by David Ashton
And not been seen since.
Now he was.
Seen.
‘He’s no wearing his hat,’ observed Hannah. ‘And his heids a’ flat.’
‘You mean the hair?’
‘Aye. Pomade it must be.’
‘Pomade?’
‘Or he fell in a cow pat.’
One of the peacocks approached and, instead of his usual practice of booting the bird out of sight, McLevy allowed it to peck ineffectually at his foot before moving on.
The policeman did rehearse a kick but did not follow through.
‘Oh, I see his hat,’ Hannah announced. ‘In his hand.’
‘Whit else?’
‘My Goad. His fusker’s gone!’
‘Thank the Lord. How does he look?’
‘Younger. Ugly as hell though.’
Hannah was further puzzled by something, while Jean had a thought gnawing at her like a harvest mouse.
‘He’s awfy tidy dressed. Wedding or funeral maybe?’
‘Clean shirt?’
‘Looks like so.’
‘Tie?’
‘Purple.’
‘Hannah?’ Jean spoke with a queasy belly. ‘You don’t think he’s come . . . calling?’
‘How the hell would I know?’
‘Is he holding flowers?’
‘No. Not even a pee-the-bed.’
‘Go and ask him.’
‘Whit?’
‘What he wants!’
Some time later, James McLevy, like an ill-farrant Narcissus, regarded his reflection in the pond that housed Jean’s loitering tropical fish.
Although it was a fine day and the sun was shining, these piscine shirkers lurked obstinately at the bottom, keeping their bright colours to themselves.
There was no wind, so he had no escape from his watery image. The only ripples were the near-healed bumps and lumps on his face.
Hannah had arrived and departed with his request to Jean, muttering to herself like a harbinger of doom.
The inspector’s mind rolled back to Doctor Seward Ramsay. In his consulting room the fierce little man, tufted eyebrows, mouth like a snapping turtle, did not spare the inspector from his withering verdict.
‘You’re a damned fool to yourself. Who was that fellow you saw in Glasgow?’
‘Alexander Pettigrew.’
‘The man’s mistaken. There is nothing wrong with your heart. This is the problem!’
Ramsay emptied the iron coffee mug by hammering it out on a spread newspaper.
After the exhilaration of the case being solved, McLevy had begun experiencing the shafts of pains again, as if the frenetic activity had merely kept them at bay.
He had sworn Ballantyne to silence and sent the boy to ask his mother for a medical man recommended.
Ramsay was her choice.
Close-mouthed, diligent, sharp as a tack.
The wee man had given the inspector a worse going over than the effigy’s cane, found nothing, then honed in on what went down the McLevy gullet.
The tavern fodder was indeed a heavy load and the irregularity of his meals another, but when McLevy described his late night slurping, Ramsay demanded that he bring in the implements concerned.
And there on the newspaper were great wodges of flaked iron, some smaller versions of which had reappeared in the tin mug, itself a crusted bearer of ill fortune.
‘That is poison!’
Ramsay tapped the pile of ferrous cartilage.
‘Going into your guts on a regular basis. God knows how your digestive system had coped, but that’s the source of your pain!’
The little man screwed up the paper and threw it into a wastebasket, along with pot and mug.
‘Now – Pettigrew was right in one thing – improve the way you live or you’ll die like a dog!’
Jean’s image appeared beside his own in the water – all dolled up with a concoction on her head that might have been a hat or some French meringue.
He looked circumspectly at her footwear, the latest fashion no doubt but –
‘Are we not taking my carriage?’ she demanded.
‘I thought we’d go on the saunter.’
‘Whit’s the destination?’
‘Princes Street.’
‘We can take the coach and walk the length.’
He nodded at a sensible compromise, shoved his bowler onto a newly flattened head and crooked an elbow in habitual fashion that more suggested arrest than affection.
She slid her arm through his, opened up her parasol and they walked to the iron gates as the carriage drew up with the giant Angus sitting dourly atop.
Jean was still testing the boundaries.
‘Ye don’t mind the carriage being open?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Ye don’t mind being seen wi’ me – a woman of easy virtue?’
‘Virtue – where does that bide?’
‘So you don’t mind?’
‘I wouldnae hae asked ye for high tea else.’
He helped her up and in, followed suit and the carriage disappeared down the street.
The big fish were unconcerned – only the shadow of a heron would provoke them to movement.
The peacocks’ impossibly small heads all whipped round as the back door disclosed Lily Baxter and Maisie Powers with their mid-afternoon provender.
Hannah watched for a moment from the window, then stumped out to the top of the stairs inside and bawled out a message to one and all.
‘I hope you girls are fit for purpose this coming night, because we have a bawdy-hoose tae run!’
Chapter 55
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences.
Robert Ingersoll, Some Reasons Why
As the carriage rattled along at a leisurely pace towards Leith Walk to turn up for Princes Street, Jean made a covert study of the man sitting opposite. He could have sat by her side, of course, but that might be too much to expect.
Hannah was right, the absence of moustache gave a less careworn look and uncovered the full lips that sat somewhat strangely with a battered exterior.
