Shadow of the Serpent (23 page)
Read Shadow of the Serpent Online
Authors: David Ashton
‘William Gladstone had two deep scrapes upon his wrist. He claimed to have received them felling trees.’
‘Are we to rove the streets arresting everyone who has a scrape upon them?’ was Roach’s flinty response.
‘I followed him last night. Myself. I saw him.’
‘You saw someone who
looked
like the man. In the fog. For a moment. And then disappeared. You saw nothing but your own desire to topple the statue of authority, and bring it crashing down.’
There was enough truth in that remark to stop McLevy in his tracks.
Roach spoke more in sorrow than anger, but not much more.
‘You were following a trail of pure circumstance which has led you to a hellish pass, McLevy.
Why
did you not tell me, your superior officer, of all this?’
‘I thought you might curtail the inquiry,’ was the only answer.
‘By God, I would have and am about to do so,’ said Roach with cold anger. He moved to his desk and scribbled his name on a piece of official-looking paper which he then slid towards McLevy.
‘You are now removed from the investigation. You will
confine
yourself to your domestic quarters for as much time as it takes this matter to blow over. Then and only then will you be allowed to return to the station with your tail between your legs. There will be, of course, an official reprimand put on your record. A
heavy
reprimand.’
As McLevy slowly picked up the paper and squinted at it, Mulholland felt a hot flush run through him, but what was the emotion?
‘You can count yourself lucky,’ added the lieutenant. ‘Chief Grant wanted you reduced to the rank of third-class constable and banished to the dog patrol. I interceded on your behalf. Don’t make me regret my decision. Now, you may take your leave. Pick up your bed and walk.’
McLevy seemed stunned by this turn of affairs.
‘I will take command of the inquiry, and Constable
Mulholland
, as some measure of reparation, will assist me.’
The constable couldn’t look at his inspector as he walked to the door. The flush was pleasure. A malicious pleasure that he took no pride in, yet could not disown.
McLevy usually had the last word, but not this time.
That seemed to be left to Roach. He spoke with some sincerity because, despite their differences, he respected the fact that his inspector had brought home cases that many another couldn’t even begin to open the book on. But the man was a menace. An agent of chaos.
‘I blame myself, James. I have indulged you too long. It is my misfortune to be of such trusting nature. And it is your nature and consequent misfortune to take advantage of that trust. Hell mend the two of us.’
He then reassumed a formal intonation.
‘You will not approach William Gladstone, or anyone connected to him, in the immediate or foreseeable future. If you do so, you will be dismissed from the force.
‘Go to your lodgings. Shut the portal. And stay there.’
McLevy stood stock still at the door as if a thought had just struck him.
‘Have you anything to say?’ Roach asked in some desperation.
‘Carbolic soap,’ McLevy answered.
‘What?’
‘Frank Brennan said the man who paid him smelled of such an odour. So did William Gladstone, this very morning.’
Roach screwed his eyes tight hoping that when he opened them up again, everything would be different. But when he did, it was just the same.
‘Carbolic soap?’
‘The very odour.’
The lieutenant’s jaw twitched.
‘Anything else?’
‘It’s my birthday soon,’ said McLevy.
‘Many happy returns,’ was the reply.
The door closed. The inspector was gone. Mulholland couldn’t meet Roach’s eyes. The lieutenant signalled him to leave the office and the constable slipped gratefully away.
Roach was left alone.
He sighed and looked up at Queen Victoria. She had it easy.
By a Knight of Ghosts and Shadows,
I summoned am to tourney.
Ten leagues beyond the wide World’s end,
Methinks it is no journey.
ANONYMOUS BALLAD,
Tom o’ Bedlam
Leith, 7 April 1848
Dear Jamie,
By the time you read this, I shall have gone to join my beloved husband, Hughie, in Rosebank cemetery.
After that, it is all in the mercy of God, although when I questioned the Reverend Strang about what was on my mind, he looked at me as if I had no right to ask and said, ‘Your sins will find you out.’
He has aye been a miserable wee stick and never liked Hughie since the day somebody threw a Sabbath snowball at him and knocked his hat for sixpence. My husband came under suspicion for the act due to having a good eye and a merry disposition, but what harm is there in a ball of snow?
I fear that Hughie’s sins may weigh more than mine. Besides the drinking, card playing and, I have to admit, occasional blasphemies under
the influence, there was also the matter of various fancy women, one in particular, Olive the Gypsy.
On his bended knees, he begged me for pity and I was moved by his passion. The Prodigal Sinner is always worth more than the unco guid. But I was informed by the same nosey-parker neighbour who brought me the news in the first place, her man working the bar in a low dive, The Foul Anchor, in the Leith docks, that Hughie’s knees were not to be trusted.
He had taken up with Olive once more, the charms of a Romany bangle I suppose.
I did not dare to ask him again because I knew I could not forgive him this time, so I took a mean revenge with Tam Imrie the cobbler. But I only did it the once, and Hughie did it all the time.
