He then stepped out and I could hear his group of guards swiftly leaving the house. Again I had the feeling of witnessing a dream.
‘He did not even ask whether I accepted the task or not!’ I said after a brief silence.
Sir Charles chuckled after a sip of brandy. ‘He doesn’t have to; he is the prime minister. Besides, you would be a fool not to take on the case. There is a good chance this will redeem your career: more than one Frey will be glad to know that you have been given an assignment by the PM himself and … who knows? If you do well, maybe that will also change the mind of a certain Miss Ferrars …’
The name came so unexpectedly that I blushed like a ripened tomato. ‘How do you – how do you –’ I cleared my throat, realizing how high-pitched my voice had come out. ‘Sir Charles, that is horribly forward. Even my father does not know yet!’
Sir Charles grinned. ‘I have far-reaching ears, Frey … and many!’
‘It only relieves me to have you on my side …’ I gulped the rest of my brandy and sat properly behind the desk. ‘I will be reinstated in London if I succeed, will I not? I would expect at least that!’
Sir Charles turned his head towards me. The gaslight accentuated the deep creases on his face; he seemed terribly tired. ‘That depends solely on Lord Salisbury, Frey. Even though he asked for my help, I am afraid I have no power to help you any more. You must do as instructed and hope for the prime minister’s favour.’
I cackled sardonically. ‘Let me evaluate my situation: I must go in shame to Scotchman-swarming Edinburgh, pretend to be part of a pathetic subdivision led by a hare-brained wretch that believes in fairies, break my back and brains chasing an elusive imitator of Jack the Ripper, all in utter secrecy … and if I succeed I may, may be able to come back … and if I am terribly lucky, resume my life at the point it had reached yesterday … Barely break even! ’
A deep silence followed. Sir Charles fiddled around with his empty glass, and I could only bite my lip at the unfairness of the situation.
‘It is a paradox,’ he said darkly, ‘that some of the most brilliant, noble people must struggle their entire lives just to keep the scum of humanity in line … those parasites with neither scruples nor brains that only live to suck from society like leeches. And in the end, even if our job is done at its best, the world will not have gained anything … only the chance to keep rolling on with its other usual troubles.’
That short speech summarized a lifetime of painful battling. Sir Charles had worked for the police for years, so he must have spoken from his very core. I could but wonder whether my own spirits were destined to end up like his. The one thing that was infuriatingly clear was that I had no choice; I had to do as I’d been told.
‘I will regret this,’ I whispered, dismayed as never before. ‘I will go up to Scotland and will do whatever is necessary … although I know I will regret it.’
Sir Charles showed a weary smile and spoke in a conciliatory, rather fatherly tone. ‘Perhaps … but look on the bright side: you will have done what is best for the greater good.’
I stretched my arm to grab the bottle and help myself to a second drink.
‘A pox on the greater good …’
Blood! I hate blood!
And how he squealed! Like one o’ those slaughtered pigs!
Thinks I’m a bug, like the rest thinks. Like those that treat me like a beast …
They will all see … yes, they will all repent …
6
‘But sir, you cannot leave!’
‘And I will need more overcoats, especially the thicker ones, but those are in my wardrobes at Hyde Park Gate. Here, you can fetch them from my father’s with this note.’
‘I have worked for you for more than four years! You give me notice just like this? What will I do now?’
‘You will see that my belongings arrive safely in Edinburgh, Joan,’ I said, trying to distract her from the bleak facts. ‘That shall give you some occupation for another few days, and once you deliver everything I will give you a settlement generous enough to keep you afloat for a few months.’
‘Oh, but Mr Frey, what’ll become of me after that? I’m a poor old widow; nobody will want to give work to these weak bones!’
I let out a cackle, doing my best to raise her spirits. ‘Joan, who are you trying to deceive? You are a sturdy spud! And I will give you a fine testimonial to make sure you find employment very soon.’
‘But sir –!’ She sighed and dropped her arms, her shoulders hunched in misery.
I felt terribly guilty. I bemoaned losing prestige and a sweetheart, but my misfortunes were nothing compared to Joan’s; she was now losing the only income that guaranteed bread on her table.
‘If your situation becomes very ugly,’ I said, ‘you may contact Elgie. He will let me know straightaway and we shall do everything we can to help you. Is that all right?’
Joan nodded in silence, only a little less distressed, but I could not think of any other ways to console her. She gathered the notes I’d given her and left the study.
Poor Joan had found me in a deplorable state that morning: dark rings around my eyes, my clothes creased and a pile of letters on my desk, ready to be sent. I had not slept at all in order to sort out my sudden departure for Scotland, and only when I saw her appalled expression did I realize that I had not changed my clothes either. I was still wearing the same suit that had seen me sacked from the CID, assailed by the insolence of my brother Laurence, and jilted by Eugenia, before walking home at night to have my future turned upside down yet one more time. My head felt dizzy with the realization that all this mess had occurred in just one day … I was oblivious of the still longer days that awaited me.
