“To what do we owe such uncharacteristic modesty?”
“If there is one thing I cannot abide, it is predictability,” Donald said, taking a final sip of coffee. “Life is dull enough as it is.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Why, hello, Doyle,” Donald said, opening it. “What brings you here at this ungodly hour?”
“I was just passing by.” Arthur Conan Doyle stood on their doorstep, dressed in a handsome green tweed walking suit, belted at the waist.
Ian was gladdened at the unexpected appearance of his friend—the mere sound of Doyle’s voice lifted his mood. He had no doubt the young medical student had this effect on many people, with his good humor and kind blue eyes.
“You’d better come in,” said Donald. “It’s beastly out there.”
Doyle complied after stamping the snow from his shoes on the mat.
“You look quite the country squire,” Donald remarked. “All you need is a bird dog and a brace of pheasants over your shoulder.”
Doyle laughed in his open, sunny way. “I would sooner be out hunting than going to classes. I’m not a natural scholar like you.”
“The only thing that comes naturally to Donald is eating,” Ian said, coming through from the parlor, coffee in hand.
“I would sooner be a bit pudgy than a wraith like you,” Donald retorted. “You see how he torments me?” he asked Doyle, who smiled.
“I know you well enough to imagine you give as good as you get.”
“And so he does,” Ian agreed. “It’s good to see you.”
“And you, my dear fellow,” his friend said, giving his hand a hearty shake. “I expected you to be off chasing criminals.” He turned to Donald. “And I thought you might be headed to the infirmary for morning rounds.”
“And so I am,” Donald replied, wrapping a blue-and-green scarf around his neck. A gift from Aunt Lillian, the scarf represented the Hamilton hunting tartan, though Lillian herself was a member of the Grey clan.
“I’m on my way out as well,” said Ian.
“Splendid,” said Doyle. “Shall we walk together, at least as far as police chambers?”
“By all means,” Donald replied, though Ian thought he looked disappointed. Doyle was so agreeable that no doubt each brother would have preferred to monopolize his attention. “Come along, then,” Donald said as Ian reached for his cloak.
“Mustn’t keep HRG waiting, eh?” Ian said.
Doyle burst into his characteristic laugh, a sort of brisk bark; it reminded Ian of a well-fed seal. “Ha! I see your brother has shared his little nickname for Dr. Bell.”
“Not to be revealed upon pain of death,” Donald said, throwing open the door. “Come along, or we really shall be late.”
“By the way, I have something to show you when you have time,” Doyle told Ian as the three men stepped into the icy December air, leaving Bacchus alone in the empty flat, with only the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall to keep him company.
CHAPTER FIVE
When Ian arrived at police chambers, he was startled to see Aunt Lillian pacing in front of his desk. She looked agitated. At first he thought she had come to continue their conversation from the night before, but one look at her face told him otherwise.
“What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“You remember my friend Elizabeth Staley? From the séance?” she added, seeing his blank look.
“Of course—the schoolteacher. What’s happened?”
“We were to breakfast together this morning, as we often do after a session with Madame, but when I turned up, she was—” Lillian turned away, her jaw working, like a fish gasping for air. “I found her in her flat . . .”
“Perhaps you should sit down.”
Lillian shook him off, taking a deep breath. “She was at the bottom of the basement stairs, as if she had fallen. But,” she said, looking him in the eye, “something’s not right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come with me and I’ll show you. It’s not far from here.”
“I just have to check with—” Ian began, but as he spoke, the door to DCI Crawford’s office opened, and his massive head poked out.
“Go with your aunt,” Crawford said. “If there’s a murderer on the loose, best we find out earlier rather than later.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Ian. “Where does she live?” he asked Lillian.
“Albany Street, near the corner of Dublin Street.”
They took a cab to a well-maintained building on Albany Street, whereupon Lillian produced a key from her handbag.
“You have her latchkey?” Ian said as they mounted the steps to the front door.
“Sometimes I feed her cat,” she replied, unlocking the door.
She led him through the tidy ground-floor flat, with its slightly tattered armchairs and white crocheted antimacassars, past a table in the parlor set for tea, with a blue-flowered plate of raisin scones and cherry jam. The room was silent save for the ticking of a ship’s clock on the mantel. Ian shivered at the eerie stillness so familiar to him from other crime scenes, the heavy emptiness where a violent death had occurred, the ineffable feeling of loss. There was a sense of absence, as if life had been sucked from the air itself; the atmosphere felt thinner and more fragile.
“This way,” Lillian said, showing him to an open door leading down a sturdy set of basement stairs. At the bottom was the prostrate body of a woman.
“You touched nothing?”
“Of course not!” she scoffed, as if the question itself was an insult.
He crept gingerly down the stairs, taking note of everything he observed. Her body lay on the staircase, head on the last step, her torso and legs on the higher steps, as if she had tumbled forward while descending the stairs. The wall of the staircase was splattered with blood, and upon examining her body, Ian concluded it came from the sizable wound on the side of her head.