I hope, wherever we both end up, that I’m not looking down at him or vice versa, or we’re both not looking at each other, level pegging, with the flames of hell spread out behind us.
That’s what I was trying to ask the Reverend Strang. Without going into details, of course.
I have one other thing on my conscience which is the reason for this letter.
Not long ago you stood in front of me proud as punch because you had joined the police force. It’s the first time I’ve seen any colour in your cheeks and I was glad I had asked Judge MacGregor to put in a word, mind you he owed me enough for keeping that crabbit-faced wife of his stuffed with cream crowdie and clootie dumplings.
Anyhow, I was glad for I know how much justice means to you, what with you not getting that much in your own life.
We never spoke of that day you found your mother lying in bed with a throat she stabbed for herself, and I was grateful because I had not the wisdom to puzzle it out.
But the one thing I lied to you about was your father. You often asked me when you were growing up about him and that your mother had always said that he was an Angel of the Lord.
I always answered that it was a mystery to me, but in fact it was not so. I knew more than I was telling. Not much. But a wee bit.
About the right time, by the calculation of the months which the Good Lord has set aside for the purposes of such, the number being nine before
you made your appearance in the world, I met a young man in the hallway coming from your mother’s door. It was Easter Monday.
The man was heavy set, white complexion, a sailor by his uniform. He nodded his way past me out the place and I never saw him again.
I believe he may have been a foreign body. The Italian Navy had a ship in the harbour that very week, but Italians are swarthy skinned are they not?
Anyway, Jamie. I think that might have been your Angel of the Lord.
I have not the heart tae see your face when I break that news, you’ve had enough of a hammering.
You are about to start a new life and I have no wish to spoil it with such miserable tidings, so I will give you this letter, sealed, with the solemn admonition that you do not open it till your fiftieth birthday.
By that time, I will be long departed, and you will be of an age where you are able to bear pain as well as any other man. Which is to say, not much. But, enough.
I hope you can forgive me. I have loved you as best I could even when you spilled that beetroot all over my best tablecloth.
I hope that, by now, you are married with a tribe of children, but I doubt it.
Something in your heart closed that day. Love and trust will never come easy to you.
Except for me. You gave it all to me. And I have rewarded you by delaying the truth.
Forgive me again. Be good. Your loving Aunt.
Jean Scott
McLevy’s hand trembled as he put aside the letter which he had now read many times since the opening of it.
Happy Birthday. Well, that was one mystery solved. Or was it? Best accept that he would never know.
Every Easter Maria McLevy had waited for a knock at the door. No one came to call. She looked down at her son and put the fault upon him. He could not help her so she took her own life. No justice.
To his astonishment, he found a trace of moisture in his eyes. But it was a trace only. Nothing a wipe with a hankie would not cure. See? All gone.
And if he shed a tear, though he was certain this was merely an optic irritation, it was not for himself or his mother, but for Jean. It must have killed her carrying that secret all these years.
He had to smile though at her having a wee dabble with Tam Imrie. Ye can never tell with women.
No, you never can tell.
An impatient scratch at the window took his attention
elsewhere
and he opened the frame to let Bathsheba slip past him into the room.
Since he had come back in disgrace the cat had not visited. Perhaps word had reached the rooftops, but here she had now arrived. Was this an omen of sorts, or was it more likely the cold snap following the mild wet weather which had driven her indoors?
As she made for her saucer of milk, he noticed that a subtle change had taken place. Usually the cat dived in, face down, not a care in the world, but now she seemed uneasy, the head coming up at any slight noise. That regal poise and grace of bearing, which Victoria to possess would have given her
eye-teeth
, had been disturbed. Her coat was a mite unkempt, the grooming perfunctory. What was going on?
He knelt beside the cat and ran his fingers softly down the fur at the side of her neck.
A low growl came in response and she flinched slightly before hunger drove her back to the milk.
But he had felt the marks. She’d been pinned deep. Time would tell how deep it had gone.
He poured out some more milk then left the beast to her own devices and a measure of peace as he picked up the coffee pot from the hearth and replenished his cup at the table which was positioned by the open window.
McLevy sat back down and took a sip. It was black and bitter. Like his prospects.
That damned woman Lightfoot had jiggered up his cat’s routine, chased Bathsheba out the window before her accustomed time so that she ran straight into a couple of big hairy toms, and had caused his own incarceration to boot. Happy Birthday.
Jean’s letter was carefully replaced in its envelope and put inside his diary which, to be truthful, he had not had the energy to make an entry in these past few days.
It was late afternoon, the light still holding as he looked out into the streets below. The passers-by were muffled up against the cold, breath puffing out like a steam train, all was back to normal.
The Midlothian election result had been announced this very morning. Gladstone had won hands down. Sweet William.
A terrible lethargy had settled upon him. Each day that passed was like another layer of dust.
