Bloody Business

by Ash, C. B.

  There, in a tiny courtyard formed from tall buildings made of somber gray stonework, broken at regular intervals by thin, dark windows and doors with wood the color of old blood, the two men struggled with their victim. One of the large men was trying to push a dirty rag into Vivian’s mouth while the other attempted to hold her flat on her back against the ground! In a panic, Vivian kicked and struggled wildly. She clawed at the mask of one man, but the dark burlap fabric held firm. When that did not work, she lashed out with a balled fist against the man with the rag. A satisfying crunch echoed off the gray stone walls of the isolated courtyard. It was a sound that William knew could only be the man’s nose being broken.

  Trying to catch them off guard, William rushed forward. With a wild whoop, he immediately threw himself into the fray. Once, twice, his knife lashed out. The first swing sliced deep into the man trying to suffocate Vivian while the second slash cut nothing but air as the two men abruptly released the woman in the suddenness of William’s attack.

  William crouched low and turned his knife to hold it in a hammer grip, the blade pointed at the ground. He snarled like a hungry wolf while he stalked forward. Warily the two ruffians backed away; one with a hand up to nurse his broken nose through the black burlap mask, the other with a hand on the knife cut that had begun to freely ooze blood.

  “Mrs. Carpenter? Ya hurt bad?” William asked, when he at last stood next to Vivian.

  She nodded, coughed, and croaked a reply William did not understand. So, he guessed. “I’d not called the constables, but I’d be thinkin’ this much commotion will bring ’em here anyway.”

  Vivian shook her head and coughed again. “Blessed be, lad,” she paused to take another hoarse breath, “open ye ears. Ah’d said ‘use their guts fer garters and save me a piece, while ye be at it’.”

  William grinned. He knew he liked Mrs. Carpenter for some reason. His grin took a malicious, wolf-like turn towards the two marauders. “Ya heard the lady. Who’ll be first?”

  The larger of the two men, who had just been cut by William’s knife, snarled, “Ya try it Runt, I’ll box ya ears till they fall off!”

  Before he could leap at William, the other ruffian held out an arm. “Na here. Too many eyes.” He gestured down the close to the distantly-lit entrance.

  In the direction he indicated, a set of figures formed a rough group of silhouettes framed by the brighter light that bathed the Grassmarket. They were talking among themselves - nervous, excited and curious. Merchants and patrons, they had been drawn from the Grassmarket by the commotion of William running wildly into the alley.

  “Don’ think yer gettin’ off with this, Runt!" One of the masked men yelled angrily. "Your times’ comin’! Ya just wait for it."

  Next to him, the other large man jerked on the other's sleeve “Shut it! We got no time fer that!”

  The figure with the bleeding cut jerked his arm free of his companion with a roar and backed away. “Ya remember that, Runt. Just remember it! Ya gonna wake up one night and I’ll be the last sight yer ever gonna have!”

  With that, the two men turned and raced for one of the red wood doors that lead into one of the adjacent buildings. One of the pair slammed a heavy boot against the door latch and the door exploded inward with a loud crack. Immediately they rushed inside.

  Vivian's cough drew distracted William from the personal death threats towards the more immediate concern of the older woman’s health. He knelt down next to her, helping to ease her up into a sitting position while she gulped at the air.

  “Are ya alright?” William asked, eyes brimming with concern.

  Vivian smiled in a proud, motherly fashion. “Och, Ah be fine enough. They just took the wind from me … Ah just need a moment ta be getting’ it back.” She took another deep breath and coughed. “Where’d me basket get to?”

  While the onlookers from the Grassmarket hurried into the courtyard, William looked around for Vivian’s basket. Finally, he spotted it. During the struggle, it had been knocked a few feet away from her towards a forgotten pile of rotten cloth and wooden planks. Her vegetables were spilled across the ground.

  “It’s over here. Ya sit here and get ya breath back, I’ll get it for ya.” William reached into his bag and produced a small rag. Quickly he wiped the blood from his blade and stuffed both blade and rag back into his shoulder bag, lest any of the newcomers develop the wrong idea about him and what he was doing there. He had enough to worry about as it was.

