The Strings of Murder (37 page)

‘Congra–?’

‘You are the most infamous people in Scotland, and by this time tomorrow, will be the most infamous in the entire British Empire!’

I clenched my fists. That brute could be the best of friends with my brother Laurence!

‘It is unreasonable to ascribe the desecration of Ardglass’s grave to Jack the Ripper!’ I said. ‘Ardglass was a completely different sort of victim; the crime took place under completely different circums–’

‘Do not try to preach to me, Frey! I know that journalists are but a bunch of brainless arses that can barely spell, but so are their readers! And now, thanks to you, I must liaise with the filthy cattle we have shouting in the courtyard.’

‘I can talk to them, if ye …’

‘I will deal with the press myself, McGray. The last thing we need now is your outlandish face on show.’

‘Sir,’ I intervened, ‘I believe I can handle –’

‘Frey, you can’t handle a teapot without a cosy!’

‘Sir, if I may –’

‘No, you may not! I want results and I want them
now
, before the bloody papers inflate this to uncontrollable proportions. I expect you to bring me an identified, charged culprit by this time tomorrow. Understood?’

‘
What!
’ McGray howled, ‘Ye cannae possibly expect –’

‘You have spent enough time working on this case, have you not?’

‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘but you have read my reports: meagre evidence, unconnected deaths … until Ardglass died there was not a clear trail to follow –’

‘Excuse me, Frey, all I hear is
blah-blah-blah, we are a pair of blithering idiots
.’

‘Sir –’

Campbell shrieked even louder than McGray: ‘
Tomorrow, Frey!
Or you two will be dismissed permanently. I shan’t take more chances for the sake of redeeming your pathetic career, and I am sure Sir Charles and the prime minister will agree. And McGray, whatever arrangement we had regarding your special subsection, consider it ended. I am sure your idiotic theories have done no good to the case, and I will not risk my own reputation to help you in your dim-witted obsession with your lunatic, murderous sister.’

For an instant, McGray remained still like a statue, but then, in a startling move, he thrust an enraged fist straight into Campbell’s nose. I saw the splash of blood, and as Campbell’s head bounced backwards, McGray stood up, quick as a wolf, to seize him by the throat.

‘McGray!’ I gasped.

Campbell was dazed. It took him a second to fully realize that he’d just been hit and that McGray was throttling him with both hands.

‘They say lunacy runs in the blood,’ McGray whispered, and then squeezed Campbell’s neck a little harder with each word. ‘Ye only need a wee – something – to – trigger it.’

Campbell was choking. ‘H-help … Frey …!
Help!
’

Aghast as I was, I could not restrain my sarcastic self. ‘I would be most compelled to help you … but I am only a blithering idiot …’

Out of pure self-indulgence, I sat back and let him
suffer for a moment. Then I patted McGray’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Nine-Nails, there is no time to play! You heard the superintendent: we have one day to solve this mess.’

McGray let go and Campbell fell onto his desk like a bundle of clothes. The blood from his nose artistically splattered the newspaper’s headline.

McGray roared madly as he stormed into the basement office.

‘What a fucking pig! Blasted, goddamn-goddamn pile o’ shite! I could nail his fucking balls to the spire o’ Mercat Cross and have him pulled by two oxen!’

‘I could not have expressed myself more eloquently,’ I sighed, sinking on the hard wooden chair. I offered my handkerchief and McGray wiped Campbell’s blood off his knuckles. ‘I doubt we will manage to keep our jobs after that little scene … yet, I feel strangely … elated.’

McGray lounged on his chair, raised his legs and put his boots on the desk. ‘I’m truly sorry things didn’t work out well for ye, Frey. I really am.’

‘Well, we still have to –’

He clicked his tongue. ‘That’s how life works, ain’t it? Ye work and work like a bloody mule and when ye finally think ye’ve got something in yer hands, it all goes to Hell …’

‘I was going to say that we should act quickly, now that –’

‘Ye can leave if ye want, Frey,’ McGray added, his mind utterly adrift. ‘I need to fight my own battles … and I ken there’s nothing here for ye. Let’s face it; ye hate the sight o’ me and this place. If I’m to sink, I should sink on my –’

I had to stand up and smack him on the side of his head. ‘Oh, will you let me bloody finish, you nine-fingered perch of moth clusters!’

