Fall From Grace (32 page)

It was out and out blackmail and to my eternal shame, but for the sake of my daughter, I accepted the bargain.

There’s nae foule like an auld foule.

After the constable’s visit, I realised that there was no escaping the consequence of my actions and even if Garvie wanted to try to brazen it out, I was finished with lies.

And, so I am.

This is my confession. But I cannot thole the shame of a public prosecution. I have sent Emily out shopping. She loves shopping.

The maid will discover my body. God forgive me.

By the time Emily returns, everything will be tidied up and she will be at least spared the sight of me.

This by my own hand,

Robert Forbes.

Lieutenant Roach glanced over to where the luckless Mulholland sat with the other constables to await orders, a withdrawn disconsolate figure.

A quote from Burns came into his mind.

‘The best laid schemes of mice and men, gang aft agley,’ he muttered. ‘The maid overslept and was late to arrive. Emily came back unexpectedly. Forgotten her purse. On the hall table she found a note directing the maid to go to the police, bring them back, and convey them to the study. It conveyed her instead. A sorry business indeed.’

‘I can find little pity in my heart.’

McLevy’s face was like stone and Roach was moved to plead the adjuster’s case.

‘The shame, McLevy. It broke the man.’

A mild remark which provoked its opposite as McLevy erupted into an expression of the anger he felt within; he had once witnessed another suicide as a small boy looking down at a woman who had sliced her throat like an apple and bled regardless of the horror she had left behind.

He, the son.

She, the mother.

His inheritance.

‘Shame?’ he almost snarled. ‘Who cares for shame? He could have stood up, admitted guilt, taken his punishment – who knows what friends may have rallied round?’

Roach was stung by the broadside and answered back.

‘Would you?’

McLevy fell silent and the lieutenant warmed to his theme.

‘Would even his own daughter?’

‘She never got the chance,’ was the sombre response. ‘All she saw were her father’s bare feet swinging in the air, toenails and all.’

Both men were genuinely exercised now, each seeing something of the other’s point of view but driven by an ethos that was a cornerstone in the way they saw life.

‘Then what should he have done?’ Roach asked. ‘How could he break such dreadful tidings?’

‘Sat with her, told her the truth, begged her forgiveness,’ McLevy responded. ‘If she really loved him as a daughter, she would have been his support.’

‘I somehow doubt it,’ the lieutenant muttered.

‘She never got the chance one way or the other,’ the inspector growled. ‘Her birthright was sacrificed on the altar of his respectability. That is
truly
shameful.’

While this exchange progressed, Constable Ballantyne had made a surprise appearance at the study door and signalled Mulholland out.

He had been sent from the station to break some bad news to his inspector but had enough sense to know that a body blames the messenger.

Ballantyne had long ago distinguished the constable as being the link between lower and higher, much the same as Mercury would wing up from earth to Olympus, and so, not realising Mulholland’s agonised personal connection to the affair, delivered the intelligence such as it was, and returned to his bluebottles.

This, indeed, was the final straw for Mulholland, and, the colour fled from his rosy cheeks, he came back to inform his superiors that Oliver Garvie had unfortunately flown the coop.

His offices were empty, his house was empty save for the old retainer, and though a search would be mounted in the immediate area and then throughout Leith, he, Martin Mulholland, was not hopeful of its success.

Neither was McLevy or Roach.

It was the last brush stroke in a very black picture.

The whole room went still as if Jack Frost had laid his icy fingers upon the company and frozen them to the spot.

Then McLevy sparked into action; the state of stasis was not one of his favourites and anything is better than contemplation of the void.

He sent the stricken Mulholland plus two other constables in the direction of an address in McDonald Road and instructed them to gain entrance by hook or by crook; that accomplished they were to investigate a room at the back of the house where a man of Garvie’s description would have been renting and might be found.

The inspector was not optimistic about the finding part but who knows?

