The Strings of Murder (10 page)

8

For convenience, the morgue was housed in one of the basements of the City Chambers, which turned out to be uncomfortably close to our little department’s office.

I felt a sudden chill as soon as the doors opened. That morgue was as depressing as its counterpart in London; its small reception only had the most essential furnishing and its tiled walls were matt after having been cleaned for years and years. Morgues always looked like that: tidy, hygienic and functional … yet as cold to the eye as they were to the skin.

We were received by a young man I took to be the clerk. He had plump cheeks and wide, watery eyes that made him look rather childlike. His spotless lab coat told me otherwise.

‘Good day, Inspector McGray,’ he said with a well-modulated, yet very noticeable, Scottish accent. ‘I was not expecting you ’til a bit later.’

‘My new colleague is disgustingly eager to start the job now,’ McGray replied. ‘Frey, this is Dr Reed, our head mortician.’

‘Dr Reed!’ I repeated, hardly believing my ears. I knew that good morticians were difficult to find, but I’d never seen a morgue kept by someone so young. ‘Pray, how old are you?’

The young man held his chin higher. ‘Twenty-three, sir.’
He saw my arched eyebrows and added proudly: ‘I graduated two years early.’

‘I see. How long ago?’

‘Erm … three months – but I had a great deal of practical experience.’

‘And at least he
did
graduate,’ Nine-Nails intervened, making my stomach feel ablaze once more. ‘Did ye finish the post-mortem, laddie?’

‘Or course, Inspector. I have it right here.’ Reed went to the small desk and produced a notepad with a stack of sheets clipped to it. ‘I received a letter from Mr Campbell himself asking me to give priority to this. He also warned me about the confidential nature of the case.’

Reed handed me the notepad.

‘Can you take us to the body?’ I asked. ‘I would like to see for myself.’

‘Oh, I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir. I released it this morning.’

My eyes almost fell out of their sockets. ‘You did
what
?’

Reed’s face went white. ‘We – well … his great nephews wanted to bury him next to his wife … and that’s too far to keep it in here.’

I took a deep breath. The young man was surely under too much pressure and I would not gain much by bullying him. ‘Well, I need to see that body myself. You will have to fetch it back.’ I was expecting Reed to reply, but he just stammered. ‘What is it?’

His full accent came out. ‘Erm … it cannae be brought back.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well … erm … they’re burying him in Calais, sir.
That’s why I released it so soon. They told me their ship would set sail by noon.’

‘
What!
’

‘Sir, I … I assure you my report is quite thorough.’

‘I do not care! You do
not
get rid of bodies until you have our authorization! Do you understand?’

‘Enough!’ McGray barked as Reed seemed about to burst in tears. He snatched the pad from my hands, his eyes fulminating. ‘We better read the damn report before ye skin ’im alive.’

I snorted. ‘Well, I suppose it cannot be helped. By the time it gets to Calais the corpse’s flesh will look almost as putrid as your haggis.’ Reed was fiercely munching his fingernails and I could not help feeling for him. ‘It is all right, boy, but never do such thing again.’

McGray read aloud. ‘Gee-jum Fon-teen …’

‘Guilleum Fontaine,’ I corrected.

‘Och, shut up. Let’s see … Male; fifty-eight years of age; och, fifteen stone – not a wee chap! Erm … aye, here it is: throat and belly cut open; no signs o’ struggle …’

‘The man was old and overweight,’ said Reed. ‘He would not have been difficult to subdue.’

‘One long cut in the centre o’ his belly,’ McGray went on. He arched his eyebrows. ‘Missing organs: heart, liver ’n’ half the intestines.’

‘Beautiful,’ I mumbled sarcastically, remembering the post-mortem report on Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper’s latest victim; her heart had been missing too, but that detail had not reached the press yet. ‘Did the incision look as if it had been made by a medical man?’ I asked Reed, mentally looking for more similarities.

‘Erm … I don’t understand you, sir.’

‘Was it a clean, straight cut or did they … butcher the body?’

‘The cut was rough, sir; the flesh was even torn at some points. I do mention that in the report.’ The chap was obviously trying to make up for his mistake, for he promptly added: ‘Also, we had photographs made at the crime scene before we brought back the body, and a few during the post-mortem.’

