Trick of the Light (7 page)

Either way, it always made him laugh. But then he delved deep into her body and the power was like nothing he had ever known.

And then he forgot the world.

6

Oh! What a snug little island,

A right little tight little island.

T
HOMAS
D
IBDEN
,
The Snug Little Island

Muriel Grierson lived in fear of her husband, Andrew. The fact that he was dead in no way lessened the anxiety she felt at his house being desecrated by the removal of its most valuable contents while she and the maid Ellen were out shopping for provisional salvation at Leith market.

Of course this expedition had been at Andrew’s posthumous behest, for he frowned upon money wasted over vegetables or meat –
the cheapest cuts simmert lang, taste aye as guid as hutheron veal
was his oft-repeated dictum.

Although it was nigh on two years since he had last glowered at her over such a repast bolstered religiously by the root vegetables in season –
mair time buriet, mair flavour tae be found
– she could not rid herself of the parsimonious habit of picking over the stalls that offered wrinkled provender.

So, when she returned with the laden Ellen trailing behind after such a frugal foray, her first response on opening the front door to find the furniture agley then going into the drawing room to discover drawers pulled out, contents scattered, was to look up in horror at the portrait of her husband, draped in black crêpe, that scowled accusingly down at her; her second action was to scream.

The sound still echoed in her ears, to a certain extent numbing her against the awful aftermath of finding her few pieces of jewellery gone; most galling of all a diamond brooch that Mamma had bequeathed her, being an especial sad loss, a mother-of-pearl music box that played ‘Flow Gently, Sweet Afton’ – a wedding present from Andrew’s employees at the funeral parlour – and a large amount of cash she had foolishly not lodged into her British Linen Company savings account when she had discovered it recently, hidden in a locked bottom drawer in Andrew’s desk in the study.

The desk had also been hastily ransacked, the papers strewn over.

All this in varying degrees of accuracy, detail, and emotional heat she reported to McLevy as he stood like a block of wood amid the carnage of the rifled drawing room.

The inspector noted it all down while covertly observing the way Muriel rested upon the manly arm of young Arthur. He, of course, was unaware that dependence has its own tendrils but in the inspector’s experience when a woman leant upon you, it was always a good idea not to lean back.

Tempting, but not a good idea.

The wifie had an oval-shaped face and was pretty enough in a china doll fashion but McLevy sensed a restlessness of sorts. As if she had spent her life striving for something just out of reach.

Not an uncommon condition for the female; women often dream of a better life in another universe.

He evidenced her age at near forty, though she dressed younger, and guessed there were no children.

Funeral parlours do not encourage procreation. Roach, his own lieutenant, had undertaker’s blood running in his veins, and he was also childless.

McLevy and his constable had snuffled round the house, outside and in, to discover a few things that the inspector was keeping to himself for the moment.

Mulholland was presently closeted with the now unburdened Ellen; the constable was good with maids and this one, short and dumpy, with a face that would never threaten Helen of Troy, was tailor-made for his Irish charm.

The inspector just frightened dumpy women.

‘Arthur has been a tower of strength,’ declared Muriel, ‘with my own poor husband dead and buried.’

McLevy, as soon as he’d seen the portrait, had recognised Andrew Grierson, a miserable bugger who aye looked as if sizing you up for an imminent wooden box.

‘I’m sure Arthur has been,’ he muttered, ‘and will be ever more, but whit was he doing here?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Muriel, who was beginning to form a dislike of this uncouth creature. Could he not see her distress, her demonstrable lack of jewellery?

Arthur, who had been conscious of her hand tightening on his arm, sending a palpable tremor through the limb, sensed insinuation of some kind in the inspector’s words and hastened to defend the fragile form beside him.

But he did so with some care, because Mister Doyle, despite headstrong ways and occasional rush to judgement, was no-one’s fool.

He had observed that McLevy unsettled people. The inspector had done it at the station to his colleagues, to Arthur himself, and was doing it again.

To the unsuspecting Muriel.