Despite my efforts, I failed to catch the day’s Scotch Express, which would have taken me from King’s Cross to Edinburgh in less than nine hours. I missed it by a matter of minutes and was left standing at the platform, irate and grunting the finest selection of vulgarities in the English language. One of the station’s clerks, seeing my frustration, advised me to travel by sea; I could navigate down the Thames and reach Edinburgh’s Leith Harbour the following morning.
As water transportation was slowly being relegated to moving goods, it took me some effort to find an appropriate ship. After some inquiries I found a small boat with two separate cabins for passengers. It looked pitiful, its hull corroded, but at least I would enjoy some privacy.
Stepping onto the deck was one of those moments that remain in one’s memory, for ever as fresh as if it had occurred only seconds ago. I can still picture myself clambering aboard in the busy London dockland, wrapped in my thickest overcoat and carrying a heavy suitcase in each hand. I cast a last glance at London and its jungle of smoking chimneys. Ahead of me were the brown, choppy waters of the Thames, about to carry me to situations that I could never have foreseen, either in my wildest dreams or in my darkest nightmares.
I hesitated for a moment, with a foot on the gunwale, and was tempted to forget about the whole thing. I even began to turn for the safety of Hyde Park Gate. However, an invisible force would not let me. I shivered, and that sudden coldness brought me back to my senses. And then I boarded, muttering, ‘From here to Hell …’
The journey, though short, was a torment. Not only because of the rundown steamer that kept bouncing on the waters almost like a pebble on a pond, but also because of my dreadful state of mind.
Lying on the hard bed and staring at the cracked ceiling, suddenly everything in my life seemed dull. Why should I fight for anything at all? Why even bother to travel all the way to Scotland? This second Ripper might turn out to be as evasive as the first one. What if this other rascal fooled me too? Then again, even if I succeeded, there was no guarantee I would be reinstated.
That seeming lack of purpose was a horrible, hollow feeling in my chest. I had felt like that once before, when I left the School of Medicine in Oxford. Following on the heels of my failure to complete a law degree at Cambridge, it s
till aches to remember how defeated I felt. It had not been that the lessons or practices overwhelmed me; I liked learning anatomy and all its intriguing Latin names, researching diseases and their symptoms, and I particularly enjoyed the intuitive skills needed for diagnostics – even back then I could not suppress my inner detective.
Nevertheless, everything changed after the unfortunate dissection of a woman’s body, snatched from a graveyard (all the bodies that we used in the faculty were obtained illegally, but both the scholars and the police turned a blind eye). Only when we cut her open did we find that she had been pregnant. It was shocking for me to find the foetus’s little hand inside its mother. I will never forget the sight of those fingers, tiny yet perfectly formed, with its nails the size of grains of salt. And then the professor became crazily enthused, explaining the mechanics of the uterus and the pregnancy, before dissecting the baby to show how wonderfully formed the organs already were. It was not simply a gory or sickening image, but disturbing in a completely different way: it was heartbreaking. I knew then that I would never be a good doctor … or even a bad one. Perhaps I could have managed, but I am sure that the profession would have eaten me slowly. Not two months passed before I was back at home, re-immersed in my aimless existence. Then the CID saved me and gave me purpose again … but just as easily it had taken it all away. I had appreciated my job at Scotland Yard more than I’d thought and, as usually happens, only realized it when all was lost.
I kept rolling on the bed with those poisonous thoughts, but there is only so much the mind can take, and I finally fell asleep. When I woke up, a few hours later, it was still dark, the boat still bouncing on fierce waves. I tried to sleep again but it was hopeless, so I decided to make good use of my time. Sir Charles had given me a thin file with a briefing on McGray and the case, and also the ‘official’ paperwork dealing with my transfer.
I first found a brief report on McGray’s new subdivision. And I call it ‘McGray’s’ because the county of Edinburgh and Leith had given that oaf absolute autonomy over it. The subdivision was actually called ‘Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly’ – I have not enough breath to read it in one go.
Procedure stated that, should any investigation remain unsolved beyond a given period of time, Inspector McGray would have full access to all files and testimonies. He would determine whether a case was of a ‘ghostly’ nature and should be further investigated with an ‘unorthodox’ approach.
It was logical that only a handful of cases would trickle through the local CID and make it to McGray’s – or our – jurisdiction. Indeed, the division had only two active cases besides my present special commission. One was a supposedly haunted house in which a woman had gone mad for no apparent reason; the other was an investigation on – I cringe just from writing it – will-o’-the-wisps reported in the Old Calton Cemetery. It looked like the subdivision had been around for a while, rather than having been suddenly created as a smokescreen for the mock Ripper. I thought that perhaps the files had been purposely miswritten to give that impression; if not, it was unbelievable that the county’s funds were being spent on that nonsense. Then again, the entire thing had been conceived and managed by Scottish scoundrels.
The captain announced that we were already close to Leith so I put all the papers back in the folder. Then I noticed, clipped to the last page of the file, a note written in a hurried hand that I recognized as Sir Charles Warren’s:
You will have to stay at McGray’s place for the time being. 27 Moray Place. Your permanent accommodation will be arranged in no more than a fortnight.
