The Unbelievers

by Alastair Sim

  Despite the chill, Arthur felt a sweat break out all over him as the image flashed back into his mind of a previous time he’d been thrust into a dark, damp place by his brothers. When he was nine years old he’d told his mother that he’d seen William and Frederick pestering a maidservant. They had got their own back by holding him upside down in the well behind Dalcorn House, George looking on. He seemed to be back there now, seeing the far-off reflection of the water at the bottom of the well and hearing his own pathetic cries as he struggled helplessly. He remembered Frederick’s comment to William echoing down the well – ‘Get on with it’ – and the grip on one of his ankles being released. He didn’t know whether they’d have let him drop if a gardener hadn’t seen them. He felt dizzy and swaying. Josephine put her arm around him to stop him falling.

  “Arthur, I think you’re ill.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Pull yourself together, he thought. This is ridiculous. You can’t let yourself be weaker than a woman who’s just been widowed. Josephine’s touch seemed to transmit some strength and comfort to him.

  “Well, then,” grumbled Frederick. “Pray or something.”

  He mumbled his way through the ordained words to send William on his way to eternity, gasping for breath between the phrases. At last it was done. He half-ran past his brothers and finally breathed freely as he reached the open air.

  Farewell William, he thought. May God judge you as you deserve.

  But, standing shivering outside the mausoleum, death and hell seemed uncomfortably close to his own body and soul.

  Chapter 12

  Allerdyce stepped out of the Police Office into the thin grey drizzle, the sergeant at his side.

  It was curious how on a damp February day, even though most things looked duller and the spectrum of colour of the sky and the buildings ranged from drab to dun, the cobbles of Parliament Square had a bright oily sheen. Looking closely he could see prismatic spreads of colour on the cobbles, like a chromatography image, presumably from the coal fumes and other pollutants which were held in suspension in the filthy rain.

  He drew on his pipe and exhaled, looking at the statue in the middle of the square. In the misty dampness he could almost see the clouds of breath from the great bronze horse which pawed at its plinth between the classical façade of the law courts and the dark bulk of St Giles Cathedral, perpetually waiting for a command from the armoured figure of King Charles II which sat astride it.

  Two advocates in long scholars’ robes and white periwigs, holding parchments tied up with red silk, crossed the square in front of him, conferring quietly. A carriage rumbled over the cobbles and halted. Allerdyce saw the tall, gaunt figure of High Court judge Lord McLaren step down. Ahead of the carriage, the windowless ‘Black Maria’ van from the Calton jail was discharging shackled prisoners, men and women, with bowed heads and shuffling feet as they trooped into the court building in their heavy serge prison outfits.

  “Don’t fancy their chances much,” said the sergeant, “if they’re up before McLaren.”

  They emerged into the broad square, crowded with canopied market stalls, at the west side of St Giles. There appeared to be more stall-holders than customers, warming their hands and shouting an occasional desultory cry to passers-by to come and buy their fine sheet-music, straight from the music-halls of London, or the new cheap edition of Mr Dickens’ most popular works. A dancing bear was hauled briefly to its feet, groaning, as two ladies passed, before subsiding back to the damp cobbles.

  As they crossed the square a one-legged man emerged, on crutches, from between two stalls. He wore a Glengarry bonnet from which matted red hair stuck out underneath, a filthy red soldier’s jacket with no buttons left and braid that was hanging off by threads, and a kilt so worn and grey you could hardly make out the tartan.

  The man held out a tin cup and rattled the coppers in it.

  “Spare a few pence for an old soldier, gentlemen, crippled in Her Majesty’s service.”

  Allerdyce walked by, holding his breath against the stink of filth and whisky and brushing the man’s outstretched cup out of his way. He stopped and turned as he heard the sergeant’s stern voice.

  “Who are you?” asked the sergeant, looking down at the stunted veteran.

  “Private James McNeill, if it please.”

  “Your regiment?”

  “The 91st, Sergeant. Argyll Highlanders.”

