Nor Will He Sleep

by David Ashton

  McLevy nodded and turned unfriendly eyes back to Hannah as if he blamed her for all that had befallen.

  Or was it a dark figure in her own mind pointing the long finger?

  ‘Tell me the story,’ McLevy said.

  Hannah took a breath – as the images flashed through her head, she looked like the old crone in the fairy tale who has bad news for the hero.

  ‘Thank God Lily and Maisie were out in the garden last thing tae feed the peacocks. Jean’s window crashed through, a bottle landit at their feet. A wee perfume glass.’

  McLevy did not respond. Mulholland removed his helmet in the heat and filled the gap.

  ‘Not a usual occurrence?’

  ‘By God, no. They came in howlin’ blue murder, we ran up the stairs, I had my razor, in the door and she was – she was – the mistress was a terrible sight.’

  The old woman caught her breath as the picture of Jean’s crumpled body imprinted itself once more.

  McLevy’s face was like stone.

  ‘The killer? What about the killer?’

  ‘Jumped out the window jist afore we came in. A high distance up. I hoped the swine would break his neck but no – across the wet grass, shinned up the wall lik’ a monkey.’

  ‘Check for footprints. Soft earth below that wall.’

  Mulholland nodded assent to the terse instructions.

  ‘The killer. Did ye catch a look? Would you know him again?’

  Hannah shook her head. The constable had never seen her look so anguished and forlorn.

  ‘A pale coat. A stick. He turned top o’ the wall and waved it goodbye. I’ll swear the bastard was smiling!’

  ‘The face?’

  ‘White. Painted white. I couldnae make out a thing.’

  She added this to the list of failure – guilt attracts such dark thoughts.

  As the heat rose, the inspector finally removed his low-brimmed bowler.

  ‘I’ll need tae see her.’

  ‘She’s no’ supposed tae talk much.’

  ‘I’ll look in anyway.’

  ‘No’ much tae see. A’ bandaged up.’

  ‘Nevertheless. A witness.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

  ‘A material witness.’

  Hannah stuck her face pugnaciously into the inspector’s, all remorse forgotten, glad of the chance to let rip, and who is to say that McLevy in his perverse way was not offering her the chance?

  This thought occurred to Mulholland as Hannah accepted what was in no way an olive branch.

  ‘Ye’re a miserable swine, McLevy, and for two pins I’d roast ye in this kitchen like a hog on hellfire, but – ’

  A memory of Jean’s last whispered command echoed in her mind.

  You will admit one person and one person only.

  ‘For some reason, she wants to see you. God knows why. A mystery tae me. I’d rather have the pox onyday.’

  Silence, then McLevy walked out of the door, closing it quietly behind.

  Silence.

  ‘Oh here,’ Hannah delved into her pockets and passed a note to Mulholland. ‘I was supposed tae gie this tae Angus to hand in at the station this very morning.’

  ‘Before all hell broke loose, eh?’

  ‘Uhuh. It’s tae McLevy but you might as well open it. Ye’re one and the same.’

  The constable was not quite sure how to take this, but slipped open the note and read it in any case.

  The contents had some interest regarding Carnegie, but nothing immediate to the matter in hand.

  The matter in hand cut through everything.

  ‘If you can show me,’ remarked Mulholland, ‘where the killer scaled the wall?’

  ‘Near enough,’ replied Hannah. ‘I’ll get my heavy boots.’

  She departed also, and Mulholland was left alone in the kitchen, with the heat rising.

  Chapter 39

  Ah, none but I discerned her looks,

  When in the throng she passed me by,

  For love is like a ghost, and brooks,

  Only the chosen seer’s eye.

  Coventry Patmore, The Angel in the House

  The door creaked open and Jean opened one bleary eye. She had a large, prescribed amount of laudanum swirling around in her system; a powerful dosage that distanced pain, though one side effect was confused imaginings.

  Was this a hairy animal taking refuge in her bedroom?

  Lie still. Hope for the best.

