Of course incidental to all this was the fact that the inspector had now accepted that Jean was not part of the blackmailing plot.
But she did not feel in the least grateful at this deliverance and came at him savagely, claws unsheathed.
‘What woman would want you anyway? She’d have to be desperate and half blind.’
‘Only half?’
This caustic observation came from neither but the voice was unmistakable.
Hannah Semple stood in the doorway, hands clasped around the knob to steady her. She was arrayed in one of Jean’s nightgowns; big Annie Drummond and the mistress having eased her out of the previous night’s damp and dirty clothes into something less soiled.
Hannah also caught sight of herself in the mirror; the nightgown was perhaps more suited for Sleeping Beauty rather than her stocky frame.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘Mutton dressed as lamb.’
‘Hannah,’ said Jean, all anger forgotten as relief flooded through her very being. ‘You’ve come to life.’
‘You two would waken the dead,’ replied the old woman with spirit, but then her hand slipped from the doorknob and she fell towards them to be caught up in both their arms.
It was a considerable weight borne mostly by the inspector who was scrabbling for purchase on the smooth slippery material of the nightgown.
‘Keep your hands tae yourself, McLevy,’ she informed him hoarsely. ‘I’m a clean-living girl.’
Jean laughed and she hugged the old woman fiercely to her in spite of Hannah’s squawks of protest.
McLevy somehow got caught up in all this and wondered how he always ended up in these straits.
Like three drunks on a Saturday night, they staggered back into the other room and laid the old woman to rest once more upon the bed.
Other than the one jaundiced glance towards McLevy, Hannah’s attention had been completely fixed upon Jean who was busy pulling up the sheets to cover the old woman.
‘I let ye down, mistress,’ she murmured.
Jean shook her head.
‘More like the other way round,’ she replied softly.
‘It was the fault of both,’ McLevy butted in, anxious to get on with establishing facts. ‘What happened, Hannah?’
Pausing for breath every so often Hannah Semple told the story, as far she knew it, lips twisting wryly towards the conclusion.
‘I should have cut her throat the first time she was hanging out the washing. That was my mistake.’
‘We’ll make it up to you,’ remarked Jean sweetly.
‘The sleekit bitch. I had her in front of me, but I didnae look behind.’
McLevy and Jean exchanged glances: there could be no doubt as to the hidden assailant’s identity.
‘Not very gentlemanly,’ said the inspector.
‘If I get to him before you,’ Jean responded with a cold light in her green eyes, ‘Oliver Garvie will be a shadow of his former self.’
‘He will come to the arms of justice,’ said McLevy.
The previous animosity between them began to bubble to the surface and Hannah’s eyes glazed over.
‘Whit’s the matter wi’ you two now?’ she mumbled. ‘Worse than a pair of weans.’
Jean quietened the old woman down, tucked her in and promised to tell her the whole story in all its sordid detail at a later opportunity. As she and McLevy made for the door, and he about to open it for her in a parody of politesse, Hannah called from the bed.
‘I’ve been having some gey queer dreams, mistress.’
‘That would be the opium,’ Jean replied.
‘Opium?’ came the muffled retort. ‘I’ve aye fancied that stuff. Whit a way tae get there though.’
As the door closed, Hannah was cackling softly under the covers.
‘Opium … Well, well. Fancy that now.’
And drifted off into a dream where the Just Land was invaded by white unicorns crashing their hooves upon the stairs and sticking their heads out from every window.
Beyond the door McLevy and Jean witnessed big Annie Drummond bidding an affectionate goodbye below to her wee shepherd, the man’s fiddle tucked neatly under his arm, blue eyes agleam with post-coital delight.
Annie was accustomed to her vast form as a barrier to acts of passion but the wee fellow had leapt all over it like a mountain goat.
For a good part of the night. A giddy goat.
The Jew’s harp man had long since departed, his owner calling him to heel like a farm dog but the shepherd’s master was a kind soul and had left his man with these wise words.
‘Enjoy yerself Douglas. It’s a lang winter wi’ naethin but the sheep for solace.’
It had been, unlike the fate of many others that night, the best time of the shepherd’s life.
He closed the door after one tender kiss from Annie, her plump hands framing his face, and as he marched away up the gravel path towards the iron gates, he unslung his fiddle and played a jaunty air; the notes winging their way up into the sky above to give the larks some competition.
Annie Drummond crossed back and disappeared into the main salon where a pile of cream cakes was waiting.
Love’s appetite.
James McLevy sang words to the faint tune from the vanishing shepherd.
‘And wasna he a roguie, a roguie, a roguie.
And wasna he a roguie, the piper o’ Dundee.’
Jean Brash looked at him and said nothing.
‘It’s a Jacobite air,’ he remarked.
‘I know what it is,’ she replied, her eyes steady on his face.
He jerked his head in the direction of the departed fiddler.
‘You’re taking in all sorts these days.’
Again she said nothing.
The relationship that existed between them was one that dare not speak its name in case it got arrested, but the ground had shifted underneath their feet and now there was enough unsaid between them to fill a literary volume.
‘I don’t suppose a modicum of coffee is at hand?’
This remark, aimed at getting back to safe terrain, met with a curt rejoinder.
‘This is a bawdy-hoose, not a coffee shop.’
That was that, then.
McLevy nodded acceptance and walked off down the winding staircase but halfway down turned back to address her.
‘How did you come across him anyway? Oliver Garvie. Was he a frequenter of your wee nymphs?’
‘I met him at a garden exhibition.’
‘Oh aye. Ye like flowers.’
He could have departed there and then. She could have remained silent. But neither could leave it be.
‘Was it daffodils?’ he asked.
‘Roses,’ she answered.
‘And was he an expert?’
Jean’s mind flashed back to the moment in the garden when she had been inhaling the delicate fragrance of a yellow rose when Garvie had appeared beside her.
She had been struck at first by his absolute confidence in the physical self; he had made no attempt to engage her by the usual channels of flirtation or impress her with his importance or wealth, merely talked about the flowers with knowledge and appreciation.
She responded like a lady of quality but all the time she was aware of how easily he lived in his skin. Like an