  “Which company?”

  “Captain Ewart’s, sir.”

  “Stand to attention as you address a senior non-commissioned officer, Private McNeill.”

  The veteran attempted to stand straighter, his hands shaking on his crutches. The sergeant continued.

  “Where did you serve?”

  “Cape Colony, Mr Sergeant sir, the Crimea, India.”

  “Where are your medals?”

  “Pawned, Sergeant, to put some thin broth on my table and pay for my poor bed.”

  The sergeant’s face relaxed slightly.

  “Tell me, McNeill, if you were in Captain Ewart’s company you must have known a young private by the name of Aeneas McGillivray of Strath Naver.”

  The veteran knitted his brows for a second before giving a broad smile, exposing the rotting black stumps of his teeth.

  “Oh yes, Sergeant, I remember him well. A charming man, and most gallant.”

  “Were you with him when the Russians abandoned Sebastopol?”

  “I was, to be sure, Sergeant. He was a brave man that day. A true Highland hero.”

  McGillivray stood to attention. He slapped the veteran hard on the face. The veteran’s crutches scrabbled for grip on the slippery cobbles as he hopped sideways to maintain his balance.

  “Jesus, Sergeant, what was that for? That’s no way to treat an old comrade.”

  “You are a coward and an impostor, Mr McNeill. You have no title to the uniform which you disgrace.”

  Allerdyce’s shock at the sergeant’s violence held him back for an instant. He wondered whether the sergeant was about to kick the supposed veteran’s crutches from under him. He stepped forward to intervene, but McGillivray stood stock still as the cripple turned, spat on the cobbles, and swung away on his crutches.

  “What was that about, Sergeant?”

  “That man is a fraud, sir. He never served with Her Majesty’s armed forces.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The 91st don’t have kilts, sir. And the man had the temerity to claim to know my youngest brother, who served with the 93rd. He claimed to have been with my brother at the fall of Sebastopol, when poor Aeneas had been dead for seven months before that event.”

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant.”

  “I expect he bought old bits of uniform from a rag dealer and tried to learn enough about the regiment to pass himself off as an old soldier. We could arrest him, sir, for personation.” The sergeant looked towards the impostor, who was swinging his way towards the High Street.

  “Sergeant, we have murder to solve. Interviewing the deceased’s brother must take priority.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  They resumed their progress up towards the Castle, climbing up the broad slope of the Lawnmarket between the tall, thin frontages of the ancient six-and-seven storey tenements. The sergeant’s anger was barely visible, though Allerdyce thought there was still the faint trace of an unusual hardness in his face. He wondered for a moment whether he should caution the sergeant for striking the beggar, but supposed that breaches of military honour raised passions that mere civilians could never fully understand. They walked on in silence.

  They passed the spot in the Lawnmarket where, until so recently, public hangings had been carried out until they were removed to the discreet privacy of the death cell in the Calton Jail. Allerdyce paused as his mind saw again the abused thirteen-year-old-boy. He’d kicked and gasped at the end of the rope for ten minutes in front of a jeering crowd to try and hold onto a life that had given him so little. Allerdyce shuddered. At leas
t it was progress that the public were no longer able to watch that degrading spectacle.

  Passing the Gothic extravagance of the Tollbooth kirk, its spire and pinnacles already a sooty black barely twenty years after the Queen had laid the foundation stone, they mounted the steep wynd of Castle Hill.

  “Did you come across Brigadier Bothwell-Scott when you were in the army?” asked Allerdyce.

  “I was never favoured with a direct word from him, sir, but I knew him well enough by his actions in the Crimea.”

  “Such as?”

  “I regret, sir, he was not well regarded by the men. He was briefly in active command of our regiment and led us rather poorly.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was a shambles, sir. He led us up the heights at the River Alma. We couldn’t see the Russians but their shells were landing among us. Men next to me were falling with arms or heads blown off. When we got to the top we saw a line of Russian riflemen waiting for us. We were about to charge them when he told us to stop.”

