Trick of the Light (23 page)

Roxburghe Ballads

Jean Brash hesitated for a moment, then having knocked at the door to no response, pushed gently. It swung open. She took a quick, almost guilty, glance up and down the street, then slipped inside.

She found herself in a long gloomy hall with a sliver of light coming from a door, slightly ajar, at the opposite end from where she stood.

Deep breath. Her mind flipped back to the hand-delivered letter she had received that afternoon.

Mistress Brash,

I apologise for my behaviour of last night but I was sore enraged at the injustice. I know I am headstrong but I am also honest and I can assure you that money was robbed from me in your establishment. I have made enquiries with some of your other clients, men of my own stamp, and I have irrefutable proof that some of your girls are operating behind your back. Money has been taken and you stand to lose much because of it. Perhaps someone is plotting against you? I do not know but if you will visit me at the hour of six this evening, 32 Iona Street, I will show you the evidence and explain my suspicions. Come alone, and tell no-one, for there is no-one you can trust.

Yours in truth,

Logan Galloway

Hannah Semple, the only person Jean held in credence on this earth was at the safe house by Leith Links, the giant Angus to hand, making ready to scour the streets with their people once more to find the acid-pourer.

Jean’s reasoning was that the little swine would not show his face during the day and she had decided to stay at the Just Land to await results, part because she was too restless to sit on her backside and part because she did not want another incident like the Galloway one.

Then lo and behold the man himself had sent a missive.

And it chimed with some uneasy feelings that had been nagging away at her since this war with the Countess had begun.

Who could she really trust at the bitter end?

Once before she had let slip the reins of the bawdy-hoose when her heart had been usurped by an unscrupulous man who had twisted her like a fool.

Never again.

She had betrayed herself.

But what if this time it was another agent?

Jessie Nairn, for instance? Or was that too obvious? She had taken in a bunch of new magpies recently, wear and tear the cause. What if the Countess had been plotting ahead, and put her own agents inside to burrow and destroy from inwards like a worm in the gut? To steal? To destroy?

A bawdy-hoose, not unlike a merchant bank, stands or falls by reputation.

Jean had been queen bee for a long time and now there was another on the scene.

Had she grown too indolent, soft, lost her edge?

So she now found herself walking down the shadowed hall to prove or disprove all the thoughts milling round in her mind.

She called out softly, one hand inside her reticule firmly grasped upon her surgeon’s knife.

‘Mister Galloway? If you are present, step forward. Let us make peace and parley.’

No answer. She was not afraid. The man was a pipsqueak. But did he have a tale to tell?

She pushed at the partly opened door and it swung inwards to disclose a form wedged against the window, facing away from her. The room was in semi-darkness and the figure barely outlined by the light from outside but it seemed to be Logan Galloway, hands pressed up against the sill as if to steady himself.

Jean stepped in. Hand with the knife now by her side. A girl can’t be too careful.

‘Mister Galloway? You’re away in the wrong direction. I am here, sir. Ready to attend your proof.’

He made no response, stubbornly gazing out of the window as if deaf to her words.

‘Are you in the huff, Mister Galloway?’

Having said this, Jean stepped up with the intention to swing him round by the shoulder.

As she did so, there was a sharp movement behind her and a sudden accurate blow, crisply delivered, separated her from consciousness.

She fell to the floor, the knife in her outflung hand.

A girl can’t be too careful.

Not long after, Constable Ballantyne marched up Iona Street modestly aware that he was on time for his new beat, the previous constable having reported sick.

Ballantyne had jumped at the chance to take the man’s place and Lieutenant Roach, in the absence of his inspector, an absence that galled the good man no end, had granted permission with the proviso that the young constable held on firmly to his whistle.

However, such mistakes were in the past.

A seasoned campaigner.

Had he not already seen a corpse and only boaked the once?

So far, little of consequence, his mere presence on the streets giving the potential lawbreakers something to fear.

He checked the timepiece his mother had given him to celebrate his joining the ranks of law and order some three years before.

Half past the evening hour of six, precisely correct for the patrol; he had been given the times that the other officer, now sick of some palsy but a man to whom punctuality was God, adhered to without fail.

Time now to turn and make his way back home, to the end of this street and then right down Leith Walk itself, a proud but not prideful representative of authority in action.

A missile of some sort struck his official helmet with enough force to make his ears ring and what sounded like a snigger disturbed the stately calm of his patrol.

Ballantyne whipped round but there was nothing to be seen except… Now his hawklike eyes fixed upon an open door which had escaped his earlier scrutiny.

It swung slightly as if a malefactor had perhaps just dashed inside.

Ballantyne noted the number. Thirty-two. It would be in his report.

He took a firm grip of his now-drawn truncheon and followed the path of another pilgrim who had taken the same route some time previous.

Down the same gloomy corridor, heart pumping, not daring to say a word lest it come out a wee bit squeaky.

Pushed at the same partly opened door and walked inside.

There was enough light from the moon to let Ballantyne come to certain conclusions.

For the moment it was an assumption to be verified but it forced a gasp of strange exultation from his lips. It was a policeman’s dream.

A tableau arranged in tasteful fashion; no gobbets of gore to spoil the elegant lines, save for one outstretched hand bearing traces of what looked like blood.

‘Dead bodies,’ announced Constable Ballantyne in wonder to himself. ‘A’ over the place.’

24

Oh Lady! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does Nature live.

S
AMUEL
T
AYLOR
C
OLERIDGE,
‘Dejection: an Ode’

Samuel Grant might cheerfully have strangled his beloved Muriel but true love has ever steered between the rocks of passion and exasperation.

The boat had navigated towards vexation at her reaction to his proffered gift.

