exasperated sigh of annoyance from the nice Mister Evans.
Mister Smith turned away abruptly as if he could not bear to look at the loss and, at that moment, the sharpers made a fatal error.
One winked at the other, confident that the man’s back had no eyes to see. But there was a dirty cracked mirror in the opposite empty booth to reflect this collusion.
Yet when Mister Smith turned back, nothing in his face indicated what, if anything, he had seen.
His hand however, slid down the side of one plump little leg, while his face screwed up in puzzlement as if he could not believe what had just happened with the cards.
Mister Evans opened his mouth to compose words of consolation; he himself had lost as well and who could believe that this uncouth fellow might stumble upon such a change of fortune?
The words never passed his lips.
The little man made a sweeping gesture under the table and both men seated on the other side froze as if an icy hand had been laid upon them.
The money was scooped swiftly up and then some words were finally uttered.
‘Thank you, gents.’
Having said this, Alfred Binnie turned and made his unhurried way through the swirling smoke and heaving bodies of the Rustie Nail.
The paralysis of their nether abdomens being sliced through by a razor-edged knife that might disembowel an ox, held the two sharpers in suspension for what seemed like an eternity.
Both looked down and saw the blood seeping out of the deep cut in their lower bellies through the thick material of the tweed trousers worn to support the pretence that they were from the outlands of Jedburgh or the like.
Then the pain bit in and their groans mingled with the frenzied whoops of the tavern throng as two of the mariners burst into an impromptu hornpipe.
One of them reeled backwards and crashed into the alcove.
He apologised in Dutch. His native language.
14
And so I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Muriel’s small bedroom overlooked the side lane and a crack upon her window brought her awake with a start of fear.
The breath caught in her throat – she had been dreaming but of nothing she could easily remember, vague feelings of shame, and accusing voices in her mind.
For a moment she lay quite still. Unable to tell what had disturbed her sleep.
Another crack of pebble on glass solved the mystery.
She shifted eyes to the window, the counterpane pulled up just under her nose like a frightened child or old maid in a country cottage.
But she was neither.
Muriel Grierson was a respectable widow. Or was she?
She slipped out of bed and padded with an oddly feline gait, bare feet upon a lush carpet, to the glass where she looked out into the lane.
He was standing where she knew he would be; silver hair flattened a little by the evening damp, shining wetly in the faint gleam that spilled down the narrow track from the streetlight.
Samuel Grant. Her lover.
The man she had met by chance in the street when a cab driver had splashed her skirts with his carriage wheel and when she taxed him, the fellow had responded in a most impolite fashion. A passer-by then berated the miscreant until the brute apologised.
The passer-by. A well-set man with silver hair.
From this accidental beginning he had courted her but of course most discreetly; it would not be proper for Muriel to be seen enjoying such company.
How could one put it? She was yet, though decked no longer in widow’s weeds, carrying the indefinable marks of grief and he was somewhat…not quite of the same class.
Well mannered to be sure, a trifle flamboyant in his dress, stocky of frame, in age perhaps some years less than her but…how can one put it?
In fact there were more years between them than she realised but ignorance is often bliss as regards age in love. And so Muriel mused on regardless.
He was a little short of grace. Not coarse exactly, just lacking a certain refinement. But she liked that. An uncomplicated, unconfined vitality. She liked that.
They had met, therefore, in secret in areas of the city where she was not known and the clandestine nature had brought a certain spice as if she were having an
Then one night when her maid Ellen was having her regular evening away with her family, Muriel had permitted Samuel the house. It was dark enough that no-one might notice from the street and so she had allowed him in. And then she had allowed him quite a lot.
She had never enjoyed the act of love, it was something to be endured, like an affliction. Her husband Andrew had approached it as if measuring out a corpse.
A grim undertaking.
But Samuel Grant enjoyed what he termed
Besides Ellen’s regular absences, she encouraged the woman to vacate the premises on other evenings and Muriel was worried that her maid smelled a rat.
Yet she grew more reckless; sexual pleasure does have that effect. Rules the roost.
They pulled the curtains shut and Samuel had the run of the house. The master bedroom where the marital rites had been grindingly performed was abandoned in summary fashion and, pleading melancholic memories, Muriel had shifted to a smaller bouncier mattress in a more compact room. With no family portraits looming above.
This space she decorated in bright, vibrant colours, indulged in feminine frills and boudoir fripperies that would have given her late husband a heart attack had he not been already deceased from exactly that.
And it was from this chamber of guilty excess that she looked down upon the cause.
Samuel waved up cheerily. She had warned him previously that even though Ellen had her evening off, a long-standing social engagement must be fulfilled this night.
No matter, declared bluff Sam. He’d come late or he wouldn’t come at all. This was his style.
And she liked that.
But this time when she opened the front door and he slid in fast to embrace her in manly fashion, she retracted from desire in order to tell him the terrible events of the day.
Samuel’s eyes widened and he let out a small whistle of surprise.
‘That’s a lift tae lose,’ he announced.
‘I want my mother’s brooch. I was fond of the music box. The rest is not important.’
‘What about the money?’
‘I do not mourn it especially.’
Muriel shook her head to emphasise such and stepped back. A light from the hall lamp outlined her body
