End of the Line (2 page)

The lieutenant took a quick shifty look up at Queen Victoria before confiding further.

‘Mrs Roach has asked me to join the group. I would be the only man.'

McLevy chewed at his lip to indicate deep thought.

‘I am pit in mind o'
The Bacchae
,' he opined. ‘I would stick tae golf.'

The door opened and Mulholland returned to announce that the cadaver was en route.

‘Well, lieutenant,' boomed the inspector. ‘Shall we take up the case?'

Roach nodded. His mind was clear, the words crisp.

‘Proceed on two fronts,' he directed. ‘Find this ginger giant and also determine everything you can about the corpse. The more you discover about a dead body the more reasons emerge for it attaining that condition.'

He had scarce finished the sentence when, with a cry of approbation and promised obedience, McLevy shot out of the door, closely followed by the constable, before their superior could change his mind.

Roach sighed and attempted to recall the plot of
The Bacchae
. He had a vague memory of a man up a tree surrounded by a pack of howling females. Very Greek.

* * *

The police had struck lucky. A bang on the door of the lodging house – a timid maid about to go shopping, the housekeeper out, McLevy bluffness personified, Mulholland all Irish charm – and they had been shown to the man's room where they might root around to heart's content.

This they had done. The general inspection having produced nothing, the inspector was now nosing in the wardrobe while Mulholland sifted through the tall chest of drawers.

‘Socks of finest silk,' the constable announced.

‘Shoes of finest leather. Cashmere suits!' said the awed McLevy. He sniffed at the label. ‘Exclusive. Saville Row. The man was a spender.'

They had ascertained from the maid that the fellow had been there for a month and was the sole lodger in the house, but there was not a shred of document here to tell them one thing more as regards identity; the letters from the train – investment prospectuses from various companies replying to an obvious enquiry – were no help.

‘A man of mystery,' the inspector concluded. ‘Whit was he doing here, Mulholland?'

As if in answer, a female voice cooed in the ether.

‘Roberto?' it fluted through the door. ‘Are you decently attired?'

The portal opened and a woman of some certain years, hair newly coiffured, tightly corseted with bosom athrust to show generous inclination, tripped in.

Her mouth was a little slack, and grew slacker at the sight before her.

‘Who are you?' she asked.

‘Policemen. At your service,' stated Mulholland.

‘Where is Count Borromeo?'

‘He is – I'm afraid – dead, ma'am,' the constable assured her solemnly.

The mouth sagged further, though the bosom stayed firm.

‘But we were to be engaged!'

‘That would be difficult now,' McLevy said.

‘Oooh,' she wailed. ‘And I've just left black behind!'

‘How is that?' Mulholland enquired, while McLevy tried to guess the woman's age. No spring chicken.

‘I was widowed not two years ago. How did he die?'

‘This is whit we're trying to ascertain,' the inspector muttered. ‘Are you the housekeeper then?'

‘Certainly not!' came the outraged response. ‘I am Senga Murdison, owner of this establishment, and I would ask you to address me in a manner befitting!'

Mulholland knew from hard experience that McLevy's tolerance of glandular women was a touch on the low side, and so slid in smoothly before blood stained the carpet.

‘Perhaps ma'am, it might be best if you compose yourself from the terrible shock and then we may converse about . . . Roberto?'

She nodded gratefully at this manly offer and then heaved a sigh, hand upon the jutting breastworks.

‘I feel a wee bit faint. If you might escort me to my rooms, they are close by.'

‘I bet they are,' observed McLevy dryly. ‘Away ye go Constable Mulholland, I'll steady the ship.'

He was more or less ignored as the two left the room, Senga leaning upon the constable's arm.

‘Is that your name then?' she remarked as they disappeared. ‘Mulholland?'

‘All my life, ma'am,' came the reassuring response.

McLevy darted forward and closed the door behind them. A clever move of the constable's to get her out and leave him time to delve unsupervised.

And he had a wee surprise up his sleeve should the delving bear no fruit. It would not help with the dead man's history but it might produce a murder suspect.