  McLevy could see her red hair spread out on the pillow. The face seemed relatively untouched, but when he moved a little closer the inspector could see in the dimness, the curtains drawn and just one oil lamp emanating, white bandages swathed down the left-hand side of her neck.

  From the two corpses witnessed, he could imagine the livid welt on that milk and honey skin.

  What other wounds had she suffered?

  An irrational shaft of trespass stabbed him. He might have been on hand but no – there he was with another woman in his heart.

  Like a leech, guilt will attach to any movement of the blood.

  Jean opened the other eye and attained some purchase on the wavering image beside her bed.

  ‘Is that you, James?’ she whispered in a broken, harsh croak. ‘I thought it was a hairy beast.’

  ‘Not far wrong,’ he muttered.

  She signalled at a jug of water to the side and he hastened to pour from it into a tumbler and hold it to her lips.

  Jean sipped and groaned as the water trickled down her throat, then lay back on the pillow.

  McLevy replaced the tumbler and stood indecisively, before remembering he was an investigating officer.

  ‘How many times did he strike you?’

  ‘Twice. Lucky, eh?’

  ‘Ye don’t look lucky.’

  She laughed hoarsely, then coughed up a spasm of pain that had him shifting helplessly from foot to foot.

  ‘No jokes, James,’ she murmured. ‘Pain and pleasure. They don’t mix this day.’

  ‘Wisnae a joke. Jist . . . observation.’

  She said nothing and he glanced longingly at the jug of water.

  ‘Ye mind if I have a wee sook? That kitchen was like an inferno.’

  She closed her eyes in what McLevy took for assent and he saw that there was only the one tumbler. Of course he could slug it straight from the jug, but was that not lacking in sickroom etiquette?

  So he refilled the glass and slurped it back noisily in some confusion, while she kept her eyes shut and tried not to register the awful noise.

  Finally, when he was done, he replaced the tumbler, wiped the rim clean with a hankie, and then reached out a tentative finger towards the bandages at her throat.

  ‘Are they not too tight?’

  ‘They’re fine.’

  McLevy moved restlessly to the window and checked where it had been forced. Mulholland was right. Easy meat.

  ‘Ye should have better safeguard.’

  ‘Not many visitors. That entry.’

  ‘So he hid behind the curtains. Out he stepped. Made his move, eh? Out of the blue.’

  Jean nodded, eyes still closed.

  ‘Did ye not think to keek in case? Aye a good idea tae keek behind curtains.’

  A foolish statement that deserved no response.

  He twitched back the hanging to see Mulholland and Hannah by the garden wall. The constable clambered up and dropped over the other side, while Hannah looked back and scowled when she saw McLevy’s face at the window.

  One of the peacocks approached her and she scuffed her boot to send the bird scuttling back to its fellows, making a detour round the boy Cupid, who seemed short of things to do at this moment.

  McLevy returned to the bedside. With her eyes closed, he could look his fill at the wraithlike figure, and he experienced a weird lump in his throat, as some unexpected emotion welled up like a blister.

  Was it all his fault?

  Somehow.

  Feelings creep up on men and then j
ump out of the shadows like an assassin.

  ‘The second blow – where?’

  Her eyes snapped open to find his close scrutiny.

  ‘Are you gawking at me?’

  ‘Whit the hell else am I supposed to do – where did he strike?’

  She licked dry lips and he quickly pulled a hand-kerchief from his inside pocket, dipped it in the jug, then dabbed it across her mouth.

  ‘It’s clean this morning,’ he announced. ‘The hankie.’

  Jean smiled wanly for a moment, then her face changed as she relived the last blow.

  ‘He turned me over. To hit me down the front. I saw the cane jump. Silver. Turned away. Got it in the back.’

  Salve and laudanum had numbed the agony, but she still felt it burning down her spine.

  ‘The doctors said – if he’d hit me. Front. It would have been a whole lot worse. Bad enough.’

  ‘Did he . . . touch you at all?’

