Jean Brash hesitated for a moment, then having knocked at the door to no response, pushed gently. It swung open. She took a quick, almost guilty, glance up and down the street, then slipped inside.
She found herself in a long gloomy hall with a sliver of light coming from a door, slightly ajar, at the opposite end from where she stood.
Deep breath. Her mind flipped back to the hand-delivered letter she had received that afternoon.
Hannah Semple, the only person Jean held in credence on this earth was at the safe house by Leith Links, the giant Angus to hand, making ready to scour the streets with their people once more to find the acid-pourer.
Jean’s reasoning was that the little swine would not show his face during the day and she had decided to stay at the Just Land to await results, part because she was too restless to sit on her backside and part because she did not want another incident like the Galloway one.
Then lo and behold the man himself had sent a missive.
And it chimed with some uneasy feelings that had been nagging away at her since this war with the Countess had begun.
Who could she really trust at the bitter end?
Once before she had let slip the reins of the bawdy-hoose when her heart had been usurped by an unscrupulous man who had twisted her like a fool.
Never again.
She had betrayed herself.
But what if this time it was another agent?
Jessie Nairn, for instance? Or was that too obvious? She had taken in a bunch of new magpies recently, wear and tear the cause. What if the Countess had been plotting ahead, and put her own agents inside to burrow and destroy from inwards like a worm in the gut? To steal? To destroy?
A bawdy-hoose, not unlike a merchant bank, stands or falls by reputation.
Jean had been queen bee for a long time and now there was another on the scene.
Had she grown too indolent, soft, lost her edge?
So she now found herself walking down the shadowed hall to prove or disprove all the thoughts milling round in her mind.
She called out softly, one hand inside her reticule firmly grasped upon her surgeon’s knife.
‘Mister Galloway? If you are present, step forward. Let us make peace and parley.’
No answer. She was not afraid. The man was a pipsqueak. But did he have a tale to tell?
She pushed at the partly opened door and it swung inwards to disclose a form wedged against the window, facing away from her. The room was in semi-darkness and the figure barely outlined by the light from outside but it seemed to be Logan Galloway, hands pressed up against the sill as if to steady himself.
Jean stepped in. Hand with the knife now by her side. A girl can’t be too careful.
‘Mister Galloway? You’re away in the wrong direction. I am here, sir. Ready to attend your proof.’
He made no response, stubbornly gazing out of the window as if deaf to her words.
‘Are you in the huff, Mister Galloway?’
Having said this, Jean stepped up with the intention to swing him round by the shoulder.
As she did so, there was a sharp movement behind her and a sudden accurate blow, crisply delivered, separated her from consciousness.
She fell to the floor, the knife in her outflung hand.
A girl can’t be too careful.
Not long after, Constable Ballantyne marched up Iona Street modestly aware that he was on time for his new beat, the previous constable having reported sick.
Ballantyne had jumped at the chance to take the man’s place and Lieutenant Roach, in the absence of his inspector, an absence that galled the good man no end, had granted permission with the proviso that the young constable held on firmly to his whistle.
However, such mistakes were in the past.
A seasoned campaigner.
Had he not already seen a corpse and only boaked the once?
So far, little of consequence, his mere presence on the streets giving the potential lawbreakers something to fear.
He checked the timepiece his mother had given him to celebrate his joining the ranks of law and order some three years before.
Half past the evening hour of six, precisely correct for the patrol; he had been given the times that the other officer, now sick of some palsy but a man to whom punctuality was God, adhered to without fail.
Time now to turn and make his way back home, to the end of this street and then right down Leith Walk itself, a proud but not prideful representative of authority in action.
A missile of some sort struck his official helmet with enough force to make his ears ring and what sounded like a snigger disturbed the stately calm of his patrol.
Ballantyne whipped round but there was nothing to be seen except… Now his hawklike eyes fixed upon an open door which had escaped his earlier scrutiny.
It swung slightly as if a malefactor had perhaps just dashed inside.
Ballantyne noted the number. Thirty-two. It would be in his report.
He took a firm grip of his now-drawn truncheon and followed the path of another pilgrim who had taken the same route some time previous.
Down the same gloomy corridor, heart pumping, not daring to say a word lest it come out a wee bit squeaky.
Pushed at the same partly opened door and walked inside.
There was enough light from the moon to let Ballantyne come to certain conclusions.
For the moment it was an assumption to be verified but it forced a gasp of strange exultation from his lips. It was a policeman’s dream.
A tableau arranged in tasteful fashion; no gobbets of gore to spoil the elegant lines, save for one outstretched hand bearing traces of what looked like blood.
‘Dead bodies,’ announced Constable Ballantyne in wonder to himself. ‘A’ over the place.’
24
Oh Lady! we receive but what we give,