He had expected little cries of delight translating into a sidelong glance towards the room where the bouncier mattress had its domain. However in his haste, Samuel had reckoned without his banging upon the door to be answered by a squat purposeful little maid who looked at his form as if a stray dog had fetched him up upon the doorstep.

Upon his insistence she had ferried him to her mistress who was sitting somewhat listlessly in the drawing room.

Her demeanour changed at the sight of him as if a bumblebee had shot up her skirts. Ellen the maid was shooed from the room and once Muriel was certain the coast was clear, she, in nothing that could be mistaken for loving tones, hissed,
‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’

Samuel caught sight of himself in a cunningly sited mirror and realised that his normal faultless presentation was a trifle compromised.

The silver hair was standing on end, his clothes dishevelled; the canary yellow neckerchief had worked loose from its moorings and was hanging limply over the lapels of his jacket as if signalling quarantine.

All this of course the result of his headlong rush after grabbing the prize while Seth and the giant sailor had got to grips and given Samuel the chance to prove a hero.

At a cost.

All he could hope for was that Moxey would somehow be debilitated by the giant and either die or lose his memory.

None such very likely.

But in the meantime he might raise the money, with a little contribution from his beloved Muriel, and offer Seth enough to avoid his vengeance.

Her reaction, however, after he had related a rather altered version of his daring deeds, was not hopeful.

‘How much did you pay this man?’

‘Five pounds, Moumou.’

‘Please don’t call me inappropriate endearments,’
she hissed once again.
‘The maid might listen by the door.’

Samuel could not have cared less. It was dawning on him that he had risked his neck for next to nothing.

‘And where did you meet him?’

‘In a tavern,’ he muttered to her formal tones.

Muriel gazed at the brooch in her hand. It certainly appeared unscathed though she would give it a good clean.

‘And you wish me to reimburse you, sir?’

‘It is a matter of life and death,’ Samuel replied loudly, growing heartily sick of the charade. ‘And I might remind you, madam, that the life might be yours and the death mine.’

There was enough underlying truth in his tone that her face softened and she almost forgave him the intrusion that shrieked to a watching neighbour or any acquaintance of Ellen’s who might be a confidante, that Mistress Grierson had entertained a man with a loose cravat.

Almost.

But it is a sad fact that just when a man thinks a woman has run out of foolish moves, she can always find another.

‘What about the rest?’ she asked.

‘Whit?’

‘The rest of my stolen valuables?’

‘
Whit
?’

This came out in a strangled indignant yelp and might surely have warned Muriel that a limit had been reached but by now she had the bit between her teeth and perhaps earlier misgivings about the company Samuel kept had resurfaced.

‘Ye said ye didnae care about such!’

Samuel glared at her and she glared back, forgetting that the imaginary maid might be pressing her avid ear against the keyhole.

‘
Relatively
, I did not care,’ she replied, proving the adage that to argue with women is to pass water in a howling gale. ‘And what of the music box?’

‘It was busy,’ he retorted sullenly.

‘Busy?’

Again they locked eyes and it is possible that given a passage of time, her lips may have quirked in humour at his wild hair and askew neckwear like a grumpy little boy at a birthday party; he may have, on seeing this, risked sweeping her into his arms, a breathless kiss, a tremor in the limbs, five pounds pressed in his hands along with softer rewards, a heroic action recognised, receiving due adulation.

All this was possible, but every moment has a wealth of possibilities only one of which is manifested in the given world. Unfortunately, what came was not romantic recompense.

Three loud bangs at the door. Samuel knew in his bones that the law was a-calling.

He suddenly grabbed Muriel close anyway and gave her a resounding buss full on the lips.

‘Keep them occupied,’ said he, and darted out into the garden through the French windows.

Samuel suddenly felt heroic again; that kiss had done wonders. He measured the wall that led to freedom with a cool eye. There was a garden table nearby and he hauled it across so that the edge crunched to the wall, clambered aboard and parked his belly on the top then lowered his legs over the other side, preparing to drop.

Two hands seized his ankles.

‘Ye’ll do yerself a mischief, Samuel,’ said James McLevy. ‘Let me lower ye down like a king in state.’

When the inspector hauled Samuel round the front and the door was hammered once again, the wee maid Ellen opened up with a frown to see more traffic passing through.

‘Like Waverley Station,’ she announced.

‘Indeed you have it, Ellen,’ said McLevy breezily. ‘I cannot argue the point but where would we be without the trains?’

Ellen noted the firm grasp McLevy had on Samuel’s arm just above the elbow.

‘Ye’ll know yer way,’ she said dourly.

‘Oh, lead me on,’ the inspector replied. ‘A guide, a buckler and example.’

This quote from Burns sailed over Ellen’s head but as she marched grimly up the hall followed by the two, a few random memories from the visit she’d paid to her mother the night before came into her mind.

He lived with his Auntie Jean because his own mother had taken her life,
said Ellen’s ma, her eyes round with horror at the recollection.

Cut the throat across with her sharp scissors, she being a dressmaker by trade. The reason never known but madness hinted. The boy had found her slumped in her recess bed and sat there for hours, surrounded by blood and death.

Nae wonder he became whit he is,
thought Ellen.

She led them into the drawing room where her mistress stood stiffly beside an equally uncomfortable Conan Doyle, made a brief curtsey and got to hell out of there.

Ellen was devoid of two character traits that make up a strong part of the Scots nature.

Nosiness and malice.

She was content to leave what was not her business to remain so on the principle of
whit ye don’t know doesnae dae ye damage
, and as a consequence of that contentedness found herself free from envy and its malicious offshoots.

But she still did not get out the door untrammelled.

‘Jist before ye depart, Ellen Girvan, have ye seen this man before?’

The maid turned slowly. So the bugger knew her all the time, otherwise why remember her given name?