I could not help sighing in relief; a case like this, as important as the quest for Jack the Ripper himself, would of course have been documented by a photographer.

‘Good, when do you expect those to be ready?’

‘They’re supposed to be sent to your offices within two or three days, but I can have a word with the photographer. He’s a friend o’ mine. If we’re lucky you may even have them by tomorrow evening.’

‘That would help us a lot, laddie,’ McGray said, patting Reed’s shoulder. ‘Ye mind if we take this report with us?’

‘Please do, sir.’

‘And we better make haste, McGray,’ I said. ‘I would like to inspect Fontaine’s house while we still have some of this pathetic daylight.’

‘Easy, lassie! I don’t like to be rushed all the bloody time.’ Then he turned to Reed for a leisurely chat about the chap’s mother and fiancée. I looked at them impatiently, tapping my foot on the floor. When we were finally stepping out, Reed ran up behind us.

‘Oh! I almost forgot! Mr Campbell asked me to give you this.’ He handed us a couple of bronze keys. ‘These are the only keys to the room where they found Fontaine.
The odd thing is, the room was locked, but these were found
inside
.’

I took the keys, which were a matching pair. Reed bowed and went away.

McGray whispered as we walked upstairs: ‘Take it easy with that laddie, Frey. I ken he’s a wee bit green, but he’s darn good at his job.’

‘He does look capable,’ I said, ‘but this case may be too much to take on so early.’

McGray looked sombre. ‘Aye, ye might be right in that …’

We decided to take a carriage to Abbey Hill, where the victim had lived and died. It would get dark very soon and, even though McGray had complained about my haste, I could tell that he was as keen as me to get on with the investigation.

The rain had ceased but the mist persisted, so the towers and chimneys of Holyrood Palace appeared slowly as we descended through the Royal Mile. When we drove around the palace I saw the roofless nave of the ancient Holyrood Abbey.

Under the dark clouds, with the jagged hills of Arthur’s Seat in the background, the group of buildings looked like an engraved illustration in a gothic novel. Perhaps it was because of all the grim stories I had heard about the place when I was a child, or its gloomy baroque architecture with its pointed frontal towers, or perhaps because the eroded stones of the abbey looked as though they’d been standing there since the beginning of time.

‘You Scots seem to be all about ruined and incomplete
buildings,’ I said. ‘Look at that derelict abbey … it is downright depressing.’

‘Well, it was the English and their wretched Protestants that pillaged it in the first bloody place!’

‘I must tell you that I come from a most prominent Protestant family. My ancestors were close acquaintances of Martin Luther himself, and –’

‘Och, shush! Ye sound like Queen Vicky talking about the family trees o’ her hunting hounds.’

The carriage took us to the curved street of Abbey Hill, which obviously received its name from the ruins next to the palace. There was a line of fine yet narrow houses, and the driver halted in front of one near the middle.

McGray knocked on the door and almost immediately we were attended by a short, plump old woman. She had a mighty big nose and her face was all wrinkled like a prune.

Nine-Nails stepped forward. ‘Evening. I’m Inspector McGray from the CID. This whiny lassie’s Inspector Frey.’

‘A-aye, I was told youse were to come soon.’ The housekeeper let us into a small hall crammed with packed boxes. ‘Excuse the mess, sirs. Mr Fontaine’s landlady ordered me to empty the house right away.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ McGray said, not bothering to explain himself.

‘That room where the murder took place is still untouched, I hope?’ I immediately asked.

‘Aye, sir. I’ve not even got the keys. That nasty photographer o’ yours took them after they broke in.’

‘Those keys found their way to us,’ I replied, showing them. ‘Can you show us the way?’

She led us upstairs and pointed at a locked door. ‘There youse have it. I don’t want to see, but I’ll be downstairs if youse need anything.’

‘Thanks a lot, hen,’ McGray said. ‘We will come down to ask ye some questions. Hope ye’ll bear with us.’

The woman actually seemed excited about it, her creased eyes suddenly sparkling. ‘Of course, sirs! I’ll prepare some tea if youse wish.’

‘That’ll be great, hen!’ McGray said with a wink, and we watched her leave. ‘Open it up, Frey.’

