Trick of the Light im-3

by David Ashton

  Time now to turn and make his way back home, to the end of this street and then right down Leith Walk itself, a proud but not prideful representative of authority in action.

  A missile of some sort struck his official helmet with enough force to make his ears ring and what sounded like a snigger disturbed the stately calm of his patrol.

  Ballantyne whipped round but there was nothing to be seen except… Now his hawklike eyes fixed upon an open door which had escaped his earlier scrutiny.

  It swung slightly as if a malefactor had perhaps just dashed inside.

  Ballantyne noted the number. Thirty-two. It would be in his report.

  He took a firm grip of his now-drawn truncheon and followed the path of another pilgrim who had taken the same route some time previous.

  Down the same gloomy corridor, heart pumping, not daring to say a word lest it come out a wee bit squeaky.

  Pushed at the same partly opened door and walked inside.

  There was enough light from the moon to let Ballantyne come to certain conclusions.

  For the moment it was an assumption to be verified but it forced a gasp of strange exultation from his lips. It was a policeman’s dream.

  A tableau arranged in tasteful fashion; no gobbets of gore to spoil the elegant lines, save for one outstretched hand bearing traces of what looked like blood.

  ‘Dead bodies,’ announced Constable Ballantyne in wonder to himself. ‘A’ over the place.’

  24

  Oh Lady! we receive but what we give,

  And in our life alone does Nature live.

  SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,

  ‘Dejection: an Ode’

  Samuel Grant might cheerfully have strangled his beloved Muriel but true love has ever steered between the rocks of passion and exasperation.

  The boat had navigated towards vexation at her reaction to his proffered gift.

  He had expected little cries of delight translating into a sidelong glance towards the room where the bouncier mattress had its domain. However in his haste, Samuel had reckoned without his banging upon the door to be answered by a squat purposeful little maid who looked at his form as if a stray dog had fetched him up upon the doorstep.

  Upon his insistence she had ferried him to her mistress who was sitting somewhat listlessly in the drawing room.

  Her demeanour changed at the sight of him as if a bumblebee had shot up her skirts. Ellen the maid was shooed from the room and once Muriel was certain the coast was clear, she, in nothing that could be mistaken for loving tones, hissed, ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’

  Samuel caught sight of himself in a cunningly sited mirror and realised that his normal faultless presentation was a trifle compromised.

  The silver hair was standing on end, his clothes dishevelled; the canary yellow neckerchief had worked loose from its moorings and was hanging limply over the lapels of his jacket as if signalling quarantine.

  All this of course the result of his headlong rush after grabbing the prize while Seth and the giant sailor had got to grips and given Samuel the chance to prove a hero.

  At a cost.

  All he could hope for was that Moxey would somehow be debilitated by the giant and either die or lose his memory.

  None such very likely.

  But in the meantime he might raise the money, with a little contribution from his beloved Muriel, and offer Seth enough to avoid his vengeance.

  Her reaction, however, after he had related a rather altered version of his daring deeds, was not hopeful.

  ‘How much did you pay this man?’

  ‘Five pounds, Moumou.’

  ‘Please don’t call me inappropriate endearments,’ she hissed once again. ‘The maid might listen by the door.’

  Samuel could not have cared less. It was dawning on him that he had risked his neck for next to nothing.

  ‘And where did you meet him?’

  ‘In a tavern,’ he muttered to her formal tones.

  Muriel gazed at the brooch in her hand. It certainly appeared unscathed though she would give it a good clean.

  ‘And you wish me to reimburse you, sir?’

  ‘It is a matter of life and death,’ Samuel replied loudly, growing heartily sick of the charade. ‘And I might remind you, madam, that the life might be yours and the death mine.’

  There was enough underlying truth in his tone that her face softened and she almost forgave him the intrusion that shrieked to a watching neighbour or any acquaintance of Ellen’s who might be a confidante, that Mistress Grierson had entertained a man with a loose cravat.

  Almost.