McGray almost fell backwards, suddenly returning to reality. ‘Ye better have something absolutely crucial to tell me, lass; else I’ll do to ye what I just said I’d do to Campbell … And Mercat Cross is just across the road!’

‘Do you not see it? We are in the most advantageous position we have ever been.’

McGray raised an eyebrow. ‘Are ye all right, laddie? I think ye hit yer head harder than we thought.’

‘Think about it,’ I insisted, looking fervently at him.

Then, very slowly, McGray’s wrinkles deepened as his roguish smile came back. Somehow it was only then that I realized how young he actually was; perhaps a couple of years
younger
than me. ‘We’ve got the fiddle and we’ve got what’s left of Alistair’s body; the two things we needed the most.’

‘Indeed!’ McGray jumped on his feet, life running through his veins again. ‘All right laddie, let’s give it one last try …’

It was late afternoon when Reed came into the office with a report in his hands. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as though he could faint at any moment – quite understandably, for he had not slept at all since our chase in the graveyard.

‘Here it is, Inspectors,’ he said, handing us the documents.

‘Was it a thorough post-mortem?’ I asked, and to my surprise Reed’s reply lacked his usual deference.

‘I checked every single inch of his big, fat body, and, by God, I swear my salary is not worth this!’ The poor chap shuddered. ‘I will demand a pay raise and Campbell can’t refuse.’

‘Right, but don’t talk to him today, laddie,’ McGray said. ‘Something tells me he won’t be in a good mood.’

We gave the papers a swift scan.

‘Missing intestines …’ I read aloud.

‘Yes, almost seven feet missing, sir. They hardly left any …’ and then Reed gave into the widest yawn.

‘Ye saw that sack the beast was carrying?’ McGray asked, but he did not need me to answer.

‘The beast?’ Reed whispered.

‘Never mind,’ I told him. Then I went back to the report and, among the hurried scribbles, a short phrase caught my eyes.

‘You mention hyperpigmentation in the neck …’

‘Yes, sir, concentrated on the left-hand side of the neck. A fair bit in the chin too, and to a lesser extent in the fingertips of his right hand.’

His words immediately evoked my most glorious days in the CID and once more I felt that rush of adrenaline that only came when I hit upon the right answer.

‘May I see the body?’ I asked immediately.

‘But of course, sir.’

Reed took a deep breath and drew the white sheet away. A nauseating whiff arose and even McGray squinted, for the corpse looked simply appalling: the flesh was beginning to swell and to turn a sickening greyish colour. Only then did I understand Reed’s indignation.

‘Very well, show me,’ I said. ‘I do not want to stare at this for too long.’

Reed slightly tilted Alistair’s head, for the flap of his double chin was obscuring most of the mark. ‘There you have it, Inspector.’

It was a mighty stain: dark brown, almost blackened at the edges, and that spot of flesh, compared to the rest of the decaying body, remained rather firm and elastic, as if no parasite dared to corrupt it.

‘Show me his fingers,’ I prompted, although I was already pulling the dead hand myself. Only the very tips bore a similar tint.

‘What is it, Frey?’ Nine-Nails asked. ‘Yer grinning like a constipated hag that’s just discovered prunes.’

‘I have seen this pigmentation before,’ I murmured.

‘Have ye, Frey?’ McGray asked, peering over my shoulder.

‘Yes! And more than once.’ I went from the neck to the fingertips several times, the epiphany taking full shape in my mind. Those were the glorious instants that had made me a slave to my profession. I turned back to Reed: ‘Do you have equipment to perform the Marsh test?’

Reed looked blankly at me for a moment, but then his eyes widened with amazement. ‘Do you mean that …?’

‘I do.’

It took him another moment to process my words, but then he hurled himself forward and leaned over the body: ‘Of course!
Of course!
I should have thought so! I saw a few cases like this at university.’