I was about to ask how come he’d not called me dandy or wimp, but thought better of it; McGray would have surely asked whether I liked it.

It was hard to turn the key in the lock. ‘The key seems worn,’ I said. ‘They locked this room very often, apparently.’

As soon as I opened the door, a faint yet nauseating smell emerged. We walked into a wide studio with a dramatic view of the palace and, especially, of the dilapidated abbey. The window was smashed and there were pieces of glass scattered at its foot. I saw a shelf filled with sheet music, and counted three violins hanging over it; there was an empty gap for a missing instrument. Right next to a narrow fireplace there was a desk, equally packed with printed scores, and a wooden music stand. At first glance, the room seemed a very comfortable place for practising music – one that my brother Elgie would envy, especially given the inspiring view.

‘Look at that!’ McGray cried, and he quickly kneeled down by the foot of the stand.

Only then did I notice the macabre sight.

There was a twisted symbol on the green carpet, painted hastily with blood that now looked very dark. It was a long, inverted triangle, like the point of an arrow, divided vertically by a straight line. Inside it five eyes with vertical pupils had been drawn, two in the left half and three in the right half. The tracing was crude, almost primitive, and it gave the eyes a fixed, expressionless stare that was somehow distressing … like the stare of a snake.

Scattered around were some small shreds of dry flesh (whoever had removed the body to the morgue had done so with great haste). I recognized the whitish colour of intestine tissue and the revolting yellow of body fat. The smell of decay suddenly seemed more evident, as if accentuated by the eerie image.

‘I didn’t expect this,’ McGray muttered anxiously, unable to wrest his stare from the drawing. ‘I was expectin’ a pentagram or a goat’s head or some stupidity like that … This is serious, Frey;
very
serious.’

‘What do you mean? I have never seen this scribble before.’

McGray’s eyes showed that a million thoughts were storming in his brain. ‘Exactly … few have seen it.’

Next to the symbol there was a single, huge bloodstain of an even darker red. McGray patted it slowly.

‘The man was attacked while he played,’ he pointed at the empty stand; tiny drops of blood splattered on the upper corner. ‘He fell and was dismembered on this spot, where most of his blood dripped …’

The big stain was right next to the desk, under which I saw Fontaine’s missing instrument: a very fine violin half
hidden in the shadows. McGray stretched his arm and lifted it carefully. The wood was varnished in a rich, reddish tone that reflected the scant light on its curved surface. It looked
really
old, like one of those violins from the seventeenth century that Elgie had sometimes borrowed.

The most striking feature, however, was that it did not have a scroll, as regular violins do at the end of the fingerboard; instead, this one had the carved head of a lion, with two blue eyes made of blown glass.

‘Pretty thing,’ McGray said, turning it around to examine it. The back of the violin was made of maple, the winding stripes of the wood looking almost like the skin of a tiger; it also had an unusual chinrest made of polished, pristine rosewood. The front of the instrument was dotted with thick drops of blood, only a bit darker than the reddish varnish. McGray laid it carefully on the desk.

‘So they butchered Fontaine and then used him to play their little satanic act,’ I summarized, as speaking out loud usually helps me think better. ‘He was standing right here, with the violin …’

I stood in front of the stand and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be Fontaine … how he would have felt at that precise moment. ‘
Look
, what is this?’ I whispered.

‘What’s what?’

‘Of course! The stand is
empty
! Look at this.’

Then McGray saw what I had found: a small semicircle of blood, its left-hand side perfectly straight.

‘Someone took his music away
after
killing him,’ McGray realized immediately. ‘The missin’ half of that drop fell on the page and then it was taken away.’

We quickly looked for the score on the floor and among the papers on the desk, but none of those sheets was stained with blood.

‘It makes no sense,’ I said. ‘Why take only a stack of paper when … can you hand me the violin? I want to look into the f-hole.’

Nine-Nails laughed childishly. ‘The
f-hole
!’

I snorted, snatching the violin from his hand. ‘How puerile.’

I then looked into the violin’s body. The inner wood looked extremely old, yet I found a faint marking that was not hard to decipher. ‘This instrument was made by one N. Amati … the name sounds familiar … in 1629! This violin must be worth hundreds if not thousands of pounds! And those hanging on the wall surely are precious too. Why not take any of them instead?’