Fall From Grace (25 page)

And where was Rachel Bryden?

And Hannah Semple?

Jean had sent Angus Dalrymple out to search the gardens but it was black as pitch outside and even with a flaming torch, there was a forbidding amount of ground to cover.

Of course, Hannah could be sitting in a tavern by the docks, cackling with glee over the trouble she was causing Jean, and if that was the case by God she would make the woman pay for the worms that were gnawing away at her insides. Make her pay.

The mistress of the Just Land shook her head; these were unprofitable thoughts and she prided herself that the confusion she observed in other minds was not ever part of her reasoning.

Straight. Clear. Clean.

That was Jean Brash.

Except for love.

Love was the very devil.

She had not even had the time to go up to her boudoir and change outfits, so her clothes were still charged from the aftermath of passion.

The very devil.

The Jew’s harp throbbed agreement as the fiddler brought the reel to an end with a mighty scrape of his bow, grinned at Annie Drummond and in the silence while the company took a gulp of air before the advent of more champagne and lust, Jean thought to hear a thump at the front door.

She slipped out into the hall and listened.

Again something thudded against the wood like a dead weight. Or a foot kicking.

The fiddler started another air, ‘Tam Lucas o’ the Feast’, a tune Jean remembered being played at a thieves’ wedding which had been rudely interrupted when McLevy came to arrest the bride, Catherine Bruce, for shoplifting.

Catherine and old Mary Rough had been the queens of that trade but that was a fair time ago.

This was now.

Why was she in such dread to open the damned door?

She did so to disclose the giant figure of Angus, a stricken look upon his face, holding the limp body of Hannah Semple in his arms.

This was now.

26

And he that strives to touch the stars,

Oft stumbles at a straw.

EDMUND SPENSER,
The Shepherd’s Calendar

The woman in the framed photograph looked at Mulholland with a severe exacting gaze. She wore dark sombre clothes as would befit the about to be dead wife of an insurance adjuster. A ribbon of black crepe hung round the frame to confirm continued mourning, the death in Victorian terms being comparatively recent, that is three years before.

Martha Forbes, mother of the beloved Emily, and could he see the daughter in the mother?

It was not an unpleasant face, just a touch … lifeless, though alive enough when the picture was taken because she was sitting in a chair with the window behind, surely they wouldn’t have stuck the corpse up and propped the eyes open, surely not?

But it was a solemn countenance: life a burden to be carried to the grave.

Perhaps the daughter was a fairy child?

His Emily has darting mischievous eyes, white, even teeth, (the mother’s mouth was firm shut lest a morbiferous deadly infection enter), straight nut-brown hair, a clear skin, cherry-red lips and a little pink tongue that had licked its way round many a meringue as Mulholland watched indulgently on, a slab of Dundee cake sat solidly before him on the plate.

She was also fond of chocolate confections in the French style although like any well-bred young lady, she frowned upon many other things French.

But that little pink tongue knew its way around the intricate edifices of spun sugar that made up the mysteries of the Edinburgh tearooms.

The voice of Robert Forbes broke the icy silence during which the constable had, to escape the present predicament, allowed his mind to wander.

Forbes was sitting at the other side of a large desk in his study; above and behind a stag’s head protruded from the wall, possibly the beast had lacked sufficient cover; the books on his shelves, unlike Oliver Garvie’s, were worn with much use, maritime tides and currents, timetables of death and destruction, statistics relating to longevity or the lack of it, natural catastrophes, accidents and acts of God, all grist to the mill.

The frozen silence had been caused by the speculation that the constable had laid before the insurance adjuster.

It was also very cold in the room due to one of the windows being left open, but the older man seemed impervious.

‘Are you suggesting,’ said Forbes in clipped precise tones, ‘that I have made a mistake?’

Mulholland tore himself away from tearooms and tongues.

‘No, sir, not at all,’ he replied, meeting the baleful stare of Emily’s father with candid demeanour. ‘But in light of what has come to light, as it were. It may be as well for you to reevaluate your findings. As it were.’

