He wrapped up warmly and left. The fog was so thick you could taste it, like plunging your head into cold sea water. Murray’s black weepers hung damp and limp down his back, and a dew settled dull almost immediately on his coat and gloves. Drawing air into his lungs felt unhealthy, as if it carried all the town’s smoke and filth and disease. He coughed, and from all around him there came a chorus, it seemed, of disembodied coughs, half-smothered by the fog. His mouth tasted salty.
Navigating chiefly by the varying slope of the streets invisible under his feet, he found his way at last to the entrance of Douglas’ stair, and discovered, by virtue of jarring his shins on it, a closed-up stall in the street that he could hide behind and still see anyone who came out through the door. There would be few people on a night like this able to see, let alone wonder at, a well-dressed gentleman in mourning lurking about the Lawnmarket. He propped himself against the worn stone wall, tried to ignore the general damp, and prepared to wait.
It was lucky that he had, as usual, left home too early. About a quarter of an hour before he had reckoned it would happen, a figure emerged from the doorway and walked briskly down the hill, past Murray’s hiding place. Although the fog was still thick, the sharp lines of the advocate’s angry face, outlined by the soot-black stroke of his short whiskers, stood out against the grey breath of the mist. Evidently Douglas had an equal horror of being late.
The darkness and fog were, Murray reflected, both his friends and his enemies. He stood but little chance of being seen by the man he was following, and sound echoed strangely in the fog and made the noise of his footsteps deceptive. On the other hand, on occasion only his knowledge of where Douglas was heading helped him to distinguish the advocate from other dark shapes in the icy air. Douglas moved at a slower rate than Murray usually did, being rather smaller in build, but Murray would have lost him altogether in Nicolson Street near the College but that Douglas stopped to cough, as Murray himself had earlier, when the fog caught in his throat. Murray took two long strides to bring himself closer to his quarry, and settled back into his former slower pace.
Soon Douglas cut through to George’s Square, where there were fewer people on the street and it was easier for Murray to follow at a greater distance. Murray nodded in the direction of Blair’s house, but Douglas took a route to the southern corner of the square, veering on to the road at one point to give a wide berth to a party climbing into a carriage, who were calling farewells to their hosts at a lit doorway. Murray, as cautious as Douglas, veered likewise. They reached the corner in neat sequence, and one by one turned right towards the north end of the Middle Walk.
In the Meadows, the fog was thinner, and lay lower. It came to shoulder height on Douglas, and his hat and head seemed almost to float across it, disembodied. Murray, protruding rather further from it, dropped back again to be unobtrusive. The avenue of trees, in any case, bare black pillars, lined the walk and would confuse Douglas should he chance to look back. Underfoot, gravel mixed haphazardly with mud gave off a dull crunch, muffled and soft. No one else was around.
About halfway along the Walk, they must have crossed the ditch where the Council were digging the central drain, but Murray could only detect its presence by the sharp smell of decay that rose from it. Ahead of them, at the end of the path, the dilapidated summer house known as the Cage loomed like a shipwreck, rafters showing clear black ribs where the lead was missing. About thirty yards away from him, Douglas waded through the mist to the steps, rose like a bather from the sea, and disappeared inside. He was only there a matter of moments: Murray hardly had time to choose where to place himself, when Douglas appeared again and plunged into the fog, walking quickly towards where Murray stood. Murray was beside a tree: he allowed himself to sink slowly down towards its roots, knees bent, face turned away from the approaching man, and stayed perfectly still in the depths of the fog. Incredibly, Douglas strode swiftly past, and did not seem to see him. Murray waited until Douglas had reached again the north end of Middle Walk, then rose and moved cautiously towards the Cage.
The steps were slippery with damp, and Murray moved carefully on them. A broken bone here and now could mean a deadly chill by morning. He looked around in the dim enclosure, wondering what Douglas could have found to do in such a short time, in semi-darkness. He did not know, either, how long he might have to find out, before the blackmailer arrived to claim his money.
A bench seat ran around the inner edge of the summer house, and a smaller one formed a concentric circle around the supporting central pillar. Murray paced around between them, looking from left to right for anything obvious, then decided he would have to descend to his knees and look underneath the benches. He sent a silent apology to Robbins for the state of his breeches, and knelt gently on the wet floor.
He had completed almost one circuit on his knees before he noticed, not a fold of paper under the bench, but wet footprints on it. He had automatically disregarded anywhere that Douglas with his small stature could not easily have reached, but these were clearly his prints, quite neat and small, and freshly made. Murray rose and straightened, looking up the wooden post which met a corner of the tattered roof. Above him, at the very top of the post, there must have been a small gap between post and roof beam, and tucked into it like a handkerchief into a waistcoat pocket was a thick paper wrapping, crisp enough not to have been there for long. He was about to remove it, when some instinct told him to look round. In the distance, advancing along Middle Walk, was a figure in a tall hat. Murray crouched down and left the summer house in an undignified rush on his hands and knees, and still keeping low he darted around the back of the building, out of Middle Walk and behind one of the large trees outlining the southern edge of the Meadows. Then he breathed again.
