Trick of the Light (38 page)

McLevy could see little sign of weakness in Sophia save for the smallest crack when the name of Jonathen Sinclair was thrown in her face.

But was something within working against her? A truth she refused to recognise, or perhaps did not even yet know?

For instance, had she not mentioned the pool of blood in her vision being in the street, not the room, perhaps he might not have made – yes – made
connection
?

Had she betrayed herself?

And if you were to believe in her world of spirits and voices and God alone knows what whirling around in the ether – how would they feel about being party to murder?

Because if she, using her ‘gift’, had split off or unearthed the beast in Magnus Bannerman, would that not perturb the spirit world?

Power misused and abused.

This was getting too deep for the inspector and he decided he’d better go to his bed no matter the hour.

That deathly figure from his dream of some time ago still worried, however. And the pain he had felt on the rooftop didn’t make him feel too cheerful either.

He patted his chest to feel the reassuring flesh and his own heart beat steadily under his fingers.

Telling no tales.

All was well.

And he would have a decent breakfast for a change this day. At the Auld Ship.

Drappit egg, his favourite, being an egg poached in gravy from the liver of a fowl. With a slab of pan bread and maybe a blood sausage on the side.

Perhaps a kidney or two? Lamb, preferably.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep.

McLevy might need sustenance because he would catch a reasonable amount of hell from Lieutenant Roach on account of Conan Doyle’s presence at the attempted murder of one Walter Morrison.

And that’s another reason he was tired.

Because after leaving the George Hotel, he had stopped off at the lodging house, hauled Walter Morrison from his bed and got some of the truth from the terrified merchant.

At least as much as the man knew, for he claimed Gilbert to be the main protagonist, he being a good-natured type and his younger brother a grasping, treacherous fellow.

For sure greed and treachery were in the story.

A decent man betrayed and murdered.

Some might say a casualty of war, but McLevy saw it differently. Just a cold-blooded killing.

Betrayed for gain.

For the filthy lucre.

JUDAS
. The name on the wall. It made some sense now.

But what was the connection?

McLevy decided that, after all, he would not go to his slumbers.

If he closed his eyes, he might miss something.

38

Remember thee?

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe. Remember thee?

W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE
,
Hamlet

The day had been long but now Sophia had found peace, the demons no longer plagued her.

She sat before his picture, the uniform grey, the tasselled hat at a rakish angle, blond hair curling out under the rim, teeth white in a smile of life and love as he stood under the full blossom of a sweet magnolia tree.

The trip to the police station had been uneventful; she had made a formal statement as the inspector had warned would be necessary.

The body she had identified also, its face carved by death into harsh lines, the bullet holes, two, just like before, but not one to the face to smash the bones to bits and pieces. No. To the chest, hidden under the sheet, to leave the face above a death mask, eyes closed, mouth twisted, soul departed, the form that had once been Magnus Bannerman now an empty ruin for winds to blow through.

She had sat in the lieutenant’s office with a portrait of their gloomy English queen staring out at something no-one else could see and answered the questions quietly, the same, some of them, as had been asked by the inspector on their last meeting.

Most of her answers were lies but she told the truth wherever possible.

She knew nothing of the why of the crime, had rested all night at the hotel, was astonished by Bannerman’s actions, and cognised of no reason why he had ascended the rooftops to bring down murder.

Those were the lies.

She intended to leave the country as soon as possible, would give her last mesmeric demonstration at the Tanfield Hall despite the loss of her audience-conductor as she did not wish to disappoint her loyal followers, and trusted that the spirit voices would not forsake her in the hour of need.

This was the truth.

McLevy asked the questions in a dull, uninterested monotone; they were conveyed to paper by a station scribe and at the end she signed her name.

The police lieutenant, Roach, was a dry-skinned creature with eyes that seemed bloodshot but not from dissipation. He was tall and bore the imprint of someone whose expectations were confined to a limited horizon.

A photo on the wall showed him dressed in golfing apparel with a club in his hand and a ball at his feet.

The other photo was a collection of solemn-faced men in strange regalia, sitting in a row.

The inscription below announced ‘The Grand Masonic Lodge of Leith’.

The lieutenant sat at the end of the row.

A narrow life.

Between him and the inspector, a strange relationship existed. Both wore uniform, one buckled in by authority, the other bursting at the seams.

A palpable tension.

After signing and just before she left, Roach, who had been mostly silent save for formal greetings and expressions of sympathy, asked her a question that must have been annoying his mind during the whole interview.

‘If Mister Bannerman is in the world of spirits, will he not make contact with you?’

‘That is beyond my governance.’

‘Ah yes,’ Roach muttered. ‘These voices come and go, you are merely the meeting point.’

‘Like Waverley Station,’ McLevy suddenly piped up.

Roach paid no attention to this. They were all sitting at a table, which doubled as an official desk of sorts.

The lieutenant leant forward and Sophia became aware that there was a hard intelligence in his eyes. It might be a narrow mind but this was not a stupid one.

‘I must inform you, Miss Adler,’ he remarked stonily, ‘that I find no accordance with your belief, which I think to be a dangerous delusion – no matter how sincerely felt. In my opinion it appeals only to the simple-minded amongst us.’

Sophia said nothing but she remembered the woman sitting beside him in the audience who drank up every word when Magnus addressed the assembly.

The lieutenant’s wife, perhaps.

A husband and wife do not always believe in the same things.

‘However,’ Roach continued, grimly, ‘I can do little to stop the flight of the gullible towards manifestations outwith the proper bounds of the Christian Church. It is a free country.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ she replied quietly.

