The Edinburgh Dead (22 page)

With the growth of the New Town, and Edinburgh’s slow sprawl to all points of the compass, the sight of boys racing along the streets, wax-sealed notes in hand, had become a rare one. But not entirely unknown. Most of the lads who did the work now did it only when other trades they practised—thievery or scavenging or chimney-sweeping—were going slow; they were but part-time practitioners of the art of message-running.

One such found Quire at the police house that afternoon. A
dishevelled-looking little fellow, skinny like a coursing dog. Well pleased with himself, though, for having landed such a simple assignment.

“There’s no note?” Quire repeated, looking down at the boy.

“No.” The boy held out his hands, palm up.

“And you’ve just come from the Royal Exchange? Not a hundred yards?”

“Aye.” A big smile.

“And you were paid for this, were you?”

“Only a penny.” The smile snapped out of existence, replaced by an expression of courageous stoicism in the face of life’s small injustices.

“Not so bad, is it, a penny?” Quire said. “Not for taking a wee stroll like that, with not even a letter to carry.”

The boy shrugged.

“Let’s be having the message, then,” Quire said.

“Misher Durand would like to speak with you. He is in the Royal Exchange coffee house and will be there for the next hour.”

It was clearly not the first time the boy had recited the message. Quire could imagine him, standing there before his client, made to parrot it until he had it right.

“Misher Durand?” said Quire, hope stirring to life in him. “
Monsieur
Durand. Is that it?”

“Aye. I said, didn’t I?”

“Good lad.”

Quire pressed a silver tuppenny bit into the boy’s hand.

“Don’t drink it, mind,” he called as the boy darted off in a state of delight. “Buy yourself some proper food or something.”

But the boy was already out the door and away across the High Street, and Quire’s advice fell only upon his unresponsive heels.

Quire was not a frequent visitor to any of the coffee shops scattered through the centre of Edinburgh. He had never acquired a particular taste for the thick, dark brew, and found that its expense considerably outstripped any pleasure it might offer. Others heartily disagreed. Every vendor did a thriving trade; none more so than the Royal Exchange coffee house.

The Royal Exchange was a mighty building, enclosing on three sides a cobbled quadrangle, archways on the fourth opening out on to the bustling High Street. The higher floors were given over to offices of various sorts, but the ground floor was dedicated almost entirely to commerce. Colonnaded walkways ran around the courtyard, each full of shops.

The coffee house was entered by a flight of steps that sank down into the ground on the left side of the courtyard. A curved sign formed an arch at the top of the stairs, with a lantern hanging from it. Passing beneath this, the visitor was greeted by a pair of dark doors with small glass windows set in them. It was a modest portal for a place that was, on the inside, a hotbed of greed and debate. More business was transacted about its crowded tables than in half the shops and offices in the city. Entire shiploads of goods landed at Leith were auctioned off there; contracts were entered into for this
or that service, this or that exchange of land and property. Philosophies were discussed, literary endeavours planned or decried.

Few crimes were committed, however—not those recognised by the law, in any case—and Quire’s duties had thus brought him through the door no more often than his pleasure had. The smell within was nevertheless instantly familiar, rich and bitter and warm: coffee and tobacco smoke.

He saw Durand at once. The dapper Frenchman was sitting alone at a small round table of polished mahogany, sipping dark coffee from a china cup. A silver coffee pot stood beside him. An ivory-topped walking cane rested against his knee.

As he had been on their first encounter, Quire was struck by the sun-browned tone of Durand’s skin. It was not, to say the least, a common appearance amongst Quire’s fellow Scots. Durand must be approaching sixty years of age, and a good portion of them had surely been spent beneath clear, hot skies.

Durand looked up almost as soon as Quire entered. An intelligent gaze, a touch nervous, but not nearly so veiled as on their previous meetings. He beckoned Quire over, and gestured towards an empty chair.

“Coffee?” he asked as Quire sat down.

“No, thank you. Not my drink.”

“I find it as much food as drink, myself. One of the few pleasures of true luxury your city offers.”

The man’s voice was flowing; heavily accented, but in the controlled way of one entirely comfortable with a second language.

“If you say so,” Quire said. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Monsieur Durand?”

“Ah, you treat my language with a little more gentleness than most of your compatriots.”

“And your English is excellent.”

“Thank you. I have a certain facility in languages, it is true. And I have had the time to master yours: I became an exile from my homeland many years ago. London was my refuge. And latterly here, of course. A beautiful city you have, Sergeant Quire.”

“I’m sure it’s very happy that you like it. Is there something you’re wanting to tell me, sir?”

“Not so gentle when it comes to pleasantries, I see. I have found that to be a common trait of your countrymen. Not that I complain. Not that I complain.”

Durand took a sip from his cup. He held it delicately. An increasingly loud argument—or perhaps it was a negotiation; it could be hard to tell the difference in these avaricious times—at the next table distracted Quire, and he shot an irritated glare at its occupiers. The two men concerned were sucking away at cigars in between their expostulations, blowing out jets of blue-grey smoke. That was a sight and smell that Quire always considered a little odd, not because he found it unpleasant—he rather liked that deep scent, in fact—but because it spoke to him of Spain. There had been hardly a cigar to be found in Britain until its officers and men came back from the Peninsular War, having learned the habit from the Spanish. The long struggle against Napoleon had all but bankrupted the country, and delivered only strange little trophies.

Quire turned back to Durand.

“Do you know what happened to Edward Carlyle? Can you testify to what occurred at Duddingston Kirk?”

“So hasty,” Durand said quietly, setting down his coffee. “No, I regret I will testify to nothing. Not in a court of law. Not unless I am assured of my safety, and that, I fear, will be a great deal harder to secure than you imagine.”

