Trick of the Light (33 page)

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

S
IR
T
HOMAS
B
ROWNE
,
Urn Burial

The body at his feet still had a vestige of life left, but that soon would disappear in flames. And who knows, he might have a little fun just before the main event?

Alfred Binnie pulled down the gauze curtains and threw them to join the pile he had gathered in the middle of the room. He liked this house. From what he could see with the furnishings and such, a few broken oil lamps thrown in, the Just Land would go up like a tinder-box.

And Jean Brash’s boudoir was the perfect place to start the conflagration.

This was not his speciality but he was adroit enough in the mechanics of fire-raising; it was a matter of draught and fierce combustion. Luckily he had opened the windows to find a breeze of sorts blowing in.

Indeed he had already seen some Halloween bonfires dotted at points over the city.

But this would top them all.

He giggled a little at that thought. A fitting way to leave his mark on Edinburgh.

A scorched trail.

He had kept to the shadows on the way here, conscious that the night had many eyes, but with the streets alive with Halloween-garbed figures had availed himself of Satan’s image in the form of a livid red mask.

The Countess supplied it. She thought of everything.

The woman on the floor groaned and he wondered about a momentary diversion but decided against. No time.

He could of course put her out of misery but decided to let the flames have their way. In any case Alfred always disliked a second plunge of the knife. Sloppy. Once should always be enough.

Should have been.

Yet the woman had caught his movement out of the corner of her eye and twisted away.

Not far or fast enough, however.

She deserved what she got. Should have known better.

He surveyed the scene with proud satisfaction; Alfred was a craftsman after all, even if it was in death.

His bowler hat lay on a table neatly to the side and he must remember to reclaim it as the flames leapt up.

A neighbouring church clock began to toll the hour and he took that as a good omen.

On the ninth bell, then.

But as he put his hand inside his coat to find the lucifers, the door burst open and two policemen appeared.

One tall and lanky, the other with a red mark on his face. Young. Easy meat.

Mulholland took a firm grasp of his hornbeam stick and motioned Ballantyne to stay in place behind him.

‘You will come with us, Mister Binnie.’

Alfred smiled disarmingly, at the same time slipping the knife out of its sheath pocket of his coat and holding it low to his side.

‘You know my name? That’s good.’

‘You will come with us accordingly and release your weapon. At once, if it please you, sir.’

Mulholland’s accent had thickened with the tension and Binnie frowned in displeasure.

‘Oh…a stinking Irish, eh? Right out of the bog.’

As Mulholland moved slowly in, the woman whimpered once more and Alfred kicked at her.

‘These sluts. Noisy bitches, eh?’

Another whimper and Mulholland’s face tightened in anger, which was Alfred’s intention.

Angry people make mistakes.

‘Come and get me, bogman.’

The constable raised his stick in response and Alfred grinned like a cesspit rodent.

‘Come on, bogman. I’ll slice up your potatoes.’

Mulholland was angry but he had channelled the feeling into his right arm. He knew the man would be fast but backed his reflexes against some sewer rat from Shoreditch.

However Fate and Ballantyne took a hand.

All the inexperienced young fellow saw was a slimy, corpulent man, slow-moving, eyes twitching. Easy meat.

He made a rash move from the side and while Mulholland’s attention was distracted by alarm for his colleague, Alfred moved with blinding speed.

His knife shot out at Mulholland like a snake’s tongue.

The constable was alert too late to the danger but managed to wrench away; the blade cut deep into his side and he gasped in pain to fall stunned to the floor, the stick falling to land a distance away.

Ballantyne was stricken, Alfred grinned some more and James McLevy burst finally upon the scene.

As he had been about to follow the constables up the stairs to the top of the house, the other rooms found empty, McLevy heard a noise from below in the cellars.

The inspector hesitated a moment then decided his men were big enough to look after themselves.

He moved swiftly down the stone steps to the cellar and stepped cautiously inside.

Was the killer here?

