Trick of the Light (21 page)

‘Ye’re back,’ acknowledged the inspector. ‘Good. Now the investigation can begin in earnest.’

Ballantyne nodded guilelessly.

‘I’ve been returned a bit, sir,’ he said solemnly. ‘I ran out of things tae bring up. I had a wee poke about in the other rooms.’

‘Did ye now?’

McLevy shot a sidelong glance to Mulholland who kept his face straight; the boy had some sand to him then, from a dry boak to searching of premises in the one fell swoop.

‘Aye, and I found this in the bottom of his wardrobe. Wrapped up in velvet.’

Ballantyne studiously avoided looking in the direction of the corpse and held up a pliant leather quirt.

In truth he was quaking inside because he had been on his way back, leaving the other two loitering in the street eyeing up some cheeky shopgirls, when he impulsively shot upstairs and through the first door, which turned out to be the one that led to the man’s bedroom.

There he ‘poked about’, a phrase Ballantyne often heard his inspector use to describe apparent rootless snuffling that often had surprising results.

His fear was that he had done something out of turn, that he should have waited for his superiors, but he wanted to prove there was more to him than opinion warranted.

Anyway. He held the quirt up like a policeman stopping a runaway carriage. Hoping for the best.

‘Whit colour was the velvet wrapping?’ McLevy asked, while he took in the tableau of Ballantyne with a quirt to hand in a murder room.

‘Red, sir.’

‘Goes well wi’ the rest of him then.’

Ballantyne’s own strawberry birthmark pulsed upon his face and he forced himself to survey the crunched remains.

Nothing more to bring up, as he had said, so he took a deep breath and held firm.

‘Were there any other horsey accoutrements?’

‘Not that I could see, sir.’

Mulholland, observing that Ballantyne’s arm was beginning to waver, took pity and reached over to pluck the quirt from him.

The tall constable swished it through the air and the slender rod cut a fine dash.

The Count of Monte Cristo.

He met McLevy’s eyes.

‘I have heard rumours,’ the inspector remarked, ‘that Mister Morrison was inclined in the way of chastisement.’

Jean Brash had dropped a hint to the effect when, in friendlier times, they had gossiped over the coffee cups.

‘Inflicting, or taking on board?’ asked Mulholland.

The question was never answered because at that moment the door to the room opened and a fat man, puffed up with his own importance and splendid living, burst in.

He did not at first see the corpse, which was partly hidden behind the three policemen ranged before him.

The rest of the room of course, was untouched by death.

‘What is going on here?’ he demanded loudly.

‘Who are you when at home?’ asked the inspector.

‘Walter Morrison, no less,’ replied the fat man huffily. ‘Gilbert is my kith and kin. Your fellows had the impertinence to try to prevent me entering the premises.’

Indeed the constables had attempted to bar Walter’s entry but on his insistent blustering, they let him pass, sniggering to themselves as policemen often will, at the thought of things that come to the unsuspecting public.

‘What do you want with your brother?’

The fat man puffed up further at the inspector’s brusque enquiry.

‘We have a business appointment,’ he replied loftily.

‘I don’t think he’ll be keeping it.’

With this succinct statement McLevy stood aside to reveal the body.

Walter Morrison gasped in horror.

For a moment Ballantyne almost felt sorry for the man but he remembered what the inspector had once told him at the station when he found the constable on his hands and knees trying to catch a cockroach. The insect had shown no gratitude towards his would-be rescuer and had crawled into a narrow gap in the floorboards. Ballantyne was muttering over this event when he looked up to see the face of McLevy looming over like the dark side of the moon.

‘Folk in the main are not grateful for kindness proffered, Ballantyne. So if in this life ye treat everyone you meet as a potential guilty party and deeply suspicion each individual’s intentions, ye will not go far wrong.’

So Ballantyne held pity at bay.

Mulholland did not need to be told such. He lived by that edict as regards criminal activity.