“What use are you to me, then?” muttered Quire in frustration.

“I confess, I am more interested in the question of what use you might be to me. Are you familiar with the Shelley book?”

“I’m not much of a man for poetry.”

“No, the wife.
Frankenstein. The Modern Prometheus
.”

“Not much of a man for reading in its entirety, to be truthful.”

“Not a requirement of your profession, I suppose. Never mind. Tell me: you have the manner, and are of the right age… you fought against my countrymen, perhaps?”

The change in the course of the conversation did not greatly
surprise Quire. For all his poise, Durand was a man quite evidently ill at ease with his situation, and with his company. His hand betrayed it, tapping nervously at the boss atop his cane. His eyes betrayed it, flicking from the thick, steaming black coffee to Quire’s face, to the door over his shoulder. The man needed a little indulgence, Quire judged, and he bit back his impatience.

“Seven years in the army, near enough. I was at Waterloo; Spain and Portugal before that.”

“Ah. Do you think me your enemy, then?”

“No, sir. That business is over and done with. If there are current matters fit to make you my enemy, of course, that’s different. But I’m hoping still that you’re here to make yourself a friend.”

“Indeed. I met Napoleon, you know.” A brief loss of focus to those nervous eyes, a glance towards memory. “It was a long time ago, before I fell out of favour with his regime. In Egypt. I was a member of the scientific expedition that accompanied him in his conquest of those lands.”

“I know.”

Durand’s surprise was obvious. Quire had no intention of providing an explanation for his knowledge, though. Let the man ponder the fact that he was not the only one with secrets.

“He was very small, I heard,” Quire said.

“Napoleon?
Oui
. A giant spirit, contained in modest accommodation. Not a good man, you understand. I do not claim that. But a great one.”

“Caused misery and havoc enough, if that’s what you mean by greatness.”

“True, monsieur. Quite true. Greatness is no guarantor of wisdom, or of a peaceable nature. Believe me, I have cause to know that better than most. Are you sure you will not take some coffee? Or something else, perhaps?”

“I don’t need anything.”

The door behind Quire banged open, and Durand’s eyes went to it instantly, bright alarm in them for a moment. Quire’s arms tensed in response, but he saw the Frenchman’s features relax, and
he almost smiled at how easily one man’s unease might attach itself to another.

“John Ruthven might have been a great man once,” Durand said.

Quire leaned in, his interest on the hook now. He said nothing, for fear of diverting the Frenchman from his course.

“But great men can go… astray, that would be the word, no?” Durand said. “More easily than lesser men, perhaps. He has a rare mind, Ruthven, a gift to see further and deeper than most of us. He has done things… ah, they would amaze you. But his is not a kind gift, for what he sees has clouded him, drawn him down paths better ignored.”

“Maybe I can do some correction of that.”

“Maybe. I am not innocent in this, no more than John Ruthven. Not one of us in that house can lay claim upon innocence. You know Mr. Blegg?”

“Not as well as I’d like.”

Durand smiled at that, and sank back in his chair. It was a sad smile, almost one of pity.

“He is not a man you would wish to know better, Sergeant. I assure you of that. And he is not so easily understood as you might think. Blegg is not his only name. I have heard Mr. Ruthven call him Weir, and other names. Darker names. Such is the company I keep, at the gravest peril to my immortal soul.”

The regret in Durand’s voice was all but palpable, and Quire could hear in it a vast acreage of mourning. Mourning, perhaps, for a life gone wrong.

“What’s Ruthven doing in the body-snatching business?” he asked. “Can you tell me that? He can’t need the money.”

Durand gave a twitching snort.

“You think that is what this is about? Selling the dead? Nothing so harmless. But in any case, you misjudge Ruthven. He is no longer a rich man, Sergeant. Not by any means.”

“I’ve seen his house. I know what rich looks like.”

“You have seen one room, no? The public façade. It is a large
house, and contains many surprises. Much emptiness. But as for the digging of graves… I do not think you need concern yourself with that. I have the impression that certain recent events may have convinced those involved to stay away from your cemeteries for a time.”

“Tell me what I need to know,” Quire pressed, tiring of Durand’s coyness. “I’ll fix what’s needing fixing.”

Or break it, he thought.

“I do not doubt that you will try, Sergeant. You have already proved yourself a most… troublesome sort. That is why I am here. But be certain of this: you would be dead by now, were you not a member of the police. You are not the sort of man who can simply disappear, not without hard questions being asked. Especially as you have not been precisely quiet about your suspicions of John Ruthven. They have been circumspect. Had you been but an ordinary man… well.”

The Frenchman spread his hands, inviting Quire towards the obvious conclusion.

“I’d not call setting their damned hounds on me circumspect.”

“The dogs? I did not know that. I am not as trusted as I once was. I am no longer fully in their confidence. It does not bode well. But still: a man killed by dogs is accident, not murder, is it not? Circumspect, as I say.”

“What are they, anyway? Those dogs?”

“An early venture on Ruthven’s part into dark territory. A failed experiment, you might say. But he has learned, since then; with my assistance, to my utmost regret. Make no mistake, I come to you in desperation. I am surely doomed, if the charnel house they have built cannot be destroyed, to its very foundations, and them along with it. I hope you might be the man to do it, but it is a slender hope only. An illusion, most likely.”

Durand shook his head. He looked around the coffee shop, though Quire did not think he was truly seeing that which his gaze fell upon.

“I am a man in need of salvation,” Durand said softly. “If not in
the life yet to come—that might be a lost cause—at least in this one. I cannot stay in that house, in that company, for fear of losing my mind. Yet I cannot leave, for fear of worse. Monsieur Carlyle taught me that. As he was perhaps intended to.”