Indeed, the whole aspect reminded him greatly of a waiting room in a railway station. Perhaps not surprising given Sir Thomas Bouch and his connections, but in the dark square masculine furniture which lined up against the walls like soldiers, there was not a trace to be found of femininity, not a frill to the antimacassar.
An empty space that people passed through. En route to another destination.
Margaret Bouch spoke slowly, her attention fixed inwardly, as if to hold some emotion at bay.
‘Mister Gourlay had been butler here these past ten years. He managed this household to perfection.’
‘Like a railway timetable?’ McLevy asked, a wicked gleam lurking somewhere at the back of his eyes.
‘Precisely so. He was a kind, gentle old man who lived to serve.’
‘And died, no doubt, in the same capacity,’ muttered the inspector. ‘What of his desires?’
‘Desires?’
‘We all have them.’
McLevy’s remark caused the woman to blink. He was somewhat amused by that; no doubt her acquaintance of policemen was slight, the occasional overbearing chief constable at official functions, and the inspector did not correspond to any known specification. No fixed abode.
‘I never asked him,’ she replied somewhat primly.
‘That’s the trouble wi’ being a servant.’ McLevy frowned as if personally affronted. ‘Nobody ever asks you.’
He noted a flash of outrage in her eyes. Good.
‘Let us therefore leave desires and return to habit,’ he said. ‘Of a Wednesday evening, what was his custom?’
‘It was his night off. He would go and have a few drams with old friends. “A wee gab in the corner of the Old Ship,” he would say. He loved to gossip.’
She essayed a passable imitation of an old man’s voice and McLevy noted that also. A talent for mimicry was rare in a woman of this class and, more especially absent, was the willingness to display such a gift.
‘The Old Ship?’ he said. ‘I know that tavern well, a good place for a wee dram.’
His tone was warm enough but his eyes were watchful. All friends together, eh? he thought to himself. The mistress and the servant.
‘And he told you so? He confided that much in you?’
‘Yes. But not the extent of his desires,’ she replied dryly. ‘Not what he wished for in his heart.’
‘Peace and quiet, probably,’ said the inspector, a trifle sententiously. ‘Well, he’s found it now.’
‘Can murder bring you peace and quiet?’
She bit the words off somewhat tightly and McLevy was happy enough inside himself; getting the truth out of the respectable classes was a fiendish job, you had to catch them on the hip, or was it the hop?
‘And when did he usually get back at night?’
‘Late. And sometimes – slightly the worse for wear. I often heard the key scraping in the lock.’
Affection in the voice but the inspector had picked up on something else.
‘Ye heard? Late at night? How so, if I may ask Mistress Bouch, to be alert so deep into the dark?’
‘I sleep badly.’
‘So do I,’ said the inspector. ‘I put it down to conscience.’
He smiled at her like a wolf in a nursery book illustration. Not chasing after Red Riding Hood or three smallish pigs; just a wolf in a green field, with all the time in the world. He often regarded himself so, and Margaret Bouch did not seem at all uncomfortable with this prospect.
Perhaps, she was part wolf herself, thought McLevy.
‘So, did ye hear a scrape last night?’ he continued. ‘Or something else perchance?’
‘I was not here, last night.’
The inspector raised his eyebrows the merest fraction and his mouth drooped slightly like a puzzled child; it was what Mulholland would recognise as McLevy’s idiot look, and often drew response like a poultice.
‘This is my husband’s place of work, his office and study are set here on Bernard Street. The family home, his country retreat, is in Moffat.’
‘That’s border folk,’ said McLevy. ‘Sheep stealers and the like!’
He laughed loudly. She permitted herself a faint smile at this presumed witticism, but had Mulholland been on hand his long nose would have twitched in recognition that the inspector was up to his tricks.
‘A fair distance.’ McLevy’s eyes widened at the thought. ‘Back and forward all the time, eh?’
‘Sir Thomas spends the week on the premises here and then at weekends, he does not. He returns.’
‘To the bosom of his family?’
‘That is correct,’ she responded evenly.
‘And you, Mistress Bouch?’
‘I reside there. The Moffat house demands much of my attention.’
‘But it didnae in former times, did it?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Because, as you told me yourself, you’d lie awake in this place at night and listen to the key scraping in the lock.’
For a moment she did not answer and in the silence, a ship’s horn from the Leith docks sounded in the distance like a lost soul.
‘That is correct. In former times.’
‘Yet, here you are today!’
McLevy beamed at her as if they had both reached a satisfactory conclusion to the exchange and Margaret Bouch shook her head as if it was spinning a little.
‘I – I had some shopping to do in Edinburgh and took our carriage, we have a carriage you see, and arrived in the early morning to find this – catastrophe.’
That would mean, the inspector surmised, she had left Moffat before the break of dawn. Why such an hour? Was her arrival unannounced? Unexpected? What had she hoped to find, a house full of licentious women?
Under his scrutiny, Margaret Bouch suddenly pushed forward one of her dainty boots with the toe pointing up towards the ceiling. It was like a gesture of defiance.
‘I dare say you would like to talk to my husband about all this, inspector.’
‘I dare say I would.’
‘Then, let me oblige you,’ she said, walked to the study door, knocked sharply upon it then thrust it open.