Doyle recognised the technique himself from the rugby scrum. It was all a matter of equipoise. Keep the opponent off balance, the feet slipping under, limbs splayed, then apply the pressure.

And hammer him down.

‘I happened here by chance,’ he offered. ‘I was delivering a note from my mother to Mistress Grierson.’

‘Mistress Doyle and I are old friends,’ added Muriel, ‘and were to meet this evening.’

‘The note was to confirm a time,’ Conan Doyle said firmly. ‘A little later than planned.’

‘But I may now have to postpone,’ said Muriel, ‘with this dreadful loss of property. This…catastrophe!’

McLevy had a fine ear for the tonal nuances of respectable Edinburgh and this seemed to be quite a song and dance from her, as if something was being concealed, but he nodded as if it all made sense.

‘On a cursory examination, there appears no sign of forced entry,’ he announced, shoving his notebook deep into his coat pocket. ‘All windows front and back apparently intact, no boiler hammer crashing through the panels of your door, no jemmying of the outside locks.’

While stating the obvious, he had one ear cocked to the other room out by the hall where Mulholland was no doubt beguiling the stolid wee Ellen, his hair neatly parted, blue eyes shining as if butter would not melt in his mouth.

But it would. Butter.

That hornbeam stick of his had cracked open many a criminal pate and had the man not looked up at the suicidal revolving feet of his once potential father-in-law?

The constable had been down many dark alleys and was as near to insidious and shifty as McLevy himself in the onerous pursuit of justice at all costs.

He also had an innocent face that invited female confidence, which he would have then no scruple in abusing.

But since McLevy had not heard any wild self-incriminating cries, he must assume that Ellen was holding also to her story.

A’body sticking to their guns.

‘Ye left the house after a bite tae eat at half past one o’clock in the afternoon,’ he stated pedantically. ‘And returned at three o’clock, that same day. An interval of one and a half hours. Doesnae leave long.’

Conan Doyle nodded a mature agreement.

‘I would concur with you, inspector,’ he stated, as if indeed they were investigating the crime as equals. ‘And it leads me to an inescapable conclusion.’

‘Whit might that be?’

‘Mistress Grierson assures me that the front door has a spring mechanism that locks automatically upon closing; I myself, on finding larceny, examined the outside back locks and windows before searching out authority.’

‘Authority,’ the inspector scratched his head as if puzzled by something. ‘That would be me?’

‘Exactly!’ beamed the young man, as if the slower student had caught the current. ‘I agree with you, sir, no sign of a break-in.’

‘Apparently.’

‘Definitely! What do we then conclude?’

‘Oh, you go first,’ was the shy response.

Doyle drew himself to his full height under Muriel’s admiring gaze.

‘Examining the known facts I can only therefore deduce someone has procured a copy of the house keys.’

For a moment a shadow crossed the woman’s face and then she let out something very close to a wail.

‘Oh, say not so, Arthur!’

The young man tried to soften the severity of his supposition.

‘No-one is blaming you, Muriel –’

‘I
never
let them out of my possession.’

‘Whit about Ellen?’ grunted the inspector. ‘Does she have a set?’

‘Ellen has been with me for nearly ten years, I would trust her with my life!’

But could ye trust her wi’ your jewellery?
was the thought in McLevy’s distrustful mind.

‘Whit about your husband’s keys?’

‘They were buried with him. Alongside his measuring stick for the deceased and his wedding ring still upon the finger. It was stipulated so in his will.’

While McLevy mulled over that strange request, Doyle put his hand to his chin in a manner that suggested deep contemplation.

‘So, we have two possible sources, both of which would seem –’

‘Three!’ McLevy, who had endured quite enough of this highfalutin elucidation, marched out into the hall followed, after a second, by the others, Muriel letting go her vicelike grip on Arthur’s arm to squeeze her skirts through the door. The inspector walked rapidly up to the front entrance and pulled aside the draught excluder curtain to disclose a bunch of keys hanging from a nail.

