Fall From Grace

from his own evil.

It would be their secret. Never told. Inside their minds, for ever.

And so she sang, as she watched the figure in the street below.

‘Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter,

Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter,

Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter,

Earl-aye in the morning.’

Of course the captain’s daughter was another name for the lash of a cat o’ nine tails and the drunken sailor would suffer horribly for his misdeeds but, as she sang, a single tear for some obscure reason, trickled down her face.

Though she was not the crying kind …

34

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error,

and another to put him in possession of truth.

JOHN LOCKE,

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

McLevy slurped at his coffee and perused what he had just written in his diary.

Some days had passed since that stramash with the mistress of the Just Land but it had got the blood moving that night and, having returned to the station to agree with Lieutenant Roach a certain course of action for curing the love-sickened Constable Mulholland, he had come back to his lodgings to clarify some details in his case notes as regards the warehouse fire.

He had then checked the seagoing time of a certain ship, the Dorabella in Leith docks, which was bound for Argentina in a few days’ time, and had formulated a plan of campaign.

This involved waiting.

In the meantime both his forces and Jean Brash’s spies had fine combed the city for three days and nights to no avail. The fugitives were not to be found.

McLevy had not been surprised.

Tonight the wait was over. A long shot but worth a try.

There was time to spare yet and so he had put pencil to paper. The first in a long time. A good omen.

He peered down; there was no doubt that eyesight was playing tricks upon him and he might have to consider the purchase of reading glasses.

His two latest book purchases, the Arab legends and Poe’s short stories were squared neatly at the right- hand corner of the table. The Eastern typeface was generous though slanting but Poe’s was crabbed and narrow, and the inspector wondered if this had damaged his optics somewhat, to say nothing of the content as regards his mind.

‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ for instance … a madman kills an old man because of a supposed evil eye, buries him under the floorboards and then is betrayed by the louder and louder beating of the dead man’s heart.

The strange fancies of the author’s mind stirred McLevy’s own uneasy imagination. Sometimes he felt haunted by his own history as it beat louder and louder in the confines of his soul.

He took a deep breath to still this shivering within and muttered his own written words as an incantation against the guilt that followed him like a black dog.

The Diary of James McLevy, 13 November 1880

The past and present collide like two bulls in a field and so it is in my thoughts this evening.

Robert Forbes and Sir Thomas Bouch, two men far apart in temperament and standing yet inextricably linked by their fall.

They had built an image of themselves in their psyche that could not endure the cold blast of reality.

In Forbes’ case it was a slippery whore who roused him from his widowhood to an ardent desire that had lain dormant in him, no doubt since birth.

He found himself not what he thought himself to be and as his penis blossomed, so his common sense dwindled.

If we ever find the letters he wrote to Rachel Bryden, I expect they will be filled with protestations of love.

Nae foule like an auld foule.

But are we not all fools in the end?

Over love especial.

And now the other case.

Sir Thomas thought himself to be a giant and in that iron certainty lay the seeds of his own destruction.

According to the late Alan Telfer, the bridge builder towered above us all like a Colossus but there’s only one God and he does not take kindly to competition.

Heat did for Icarus, and the howling wind blew Sir Thomas Bouch away like a shrivelled leaf.

On a more practical note, Mulholland, another soaring specimen, has been, some days ago, sent back to Ireland to recompose himself and his Aunt Katie will hopefully fill him with barnyard saws and Irish stew so that he will return to Edinburgh a sadder but wiser man.

But time is a great healer and an engagement ring may fit on many fingers.

After the speedy and very private funeral of her father, Emily has fled to the country with the maiden aunts. I believe somewhere in Stirlingshire, where pulley ropes perform their proper function.

As for myself I have no place to fall and business on hand. So I shall close this ledger and return to it when occasion allows.

While he did so, an indignant scrape upon the window announced the arrival of Bathsheba and McLevy sighed.

He would have to feed the cat and pour out her milk but then there was the rest of the ritual. She had to retire to her little niche by the fireplace and groom herself from head to toe before embarking on to the moonlit slates of Leith.

Still there was yet enough duration.

On the desk beside the diary where it lay, was an oilskin pouch, which McLevy gently parted to reveal the outline of a heavy black revolver.

He crossed to slide the oilskin into the side pocket of his heavy outdoor coat.

Time enough.

While the cat tucked into her provender he walked over to the narrow cupboard where he kept his hidden treasures, opened it up and carefully laid the diary back to its provided place beside a mother-of-pearl box that had been given to him by a dying man more than twenty years ago.

He carefully prised up the lid and looked in. It was somewhat gloomy in the cupboard but sufficient for him to discern amongst other things, a broken grubby scrap of white feather, a lock of golden hair, and a fragment of black material.

Mementoes of past crimes.

One of which he had promised the dying man to solve but had yet to deliver.