At the bottom of the stairs was an upturned laundry basket, the contents spilled out onto the hard-packed dirt floor. Lifting the basket carefully, he examined the ground beneath it. The cellar smelled damp, of earth and apples and aromatic plants. Looking around the low-ceilinged space, Ian spied a bushel basket of apples in the corner, a wooden washing tub with attached wringer, and bunches of herbs hanging upside down from an improvised clothesline. An empty coal scuttle sat waiting to be filled. The cellar was as neat and organized as the flat upstairs, everything in its place, no sign of a struggle. The only evidence of violence was the blood on the walls and the gash in Miss Staley’s head. He took some time examining the railing and each step before climbing back up to where his aunt stood, watching anxiously.
“You are entirely correct,” he told her. “This was no accident.”
“How can you tell?”
“There are numerous clues. For one thing, she appears to have hit her head on something, yet there is no concentrated area of blood on the railing or any of the steps. The blood on the wall suggests a violent blow of some kind. It is spread out over a large area, and you can tell from the shape of the droplets that it hit at considerable velocity.”
Lillian frowned. “The shape of the droplets?”
“Yes. Observe how they are long and narrow.”
“So they are,” she said, peering at them through her spectacles.
“I have been studying the properties of blood evidence. The shapes made upon impact vary according to velocity, distance, and angle.”
“And how are you coming by all this blood for your . . . study?”
“Conan Doyle has been very helpful in that regard. At any rate, this blood was traveling quite fast, which accounts for the long, narrow droplets.”
“I see.”
“Furthermore, there is the matter of her skirts.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Did you not remark how they are modestly draped over her legs?”
“Yes.”
“Does that no
t strike you as odd?”
“You mean if she had fallen down the stairs—”
“Gravity would likely have resulted in a less ladylike position.”
“Possibly, but that’s hardly conclusive.”
“There is one more thing. Come,” he said, beckoning her to follow him down the steps. “Mind how you tread.”
They descended together, careful not to touch poor Miss Staley, into the cellar with its faint odor of mildew and dried aromatic herbs. “Do you see any blood on the laundry or the basket?” he asked.
Stooping to look, Lillian examined it carefully. “No.”
“Yet look at this,” he said, lifting the basket. On the floor beneath it was the same scattered pattern of blood as on the staircase.
“That’s odd,” she said. “What do you make of it?”
“She did not have the laundry basket when she was attacked. It was placed there by her killer.”
“But why?”
“To make it look like she fell while going down to do the laundry.”
“So she was actually attacked—”
“She was assaulted on the stairs, most certainly, but whoever killed her felt compelled to place the overturned laundry basket there to make the accident narrative more plausible, as if she dropped it when she fell. However, they neglected to realize that this little flourish would betray them in the end. Sometimes it is best to leave well enough alone.”
“I knew it,” Lillian said softly. “Elizabeth Staley is not the sort of woman to trip over herself doing housework.”
“Can you think of anyone who might wish her harm?”
“I didn’t know her that well, but I’m not aware of any enemies. She never mentioned anything of the kind.”
“Is there a back entrance to the flat?”
“No, just the front. And the cellar doors.”
“I examined them—bolted shut from the inside. And neither the front door nor the entry to her flat showed signs of damage. They were both closed when you arrived?”
“Yes, I had to use my key. Why?”
“There is a strong likelihood Miss Staley knew her assailant. Not only that, it was someone she trusted well enough to turn her back on—the location of the wound suggests the blow was struck from behind.”
“Good heavens,” said Lillian, her voice unsteady.
“Do you know any of her friends or family?”
“I believe she has a married sister in Aberdeen. Emily, I think. She never mentioned her last name.” There was a pause, and Ian could hear the slow drip of a faucet in the kitchen. Plunk, plunk, plunk . . . Did the killer neglect to turn it off after washing the blood from his hands?
“What do we do now?” Lillian asked.
She looked shaken and frightened, and Ian had an impulse to envelop her in his arms, but members of the Hamilton and Grey clans did not do such things. Such an action might thoroughly mortify her.
“What I want you to do is go straight home, lock the doors, and don’t open them to anyone except me.”
“What about Donald?”
“Yes, of course. Can you do that?”
“I suppose so,” she replied, but she looked rather cross. “I can’t stay locked up forever, you know.”
“Would you just humor me this once?”
“Very well,” she said with a sigh. “What about poor Elizabeth?”
“I’ll ask DCI Crawford if he wants an autopsy. I think the cause of death is rather evident, but I’ll leave it up to him.”
“Must you cut her open? It seems to me she’s been through enough.”
“There is always the chance that she was drugged before she was attacked, and that could provide another piece of evidence.”
Lillian shook her head sadly. “Poor Elizabeth.”
“I’m going to hail you a cab—mind you go home straightaway, lest it should be poor Lillian next.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but he could tell that for once she was grateful he was taking charge.
“If you think of anything that might be useful, please write it down. I’ll come by later to ask more questions, but first I want to see if I can glean anything from her neighbors. Do you happen to know any of them?”
