an unwary ship between them. Avoid the one and you were impaled upon the other.
Thus wrecked between the condemnation of his betters, Martin Mulholland wished in vain for calm seas and a soft wind. What he received instead was a cannonball amidships.
‘Ah well,’ remarked a suddenly cheerful McLevy. ‘We’d better repair to the scene of the crime, constable.’
‘Crime?’ came a cry from the shipwreck.
‘Suicide is against the law.’
The thought of having to face the accusing eyes of his beloved Emily once it became revealed that his visit had been, at the very least, a contributory factor in her father’s demise, sent Mulholland into a guilt-ridden panic.
‘Oh, no – I can’t – I can’t go – sir.’
‘Part of the job,’ was the stolid response.
‘Have pity, sir,’ the constable almost wailed, out of the blue coming over very Irish. ‘Pity is a grand thing.’
‘What’s the problem that needs this pity?’ grunted McLevy, who was anxious to be on his way; the insurance adjuster was not a game bird that would improve the longer he hung there and the man could not be lowered till a senior investigating officer was on the scene.
‘How can I face my Emily? How can I look her in the eyes?’
‘Love conquers all,’ was the unsympathetic reply. ‘Now get your helmet and your cape.’
Mulholland looked to his lieutenant who nodded in bleak concordance with his inspector.
The young man realised for the first time that these two men, so far apart in temperament, shared the same unremitting attitude towards the shorn lamb.
Pity was in short supply.
And so, also realising that if he refused to perform his duty he might as well walk out of the station and kiss the Leith police goodbye, Mulholland screwed up his eyes an instant, opened them again, and then strode out to find his uniform and face the eventual music.
Roach and McLevy looked at each other; suicide was always such a messy business.
‘It’ll be the making of him,’ the inspector remarked somewhat obscurely.
In response, Roach moved to take his heavy frock coat from a stand in the corner.
‘I shall come as well,’ he announced. ‘I feel part way responsible for this debacle in any case.’
‘You and Mister Cupid,’ said McLevy.
Roach refused to rise to the bait; the inspector obviously knew that he had acted as love’s emissary but he would not grant him the satisfaction of the gory details.
‘Perhaps,’ he remarked dryly, ‘I can be of comfort to the young lady, whilst you and Mulholland examine fibres on the carpet, McLevy.’
‘A fair division of labour,’ was the equally dry response.
As Roach shrugged into the immaculate frock coat and plucked down a tall hat of imposing proportions, something that looked like the ghost of Mulholland appeared in the doorway.
‘Shall we gentlemen?’ said Roach.
The other two nodded and off they went to meet the hanging man.
31
Anything awful makes me laugh.
CHARLES LAMB,
The household of Forbes had been in chaos, Emily howling and shrieking like a lost soul while two maiden aunts, Jessie and Jemima, who had turned up as if from nowhere, did their level best to console her.
The maid was also in hysterics; she had turned up late for work that morning and seemed somehow to blame herself.
The cook was wailing in the kitchen where the pulley hung askew over the kitchen table and the very walls reverberated with female lamentation.
While Roach dealt with all this below, McLevy looked up at the bare feet of Robert Forbes; for some reason the adjuster had removed his socks and shoes before tying a rope around the head of the stag mounted securely upon his study wall.
The man had subsequently tied the other end round his neck, stood on a chair perched high upon his desk, and then kicked off into oblivion.
A shaken Mulholland who had been sent downstairs to assist his lieutenant and come shooting back some moments later as if pursued by Alecto the implacable Fury, was engaged with one other constable in untying the knots from the neck of the monarch of the glen and lowering the body to where three other men waited to receive the altered form of the insurance adjuster.
This was accomplished and the corpse laid inside the evidence sheet to be wrapped up and removed to the cold room at the station for examination.
McLevy noted that, from appearances, the man had used the pulley rope from the kitchen but the weather was decent enough they could dry the linen outside.
He almost shared that comforting thought with Mulholland who, through gritted teeth, was pulling the sheet over the waxy contorted features of his once-upon-a-time future father-in-law, but decided against it.
The dead man’s socks and shoes had been carefully laid out on a newspaper on the floor at the side of the desk. The local
Suicides perhaps …
The corpse’s face had now disappeared from view, a few bumps in the sheet indicating where a life had dwelt.
But what circumstances had driven Robert Forbes to such a pass? To end his own existence? To lie and deceive? To betray his very calling? All of this was so much against the proven character of the adjuster.
As he pondered these matters, McLevy found himself at the man’s bureau, rifling through the contents therein.
Possibly this was slightly against the rules but since the nearest member of the family present was dead as a doornail, the inspector assumed tacit permission and delved.
And as he pulled down the corrugated wooden screen that concealed the multitude of narrow drawers making up the top half of the imposing oak varnished desk, he found, prominent and propped up inside, a long white envelope with the name,
He opened and read.
Everything began to become clear.
There’s no fool like an old fool.
Roach entered through the open door of the study and cast a wary glance at Mulholland where he was helping to manoeuvre the body into a position so that it could be lifted up and taken downstairs to be loaded discreetly into the carry waggon and thence to the station.
The lieutenant crossed over towards McLevy who seemed absorbed in a piece of paper, which he held in hand, and spoke quietly in his inspector’s ear.
‘I have solved part of the mystery,’ he announced.
‘Uhuh?’ muttered McLevy, scratching at his nose.
‘Indeed. Emily noticed that her father this very morning was withdrawn and distraught. When asked the reason, he remarked that it was a great pity the constable could not change his mind.’
‘Uhuh?’ was the unhelpful response.
‘He would say no more about the matter and gave her some money to go shopping,’ Roach continued. ‘Emily
