The Darker Arts

by Oscar de Muriel

Reed looked mortified. ‘Yes, sir. I finished just before the session started.’

  ‘And why did ye—?’ McGray went silent and fear began to creep into his face.

  ‘I did finish the tests,’ Reed went on, ‘but … I didn’t think you’d want to hear my findings here today.’

  McGray and I were open-mouthed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, and Reed’s voice became the softest murmur.

  ‘I found something in their blood. In all of them.’

  McGray’s eyes could well have fallen out of their sockets. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know the exact substance yet, but I did the Reinsch test and I can tell you there is a nasty cocktail of metals in them.’

  ‘So they were … poisoned,’ I said, though only mouthing the last word.

  Reed nodded. ‘And the knife gave similar results.’

  McGray needed a good moment to take in the news. He finally let go of Reed’s jacket, but only to spit his cigar onto the flagstones and rub his face in utter frustration.

  I drew closer to Reed. ‘You risked a lot concealing that from today’s session.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I thought it might buy you some time if the sheriff didn’t hear that today. But we can’t keep it secret for much longer. I need to file my report.’

  I sighed. ‘Yes, you are right.’ I gave the young man an evaluating look. The skin around his eyes was indeed blackened. I had to pat him on the back. ‘Thank you, Reed. You did very well.’ I looked at McGray with the corner of my eyes. ‘And I’m sure Nine-Nails will thank you as soon as he is able.’

  The look in Reed’s eyes told me that, despite how much he pretended to dislike me, my approval meant a good deal to him.

  ‘I should go, inspector. If they see me, they’ll want me to testify right now.’

  ‘Indeed. Thanks again.’

  Less than forty minutes passed before we were summoned back to the courtroom.

  When he asked for silence, Sheriff Blyth was still wiping what looked like crumbs of meat and potato pie from his beard.

  The jury’s foreman, a wisp of a man, stood up to deliver their verdict from a crumpled piece of paper, which looked more like a piece of brown wrapping than a legal edict.

  ‘We acknowledge that the cause of the deaths has not been determined,’ the man read, and McGray almost sighed in relief ; however, then came … ‘but, given the circumstances in which such deaths occurred, and the fact that the six victims were of such differing health and ages, murder remains the most likely cause, and we advise that further investigations should proceed on that basis.’

  Katerina lowered her head, just as the main line of the verdict was read.

  ‘We believe Miss Ana Katerina Dragnea is the main suspect and should remain under custody.’

  There were some victorious little yelps. I could almost feel McGray’s hope leaving his body as he exhaled, yet all I could do was rest a hand on his shoulder.

  The foreman went on. ‘Even though Mr Alexander Holt appears to be an honourable man, and it is clear he was highly appreciated by his employer, his behaviour remains reprehensible and suspicious. We advise he too should remain in custody. Thank you, my Lord.’

  There was a wave of applause, which would have turned tragedienne Ellen Terry green with envy. I looked around for reactions.

  Mrs Cobbold still covered half her face with her handkerchief but could not repress the glee in her little blue eyes. Pratt was shaking his head, though he looked satisfied enough. Holt was on the verge of tears. Poor Katerina stared at nothing, like an empty vessel. And Sheriff Blyth seemed only too happy to finally be able to go home.

  ‘Thanking the jury,’ he said and then looked at Katerina with a rather cruel spark in his eyes. ‘In light of their decision, this case now goes beyond my remit. Miss Dragnea shall be tried for murder at the next session of the High Court. Mr Holt shall also be questioned then.’

  I rose to protest but would not even get a chance to open my mouth.

  ‘Save your breath, inspector. You know how the law works, and now you will have plenty of time to investigate.’ He gave me a derisive smile. ‘Who knows? By the time the High Court meets again, you two might even remember all the other key elements you’ve withheld today.’

  And he rose up amidst sardonic sniggers.

  ‘Today’s sessions are closed.’

  13

  ‘Ye never told us ye gave them the sodding knife! What were ye thinking?’

  ‘You never asked me!’

  ‘Och, for fuck’s sake, Katerina! Are ye mad?’