Forbes’ eyes hardened.

‘It strikes me, constable, that you are the one in need of reevaluation.’

‘I beg pardon, sir?’

The insurance adjuster took a deep breath as if trying to contain mounting exasperation.

‘What you have put before me is slight, riddled with hearsay, and circumstantial. Is this all you possess?’

‘At the moment,’ Mulholland retorted. He was in truth somewhat nettled himself, not unlike little Nelly, having presented his case hoping for a grave appreciation, and after that, the two men, soon to be related by marriage, fellow investigators together, poring over details, nodding solemn agreement and then nailing Oliver Garvie to the wall.

But, Robert Forbes seemed to be taking this personally.

‘The word of a thieving woman, you would place above mine?’

‘It’s Mister Garvie in the dock.’

‘I am implicated!’

This sharp response delivered, Forbes sat back in his chair and tapped his finger twice upon the inlaid surface of the desk. It was a sober charcoal colour and matched the suit of the adjuster, who closed his eyes for a moment in thought and then pronounced his judgment.

‘All this seems hardly worth the bother, constable.’

‘Bother?’ Mulholland almost squeaked the word.

‘Examine it, sir.’ The small intent eyes bored in as Forbes leant across the desk. ‘Who knows where these so-called Stinking D’Oros came from? And this mysterious fleshy gentleman that you surmise to be Mister Garvie? A figment. You have only her word.’

Mulholland opened his mouth but nothing came forth and the stag’s glassy eyes above offered little encouragement.

The box of cheap cigars lay between them on the desk, opened to display its wares. Robert Forbes flicked the lid shut with one fastidious finger, and then shoved it back to the constable who pocketed the thing once more.

‘The son is dead, the guilty party. The mother, despite her low breeding, is desperate in grief and punished enough. In my opinion, you should forget the whole thing.’

At this point Mulholland would have liked nothing better than to forget the whole thing, to nod his head and hopefully watch a wintry smile spread across the Forbes face with perhaps the merest unspoken indication that his suit for Emily might stand a cat in hell’s chance; but he had been too long in McLevy’s company and, though he resented walking in the shadow cast by the man, he had absorbed the inspector’s brand of justice down to the very molecules.

So, he could not let it go.

Not yet.

Perhaps not ever.

For what said his Aunt Katie? ‘Only death can stop the badger’s grip.’

Was that a noise outside the study door?

‘May I ask you, sir,’ he began carefully, softly does it, not a hint that this might be evidential scrutiny, ‘at the warehouse, you must have found fragments of tobacco?’

‘I did indeed.’

‘And the quality. You found nothing awry?’

Forbes pursed his lips and hesitated for a brief moment as if recalling his examination.

‘They were burnt to a crisp. But I had no suspicion. The quality was clear.’

‘And the cargo documents? The invoices, all the papers from abroad, they were genuine?’

There was a silence and then flat response.

‘In my opinion. They were. Without fault.’

‘And you have sent confirmation of all this to your head office?’

‘Indeed so. As I am bound to do.’

That was that, then.

Mulholland sighed. Life was free and easy when all you had to do was push other folk down the slope.

‘I have come to a decision, sir.’

‘And what is that?’

The pure and simple fact of it all is that he was an idiot, the constable had realised. Cupid had led him by the appendage. He should have known better when he saw the boy on that branch with the goddess.

Too many irons in the fire.

‘I shall do what I should have done in the first place, Mister Forbes,’ said the constable firmly. ‘I shall go back to my superiors this very night, lay everything I have found before them, and let them come to whatever conclusion the evidence merits.’

He got to his feet with a strange sense of relief, as if he had suddenly come to his senses.

‘I should have followed the proper procedure and I apologise for disturbing you at your home. I wish you good night and that’s me out of here.’

‘Constable, wait!’

The call stopped him at the door.