  “Stop? Why?”

  “He’d mistaken them for the French. He thought they were our allies, and that they’d reached the heights already.”

  “What happened then?”

  “They fired straight into us, sir. We lost eighty good men before Sir Colin Campbell rode up and told Colonel Bothwell-Scott to hand over his command.”

  “You must have lost good friends.”

  “I did, sir. Unfortunately, that that was the least of the trouble we had from him. Having been removed from active command of soldiers in the field, he was made responsible for the distribution of supplies. Lord Raglan promoted him to the rank of Brigadier so that he didn’t feel humiliated.

  “It was in that capacity, sir, that he killed more men by neglect of his duty than he could ever have killed in battle.”

  As they passed the Ragged School they heard the rhythmic chanting of times-tables. McGillivray continued.

  “Sir Frederick’s entire challenge was organising the forces available to him so that supplies were unloaded from ships, transported to front lines which were no more than five miles distant from the harbour at Balaklava, and distributed according to need. He completely failed in this.”

  “We read in the newspapers that there were problems with supplies,” observed Allerdyce. “I don’t recall why it was so bad.”

  McGillivray looked grimly ahead, his jaw clenched. It was a moment before he spoke.

  “Thousands of men died because, we heard, the Brigadier was too drunk to do anything to organise the supplies. We heard he’d taken his removal from command very badly, and that he punished as insubordination any attempt by anyone else to remedy the situation. I don’t know the truth of that rumour, sir – all I know is that there were ships full of winter clothes and food lying rotting at anchor in Balaklava harbour with no-one stirring a finger to unload them. And when I think of my poor brother Aeneas dying of hypothermia in the sleet in the trenches before Sebastopol, I can’t help thinking that a woollen overcoat and a bowl of porridge would have been enough to keep him alive. It’s a bitter thought, sir, but it’s un-Christian of me to blame any one man.”

  Allerdyce looked at the sergeant. He wondered how much grief and resentment this proud, dutiful man was carrying. He felt sorry for having to bring the sergeant face-to-face with the man he held responsible for his brother’s death. But duty was duty, and had to be done.

  A young officer showed them into the Brigadier’s vast office in the Governor’s House of the Castle and left them waiting.

  The dark wood panelling was interrupted by paintings of old generals in various attitudes of disdain or anger, and lines of red-coated soldiers advancing into different eras of slaughter by sword, musket or artillery. The huge wooden desk supported a sword, laid lengthways on a stand, a decanter of whisky and a glass, and some papers. Behind the desk was a portrait of the unsmiling, heavily-moustached features of Brigadier Sir Frederick Bothwell-Scott sitting in full Highland dress as he scowled at the artist, and above that the glazed eyes of the stuffed-and-mounted head of a ten-pointer stag.

  Allerdyce sat drumming his fingers against the desk. He started to whistle gently – a banal little tune from his last visit to the music-hall that he couldn’t quite get out of his mind.

  At last the silence was broken by the muffled flushing of a water-closet. A few seconds later a hidden door opened in the panelling, to the right of the Brigadier’s portrait. The 8th Duke of Dornoch emerged, his red tunic undone, still fastening the fly buttons of his tartan trousers.

  “You must be the policemen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Know who did it yet?”

  “No. We’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Well, it bloody well wasn’t me so I don’t know what I can do for you.”

  The Brigadier sat down. He was the exact facial image of his portrait, except that the artist had not fully captured the broken veins and the redness of his complexion. He poured himself a whisky and sat back.

  “Sir,” asked Allerdyce, “do you have any idea who might have killed your brother?”

  “I’m not a bloody detective, am I? How should I know?”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have a particular resentment against him?”

  “You don’t get to a position of honour in society without people resenting you for it. But no, I can’t think of anyone who’d specifically want to murder him.”

  Allerdyce took an envelope out from the inside pocket of his jacket. He opened it and took out the telegram which had arrived on the afternoon of the Duke’s disappearance. He held it out to the Brigadier.