“No. I’ve seen one or two coming and going, but I can’t say I know anyone.”
“You get along home now, and make yourself a nice cup of tea.”
After seeing his aunt off, Ian had a thorough look around the rest of the flat. There was no sign of blood in the kitchen or anywhere other than the basement stairs. Surely the killer had some blood on his person—or did he come prepared with a second set of clothing? There was no discarded clothing in the trash bins, either in the flat or in the alley. An exhaustive search for the murder weapon yielded nothing—the killer must have taken it with him.
Ian went into the building stairwell and knocked on the doors of the four other flats in the building. The only response he got was from a tall, elegantly dressed young man in the flat one flight above, who claimed to be on his way out. He gave his name as James Milner and claimed to know Elizabeth Staley only by sight.
“I haven’t lived here long, you see,” he said, tying his cravat.
“Did you happen to see or hear anything unusual this morning?”
Mr. Milner furrowed his brow. His hair was pale as wheat, his eyes of the lightest blue, and his skin so smooth that Ian doubted he could grow a beard if he tried. “Let me see . . . as a matter of fact, I heard a sort of—thumping, if you will. Like the sound of something being dropped.”
Ian’s pulse quickened. “What time was this?”
“It was just around eight o’clock, you see, because I was having my morning coffee, and I heard the milkman shortly afterward.”
“You said you heard a thumping. Could it have been the sound of someone falling down a flight of stairs?”
“I suppose it could, now that you mention it.”
“And did you happen to see the milkman when he came?”
“No. I wasn’t properly dressed, so I didn’t collect the milk until later.”
“And did you happen to notice if Miss Staley’s milk had been collected?”
“I assume it had. Mine was the only bottle remaining on the stoop.”
“Thank you, Mr. Milner. You have been very helpful,” Ian said, handing him his card. “Please contact me if you think of anything else.”
“Certainly.”
“Oh, one more question. Can you think of anyone who might want to harm Miss Staley?”
The young man’s face reddened. “As I said, I didn’t really know her except in passing.”
“So you did. Thank you again,” said Ian, tipping his hat. Pulling his cloak around his body, he stepped lightly down the stairs, pausing in the street for a moment before heading back in the direction of police chambers. He pondered who might want to kill poor Miss Staley. She seemed such an inoffensive woman, bookish and shy, someone you wouldn’t notice in a crowd, the kind who blended into the background easily. He wished he had spoken with her more at the séance, and cursed himself for being so impatient to leave.
He thought about the milk bottles. The other tenants either collected theirs, had no delivery that day, or did not use milk—an unusual occurrence in Edinburgh, where residents were great devourers of milk, cheese, and cream.
Turning south onto Dublin Street, he stepped aside to let a fine landau pass. It was drawn by a pair of shining black geldings, and the driver seemed to be in a hurry, urging on the high-stepping horses with a flick of his long whip. The carriage was royal blue, trimmed in gold, and bore the Scottish version of the royal coat of arms—a mirror image of the English one, with the unicorn on the left side of the shield, the lion on the right. The unicorn carried the familiar blue-and-white Scottish flag, St. Andrew’s Cross, while the lion waved the English standard, the red-and-white Cross of St. George.
Ian concluded the carriage belonged not to the Queen but probably to a high-ranking Scottish official, perhap
s on his way to his office on Melville Crescent. Passing by the private Queen Street Gardens, he pondered the privileged lives within elegant Georgian townhouses, a deep contrast to the misery embalmed in Old Town’s squalid alleys. Gazing at the wide, clean expanse of Heriot Row with its tidy, geometrically pleasing three-story row houses, he realized he preferred the unpredictable turmoil of Old Town. It was dark and dangerous and depressing but somehow more human.
Now, approaching the dividing line between New Town and the sordid slums of Old Town, Ian pondered the dual nature of a killer who seemed harmless enough to gain entry to a helpless spinster’s flat yet was ruthless enough to brutally murder her.
CHAPTER SIX
Before turning onto the High Street, Ian stopped to give money to a blind beggar perched on a three-legged stool near the entrance to Waverley Station.
“How’s business?” he inquired, slipping a coin into the man’s hand.
“Is ’at you, Detective Inspector?”
“Hello, Brian.”
“There’s no mistakin’ yer voice.”
“Have you anything to tell me?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On wha’ it’s worth to ye.”
“That would depend on how useful the information is.”
Brian licked his lips. “Half a crown.”
“I just gave you that.”
Brian smiled, his teeth as stained as the gray cobblestones beneath their feet. “So ye did. A shilling, then.”
“It’s a steep price.”
“It’s valuable information.”
“Very well,” Ian said, digging another coin from his pocket.
“Ta very much,” Brian said, fingering the coin eagerly before tucking it into his jacket pocket.
“Well?” Ian said, leaning over him.
“Come closer. The walls have ears.”
Ian bent down so his ear was near the man’s mouth. The aroma of cheap tobacco, stale whisky, and undigested cheese and onion pie wafted into Ian’s nostrils.
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