His eye had near healed up, but both optics were trained on the passing vista and did not meet hers.
Ye wouldnae call the man ugly though, just . . . not all at once immediately prepossessing.
‘I have some news for you, James,’ she murmured. ‘Sim Carnegie?’
‘Uhuh?’
Now she had his attention.
‘He welshed on his debts and is no longer in the city.’
‘With luck on a fish cart tae Stranraer, given the boys he owed the money.’
‘That’s always possible.’
‘Wi’ a nine-eyed-eel stuck up his backside.’
‘I hope the fish doesn’t mind,’ said Jean demurely.
They exchanged a smile, but any further intimacy was shattered by the advent of a hansom cab that went hurtling past them, piled to the gunnels with luggage, and containing three people also laden with the detritus of travel.
Angus let out a curse and the man in the open cab abruptly rose to his feet, balancing precariously, and waved a large, velvet hat.
Stevenson having the last word as usual, with Fanny grasping firmly to the sides, and her son holding onto the sliding chaos of cases.
‘We are late for the train,’ called Robert Louis. ‘I doubt they will delay. Goodbye, goodbye!’
He fell back with a peal of laughter as the cab picked up speed and just as suddenly was gone, scattering all in its wake, heading for Waverley Station.
Both Jean and McLevy lifted their hands in farewell.
‘The man’s a menace,’ said the inspector.
‘He leaves his mark,’ was the cryptic response.
It was the last time Stevenson saw his beloved, intractable city – the writer never returned and died seven years later in Samoa of cerebral haemorrhage.
The last sentence he wrote in the unfinished Weir of Hermiston might well ha
ve described his death.
‘It seemed unprovoked, a wilful convulsion of brute nature . . . ’
The last word.
As usual.
They disembarked the carriage in Princes Street and Jean, more naturally this time, slipped her hand through his crooked arm as they walked in the mid-afternoon sunshine.
It might have been her imagination, but folk seemed to turn and at times downright gawk as they made their passage.
Were they all that well known – the Thieftaker and bawdy-hoose keeper?
McLevy seemed oblivious and whistled absent-mindedly under his breath – ‘Charlie is my Darling, the Young Chevalier’.
Half way down Princes Street was an establishment called Miss Lavinia’s Tea Room, and it was there McLevy guided them.
Jean had been inside once before with Hannah, but both women found it too knabby.
‘Hoachin’ wi’ genteelity,’ was the Semple verdict.
Again this did not seem to perturb the inspector, as a dainty little waitress shimmied towards them.
‘Would Sir and Madam desire a table?’ she asked in affected tones.
‘Sir and Madam would,’ replied McLevy; then as the waitress turned to survey the room that was three quarters full of women with various lap dogs, he added, ‘Do I not know you?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nettie Burns! Your mother, you’re the spitting image. How is she these days?’
‘She – she – very well. She lives with my brother now.’
‘Oh, that’s nice. Give her my regards. James McLevy, Inspector of Police.’
He had raised his voice slightly and the discreet hum of the tearoom dropped a notch as the inhabitants gauged the social standing of these two strange arrivals.
Jean, for the few who did not know her profession or reputation, cut an acceptable if exotic figure in her finery, but McLevy, pomade and purple tie notwithstanding, was like a hairy animal in his heavy overcoat.
They were led to a corner table, but he would have none of it.
‘That’s too pokey, hen,’ he boomed, as if to an old family friend. ‘There’s the mission!’
He pointed at a table right in the centre of the room, underneath one of the hanging lamps.
Prime position.
And soon after, there they sat in all their glory, cakes and coffee even though it was high tea.
But tea was not a taste they shared.
Jean did the honours, pouring what looked like a gey spleuterie offering from the coffee pot.
McLevy surprised her by adding only three lumps of sugar to the weak mixture.
She picked out a French cake and he a decent slice of gingerbread.
‘Nettie Burns?’ asked Jean.
‘A cleaner at the station. Nice wee woman.’
They drank and munched as one of the lap dogs, a Cairn terrier, sneaked out from below its table and approached, hopeful of fallen crumbs.
‘Hamish?’ called the owner. ‘Come back to Mummy!’
McLevy recognised the woman from the park; Hamish recognised the inspector and scuttled back to safety.
His mind shot back to that moment in the church when he tried to hold the killer from hurtling to his death.
The inspector wiped at his face with a napkin as if the effigy had just spat straight in.
‘Awfy nice in here, eh?’
Jean made no reply – she was acutely conscious of sly glances and whispered behind-the-hand remarks aimed in her direction; and though she would usually brush these off with contempt, for some reason her hackles were rising.
‘What do you want, James?’
‘Me?’
‘You.’
‘Me?’
‘You – you aye want something.’
McLevy considered. He’d risen that morning after a straight six hours sleep without a besom rider to haunt his dreams, noted it was his day off, decided to shave away the moustache and then spiffed himself up.
Next thing he knew, he was in the garden of the Just Land.
With high tea on the agenda.
‘What do you want, James?’
McLevy considered once more.