Forbes had also risen to his feet, hand resting unconsciously on the photo of his dead wife.

‘Do you insist upon this course of conduct?’

‘I am afraid I have no option, sir.’

The older man shook his head in seeming disbelief and his eyes registered unexpected depth of feeling.

‘Then I must ask you to wait until the morning,’ he declared.

Now it was the constable’s turn to shake his head.

‘I have delayed long enough,’ he muttered.

The hand of Forbes came up and slammed down on the desk.

‘It will give time for me to absolutely examine all my findings, to make sure there is not the slightest hint of irregularity. Then I shall present myself at the station in the morning, along with Mister Garvie, and I am certain the whole matter can be cleared up without setting any loose slander afoot.’

There was a penetrative intensity of both word and gaze; Mulholland was taken somewhat aback.

‘My reputation is at stake here, constable. Hard-earned. Reputation is everything.’

The little man held himself erect, as if an iron rod had been inserted in his spine.

‘I realise that, sir,’ replied Mulholland, ‘but –’

‘For the sake of my daughter, if for
nothing
else. She must be protected!’

A fierce appeal in the father’s eyes and the constable had a flash of Emily nibbling innocently at a chocolate cake.

That little pink tongue.

His resolution turned to jelly.

‘Very well,’ he mumbled. ‘For Emily’s sake.’

‘I have your word?’

‘You have my word. Till the morning.’

Forbes nodded his acknowledgement of the pledge.

He stood there, the very embodiment of prideful dignity and inclined his head in farewell.

‘Good night, constable.’

‘Good night, sir.’

The constable left and, as the door closed behind him, Robert Forbes lifted up the photo of his wife and stared at her. The black crepe rustled round the frame as a draught of cold air from the open window blew across the room.

The stag above him was a twelve pointer, though Forbes had not shot it himself. Fixed fast to the wall high above; the head was strong and powerful.

But, as has been remarked before, the beast had not been insured.

Insurance is everything.

There were two receptacles in Mulholland’s possession. One was the cigar case, banging against his leg as he made his way down the dark staircase; his hand closed tightly once more around the other, the sharp edge of the small jewellery box cutting into his palm.

The engagement ring would be safe inside no doubt, snug and upright in its appointed slot.

He had not lost hope; love will conquer all.

Perhaps it could yet be so.

He stumbled on the treads and muttered under his breath; the dumpy maid who had admitted him had not been summoned by Forbes to show him out again, there was but one miserable light by the front portal and a long dim corridor towards it.

A gloomy prospect … but from the shadows a white arm reached out from a partly opened door and he was hauled from the corridor unceremoniously out of sight.

Darkness has its uses.

On the other side of that door Mulholland found himself at close quarters with his heart’s desire, as a fragrant female form insinuated itself into his vicinity.

Emily Forbes giggled at her own boldness and whispered low to Martin Mulholland.

‘I had retired, then I heard a knock upon the street door, then I asked Sarah and she rolled her eyes at me.’

‘Sarah?’

Mulholland’s voice had achieved a high pitch, aware that as far as he could see in the half-light because the room was in near darkness, the only source of illumination coming from a small desk lamp in the far corner, but as far as he could see, Emily was attired in a frilly
peignoir
of sorts, cream in colour, and though it covered a fair amount, the white of her throat glowed like a beacon in the dark.

‘The maid,’ she answered, taking a deep breath of excitement, causing the
peignoir
to part a little and reveal an equally frilly white nightgown above the neckline of which was a hollow curve of collar bone and below that same neckline a seductive mound that mercifully was more of a hint than a declaration.

‘Rolled her eyes?’ he replied, tearing his from this inflammatory scene.

‘She said a tall handsome man had been conducted to my father, then I knew it was you, then I sneaked up the stairs to listen at the door.’

‘You were listening?’

‘Naturally!’ she responded with a flash of temper showing in her eyes. ‘It would concern me and why should I not take part?’

‘And what did you hear?’ Mulholland asked with a deal of concern.