‘It was not entirely obvious,’ I said. If possible, my
smile grew wider. ‘Not until now, at least. Do you have the equipment?’

‘Yes, I do, sir. That’s what I used to analyse Wood’s stomach.’

‘Well, now you know why you found nothing in his tripe.’

‘Indeed I do.’

‘Good. Prepare the apparatus and test this man’s skin. If you still have samples from Wood’s body, test them too. There is another sample that I need you to analyse. We will fetch it and come back within the hour.’

I walked out of the morgue with McGray behind me. He had to pull me by the arm

‘Ye better tell me now what’s goin’ on, Frey!’

‘Have you not worked it out yet? Wood and Ardglass indeed died of the same cause.’

‘Which would be …?’

‘Poisoning by cutaneous transmission.’

McGray frowned. ‘Through the skin? Transmitted from whe–?’ He did not have to finish the sentence. He understood. ‘Come on, let’s get that sample!’

The Marsh apparatus was quite simple, yet it looked like the convoluted glass devices that one would expect to find in a chemistry lab: A U-shaped tube filled with a white powder, one end of the U connected to a round flask – containing scrapings of the sample – and the other end connected to a longer, thinner tube heated by a Bunsen burner. Reed held a white porcelain dish close to the open end of that thin tube, and as soon as he did so, the pristine ceramic turned silvery black.

‘Lord!’ he cried. ‘I have never seen a result like this!’

He took the dish with a pair of tweezers and placed it next to a collection of coloured films that went from the palest grey to raven-black. The stain on the dish was darker than any of them.

‘ ’Tis off the chart!’ McGray cried. ‘This could kill an elephant!’

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘And now we know who did it all.’

31

I tossed the rosewood chinrest onto Joe Fiddler’s working table. His workshop still smelled of confined flatulence.

McGray stood next to me and displayed the photographs from Fontaine’s study; all the ones that showed the Amati Maledetto. ‘How clever ye are, laddie!’ he cried in true admiration. ‘Ye managed to deceive us all!’

Joe Fiddler was casting us an astounded look, his eyes almost popping out. ‘How can youse think I killed Guilleum?’

‘And Theodore Wood, and Danilo Caroli, and Alistair Ard–’

‘
Nonsense!
’ Joe yelled, jerking a hammer about. ‘Youse are talking shite!’

McNair stepped in behind us. ‘Ye want me to look for the stuff?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘You can begin in Mr Fiddler’s personal rooms.’

Joe blocked McNair’s way. The poor man looked pathetic trying to stop the tall, young officer.

‘It will be wisest to let us do our job,’ I said.

McGray approached him and gently pulled him aside. ‘Come on, laddie, we need ye to come with us for questioning.’

‘Not if youse don’t tell me first why!’

He seemed so frail, so broken, that even I could not help feeling a smidgen of compassion.

‘Very well,’ McGray said. ‘Have a seat and Frey will explain it all to ye.’

Joe Fiddler sat on a wooden box, his face all confusion. Whether it was genuine or fake, I could not tell right then.

‘You made this chinrest, did you not?’ I said while pacing around the workshop. I grabbed an unfinished violin and laid it next to the chinrest. ‘It has your mark on it.’ I pointed at the symbol I’d seen before: a winding character that formed both a J and an F. ‘Also, you were the last person to see Fontaine before he died, and you delivered a violin you had been repairing for a while; the same violin he was playing when it all happened.’

Joe confronted us with a firm face. ‘Aye, I made this piece and I repaired Guilleum’s fiddles. That doesn’t make me a damn murderer!’

‘You gave a rather special treatment to this piece,’ I continued. ‘You soaked this piece of wood in a concentrated solution of arsenic …’

Just as if he’d been called, McNair walked back into the room. ‘Found it, bosses!’

He was holding a large bottle of amber glass. I grabbed it and read the label. ‘Bed-bug killer, and the label tells me this comes from a very good chemist. You know that this is basically arsenic dissolved in soap, of course? Wash away the soap and you are left with pure arsenic.’