Shadow of the Serpent

‘As Samson did Delilah’s?’ McLevy muttered as he shook the coffee pot hopefully and received a dry response. With a disappointed grunt, he banged it back on the hob.

The inspector was getting fed up with all this. A small fishbone had lodged in one of his back molars and he was dying to hook his thumbnail in there. Manners maketh man, however.

‘Did you come up here to talk about decoration or murder? There’s only the one that interests me, so declare yourself.’

The colour heightened in her cheeks for a moment, then she suddenly stamped her foot on the floor.

He noticed her boots were in the latest mode. Boots strangely interested him, of Italian leather he would surmise, tight to the ankle, the laces looped so neatly.

Her feet almost as large as his own. In fact … he walked towards her so that they were face to face. She was near the same elevation as himself, now what would all this equality produce?

She looked him straight in the eye, then delivered a body blow.

‘Thirty years ago in Leith. There was a similar death, was there not?’

13

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

And to keep off envy’s stinging,

JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.

Leith, December 1850

Sergeant George Cameron lay in a hospital bed of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, what a place to end your days.

He had no relatives to gather round and dab their eyes, for which he thanked his Protestant Redeemer. They were all up in the Highlands gutting trout and chasing sheep.

What a scunner. Some drunken fool in a tavern brawl sticks a penknife in his leg, the blade snaps off, the young doctor, Jarvis by name, just qualified, full of mince, opens up his flesh but cannae find it.

‘Dropped out,’ he says. ‘It must have dropped out.’

But it hadnae dropped out, the stupid bastard had missed the damn thing entirely. It had lodged just below the back of the knee and by the time inflammation had alerted Cameron, the thing found and removed from its hidey-hole, his blood was evil-poisoned.

Amputation had been suggested – that would be nice, on the saunter with a wooden leg. But even for that, the fever must abate, and it had not abated; it raged through him like a forest fire.

A hand came down with a big white hankie and wiped the sweat off his face. Dabbed the tangled eyebrows. Constable James McLevy. All his damned fault.

He should have been Cameron’s rearguard, what happened though he’d got carried away and had not observed the eleventh commandment. In matters of communal violence, always stay back to back with a fellow bulls-eye.

Somebody’d nipped the helmet from the young man’s head, he’d gone on the chase and while he was thus engaged a drunken sailor had stuck his ’baccy knife into Cameron’s nether limb.

See the big white face staring down, the agony and guilt in his eyes, serve the bugger right. At least he would be alive to feel such agony. A spasm of pain went through Cameron and he reared up in the bed, then collapsed back.

God help him, he was like a gaffed fish.

‘Well now, what have ye got to say for yourself?’ he demanded fiercely. Well he meant it fierce but it came out more like snuffed mutton.

‘I wish it had been me who suffered the blow.’

‘So do I, son. So, do I,’ muttered Cameron. ‘But for some reason the Almighty thought otherwise.’

Another spasm took him and the young man stood helplessly by, like a mourner who didn’t know where to lay the plate of funeral meat.

‘Shall I fetch the nurse?’

‘For God’s sake no! She’s a Paisley woman, what comfort is there in that?’

The constable gently mopped the soaking brow again.

‘I am truly sorry,’ he said.

‘Sorry? Sorry’s not good enough!’ Cameron glowered up, his pupils dark with pain. ‘Now you listen to me, the next time I close these eyes o’ mine, will be the last. I’m not opening them another go.’ His gaze went inwards and his voice lost power.

‘Too much suffering, Jamie. I’ll be giving up the ghost. Now here’s what you must do. You must tell our noble commander Lieutenant Moxey that I am to be buried with full honours and attendance.’

‘I’m not sure the lieutenant will pay much heed to me,’ the constable replied. ‘But I’ll stand in front of his face until he does so.’

Damn the boy, and damn this dying, George would have enjoyed teaching him the craft.

‘Just mention a bawdy-hoose, name of the Happy Land. Then ask after his wife. He’ll do it.’

By God he would, the dirty auld leglifter – ever since his good woman had taken to her bed with a wasting disease he’d been at it like a fornicator reborn.

‘Now, on the day, the burial day, you must pray for rain. Buckets of it.’

Cameron laughed painfully at the look on the boy’s face.

‘Rain?’

‘Aye. The high heid-yins, the powers-that-be, will all be standing there. I would wish a long service, a deep-ribbed minister who loves his own words, and the east wind blowing a sleety lash in their faces so they all may catch their death of cold.’

This time the laughter racked him so deep with pain that he had to stop even his last pleasure. Down to the real business. He beckoned the constable in close and pointed to a small mother-of-pearl box which lay on his bedside table.

The young man brought it to him with due solemnity as if it contained the ashes of his ancestors.

‘That box was a nuptial gift to my own good mother, pity it wasnae a gun tae shoot my father on the wedding night,’ the sergeant announced heavily.

‘Then ye wouldnae be here,’ said the constable.

Damn the boy again. Damn his gallows humour. Damn the tears stinging at his eyes. He didnae wish to disgrace himself, let the boy see strength. Strength was everything.

Cameron fumbled for his eyeglasses, stuck them on his nose, opened the lid with impatient trembling fingers and took out … a fragment of thin black cloth.

‘Ye remember this?’

‘I do. From the murdered girl. In her hand.’

‘That was the bond, Jamie. Between us. We looked at death thegither then. Now, we do so once more.’