It was dark, but enough light from the hall above the stairs was coming down to show the implements for inflicting a piercing pleasure hung neatly in rows on the wall.

The noise was coming from a closed door at the other end, where the Berkley Horse stood.

A muffled thudding came from this portal, a large iron key in the lock.

Mindful it might be a trap, McLevy grasped his heavy revolver in one hand, turned the key with the other and sprang the door.

A frightened Lily Baxter almost fell into his arms.

She took a deep breath, mimed someone pushing her in, then pointed urgently upwards.

McLevy cursed to himself. This was the wrong place to be for a policeman searching out a murderer.

Now, moments later, after heaving himself up the stairs, he was in the right place. At the wrong time.

Two bodies lay on the floor. One Mulholland, the other Jessie Nairn.

A cold light came into his eyes and he raised the revolver to point at Binnie.

‘Give me an excuse,’ said the inspector of police.

But the little man had one more trick up his sleeve, darting to the side behind the paralysed Ballantyne and putting the sharp edge of his knife against the red patch that signalled a beginning to the birthmark.

‘I’ll cut his throat,’ he said softly. ‘No problem.’

McLevy sighted down the barrel but Binnie ducked behind Ballantyne and started edging towards the door using the other  as cover, dragging the young constable like a dumb animal to slaughter.

‘Keep well back,’ he warned. ‘Or his head falls off. That’d be fun.’

The inspector performed as bidden. The little man’s calmness was oddly unnerving but that was not the reason.

McLevy had noted, as they shuffled past Mulholland, that the constable’s hand had wrapped itself once more around his stick. Good that the man wasn’t entirely dead.

Now what he needed was a chance.

McLevy suddenly let out a tremendous roar and pointed to the window as if Satan had just flown in.

An old trick for sure. But old are often best.

Alfred’s turn to be distracted. For a second his head turned and the knife came away a fraction from Ballantyne’s neck.

Not much, but enough.

Mulholland’s arm swept up in an arc and the hard tip of hornbeam crunched against Binnie’s left elbow, numbing the arm like a bolt from the blue and enabling Ballantyne to pull himself free while McLevy stepped forward to confront the cursing Binnie.

The little man flipped the knife over to his other hand.

‘I’m just as good with the right,’ he said.

‘That’s nice,’ replied McLevy.

He stepped up so that there was hardly arm’s length between them, and before Binnie could make his move, the inspector’s hand was a blur in the air as the barrel of his gun crashed against the side of the killer’s head.

As Binnie slumped downwards, McLevy adroitly relieved him of his knife, turned him, slapped on the restrainers to pinion his hands behind the back, and then threw the man bodily into the corner like a sack of coal.

In almost the same motion he moved to kneel by Mulholland who was wincing in pain, supporting himself on the one elbow.

‘How are ye, Martin?’ McLevy questioned anxiously.

‘Terrible, if that’s you on my Christian name,’ gasped the constable.

‘Jist asking.’

They both looked down to where the blood was oozing slowly through the thick serge of Mulholland’s uniform.

‘I think only a flesh wound,’ muttered the constable, ‘but it’s a deal of flesh.’

‘I can help,’ said Ballantyne, suddenly pulling a pure Egyptian cotton sheet from the bed of Jean Brash and ripping it in pieces.

He knelt down and gently undid the buttons of the uniform and pulled up the shirt to uncover a nasty looking gash mercifully not near any vital organs, which he neatly wiped clean and then began to wrap round with the makeshift bandage.

‘My mother’s a nurse,’ he explained.

Then he looked up for a second at Mulholland.

‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I brought this on.’

In spite of it all, Mulholland was oddly pleased to be called ‘sir’.

‘Just don’t do it again, constable,’ he replied with a grimace of pain. ‘Lest the luck run out.’

A low moan from Jessie brought McLevy over to her side. This wound was not so hopeful.

The death sheen was already on her face. It was something the inspector had observed before and he could see in her eyes that Jessie knew she was going into darkness.

