the hell did that mean?
And yet his eye was drawn back to the words …
And then there was a postscript.
He slowly unravelled the tissue paper and found in its depths a fragment of white plume. The feather part was, to some extent, dried and shrivelled, but the spine was intact and showed where it had been snapped through.
McLevy moved quickly to the cupboard, brought out the mother-of-pearl box, opened it, and carefully, from its wrapping, teased out Sadie Gorman’s broken and grubby panache.
He pulled out a drawer in the table, took out a magnifying glass and a piece of plain white paper. The two pieces were then slid together over the paper, his fingers trembling a little as this was accomplished.
He looked through the glass.
It could not be denied. A perfect match.
36
‘Take the hand and say you do not know it.’
‘Lay your hand upon that face and say you do not know it.’
‘Place your hand upon that bosom and say you do not know it.’
Inverness. A murderer’s testified denial,
upon the body of his victim.
The castellated turrets of Fasque House had withstood stronger blasts than this April wind. Indeed it was a mere snipe of a breeze which made no impression on the golden stones. The lights were blazing, and there was a sound of merriment and music from within which would not quite carry to Balmoral Castle fifteen miles away.
Even if the noise had and were the Queen in residence, which she was not, being tucked away safely in Baden-Baden, it is doubtful that she would have joined in the joyful celebrations, her worst fears realised, her champion unhorsed.
McLevy wasn’t celebrating either as he hunched his way up the long drive towards the stately mansion. The coach journey to nearby Laurencekirk had taken an eternity and then he’d had to scrounge a lift to the outskirts of Fettercairn and follow by tramping the rest of the way in this nagging wife of a wind.
The import of Roach’s words kept circling in his mind.
If the inspector approached Gladstone, he would be dismissed from the force. Not an idle threat.
But he wasn’t going to meet William head on, more … discover his way around. A glancing encounter.
Thus, falsely reassuring himself but feeling doom in the pit of his stomach nevertheless, he pressed onwards.
Luckily the main gates had been wide open and he’d already watched pass by two carriages of cheery gentlefolk who no doubt by this time were well inside, warm as toast, drinking a health to the Great Man and then each other. They had paid no heed to the dark figure skulking along the verge like a plague carrier to the feast.
An exposed huge swathe of grassland lay in front of the large doors of Fasque House, which opened and shut like a hungry mouth to gobble up the jovial visitors.
The houselights spilled on to this lawn with fine abandon and, in the darkness out of the circle of this artificial radiance, the eyes of nature glittered in the night as some curious deer gathered to witness the spectacle. But not too close lest they be seen and some celebrant lean out of the window to let loose a shot.
For that same reason, McLevy also skirted the edges of the light. He was searching for a building suited to darker purposes.
And there it was. Not far from the house but far enough that the music would not waken the dead and the dead not disenchant the living. The Gladstone family vault.
The stone glowed faintly in the surrounding gloom: four pillars with a flat slab of a roof and an iron railing placed around, of which the gate had been thoughtfully left, as he found when he tried it, unlocked and open to the touch.
Before he descended the worn stone stairs to the opening of the crypt, McLevy felt in his pocket for the comforting weight of an old black revolver. His lifesaver.
He cleaned it every month before replacing the weapon in its oilskin pocket. Aunt Jean had given it him on his twenty-first birthday, to protect him when she was gone.
She claimed her husband Hughie had gained it in a card game with some excise men who had confiscated it off a rum smuggler from Jamaica, but McLevy doubted that.
He had fired the gun twice in the line of duty. Once he’d missed, once he’d hit. But since it was at the same man, a blackmailing bastard who was shooting back at him, one cancelled out the other.
The wind whistled round his ears and McLevy realised he’d taken refuge in the past to avoid the present.
No more of that. This uneasy breeding of hesitation must be rectified. He took the revolver from his pocket and grasped it firmly in his hand as he walked down the slippery mosscoated steps. The entrance to the crypt was black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat. He poked his head inside.
‘I am James McLevy, inspector of police,’ he called softly. ‘Whoever is there, make yourself known and let us parlay.’
Silence. The wind swithered above. He took a deep breath to calm himself and walked into the darkness of the tomb.
The air was cold and clammy but what else was to be expected from a congregation of long-dead bodies?
The inspector shuffled forward in the dark, all senses alert for danger. He might strike a lucifer but that would make a target of him and he felt his big backside was already sticking out quite far enough.
Then he saw a glimmer of light. It appeared to be coming from behind the defining edge of the sepulchre. He moved softly and, bending down so as not to be visible above the flat surface of the stone, sneaked a look around the corner.
A small candle flickered on the stone ledge of a bricked-up window.
It illuminated the shape of a book that lay beside, uneven pages protruding from the leather binding. On top of the book was a small bell.
Bell, book and candle. Were they not the auguries of excommunication?
‘The dramatic in me,’ said a voice behind him.
The man who had been lying perfectly still, arms crossed, on the top of the sepulchre, had swung silently off the stone surface hindward of the inspector. He reached forward, one hand to pull back the head, the other thumb and first finger to press hard just below the lobes of the ears before McLevy could swing round with the revolver.
Unconsciousness followed, like a lamb the shepherd.