To keep his thoughts from shifting back to the contents of Jean’s letter and all the raw feelings it invoked, he replayed in his mind the last exchange of words between himself and Mulholland. Although that itself had not exactly been an ode to joy.
As he had walked away from the station up Charlotte Street, heading for the Leith Links where the rain could
really
get at him, a shout came from behind. He knew the voice but did not turn round.
He was filled with a terrible rage. He had never been taken off a case before; why had he not lifted up Roach’s desk and hurled it at the man? But he had felt paralysed, quite paralysed, by the rain and cold and the long walk back, and the exchange with Gladstone, the instinct that something was not quite right, and something was equally very wrong.
His own desires, obsessions, played like a harp; something was behind it all, he knew it in his bones.
Roach was correct. Circumstances had led him by the nose. Yet something was behind it all and he was like a blind man, led by the nose. And so his anger was directed against himself. Who better to batter?
‘Sir. Sir!’ Mulholland swung in front and brought McLevy to a halt.
‘How was the musical soirée?’ demanded the inspector, a savage grin on his face. ‘Did ye encounter anyone of interest? Any wee chookie birdies?’
‘What? Yes. Yes, I did,’ replied the nonplussed but slightly nettled constable. ‘Emily Forbes is the young lady’s name. And she is not a chookie birdie.’
‘The daughter of Robert Forbes?’ A reluctant nod from
Mulholland
who was wondering how he always ended up where he never intended to be when the inspector was in such a mood, like a matchstick boat in a raging gutter torrent.
‘I know him well!’ roared McLevy, oblivious to the rain pouring down his face. ‘He was once, like me, an investigator. We broke a bonded whisky swindle one time. Danced on the tables of the Old Ship till we fell off on our faces. But he is respectable now.’
‘He certainly seems to be,’ was the careful response.
McLevy stuck his face close in to Mulholland, his eyes were bloodshot, face unshaven, the wild man of the forest.
‘Well, you hang in with respectability,’ he said with a mirthless smile. ‘Because that’s where ye belong. That’s where your bread is buttered! Sook, sook!’
He brushed past Mulholland and headed up into the slanting downpour.
The constable was hurt and angry, his overture not even made, already rejected.
‘It’s not my fault things turned out to be so!’ he shouted after.
The figure of McLevy carried on walking as if not having heard, then, as the street rose to a small crest, he turned and shouted back.
‘I am sure yourself and Lieutenant Roach will solve these murders in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. I look forward to that. Remember when you kiss his backside, it’s to be right in the middle. Don’t deviate. In the meantime I advise you to shun my presence lest you be contaminated by the desire for justice!’
Thus was the parting.
McLevy took another sip of his coffee and made a face. It was cold. So was his bond with Mulholland but better that way. Keep the young man out of trouble. Till the game was played through. He would wait for the next move. He knew it would come. Something was behind it all.
The cat had been nesting in one of the armchairs, treading the cushion to make herself comfortable, when she suddenly leaped from the chair and out of the window in two jumps, hair standing on end.
In his preoccupation, he had heard nothing, but now the creaking floorboards presaged a visit.
Rap-a-tap-tap on the door. His landlady this time for sure. He opened it a crack, foot poised to forestall Fergus if the dog smelled departed feline. It whined but nothing more. Mrs MacPherson peered in at him. He’d never known a more
mis-doubting
tribe than the Dundonians. Born wary.
She pushed an envelope through the narrow aperture which divided them.
‘This was handit in for ye,’ she announced. ‘A wee street boy. Paid tae deliver.
A woman
, he said.’
She still held on to the envelope which he now had at least his fingers upon. Her face was dubious.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs MacPherson,’ McLevy smiled as best he could, while he tugged the envelope out of her hand. ‘It is not a love letter. The reputation of your house is yet above reproach.’
‘Ye’re getting a lot of visitors these days.’
‘It’s the weather,’ he replied, closing the door gently on her then listening to her departing footsteps on the stairs before he examined the missive.
It seemed to be his day for envelopes. He sniffed at the paper. The faintest touch of rose perfume, very delicate, no wonder Mrs MacPherson was suspicious.
He took the envelope to the window where the light was better, sliced open down the join with his thumb, and brought out two pieces of paper. One vellum with writing inscribed; the other, tissue, wrapping something within. He read as follows.
W.G. will celebrate his triumph tonight in the family house at Fasque. My friend has the secret diary and will meet you in the funeral vault on the hour of nine. The diary has all the proof you need in his own entries. You must bring this paper with you as evidence of identity. I cannot be there. I am otherwise engaged. J.L.
McLevy almost spat in disgust at these words. What did the woman think he was? Otherwise engaged? What the hell did that mean?
And yet his eye was drawn back to the words …
all the proof you need.
And then there was a postscript.
The other was found where the diary was hidden. I remembered your words, ‘a silent witness’.