In any case, McLevy had quite another venue in mind. He doubted he would catch the man there either but he might uncover a relevant fact or two.

And play merry hell.

The rest of the crew he dispatched with the body of Forbes to the carry waggon and thence the station.

Now, the room was empty save for himself, Roach and the stag’s head.

The lieutenant picked up a picture frame from a small table beside the desk and regarded the depiction of the wife of Robert Forbes.

He had met the woman a few times at official functions and exchanged some polite words such as one does. She had seemed a decent sober soul, quite properly dedicated to her husband and taking great pride in his achievements.

What would she think now?

It often perturbed Roach, the idea in some quarters that those in heaven were still able to witness the exploits of those left behind on earth.

If so, it must put quite a damper on the paradisiacal bliss.

And where would Robert Forbes end up?

The word suicide did not even occur in the bible but it was a safe bet that God the Creator who giveth and taketh away, would frown upon his function being pre-empted.

Though if he knew and performed all things, did that not make Him a part of this unfortunate event?

The pulley rope, the stag’s head and the bare feet?

All gifts from God.

McLevy had been standing by in silence while Roach was struggling with these unfamiliar notions; the inspector was deliberating on his own behalf and, not for the first time, was caught between the fierce impetus of investigation and the disquiet of what it might uncover.

So be it, however. No mercy.

Roach voiced a thought that had never been far away from his mind since the news had been broken at the station.

‘For the moment,’ he said quietly, ‘there is no need to make this public.’

‘Not until Oliver Garvie is caught,’ came the obdurate response. ‘But I will lay my hands upon him.’

McLevy could see which way the wind was blowing but it wasn’t going to whisk anything under the carpet.

Roach changed the subject.

‘This girl, Rachel Bryden, would she be one of the magpies of the Just Land?’

‘I believe it may be so,’ said McLevy.

‘Then your friend Jean Brash comes into the picture?’

‘I believe she may.’

Roach had long considered that his inspector’s relationship with the bawdy-hoose keeper would one day see McLevy compromised beyond his control.

However he contented himself with a sly dig.

‘A woman of influence, eh?’

For a moment the inspector’s mind flashed back to a lighted window beneath which he sat like Humpty Dumpty while passion raged above.

‘Uhuh,’ replied McLevy with a hard glint in his eye, ‘but as regards that influence, it is a question of how far and how deep it goes.’

Roach nodded, and for a moment the two men stood in the silence of the room, which was finally broken by another muffled howl of grief from the lower reaches.

‘I take it,’ said McLevy, who had noticed the shaken state of Mulholland’s earlier return, ‘that love has not conquered all?’

‘I am afraid not,’ was the sober reply. ‘In fact I fear that it may have gone up the chimney.’

They both looked in the air towards the stag but it was just another victim.

32

Mine is the most plotting heart in the world.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON,
Clarissa

If Hannah Semple had been conscious, she would have derived a deal of bleak amusement over the undignified squabble in progress next door.

But the old woman lay in Jean Brash’s boudoir in the midst of the peach-coloured chiffon and gauze reflecting back and forth from the mirrors, like a character in a fairy tale waiting for the kiss of a prince to jolt her into life.

She was flat on her back, not an unknown position, her hands clasped together over the sheets.

Hannah had not stirred since the giant Angus had lain her gently down on the bed the previous night.

The doctor had come and gone, diagnosed concussion from a blow to the back of the head, cleaned then dressed the wound and prescribed a strong opium-based medication. Then the man of medicine had left, advising rest, prayer and patience.

And so Hannah rested, her breath shallow but regular; unlike the rammy going on in the next room.

Jean Brash and James McLevy; hammer and tongs.

He had arrived with blood in his eyes, been taken aback to witness the recumbent Hannah, expressed brief but sincere enough sympathy and then asked bluntly what had transpired.

It was to his mind suspicious happenstance that Hannah had been struck to the ground the night before Robert Forbes was about to launch himself off into the air.

One up, one down.

