‘But does not the function of policeman and doctor bear similarity? We analyse, we observe symptoms, eruptions on the body and mind, you of guilt, me of malady? Identify the offender, cure the contagion. Protect the innocent.’
McLevy scratched his nose. It had begun to itch.
‘Crime,’ he remarked tersely, ‘is certainly contagious.’
‘Yet we all desire to catch it, do we not?’
‘Indeed we do.’
A glint of humour came into McLevy’s face. There was a shrewdness to this young man that belied his bluff manner.
From Doyle’s point of view, he was intrigued by a similar incongruity of overt behaviour and subtle thought.
‘I would consider it a great honour…’ Doyle’s voice lowered in tone, ‘if I might attend your…casebook of enquiry?’
The inspector’s lips quirked at such portentous description as regards some of his more mundane ‘enquiries’, for instance, the time he and Mulholland had trawled the back-yards of Leith to find half a dozen abducted hens, solving the mystery through the deformity of one which, though plucked of all its feathers, still lacked the one eye and one leg it had lost during a life of adversity.
However, he had also witnessed bodies hacked to pieces, and on one particular occasion a face blown so far apart that it looked like a spilt bowl of stewed rhubarb.
‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ said he. ‘But it cannot be these present shenanigans; you have too personal a connection and it’s no’ enough challenge.’
‘You will solve this case?’
‘Never all of such. There’s aye a loose thread. It’s only in books everything is remedied.’
McLevy looked up at the sky, which was unremittingly overcast, and pursed his lips.
‘I’ll try tae find ye a ghost or two wi’ murder thrown in.’
‘Good man!’ exclaimed Doyle, as if all were done and dusted and he had not perceived the sardonic tone. ‘I shall await your pleasure, sir.’
With that he nodded to the silent Mulholland and then strode on up the street, scattering a few pedestrians in his wake like the liner Oceanic.
‘Did ye no’ wait for your cup of tea?’ McLevy called after.
‘I have to get back to mother,’ came the unabashed reply. ‘Family comes first!’
McLevy watched the young man until he turned the corner and disappeared.
The inspector became aware of his constable’s critical scrutiny and wondered what expression had been on his face.
Whatever shape taken, it was vanished now.
‘All right,’ he said as if all so far had been an everyday occurrence. ‘You take the even, I’ll take the odd.
8
An’ when Massa rode in the arternoon,
I’d follow wid a hickory broom;
De poney being berry shy,
When bitten by de blue-tailed fly.
TRADITIONAL, ‘The Blue-tailed Fly’
Glasgow, 1864.
My Dearest Melissa,
I have little idea if this letter will ever reach you and I can offer no kind of address to which you may reply should that eventuality occur.
I have been mightily sick crossing the Atlantic Ocean to reach this godforsaken place. I call it so because I am staying in lodgings down by the docks and what I see from my window does not induce the notion that any kind of decent God-fearing people exist in these parts.
Rather I watch the Devil in all his many guises and humanity so wretched and base as near defies description.
Possibly I am seeing all this through jaundiced eyes. I disembarked but two nights ago, was smuggled in like a plague carrier and have been kept out of sight ever since.
The only time I ventured forth was last evening in the darkness when the streets were awash with a tide of men and women spilled out from the taverns. The Scotch are in the main a small race and damned ugly.
How did I come to this pass?
The night I spent in your sweet arms still lingers with me but directly after came horror one hundredfold.
Gettysburg.
The battle lost.
After the defeat, it was a nightmare journey, the wounded groaning their lives away, dragged on wagons, calling for a mercy we could not grant them.
We were attacked on all sides by the Bluebellies, a heavy rain beat down on us as if the Almighty himself was on the Union side. The screams and shrieks of the dying haunt my sleep and burn images indelibly in my mind to this day.
There is little glory in war that I can see.
We took refuge in the town of Williamsport and had not Jeb Stuart and Fitzhugh Lee arrived in time with their troops, it would have been all up with us. The Confederate Army would have been no more.
General Robert E. Lee would have broken his sword.
But they came. And so the war continues.
We made it through to Virginia although the Potomac River was swollen to flood by the rain and there…there I am afraid…I forswore my reason. Fell into a fever.
How long I cannot say. Time lost meaning.
When I recovered, I was told that I might serve my country in another capacity. I was then taken to a rendezvous with Secretary Mallory, a heavy-set man with a thin rim of beard and shrewd in the eyes.
I was given orders, papers I must deliver in person.
I will seal this letter now, the messenger is due to leave by the Evelyn; Curious how many ships bear names of the gentler sex. I pray he will make it through to Galveston and see this delivered.
As for me, I wait for further orders. I am still a soldier though at present I discharge the duties of a secret Confederate agent.
Bonded to stealth.
I miss your sweet face.
But love seems to have little purchase in this world.
