Trick of the Light (28 page)

Between one thought, one action and another, lies eternity.

I am almost ashamed to say how lonely I have become, how desperate my need for solace and warmth; like a starving man. My very hand trembles as I write these words.

Again I have been billeted down by the docks, a rabbit warren of ‘wynds’ as they call the narrow little lanes. At dark they become alive with the creatures of the night that would sell both body and soul for a silver coin.

Tomorrow I meet with the two merchants who have promised ships in return for the cash bonds I have guarded with my life since I arrived on these shores.

I will not hand them over till I am satisfied that the papers are in order and then an exchange will be arranged.

Soon. It will all be over. Soon.

The Federal spies are never far from my trail. I caught a glimpse of my adversary in his long black oilskin cape.

Like myself he wears a wide-brimmed hat; my reason is to conceal the colour of my hair, which howls my name as if a finger were pointing from the sky.

I could dye it, of course, but I’ll be damned if I will.

William Mitchell. My enemy. I wonder what his reason is? Disguise, perhaps. To hide the face of death?

I shall give this letter to Bartholomew Jones. One of my best agents. Wily and wild. They say he is a devil with the ladies.

If anyone survives this, he will. I have charged him to put this letter in your hand but God knows when that will be. It is all in doubt.

I write and yet I feel as if I have nothing much to say that might have meaning for you.

This whole venture is like a dream and I a shadow that moves within. The air of Edinburgh, the very air I breathe, has mixed in with my blood to create strange thoughts and fancies that bewilder me.

As if I am being seduced into a world where nothing is certain. Everything is in suspense. Especially myself.

I must stop now.

If we do not break this blockade, we lose the war.

Another thing I have said before.

I have heard that the ports of Wilmington and Charleston are now closed to our ships. We may have lost it already.

Be brave. I’ll do my best.

Your husband,

Jonathen

29

And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.

T
HE
B
IBLE
, Revelation

As he sat drinking his coffee in the attic room, James McLevy reflected that he might well have done a foolish thing this night. More than one in fact. Two at least recognisable. God knows what others had slipped past the sleeping sentries.

Mulholland had gone home and McLevy, having finally arrived at the Auld Ship and found to his despair that the last of the sheep’s heid broth had been scoffed by some swine from Kilmarnock, had drowned his sorrows with a hooker of whisky and hairy tatties.

Unfortunately a side effect of the mashed potatoes and flaked dried saltfish was a raging thirst.

He called for water, remarked it lacking in gusto, and called for more whisky.

And it was in this state of unaccustomed inebriation that he had found himself sitting before the amused gaze of the Countess while a delicate tune from a piano traced a passage in the air around them, coming from some other room in the bawdy-hoose.

McLevy had knocked upon the door in peremptory fashion and demanded to see the
Madame
of the ‘hotel’ on official business. To his surprise, after a moment’s wait, he found himself ushered politely inside by a tall cadaverous fellow dressed up to the nines as a butler.

‘I don’t recognise your features,’ he declared as he followed the fellow down a long narrow hall with tasteful landscape paintings on the wall, most unlike the Just Land where Jean Brash’s favourite picture was an octopus dragging a scantily clad woman under the sea.

‘I am not from these parts, sir,’ the man answered in rounded tones. ‘My previous employer was the Earl of Essex.’

‘Oh?’ said McLevy. ‘Come down in the world, eh?’

‘The remuneration,’ replied the butler, smoothly opening a door to deposit the inspector within, ‘is far superior. And regular to boot.’

The Countess was sitting at a large mahogany desk with a spread of papers before her.

‘You may remove your hat, sir,’ she remarked. ‘No-one will steal it from you.’

While McLevy did so, with a somewhat befuddled air, the Countess beckoned towards a small table set by the window where, as if ordained, a crystal decanter of whisky with two large equally crystal glasses had their pride of place.

‘I welcome the distraction,’ she smiled, throwing one of the papers back onto the desk as she rose. ‘There is too much paperwork in this world.’

‘I would concur. But I didnae know a bawdy-keeper and policeman shared the same predicament.’

The Countess raised a thin eyebrow to signal otherwise and motioned him to the table where she poured out two large slugs of whisky without asking.

It was not their first meeting. He had dropped in a time before with Mulholland to inform her that Leith was his parish and she had best be discreet. The woman had nodded polite assent and did not attempt to offer a free sample of the wares within.

Then they had met again when someone had tried to break in by her back garden and the German Shepherds she kept had near torn the man to pieces.

The Countess declined to press charges; the animals had earned their keep and the word would get round.

Beware of the dogs.

So, this was their third meeting.

They drank. It was good whisky.

‘Business or pleasure, inspector?’ she asked with a modest smile.

McLevy tried a flanker.

‘A respectable man has been murdered. You know him well. He has been seen in your company.’

She registered this remark calmly enough, dabbing at her mouth with a lace handkerchief lest the whisky linger.

‘Who is this man?’

‘Witnesses link him to your establishment. Artefacts found on the premises point in your direction.’

Her gaze was steady but he noticed the faintest tremor just above the lip; the lips of women sometimes give them away. Looking in their eyes is just a waste of time.

‘A brutal murder. The head smashed into a thousand pieces. As if a monster had broken it for vengeance.’

‘But surely –’

‘But surely, what?’

The inspector put on his
daftie
face, easy enough with the amount of blood alcohol.

‘A thousand pieces?’

‘Bones and flesh under your feet. Whit a mess!’

Now the Countess was blinking her small eyes as if her thoughts were speeding too fast.

That had not been the description given to her.

‘How is this to do with me?’

‘He visits you. In your company. Witnessed.’

‘That’s not possible.’

‘Definite.’

‘Who
is
this man?’

‘You already know the name.’

‘I do not.’

‘Gilbert Morrison!’

