Trick of the Light (18 page)

Arthur Conan Doyle rarely knew serenity in sleep. His dreams were often peopled with malignant vampire women who sought to chain him to their bodies, and then twist the iron till they drained him of lifeblood. They bore no resemblance to the fair ladies of beauty and grace that he witnessed in daylight. His giant form twitched uneasily as dark tales unravelled in his mind. He feared a father’s genetic demon in the blood and marshalled his mind to resist by holding logic like a sword before him. Raised high, crashed down.

But the dismembered monsters crawled back into his mind to burrow and feast upon the cells of sanity.

From the evidence presented, it would be safe to assume that there was a difference between the outer and inner man.

Conan Doyle’s life would always be a struggle between what he presented to the world and the intensity of an inner vision that would not let him rest in peace. Art in the blood gives no quarter.

Samuel and Muriel slumbered together as if children, she cuddled against his broad back. Her breath fluttered upon his neck and he marvelled that she put her trust in him. It made what he had committed all the more regrettable.

Magnus Bannerman’s body smelled of soap and cologne. Sophia had bathed him like a baby then put him to bed. The blinding headache had gone and now he slept the sleep of the righteous.

And James McLevy still hadn’t made it into the Arms of Morpheus. Too much on his plate.

The unconscious could wait its hurry.

18

One day Massa rode aroun’ de farm,

De flies so numerous they did swarm;

One bit his pony on the thigh,

De devil take dat blue-tailed fly.

T
RADITIONAL
, ‘The Blue-tailed Fly’

Glasgow, 1864.

My Dearest Melissa,

I feel as if I am embroiled in a world where nothing can be trusted and to be truthful I am not certain if this letter will ever reach you without being tampered with, opened, read, and perhaps destroyed.

In that case it will never accomplish its mission. But I must write as if it does, as if it will.

It is as if I have become a shadow, as if the life I have led up until now has no meaning, insubstantial, and I hunger for one moment that might give it significance.

As if my identity, what I call myself, Jonathen Sinclair, is losing shape. I am becoming
…
indistinct.

I fear that the fever which struck after Gettysburg is still hectic in my blood and I cannot trust my own thoughts, as if I am being manipulated by someone else who pulls the strings to make the puppet jump.

When I asked Secretary Mallory why he would delegate such an onerous responsibility to a soldier who lacks all experience for such a task, he answered, ‘Because you are an honest man.’

I would have thought honesty to be the last attribute necessary for this damned business.

There is a deadly game of hide and seek being enacted in the docks of Glasgow. Lincoln’s Federal agents know a messenger has arrived with bonded certificates to purchase ships for the South and run the blockade that strangles our Confederate forces. It is their intention, by fair means or foul, to stop me in my tracks.

The British Government is now turning against us and the local Emancipation Societies, no doubt whipped up by the Federals, are delivering petitions to the Foreign Office.

Liverpool and Birkenhead are closed to us now and this is one of our last ports of call.

Our own agents have contacted the shipping magnates but the usual conduits have been forestalled.

They are watched. Known. We must go further afield.

Meanwhile my men guard me like jealous bridegrooms, ring me round to protect that precious honesty.

One of our meetings was betrayed, by whom I cannot tell, and two of our men wounded in the ambush.

I myself shot at the assailants and believe I winged one, or perhaps even killed him, who knows?

Do you remember John Findhorn? I spoke of him when I rode day and night to lie by your side just before that bloody battle.

Remember? I left in the morning and you cried me to fight well for the South. I shouted back that John and I would whip them blind.

It was I who was blind. Blinded by glory.

He died of his wounds, the flies around him where he lay, with the cries of those in agony rising to the sky.

His last words to me were, ‘I wish I was home.’

He was a good comrade and before death claimed him, bequeathed me his revolver, oiled, cleaned and true if the aim was such. His father was a gunsmith and had made it for John to keep him safe.

It was with that I fired in the Glasgow docks. I now have only three bullets left. I have been offered other weapons but I shall stay with my bequeathment. Three bullets should be enough.

I glimpsed my main adversary. He wears a black oilskin cape, a man of sense given the unremitting rain, and goes by the name of William Mitchell.

For a moment our eyes met. I saw belief in his and trust he saw the same in mine. Then I let fire but he ducked back out of sight, the man behind him fell and the rest of the night was spent on the run from our pursuers.

The Federals outman us and are well organised. We rely on our native wits.

It is like a small version of the war itself.

I will send this letter by our next departing messenger and ship. Arrangements have been made for me to move cities. I shall not be sorry to leave Glasgow.

A low place, to be sure.

When I wheeled my horse on the ridge, you were standing in front of the house in the early summer blossom.

I am sure I cut a romantic figure.

If you receive this, think of me kindly. That is all I would wish from you. It is all we can do until this carnage is over and we all come home.

Your husband,

Jonathen

19

L’homme est, je vous l’avoue, un méchant animal.

Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature.

M
OLIÈRE
,
Le Tartuffe

Lieutenant Roach rubbed a furry tongue over his snaggled teeth and reviewed the events of the previous night in his mind. The onions had finally stopped repeating upon him at the hour of midnight with the aid of some powders but his wife unfortunately was not so easily neutralised.

She engaged him in an intense discussion – intense, that is, on her side – which ranged from some unexpected accidents that had befallen members of her family – ergo, was there some curse or evil spirit on her familial trail? – thence to the idea that the ether might be jam-packed with whirling ghosts jostling impatiently to get a word in edgeways and full of as many complaints as they had enjoyed in real life.