  ‘I only told Leonora. She wanted to learn the craft, so I taught her some of my methods, but I made her swear she’d never tell anyone. I never thought she would betray me like that, the little bitch!’

  ‘Could you please calm down?’ I beseeched them. It was enough with the clatter of the cab as it drove us back to Calton Hill.

  Katerina sat down, her hands fidgeting with the little grey hat, her lower lip pushed out, sulking like a teenager. ‘I knew if I told you about the knife, you’d take it the wrong

  way.’

  ‘Do you mean like the jury did?’

  ‘It’s like I told them! The blade had to be—!’

  ‘Oh, do save it, madam! This is far worse than I expected. They will try you for murder now!’

  She tossed the hat to the floor and began sobbing uncontrollably, her fingers quivering around her mouth as she spoke. ‘D’you think I don’t know that, you prick?’

  ‘There, there,’ said McGray at once, putting an arm around her and punching me in the shoulder with his free hand. ‘Aye, he’s an utter English prick. Percy, how dare ye talk to her like that just now?’

  ‘But you were just telling her—! Oh, never mind. We better look ahead. I do not believe the High Court will meet for at least another couple of weeks. We do have time to turn this around – but only if you talk openly to us.’

  The poor woman was shaking from head to toe, the weight of the situation finally hitting her.

  ‘We will not probe now,’ I added. ‘It has been a long day for us all. We better rest. We can plan our investigations tomorrow morning.’

  McGray agreed and squeezed Katerina’s shoulder affectionately. I thought she was calming down, but then the cab crossed North Bridge, and to our right we had a gloomy view of the jail’s towers – blackened bricks and sturdy walls at the very edge of the jagged cliff. Whichever spark was left in Katerina’s eyes instantly faded away. She went ghastly pale and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth seemed to grow deeper, almost as if her flesh had been suddenly drained.

  ‘What is it?’ McGray asked her.

  Katerina’s green eyes followed the outline of the jail, any other muscle frozen.

  She whispered, ‘I have seen my death …’

  The post office buildings blocked Calton Hill from our view. Only then did she manage to move, bringing a hand to her neck.

  ‘On that hill. I saw myself hang. I felt the—’

  She ran a finger on her skin, following the line of an imaginary noose, and said no more. I was expecting McGray to give her some comfort, but he did not speak either. We waited in silence until we made it to the jail’s fort-like gate. It took only a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

  Just before we handed Katerina to the guards, she seized McGray’s hand, patted it, and then struggled for a moment before she could talk.

  ‘Adolphus,’ she mumbled, ‘promise me you’ll look after him.’

  McGray’s shoulders dropped an inch. He looked at Katerina with terrible sadness.

  ‘Oi, hen, don’t talk of—’

  ‘Just promise me!’ she hissed, clenching his hand, her misted eyes pleading.

  ‘Course I would, hen. If it came to that, and it won’t.’

  She took a short yet deep breath, nodded, and then turned away, saying no more.

  I saw her walk off with short, heavy steps, her back slightly stooped, as if all the weight
of the world had been laid on her. She could have been someone’s grandmother, and I felt an inexplicable prickling on the back of my neck when I thought so.

  Nine-Nails was just as affected as her, so I did not speak until we were back in the cab.

  ‘What did she mean by that?’ I asked him. ‘Who does she want you to look after?’

  As we rode away, McGray cast a melancholy stare at the thick stone walls. I half anticipated his answer.

  ‘Poor woman,’ he whispered. ‘She has a wee son in England.’

  PART 2

  The Trial

  14

  The following morning, Katerina was crucified by the newspapers. The Scotsman devoted four full columns to the hearing, which included a rather grotesque profile drawing of her, captioned Mrs Catriona Drakulea, nefarious fortune teller and only suspect of the Morningside murders. The rest of the article was just as misinformed, accurate only when retelling McGray’s family history, which was detailed before stating that he was a blindly loyal disciple of the despicable foreigner. So much for impartial press.