The fat man’s face was white, like the belly of a whale. A good colour for interrogation.

‘My God. My poor brother. Who has done this?’

‘That’s what we intend to find out,’ said McLevy.

Walter bowed his head and murmured brokenly to himself but McLevy was unmoved. Despite his opening question, he had recognised and placed the man as soon as seen.

If anything his reputation was of being even more merciless in business than his brother except that Walter had the jollier appearance.

The fat man’s complexion recovered somewhat to that of a suet pudding.

In, before he regains full health.

‘Did yer brother say anything?’

‘What?’

‘About someone on his trail. Death threats, murder in mind, any wee thing like that?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Any recent enemies? Folk he did down. Betrayed. Ruined. Swearing vengeance upon him?’

‘My brother was a good man.’

‘Uhuh. But in the world of commerce enemies abound.’

‘We are respectable shipping merchants.’

McLevy looked hard into Walter’s eyes. He knew for a fact that the brothers had swindled and destroyed two decent men of business. Owed them money then denied the contract. Watched them go bankrupt, one man indeed dying of the strain and shame.

Just the world of commerce.

‘I need not remind you, sir,’ he said sombrely. ‘That you are accounted close to your deceased kith and kin. I would not wish your fate to mirror his.’

Walter’s eyes flicked towards the bloody heap then jerked away convulsively.

‘I would ask you once more, is there anything you can tell me, any-thing you know that might bear relevance to this hellish butchery?’

For a moment Walter hesitated then he shook his head.

‘Might it not just be simple robbery?’ he offered.

‘Simple?’

‘The thief disturbed in the act, lashes out?’

The fat man seemed to find some comfort in this notion and his terrible grief was perhaps assuaged by the thought that he would now be the sole owner of the shipping firm.

Just the world of commerce.

‘What about this then?’ said McLevy signalling the tall figure of Mulholland to stand aside and reveal upon the wall a word scrawled in blood.

JUDAS
.

All comfort fled. Walter’s eyeballs pitched up to the word on the wall, his mouth opened but no sound emerged.

Then he fainted forwards to thud onto the floor with a reverberation that paid homage to his avoirdupois.

For a second there was silence as the three policemen gazed down at the recumbent body.

McLevy finally addressed Ballantyne.

‘That is whit we call in the trade, constable…a heavy dwam. Out for the count.’

22

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

L
EWIS
C
ARROLL
,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Arthur Conan Doyle was three sheets to the wind.

A nautical term whose derivation he had discovered from experience and maritime lore to be a square sail out on the lash because its control ropes are flapping in the salty gusts.

The previous year in a quest for glorious adventure and some necessary financial gain, he had enlisted as a ship’s surgeon aboard an Arctic whaler, the sailor’s jacket and cap from which he still wore with pride. 

He had come of age at 80 degrees north latitude, then days later watched and taken part in the grisly ritual of mother seals being shot, the little ones’ brains being bludgeoned with spiked clubs; heigh-ho for a life on the ocean waves.

In perhaps unconscious expiation for this bloody slaughter he had managed to fall into the icy waters five times, surviving, however, in better condition than the seal cubs. Heigh-ho.

He had learned to hold his own with drink and hard brawling both at sea and in the Lerwick taverns, but this day had begun early with some fellow students to celebrate his friends attaining passes in their recent exams.

The revels had continued till he found himself strangely alone in the nether regions of Leith.

His companions had been scattered astray in the various taverns from the Royal Mile to the Shore in descending order of good vittles and beer but now only Arthur remained, full of beans and ready for anything.

Witness him swaying slightly in the gathering gloom of early evening in a most insalubrious part of the docks.

Doyle was large and tough enough in appearance that no-one would have marked him as easy prey, but from the side a few watched and wondered if he might be tempted by a nymph of the pavé into the wynds and there summarily relieved of the contents of his pocketbook.

However, any approach was held in suspense when the frail notes of a beautiful song sounded like a summons to love in the dank, dampening air.