Mrs Roach had a somewhat sporadic, impulsive mind which, when activated, was capable of jumping from one subject to the other with no discernible link or lack of pace. For some reason her thoughts had ended up in a whist game where her partner Muriel Grierson, whom they had seen at the gathering and barely acknowledged, had played a card so bereft of intelligence that she cost their side the game.

A certain coolness had existed between the ladies since then but when Roach reluctantly vouchsafed the information that the woman had been burgled, he was subsumed in a welter of demand for details and a sudden gush of sympathy for the dear soul; not one of nature’s brightest creations but undeserving of rapine and pillage or whatever had been visited upon the poor creature.

Though there had been certain rumours of her being seen with a mysterious man in out-of-the-way places, these were only stories and it was ever a widow’s fate to have insinuations follow her, which Mrs Roach hoped would never be her own doom.

Roach agreed somewhat dryly and finally the woman ran out of steam. Just before they closed their eyes in the bed of matrimony, however, she had one more shaft of intuition.

‘Robert,’ she asked, in the merciful darkness. ‘Have you anything you would wish to tell me?’

‘About what?’ Roach responded tersely.

‘Anything…
shameful
. That might have been witnessed from above?’

The lieutenant was not sure whether his wife was referring to an all-seeing God or the swirling spirits and hoped sincerely that the balance came down on the Christian side. But then he had to consider the question.

Do we all not have something so petty and shameful hidden away as to make us cringe within?

Not a huge offence such as regicide or bank robbery and the like – these can be dealt with by the authorities – but something so small and so morally miserable that not even our worst enemy could conceive that we might sink so low as to commit this act.

And the one who cannot forgive us or forget is not the Almighty or a plaintive spectre but ourselves.

In Roach’s case, inevitably, it had to do with the game of golf.

From an early age the prospect of a green fairway and a white ball curving in a graceful trajectory to land and then skip like a free man onwards to a destination marked by a red flag, only the top of which was visible waving in the breeze above the undulations of green hills – this vision had taken root in his soul.

Late spring in the President’s Cup, however, while searching amidst the early morning heather for his chief constable’s misdirected drive – a man who had distracted him the year before by jingling coins in his pocket while Roach contemplated then missed a tricky putt, a man who was a fellow Mason to boot and higher in the golden chain than his lowly lieutenant and therefore should know better, a man who puffed cigar smoke so that it drifted across the line of a complex mashie niblick shot – Roach rested his case there – but the memory of his own heinous offence against the gods of golf almost set off the onions once again.

He had stood on the man’s ball while it nestled in the wiry gorse. Not only stood but with full weight bore down.

There was the excuse of a whipping east wind stinging at his eyes and fooling his feet, he not seeing the ball buried like a murder victim in the bonny blooming heather.

It was his heel however that did the damage. And having done so, Roach did not say a word until Sandy Grant, the aforementioned chief constable, stumbled upon the impacted body himself. Under Roach’s watchful eye, of course, lest the ball in some miraculous fashion be resurrected into a decent lie.

It took Sandy three hacks to dislodge the thing and by that margin he lost the round.

Of course the man could have taken a drop. But that was not in his character.

And what of Roach’s own persona?

What is the fine line between accidental mishap and a cognisance that refuses to cognise itself?

While the lieutenant had thus pondered he realised that his wife had fortunately gone to sleep.

And when he uncloaked his guilty eyes in his station office, these thoughts having flooded inappropriately into his mind, he found himself staring at Constable Ballantyne.

‘I knocked the door, sir,’ stammered the young man, his birthmark already a rising tide of red. ‘Ye didnae answer.’

Ballantyne indeed, having tapped timidly to no response, had pushed gently at the door, which had to his dismay sprung open like a yawning pit.

He had received a summons at his desk and expected the worst even though he had avoided mirrors like the plague.

Roach frowned. It came easy to his countenance.

‘Ballantyne,’ he announced severely. ‘I have decided to overlook that unfortunate happening in the uniform quarters and trust it will not be repeated.’

The constable nodded gratefully.

‘We all make mistakes,’ said Roach. ‘Now, go away and make yourself useful somewhere.’

He closed his eyes but when he prised them apart once more, Ballantyne was still in the office.

‘I was wondering, sir,’ declared the constable, emboldened by reprieve. ‘If I might have another try at the patrolling?’

The last venture on the streets had ended somewhat ignominiously; a female pocket delver had dipped his police whistle and when Ballantyne had raised hand to lip in order to signal alarm, he found it empty of purpose.

‘I will consult the inspector,’ said Roach, who felt an irrational anxiety suddenly seize him. ‘Now, go away.’

This time when he shut his eyes the door closed with a satisfying thud but after a few moments it banged open once more. Roach was irritated beyond his usual level because the events of last night, not to mention the recalled
Incident of the Golf Ball in the Heather
, had set his nerves a-jangle.

‘Whit do you damned well want now?’ he snapped.

‘Ye need tae get that door fixed, lieutenant,’ said James McLevy. ‘It runs the risk of unwarranted entry.’

Roach sighed and blinked open weary eyes to see his inspector, glowing with health and efficiency, standing at what even might have been claimed as attention before him.

Just behind McLevy on the wall, Queen Victoria also stood with her hand resting on the back of a chair.

It was said she had attended a séance at the Royal Palace to contact her beloved, deceased Albert. Sadly the departed consort had failed to put in an appearance, which might explain the disappointed look on her face as she gazed out of the portrait photograph, which Roach himself wiped clean every morning with averted eyes, lest her Majesty think him intrusive.