Try as she might, the Countess was unable to suppress the fleeting stab of relief which left a mark on the heart-shaped face, the visage changing from cloudy confusion to a sharp focus of concentration.

‘Mister Morrison. I know nothing of his death.’

‘Whit about Logan Galloway?’

McLevy shot out the other name like a bullet into her face and despite herself, she almost blinked recognition.

Then recovered.

And he knew he would get little more for his pains.

But he also knew that she was complicit, if not the
fons et origo
of events surrounding Jean Brash.

How to prove it was another matter.

‘Who might that be?’ she queried finally.

‘Another deid body. Jist thought tae throw it in.’

The inspector grinned somewhat foolishly as if the drink was leading him by the nose, but although she had smelled the whisky as soon as he walked in and sought to augment the effect, the Countess bore in mind that every member of the fraternity she had so far encountered had described McLevy by various detrimental adjectives, but
stupid
was not one of them.

‘I have not heard or met with this…Mister Galloways,’ said the Countess carefully.

‘Galloway.’

‘Yet Mister Morrison, how sad. A good client.’

‘Dead as a doornail,’ said McLevy cheerfully. ‘Oh, here…’ He hauled from the deep poacher’s pouch in his coat the quirt Ballantyne had unearthed and which he had stuffed in his pocket before parting from the station.

An act which might indicate that, whisky or not, he had intended to come a-visiting.

‘Ye recognise this artefact?’

Her eyes, narrow at best, became slits.

‘It is for horses,’ she said.

‘And other beasts of burden.’

The Countess shrugged as if the matter had nothing to recommend further discussion.

‘I respect the privacy of my clients. Especially when dead. Let us leave them in peace.’

‘Not if they’re murdered. No-one gets any peace if there’s a murder in Leith.’

McLevy slugged back his drink and noticed that the Countess did not rush to replenish the libation.

‘Then how can I help you?’ she asked with a hint of frost in the tone.

‘I’m looking for a motive,’ said McLevy artlessly. ‘In my opinion, murder always has a motive. Revenge often.’

‘Revenge?’

‘Aye.’

The inspector scratched his head absent-mindedly with the tip of the quirt. ‘Someone suffers loss or pain, they wish the downfall of the one they blame for that. Next thing ye know, death on the carpet!’

This all-embracing concept found little favour with the Countess.

‘Morrison liked to leather hell out of women, perhaps someone took exception?’ the inspector continued.

‘Not in this house. You pay for your pleasure. A business transaction.’

‘Whit about wee Simone? Did she not flee the nest because of such transaction?’

‘Simone had her own reasons,’ the Countess responded cautiously; as was common with McLevy the conversation was veering all over like a coach with a headless driver.

‘And then she ends up wi’ acid poured down her back, does that not suggest revenge to you, Countess?’

She waited with ready answer should he accuse her but he sniffed appreciatively at his whisky and tilted the dregs down his gullet. It was not an elegant gesture and for some reason annoyed her.

‘What has this to do with Mister Morrison?’ she questioned abruptly.

‘Who knows? I’m jist asking round the doors.’

McLevy held his empty glass up to the light and squinted through it. The Countess sighed and poured again but only half way, and then the inspector rocked back in his chair as if settling in for the night.

‘My head is fair birlin’ with the events of the last few days,’ he remarked equably.

She made no reply. They sat in silence. Her drink was almost untouched and she glanced back to her pile of papers, which had suddenly assumed a revitalised importance.

The music wafted over them once more and McLevy bobbed his head rather foolishly to the notes.

‘Is that Chopin?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she answered a little surprised. ‘The
Etudes
. Most nights I have a classical pianist in the main salon. It adds quality.’

‘I like Chopin,’ remarked McLevy. ‘He has never to my knowledge murdered anybody.’

She once more made no response and for a moment it seemed oddly peaceful in the room as they both appreciated the beauty of a fragile melody.

The Countess looked into the inspector’s eyes and was disturbed by the depth of understanding in his gaze.

‘Gilbert Morrison died because past action called for a retribution that has only now surfaced in the present,’ he said quietly. ‘I will find it out. Do you know this man?’

He held out the rough likeness of Alfred Binnie, the very fellow to whom the Countess had recently paid further gold coin as a mark of appreciation for a task accomplished.

Binnie had followed her plan to the letter, killed Galloway, left the man’s blood on Jean Brash and had one more deed to perform before he would vanish back to London.

Meanwhile he perched in a room three storeys above.

This she knew, but discretion was paramount. What was good for clients was surely good enough for Binnie.

‘No,’ she answered. ‘I have never seen him.’

So be it. One crime spills into another and the lies mount up.

McLevy thought such, put away the drawn likeness with the quirt then slugged back the rest of his whisky.

The Countess relaxed a little thinking this strange and contradictory fellow was about to take his leave, but not quite yet.

Not quite.

‘Ye didnae ask,’ he stated, thumping down the heavy tumbler.

‘What?’

‘Why I showed you that portrait. Ye didnae ask the reason.’

‘Because I assumed you would tell me.’

‘Uhuh?’

A good answer, but not
sufficient
good.

‘He’s the one who poured the acid down Simone’s back. Bad wee bugger, eh?’

McLevy had still made no mention of the obvious correlation between the war waged and events unfolding so the Countess thought she might beat him to the punch.

‘I hope you don’t connect me with this dreadful act?’

‘Not at all. Ye don’t look anything like the mannie.’

He laughed loudly at his own joke and she managed a small twitch of a smile.

‘She screamed like a witch on the bonfire. The French girl. So they say. I wisnae there.’

McLevy stood up, low-brimmed bowler hanging loose in his hand.

‘Jist as well Simone had Jean Brash tae fall back on, eh?’ he muttered. ‘Be in a fine state else.’