Murray waited. The fog, disturbed by his awkward passing, settled again around him, lapping its cold waters about his arms and legs, seeping into his bones. He dearly wanted to see the distant figure approaching, but even more dearly did not want the distant figure to see him. At last curiosity, abetted by a fear of his limbs becoming completely rigid, led him to remove his hat carefully and, holding it clear behind him, he peered very slowly round the edge of the tree trunk.
The man, for now he could see more definitely that it was a man, was just in the act of stepping off the bench directly below the point at which Murray had seen the paper wrapping. Through the open sides of the building he appeared as a stocky individual, not much above the middle height, but still too far away in the fog for Murray to tell more. In contrast to Douglas’ grim, determined stride, this man scuttled back down the steps, looked about him nervously, and trotted off into the mist back the way he had come. Murray shot out of his hiding place, jammed his hat back on his head, and followed as quietly as the gravel would let him. Again, his height and length of stride would stand him in good stead.
They were almost halfway along the Walk, both cutting swiftly through the pools of mist, when it happened. Murray, in his urgency, was not even trying to see what was under his feet, and a smallish branch, broken from its tree in the recent snowfall, was quite invisible even to the cautious walker. He placed one foot on top of it, found his step unsteady, drew the other foot up quickly to help his balance, caught it on the rest of the branch, and fell solidly on to the path. There was a yelp, which for a moment he thought was his own voice. Then he realised it had come from the person ahead of him, who, alarmed by the sudden evidence of company in the fog, broke into a run. Murray cursed quietly. But suddenly there was a slithering noise, a shriek, and the unusual sound of a very heavy body being received into the various and welcoming contents of the Council’s new drain.
There was a long moment of silence. It was followed by an unattractive sucking noise, and a slap as if of someone pulling their arm or leg free from the morass and letting it fall once more. There was a whimper, and Murray began to pull himself up from his prone position and make his way, with considerable wariness, towards the scene of the accident. Sound
s of choking made him add an inch to his stride, but as he approached it became clear that the victim was not so much on the point of drowning as on the point of abandoning his supper to the drain. The smell up on the path was atrocious: in the drain itself it had to be diabolical.
Murray found the edge, made sure he had his balance, and called out,
‘Hallo there! Are you injured at all?’ He found that his pulse was racing, waiting for the reply.
‘Murray? Charles, is that you, my dear boy?’
‘It is.’ Murray swallowed hard. ‘Can I help you out of there? Are you all right?’
‘I fear,’ said the man, to the accompaniment of a tremendous slurp from the drain, ‘that my clothing has suffered more injury than I have. I wonder, my dear Charles, if I could trouble you for a hand to guide me out?’
Murray edged nearer to the lip of the ditch, crouched, and took a generous hold around the trunk of a tree. With his left arm, he reached as far as he could towards the voice. After a moment, he felt a gloved hand fasten on to his, slippery but strong. He pulled. There was a scrabbling and a squelching, a few frantic steps on unsure ground, and up on the path, bulbous with indescribable filth, came Andrew Balneavis.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘My dear boy, what good fortune!’ Balneavis exclaimed quickly, flicking particles of unnameable substances from his sodden sleeves. ‘I was just returning from a client in the Boroughmuir – house over there, in fact –’ he waved vaguely southwards, ‘and he had just paid me, so I was feeling very nervous. He likes to pay all his bills at once, you know? And I heard a noise, and thought I was about to be robbed, so I fled – and fell.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Murray. He felt very embarrassed. He was quite sure that he had not lost sight of the figure from the time he saw it step off the bench in the Cage to the moment he fell over the branch. The chances of his quarry vanishing and Balneavis independently falling into the ditch within a few yards of each other seemed to Murray a little slim. Not even Willie Jack Dundas would have put money on it. Besides, in the hand that had not seized his own, Balneavis was clutching a paper wrapper which looked familiar, and to which he clung as if his life depended upon it. Presumably, if Murray asked, Balneavis would say that it was the payment from his client. ‘You must be very uncomfortable,’ Murray suggested at last. ‘And you are probably quite chilled. We should go on to Blair’s house, I think, and see you warmed and changed. Unless you know anyone nearer by?’
Balneavis had indeed started to shiver. He nodded.
‘No, dear boy, I fear we must impose upon my good friend Blair.’
They set off at a brisk pace, gradually easing the sharp bruise in Murray’s knee and also, when they had reached a good speed, allowing the ripe scent from Balneavis’ clothes to fall behind him, rather than linger around. It was a few minutes only before they arrived at Blair’s doorstep, and the manservant’s expression changed magically from welcome to alarm to distress. He brought them quickly into the narrow entrance hall and murmured something about finding Mr. Blair. As he vanished round the corner towards the street parlour, Murray noticed him snatch his handkerchief from his pocket and slap it over his nose.