  A shaft of dark humour entered her eyes, pupils inflamed with the ordeal.

  ‘Ye mean – privately?’

  ‘Uhuh.’

  ‘He ripped my gown. Left me naked. But that was just – for the blow.’

  She began coughing again, shuddering as her body registered the memory of that cruel invasion; he poured more water and offered up the tumbler but she shook her head.

  James McLevy, nursemaid. Didnae fit somehow.

  The hairy beast spoke through a thick moustache.

  ‘Then you must have seen him, eh?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His face. You saw his face.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘If ye saw the cane, ye saw the face!’

  Whatever thrawn compassion had been in his eyes was replaced by a look of fierce intent.

  Of course it might be to avenge her, but more likely it was just a policeman on the trail.

  And now he had a live victim.

  For some reason her eyes brimmed up, so she closed them again. Tears get you nowhere.

  ‘I saw little. Face – white. A phantom. Never still. Only the eyes. Like the devil.’

  ‘Devil – how?’

  ‘Hate. Nothing but hate.’

  The inspector was beginning to wonder if the man had some sort of refracting shield that blighted others’ vision.

  ‘If ye saw him again – would ye know that face?’

  ‘Not a hope.’

  ‘Even a wee bit?’

  ‘Not a hope.’

  A flat statement.

  Jean lay there with a curious sense of grim satisfaction. Bugger him. Hardly an ounce of sympathy did the man show, and anyway, it was the truth.

  The killer’s face swam before her, melting like jelly.

  Whereas McLevy’s was only too ugly and sticking out a mile. Thank God it was moving back, out of sight.

  He looked round the boudoir; it was all very feminine.

  Perfumed.

  What must it be like to live in perfume?

  The stink of death followed him like a black dog.

  ‘Why?’

  A quiet lethal question, unlike the rest.

  ‘Why whit?’

  ‘Why did he attack you, Jeannie – out of the blue? What had you done to provoke his wrath?’

  That was what she hated about the man, these changes! And whit did he look like? An ill-farrant Toby Jug or was that the laudanum talking?

  For the inspector was right.

  It was also the thought that had plagued her. Every time her body ached, every time she saw the silver cane above, the swimming, swirling vision of that melting face, eyes slanty with evil intent – why?

  Why?

  Even killers have their reasons.

  She pointed to a small drawer in the bedside cabinet, where the jug was standing on a copper tray.

  McLevy opened it to find a scrap of paper.

  ‘He left it behind. Keepsake maybe.’

  A page from the bible, again underlined with a score of the nail.

  Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father: but he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance.

  The inspector’s mind did not exactly leap to a conclusion, more gathered it in like part of a harvest.

  ‘When you rendezvoused with Stevenson, was it a public place?’

  ‘In the garden. The gazebo. Like yourself. Gentlemen callers.’

  ‘Open to all eyes, then?’

  ‘If you keek through the gates.’

  ‘Or hide across the street?’

  Was Robert Louis the key? Whit kind of maniac would kill you for having coffee wi’ somebody?

  Pain jagged into her thoughts as the laudanum began to lose effect – she’d need another dose, but damned if she’d do it in front of McLevy.

  ‘When you leave. Send Hannah up.’

  He seemed lost in deep thought and provided no kind of answer.

  It annoyed her for some reason, like the memory of their last meeting – the braw gallant, but not for her.

  ‘And for God’s sake get rid of that moustache. It’s an affright tae one and all.’

  She almost giggled, then winced as the pain flamed her neck and back.

  Again he made no answer, but reached out to her dressing-table mirror, where she had jammed a small crumpled photograph into one of the ornate fixings.

  ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘Night we shot the students. It cheers me up.’

  He looked at the image of a military man with his fragile son and law-abiding wife.

  ‘Mind if I take such?’

  ‘Is it a clue?’

  ‘Not material, I doubt.’

  She waved her hand wearily.

  ‘Please go now.’

  He moved to the door then, instead of opening the damned thing, spoke to the wooden panels.

