Edinburgh Midnight

by Carole Lawrence

  “Indeed. And if I were you I’d mind what you say around him.”

  Dickerson shifted uneasily in his seat. “He’s not tha’ bad.”

  Ian let the remark pass, though he was troubled at the thought of the sergeant falling under the spell of a man he regarded as untrustworthy.

  There was no sign of Brian in front of St. Giles, so Ian instructed the cabbie to continue on to Waverley Station. The ride to the train station was short, and the man tipped his hat when Ian paid him.

  “Don’t get too spoiled,” Ian told Dickerson as they alighted from the cab. “Today I’m in a hurry and the weather is bad.”

  The impressive five-story building was even more imposing shrouded in falling snow, and Ian couldn’t help admiring it as they hurried past the line of cabs to get to the main entrance. Each of the building’s five stories was different in size and design, breaking the square symmetry of its heavy stonework, culminating in a top floor with a magnificent mansard roof.

  Ian looked for Brian in front of the station, but the beggar was nowhere to be seen. Thinking he might have gone inside to escape the inclement weather, Ian passed the throng of passengers waiting for cabs, and stepped into the cathedral-like interior, with its ornate glass ceiling culminating in the central round dome. The quality of sound inside the station was like nowhere else. At once diffused and magnified, it was as if a thousand voices were blending into a massive collective conversation, unintelligible but somehow vastly comforting.

  “No sign of ’im, sir?” said Dickerson as they roamed the marbled floors, weaving in and out of groups of people from all walks of life.

  “I’m afraid not,” Ian said, a sinking feeling worming its way into his consciousness.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but isn’t it possible he gave ye false information on purpose?”

  “But why would he do that now, after being so reliable all these years?”

  “Don’ know, sir, but isn’t it possible?”

  Ian had to admit the sergeant was right, but if he couldn’t trust Brian, whom could he trust? Ian felt a creeping dread as they stood, immobile and directionless, lost amid the rush of people who knew exactly where they were going.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  By the time Ian and Dickerson left Waverley, snowflakes were tumbling from the sky as if in a race to reach the ground. There wasn’t a cab to be had, so they trudged through the gathering gloom to police chambers. Ian nipped into a shop to buy umbrellas, but by the time they arrived at the station house, their feet were thoroughly soaked. Lounging on the steps beneath a torn umbrella, looking surprisingly dry and comfortable, was Derek McNair. Dressed in his usual assortment of mismatched clothing, he had topped it off with a broad-brimmed oilskin hat.

  “Where ye been?” he said as they approached. “I’ve been waitin’ fer ages.”

  “Strange as it may seem, I don’t arrange my schedule to suit your convenience,” Ian replied as the boy followed them up the stairs.

  “Don’ ye wanna know why I’m here?”

  “I’m guessing there’s a cup of tea and a tin of biscuits involved.”

  “I won’ say no—ta very much.”

  “You might as well come in,” Ian said, holding the door open for him.

  The boy entered the station house as if he were walking into a grand ballroom. “Hiya, mate,” he said, tipping his cap as he sauntered past the desk sergeant.

  “Now then,” he said, perching on Ian’s desk, “’bout that tea.”

  “I’ll fetch it, sir,” said Sergeant Dickerson.

  “So what momentous news do you bring me?” asked Ian, as McNair sat swinging his legs back and forth.

  The leg swinging stopped. “Momen—what? Wha’ ye usin’ fancy words fer, mate?”

  “Important news.”

  “He wants t’meet ye again,” Derek said, lowering his voice.

  “Who does?”

  “Who’d ye think? Rat Face.”

  “He communicated that to you, did he?”

  “A’ course he did. I’m yer go-between, ain’t I?”

  “Did he say when and where?”

  “Tonight, five o’clock. Same place as the first time.”

  “The stables?”

  “Aye.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “I’m jes the messenger.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there.”

  “D’ye wan’ me t’take ye there?”

  “I can find my own way.”

  “Never know when ye might need a mate.”

  “Thanks all the same, but I’ll be fine.”

