Trick of the Light

Sophia Adler sat across the room from the two men and wondered why a memory from long ago had flashed a picture into her mind.

Her Uncle Bartholomew, smelling of strong tobacco, lifted her up into his arms and thrust her face into the magnolia blossom of a young tree. It was the middle of April, not long before her eighth birthday and she was giddy with excitement.

The sweet smell of the flowers, safely ensconced in their leathery green leaves, filled her very soul with a wild longing for something far beyond this existence.

‘Higher! Higher!’ she commanded and, grinning like a racoon, cigar clenched between his teeth, he thrust her up to the very limit of his powerful arms.

And there she lost herself.

Exultant.

That was before the mother’s betrayal of honour. Seven years later. In front of her daughter’s eyes.

Now, in an Edinburgh hotel room, with subdued pale pastels unlike the vivid colours of childhood, and a leaden sky outside which signalled clear blue was a distant recollection along with a yellow sun, she found herself gazing at Inspector James McLevy, wondering at the many paths that must have led the two of them into each other’s orbit.

For make no mistake, this was a dangerous man. The eyes slate-grey and wolf-like stared back into hers without the usual evasions of protocol.

He just…looked. Dispassionate. Observing. Perfectly still within. Nothing to prove.

Not unlike herself.

For McLevy’s part he, behind the deadpan exterior, was in the not uncommon state of having the voice of reason and authority blethering in one ear, and a slice of intuition that had no basis in East of Scotland pragmatism whispering in the other about some strange force field where unseen lines, like some sort of invisible web, connect all events, murderous and otherwise.

A sort of forensic mesmerism perhaps.

While taking Silver Samuel back to the station he had run into Sergeant Murdoch in the street, on his way back from a colleague’s funeral.

A fellow sergeant. All the more to be mourned.

But Murdoch did not partake of the demon drink. So while the rest of the mourners, in the main from Haymarket where the dead man had his station, got lashed into the funeral meats and decent whisky, Murdoch pressed the widow’s hand in sympathy and left.

McLevy took it as an omen. Murdoch in motion was like the sighting of a rare comet blazing through the heavens.

He shovelled the manacled Samuel onto the solemn-faced sergeant and bade him escort the prisoner to the cells where the inspector, on his return, would fill in the paperwork and all would be well with the known world.

What he did not mention was that Lieutenant Roach, already no doubt unimpressed by the detritus of the Moxey gang, would be likewise indifferent to Samuel’s arrival; small fry while more murderous and bigger fish swam free.

He would also be tired of receiving various delegations from his inspector like some sort of offering from a papal legate.

There would be hell to pay when he showed his face.

‘Tell him I’m on the case!’ McLevy bawled as he and Conan Doyle left the statuesque figures of sergeant and prisoner. ‘On the case!’

But was he? Or did he just, like many a married man, not want to find his way back home? Roach taking the part of the wife on the doorstep, rolling pin to hand?

Doyle had been pressing, as they marched down the street with the withdrawn Samuel in tow, attracting many passing curious glances which young Arthur rather revelled in, for an opportunity to accompany McLevy on a more demanding challenge – he, the great deductor having helped solve this one in the twinkling of an eye.

The inspector, his mind full of the problem of how to unravel The Riddle of the Battered Mason, muttered out a few details of the homicide investigation including at a final stroke the name of the murder victim.

No great confidentiality breached here; this would be in the newspaper soon enough, though Roach would try to keep it all under the carpet as long as he could in the hope that crime and solution appear on the same page.

McLevy doubted that. Such only occurred in cheap fiction. Easy in an armchair.

Doyle, after his initial shock, was thrilled by the gory details and fired questions right, left and centre.

His medical enthusiasm for the bloody entrails of the crime amused McLevy and lifted his spirits a little, for in truth he, at this juncture, had no route that opened out onto the killer. He needed something to break for cover.

The inspector teased the young man by withholding the name of Gilbert Morrison, revealing it at the end with a flourish as if he had accomplished some triumph, but Doyle, not for the first time, provided a surprise.

And what he said, face lit up with an infectious grin, was what had brought McLevy, after the felicitous dumping of Samuel, to the George Hotel.

To request an audience with Sophie Adler in his guise of investigating officer.

A slice of intuition.

Or just catching at a straw?

Conan Doyle, on the other hand, was counting his good fortune to be in her presence so unexpectedly soon for the favourable reply had come straight back. She had no audience that night and, even better, when they arrived at her door, Magnus Bannerman was notable by his absence.

The man had been pleasant enough but the younger man sensed a rival and a certain veiled contempt.

Many people took Doyle’s boisterous personality at face value and that was their mistake.

Sophia looked wan but composed. Some of the white-blonde hair escaped in wisps that clung to her delicate neck. Pretty as a picture.

She was once again wearing a simple gown, pale lilac in colour, which accentuated her youthful appearance and tenuous fragility.

Introductions made, politesse observed, all parties seated, McLevy got stuck in.

‘In your wee soiree last night, Mister Doyle here tells me you picked out a member of the audience and near choked at the sight of him.’

‘These were not my words,’ protested Doyle.

She smiled reassuringly at him but said nothing.

‘Ye pointed at him. A shilpit individual.’

‘Ah yes. I remember now.’ Sophia nodded slowly.

She rose from her chair and walked to the window to stare out at the back of the hotel building where the laundry rooms, kitchens and servant’s quarters lay.

Sophia had made it her business to spy out the lie of the land down there for her own reasons.

Magnus had the better view of the street but she enjoyed listening to the murmur of activity below, the occasional clatter of a plate and hastily stifled laughter.

Voices everywhere.

‘Do you believe in other worlds, inspector? A supra-normal plane where other forces exist and the spirits of the dead wander like lost children?’

She spoke formally, as if laying an injunction upon the policeman.

Now it was McLevy’s turn for silence. His face betrayed nothing. Doyle kept his eyes fixed upon Sophia as if at any moment a great mystery was about to be revealed.

‘An existence beyond ours,’ she continued more simply. ‘After death. Yet connected. A force like magnetism. Flows like blood around us all. We bathe in the same stream.’

McLevy surprised Doyle by nodding slowly, his face grave and thoughtful.

‘I know that dreams would indicate there’s more tae life than meets the eye. My mind is open.’