The Edinburgh Dead (16 page)

He slipped the rotted blade back into the crate and stepped down from the stool.

“Sergeant Adam Quire. I’ve one or two questions in want of an answer.”

“Oh?” Macdonald’s raised eyebrows suggested a lively interest. “A criminal enquiry, is it? How exciting.”

“A few years back, there was some trouble between your Society and John Ruthven. Your secretary told me you’d be the one to shed some light on the matter for me.”

“Oh,” Macdonald said again, a little deflated this time. “Yes, I suppose Mr. Anderson would not wish to involve himself in such matters. He’s most protective of the Society’s reputation, you know. Wouldn’t want it to come out that he’d reported matters that put the Society in an unflattering light.”

“You needn’t worry about that. It’s just that I’m wanting to know more of Ruthven. Something of his nature, his activities. You follow me?”

“Would you care to sit down, Sergeant?”

Macdonald led Quire to the far end of the storage rooms, where, in a cramped corner, two rickety-looking chairs flanked a little round table. Quire had to move a box of papers bound up with
ribbons before he could occupy the one to which he was directed. He carefully laid the hessian sack down flat on the table before him.

“It was a small unpleasantness in our history, the Ruthven business,” Macdonald said with an air of world-weary regret as he took his own seat. “Nothing more than that by all accounts. You must understand, many of our members are men of considerable reputation, and intellect, and… let us say they are men of robust character and strong opinion, often on the most arcane and obscure of topics. There is always some dispute grumbling away to enliven our proceedings.”

“Must have been of some consequence, if Ruthven resigned from the Society over it.”

“Resigned… well, in a manner of speaking.” Macdonald fluttered a hand in the musty air. “Difficult to be precise about meanings. You might say, though, that Mr. Ruthven chose to leave our ranks rather than face the ignominy of expulsion. He had fallen out with a number of the other senior members over some considerable period of time. You’ve met him, you say?”

Quire nodded, but chose not to expand upon that simple confirmation.

“You’ll have formed your own opinion, no doubt,” Macdonald went on, recovering some of his initial animation. “He has—or had then, at least—some rather eccentric views on various historical and philosophical subjects, and a somewhat rough manner with those who did not share them. Matters came to a head… well, I believe some questions were raised over a number of items that went missing from the Society’s collections.”

“He stole them?”

Macdonald was alarmed. He raised a splayed hand to fend off the very words.

“I did not say that, Sergeant. I very purposely did not say that. Questions were raised and no satisfactory answers could be agreed upon, so he and the Society parted ways. That is all.”

“What items went missing?” Quire asked.

“Oh, nothing of especial significance or value, either monetary or historical, as far as I know. Some pieces from Major Weir’s house, a lock of hair reputed to have been cut from the head of a witch before she burned. A set of keys once owned by Deacon Brodie. That sort of thing. Minor relics of the darkest corners of Edinburgh’s past, if you like. Interesting to a local historian of macabre bent, but not central to our collections.”

Quire could not keep the look of disappointment from his face. A few inconsequential trinkets gone missing years ago were no kind of lever with which to prise open Ruthven’s—or Blegg’s—secrets. That disappointment went entirely unnoticed by Macdonald, who was carried along by his own more recondite lines of thought.

“All of a piece, really, with his interests and descent,” the curator mused. “You may not know, Sergeant, but Mr. Ruthven is distantly descended from a notable family of dabblers in the arcane. So he liked to imply, in any case. Men who, in less enlightened times than our own, were drawn to alchemy, and much darker arts. Delusional mystics, would be the current judgement, fortunate to have avoided the stake and the fires of witch-hunters.

“There was a namesake of his, a John Ruthven of the sixteenth century, who habitually carried about his person a bag filled with magical wards inscribed upon plaques of wood in Latin and Hebrew. To guard against evil spirits, or some such. He was executed as a conspirator against the Crown, so you may judge for yourself the merit of such precautions.”

There was a twinkle of amusement in Macdonald’s eye.

“And that John’s brother—a certain Patrick, Lord Ruthven no less—was reputedly an even more active dabbler in the black arts. Curses and charms, that sort of thing.”

“Ruthven lives in some comfort,” Quire observed. “He must come from money of some sort.”

“If you say so. I’ve not had the privilege of calling on him at home, and I am certainly not privy to his financial dealings. He
did display some generosity towards the Society in happier times, mind, so he undoubtedly had funds at his disposal. I have a vague recollection that he has some modest landholdings. Farms or some such. Perhaps there are rents…”

The suggestion faded away with a rising, questioning tone and another flutter of his hand.

Quire regarded the shelves of boxes and crates glumly. This talk of the black arts put a sour twist into his gut. His fingers, of their own accord, tapped at the sack laid on the table. He turned his head, and looked down at them, as if they belonged to someone else entirely.

“I did wonder…” he murmured. “Another matter I thought someone here might be…”

He was hesitant, straying into areas that he neither understood nor gave any credence to. Ever since he had been called to look upon Carlyle’s body, though, he had felt himself moving slowly but surely on to unfamiliar ground of one sort or another. It was too late to turn about now.

He pushed the sack across the table. Macdonald regarded it with surprise.

“Perhaps you could take a look at that, sir?” Quire asked. “Tell me what you make of it.”

Macdonald reached in, his brow alive with curiosity. He withdrew the fragile, crude star of twigs that had been left affixed to Quire’s door. The curator held it on his spread hands and frowned at it. With the delicate precision appropriate to his vocation, he turned it over. The little black feathers brushed softly over the twigs. Tiny fragments of bark came loose.

“I thought it might be old, at first, but it’s not, is it?” Macdonald said.