‘Wonderful …’ I grunted.
The city was being lashed by torrential rain that turned everything into blurry splodges. The place must have been at least five degrees colder than London, for I shivered as soon as I stepped off the steamer.
Walking from the dock, I found that Leith Harbour was a din of seagulls, seamen, steamers and coaches, almost as busy as any dock on the Thames. As I enveloped my hands in leather gloves and opened my umbrella, I felt utterly out of place: a spotless black suit amidst a crowd of loaders and fishwives. From all directions came cries in that Scottish accent that rolls the R in an even more disgusting way than the Irish. Just when I thought of it, two coarse men in kilts came my way, trying to pull a stubborn ox and swearing in the foulest form of disfigured language. A gust of cold wind and rain hit us, and I only pitied them their bare, hairy legs.
A young chap approached me and offered to carry my luggage. I gave him a penny and asked him to take me to a reliable driver. With agile movements, the boy dodged the men and the ox and I lost sight of him. For one second I thought that he had stolen my suitcases, but then the men managed to move the beast and I saw that the boy had stopped a small cart for me.
I jumped onto the back seat and received my luggage. The driver, a slender man who lacked all his front teeth but one, spoke to me with a well-modulated accent. He must have been used to dealing with foreigners. ‘Where to, master?’
I produced the file and searched for Warren’s note. ‘Erm … Twenty-seven Moray Place.’
He immediately showed a toothless grin. ‘Nine-Nails McGray’s house!’
I arched my eyebrows as the fellow set off.
We rode through a wide avenue, ascending a soft slope. Edinburgh is set on an undulating terrain, and the first summit I found ahead was Calton Hill. I looked at my left-hand side, expecting to have a view of the other hills of the city, but the weather was appalling. All I could see of Edinburgh Castle was a grey silhouette delineated against a white sky, surrounded by fog just as the jagged peak of Arthur’s Seat was.
On my left-hand side I saw the entrance to the Old Calton Cemetery, and wondered whether McGray would make me go there at night to hunt will-o’-the-wisps. Descending from Calton Hill we entered a very elegant neighbourhood: grand Georgian mansions on both sides of the street, with impeccable granite and sandstone walls.
‘ ’Tis the New Town, master,’ the driver told me.
After a while we turned right and went through a short street called Forres, which led us into a wide crescent. In its centre there was a neat garden with a few benches and narrow footpaths traced geometrically on the bright grass.
The circus was flanked by magnificent Georgian houses, all of them four storeys high. I noticed a fine carriage carrying a couple away, but other than that the place was pleasantly quiet. Remarkable since we were within two hundred yards of the busy main roads.
Moray Place was, after all, very well situated in the sumptuous New Town of Edinburgh. I could only let out a sigh of relief; for a while I had thought that I would be dwelling in the overcrowded, grubby medieval lodgings of the infamous High Street.
Just when I thought that I had made it to a nice neighbourhood, the cart passed in front of a house with several windows bricked up, and not because the place was empty or abandoned. It had all started in 1696, with the introduction of the window tax. Edinburghers, unwilling to pay, went for the utterly tasteful alternative of walling up their windows. Not content with that, and to make even more of a statement against the government, people left the window frames intact, as if saying ‘we did have windows here, but will do anything to go against your stupid taxes.’ The very façades of Edinburgh had thus become an anti-English flag.
I brought a dismayed hand to my brow when I saw another granite townhouse with half its windows blocked out with the most disgraceful red brick. The tax matter was more than a century old and the tax itself had been repealed more than thirty years since – yet these people had not even attempted to restore their houses.
That could only remind me that I should not be fooled. Refined and stately as the place looked, it was far, far away from the world I was used to. This was Scotland.
My toothless coachman drove around the circus and halted in front of number twenty-seven.
‘Nine-Nails McGray’s residence, sir,’ he announced.
> It was not the grandest house in the circus, its façade only three windows wide, and right on a corner, but there was a certain charm to it (the fact that all its windows remained intact was certainly an important factor).
I climbed down from the cart and knocked on the oak door. As I waited, I had a closer look. It seemed like a well-kept place; clean windows with white frames, through which I saw green velvet curtains.
Nobody answered the door and the rain was beginning to dampen the hem of my trousers, so I had to knock again. The driver brought my suitcases. ‘No one in the house?’ he asked.
‘There must be at least a blasted housekeeper!’ I grunted, knocking much harder than before.
I was not finished banging when a coarse voice shouted: ‘I’m coming, hold your bloody horses! ’ A moment later an old man opened the door. ‘Whit’s so fuckin’ urge–’
He shut his mouth as soon as he saw me. The man was rather short, with jutting cheekbones and a round nose; untidy locks of grey hair grew only on his temples. He was wearing a stained apron and clenched a greasy rag in his hand. Even though the man had a reddened face, as if he’d just come out of a steam room, the colour faded away in a second.
‘I’m sorry, sir! I didn’t know who was calling!’
‘Save the apologies,’ I replied dryly. ‘My name is Ian Frey. I am looking for Inspector Adolphus McGray.’
The Strings of Murder Page 5