  With a single, smooth motion, William scooped up the basket and began to refill it with vegetables. Most had survived the fall relatively undamaged, with perhaps the exception of the onions. Those had fallen into a dirty puddle of mud near the garbage pile, and looked completely unappetizing. He pulled the first from the small mire, then shook it to encourage the grayish brown slime to slip off and return to the ooze on the ground. Before he resigned himself that the muck was not going to let go, he noticed something white just under the wood in the refuse pile not far from the puddle.

  At first, he thought it might be another onion. However, the longer he looked at it, the less ‘onion-like’ the color seemed. Cautiously, he set Vivian’s basket down, walked over to the debris, and crouched. Slowly, he began to remove the wood. The more debris he moved, the more color drained from this face while a fear, a raw terror, gnawed hungrily at his mind.

  On seeing William’s apparent interest in the refuse, Vivian excused herself from the small crowd to join him.

  “What be the matter?” Vivian asked with a hoarse croak, her throat not quite having recovered from the attack. “Ye look like ya seen a banshee.”

  William removed a broad plank to reveal the still, cold face of a woman; her face ashen, eyes closed in the tranquil sleep of death. The young man glanced up at Vivian, who gasped in shock and horror.

  “Heavens protect us." Vivian said in a quavering voice. "It be Maggie. That's where she vanished off ta.”

  “Maggie?” William asked, but as soon as the word left his mouth, he remembered the name Vivian had mentioned to them. “Ya mean Maggie Campbell, the other lady who had been stayin' at yer boarding house?”

  "Yes, the very one." Vivian covered her mouth in horror and knelt down next to the body. “Oh my poor, poor girl. What did they do to ye?”

  William looked past her at the few people gathered in the courtyard. “Call a constable! Tell ’em we’ve found a body!”

  Chapter 12

  Despite the early afternoon sun, which had beaten back some of the stormy soot clouds that seemed to continuously clutch at Edinburgh, the courtyard was as gray as a tomb. The walls, formed by the somber, damp bricks of the surrounding buildings, formed a solemn barrier between the bustle of the city beyond and the pallor of death that now hung in the air.

  That was not to say the courtyard did not have its own activity. Constables, having only recently arrived, searched the area for clues as to what had happened with regards to the gruesome discovery of the dead woman. All business, they had expertly and congenially separated any witnesses from one another before asking them questions. William Falke, in particular, had been guided to the far side of the courtyard from the entrance, where a small crowd of onlookers had already gathered.

  The young man watched in a respectful silence while two constables gently exposed the rest of Maggie Campbell’s body from the refuse pile nearby. Two others, meanwhile, had rushed in with a stretcher and were in the process of laying it out next to the body. Even though he felt it disrespectful, William could not help but stare at the woman’s corpse with a clinical interest.

  She had been a young woman in her early twenties, her skin still smooth and unblemished from factory work; life buried under the smog of the city. Locks of damp, dark brown hair with a natural wave cascaded out to frame her pale, bloodless face. Her hands - or the hand he could see from where he stood - bore what might be the beginnings of callouses. There was even an odd bluish mark on some of her fingers, like some sort of a bruise.<
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  Maggie wore what had likely been a modest blue dress before someone took a knife to it. Now, it was sliced with an eerie precision. William was no tailor, but he swore that most of the cuts had been made along seams which normally would have held the dress together. It was hard to tell if all the cuts were so precise, what with the copious amount of blood staining the front.

  The few cuts in her smooth, white skin just visible between slices of bloody fabric also struck a chord with the young man. He mentally grouped them into two kinds: one, very precise and specific, and another that was brutal and careless, like someone dressing a fresh kill. However detached his observations, the idea of subjecting anyone to what Miss Campbell had obviously gone through turned William’s stomach.

  “Och, gruesome bit o’ work, that.” Detective Oren MacTaggart, still dressed in his customary tweed jacket and brown trousers, said with a touch of sadness in his voice.

  Startled, William tore his eyes away from the corpse and gave the Detective a withered smile in greeting. "It is. How anybody could do that ta someone else.” The young man did not quite repress a shudder. “I just don’t know.”