  But it is a sad fact that just when a man thinks a woman has run out of foolish moves, she can always find another.

  ‘What about the rest?’ she asked.

  ‘Whit?’

  ‘The rest of my stolen valuables?’

  ‘Whit?’

  This came out in a strangled indignant yelp and might surely have warned Muriel that a limit had been reached but by now she had the bit between her teeth and perhaps earlier misgivings about the company Samuel kept had resurfaced.

  ‘Ye said ye didnae care about such!’

  Samuel glared at her and she glared back, forgetting that the imaginary maid might be pressing her avid ear against the keyhole.

  ‘Relatively, I did not care,’ she replied, proving the adage that to argue with women is to pass water in a howling gale. ‘And what of the music box?’

  ‘It was busy,’ he retorted sullenly.

  ‘Busy?’

  Again they locked eyes and it is possible that given a passage of time, her lips may have quirked in humour at his wild hair and askew neckwear like a grumpy little boy at a birthday party; he may have, on seeing this, risked sweeping her into his arms, a breathless kiss, a tremor in the limbs, five pounds pressed in his hands along with softer rewards, a heroic action recognised, receiving due adulation.

  All this was possible, but every moment has a wealth of possibilities only one of which is manifested in the given world. Unfortunately, what came was not romantic recompense.

  Three loud bangs at the door. Samuel knew in his bones that the law was a-calling.

  He suddenly grabbed Muriel close anyway and gave her a resounding buss full on the lips.

  ‘Keep them occupied,’ said he, and darted out into the garden through the French windows.

  Samuel suddenly felt heroic again; that kiss had done wonders. He measured the wall that led to freedom with a cool eye. There was a garden table nearby and he hauled it across so that the edge crunched to the wall, clambered aboard and parked his belly on the top then lowered his legs over the other side, preparing to drop.

  Two hands seized his ankles.

  ‘Ye’ll do yerself a mischief, Samuel,’ said James McLevy. ‘Let me lower ye down like a king in state.’

  When the inspector hauled Samuel round the front and the door was hammered once again, the wee maid Ellen opened up with a frown to see more traffic passing through.

  ‘Like Waverley Station,’ she announced.

  ‘Indeed you have it, Ellen,’ said McLevy breezily. ‘I cannot argue the point but where would we be without the trains?’

  Ellen noted the firm grasp McLevy had on Samuel’s arm just above the elbow.

  ‘Ye’ll know yer way,’ she said dourly.

  ‘Oh, lead me on,’ the inspector replied. ‘A guide, a buckler and example.’

  This quote from Burns sailed over Ellen’s head but as she marched grimly up the hall followed by the two, a few random memories from the visit she’d paid to her mother the night before came into her mind.

  He lived with his Auntie Jean because his own mother had taken her life, said Ellen’s ma, her eyes round with horror at the recollection.

  Cut the throat across with her sharp scissors, she being a dressmaker by trade. The reason never known but madness hinted. The boy had found her slumped in her recess bed and sat there for hours, surrounded by blood and death.r />
  Nae wonder he became whit he is, thought Ellen.

  She led them into the drawing room where her mistress stood stiffly beside an equally uncomfortable Conan Doyle, made a brief curtsey and got to hell out of there.

  Ellen was devoid of two character traits that make up a strong part of the Scots nature.

  Nosiness and malice.

  She was content to leave what was not her business to remain so on the principle of whit ye don’t know doesnae dae ye damage, and as a consequence of that contentedness found herself free from envy and its malicious offshoots.

  But she still did not get out the door untrammelled.

  ‘Jist before ye depart, Ellen Girvan, have ye seen this man before?’

  The maid turned slowly. So the bugger knew her all the time, otherwise why remember her given name?

  In fact it had only come into McLevy’s mind when she’d opened up the door; something in the cast of her features and the way she had glowered at him brought to mind a similar face from childhood.

  Looking across the cobbled square at him one day when he had just kicked hell out of a thug who had persecuted him for a deal of his young life.