* * *

To see Thomas Pettigrew you would scarce believe it. A trusted employee of the North British Railway staring through the iron gates of a bawdy-hoose. Birds strutted on a large expanse of green lawn leading to an imposing façade that gleamed white in the cold Edinburgh sunshine, but a'body in the city knew of this place.

The Just Land. Owned by the notorious Jean Brash, and there the man was, soiling his eyes with such scrutiny.

A bawdy-hoose. Anathema to the pure at heart.

While the guard was thus preoccupied, McLevy and Mulholland wrangled quietly in the background.

‘That widow woman has you in her sights,' said the inspector with malicious intent.

‘I merely offered a steadying arm.'

‘Which caused her knees to knock thegither.'

McLevy laughed heartily at his
bon mot
and Mulholland did not dignify it with rejoinder. They had broken the news that the man had been indeed murdered, and despite her palpable shock, the inspector had questioned vigorously, much to the woman's displeasure.

Strangely enough Senga Murdison seemed to know little about her fiancé. He had arrived out of the blue, swept her off her feet and marriage was mooted.

But no hard facts.

Pettigrew meanwhile was growing somewhat restive.

‘All I can see are peacocks.'

‘Ornamental, like so much in life,' the inspector replied. ‘Keep looking, if you please.'

While Pettigrew sighed and did so, Mulholland shook his head dubiously.

‘This is a long reach, sir.'

‘Not so far,' McLevy defended. ‘I met with Jean Brash in her coach some time past, bowling along Great Junction Street. I remarked she had a new coachman atop.'

‘Some people are emerging,' offered Pettigrew.

‘Good,' said McLevy, then resumed a line of reasoning that Mulholland had already attended and by which he was still resolutely unimpressed.

‘Jean told me her usual man, Angus Dalrymple, was on a wee holiday. Jedburgh. By the Borders. And he would be back in a few days.'

‘Two women only,' the guard declared.

‘Just keep on the
qui vive
,' answered McLevy, and extended his line of deduction to Mulholland. ‘Angus is a giant of a man—'

‘With ginger hair. I know. It's still a long reach.'

‘Newcastle,' said McLevy, ignoring the disbelieving tone of his constable, ‘is the nearest main station from Jedburgh for the train to Edinburgh.' He developed his theme further. ‘And at this time of the day Jean Brash is wont to take coffee in her garden along with her right-hand woman, Hannah Semple, while often accompanied by—'

‘That's him,' Pettigrew said reluctantly. ‘The very same.'

They peered through the iron bars of the gateway like children at a peep show as Hannah poured out coffee for Jean, who watched as the aforesaid Angus, sandy-red hair agleam in the pale sunshine, began to chop lumps out of a dead tree trunk.

‘It is the man from the train,' muttered the guard. ‘I am not mistaken.'

‘Sometimes, sir,' Mulholland whispered with only the slightest trace of irony. ‘You amaze me.'

‘Only
sometimes
?' replied a man who was, by his own perception, the eighth wonder of the world.

* * *

Hannah Semple was a pugnacious survivor who kept the keys of the Just Land and ruled the magpies therein with a rod of iron. The old woman feared neither man nor beast, and if one thing delighted her it was to watch Jean Brash and James McLevy at each other's throats.

Jean's hair was also red but it was a deep auburn that brought out the green of her eyes – eyes that were glinting with controlled fury as they speared into the inspector's impassive face. Porcelain skin betrayed no trace of the life she had led as a street girl and whore in various low-slung brothels before clawing her way up the greasy pole to a divine consummation, as she now owned the finest bawdy-hoose in Edinburgh, patronised by respectable loins of the ruling class.

A tall, elegant woman, taller from her fashionable boots, she had at least an inch on McLevy which, having stood, she was using to great effect by looking down a disdainful nose at the man.

Mulholland stood vigilantly to the side opposite Hannah, straight-faced, but she knew that he enjoyed these bouts as much as she did herself.

Pettigrew, having formally identified Angus, had walked off to gaze at a rose bush, ostensibly to admire the blooms but it would seem in reality to put as much space between himself and sin as possible, lest it contaminate his Calvinist conscience.

