It was McGray’s turn to snort. When he lit his cigar, his hands shook with frustration.
‘If you really want to help her,’ I resumed, ‘I suggest you stop thinking of evil spirits and start looking for a proper explanation. Something that will stand up in court.
‘And if that fails, claiming insanity might be her best choice. Perhaps you should go to the asylum and talk to Dr Clouston. He might be willing to sign a certificate for her. Only, remember you will need two. And he might be stuck with her in the asylum for the rest of her life.’
McGray shook his head. ‘Clouston will never agree to that. He’s all duty and morals.’
I chuckled. ‘Is he? He has signed questionable certificates before.’
‘One! One certificate. And that sod was clearly mad back then!’
I did not have the energy to debate our older cases. ‘I am trying to give you alternatives.’
McGray puffed at his cigar as we descended the steep Calton Hill. I could tell he was doing his best to keep his temper. He understood I was still mourning my dear uncle, and how fragile my patience was.
At last, he took a deep breath. ‘I’ll go see Clouston if we come to that, even if I ken what he’ll say. Right now—’
‘Right now, we have to plan our course of action, prioritise the evidence and discuss our theories. Real theories. I have a couple already.’
As I said so, we made it to the intersection at North Bridge ; to the left was the shabby and medieval Old Town, to the right the wealthy New Town.
‘Fancy a dram and a plate o’ stovies at the Ensign?’ McGray said. ‘I’m starving and I’ve nae had a single drink since yesterday. We can ponder there.’
‘No. I am going to the New Club. I need a decent meal and I do not want to eat it from a sticky table.’
‘Frey—’
‘I will rephrase,’ I said with a raised voice. ‘I am going to the New Club. If you want to discuss the case this evening, you can follow me. And if you are in anyway unhappy about it, you can file a complaint to whichever bloody clown is leading your blasted Scottish police these days. See how much I care.’
And I stepped faster towards the emerging lights of Princes Street.
‘Och, I liked ye better before ye grew a pair!’
In his gaudy tartan trousers, ragged overcoat and grimy shirt, and seated right at the centre of the New Club’s main dining hall, Nine-Nails was like a flashing beacon. And his eating was as sordid as his clothes : squelching, smacking his lips, hacking at his teeth with his fingernails … and when he was done butchering his steak, he let out a mighty belch that almost shook the windows. I had to move my wine glass away from the path of debris.
‘Nae bad, this coo,’ he said. ‘A wee bit raw, though.’
I sipped my wine and said nothing, enduring the reproachful stares of the other diners, all dressed in black and white. I could tell how worried McGray really was ; despite his outward nonchalance, he could not repress a nervous flicker in his eyes.
‘So, Madame Katerina mentioned you two go back some years,’ I said as soon as the waiter cleared our plates. ‘I’ve never asked how long you have known her.’
McGray drank half his pint of ale (which the waiters had had to fetch from a nearby pub) before answering.
‘Five years, I think. She was one o’ the first clairvoyants I ever met. After my sister’s … troubles.’
He stared at the stump of his missing finger, and I saw no need of bringing up the Amy affair one more time.
‘How did you first hear of her? About Katerina, I mean. She hardly strikes me as the sort of professional that advertises her services in The Scotsman.’
Nine-Nails smirked. ‘She came to me. She’d heard my story and she offered help. I doubted her at first, but then she told me her list o’ fancy clients. She still works for many preening new-towners.’
‘Is that so? We have been to her … premises several times. I have never seen one respectable client around.’
‘Oh, that’s ’cause she’s brilliant. She either goes to them, or only receives them at certain times, when she’s sure nobody’s watching. I bet even the Lord Provost has consulted her at some point.’
‘I remember you telling me once that she was different from all the other seers … How so?’
He half smiled, at once with sourness and nostalgia. ‘Ye believe I’m a gullible halfwit.’
‘Oh? What have I ever said to make you think that?’