  His answer put a damper on the boy’s mood, but that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. A few of the other officers looked at him askance as he slurped tea and gobbled down biscuits, finishing nearly half the tin. Luckily, DCI Crawford wasn’t around—Ian knew he had little regard for the ragamuffin, and didn’t want the chief questioning him about what the boy was doing there. The pursuit of his parents’ death was not an official inquiry, and he risked censure—or worse—if Crawford were to learn how he was spending his time.

  After devouring the biscuits and tea, Derek grabbed his torn umbrella and pulled on his hat.

  “See ye later, Guv.”

  “Hang on,” said Ian, holding out his own umbrella. “Take this one.”

  The boy hesitated, then took it with a little tip of his hat. “Ta very much. See y’around,” he said, ambling from the station with the same cocky swagger. Watching him go, Ian had to admire the steely determination it took to be a boy living by his wits in the streets of a cold and indifferent city.

  No sooner had the boy left than the door swung open to admit a tiny, dark-haired woman carrying a large handbag. She wore a light-brown travel suit and a dark-green plaid shawl. Ian recognized her as Bronwyn Davies, the woman from the séance group.

  “Miss Davies, thank you for coming in,” he said, rising to greet her. “Please, have a seat. Would you care for some tea?”

  “Thank you, no. Esodora said you were looking for me,” she said in her soft Welsh accent, settling her petite body into the chair and pulling her plaid shawl around her thin shoulders. When she sat all the way back in it, her feet barely touched the ground.

  “That’s your landlady, is it?” he said.

  “Actually, my downstairs neighbor. She’s quite the busybody, and overheard you talking with my landlady.” She cocked her head to one side, regarding him with big, dark eyes, which appeared even larger in such a small face. Her age was impossible to guess—she could have been thirty or fifty. “I believe she’s Egyptian or something—and very nosy.”

  “And you, Miss Davies—you are Welsh, I believe?”

  “I am indeed. I grew up in Cardiff.”

  “And how long have you lived in Edinburgh?”

  “Since my poor sister took ill,” she said dolefully. “I came up from Wales to nurse her, and never left. When she died I just stayed on in her flat.”

  “I believe you told me that you attended Madame Veselka’s séances in an attempt to communicate with her?”

  Her face brightened. “I am happy to say I have had many conversations with her since she crossed over. It has been a great comfort to me.”

  “Do you intend to continue attending the meetings?”

  “Why on earth would I not?”

  “Two of your members—”

  “Surely you don’t believe their deaths are connected!” she exclaimed, as though the idea was truly scandalous.

  “Does it not strike you as odd?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “You are aware they were both murdered?”

  “I know that is what the police believe.”

  “And what do you believe, Miss Davies?”

  She leaned in toward him, and he could smell peppermint on her breath. “I believe they were taken by spirits.”

  He sat back in his chair, quite unprepared for such an outlandish response. He was aware Miss Davies was eccentric, but clearly she
possessed very bizarre ideas.

  “Think about it,” she said. “The major was a military man—no telling how many of his enemies were waiting to avenge their deaths from the beyond.”

  “And Miss Staley?”

  “I don’t know enough about her, but I imagine she had a secret buried somewhere in her past—someone she wronged in life, who crossed over just long enough to do her in.”

  “And you, Miss Davies? Have you no such enemies in your past?”

  “I have led a very quiet life, Detective. Some people would say a dull life, and perhaps they are right. But I cannot remember ever harming anyone—at least not consciously.”

  “Good for you, Miss Davies,” he replied, eyeing her enormous bag, still clutched tightly in her arms, as if it was a baby. “That is quite an impressive satchel,” he remarked.

  “It’s my knitting. Goes everywhere with me, in case I have a spare moment. Helps calm my nerves, you know.”

  “How very commendable,” he said, wondering what was wrong with her nerves that they needed calming.

  The rest of the interview yielded little of interest. She claimed not to know the major or Elizabeth Staley very well, and could think of no one—living, at least—who might wish to harm them. After another offer of tea, which she again politely refused, he escorted her out of the station.