‘Oh dear,’ said Muriel feebly. ‘I forgot. The spare set. They’ve been hanging there since the beginning of time. Andrew always kept them by the door in case of –’

‘Catastrophe?’

Conan Doyle paid no heed to the sardonic tone in the remark.

‘Of course. Now the solution is obvious!’ he cried.

‘Is it?’

Nothing in McLevy’s experience was ever obvious. All things had, lurking within them, a subtle subversion.

‘Remove the keys,’ said the young man eagerly. ‘Press them into soft wax, imprint both sides, replace, then make a metal copy from the imprint and no-one is any the wiser.’

The inspector put on what Mulholland would have recognised as his
daftie
face where he let his jaw drop and eyes widen; it served him well in that the more folk felt obliged to elaborate, the more they gave away.

He did not necessarily suspect the fellow before him of malfeasance but somebody somewhere had something up the sleeve, up their jooks, a secret thought, a notion withheld.

‘Who would do all that?’ he asked.

‘Anyone who knew of the location.’

‘And who might that be?’

‘Someone who was often in the house.’

‘Such as who?’

This stopped the train of deduction in its tracks because the one person present who might qualify for that possibility was Doyle himself. However Muriel, who had been, for her, strangely silent since the revelation of the twitched curtain, suddenly launched forth like someone with a story to tell.

‘Of course, when Andrew died the house was
invaded
by tradespeople; the reception of the coffin, the mourners, the relatives, it all needed to be catered for.’

‘Aye. Nothing like a deid body tae provoke appetite.’

Muriel nodded vigorous agreement.

‘Ellen and I were rushed off our feet; I had to employ extra staff, provide food, whisky – the amount of whisky consumed at a funeral is nothing short of scandalous – and I distraught with grief. That would surely be the time and opportunity.’

Conan Doyle had moved out of the limelight and now watched from the side. Although he had a highly developed sense of chivalry towards the frail vessel of womanhood, he was also trained to observe.

And it struck him with some force that the inspector was playing Muriel like a hooked fish.

Had he, Conan Doyle, man of medicine, acute of sensibility, a student of the great Joseph Bell who taught him to be on constant alert against the assumptions of a lazy mind, to take the contraposition to implication and only deduce from known facts – had he also been played like a fish? For a moment he caught a glimpse of himself in a long mirror that hung by the side of the coat stand in the hall, and with his protruding eyes and droopy moustache, he might well have been mistaken for a large cod.

With an effort he shook off this unflattering comparison to hear the inspector cast another query.

‘But your husband died two years ago. Why wait until now to utilise this presumed copy. What has changed?’

McLevy hauled his notebook out and licked his lips, turning pages, peering down as if to refresh his memory.

‘Ye found a sum of money in his desk. Notes of the realm. Near a hundred pounds, ye said?’

A nod in answer.

Silence is golden.

‘Approximately two weeks ago, ye said?’

Another nod.

‘A deal of money. Ye should have banked it. Bankers aye like to see money coming in at the door.’

‘I didn’t like to…handle such.’

‘Was it tainted?’

‘It was – Andrew’s.’

‘Well, it’s gone now. A fierce amount. What use would he have had for it?’

‘I do not know.’

The garrulous Muriel had suddenly clammed up like a clabbydhu.

A door further up the hall opened quietly and Mulholland slipped out. McLevy had positioned himself so as to have the vantage, looking out past the other two down the corridor.

The constable shook his head to signal that Ellen had tucked in her elbows and given away nothing.

Conan Doyle cleared his throat. His features had altered from cod-like, more towards that of a Chinese Mandarin.

‘Is it your contention, inspector,’ he announced gravely, ‘that there is a connection between the discovery of the cache of money and the larceny?’

‘Possible. Possible. All things are possible.’

This cryptic response galvanised the policeman into sudden action as if what he had just said had unleashed a font of energy in his own being.

‘Who else did ye tell about this treasure trove, eh?’ he demanded fiercely.

‘Only Ellen, of course,’ replied the startled Muriel, ‘And –’

‘Arthur, of course,’ said McLevy. ‘Naebody else?’