A moment later, Blair appeared, his portly body enveloped in a banyan intended for a taller man, and an expression of kindly anxiety across his careless face.
‘My dear Balneavis, my dear Charles, what has happened? Never mind, not now. Smith, take their coats.’ The manservant reappeared, looking determined and with his mouth slightly open, and removed the coats to some distant part of the house. Murray could not see whether or not he was breathing. Balneavis was ushered rapidly into Blair’s own chamber, where there was already a fire in the grate, and maids were instructed on the provision of bath and hot drink. Murray himself, refusing fresh clothes as his own were reasonably dry under his coat, was brought into the street parlour. A goggle-eyed maid brought brandy which Blair warmed at the fire, and Murray felt his first sip sending trickles of heat down into his cold limbs. Blair immediately topped up the glass from the jug, and settled back into his chair, eyes wide with curiosity.
‘Well?’ he prompted, jiggling with excitement.
‘Mr. Balneavis fell into the new drain in the Meadows,’ Murray said briefly.
Blair looked oddly at Murray, his head on one side, and Murray met his eye with meaning. Blair nodded, his wig bouncing perilously.
‘How very fortunate that you came to be passing.’
‘Yes, most fortunate. Although he would have found his way out eventually, the fog made his path very uncertain, and a voice calling to him from the bank may indeed have rendered him some assistance.’
There was a moment’s silence, during which they could hear the distant clanking of servants bringing hot bath water to the bedchamber next door. Then Blair bounced in his seat.
‘But Charles, what in Heaven’s name were the two of you doing?’
‘Well, Balneavis says he was visiting a client in the Boroughmuir, who had just paid him, which is why he was jumpy.’
‘The day Andrew Balneavis contracts with a wealthy client in the Boroughmuir who wishes to deal with him late at night is the day I eat my wig.’
‘Well, I have no absolute proof,’ said Murray slowly, ‘but the balance of probability is that Balneavis is extorting money from John Douglas, in return for keeping a secret of his. I believe that Douglas does not, however, know who his blackmailer is, but the sums are quite substantial.’ He explained what had happened in Douglas’ flat and later in the Meadows, finishing with Balneavis’ own very unlikely – and unlooked-for – explanation of what he was doing in the Meadows at night.
‘A blackmailer,’ said Blair thoughtfully, his jiggling subsiding. ‘Possibly, yes. His situation is desperate enough, with all his daughters to marry. I confess to being surprised, however.’
‘I agree,’ said Murray. ‘He has always seemed so open. Yet it seems to fit with the account I had of his activities in the Grassmarket at night, as if he were hunting for potential victims for his schemes.’
‘The Grassmarket at night?’ Blair started jiggling again, and Murray realised that he had left out a significant part of his recent activities. He managed to gloss over what he knew of Douglas’ liaisons, but gave a summary of his visit to the Cowgate and the Grassmarket with Mary.
‘And the Grassmarket is almost certainly where he found his information concerning Douglas,’ he finished. He remembered vividly the sight of John Douglas in the early morning going home down the Lawnmarket, the ends of his neckcloth lying loose across his shoulders after his passionate encounter with the young woman in the Cowgate.
‘Yet how could this lead us to a murderer for your father and Jamie?’ Blair asked at last. ‘It is an excellent reason for Balneavis to be murdered, if he is making people’s lives more miserable than they need to be. He might even have killed in self-defence, if one of his victims became violent. But there are several reasons why I think that unlikely. In the first place, from what you say about his methods with Douglas and from what I know – or think that I know – about his character, it seems unlikely that any of his victims – and here we are, of course, assuming that there are others apart from Douglas – knows who he is. He avoids, as seems natural for him, meeting them directly as their blackmailer.’ He regarded Murray with a watery eye, and nodded to reinforce his point.
‘In the second place, neither your father nor Jamie is likely to have had any secret they would have paid to have kept secret, nor was either of them likely to attack Balneavis: this might not, of course, count as far as Matthew Muir was concerned. He might well have been susceptible to extortion, though like Jamie he would have had little money to give.’
‘Do you think my father would not have attacked him? If someone had threatened to blackmail my father, I think he would have gone for them with a sturdy stick.’
Blair gave a lop-sided smile.
‘Yes, you’re probably right, alas. But in that case, I think your
father would have won.’ Blair sat back in his chair and stretched his short legs, then came back to his main point. ‘In the third place, however, the night your father died the Balneavises were supping here, and he was at the burial when Jamie was killed.’
‘Oh. I did not know.’
‘Unless he is blackmailing Douglas over something concerned with the murders? Of course, Douglas could not have killed Jamie, either.’
‘No, no, I think I know why he is blackmailing Douglas, and it has nothing to do with the murders.’ He thought for a moment, trying to disentangle the mess in his head. ‘But if indeed Balneavis has other victims from whom he is extorting money, then there are other people about whom he knows secrets, secrets which he would not have told anyone else.’
Service of the Heir: An Edinburgh Murder (Murray of Letho Book 3) Page 24