‘Och, shut it. I could see when fortune tellers were trying to swindle me. They went straight to the money or said they could feel my tragic past. Of course they fucking did! It was all over the papers and people wouldnae stop talking about it. Remember it was all fresh news back then.’
I preferred not to add that he was a local legend even today. Tomorrow, everyone at New Club would be commenting on the visit of the crass Nine-Nails McGray.
‘Katerina was different,’ he said. ‘She was the only one who admitted she heard my story from gossip. And then – she …’
He stared at his ale for a moment.
‘She divined something … Something that happened on the night my sister did this.’ He tapped at the small stump. ‘Something only I had seen.’
I very nearly gasped.
‘You mean she knew that you …’ I leaned closer and whispered, ‘That you thought you saw the devil?’
‘Aye.’
I nodded. Katerina indeed had an annoying history of telling things she could not possibly have known.
‘She described what I saw in detail, and she said that the … vision was key to bringing Pansy back. She said I should dig deeper and I might find a means to cure her.’
‘Is that how your obsession with the occult began? After Katerina’s suggestions?’
My tone betrayed me. Had that woman simply manipulated him? She was clever. She would have seen that McGray was a wounded wreck, prompt to believe anyone who offered him some hope. The woman herself had told me she had a talent for knowing what people wanted to hear and that she used it when it suited her ; nothing to do with inner eyes or otherworldly energies.
McGray stared at his drink. Either he was looking for words to express something or was struggling to decide whether to talk or not. In the end, he twitched.
‘I was researching witchcraft and the occult already, but I went much deeper after I met her. Katerina herself helped me source books and passed me useful contacts. And if ye think she only did so to rip me off, let me tell ye she’s never charged me a penny to tell me things about Pansy. I only pay her when we need help for police matters.’
To me that would be reason enough to doubt her motivations. We had consulted her many times in the past year, and from the department’s books I knew exactly how much she received for her ‘consulting’ services. Most of that money, predictably, came from McGray’s pockets.
I kept all those thoughts to myself, otherwise we would have argued until dawn.
‘I’m curious about one thing,’ said McGray, sneering. ‘Did ye really have a wine and candlelit supper with her?’
I huffed. That would take some explaining. Fortunately, the waiter refilled my glass right then.
‘You can hardly call it that. I did visit her in July, in the thick of the Henry Irving scandal. I wanted her to tell me – well, whatever she could.’
McGray arched an eyebrow, his lips slowly stretching into a grin. ‘Ye consulted her! Ye really consulted her!’
I snorted. ‘This is precisely why I did not tell you back then!’
His grin reached maximum width. ‘And the bottle o’ wine?’
‘I thought some drink might loosen her tongue.’
‘Aye ye did, ye dog!’ McGray let out something between a laugh and a joyous growl. ‘Am surprised she even let ye in! What did she tell ye?’
I sighed. I knew Nine-Nails was not going to like this.
‘She … She admitted to lying.’
He choked on the ale. For a second I t
hought he’d spray it all on me, but luckily he managed to grasp his napkin and, for the first time ever, I saw him cover his mouth.
‘She what!’ he squealed after coughing and clearing his throat.
‘Sometimes,’ I clarified. ‘She admitted to lying – sometimes.’
McGray looked at me in utter disbelief. Then he called the waiter with a loud muleteer’s whistle. ‘Oi, laddie! Start making yer way to the pub. I’m goin’ to need another one very soon.’ Then he leaned closer to me, his face stern. ‘What d’ye mean? Who does she lie to?’
I must admit I savoured the moment.
‘Are you afraid she may have lied to you?’
He banged a fist on the table and everything on it rattled. ‘Answer the fucking question!’
I was somewhat glad to see that, all and all, McGray was still far more irritable than me.
