Something one of the lodgers had told him, Archie Galbraith, a retired cooper who still held on to some vestige of dignity while drinking himself to death on what he used to watch being put inside the barrel.
‘It was in my mind to tell you, sir,’ he said as McLevy gave him a basilisk stare after this was related. ‘But the old fellow’s so far gone, you couldn’t put credence on his words.’
‘Yet his call would interrupt, ye’d have to get out the door quick. Intae the close. That would explain why there was not the time to use the skeleton keys to lock it up again, after the deed was done.’
‘What deed?’ asked the constable in some exasperation. McLevy had his
‘Oh yes there is,’ said McLevy.
He signalled the constable over and they both knelt down by the body as if in prayer.
McLevy tilted the man’s head back with some difficulty, to reveal the neck. On each side, just under the jawbone, was a small bruise.
‘I near missed it myself,’ he muttered, ‘though I expect the eagle eye of Dr Jarvis would have brought it to our notice.’
Mulholland peered closer, in truth he wasn’t sure why the inspector was putting such weight upon what looked, to his eyes, innocuous enough.
‘It’s hardly a death wound, sir. Could be the result of a fall or anything really. Louse bites even, and the man scratching.’
McLevy looked at him as if perplexed by such monumental ignorance, then remembering that the two had but presently repaired the rent in their professional rapport, heaved a magnanimous sigh and, in the manner of Moses on the Mount, revealed what he considered to be the imprint of God’s incontrovertible evidence.
‘Thumb marks,’ he said. ‘Pressing each side on the carotid artery. Unconsciousness is instant. An eastern practice, attributed to the Thuggee system. Assassins. Indian, by nature. Followers of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction.’
‘How would you know all that, inspector?’
The constable seemed unaware of the implied insult in his question, so McLevy, not for the first time, decided to give him benefit of doubt.
‘The aforesaid practice was almost inflicted upon me by an opium runner who had a den by the dockside and specialised in getting his customers doped to the eyeballs, practising his black art to knock them out, then killing them, robbing the bodies and dumping the cadavers weighted down with rocks through a trap-door at the back into the sea where they nourished the denizens of the deep. Coal-fish and crabs mostly. Bottom feeders.’
McLevy had a sudden vivid memory of the man leaning over him, face contorted in a hideous delight, sliding his thumbs up each side of the neck.
‘I had been sent in under guise of an opium user, by dint of my complexion. I think Lieutenant Moxey, my superior officer at the time, was trying to get rid of me.’
‘Did you have to puff the pipe?’ Mulholland asked eagerly, fascinated by this racy anecdote.
‘I did not inhale,’ was the stern response.
Although, mind you, there was a certain heightened aspect to his recollection. McLevy could have sworn the man had a tattooed serpent on his face, but at the trial it had mysteriously vanished.
‘And did he kill you, sir?’
‘Obviously not.’
‘No. I mean. Sir. How did you effect escape?’
Again the memory, the thumbs tightened, the yellow teeth bared in a murderous smile, then the man shot up over McLevy’s head like a cork out of a bottle and landed with a crash on two far-gone addicts who lay peacefully behind them in the smoke-filled, opium-scented den of iniquity.
Case concluded. Of course Moxey took the credit.
‘I used a technique,’ said the inspector gravely, ‘called Kissing the Clouds.’
‘Is that Chinese?’
‘No. It comes from Leith. It is adapted from the leg movement of a hanged felon. I’ll show it you sometime.’
Back tae business. He looked down at the body.
‘Once Brennan was safely insensible, the killer finished off the job.’
McLevy anticipated Mulholland’s next question by picking up the dirty, ripped pillow from the mattress and displaying a reddish stain which lay in the centre of the cloth.
‘This mark is recent, even still a wee touch damp. If you examine Brennan’s mouth … well go ahead, examine the damned thing!’
This sudden flash of temper indicated to Mulholland that all was back to normal. He peeled the lips of the corpse apart, peered inside and winced at the rotting stench.
‘Worse than a dead badger,’ he muttered.
The inspector smiled happily. ‘The by-product of gingivitis; observe the gums and you will see another result of the inflammation.’
The whole mouth was in a terrible state but the gums were especially caked with smears of dried blood where the irritation had wreaked havoc.
Mulholland nodded. It made a sense of sorts. He let the mouth fall shut with a hollow clack.
‘The man was potentially smothered,’ he said.
‘Exactly! And the blood in his mouth left marks where the pad was pressed.’ McLevy’s eyes gleamed.
‘And I’ll tell you one more on top of that. It was not a member of the fraternity, they’d just cut his throat and to hell with it. This is professional. High class.’
‘There’s not much in the way of actual proof, sir. A wee bit scratch, a couple of bruises and a stain.’
‘Uhuh. So, you say,’ replied the inspector.
The unspoken question in McLevy’s mind was, of course, why kill the man anyway? Was it some sort of … clean sweep?
The door abruptly flew open and the squat form of Biddy Lapsley stood framed, arms folded. She opened a mouth like the gates of hell.
‘I want my room back,’ she bellowed. ‘This man’s been dead long enough.’
Then. Astonishingly. Tears started to flow down the veined and mottled face.
‘I had hopes for him,’ she muttered brokenly. ‘He was such a fine big specimen. Meat on the bone. He put his lips upon my hand in the hall. A real gentleman. I could have raised him high.’
The policemen looked back at the corpse. It showed no sign of resurrection.
25
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
WILLIAM BLAKE,
Sir Henry Ponsonby had been in the Queen’s service these nineteen years. He’d arrived as an equerry to the Prince Consort but his exuberance, intelligence and good nature had quickly endeared him to Victoria so much that