He sounded neither alarmed, nor overly interested. That went some small way towards easing the tension that had crept into Quire’s arms. He thought himself foolish, to be so unnerved by a silly decoration some child might have put together, but it was one thing too many amongst several he could not quite explain. And he
had, when he first held it, felt something strange. Still, Macdonald evidently felt nothing untoward.

“If it had some age to it, it might have been interesting. From an antiquarian point of view, I mean. It does bear a passing resemblance to one or two illustrations I have seen. In books relating to witchcraft, I believe. Not something one would think to see in our times, now that our path is illuminated by the power of rational intellect, eh? Might I ask how you came by it?”

“Not important,” grunted Quire. “You’ve no thought on its purpose, then?”

“I really could not speak to its significance or intent. Not my field, you know: the intricacies of these particular extinct beliefs. I’m afraid there are no practising witches in these parts nowadays, to the best of my knowledge, otherwise I might have referred you to an expert.”

Macdonald said that last with a twinkle of humour, in which Quire could not share.

“Does look a little ill-omened, though, wouldn’t you say?” the curator observed. “Even to the untrained eye. One suspects that it might be a warning, or threat, or curse, or fell invocation. Back when people took such things seriously, of course.”

“Of course. You keep it, sir. I’ve no further need for the thing.”

Macdonald frowned down at the object.

“Not something we would particularly wish to add to our collections, I think.”

“Dispose of it, then,” Quire said, a little too sharply.

He wanted to be rid of it now. He was not a superstitious man, but he hated and mistrusted the way his eyes were drawn to that frail construction of sticks and feathers, and the way it made him feel. It was not fear precisely that pinched at him; sharp unease, perhaps. Or trepidation. Its presence seemed even to lend the long store room in which he sat an oppressive, dark atmosphere.

“Ruthven seems to make a habit of parting with folk on poor terms,” Quire muttered as he folded away the sacking and pushed it
into the pocket of his long coat. “An assistant of his—Carlyle—fell out with him recently. I don’t suppose you know the man?”

Macdonald shrugged apologetically, and then shook his head for good measure.

“What about Blegg? Do you know that name?”

“Blegg, Blegg.” Macdonald frowned and gazed up towards the ceiling, in pursuit of an errant memory. “Yes, I think he’s been attached to Mr. Ruthven for a considerable number of years. I have some vague recollection of him. Quite the shy fellow. Obsequious, to be honest.”

“That’s not entirely my experience of him.”

“No? Well, I don’t know the man, of course. Only ever saw him fawning at Ruthven’s elbow, but it has been a good few years. Perhaps he has changed. Many of us do, with the passage of time.”

Quire grunted. Men changed less often than most thought, in his experience, and seldom in the deeper fibre of their character.

“A Frenchman by the name of Durand?” he asked without great expectation, and was surprised to see Macdonald’s expression brighten considerably.

“Oh, yes indeed.” The curator nodded. “Him, I have met. A fascinating man. Do you know him, then?”

“We were introduced, that’s all. Nothing more. I had the impression he was not much given to conversation. Not in English, at least.”

“Oh, he is exceptionally fluent in our language, Sergeant. A fellow of the Institute of Sciences in Paris, with—so it seemed to me, in any case—a quite profound knowledge of the antiquities of the Levant, and Egypt. He was a member of that expedition which accompanied Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, you know. A dreadful business, no doubt, but they obtained a remarkable amount of…”

“He’s lodging with Ruthven,” Quire interrupted. He had no desire for an education in Napoleon’s achievements in the East.

Macdonald blinked, whether in surprise at the information or at Quire’s curtness it was difficult to say.

“Is he? I did not know that. I met him perhaps eighteen months ago, when he was only recently arrived here. I had the pleasure of showing him around some parts of the collection.”

“What’s his business here? In Edinburgh, I mean?” Quire asked.

“I took him to be a simple traveller with a thirst for knowledge, seeking out those of like mind. And I envied him that, I must admit. The freedom to wander at will amongst the world’s great centres of learning…”

Quire watched the curator drift into a reverie of itinerant scholarship. Then he sneezed, which returned Macdonald to more immediate concerns.

“If you want to renew your acquaintance with Durand, you would likely have the chance tomorrow,” the curator suggested. “There’s to be an exhibition. You must have seen the preparations for it downstairs. No? An American artist showing his wares. Ruthven invariably attends such events, I believe, and the exhibition is entirely unconnected to the Society, so he will undoubtedly have received an invitation. I’m attending myself, as it happens. Most exciting. I should imagine Durand would accompany Ruthven, if he is indeed his house guest. The French are great ones for painting, you know.”

A fog embraced the city the next day. It had the sharp scent of industry and smoke buried within it, but the salt tang of the sea, too; the work of both Man and Nature.

Amidst it, the gaslights along Princes Street burned: diffuse globes of pale fire suspended eerily in mid-air. They receded, each in the chain a little fainter than the last, into the grey oblivion that shrouded everything.

From that murk, the carriages emerged one by one, the clattering of their wheels muted by the dank air. They came to the Royal Institution and disgorged on to its steps Edinburgh’s moneyed, propertied elite. Men of the law and of science and of letters; landowners, merchants and clerics. They came in their finest clothes, with wives and daughters upon their arms, walking canes in their hands—though they were not much given to walking on a night such as this—and tall, stiff hats crowning their heads.

On a finer night, they would have lingered on the plaza outside the Institution; taken the air, greeted one another, measured the mood and appearance of their fellows. Beneath the damp weight of the fog, they were not so inclined. Each time the heavy doors were opened to admit a newly arrived party, there was a spill of light and of chatter out into the mist.

Quire stood amongst the columns, watching them arrive. He recognised a goodly number of faces; doubted whether any more than one or two of them could have put a name to him in their turn, for it was in the nature of the influential to be known by those they did not themselves know. He kept to the shadows, in any case, withdrawn behind one of the fluted stone pillars.