‘She assured me she has never lied to you,’ I said, my tone telling just how much I doubted her. ‘I asked her how she did her divination tricks. She admitted she often observes and guesses, or asks seemingly unrelated questions, very much like we do with witnesses. She also admitted that most of her clientele are “simple” folk who crave to be helped.’ I raised a hand before McGray protested. ‘Nevertheless, she insisted she has “the eye”, and that she inherited the gift from her grandmother.’
Again, I said all that with blatant incredulity, but it seemed to quieten McGray’s temper.
‘So, what d’ye think happened last Friday?’
I pondered for a moment. I had said earlier I could not believe Katerina could be responsible. This little chat, however, had made me wary.
‘I would like to hear your theories first,’ was my evasive reply. ‘Skip the ones that involve evil spirits, please.’
McGray shrugged. ‘I can only think of two options. Either one o’ those sad bastards decided to kill him – or herself along with the others, or someone set the whole thing to murder them and frame her.’
I nodded. ‘My very thoughts, though I am more inclined to believe the latter.’
‘How so?’
‘I am not ruling it out entirely, but if this were the doing of a suicidal person – or group of persons – it strikes me as odd that they would summon Katerina. Or care to let her live.’
‘Perhaps they needed her as part of a ritual.’
‘Some suicidal rite of passing?’ I ventured. ‘Atonement for sins, perhaps?’
‘Aye, and that would explain what Katerina heard. I need to look into my books.’
‘And I must think of the nuts and bolts … something that killed them but not her … That should be – I hope – evident from the bodies and the crime scene.’ I took a sip of wine. ‘We should also look at the people connected to the six victims. Anyone who might have wanted them dead.’
McGray stroked his beard. ‘The colonel’s valet …’
‘A logical assumption. He was the last man around and the first one to arrive. And he could only have found the bodies if he took a set of keys with him, so he had full access to the house at all times. We must question him, and soon. But even before that, I want to see those bodies.’
McGray began counting with his fingers. ‘Morgue, séance parlour, the valet … Anything else?’
‘Not that I can think of right now.’
‘Good, I’d run out o’ fingers. With a wee bit o’ luck, we might be able to squeeze them all in one day.’
‘We better do. We must present a good case at the inquest if we want to avoid a full trial.’
Nine-Nails nodded and downed his pint. Just as he put the glass back on the table, the waiter approached with a jug and refilled it.
‘Drink at your leisure, sir. We brought you plenty.’
McGray grinned. ‘Good service here. I might join.’
‘Please, do not. I beg you.’
6
I cannot tell you how relieved I was to find all of the windows of my former house lit up. Layton was pleased to tell me he had received the keys, along with a note from Lady Anne. Exhausted as I was, I forced myself to read it.
The nasty old woman was reprimanding me for my ‘abrupt and most inconsiderate’ request for lodgings. Her lengthy treatise on acceptable manners was followed by a succinct paragraph in which she agreed I spend the present night at her property, but only out of her boundless Christian charity. Her postscript, however, demanded we signed a ‘new and amended contract’ as soon as my ‘petty duties’ allowed, or she’d be forced to send her men to evict me.
I did not have the energy to think of any of that. I went straight to bed, so dreadfully tired no nightmare came to haunt me.
In the morning I thought I’d walk to the City Chambers – already regretting I’d left my white Bavarian mare back in Gloucestershire. However, an insistent rain was falling all across the city, so I opted for a cab. It turned out a wise choice, for I made it to the Royal Mile precisely as all the pauper tenants of those shabby buildings were emptying their chamber pots onto the road.
I made my way into the City Chambers, barely thinking of my surroundings. By now I could have found the way to our ‘office’ blindfolded. However, once there I found a surprise waiting for me.
The cellar’s usual clutter was no more. Instead, there were piles upon piles of crates, all crammed with McGray’s preposterous books and odd paraphernalia. I recognised his gargantuan Peruvian idol, nearly as tall as me, hastily wrapped in brown paper. Nine-Nails must have been packing his mountains of rubbish, preparing himself to be kicked out of the police buildings as soon as the new superintendent took charge.
