success.
Neither was McLevy or Roach.
It was the last brush stroke in a very black picture.
The whole room went still as if Jack Frost had laid his icy fingers upon the company and frozen them to the spot.
Then McLevy sparked into action; the state of stasis was not one of his favourites and anything is better than contemplation of the void.
He sent the stricken Mulholland plus two other constables in the direction of an address in McDonald Road and instructed them to gain entrance by hook or by crook; that accomplished they were to investigate a room at the back of the house where a man of Garvie’s description would have been renting and might be found.
The inspector was not optimistic about the finding part but who knows?
In any case, McLevy had quite another venue in mind. He doubted he would catch the man there either but he might uncover a relevant fact or two.
And play merry hell.
The rest of the crew he dispatched with the body of Forbes to the carry waggon and thence the station.
Now, the room was empty save for himself, Roach and the stag’s head.
The lieutenant picked up a picture frame from a small table beside the desk and regarded the depiction of the wife of Robert Forbes.
He had met the woman a few times at official functions and exchanged some polite words such as one does. She had seemed a decent sober soul, quite properly dedicated to her husband and taking great pride in his achievements.
What would she think now?
It often perturbed Roach, the idea in some quarters that those in heaven were still able to witness the exploits of those left behind on earth.
If so, it must put quite a damper on the paradisiacal bliss.
And where would Robert Forbes end up?
The word suicide did not even occur in the bible but it was a safe bet that God the Creator who giveth and taketh away, would frown upon his function being pre-empted.
Though if he knew and performed all things, did that not make Him a part of this unfortunate event?
The pulley rope, the stag’s head and the bare feet?
All gifts from God.
McLevy had been standing by in silence while Roach was struggling with these unfamiliar notions; the inspector was deliberating on his own behalf and, not for the first time, was caught between the fierce impetus of investigation and the disquiet of what it might uncover.
So be it, however. No mercy.
Roach voiced a thought that had never been far away from his mind since the news had been broken at the station.
‘For the moment,’ he said quietly, ‘there is no need to make this public.’
‘Not until Oliver Garvie is caught,’ came the obdurate response. ‘But I will lay my hands upon him.’
McLevy could see which way the wind was blowing but it wasn’t going to whisk anything under the carpet.
Roach changed the subject.
‘This girl, Rachel Bryden, would she be one of the magpies of the Just Land?’
‘I believe it may be so,’ said McLevy.
‘Then your friend Jean Brash comes into the picture?’
‘I believe she may.’
Roach had long considered that his inspector’s relationship with the bawdy-hoose keeper would one day see McLevy compromised beyond his control.
However he contented himself with a sly dig.
‘A woman of influence, eh?’
For a moment the inspector’s mind flashed back to a lighted window beneath which he sat like Humpty Dumpty while passion raged above.
‘Uhuh,’ replied McLevy with a hard glint in his eye, ‘but as regards that influence, it is a question of how far and how deep it goes.’
Roach nodded, and for a moment the two men stood in the silence of the room, which was finally broken by another muffled howl of grief from the lower reaches.
‘I take it,’ said McLevy, who had noticed the shaken state of Mulholland’s earlier return, ‘that love has not conquered all?’
‘I am afraid not,’ was the sober reply. ‘In fact I fear that it may have gone up the chimney.’
They both looked in the air towards the stag but it was just another victim.
32
Mine is the most plotting heart in the world.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON,
If Hannah Semple had been conscious, she would have derived a deal of bleak amusement over the undignified squabble in progress next door.
But the old woman lay in Jean Brash’s boudoir in the midst of the peach-coloured chiffon and gauze reflecting back and forth from the mirrors, like a character in a fairy tale waiting for the kiss of a prince to jolt her into life.
She was flat on her back, not an unknown position, her hands clasped together over the sheets.
Hannah had not stirred since the giant Angus had lain her gently down on the bed the previous night.
The doctor had come and gone, diagnosed concussion from a blow to the back of the head, cleaned then dressed the wound and prescribed a strong opium-based medication. Then the man of medicine had left, advising rest, prayer and patience.
And so Hannah rested, her breath shallow but regular; unlike the rammy going on in the next room.
Jean Brash and James McLevy; hammer and tongs.
He had arrived with blood in his eyes, been taken aback to witness the recumbent Hannah, expressed brief but sincere enough sympathy and then asked bluntly what had transpired.
It was to his mind suspicious happenstance that Hannah had been struck to the ground the night before Robert Forbes was about to launch himself off into the air.
One up, one down.
Jean, riven with guilt about her part in Hannah’s bad fortune, answered truthfully enough that she did not know.
He then queried the whereabouts of Rachel Bryden.
Jean flinched; could he already have cognition of her humiliating loss of face and property?
She waited for him to drop a further remark to indicate such but he did not; merely stared at her through slate-grey unfriendly eyes.
Again she answered truthfully, she could not help. The girl had disappeared.
What Jean did not add, however, was that her people were searching the nooks and crannies of Edinburgh to track down Rachel Bryden and, once found, there would be hard questions as regards certain missing valuables.
McLevy sensed that she was hiding something and it fuelled his own dark doubts.
He went for the kill, stuck his face into Jean’s, related the facts of the insurance swindle, the death of Robert Forbes, blackmail originating from the Just Land, and after naming Rachel’s part in it all, hammered her with the