Jean, riven with guilt about her part in Hannah’s bad fortune, answered truthfully enough that she did not know.

He then queried the whereabouts of Rachel Bryden.

Jean flinched; could he already have cognition of her humiliating loss of face and property?

She waited for him to drop a further remark to indicate such but he did not; merely stared at her through slate-grey unfriendly eyes.

Again she answered truthfully, she could not help. The girl had disappeared.

What Jean did not add, however, was that her people were searching the nooks and crannies of Edinburgh to track down Rachel Bryden and, once found, there would be hard questions as regards certain missing valuables.

McLevy sensed that she was hiding something and it fuelled his own dark doubts.

He went for the kill, stuck his face into Jean’s, related the facts of the insurance swindle, the death of Robert Forbes, blackmail originating from the Just Land, and after naming Rachel’s part in it all, hammered her with the name of Oliver Garvie.

For Jean the last was like a kick in the stomach.

Made worse when McLevy more or less accused her of being part, if not author, of this conspiracy.

Thus the rammy began.

‘What do I know of Oliver Garvie?’ she lashed out.

‘Ye were his fancy woman,’ was the brusque response.

‘Who says?’

‘I do.’

‘How so?’

McLevy had no wish to bring Humpty Dumpty astride a damp wall into the equation.

‘Garvie was put under observation after the warehouse fire; a woman of your description was seen entering his lodgings out of a carriage also identified.’

‘From the horses no doubt?’

‘From the coachman, Angus Dalrymple.’

‘A social visit,’ was the response.

‘That’s a bare-faced lie.’ McLevy was hot and bothered; this was getting near the knuckle.

‘Says who?’

‘Ye were seen from the back window in flagrante!’ he bawled, a flush creeping up the back of his neck.

‘Flagrante?’

‘On the verge of it!’

‘Who did all this seeing?’ she bawled back, equally embarrassed.

Humpty Dumpty was unavoidably revealed.

‘I did,’ said Inspector James McLevy.

Jean’s mouth fell open and, for a moment she resembled a virgin nymph disturbed at her morning ablutions.

‘Ye – ye – dirty old beggar,’ she finally gasped.

‘I performed my duty,’ was the stern rejoinder.

McLevy was certain that he had nothing more than observation and incipient piles on his mind the night in question, pure as a newborn lamb.

However, they were both deeply discomfited as if coming upon each other naked in a biblical situation.

Adam and Eve.

The side room, into which Jean had ushered McLevy, to spare the comatose Hannah from his intrusive presence, had a small dressing table with a three-sided mirror, below which on a smooth white marble surface lay a dainty confection of colognes, sprays and various unguents.

There was another door which no doubt led to a room where other feminine mysteries were lurking but upon being tugged into this adjoining one, McLevy, after a swift glance round, thanked his lucky stars there was not a commode in sight.

You never can tell.

The inspector was squeamish about matters feminine latrinal; the only regular woman in his life, Bathsheba the cat, did her business on the slates, which suited him fine.

But now he had other things on his mind.

‘Never mind all that,’ he accused. ‘Were you in cahoots with Oliver Garvie, partners in all things?’

‘Go to hell, I was not!’

‘But you would confirm that Robert Forbes was a client of the Just Land?’

‘He had his requirements.’

‘And his chosen magpie was Rachel Bryden?’

Jean sniffed and made no answer. McLevy probed further.

‘Whit about this Rachel Bryden? She worked here, you must have known the goings on, eh?’

‘That bloody girl, I’ll wring her neck.’

‘How so?’

‘She stole from me!’

Jean had been hugging this bitter grievance to her bosom since she made discovery, not able to confide in anyone save Hannah who was unable to respond and Mistress Brash could not now restrain her anger any longer. Bad enough to lose her property without being roped into a blackmailing ring.

‘All my jewels, the skinnymalinkie whoor!’

This childlike but heartfelt insult caused McLevy to jerk his head back a little.