  He turned to see Constable Turnbull staring at him. When he caught Ian’s eye, the corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer. He turned to Sergeant Dickerson, who was tidying up the tea station, and whispered something to him. Dickerson let out a guffaw that turned into a cough when he saw Ian looking at him. Clearing his throat, he stumbled over to his desk and sat, pretending to busy himself with paperwork, avoiding looking at Ian.

  Ian felt a wave of loathing wash over him. How could Dickerson not see what Turnbull was, how he was playing him? Was the sergeant’s judgment so compromised that he was drawn to the constable’s insincere flattery and attention? He looked at Dickerson, his ruddy face flushed, burying himself in paperwork.

  Ian stood up and threw on his cape. Dickerson looked up with the expression of a puppy who has just soiled an expensive rug.

  “I’m going out,” Ian said.

  “Where to, sir?”

  “A funeral,” he replied, and before the sergeant could respond, he turned and strode to the front entrance. His anger was mounting to the point that leaving was the only reasonable option. He feared saying anything further to Dickerson would unleash a torrent of recrimination. Apart from embarrassing the sergeant in front of his colleagues, it would give Turnbull the upper hand, if he didn’t have it already. But for now, Ian needed to track down Jeremy Fitzpatrick, and he could think of no better place to find him than his father’s funeral.

  Major Fitzpatrick’s funeral was at the Kirk of the Canongate, near the bottom of the Old Town, not far from Holyrood Palace. As Ian approached the church, with its rounded, Dutch-style gable, a line from Robert Fergusson’s poem “Leith Races” popped into his head.

  An wha are ye my winsome dear,

  That takes the gate sae early?

  He thought about the young poet, buried within its walls, dead at the age of twenty-four. He gazed up at the tall, thin windows with their many panes, flanking the central round window, peering down at him like a giant eye. The sole festive holiday touch was a large holly wreath on the kirk’s front door. The sound of a hundred voices singing “Abide with Me” floated from the building. He tiptoed into the seventeenth-century kirk, laid out in cruciform design, and took a seat at the back of the long central aisle just as the last chords of the hymn lingered in the thin air, echoing through the silent white columns.

  As people settled into their pews, he thought of Edinburgh’s citizens who had “taken the gate sae early” through no fault of their own. The mother tending to her babies, surprised by a house burglar, delivered a fatal blow by the panicked thief; the young law clerk, strangled before being flung from the parapet of Arthur’s Seat; the banker poisoned by his rapacious lover. The list went on, and Ian had determined to seek justice for them all, even if he had to wrench it from the jaws of despair itself.

  Suddenly aware of someone moving toward him, he turned to see Madame Veselka, all in black except for a large gold pendant upon her heavy bosom, her face half hidden beneath an ornate black-lace veil. She nodded solemnly and slid into the pew to sit next to him. Her unwelcome presence made him squirm in his seat, as the thick scent of her gardenia perfume surrounded him.

  Putting her face close to his ear, she whispered, “It’s not over.”

  Puzzled, he frowned at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Paris?”

  She shrugged. “The trip was canceled. Ghosts ill-treated do not rest easy,” she continued, looking at his cheek. “That mark—a reminder of sin and mortality,” she murmured, shaking her head. “Restless ghosts will haunt the living. Secrets long buried cry for the air of truth. Look to your dreams—the answers lie there.”

  And with that, she rose and moved to another section of the church. Her words left him feeling shaky and uncertain. Was she trying to throw him off the scent, keep him from investigating her too closely? She spoke of secrets, but what secrets was she hiding? What of the trip to Paris, suddenly canceled at the last minute?

  The minister delivered a brief eulogy, after which the audience rose to sing “Nearer My God to Thee.” The rest of the service was traditional and concise, and as the mourners left the church, a lone bagpiper playing “The Minstrel Boy” followed the solemn procession of pallbearers. The eight men carried the coffin slowly toward the churchyard, the women standing outside the gates, as was the custom. Madame Veselka was nowhere to be seen. Surprised not to see the major’s son among the pallbearers, Ian searched the crowd for any sign of him.