  Detective MacTaggart withdrew a small notebook and pencil from the inner pocket of his jacket. He flipped the notebook open to a blank page. “That be part o' what makes all this difficult, lad. Just like at the cattle market where ye Captain found that cart belongin' ta that peddler girl."

  "Miss Newt's cart." William said hollowly. "Do ya think ... "?

  MacTaggart shook his head and interrupted him. "Lad, Ah canna talk about an open case. It's against the rules. However ... Ah always try ta hope they'll be alive." The detective cleared his throat. "Well, we've been through some o' this already, ah just want ta go back over a few things."

  William managed a thin smile. "All right."

  MacTaggart flipped back a page in his notebook a moment. "So, Sirrah Falke, what again brought all this ta ye attention, eh?”

  William fidgeted slightly. He knew he had to be careful in what he admitted to, otherwise he would surely get himself, Captain Hunter and Moira in grave trouble. “I was walkin’ through the Grassmarket down from … uhm … where the flower sellers are … Victoria Street. Then, sure as day, I look up and see a couple of bludgers grab Mrs. Carpenter there an drag her off down inta the dark. I looked around, but no one seemed ta notice, so I took out after them.”

  The detective nodded sagely, his pencil scribbling madly against the paper. “Ah see. A wee bit dangerous, runnin’ off after ’em like that.”

  Young William shrugged with a casual air he honestly did not feel. “I couldn’t just stand around doin’ nothin’, and I didn’t see a constable anywhere. I figured if I knew where they were headed, then I could yell ma head off for a constable.”

  “Ye spoke before like ye know Mrs. Carpenter.” The detective asked curiously. “Ye be a good acquaintance of hers?”

  William hesitated a moment before he answered. “I wouldn’t go and say we’re mates, no. Just saw a lady that got herself in a tight spot. Like I said, I couldn't just stand by and watch like nothin’ was wrong.”

  Detective MacTaggart nodded silently again, which made William all the more uncomfortable. However, the detective did not seem to notice the young man’s discomfort, or he gave no indication that he noticed. “So, ye ran down the close after 'em. When ye got down here, what’d ye see?”

  “Well, I was just back from the entrance,” William explained, pointing back down the alley, “when I saw two bludgers jump outta hidin' and grab Mrs. Carpenter. The two were big, much bigger than me. They had broad shoulders, like they're used ta haulin' coal or crates, for a livin', and were dressed in rough work clothes and boots."

  "From what ye said before, ye couldna see their faces cause o' the masks they wore?" MacTaggart asked curiously.

  William nodded. "True. They had black hoods coverin' their heads, made from some kinda rough cloth. Burlap I think." The young man shrugged. "In any case, they latched onto her arms - one on each side - and yanked her down the close outta sight. I got a bad feelin' about it all, I mean nobody goes and does such fer a jest, y'know? So, I figured they'd meant ta hurt her."

  "Think back, lad, do ye recall any more about 'em? Anythin' they said, a way they acted? Maybe one ran with a wee limp?" The detective suggested.

  William frowned, thinking back to the moment when the two men first jumped out to grab Mrs. Carpenter. With the excitement since, however, the details had begun to blur together. Finally, he shook his head. "Not that I can recall. Just ran out, grabbed her and drug her off."

  The detective paused for a second, scribbled a word or two, then abruptly stopped. He leveled an unblinking, bespectacled stare at the young man. “Yet ye didna call for a constable.”

  “N … no.” William stammered. “I just sorta jumped in.”

  Detective MacTaggart raised an eyebrow quizzically and pushed his glasses up from the end of his nose. “Ye ‘sorta’ jumped in?”

  “Well, what was I supposed ta do?” The young man blurted out, his nerves punching a small hole in the calm demeanor he was trying to maintain. “They were chokin’ her! I’m not gonna go runnin’ off ta find a constable while that’s goin’ on, fer all I know, she’d have died if I’d gone off like that.”