Angus, his axe dropped to the ground, was caught unhappily between Jean and McLevy, stringy ginger hair hanging over his face and bearing a passing resemblance to, in the words of the immortal poet,
a coo looking ower a dyke.
Although the image of a bovine female gazing over a small stone wall might be somewhat forced, there was a dumb, enduring quality to his stance that gave some credence to this conceit.

The coachman admitted being on the train though had, he claimed, but a hazy recollection, having supped heavily on the ale of the Newcastle Station tavern.

This was indeed, he further claimed, why he had rushed through the barrier at Waverley, being in dire need of relieving himself, accomplishing the function just in time, a feat in which he took no little pride. He had no knowledge of which carriage he had occupied, having slept through the whole journey.

Battle lines having been drawn, the warring factions were getting stuck into each other.

‘You have only the word of that . . .' Jean waved dismissively at Pettigrew, who was peering at a deep pink rose as if it contained the secrets of the universe, ‘wee railway man to place Angus on the scene – and proof of nothing else. As per usual.'

McLevy drew up the artillery of heavy sarcasm.

‘Lucidity personified, Jean,' he shot back. ‘I bow before you. But – if he was in that compartment?'

‘Whit does it prove?' Hannah threw in, just to keep the pot boiling.

‘Proximity to murder.' Mulholland made his own contribution for much the same reason.

‘I saw no dead body!' Angus proclaimed loudly.

‘Calm yourself,' said Jean, and sighted carefully at the inspector's parchment-white face as if it were a target area. ‘You are full of wind, McLevy. As per usual. Puff, puff. Full of wind.'

Angus took encouragement from the short-range salvo and declared grandly that he had nothing to hide.

McLevy pounced.

‘In that case you will oblige me by turning out your pockets.'

‘Eh?'

‘You heard me!'

Jean yawned disparagingly. ‘Go ahead, Angus. Humour the poor soul. Think what a sad life he leads.'

‘Aye. So.'

The coachman laboriously turned out his pockets and listed the contents.

‘A bit o' string, sugar for the horses, my own handkerchief, plug of tobacco and some paltry coin. A poor man afore you!'

‘Whit about the inside pooch?' enquired the inspector. ‘It hangs heavy.'

Angus blinked at this unexpected observation and slowly drew out from his inside jacket pocket a battered and worn leather wallet, opening it to display the innards like a butcher flaying meat.

‘Paper,' he declared. ‘Naething but paper.'

‘The world is full of it, eh Angus?' said Mulholland, and while the coachman was thus distracted McLevy reached out and neatly flipped the wallet into his own hands.

‘Give me back!'

‘Oh let him pochle about to his heart's content,' said Jean. ‘Sooner he's done, sooner I enjoy my coffee.'

The inspector licked his lips. ‘I don't suppose there's any chance—'

‘No, there is not!' Jean rapped back.

‘Damned right. Cheek o' the devil!' chimed Hannah.

‘In that case,' McLevy muttered, fingers busy, ‘I will go about my business.' He scrabbled in the guts of the wallet and looked disappointed at the result.

‘You are correct, Angus, nothing but bits of paper, yet – wait now – see here.'

He had located a hidey-hole in the leather and as he fished therein, the rest gathered round a little so that the manoeuvre took on the appearance of a conjuring trick. The inspector played it for all he was worth as he pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

‘Abracadabra!'

The ‘rabbit' turned out to be a large bank note. It was waved through the air in McLevy's podgy fingers.

‘Twenty pounds. Currency of the realm. That's a deal of money, Angus.'

The coachman said instantly that he had won it at the races. Jean asked what all this legerdemain had to do with anything. The murdered man was robbed, countered McLevy. Pettigrew heard the voices raised and peered all the harder at the damask rose. Mulholland took the note from McLevy, held it to the light and pronounced it genuine. Angus repeated he had won it at the races. Jean and Hannah looked at each other during this assertion as McLevy came in on another tack.

‘Whit were you doing in Jedburgh?' he asked Angus suddenly.

‘I have friends there.'

‘You don't have any friends, you're an Aberdonian!'

Angus growled at this insult and Jean shoved in lest he make the mistake of attacking McLevy. She had seen the inspector in action more than a few times and the level of pure violence was quite terrifying.