stone monument, the memorial to all those executed in the square over the years.
"Was Burke executed here?" Owen wanted to know.
Elizabeth tugged at his arm. "Hush, Owen! This is a tour, not Meet the Press!
"I'll show you where he used to live—in Tanner's Close," Adam Lyal said patiently.
He led the way up a steep dark street, his cloak flapping about his legs. A wino, cradling his bottle in a paper sack, was settled for the night in a doorway. The noise of so many footsteps shook him out of his stupor, and he looked up just in time to see the chalk-faced ghoul stride past him. After a few moments of startled silence, the derelict called out, "Have ye no been weel, man?"
Cameron and Denny were still snickering at this unscheduled performance when the tour made its next stop, but the highwayman had the last word: "He was on the tour last night," he announced.
He launched into a description of the mad old woman said to haunt this particular close, when suddenly the confederate appeared again, this time in a woman's dress and wig, making the tourists scream again and running off into the night as before.
By now the group had discerned the pattern of the tour,
so that at each stop, they braced themselves for another fright. Sometimes the accomplice appeared and sometimes he didn't, but the anticipation of his dramatic arrival kept the tension high.
"The ghost is wearing gym shoes!" Denny whispered to Cameron. They had begun to look for the accomplice, to see if they could spot him before he attacked.
"It's a wonderful idea for a tour, isn't it?" Owen said to Elizabeth.
She smiled. "Are you thinking of doing one in America, with all your knowledge of crime?"
Owen shook his head. "American murders are too spread out for a walking tour. And probably too gruesome anyway. Well, I suppose you could do Chicago, but it wouldn't be the same. Mafia executions? Leopold and Loeb killing a little boy? Richard Speck and the eight student nurses? Nobo
dy would pay to see that."
Except possibly you, Elizabeth thought, but aloud she agreed that it wouldn't work as a paying concern.
In the darkest close of all there was not room for the group to form a circle around the guide, so they leaned in clumps against the brick wall of an ancient building, as he paced up and down the cobblestones. "The plague came to Edinburgh, did you know that?" he asked in menacing tones. "It came and went half a dozen times through the Middle Ages, brought from the Continent by . . . rats!"
As he uttered the last word, Adam Lyal's ghostly assistant, his face red-streaked with plague pustules, rounded the corner and drew a squeaking black rat from the folds of his cloak, waving it menacingly at the shrieking tour group. The women in the party shrank back against the building, and Elizabeth found that she had grabbed Cameron's arm without a conscious thought. After prowling up and down the line of cowering tourists, shaking the rat at those who screamed, the assistant seemed to single out the man in the green anorak. Lunging at him with the rat, as if to cause him to be bitten, the accomplice drew close enough to his victim to speak to him, while those nearby tittered nervously, perhaps in relief that they had not been chosen instead.
After a few moments of terror the assistant dropped the still mewling rat at the feet of a hysterical French girl, and ran out of the close. By that time most of the party had already realized that the creature was only a toy, but the tension of the horror-laden tour and the surrounding darkness had done its work on their nerves, and the screams continued.
The spectral highwayman, amused by his audience's reaction to the trick, leaned against an ashcan, waiting for the panic to subside. When the squeals had died down to a thin murmur, he stepped forward to resume the narrative.
"As I was saying, the plague is no stranger to Britain. In 1348 and again in 166S, the disease arrived on British shores, carried in ships along with—"
He got no further before he was interrupted again, this time by the man in the green anorak, who pitched forward onto the pavement at the highwayman's feet.
In respectful silence, the tourists watched him die.
CHAPTER
6
Owen Gilchrist did not enjoy the murder investigation nearly as much as he might have expected. Someone who doted on true crime stories and biographies of former chief inspectors should have welcomed the opportunity to observe police procedure firsthand, but instead of being thrilled with his good fortune, Owen found himself both uncomfortable at the long wait in the chilly room and oddly apprehensive about his own turn at being questioned.
When the police arrived in Fishers Close to take charge of the corpse and to escort the members of the tour in for questioning, Owen was too nervous to pay much attention to what they did. He found later that he could not remember whether the deceased was covered with a blanket or an oilskin groundsheet, whether the surgeon had arrived with the police or not, and just what was said to him by the officer who noted down his name and address.
He did remember blurting out that he had spoken to the
unfortunate victim. And what had they talked about, please? Well, murder, actually. Despite the chill of the night air, Owen had been sweating when he arrived at the police station. He would probably get pneumonia from it, he thought— another victim for the unknown killer.
Most of the other members of the tour—a women's group from a local church—had been released almost immediately. The archaeologists had been detained, waiting in uncomfortable wooden chairs while the police questioned Adam Lyal himself. Owen wondered why he felt so guilty. Suppose he had to take a lie detector test. What if he failed it simply because he was having an anxiety attack? He wondered if the British police allowed one the customary phone call, and whether the American consul to Scotland would have his home phone number listed in the directory.
Adam Lyal, deceased, had wiped off most of his white stage makeup from the evening's performance, but he still managed to look decidedly pale. The unscheduled demise of a tourist was one surprise that he had not incorporated into the evening's entertainment. As he explained the premise of the tour for the fourth time that evening, he leaned back in the dented metal chair and looked at the linoleum floor instead of at the spotty youth in blue who was meticulously printing Adam Lyal at the top of his notebook. Gently the guide corrected him, providing the spelling of his real name. The constable looked at him suspiciously: an alias. Adam Lyal was sure that he had just been promoted to the top of a short list of suspects, but he was too tired and worried to be amused.
