animal.
Almost diffidently he had suggested tea in the pavilion and it had all led on from there.
Of course he had been primed by Rachel Bryden to know her tastes and predilections and she had been seduced like a fool. Played like a fish. A foolish stupid fish.
And she should have remembered that the yellow rose is a symbol of infidelity.
Yes, he was an expert. An expert in many things.
Jean became aware that the inspector was waiting for an audible response, a strange, oddly vulnerable look upon his face.
‘He appeared to be,’ she said finally.
For a moment McLevy blinked like a disappointed child and opened his mouth as if to say something, but then he sniffed as if something had become lodged in one of his nasal passages, hauled out a large white handkerchief and blew noisily upon the unsuspecting square of cloth.
Jean closed her eyes; she recognised signs of the man going into one of his uncouth phases.
The inspector peered into the hankie with some interest, glanced up as if suddenly remembering that she was still present and adopted pompous delivery.
‘If by any lucky accident that web of informers and street keelies that you have in your employ for matters nefarious, happen to chance upon Oliver Garvie and Rachel Bryden before the forces of law and order, you will deliver these miscreants into my hands.’
‘I will do what I see fit,’ was the retort.
This stung McLevy into further raising his voice like Moses on the mountain.
‘You will do what I tell you Jean Brash, the law is above all things.’
‘Then the law can find them.’
‘Forget your foolish pride, you’re not the first woman to make an idiot of herself over a younger man.’
If Jean had possessed something close to hand she would have hurled it into his great pudding of a face.
‘Well if I ever take another lover, I hope not to find you keeking in through the curtains!’
This remark, so below the belt in implication and inaccuracy, brought a gasp of indignation from the target.
‘You flatter yourself that I give a damn about what you do with a body nurtured on the common wages of sin!’
‘A lot of words for such a lack of interest.’
McLevy jammed the bowler on his head and clattered down the stairs, hurling a backward stricture over his shoulder.
‘If you interfere in the due process of justice then I will bring the law down on you like the Hand of God!’
Such was his impetus off the bottom of the stairs that he skidded on the polished floorboards of the hall, almost crashing into Francine the Frenchwoman as she emerged from the cellar steps to find out the cause of this commotion. Her sinewy arm shot out, fingers splayed like talons to catch him before he fell.
‘Careful M’sieu Inspecteur,’ she said quietly, her face serious and intent. ‘At your time of life, pain is to be avoided unless paid for and supervised.’
McLevy drew himself up with dignity, marched to the door and turned round to deliver a final caution to Jean who stood at the top of the stairs glaring down at him.
‘I warn you Jean Brash, cross me in this affair and I will close your bawdy-hoose down.’
‘Ye havenae got the power,’ Jean asserted, ‘half the city council take their pleasure here.’
The door slammed in answer and he was gone.
Francine shrugged up at her mistress and disappeared back down into the cellar. The General Synod was due to gather in the city soon, so she and Lily, now restored in harmony, were due a busy time of it. Churchmen, unlike farmers, enjoyed the scourge of sin and punishment.
Jean found herself alone, an isolated figure in a plain grey gown.
For a moment she felt once more the sharp knife of humiliation twisting in her gut.
Oliver Garvie and Rachel Bryden.
They had robbed and deceived her, struck Hannah Semple to the ground. They had taken her beautiful black pearls that she loved above all things.
If she got to them first, they’d never see the light of day.
33
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