  The first thing I did was check when the High Court would meet next. I was glad to hear that the court was currently sitting in Aberdeen and would not return to Edinburgh until the first week of October. That gave us exactly a fortnight to work on Katerina’s case. It was still too tight, given the complexities of the case, and as usual I felt an initial wave of overwhelming despair.

  My mood worsened when I walked into our office and found it empty. I had assumed Nine-Nails would have been there for hours, with a plethora of books on séances ready for me to mock on.

  He would not arrive for another hour, but I wasted no time. I jotted down a list of all the people we should question and the places we should inspect – the Willbergs’ home in particular. If Leonora, for some unfathomable reason, had poisoned the knife, it was likely she had left traces.

  I was about to head to the morgue when McGray burst in like a derailed train.

  ‘Fucking reporters, Frey!’ he roared, clasping a handful of crumpled newspapers. ‘Nothing in that pile o’ shite is true! Nae a single peshin’ word!’

  I waited until he was done tearing the sheets apart. ‘At least they drew her nose rather truthfully.’

  He growled and then punched the thin wall behind his desk, leaving a detailed impression of his knuckles on the plaster. ‘I would nae even wipe my dogs’ arses with that.’

  Just as he said that, the huge black mastiff and the golden retriever trotted in. The nonchalant beasts laid on the floor, Tucker on top of Mackenzie, and almost immediately dozed off in a pile of fur and dribble.

  ‘Did you say your dogs? Plural?’

  ‘Aye. If the family don’t reclaim him, I’m keeping the big brute. And don’t ye mention him when we question them! They might’ve forgotten.’

  I sighed. ‘And you gave Holt a hard time for pilfering the Grenvilles’ estate?’

  ‘Och, how priggish ye are! Never mind. What’ve ye been doing? Anything useful?’

  ‘Believe me, the fate of that animal is not my main concern right now. I was about to see Reed and check his results on the knife.’

  ‘Ye’ve nae looked at that yet? Had a lie-in in yer silken sheets?’

  ‘Oh, do shut up,’ I snapped as we walked out. ‘Where were you in any case?’

  ‘Meeting Katerina. Ye saw her yesterday ; she’s sure she’s goin’ to die.’

  ‘Let us hope her inner eye is wrong this time.’

  We found Reed standing in front of very tidy rows of test tubes, arranged in six clusters that mimicked the six corpses on the opposite side of the room. The exhausted chap spoke before we could even utter good morning. ‘Be careful, sirs. I’m working with very strong mutiatic acid.’

  McGray looked intently at the labelled flasks. ‘Got any more news for us, laddie?’

  Reed turned off the Bunsen burner and made a few notes before answering. ‘I ran the Marsh test. We can discard arsenic. I only found traces of it in Mrs Grenville, but that will most likely be from her beauty products.’

  ‘That magnolia skin comes at a price,’ I said, and then sighed. ‘I was secretly hoping for arsenic.’

  ‘Really?’ asked McGray.

  ‘Yes, me too,’ said Reed. ‘These people look like they died of something so poisonous it killed them even before their bodies could develop any noticeable symptoms. There are very few substances that can kill that quickly.’

  ‘And even fewer that can be detected beyond doubt,’ I added. ‘McGray, do you remember those foul poisonous frogs you made me research?’

  ‘Aye. A cherished memory.’

  ‘There is no technique yet that can differentiate that sort of substance from those in the human body. If something like that killed these people, Katerina is as well as dead.’

  McGray stared at the test tubes, not blinking, and he mumbled, ‘Shite …’

  Reed reached for six vials labelled with the names of the victims. They did not contain liquid, but thin strips of copper, all covered in dark, silvery deposits. ‘As I said yesterday, there seems to be a nasty cocktail of metals in their bloods. I could perform individual tests for each element, but that would take a lot of time – and large amounts of sample.’

  I looked sullenly at the six bundles of white sheets. ‘We need to narrow down the list of potential poisons. The families will not be happy if we return them an ounce worth of corpses.’

  ‘No, inspector. And they’re already demanding we surrender them. One Walter Fox, Mrs Grenville’s cousin, went directly to Superintendent Trevelyan. They want to embalm them as soon as possible.’

