McLevy (26 page)

With these thought I proceeded up the High Street, and entered the office. The Captain was already there, with a gentleman standing by him—no other then Mr Blyth, whose shop had so
occupied my attention in my walk.

“Oh, M’Levy, you’re just in time,” said the Captain. “Here is Mr Blyth with information that his shop has been broken into last night from behind, and a great
quantity of silks carried off.

“It is just a case for you, M’Levy,” said Mr Blyth, who gave me no time to speak; “for I fear that it is almost a desperate one. I mean we have no means of tracing,
except through the goods. No one in the neighbourhood saw the burglars.”

“It is a mere case of a search for the articles,” continued the Captain. “M’Levy, you can take charge. Call up some of the best searchers, and distribute them in the
course of the day among the brokers. But we can expect nothing for a day or two—until the robbers begin to ‘give out’.”

“There’s no occasion for calling in any of the men,” said I; “neither is there any occasion for troubling the brokers. I know who the robbers are, and will have them up
in a couple of hours. Nay, if you wait, I will bring them to you.”

“What,” cried the astonished silk-mercer, “already! You’re surely joking. Have you been up all night?”

“No; in bed all night, sleeping as sound as a bat in winter.”

“Then some policeman has been on the look-out, and told you.”

“I have not spoken to a policeman today yet.”

“Then how, in the name of wonder, have you got it?”

“Just through the means of a laugh,” I replied, laughing myself.

“Why, you are making a joke of my loss of a hundred guineas.”

“A laugh is not quite so useless a thing as you imagine. The cackle of a goose saved a city on one occasion, and the cackle of these men, who are not geese, will save your silk-mercery. I
tell you I will have the burglars with you, ay, in one hour, and with them your goods. Wait till I come.”

“Well, no doubt you’re famous in your way, but I fear it won’t do to apprehend a man for a laugh.”

“I’ve done it for a
breath
,” said I, “merely because it told me there was some fear in the breather of his breath being interrupted by a certain kind of
handkerchief which you don’t deal in. Sit down, and keep yourself easy.”

I accordingly set to my task, going direct to M’Quarry’s mother, in Hume’s Close; my assistant, as usual, with me. I opened the door, and went in just as his mother was giving
him his breakfast.

“You didn’t notice me this morning, M’Quarry, when you passed me at Mr Blyth’s door?” said I.

The word Blyth struck him to the heart.

“Blyth, wha is Mr Blyth?” said the mother, as she looked into her son’s pale face, her own being nearly of the same colour.

“Why, bless you, don’t you know the man you bought these silks of, up in that bole there?” pointing to the likeliest place, at the same moment that I observed something like a
fringe hanging out from the crevice made by the shrunk door.

“There’s nae silk there,” said the mother.

“All a d—d lie,” growled the son.

“There’s no use for any words about that,” said I, placing a chair and mounting.

On opening the door of the old cupboard, sunk in the wall, there were Mr Blyth’s scarfs, neckcloths, and ribbons, all stuffed in except that bit of fringe, which had claimed my eye, and
convinced me more and more that the devil has a halt; but at that very moment the door of the room burst open, overturning the chair on which I stood, and laying me sprawling on my back,
confounded, but still able enough to hear the words of the intruder.

“Run, M’Quarry, M’Levy’s in the close!”

“Yes, and here,” I cried, starting up and seizing the speaker, just as he got alarmed; no other but my friend whose laugh, along with M’Quarry’s, so delighted me in the
morning.

“The laugh’s on the other side now,” said I.

The fellow struggled, but he was only a sapling; and as M’Quarry saw there were two to one, he started upon his feet and laid hold of me by the throat. I instantly changed hands, seizing
the younger and weaker with my left, and, using the other against M’Quarry, pulled away his right, at the same time getting hold of his neckcloth, which I pulled so tight that he instantly
became red in the face. I was afraid of the mother, who still held the knife in her hand with which she had been cutting the bread for her son’s breakfast; but the sight of her choking son
produced such an effect upon her that she set up a scream sufficient to reach the head of the close. The sound had been heard by Mulholland, who, hastening up, relieved me of one of my
opponents.

“We give in,” said M’Quarry, as he gasped for breath.

“That’s sensible” said I. “Then you walk up with me you know where; on with your bonnet. As for you, Mrs M’Quarry, I have to ask you to accompany us; not, perhaps,
that I will trouble you much, as the silks may have been placed there without your knowledge; but as I need the room for half-an-hour, and must be sure of your not entering it when I am away, you
go with us, and I lock the door.”

They all came very quietly. I locked the door and took the key with me, and in a few minutes had them all lodged, without communicating my capture yet to Mr Blyth, who, I understood, was still
waiting. I would go by and by, however, and taking two men I hastened and got up the silks.

“Now, Mr Blyth, here are your silks and the robbers,” said I, as the prisoners were brought and the mercery. “It is not two hours yet, and as this affair began with a laugh I
wish it to terminate with one.”

A wish complied with on the instant by every one except the culprits.

My story is ended, but there is a postscript. Mr Blyth could not, after he went away, understand my allusion to the laugh, and one day, as I was passing, he called me in, with a view to an
explanation. That I gave him, much in the same way as I have given it to the reader. After considering a little, he said,—

“Well, how simple this affair is after all. It was not so much your cleverness, M’Levy, as their folly, that got me my goods.