Inexplicably, I felt a wave of warmth finding myself back in that damp, dingy place.
Like many times before, I caught Nine-Nails listening at the walls with a stethoscope, expecting to hear the ghosts that were said to haunt the underground passages of Mary King’s Close. According to McGray, only a thin wall separated us from those tunnels, and he alleged he’d occasionally heard footsteps, and once even a high-pitched laugh. I had offered him a plethora of sensible explanations – after all, a few sections of Mary King’s Close remained inhabited to this day ; even a tanner and a shoemaker still had their businesses there. Nine-Nails, of course, paid no attention to that detail.
‘I found this auld lad in Grass Market,’ he said with unabated excitement. ‘He sold me that wee map. It has all the streets o’ Mary King’s Close! This very basement was part of it!’
I barely glanced at the piece of yellowy paper on his desk.
‘Did you walk here under this rain?’ I asked. His overcoat was quite damp, and strands of wet hair still stuck to his forehead. Tucker, his faithful golden retriever, was drenched too, and lay belly-up at a corner, a puddle of mud all around him.
‘Aye. It’s only water. It’s clean.’
‘Have you not bought a new horse yet? It has been nine months now.’
His last mount, a magnificent Anglo-Arab specimen, had been killed in January. A gift from his late father, McGray had not had the heart to get a replacement. Today he simply ignored my comment.
‘Glad yer here. Dr Reed left me a note. He can only see us this morning.’
I had to laugh at that. ‘The snotty child telling us we need an appointment?’
‘Aye,’ said McGray, already walking to the door. ‘He’s really busy with that other murder at the Deaf and Dumb Institution.’ He poked my chest. ‘I ken ye don’t like the lad, but don’t upset him today. We’ll probably have to ask him to rush his work for our case.’
I only sighed and followed him.
The morgue occupied an adjacent basement so that the corpses remained cool, and was only a few steps away. There we met young Dr Reed, who at twenty-four was already Edinburgh’s chief forensic physician (not because of his astounding talent, but because a fresh graduate was all the Scottish police could afford).
We found him at the morgue’s small reception room, sorting out stacks of paperwork – reports to be presented at court, from what I could
see. The chap was responsible and he learned fast, I must admit ; however, the strain of his duties was beginning to show on his face. He still had the plump, slightly reddened cheeks that always reminded me of a baby’s rump, but his eyes, which used to look like those of a nervous cocker spaniel, were now stern and encircled by darkened, puffy skin.
‘Good morning, inspectors,’ he said with an already tired voice. He pulled a surprisingly thin file from between the neat piles of paper.
‘What have ye found, laddie?’ McGray asked, attempting to sound jovial.
‘Nothing so far.’
‘What!’ I cried. ‘How long have you—?’
McGray had to elbow my ribs, even if his own tone was not much kinder. ‘What d’ye mean?’
Reed yawned, though looking daggers at me. ‘I have looked at all six bodies. I found nothing that might suggest the cause of death ; no obvious signs of poisoning, no fatal wounds, no—’
‘Were you absolutely thorough?’ I interrupted.
‘Oh, no, not at all, inspector. I barely glanced at them so that you could step in and remark on my incompetence.’
I clenched my fists while McGray laughed hard.
‘Och, the laddie’s become a baby, Frey!’
We both looked at him with unifying hatred.
Reed turned a page and went on, utterly unamused. ‘They all presented a deep cut in the arm joint. It looks as though they bled themselves in the hours preceding their deaths.’
‘The offering,’ McGray mumbled, recalling Katerina’s statement. ‘Did they bleed themselves to death?’
‘No, inspector. The officers found a decanter with the stuff at the site. From the volume, I’d say each person lost the equivalent of a tablespoon. The colonel, however, presents two wounds ; the other one on the palm of his left hand.’
I looked sideways. ‘They could have been poisoned from the knife, directly into their bloodstream.’
The Darker Arts Page 5