  Whit the hell was the point of talking tae a door?

  In such solemn tones?

  ‘I swear to you, Jean Brash, that I will find this man and bring him to justice. I have no family, I have no kin; I have nothing except the law and I will bring it to bear.’

  Then he was out the room.

  In the silence, his words echoed in her mind.

  I have no family, I have no kin.

  Liquid welled up once more.

  Though as she knew to the bone – tears get you nowhere.

  And love is the very devil.

  Chapter 40

  Do wrong once, and you’ll never hear the end of it.

  Seventeenth-century proverb

  Robert Louis lay under the covers and shivered. This very morning, the funeral morning, as the house stirred and every floorboard creaked with intent to inter, the ague had struck like a hammer blow.

  One moment he had been half-listening to the scurry of various bodies as they sped through the house with a perfect entombment in mind – fingers twitching idly at a black but rather limp bow tie – and the next he had been jack-knifed towards the nearest privy, where he vomited copiously and then had to switch like lightning as the other orifice began to expel with the same velocity.

  Stevenson had called faintly for a bucket, lest both might join forces to leave him in perilous mid-stream. There ensued an acerbic, more than ridiculous conversation with Fanny, conducted through the privy door.

  His wife, not to put too fine a point on it, had deep suspicion that her beloved yet slippery husband was evading his filial responsibilities, but the sounds of what might have been a swamp emptying, with attendant odours, finally persuaded her that even his chameleon ability had limits.

  Stevenson had then spent an eternity of evacuation before tottering to his bed, a now anxious Fanny behind, an arm on Lloyd’s strong young shoulder, and had not budged an inch since.

  Was it the oysters from last night? He and Lloyd had consumed a dozen each, but the young man, admittedly the possessor of a cast-iron stomach, showed no sign of galvanic upheaval.

  Or was some virulent airborne messenger sent by one of his Brownies who sensed his deep
ambivalence, deeper as the event loomed, with regard to witnessing his father’s coffin being lowered into the earth, himself holding one of the ropes, with the eyes of the world upon him and a maelstrom of grief and anger in his breast?

  He had sought to provide an elaborate display of mourning – a hundred invited guests, carriages galore – but it was only an outward show.

  For two days his father had gazed at him and seen nothing, and for two days Stevenson had done the same.

  What do we see when we regard death in waiting?

  And what do we remember, as the child looks up and the father looks down?

  All those writhing thoughts and agonised doubts had been blown away to the four winds.

  He was now beset with bucket and basin, arranged round his bed like sentinels. Mercifully, the writer had expurgated his meagre breakfast, plus whatever remnants of food may have resided in his seething innards from the previous day, so all that was now left was what in common parlance was termed the dry boak. This consisted of retching to no great purpose, the stomach heaving with nothing to show for it.

  Some unkind Calvinist critics might describe authorship as such activity; those who root themselves in fundamental righteousness have their noses perpetually out of joint.

  The precipitous defecation had also ceased, though Robert Louis had discovered to his cost that the slightest sip of water rushed through his system like a mighty flood.

  A doctor had been summoned and prescribed a calming potion, but no sooner swallowed then it was spewed out like the Whale did Jonah, a tin bucket taking the place of biblical dry land, and had Stevenson the strength he would have emptied it over the damned quack.

  Meanwhile life went on for the dead.

  Servants were already ferrying out vast amounts of funeral meats and whisky for the eventual return of the sorrowful mourners. The house not being large enough, the wake was to be held in a nearby civic hall where sherry, port wine and ale linked up with John Barleycorn, and the tables were loaded to the brim with cold meats, pickles, cheese, hefty loaves of bread, cakes of all denomination, and funeral biscuits baked by the widow’s own hand. All of this based on the premise that there’s nothing like the filling of a grave to give folk a healthy appetite.

  This cornucopia for the sad at heart was guarded by beady-eyed butlers, some hired, some borrowed from neighbours, but all watchful that the help – also in the main hired – did not untimely reap the harvest of sorrow.