  So he had taken a flyer and was gratified to see the hit; a reputation for omniscience does a policeman no harm.

  ‘Aye, I’ve seen him,’ Ellen said, staring more at the inspector than Samuel. ‘A wee time ago at the door.’

  ‘Never before that?’

  Ellen could almost swear she had observed the man loitering in the street when she left on her weekly visit to her mother but she only operated on conviction. She had also noted a twinkle in Muriel’s eye of late and a loose vivacity in her movements. But whit ye don’t know…

  ‘Not to my decent knowledge,’ she responded carefully.

  McLevy thought to push it but there was a flinty cast to Ellen’s face that dissuaded him from the effort.

  ‘Are ye going to make us any hot beverage?’ he asked instead.

  ‘It wisnae in my mind.’

  Ellen looked at her mistress who gazed downwards and the maid took that for a negative.

  She left.

  Samuel had not said a word.

  Conan Doyle for once had nothing to deduct.

  McLevy had sent him on to batter at the door and sneaked off round the side with productive results but Arthur had the feeling he had been used as a decoy of sorts.

  A disgruntled Constable Mulholland, who was beginning to regard Conan Doyle with jaundiced eye, had been dispatched to the station with a pack of summoned helpers to transport the Moxey gang.

  But Seth had lost no time in pointing a dislocated finger towards a certain direction; there being no honour amongst thieves and he being foul indignant at someone stealing his hard-earned lift.

  The constable was not best pleased at being left out of the action but McLevy persuaded him that he was essential for safe transport of the gang. Besides Doyle might be useful because of his local knowledge.

  It amused McLevy to see the giant so discomfited by personal relationships. That’s why McLevy, in the main, tried very hard not to have them.

  Deduction has its drawbacks.

  ‘Mistress Grierson, can you enlighten us as to your dealings with this fellow?’

  A simple enough question, but a nest of vipers. Silver Samuel, according to Seth, had supplied the knowledge for the lift and danced the Reels o’ Bogie with the lusty widow.

  Muriel swallowed hard but before she might formulate a response Samuel burst into speech.

  ‘Easy enough,’ he declared. ‘Moxey made vaunt tae me where he had thieved a brooch.’

  Samuel waved his free hand in Doyle’s direction.

  ‘When that big hooligan started a rammy, I took my chance, thieved it in turn and came here to sell it back.’

  ‘Is this true?’ asked the inspector.

  Muriel closed her eyes and nodded.

  ‘Where is the brooch now?’

  She brought her hand slowly from a pocket in her dress and displayed the cause of all these shenanigans.

  ‘Did you pay for such?’

  ‘We were interrupted,’ said Samuel quickly.

  McLevy carried on looking at Muriel and was rewarded by a shake of the head.

  ‘Then why leave it?’ he asked Samuel with a mean glint in his eye. The inspector didn’t need much in the way of deduction to smell a rat up a drainpipe somewhere.

  ‘As I tellt ye,’ Samuel offered defiantly. ‘We were interrupted. I ran for my life.’

  ‘And this is the first and only time you have seen this man, Mistress Grierson? You have never met him previous?’

  To this query of the inspector’s Muriel, after gazing into the eyes of a person who had hazarded his very existence to preserve her name, shook her head much after the manner of St Peter in the garden.

  Conan Doyle, who had been still as a statue during all this, prayed inwardly that McLevy would not repeat what the young man earnestly hoped were the calumnies that Moxey had disgorged.

  ‘And you, Silver Sam, this is your first visit here?’

  ‘Aye. And I wish I’d never set foot.’

  The inspector let out a sudden bark of laughter.

  ‘So be it. But ye surprise me, Samuel. You’re more in the mode of turning some daft woman’s head wi’ your charms then living free and easy. This is not your style.’

  Samuel flushed and bit his lip.

  Muriel’s face drained of colour.

  McLevy fished in his pocket and produced the crumpled music box.