‘It would appear that your Mister Bannerman was a profoundly split person. One part human, one part monster, if what the inspector tells me is true.’

‘It would appear so.’

‘And yet someone with your – if I am to believe you – mystic abilities saw no sign of this?’

‘My point entirely!’ McLevy chimed in.

‘Great minds,’ said Roach, ‘coincide.’

He gave his inspector a sharp look and McLevy sat a little back into his chair. Sophia had never seen the man so subdued and wondered for a moment at the cause.

But then she had a response to find.

‘To be split is to be separated from the other. There is no connection. No trace between. Inside the one entity is another. Neither knows of the other’s existence.’

‘That is all you have to say?’

‘That is all I
can
say.’

Then it was over. McLevy stayed slumped in his seat as if drained of pith, the lieutenant escorted her to the door where a gawky young constable saw her to the station exit.

The constable had a livid red birthmark spreading up his face from the side of his neck and kept rubbing at it as they crossed the station floor.

She was aware of all eyes upon her and a babble of noise coming from the outside.

The young man kept his gaze averted till they got to the door then just before he opened, blurted out a question.

‘Can you cure people, like Jesus?’

His eyes were innocent. Like a child’s. And it pierced her to the heart.

‘No,’ she answered softly. ‘I cannot perform miracles. It is not my gift. I am sorry.’

For a second she almost reached out to touch the mark that lay upon his face but touching a policeman can often be misconstrued.

He released the door and delivered her to the waiting journalists who were milling around in the street; the news had been at last officially broken to them of the murder of Gilbert Morrison and the death of a murderous American, and the Edinburgh press were hungry for blood.

She stood helpless, pinned at the threshold as the questions rained in upon her; like stones thrown, sharp, cutting, insinuating, wheedling, each seeking to slice a headline from her body.

Sophia knew a moment of panic as if she had been cast out, abandoned, then the door behind opened and a hand grasped her elbow.

James McLevy, his face set in grim lines, steered her through the jostling horde and into her waiting carriage.

He slammed the carriage door shut and leaned in with the voices calling like seagulls in the background.

Her words of gratitude were beaten to the punch.

‘Don’t thank me too soon,’ he said.

Then it was a race back to the hotel where more of the press waited, back to her rooms past the curious glances of the good citizens in the foyer, then close the door and pull the curtains.

All that was past.

Everything is in the past.

Now she sat at the shrine. Safely locked away. No-one could touch her in this place. The small precious leather suitcase lay empty, the contents arranged as they were in every hotel, every lodging place. A secure room must be laid aside and there she had her peace.

Where he watched over her.

The good man.

Tonight she would sit in front of an audience of hungry souls and inhabit the terrifying emptiness inside her mind before the voices began to announce themselves.

Not unlike a railway station… There was some truth in what the inspector had remarked.

For a moment there was a tug of humour at her lips and then she surveyed everything laid out like an altar: a white linen cloth, the candles lit for purification, a smell of scented honey, a shaving brush and closed razor, a leather belt stained with travel, two silver uniform buttons that she polished every day.

And the letters. Inside the mother-of-pearl box and tied with her own silk ribbon, red as if love tokens.

Sophia had just perused and replaced inside the last. It filled her with the same terrible anger as always.

Betrayal. On every side.

She closed her eyes and let the past wash over her like the sea.

Sweet magnolia trees.

Sophia was riding hard. Just turned fifteen, her blood racing with the horse; she rode bareback, legs astride,
like a nigra heathen,
said Uncle Bart.

Though he was not really her uncle, just…a friend of the family.

They had lost the plantation to the carpetbaggers but kept a small farm, enough to eke out a decent living, though not enough for her mother who lamented a lost life.

The Glorious South.

Melissa Sinclair mourned that loss, her airs and graces wasted on a hard life of toil.

Sophia did not think it so hard. They had enough to eat, some horses, cows and chickens, two men, ex-Johnny Rebs who worked the place and that Uncle Bart kept in line on his frequent visits.

She was a strange child, so said her mother. Left by the faeries perhaps. Or by a dead soldier. Lived in a world of her own.

And Sophia did. An intense, secret world where her father rode over the hill to wave his hat in the air before sweeping down to hoist her on to the saddle and off to ride the wild winds.

The father she had never seen.

He had died in the war. Melissa told stories of his bravery and noble ways but her daughter felt that the mother blamed him somehow for the lost battles.

The more she praised, the more something did not ring true but Sophia loved him with a fierce pride.

He was a good man. She could see it in the photograph that Melissa had kept along with a pitifully few mementoes of his last and hasty visit.

His death was a mystery. Her mother would not let her see the letters that she guarded so jealously and when she questioned Uncle Bart he merely said,
Died for his country, little girl.

Now she was a big girl. Fifteen. Bart looked at her different. Made her feel hot. Strange. Flattered.

Men change when women do.

Her mother looked at her oddly as well, and then sang praises of the father as if the memory might keep Sophia still a worshipping child.

That day when she left the horse to cool down in the stable, why did she do things differently?

No shout through the house to announce her arrival, no slam of the front door which she delighted to do because it made the whole house shake to the rafters.

No. Walk quietly up the stairs, led by the sounds to the mother’s bedroom.

Did she already know what she would find?

A strange chorus like a bullfrog and a mocking bird. Low grunts, high stifled shrieks.

Open the door softly to see her supposed uncle but no such thing, his hairy naked back, her mother’s legs splayed around him, mouth contorted, the Glorious South.

And Sophia had screamed. Lord, how she had screamed.

Betrayed. Her father. Herself.