  At the far end of the churchyard, slouching next to a tall, ornate monument, was a familiar figure. Half hidden by the headstone, Jeremy Fitzpatrick gazed at the crowd of mourners assembled around the deep hole in the ground, watching as the coffin was lowered down. Weaving between the men in their dark clothing, Ian tried to get closer without being spotted. But as he stepped behind a well-dressed fat man in an expensive waistcoat and top hat, Jeremy spied him and took off at a run.

  “Damn your eyes,” Ian muttered, sprinting after him across the soggy ground. But the lad had a good head start, ducking through the gate on Old Tolbooth Wynd. Turning right, he ran in the direction of Calton Road. Ian loped after him, but when he reached the intersection, looked on helplessly as Fitzpatrick hopped onto a half-empty tram.

  Panting and sweating, Ian watched the horses break away at a brisk trot, the wheels squealing on their metal rails as the tram careened around the corner of Calton Road where it swung north toward Leith Street. He knew the route—the tram ran all the way to Bernard Street in the village of Leith. If the boy disembarked at the port, he could lose himself amid the dockworkers, oystermen, fishmongers, and prostitutes.

  Having recovered his breath, Ian wiped the sweat from his brow and turned back in the direction of Old Town.

  Jeremy Fitzpatrick had just catapulted to the top of his suspect list.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The sun had already ducked like a retreating thief behind Castle Rock as Ian set out across the sodden landscape of the city for his rendezvous with Rat Face. Avoiding the squalid swamp of Old Town, he walked up Calton Road to the intersection of Princes Street, joining the throngs of well-heeled gentlemen and elegant ladies trolling the expensive shops lining the broad avenue. The Kirk may have banned Christmas in Scotland, but that didn’t stop the merchants of New Town from turning out the shops in their holiday best. Clothiers lined their front windows in red-and-gold trim; bowls of oranges studded with cloves beckoned shoppers to enter festively decorated bakeries and sweets shops; holly wreaths with bright-red bows hung from the front doors of chic haberdasheries.

  All the holiday finery made little impression upon Ian as he strode, head down, past the brightly l
it shops, the air alive with the smell of fir trees and peppermint. He might as well have been walking through Old Town, with its stench of boiled cabbage and despair, for all the effect his surroundings had upon his churning brain.

  Madame Veselka’s words swirled through his head, a confusing jumble of thoughts cascading after them. He tried to concentrate on what he knew was his duty—solving the séance murders—yet his attention was divided, as he felt he was drawing ever nearer to his parents’ killer. It even struck him that there might be some connection, however faint. As for the search for the corruption within the police force, he felt hopelessly overmatched. He was convinced Turnbull was involved, but proving it was maddeningly elusive.

  As he passed Jenners Department Store, a grande dame emerged from the building, and he stepped aside to let her pass. Dressed in white ermine and diamonds, she was trailed by a brace of liveried servants buried in a mass of hatboxes, shopping bags, and—of all things—a gilded birdcage. Her nose was tilted upward, lest she be contaminated by the merest whiff of commoners, her face swathed in a cloud of snowy fur.

  One of her servants stumbled on an uneven bit of sidewalk and dropped his packages. The grand lady turned on him, her face scarlet with fury.

  “Stupid oaf!” she hissed. “Watch where you’re going! Pick all of those up straightaway!”

  The lad hurriedly complied, bending over to snatch the precious cargo from the ground. He was hardly more than a boy, slight of build, with a delicate face and a thatch of light-brown hair. Ian put his age at no older than fourteen. No doubt he considered himself lucky to have such a job, while other boys his age toiled in the mills, swept the streets, or loaded cargo on the docks of Leith. And there were unluckier still, boys like Derek McNair, as Ian knew only too well.

  Still, as he watched the lad scramble to obey his mistress’ commands, Ian felt anger build in his own breast. He longed to give the haughty woman a piece of his mind. He knew it would be of no use, and would certainly do more damage than good to the poor servant, so he held his tongue. The packages were duly gathered, and the procession continued onward.