“You never said a truer thing in your life, sir;” said I, “for people give M’Levy great praise for extraordinary powers. It is all nonsense. I am just in the position of
the candid juggler, who tells his audience that there is no mystery at all in his art, when all is explained. My detections have been and are simple pieces of business,—far more simple than
the schemes that end in non-detections,—and yet these have all the intricacy of some engines, which look fine on paper, but the very complexity of which prevents them from grinding your
meal.”

SHADOW OF THE SERPENT

Known as the father of forensics and a likely influence on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, real-life police inspector James McLevy is here reinvented by David Ashton in a thrilling mystery,
Shadow of the Serpent.

1880, Edinburgh, Election fever grips the city. But while the rich and educated argue about politics, in the dank wynds of the docks it’s a struggle just to stay alive. When a prostitute is
brutally murdered, disturbing memories from thirty years ago are stirred in McLevy who is soon lured into a murky world of politics, perversion and deception - and the shadow of the
serpent.

FALL FROM GRACE

The second in a new series of McLevy books, Fall from Grace revolves around the terrible Tay Bridge disaster. The story begins with a break-in and murder at the Edinburgh home of Sir
Thomas Bouch, the enigmatic, egotistical builder of the Tay Bridge. McLevy is brought in to investigate. With the help of brothel madam Jean Brash, McLevy finds the murderer, but there is much,
much more to unfold: murder, arson, sexual obsession and suicide.

TRICK OF THE LIGHT

The third in David Ashton’s series of McLevy thrillers, A Trick of the Light sees McLevy team up with Arthur Conan Doyle to pursue a ruthless killer. It is 1860 and a
Confederate officer, Jonathen Sinclair, arrives in Edinburgh with a sheaf of money to purchase a blockade-runner from Clydeside shipbuilders. He is betrayed to the Union forces and is shot dead
by their secret agents. Who are they and where is Sinclair’s money? Meanwhile, a beautiful young American spiritualist, Sophia Adler, is the toast of upper-class Edinburgh with her dramatic
séances. However, she could yet prove to be the deadliest woman McLevy and Conan Doyle will ever encounter.

NOR WILL HE SLEEP

1887. The streets of Edinburgh seethe with youthful anarchy as two rival gangs of students, Scarlet Runners and White Devils, try to outdo each other in wild exploits. After a pitched
battle between them, an old woman is found savagely battered to death in Leith Harbour. Enter Inspector James McLevy, a little more grizzled, but unchanging in his fierce desire to mete out
justice. As the inspector delves further he meets up with one Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Jekyll and Hyde, in the city to bury his recently deceased father.

END OF THE LINE

Exclusive eBook-only edition. When the body of a handsome, fleshy man is found on the Newcastle to Edinburgh train with the livid mark of a garotte round his throat like a lethal
necklace, naturally the first port of call is Leith Police Station and Inspector James McLevy. The corpse is discovered to be one ‘Count Borromeo’, a ruthless seducer and amoral
bigamist; it soon emerges that Jean Brash’s coachman, the ginger-haired giant Angus Dalrymple, was also aboard the train and is the number one suspect, a fact that sets Jean and the
inspector once more at daggers drawn. When McLevy and Constable Mulholland finally unravel this case, the murderer is confronted in a deadly encounter on the girders and high gantries above
Waverley Station. This is an adaptation of an episode of the BBC series based around the Victorian detective James McLevy, developed for Radio 4 by David Ashton.

THE PAINTED LADY

A dead judge’s wife is suspected of poisoning him and the Haymarket police think they have a foolproof case. They have undisclosed evidence she has been having an affair with a
society artist plus the fact that a quantity of arsenic has been found in the judge’s body. She appeals for help to McLevy though the case is not in his parish; there is an ambivalent
quality to her, an elusive attraction that the Inspector can’t resist. Nor can Leith’s finest avoid the temptation of getting one over his Haymarket colleagues. In a world of
corruption, drugs and unfaithfulness who is to be believed? McLevy finds the answer but will justice be done?

AND READ THE ABOUT THE REAL McLEVY HERE

McLEVY: THE EDINBURGH DETECTIVE

James McLevy, an Edinburgh policeman, was one of the first exponents of the crime genre and a likely influence on the creator of Sherlock Holmes. This book features a collection of
stories based on some of the 2,220 cases he dealt with in the course of his career, evoking the spirit of the city, and the vivid descriptions of its criminal classes. Edinburgh has provided the
backdrop to stories of detection for almost a century and a half. In the 1860s, a few years before Conan Doyle began his medical studies at Edinburgh University, there appeared a hugely popular
series of books with titles including “Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh”, “The Sliding Scale of Life” and “The Disclosures of a Detective”. They were all the work of one James McLevy, an
Edinburgh policeman. The now largely forgotten, McLevy was one of the first exponents of the crime genre and a likely influence on the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Like Conan Doyle, McLevy had an
Irish background. He was born in Co Armagh, the son of a small farmer. Largely self-educated, he joined the Edinburgh police force in 1830 as a night watchman before rising up through the ranks
to become a detective. The collection of stories in this book are based on some of the 2,220 cases he dealt with in the course of his career, wonderfully evoking the spirit of the city, and the
vivid descriptions of its criminal classes as they moved between the very different worlds of the Old and New Towns. It is introduced by Quintin Jardine.