Fall From Grace

Toilette, Margaret reflected, now there’s a respectable word, for was she not a respectable lady?

She felt as if her husband had been an iron band around her body and now, free of its constraint, she was shaking to pieces as the train roared overhead.

Margaret shivered. One of the newspapers had as its front page an artist’s impression of the calamity, men, women and children falling into the bleak December sea like so many brittle leaves. Although almost a year ago, she could not rid her mind of that image.

And what of Sir Thomas, she wondered? What pictures were frozen inside the cold obstruction of his mind?

She had experienced an impersonal kind of compassion for the man despite the secrets he had concealed. A dutiful pity. But he had shut her from his life and locked her out like a poor beast in the rain. Year by year, the little wife had withered and dwindled while he and his true love kissed and fondled to heart’s content.

Now, Mistress Bouch was free. Free to destroy herself in any way she saw fit.

The minister closed his bible with a dull, righteous thud and Margaret became conscious that she was the focus of many eyes.

For a moment she was confused then remembered the protocol of interment. The widow knelt down, groped for a portion of the damp, sodden earth and cast it into the grave before her. The muddy mass landed on the polished oaken lid, stuck to one of the brass fittings, then slid slowly out of sight towards oblivion.

She hoped sincerely that would do the trick.

And it did. She watched the others follow suit, the rain herding in their thrown clods like a drover, and then the pallbearers began to drift away. Just like her mind.

Margaret had felt such a welcome separation from reality since her lord and master had died and prayed most earnestly for its continuance.

In the meantime, all ceremonies were to be observed and she would play her part. They would all reconvene at the house in Bernard Street; a little too near the Leith docks for some, but Sir Thomas had it purchased as his base in Edinburgh because he liked to walk to the sea and gaze upon that which he planned to conquer.

Reconvene. She could just see it now. Tasteful funeral meats would be passed from hand to hand, malt whisky raised to lips, not the grieving widow’s of course, and then after a respectful time the mourners would take their pious departure, surreptitiously scraping heels on the kerbing stone outside lest some oozing stigma had attached itself to their shoes along with the earth from the cemetery.

Margaret became aware that a man was standing before her muttering words of comfort she could scarcely hear such was the blessed separation.

A fellow engineer to her husband, bound by professional code to attend; a few of these, the family, and that was all Sir Thomas had to see him on his journey.

Not much of a show to be sure, but then the bridge builder had few intimates, certainly not her, no, few intimates, save the one.

She brought his face to mind.

Alan Telfer, his personal secretary, who scarcely bothered to conceal the look of cold disdain in his eyes if she dared to visit Edinburgh and disturb them at their work; this stupid interfering woman, this dowdy squashed creature who witnessed them with their heads together over the sacred drawings.

A fine combination.

But Mister Alan Telfer was missing from the scene due to the undisputed fact that he had, some time ago, blown out his brains.

Quel dommage. So regrettable.

A dreadful sight to be sure, she remembered.

She had borne witness to so many things.

In truth, there were two participants missing from the scene. Where, she wondered, was the other?

A gust of wind blasted the rain almost horizontally into the face of Reverend Sneddon, and the man of god moved hastily to follow the straggle of departing mourners towards the waiting carriages.

He left a space where piety had endured and through that frame, past the attendant gravediggers who stood patiently biding the time to begin their labour, Margaret saw a shrouded figure in the distance under a threadbare dripping tree.

The inspector. He had come after all. How like the man.

4

And take upon’s the mystery of things,

As if we were God’s spies;

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

King Lear

Leith, December 1879

Murder is a dirty business. The corpse of the old man lay in a dismal posture on the stone flags of the scullery floor where it had fallen, body wrapped in a heavy outdoor coat, the blue serge still damp from last night’s rain.

An apologetic little dribble of blood led from the crushed head at the foot of the stairs where the fellow had rested quietly enough until assailed by the shriek of a hysterical kitchen maid who had arrived at the crack of dawn, to help prepare breakfast.

Indeed some ham and a slab of liver, fresh bought that morning from the butchers, were huddled together upon a plate near the sink where the selfsame maid, who had entered from the side door, had dumped them down before turning to discover the carnage lurking behind.

The liver also bore traces of blood though McLevy doubted if it would receive the requisite cleansing.

He also doubted that even if treated so and fried up with some onions and the ham, there would be much appetite in the house.

Nothing tempers the carnal like a cadaver.

Unless you are a policeman.

Constable Mulholland was upstairs exercising his Irish charm on the maid who was a hefty specimen, and one of those glandular females that the inspector avoided like the plague. Mulholland, however, was good with glands.

McLevy was left with the dead butler.

The inspector had painstakingly scrutinised the floor slabs down to the very cracks. Just under the man’s skull he found fragments of flesh and bone. Difficult to tell whether they had spilled out after his head had been split and he had fallen, or if they were the result of the fall itself. But from the depth of the wound, he would have to assume a blow. A savage blow.

He then poked into the myriad moist crevices of the scullery but found nothing untoward.

A few cockroaches scuttled guiltily into hiding but they, undoubtedly, had an alibi. He remembered reading once in one of his books the fact that cockroaches were revered in Ancient Egypt. A mysterious bunch, the Egyptians.

It would seem as if entry had been forced by the jemmying open of one of the windows at the back garden, which provided access to the lower ground-floor level where the kitchen and scullery were based.

The question was, had the fellow been on his way in to commit the robbery when he encountered the butler, or had he already committed it and been on his way out? The inspector fervently hoped the latter. If nothing had been taken, then nothing could be traced, and that would shut off a fertile source of inquiry because in McLevy’s experience the pawnshops in certain low areas of Leith were veritable mines of information.