What did he want?
‘Your company,’ he answered finally.
Jean sighed. He’d get round tae the truth eventually.
Or was such the truth?
‘D’ye remember,’ McLevy said suddenly, ‘when you lost that pearl necklace?’
Jean winced. She had fallen most inappropriately in love and the man concerned not only had a woman on the side but they were both swindlers.
They swindled her. Like a fool.
And the necklace was beyond price.
‘I near droont myself getting it back for you.’
‘Ye were after him for something else. The pearls were incidental!’
‘I still endit up near droont.’
‘And who brought coffee and sugar biscuits to your sick bed?’
Jean swirled her cup disparagingly.
‘Better brew than this peely-wally rubbish.’
McLevy, now launched, would not turn back.
‘What about when you were in the frame for murder – who got you out of that?’
‘The guilty party had knifed three people and thrown acid over one of my girls.’
‘So?’
‘So you were after him for something else!’
McLevy chewed resolutely on his gingerbread, but she was not finished either.
Women rarely are.
Finished.
‘And what about when you were shot in the belly? Who gave you the wee bit of paper where to find the man?’
‘You did. Inside a rotten apple, though.’
‘It wasnae rotten. Jist soft!’
In her vigorous response, the shawl-neck of her dress had separated and he saw to his surprise that she was wearing the very same pearl necklace. He also noted the lingering scar left by the silver cane, just above her collarbone.
His healing eye ached all at once.
‘Whit’s the matter wi’ your face?’
‘I was just thinking. One way or another, we’ve been battered tae buggery right enough.’
‘True,’ said Jean thoughtfully. ‘No mercy.’
They looked at each other in silence before he pronounced judgement.
‘Whit a pair of shipwrecks, eh?’
McLevy’s aggrieved expression suddenly struck her as very comical and Jean began to laugh.
He looked even more aggrieved and this provoked a further explosion.
It must be said that her laughter was not at all ladylike. In fact it could have been mistaken for that of a tarry-breeks on the randan.
Whatever, it set McLevy off and he began to whoop in that odd fashion that always had an edge of menace.
The little waitress started to panic at the racket and darted into the kitchen, returning at speed, accompanied by the eponymous Miss Lavinia – a tall bony woman with lantern jaw and sour disposition.
It put McLevy in mind of someone he knew only too well.
‘God Almighty,’ he muttered. ‘It’s the lieutenant in a bustle and corset.’
Off they went again into howling laughter and the tight-arsed, purse-lipped Edinburgh tearoom was shaken to the core, as if two lions had escaped from the zoo.
Then just as suddenly, they both stopped.
Jean because something had struck her deeply, and McLevy’s reason being that he had spotted Mulholland’s face gazing in through the window like a man staring into a goldfish bowl.
The inspector muttered some excuse and made his way to the outside street.
‘How did ye know I was here?’ he asked, with no discernible trace of cordiality.
‘I approached your landlady and she said you had enquired of her after a decent tearoom. This was her recommendation.’
McLevy nodded. That made sense. But why was the constable chasing to his lodgings and furthermore looming over him in Princes Street?
‘Daniel Drummond,’ said Mulholland.
‘Whit of him?’
‘Bad blood between himself and Gregor Gillespie – leader of the Scarlets.’
‘A’ that stuff is over now.’
‘Not for them. A duel. Foils. Early this morning.’
‘But Drummond’s a champion!’
‘So it proved. Straight through the lungs. Gillespie’s at the hospital in a bad way.’
McLevy stroked where his moustache used to be.
‘You deal with it,’ he said.
‘I just thought since you’d been involved – ’
‘Is Drummond in the cells?’
‘He knows them well by now.’
‘You and the lieutenant sort the thing. It’s my day off.’
Mulholland looked past him into the tearoom where Jean sat in isolation.
‘Right enough. I’ll be on my way.’
And without more ado, his lanky frame strode like a giraffe down the street and out of sight.
McLevy thought for a moment about the look in Jessica’s eyes as she talked about her brother, and the darkness he had sensed in the young man’s soul.
Darkness will out.
Back he went and sat down.
‘Crime,’ he remarked. ‘Never at peace.’
‘What was it?’
‘Jist the usual. Could ye pour me another of that shilpit coffee?’
She did so.
He added three more sugar lumps and slurped noisily through his teeth.
Jean winced, but at least she was spared that drookit moustache.
‘So,’ she announced. ‘You desired my company?’
‘Uhuh.’
‘Well, you have it on hand.’
‘That I do.’
There was a long silence between the two while the tearoom babbled with exchanged inanities.
Her thoughts went back to when she’d been looking at Cupid in the garden and McLevy had asked her a question that had stopped her dead.
God knows what he’d been going through at the time, but she was buggered if she’d ask him about it now.
However Jean did have another subject in mind.
‘What about us, James?’ she asked quietly.
‘What about what?’
‘You know what I mean!’
He took a deep breath and named the unnamable.
‘Ye mean love, Jeanie?’
The wee dog Hamish lifted a sly leg under the table and urinated on the hem of his mistress’s garment.