  “Ye coulda been windin’ up dead by jumpin’ in, also.” Detective MacTaggart tartly replied. With a sigh, the older man’s features softened slightly. “Lad, I understand what ye be feelin’ about this, but from here on out, just remember, this be our job. Ye shoulda made some commotion right when it happened.”

  William opened his mouth to protest, but decided against it. Instead he wisely replied, “Yes, Sirrah.”

  The detective smiled. “Good lad. Now, where were we? Och, Ah remember. That twas when ye jumped in with yer skinnin’ knife? Yes?”

  “Aye. Just ta run ’em off.”

  “Ah see. Might ah be seein’ ye knife?” The detective replied.

  “Surely.” William eagerly withdrew the knife from his shoulder bag and offered it out to the detective hilt-first.

  The detective gingerly accepted the knife, turning it over in his hands. While he examined the weapon, two of the constables slowly walked by, carrying the medical stretcher with its silent, bloody burden wrapped in a dirty blanket. William watched the procession with a long, sad face.

  Slowly, the two constables carried the corpse across the courtyard, pausing where the alley began. There, a newcomer to the spectacle, a tall thin man dressed in a trim blue suit and waistcoat carrying a black leather medical bag, stopped them. He lifted the blanket to inspect the woman’s dead body silently. William finally looked away from the cold scene to the gray courtyard pavestones, walls and the long dark windows that bore silent witness to it all. Anywhere that he hoped might seem a bit more cheery to take his mind off the memory of the dead woman’s face.

  Fortunately, Detective MacTaggart provided such a distraction. “Sirrah Falke, how did ye find the body?”

  William turned around to gaze behind him. He gestured to the pile of refuse. “Mrs. Carpenter’s basket got knocked aside. She was all worried over it, so I went ta retrieve it fer her. When I was puttin’ vegetables back inta it, I looked up and thought I spied an onion in the pile just there.”

  “Only, it na be an onion?” The detective offered.

  William shook his head and replied solemnly. “No, not a bit.”

  MacTaggart wrote something hastily in his notebook and was about to say more when the brass and leather shape of a dragonet servitor flew up and into the midst of the two men. Two foot long from head to tail, it was made primarily from a thin shark skin leather with brass joints, fittings and steel inner workings. It was obviously one of the better-made servitors that could be bought.

  The clockwork device flapped its membranous wings rhythmically to hover a moment, turning its orange-amber eyes on the two men. It stared at William first.

  “Not Acquainted,” the small device droned
in a flat, unemotional tone. It then turned its mechanical gaze on the detective.

  “Acquainted.” The servitor said in a higher, almost chipper tone. From a small compartment in its chest, it withdrew a small folded note and held it out to the detective. “Message for you, Detective.”

  MacTaggart took the message and unfolded it. He read it quietly a moment, then re-folded it.

  “Thank ye fer that. Na return message, Fiver.” The detective told the servitor.

  “Very good, Detective.” Was the machine’s only reply before it soared off with a flurry of its wings. William watched as it flew over to say something to the thin man with the doctor’s bag.

  “Sirrah Falke,” MacTaggart said slowly, while resuming his examination of William’s skinning knife. “Ah be thinkin’ here. Ye’ll need ta come back to headquarters with a constable and meself. Ah’ll need ta ask ye a few more questions involvin’ some other bodies, and yer skinnin’ knife.”

  William’s eyes snapped back to the detective in alarm. “What? Why? All I’d done was help Mrs. Carpenter.”

  “Seems a skinnin’ knife has been playin’ a part in more than just ye rescue of Mrs. Carpenter.” Detective MacTaggart explained. “An we need ta be havin’ a long chat as ta how ye knew the lady’s name be ‘Carpenter’ when ye seem ta be suggestin’ ye only just ran over ta help a lady being accosted in the Grassmarket.”

  "Now, hold up there." William said in protest. "I'd not said anythin' o' the kind!"

  From across the courtyard, Vivian looked up sharply at William's outburst. "What're ye on about with that young man there? If it hadn't been fer him, ah'd have been done for!" She called out around the constable that stood next to her. "Don't you worry none, if these peelers give ye any trouble, ah'll send fer ya Cap'n square away!"