  ‘What did Trevelyan say?’ I asked.

  ‘He told me it was your orders I should follow.’

  I saw a fraction of a male toe sticking out of the nearest sheet. There was already a hint of blue Stilton to it.

  ‘I’d say you take as much tissue as you think you can safely preserve and then release the bodies. I do not want another episode like the one in the Highlands.’

  Only very recently we’d done our best to preserve a body for forensic inspection. Cut off from the civilised world, in mid-summer and with scant tools at hand, we had of course failed, with unspeakable consequences. McGray had at some point mocked me for my reactions, but even he seemed to retch at the memory … and he’d not even dealt with the thick of it.

  ‘What about the knife?’ he asked.

  Reed brought it back on a little steel dish. ‘Like I told you before, it has the same blend of metals.’

  ‘Could that have come from the blood itself?’ I said. ‘Katerina told us the colonel was the last one to use it. He could have been already poisoned by then.’

  ‘It is possible,’ said Reed, ‘but again, there’s no way I can prove that. If I washed the blood away, I would also wash the poison.’

  McGray stared at the little blade, still shiny underneath the clotted blood, and there was a scary sparkle in his eyes. ‘Will the fiscal be aware of that?’

  ‘Nine-Nails!’ I cried. ‘We are not lying in court!’

  ‘The fiscal would definitely know,’ Reed sentenced, putting the dish aside. ‘I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you right now. I know it doesn’t help the lady’s case. I’m sorry.’

  McGray exhaled, glaring at the scientific instruments as if they were plagues from hell.

  ‘Speaking of the procurator fiscal,’ Reed continued, ‘I am forced to send him my full reports as I produce them. I …’ he lowered his voice, ‘I could delay this one until tomorrow.’

  I was going to object to that, but McGray pushed me just hard enough so that my elbow lightly brushed the big flask with the concentrated acid.

  ‘Aye, do that, laddie. And, Percy, I want ye to look up in yer fancy books, or telegram any o’ those Oxfordian upper-class sissies ye shared yer bathtubs with when ye were studying. Try to find if there’s any new sodding test we’ve nae heard of.’

  ‘I doubt that will—’

  ‘Just
do it,’ he snapped over his shoulder as he walked out. ‘Thanks, Reed.’

  ‘Before I bury myself in books,’ I said as soon as we were back in our cellar office, ‘I think we should make a priority of interrogating the surviving relatives.’

  McGray was looking at Mackenzie. ‘Aye, yer probably right. And we have an address already.’

  15

  The carriage stopped in front of a rather modest house on Inverleith Row, just off the Botanical Gardens. The granite walls were eroded and covered in moss, a couple of windows were cracked, the front garden had a lawn as patchy and unkempt as McGray’s stubble, and even from the road one could see how grimy the lace curtains were.

  ‘It looks like Miss Leonora and Mr Willberg were the poorer relations,’ I said.

  McGray knocked at the battered door.

  ‘Don’t ye dare mention the dog,’ he told me while we waited.

  ‘Who’s that?’ a coarse female voice asked from within.

  ‘CID, missus,’ McGray answered. ‘We’re investigating the deaths of yer master ’n’ mistress.’

  ‘I know nothing.’

  McGray chuckled. ‘Missus, ye better open the door now or we’ll open it for ye.’

  ‘I told youse I—’

  McGray began banging and kicking the door.

  ‘All right, all right!’

  We heard several locks and keys being turned, and the woman finally let us in.

  ‘Yer so kind, hen,’ McGray said as we stepped into a darkened hall. Like the façade (and the maid’s face), the interior looked well past its prime : wallpaper peeling off the walls, damp stains, cracked plaster on the ceiling … ‘What’s yer name?’

  The maid spoke belligerently. ‘Why? Youse need to know?’

  ‘Ye better answer me.’

  The woman snorted. ‘Mrs Taylor.’

  ‘I take it ye served Mr Willberg and his niece.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the woman, who walked with a slight limp. She was fidgeting with a greasy rag and biting her already chapped lips. She was all nervousness and no sorrow.