There was a… lively, you might say, debate on the matter.”
Quire hung his head.
“If they’ve turned you out on my account…”
“Don’t flatter yourself overmuch,” Robinson gently chided him. “You’re a brick in this particular wall, right enough, but only the one. It’s not helped, though, that you apparently caused some small disturbance at the Royal Institution. At an exhibition of paintings, of all things. Birds, was it?”
“Anyone calling it a disturbance has never seen the real thing,” Quire said.
But he had not the heart to be argumentative, or truculent. He felt only sorrow at Robinson’s fall, and shame that he might have been, in however small a part, a cause of it. Robinson was a better man than the people who had seen fit to dispense with him. A man who had served his country in war, and his city in peace. But past service counted for little these days. The world, and those who governed it, moved too quickly to be carrying such burdens as memory and gratitude. So it seemed to Quire at that moment, at least.
“Listen, Adam,” said Robinson, leaning a little closer. “You’re in deep water. They’ll be coming for you, like as not, now that I’m gone. I know something of what this work means to you; what it’d cost you to lose it. Go carefully.”
“It’s too late for that. Ruthven’s tried to kill me. If he had not gone so far… I don’t know, maybe I could have let him be. But they came to my house and tried to kill me. That’s not a thing can go unanswered.”
“This business with the dogs?”
“The dogs, aye. Whatever’s at the root of this, it’s foul as a cesspit. There’s a darkness to it. Not just the killings. Something unnatural… maybe evil. I don’t know. Would you walk away from it, if you were me?”
“Probably not.” Robinson gave a rather sad shrug of his shoulders. “We all do things that are not in our own best interests sometimes. Just don’t do them blindly, or without thought. You’ll have little enough help to call upon inside these walls, I fear. It will be some while before my successor is appointed; in the meantime, Lieutenant Baird is to be acting superintendent.”
Quire groaned.
“Indeed,” sniffed Robinson. “Not by my recommendation, of course, but my influence is spent. If I can be of any assistance to you, come to me. But I fear the most I can do now is wish you luck.”
Message boys were a vanishing breed in Edinburgh. At the height of the city’s intellectual ferment late in the last century, half the inns in the Old Town had a couple of lads loitering about outside, happy to wait there for hours on the chance that a customer would have a message he wanted running to someone elsewhere. Those boys working the better establishments would have a split stick in which a written note would be carried, and a simple lantern of some sort for navigating the wynds after dark. Most, though, had relied solely upon hand and eye and quick feet.
With the growth of the New Town, and Edinburgh’s slow sprawl to all points of the compass, the sight of boys racing along the streets, wax-sealed notes in hand, had become a rare one. But not entirely unknown. Most of the lads who did the work now did it only when other trades they practised—thievery or scavenging or chimney- sweeping—were going slow; they were but part-time practitioners of the art of message-running.
One such found Quire at the police house that afternoon. A dishevelled-looking little fellow, skinny like a coursing dog. Well pleased with himself, though, for having landed such a simple assignment.
“There’s no note?” Quire repeated, looking down at the boy.
“No.” The boy held out his hands, palm up.
“And you’ve just come from the Royal Exchange? Not a hundred yards?”
“Aye.” A big smile.
“And you were paid for this, were you?”
“Only a penny.” The smile snapped out of existence, replaced by an expression of courageous stoicism in the face of life’s small injustices.
“Not so bad, is it, a penny?” Quire said. “Not for taking a wee stroll like that, with not even a letter to carry.”
The boy shrugged.
“Let’s be having the message, then,” Quire said.
“Misher Durand would like to speak with you. He is in the Royal Exchange coffee house and will be there for the next hour.”
It was clearly not the first time the boy had recited the message. Quire could imagine him, standing there before his client, made to parrot it until he had it right.
“Misher Durand?” said Quire, hope stirring to life in him. “
“Aye. I said, didn’t I?”
“Good lad.”
Quire pressed a silver tuppenny bit into the boy’s hand.
“Don’t drink it, mind,” he called as the boy darted off in a state of delight. “Buy yourself some proper food or something.”
But the boy was already out the door and away across the High Street, and Quire’s advice fell only upon his unresponsive heels.
Coffee
Quire was not a frequent visitor to any of the coffee shops scattered through the centre of Edinburgh. He had never acquired a particular taste for the thick, dark brew, and found that its expense considerably outstripped any pleasure it might offer. Others heartily disagreed. Every vendor did a thriving trade; none more so than the Royal Exchange coffee house.
The Royal Exchange was a mighty building, enclosing on three sides a cobbled quadrangle, archways on the fourth opening out on to the bustling High Street. The higher floors were given over to offices of various sorts, but the ground floor was dedicated almost entirely to commerce. Colonnaded walkways ran around the courtyard, each full of shops.
The coffee house was entered by a flight of steps that sank down into the ground on the left side of the courtyard. A curved sign formed an arch at the top of the stairs, with a lantern hanging from it. Passing beneath this, the visitor was greeted by a pair of dark doors with small glass windows set in them. It was a modest portal for a place that was, on the inside, a hotbed of greed and debate. More business was transacted about its crowded tables than in half the shops and offices in the city. Entire shiploads of goods landed at Leith were auctioned off there; contracts were entered into for this or that service, this or that exchange of land and property. Philosophies were discussed, literary endeavours planned or decried.
Few crimes were committed, however—not those recognised by the law, in any case—and Quire’s duties had thus brought him through the door no more often than his pleasure had. The smell within was nevertheless instantly familiar, rich and bitter and warm: coffee and tobacco smoke.
He saw Durand at once. The dapper Frenchman was sitting alone at a small round table of polished mahogany, sipping dark coffee from a china cup. A silver coffee pot stood beside him. An ivory-topped walking cane rested against his knee.
As he had been on their first encounter, Quire was struck by the sun-browned tone of Durand’s skin. It was not, to say the least, a common appearance amongst Quire’s fellow Scots. Durand must be approaching sixty years of age, and a good portion of them had surely been spent beneath clear, hot skies.
Durand looked up almost as soon as Quire entered. An intelligent gaze, a touch nervous, but not nearly so veiled as on their previous meetings. He beckoned Quire over, and gestured towards an empty chair.
“Coffee?” he asked as Quire sat down.
“No, thank you. Not my drink.”
“I find it as much food as drink, myself. One of the few pleasures of true luxury your city offers.”
The man’s voice was flowing; heavily accented, but in the controlled way of one entirely comfortable with a