  “Does this mean anything to you, sir?”

  The Brigadier took it and, for a couple of seconds, appeared to have difficulty focussing on it before he read it out loud.

  “‘Mine all mine. Meet at the well at midnight.’”

  “So? Can you shed any light on the message, sir?”

  The Brigadier furrowed his brows and squinted again at the telegram. He turned it round, and turned it upside down, as if he could shake some truth out of it. At length he punched the air and seemed, for an instant, to smile.

  “I have it, gentlemen. It’s obvious.”

  “Is it sir?”

  “Well it is to me. I think I should be appointed to the detective force. I clearly have more aptitude for it than you gentlemen.”

  Allerdyce tried not to let his face reflect the insult. The Brigadier continued.

  “My brother’s body was recovered from a mine shaft, wasn’t it?”

  “We understood it to be a well, sir.”

  “You were not fully informed, then. The shaft in which my brother met his end is decorated as an ornamental well, and has water in it, but it was originally a mine shaft.

  “As you know, my family have substantial mining interests on our estates in Linlithgowshire. Some of the reserves have been worked for many centuries. The ‘well’ from which William was recovered was a mediaeval mineshaft – a bottle mine is the correct term I believe. The grounds at Dalcorn are riddled with these shafts, but that’s the only one that’s been kept open. A sort of memorial.”

  “So,” asked Allerdyce, “how does that lead us to the murderer?”

  “Think about mines, gentlemen. Is there anyone connected with the mines who has a resentment against my brother? I can think of one clear person.”

  “Who is?”

  “James Semple of the Amalgamated Fraternity of Scottish Miners. He’s the seditionist who led my brother’s miners out on strike when market forces meant he had to cut their wages. He got dismissed for it, of course, along with the other strikers and he and his family were thrown out of the company’s cottage. We made sure that every mineowner and factory-owner in Britain knew not to offer him employment. These were the wise precautions my brother had to take to avoid the spread of industrial sedition. Mutiny is mutiny, whether it’s in the army or in the mines. It’s only a shame that we ca
n’t blow the industrial mutineers from the cannons.”

  “So you think Semple would want to kill your brother for revenge?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Why do you think he would arrange to meet your brother at midnight, on your brother’s estate?”

  “I don’t know. Presumably you fellows can fill in the details. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “I think we might need some more evidence to be able to charge Mr Semple.”

  “Well, thrash it out of him then. That’s what we do in the army. And hang him quick. The worst you’ll have done is to rid the world of another verminous socialist. He’s got be punished for what he’s done.”

  Allerdyce shifted in his chair and flicked over another page of his notebook.

  “How has your brother’s death affected you, sir?”

  “What sort of a bloody impertinent question is that?”

  “Merely one asked from professional interest, sir.”

  “Well, it’s a bloody awful thing to happen isn’t it? But you get used to death in this job, and it isn’t all bad.”

  “Not all bad?”

  “I’m sorry for William, of course, but it’s been an upturn in my own fortunes. I’m getting a promotion out of this – the army thinks Dukes should rank at least as Major-Generals. And I can’t pretend that I don’t welcome having the entire revenues of the family’s properties.”

  “The entire revenues, sir? The late Duke made no provision for the Duchess in the event of his death?”

  “No. Why the hell should he leave anything to that fallow bitch?”

  Allerdyce lifted his eyebrows. The Brigadier continued.

  “My brother managed to avoid marriage for as long as he decently could. He’s a wise man – I’ve managed to avoid marriage entirely and I can’t say I feel any the worse for it. But William had the responsibility of perpetuating the family line hanging over him, as our mother reminded him more and more forcibly from year to year. She didn’t want the estates passing to a bastard or a stranger. So she ground into him the notion that he had to get married. She also harangued him to recognise the wisdom of marrying his cousin Josephine – she was the sole heir to the fortune which her side of the family had made in America. It would bring the money home to where it belongs.