"Have they found my partner yet?" he asked the young police constable who was taking the statement.
P. C. Hendry took a long look at the smeared vampire makeup and the rumpled black cloak. "There were two of you?"
The tour guide nodded impatiently. "I must have explained this half a dozen times by now! Don't you people talk to each other? When we give the murder tour, I lead the people round and do the commentary; my partner waits for us along the route and makes various surprise entrances in disguise to liven up the tour. Have you found him yet?"
"You are saying then, sir, that it was he who murdered—"
"No, of course, I'm not saying that! Somebody coshed him, and took his place in Fishers Close. You have to find him!"
"I'm sure it's being seen to," the constable said soothingly, scribbling a word on his notepad. "Now, how well did you know the gentleman who was murdered?"
"I hadn't any idea who he was," Lyal replied. "People phone up to reserve a place on the tour, but I don't meet them beforehand. In fact, it is so dark when we begin that I scarcely see them at all."
"Well, we can help you there," P. C. Hendry told him. "There'll be plenty of light in the morgue, and you can go along and look at him for as long as you like. But we have made a tentative identification of the deceased. He was an Englishman called Kevin Keenan. Does that help?"
Lyal shook his head. "Quite a lot of the people who take the tour are from out of town. I take them round in the dark for an hour and never see them again.''
"Did the deceased say anything to you during the tour?"
Adam Lyal almost laughed at the constable’s formal phrasing. I wonder how many American cop shows he watches per week, he thought. Next he'll be making references to the perpetrator. Suppressing a smile, he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. "Wait . . . somebody asked me a stupid question. What was it? Oh, yes! Whether John Donald Merrett's house was on the tour. But I don't think he asked it. I seem to remember an American accent."
P. C. Hendry hesitated, as if trying to determine what to say next. Sometimes, he decided, you had to give a little information in order to get some. "It sounds like the sort of question Mr. Keenan might have asked," he said. "Considering who he was."
At that moment the door opened, and another officer signaled for their attention. "We've just found the other gentleman who runs the tour," he told Hendry. "He's on his way to hospital with a head injury."
"Thank God for that!" said Adam Lyal. "I've been afraid he was dead."
P. C. Hendry's lips twitched. "No, sir," he said. "Excepting the victim tonight, you are still the only one deceased."
In the end Owen had decided against routing the American consul general out of bed, but as he was led away to be questioned, he implored Elizabeth not to leave him alone at the police station. She promised they would wait for him.
"Of course he didn't do it!" Elizabeth said to no one in particular. "He was standing right beside me when the man was stabbed!"
Cameron and Denny ignored her. "Gangs, do you suppose?" asked Cameron. "One hears of such things in Glasgow."
Denny shrugged. "It's possible, of course, but there was no robbery, and surely that fellow was a bit too old to be mixed up in such things."
"Will I need my passport?" Elizabeth asked. "They always say not to carry it with you, don't they? Or is it not to leave it anywhere?" She began to rummage through her purse.
"I hope they're not plannin
g to make us stay in town," said Denny. "Imagine telling the old man that the dig has been held up because of a murder.''
Cameron smiled. "They can hardly detain an entire tour. I believe the parish auxiliary has already been sent home. I think they just want to get the paperwork done. Find out if anyone saw anything, and of course we didn't."
Elizabeth looked up. "I did."
"No," said Cameron. "I mean, if we noticed anything about the killer. All of us saw it happen, more or less, but it was so dark and sudden that we hadn't time to take it in."
"I did."
Denny grinned. "Two days in Edinburgh, and the killer turned out to be somebody you knew, Elizabeth?"
She blushed. 'Of course not! But I did notice his feet. Or rather I noticed the feet of the other one. Adam Lyal's accomplice, I mean. After the first two times, when I was just as startled as everyone else, I noticed that he was wearing white socks and sneakers. His costume always changed, but his footwear didn't. After a while I started looking around for him, because, of course, he was going on ahead and waiting for us to catch up. Once I spotted him waiting for us
across the street from one of the closes. But the person who came in during the plague speech—the killer—wasn't wearing white socks and sneakers."
Cameron sighed. "So you've just cleared the other tour guide, who has no doubt been found coshed behind an ash-can by now. Very helpful indeed, dear."
If Owen had not reappeared just then, Elizabeth was sure that there would have been a major Anglo-American disagreement, because her reply would have contained a particularly Anglo-Saxon four-letter word of which Cameron disapproved thoroughly. It was an unladylike utterance, he had informed her more than once. Elizabeth found this attitude very confusing, not only because Cameron himself used the word quite often in reacting to heavy traffic and minor injuries, but also because she had just that afternoon read the Dawson family newspaper and discovered that most of page three consisted of a bosomy young woman, nude from the waist up. When she had asked his brother Ian about this unusual feature for a family newspaper, he seemed surprised that she'd noticed; page three, he explained, was always like that. Elizabeth thought that it was quite hypocritical of Cameron to quibble about a figure of speech and then to drag girlie pictures into the house every day without giving it a second thought. British morals, she decided, were not what she would call consistent.
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