his everlasting shame that he might suspect this honest maid of having a lover on the sly and tipping the transgressor off about a bottom-drawer bonanza.
He could hear his aunt’s voice.
Muriel and Conan Doyle were somewhat taken aback to see a warm smile light up the inspector’s face as he inclined his head respectfully towards Ellen’s chunky form.
‘No thank you, miss,’ he said. ‘I have business on hand. A policeman aye has business on hand.’
She smiled in return and for a moment he was reminded of someone from childhood, then he turned towards the others and pointed down to the earth below the window.
‘Don’t touch the soil. I shall send a man round to make a cast of the footmark, though to my eyes it is a common shoe, nondescript amangst its fellows.’
He had not removed his low-brimmed bowler during all this time but now tapped twice as if to wedge it on his head before stepping up close to Muriel.
‘Mistress Grierson,’ he began and for a moment her heart thudded against the tight confining corsetry.
Her thoughts ran wild. What if he suddenly said,
But he said nothing of the sort, though his face was solemn, grey eyes piercing, seeking a trace of culpability in her own.
‘Once more I am brought back tae the question; who knew of the discovery in the desk, the located spare keys, the jammed window? Somebody did. And used that knowledge.’
Her chin came up slightly.
‘In that I cannot help you, inspector. I have lost a great deal that is precious to me. I believe it is your task to find it.’
Once more she grasped onto Arthur’s arm. This time in a firm taking.
‘And I have disclosed nothing to a living soul!’
McLevy’s face was impassive at this vigorous denial.
‘I shall make enquiries in the usual quarters for your purloined valuables, but you can kiss the money goodbye.’
A brusque nod and he was out of sight.
The bird sang once more. A sharp, piercing note.
Muriel avoided Ellen’s eyes.
‘I’ll awa’ an’ lay out the tea then,’ said Ellen, but at the doorway she suddenly stopped.
‘My mother knew him,’ she remarked.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Muriel asked.
‘McLevy. The thieftaker.’
‘Is he noteworthy?’ Doyle said with sudden interest.
‘Aye. In Leith especial. A’body kens him. And fears as well. High and low. No mercy.’
For a moment Ellen’s eyes narrowed as if she had some personal experience of such to relate but then she resumed her theme.
‘Anyhow, my mother knew him. The inspector. Her family lived in the same cobbly square as him and his auntie. When he was a wee thing.’
‘What was he like?’ Conan Doyle enquired eagerly.
‘Hammered,’ was the succinct response. ‘The big boys battered hell out of him every day.’
‘Why?’ he pursued.
‘Jist devilment, I suppose. Then one day it stopped.’
‘For what reason?’
‘Nobody knew. But my mother was playing that time. She saw the leader o’ the gang. A big shamble of a laddie. On his hands and knees, crawling, bleeding like a pig. Spewing like his bones were broken. Jamie McLevy was half his size. Watching on. Tackety boots. His auntie must have bought them. Iron at the toe. Brand new upon his feet.’
These were the most consecutive sentences Muriel had ever heard the maid utter in her life.
‘I think I can draw an inference there,’ murmured Doyle.
‘My mother said when she looked intae his eyes it was like a wolf on the trail. A wild beastie.’
Ellen passed on into the house.
Muriel wondered if it was worth her while to become tremulous but Arthur had a faraway look in his eye.
Meanwhile outside, McLevy and Mulholland walked slowly in silence to put a little distance between them and the persecuted front door of 42 Bonnington Road.
‘What do you think to all this?’ asked the constable.
‘That wifie is hiding something,’ replied the inspector, scowling at the innocent pavement. ‘And I will find it out.’
‘Something between her and Big Arthur?’
‘I doubt it. On his side certainly not.’
Then they stopped and looked at the houses surrounding, each with the shut-faced prim expression of a spinster at a wedding.
‘I don’t fancy our chances,’ said the constable.
‘Neither do I,’ grunted McLevy. ‘But it has tae be done. You take even this side, I’ll take the odd opposite.’
And yet neither of them moved.
Since Conan Doyle had approached them at the station, this was the first moment of a guarded privacy they normally enjoyed day in day out.
On the saunter.
Each with his thoughts but an understanding forged by bitter experience of the dark side of humanity. Mulholland still immune with a young man’s vitality, McLevy only too aware that everything gathered during the years was no protection against his own transitory nature.
As is the habit of men they spoke about such things rarely if at all, but something had changed.
Or was changing.
‘Ye made a right show of yourself wi’ Ballantyne,’ McLevy said grumpily
‘I was only trying to help,’ came the huffy response.
‘Ye were sookin’ up tae the lieutenant. The boy is afflictit, an easy mark.’
Mulholland flushed in anger and shame.
He bit his lip to restrain a riposte of how the affliction did not stop the inspector tearing lumps out of Ballantyne if he banjaxed a case procedure.
At that moment a call turned them both round and Conan Doyle came striding up towards them, the picture of health and certainty.
‘Inspector McLevy!’ he cried breezily, as if the two had just met by chance. ‘I wonder if I might beg a favour?’
McLevy made no response. Favours were not his speciality.
‘I dabble a touch in the writing of stories. Adventures. Tales of mystery. Haunted houses.’
Doyle roared with laughter, as if recognising the ludicrousness of a hale and hearty fellow like himself having truck with such pastime.
‘But I have great interest in detection. In-vestigation. And I wonder if I might accompany you at such.’
‘I don’t detect ghosts,’ said McLevy.
‘You can’t get the restrainers on them,’ Mulholland added somewhat stiffly.
‘Of course not.’
Having agreed this, Doyle’s face took on a serious mien and he spoke quietly, soberly, a different man entirely.