Notes only, but Doyle’s mind supplied the words.

‘Flow gently, Sweet Afton

Amang thy green braes.

Flow gently, I’ll sing thee

A sang in thy praise.’

They floated in the mildewed firmament of the old harbour, an invocation to the kind of tenderness that was noticeably absent in the denizens lurking by the shadows.

The young man took a deep, steadying breath and licked his lips where the moustache curled.

Could he, by chance, have stumbled upon the most vital clue of all? Was the purloined music box calling to him for rescue as a fair maiden has every right to do?

The quavering melodic strain was issuing from a small weather-beaten tavern that crouched like a gnarled goblin at the end of a row of buildings.

The sign above proclaimed this to be the Foul Anchor and it more than lived up to the name.

Doyle walked with measured tread towards the dirty windows and peeped through, tipping his old naval cap back for better viewing.

It was a strange sight within. The tavern was almost empty, save for two men huddled close together at a back table with a barman behind the counter, but in front of them, on the bare boards in shabby finery, were three weird harpies dancing to the music, eyes half-shut, fingers trailing in the air.

Their gaudy clothes proclaimed them women of a certain profession or at least the two elder had been at one time and the other on the far cusp of whoredom.

And yet their faces were rapt and seraphic, lost in the dance as the melody played on.

‘Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen

Ye wild whistly blackbirds in yon thorny den

Thou green crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear

I charge you, disturb not my slumbering fair.’

It is a tribute to the art of Robert Burns that he had produced such sweetness and dreams of forgotten innocence amongst these lost souls.

But it left Conan Doyle with a problem. The chances of two music boxes playing that particular tune were a thousand to one. If indeed it was Muriel’s precious gift how could he reclaim it from the dragon’s castle?

How would Sir Lancelot, or even the young Lochinvar, handle this situation?

Inside the Foul Anchor, Seth Moxey watched his ladies dance and smiled to see such fun.

‘Are they no’ beautiful?’ he observed. ‘I’ll stick the man who says otherwise.’

Samuel Grant nodded assent but his guts were churning inside. The Moxey gang were cut-throats to a man and woman, dance or no dance. Life was cheap to them, and Samuel, if he played his cards wrongly, might pay the forfeit.

‘Do you have the brooch?’ he asked quietly.

Seth grinned, the wide gaps in his teeth in no way at odds with his lank scalloped hair and the scar that ran down the right side of his face.

‘I sold on the rest but kept this as per requestit. But, it’ll cost ye,’ he replied, waving at his good lady, Agnes Devlin, who had supported him with her earnings these many years but now was more for skulduggery, being possessed of a sharp wit for the possible criminal chance. Of the other two, Sadie Shields could still turn a penny but Jennie Martin had also seen better days.

‘How much?’ asked Samuel with a dark frown.

Seth took the brooch out from his pocket and laid it carefully upon the table.

‘Five pun’, take or leave.’

‘That’s robbery!’

‘Ye hae that correct, Silver Sam.’

Seth roared with laughter while Samuel boiled with indignation.

‘If it hadnae been for me –’ he began.

An evil smile from the man opposite stopped him in his tracks.

Indeed there was the bitter truth. If it had not been for Samuel trying to impress Seth Moxey, puffing himself up by telling of the cash discovery in the desk and how he might help himself one night while the mistress lay satiated by his virile charms…a cheap, stupid vaunt that had landed him in this mess of potage. 

‘I kennt you would never have the nerve,’ said Seth, a scornful twist to his chapped lips. ‘My Agnes said so and she never has it wrong.’

Samuel bowed his head. It was true. He was not a thief, or particularly violence-prone.

What he had not known was that Seth’s gang had cased Muriel’s house previously through an informant amongst the funeral catering staff, who had noted the jammed window but had not opportunity to copy out the keys in wax.

Seth had therefore not considered it worth the risk till Mister Grant opened his big trap-door.