  ‘We found the Moxey gang’s stash but no trace of your other belongings,’ he remarked genially to Muriel, ‘save this wounded soldier.’

  He twisted the key and the melody began to play brokenly, notes missing like Moxey’s teeth, the melancholy tune rendered even more heartbreaking by the failure to sustain its rightful pitch.

  The inspector put it on a nearby table and stepped back to delve in his pocket for the restrainers that he planned to fit around Samuel’s wrists.

  The other three figures, in a strange repeat of the hell-hags in the tavern, shifted slightly while the music traced a crippled path around them, then Conan Doyle stood back and it was only Muriel and Silver Samuel who remained in the dance.

  Her eyes were shining with a feeling within and his were full of pain.

  Late-discovered love. What a bugger it can be.

  ‘My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream

  Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.’

  25

  Weep no more, lady, weep no more,

  thy sorrow is in vain;

  For violets plucked, the sweetest showers

  Will ne’er make grow again.

  ANONYMOUS, ‘The Friar of Orders Gray’

  Sophia Adler sat across the room from the two men and wondered why a memory from long ago had flashed a picture into her mind.

  Her Uncle Bartholomew, smelling of strong tobacco, lifted her up into his arms and thrust her face into the magnolia blossom of a young tree. It was the middle of April, not long before her eighth birthday and she was giddy with excitement.

  The sweet smell of the flowers, safely ensconced in their leathery green leaves, filled her very soul with a wild longing for something far beyond this existence.

  ‘Higher! Higher!’ she commanded and, grinning like a racoon, cigar clenched between his teeth, he thrust her up to the very limit of his powerful arms.

  And there she lost herself.

  Exultant.

  That was before the mother’s betrayal of honour. Seven years later. In front of her daughter’s eyes.

  Now, in an Edinburgh hotel room, with subdued pale pastels unlike the vivid colours of childhood, and a leaden sky outside which signalled clear blue was a distant recollection along with a yellow sun, she found herself gazing at Inspector James McLevy, wondering at the many paths that must have led the two of them into each other’s orbit.

  For make no mistake, this was a dangerous m
an. The eyes slate-grey and wolf-like stared back into hers without the usual evasions of protocol.

  He just…looked. Dispassionate. Observing. Perfectly still within. Nothing to prove.

  Not unlike herself.

  For McLevy’s part he, behind the deadpan exterior, was in the not uncommon state of having the voice of reason and authority blethering in one ear, and a slice of intuition that had no basis in East of Scotland pragmatism whispering in the other about some strange force field where unseen lines, like some sort of invisible web, connect all events, murderous and otherwise.

  A sort of forensic mesmerism perhaps.

  While taking Silver Samuel back to the station he had run into Sergeant Murdoch in the street, on his way back from a colleague’s funeral.

  A fellow sergeant. All the more to be mourned.

  But Murdoch did not partake of the demon drink. So while the rest of the mourners, in the main from Haymarket where the dead man had his station, got lashed into the funeral meats and decent whisky, Murdoch pressed the widow’s hand in sympathy and left.

  McLevy took it as an omen. Murdoch in motion was like the sighting of a rare comet blazing through the heavens.

  He shovelled the manacled Samuel onto the solemn-faced sergeant and bade him escort the prisoner to the cells where the inspector, on his return, would fill in the paperwork and all would be well with the known world.

  What he did not mention was that Lieutenant Roach, already no doubt unimpressed by the detritus of the Moxey gang, would be likewise indifferent to Samuel’s arrival; small fry while more murderous and bigger fish swam free.

  He would also be tired of receiving various delegations from his inspector like some sort of offering from a papal legate.

  There would be hell to pay when he showed his face.

  ‘Tell him I’m on the case!’ McLevy bawled as he and Conan Doyle left the statuesque figures of sergeant and prisoner. ‘On the case!’

  But was he? Or did he just, like many a married man, not want to find his way back home? Roach taking the part of the wife on the doorstep, rolling pin to hand?