‘Are you of the faith, McLevy?’ she murmured faintly.

‘No. Jist a policeman.’

She managed a crooked smile at the answer.

‘I need tae confess.’

‘Consider it so.’

He motioned the other two over to listen in as evidential proof; Mulholland had to inch along, wound or no wound. Every dying testimony needs a living witness. That’s the law.

Her eyes closed and McLevy knew there was little time.

‘You were planted, were you not, Jessie?’

‘Aye. The Countess had doubts on Simone. I was to go with her. Wherever. Spy the land.’

‘And Galloway?’

‘That jist happened by accident. But I sent word tae her that he might be an enemy of Jean’s. And the Countess made a plan.’

‘What would he get out of it?’

‘Promised him free rein. The Countess. A’ the women in the world.’

She coughed and a little smear of blood fell out of the corner of her mouth. Ballantyne leant forward and wiped it clean with a rag of Egyptian cotton.

‘Good looking boy,’ said Jessie.

Ballantyne retreated in confusion.

McLevy considered it time to help the girl along.

‘So Galloway was a dupe. He thought Jean was to be enticed, then kidnapped, stuck on a boat tae South America, lost at sea, whatever. Disappeared, at all counts. He didnae realise he was to be the corpse, and she get the blame.’

Jessie nodded slowly.

‘Aye. No flies on you, inspector.’

Jessie tried to laugh but the effort was too painful.

‘That’s whit I thought as well. That she’d be stuck away somewhere. But when the killing happened. Too late.
No going back,
the Countess said.’

‘Why did ye do it all, Jessie?’

‘I’m jist pure evil.’

‘No, you’re not.’

For a moment she looked into his eyes.

‘Sure you’re no’ a priest?’

He smiled bleakly. Shook his head. She sighed.

‘The Countess. Promised me my own place. I’d be queen bee. Never had anything. Of my own. Ever.’

For a moment he looked into her eyes and saw a lonely child who had never known love or anything close to it.

‘And I’ll wager ye locked wee Lily in the cellar to keep her safe? Once the fire had started, let her out, say it was all an accident. No Mistress Brash tae worry you?’

Jessie nodded.

‘Jean was fair. I felt bad. But I did it anyway.’

An epitaph for humankind.

I felt bad, but I did it anyway.

McLevy assumed official tones.

‘Jessie Nairn, do you swear in the presence of these witnesses that what you have told is the mortal truth?’

‘I swear.’

He took the letter he had filched from the bosom of the Countess and waved it in front of her dying eyes.

No mercy. Not while there’s breath.

‘And this is in your own hand to the Countess?’

‘I do so swear,’ said Jessie. ‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned.’ Her eyelids closed then her head fell back.

Lily Baxter had stood in the doorway watching events unfold.

She recognised the inert form in the corner as the wicked man from the market, saw the policemen crouching over Jessie and then her friend crumple like a leaf.

Lily darted forward; the men stood up to give room as she knelt beside Jessie and reached out her hand to caress the cold face of death.

Jessie’s last words were in a broken undertone, from the childhood game that she and Lily had been playing in the Just Land to while away the time of occupation.

Indeed it was the ruse that had enabled her to lock Lily away in safety.

Hide and seek.

In the darkness.

It had been great fun.

‘Peeky-boo,’ Jessie murmured. ‘Here I come. Ready or no’. It’s not my fault.’

Lily bowed her head.

The policemen did also, McLevy removing his low-brimmed bowler while Binnie moaned softly in the corner.

Hide and seek.

Here I come.

Ready or not.

34

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep;

And if I die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Child’s bedtime verse

Lieutenant Robert Roach was a much-relieved man as he waited for the changing of the guard at the station.

He had an injured constable to consider but the wound had been dressed by Doctor Jarvis and Mulholland was no doubt at his lodgings now, sitting with his feet up in front of the fire, regaling his landlady with tales of bravery.