Trick of the Light

Bugger the coffee, he went for blood.

‘This is your own fault, Jean,’ he said bluntly.

‘How so?’

‘The streets are hoachin’ with two things. One is the advent of mesmerism in our fair city and the other is that yourself and a certain arriviste have been spoiling for a rammy since she opened her doors.’

‘Arriviste?’

‘Don’t keep repeating whit I say. The Countess. The word is a certain French lassie broke ranks. This on the bed wouldnae be the girl by any chance?’

Jean’s face betrayed nothing but she cursed the fact that there was not a dark happening in Leith that did not reach McLevy’s ears. He had a nest of informants second only to her own, but where she garnered intelligence by understated influence of favours granted, dispensed over and under the counter like drugs in an apothecary shop, the inspector ruled by fear.

No mercy.

If he asked, you answered and many were the craven souls who sought to gain what they mistakenly hoped to be protective cover should they ever stray from the path of righteousness.

It is a human trait to lick the leather boots of power and it never gets you anything but a sore tongue.

‘What if it is the girl?’ she replied coolly.

‘You tell me,’ McLevy retorted; he had suddenly spotted the whereabouts of the sheep. They were hunched together in another frieze at a corner of the room and unless he was visually deluded, one of them, a ram no doubt, was tupping an anxious looking ewe.

‘Why should I do your job?’

But having said such, Jean proceeded to perform this very function.

‘The hand that poured the acid might not be witnessed but I believe you know the one responsible.’

‘Do I?’

The inspector’s eyes widened. Now they had changed places. She the prosecutor, he the defendant.

‘A vicious creature. Long nails. Cowardly.’

‘Tae strike from ahent, ye mean?’

‘Exactly. A dirty stinking coward.’

‘These foreign types, eh?’

‘The lowest scum. Worse than policemen.’

‘That bad?’

‘And you know the person. You know the name.’

‘And so do you,’ said James McLevy, the game over. ‘It is your contrivance this happened.’

Jean’s lips thinned but he continued apace, having spotted three ships a-sailing over the recumbent form of Simone on the far wall, so making use of nautical metaphor.

‘Ye have received a shot across your bows. A warning. The message is – give the girl back.’

‘Not a hope in hell.’

‘Then it will be war between you.’

 ‘I didnae start it.’

‘As always, you are the innocent party.’

‘The history of my life.’

Simone whimpered in the bed and her feet scrabbled under the covers as an animal might do when dreaming.

McLevy stared at Jean’s beautiful but impenitent face and wondered how sin left no mark on the human countenance.

‘Now, here is another warning. Ye have no proof that the Countess was behind this event and if I catch you either in the act itself or instigating attempted vengeance upon the woman, I shall have no option but throw you into the cells and thence to the Perth penitentiary.’

This provoked severe indignation and Little Bo Peep frowned as Jean muttered an expletive under her breath while the inspector walked towards the door.

‘And whit about her? How come she escapes your vile clutches?’

‘Proof,’ came the stern response. ‘If I find proof then justice will prevail.’

‘Justice?’

‘Don’t keep repeating what I say!’

As they glared at each other the door flung open and Hannah Semple burst in like an avenging angel.

She had a page of paper grasped in her mottled fingers and did not remark McLevy who had nearly been knocked over backwards by the outflung portal.

‘Mistress!’ Hannah cried. ‘See whit I’ve got. Lily Baxter pressed it in my hand, a decent wee soul for a’ she doesnae speak a word and witness the way Francine and that Simone on the bed there have been slaverin’ round one tae the other – but see what Lily gave me!’

These were a lot of words for Hannah who tended to deal them out with care lest she find herself short on occasion, but the keeper of the keys was unaccustomed to excitement of this sort and she brandished the paper.

‘She’s a good wee drawer. Acted it all out for me. A creepy bugger at the back o’ Simone, pouring out, passing by, and here’s his likeness!’

Hannah stopped suddenly. Jean had made no move to take the paper. Her eyes seemed focused beyond as if a malignant presence was lurking.

Then a hand reached out from behind and magicked the image out of her hand.

‘If I may be so bold,’ said a voice.

McLevy held the paper to his eyes and wondered for the umpteenth time if he should risk a visit to an ocular shop.

In focus finally, he saw a figure of a fat podgy body with a huge head out of proportion, which he assumed Lily had created to augment the possibilities of identification.

The face was round, pouch-eyed, a small pouting mouth like a mole, no nose to speak of, the chin weak and the hat above this unattractive assembly a full-blown bowler unlike his low-brimmed affair.

Francine may have been the artist but Lily Baxter had a gift for caricature, no doubt about such.

‘Not a pretty sight,’ he said. ‘How high does he ascend towards heaven?’

Hannah now knew why Jean had looked like a cow stuck in a dank bog. She reluctantly raised a hand about four inches above her own stature of five feet to indicate height.

‘According to Lily,’ she muttered.

McLevy turned the page round so that Jean might share in the pictorial exhibition.

‘Recognise this sconeface?’ he asked.

‘No.’

Hannah thought to offer something but caught a glint in Jean’s eye and sniffed loudly instead.

‘Ugly bugger, eh?’ she said.

‘I don’t know him either,’ McLevy remarked. ‘So his ill favour is not of the parish. But I’ll find him if he stays above ground.’

Simone let out a small awakening groan from the bed and McLevy suddenly shot back to her side and stuck the picture before her dilated eyes.

‘D’ye recognise this malefactor?’ he asked loudly.

She squinted, and then shook her head slowly.

‘Not a visiting randie-boy to the Countess?’

‘They’re all creaking bones,’ said Jean disdainfully.

Simone shook her head once more, then her eyelids drooped and she slid back into the dream that offered a velvet cushion against inflicted agony.

The inspector gave up, shoved the paper into his coat pocket and walked back to the door where he paused for a moment like an actor about to deliver the curtain line.

‘I don’t want any dead bodies of this description found on the streets or floating in the docks.’