‘I lost my revolver at the harbour,’ he remembered.
‘I’ll find it for you,’ promised Jean.
He nodded, then slid under the clean crisp sheets and brought them up to his nose.
‘I’m off to the Land of Nod,’ he announced, and promptly fell unconscious.
After a few moments he began to snore, another sign that he was returning to himself.
Jean hesitated for a second then bent down and kissed him gently on the brow.
‘Sleep well, James.’
On these words Jean Brash left, checking before she opened the door that her pearls were in place. A girl can’t be too careful.
McLevy slept like a child, a profound and dreamless slumber where his soul travelled to far-flung shores of the psyche and found there, rest and contentment.
For one brief instant, there may have been the merest flicker of Icarus in his mind but it was harmless, promptly banished, and did not reappear.
He was shaken into consciousness some six hours later to perceive not a guardian angel but a small starched figure, uniformed, ramrod straight, who then proceeded to light the lamp beside his bed.
‘I am Nurse Sheekey,’ she announced. ‘Are ye awake?’
‘I am now,’ he muttered.
‘Folk sleep their life away,’ she remarked cuttingly.
The woman bustled to the door and threw a command back just as she exited.
‘Pull yourself up, Mister McLevy. I have something on hand for you.’
Then she was gone and he, hoping that she had not been referring to a purge of some sort, groggily levered himself once more, stuck the pillow behind and sat there like a dog in a kennel, waiting for its bone.
And it duly arrived in the form of a tray with a steaming coffee pot, innumerable lumps of sugar in a bowl, a fine china cup and saucer with a plate of sugar biscuits on the side.
The tray was placed on astounded McLevy’s lap where he sat, then Nurse Sheekey stood back to admire her handiwork.
‘Don’t thank me,’ she declared before he could open his mouth. ‘The nice lady came back and arranged all this. I just heated up the coffee.’
The inspector sniffed at the spout of the pot. It was a Lebanese grinding. Jean Brash.
‘She paid for this single room as well,’ Nurse Sheekey further vouchsafed grimly.
McLevy had puzzled over this previously because he had been sufficiently
He had wondered about that because he did not see either Lieutenant Roach or the police authority rising to such generous heights.
Probably why the lieutenant had informed Jean, to spare himself the expense.
‘I was wondering about that,’ he said.
‘Well now ye know.’
With this pithy rejoinder, Nurse Sheekey marched to the door where she turned to address him.
‘Are you James McLevy the thieftaker?’ she asked.
‘I am indeed.’
‘You’re a lucky man.’
On that remark she shut the door and was gone.
Maybe he was a lucky man. He should have known better than try to save his mother, she was dead and gone. Though it was a wound that would never heal.
Leave that be.
He had enjoyed, however, the feeling of freedom as he floated in the water.
Perhaps he would learn how to swim.
Leave that be, also.
James McLevy reached out and with trembling hand, poured the black and sacred liquor into the cup. Four lumps of sugar, a wee nibble on a biscuit to tantalise the taste buds and then?
He raised his cup to Jean Brash, and drank.
And it came to pass that nearly an hour later, the patients of the Leith Hospital, suffering under a variety of ailments, heard, drifting faintly from one of the upper rooms, fragments of a Jacobite melody.
James McLevy danced around the hospital room in his bare feet, nightgown billowing at his calves, fuelled no doubt by three strong draughts of the finest Lebanese, but also a weird elation as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
And as he danced he sang accordingly, lifting a dainty corner of the nightgown to allow the making of a leg.
‘’Twas on a Monday morning,
Right early in the year,
When Charlie came to our town
The Young Chevalier.
Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling,
Charlie is my darling, the Young Chevalier.’
Through the high window where the vase of flowers looked out into the dark, the night sky was clear and as he capered joyfully within, a shooting star fell from heaven to the earth below.
What goes up must come down. That is the nature of things.
But McLevy didn’t give a damn. The case was over.
