‘I was hit on the head, that’s all I know,’ she ended the tale. Then I woke up and saw that boy’s face staring down at me. Poor soul.’
‘Poor soul?’ asked the inspector.
‘Wi’ that mark on him.’
‘We all have them. Some show, some don’t.’
Jean made no response to that portentous statement but unconsciously her hand massaged at the nape of the neck.
‘Aye, you’ve a wee bruise on the back belfry,’ said McLevy brusquely. ‘But nothing that would contradict the known facts.’
Mulholland altered position at the door as if he had received a hidden signal.
‘And what are these facts?’ Jean asked quietly.
‘You and Galloway quarrelled, the knife was drawn, he turned to flee –’
‘You stuck him in the rear side, direct into the vital organs,’ Mulholland chimed in, coming away from the wall, while McLevy stood up from his chair.
A well-worn routine but no less effective for all that.
‘Your hand was smeared with blood,’ McLevy stated.
‘Galloway’s blood,’ from Mulholland.
‘With his dying breath he lashed out.’
‘Knocked you over. You hit your head. Down and out.’
‘Until Ballantyne found you. Lucky that,’ said the inspector.
‘Lucky? I don’t see how,’ Jean muttered. She was beginning to develop a savage neck ache and these two big baw-faced policemen looming over her did not help.
‘Lucky for us, Mistress Brash. The unconscious part,’ answered Mulholland.
‘Otherwise you’d have retrieved the knife and made off, free as a bird,’ the inspector added.
‘But not this time,’ Mulholland ventured.
McLevy put his hands on the table and leaned in towards Jean to emphasise the words.
‘This time, you’ve come to earth.’
Jean clasped her own hands in front of her like a pious churchgoer and looked coolly into McLevy’s grim face.
‘I deny everything you say.’
He swung away as if in disbelief at her bare-faced repudiation and Mulholland took over the frame.
‘We checked the house. Belonged to a crony of Galloway’s. For their wild rants and suchlike. Why were you there, Mistress Brash?’
‘I told you. He wrote me a letter. To meet together.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps he wished…to apologise.’
‘Where is this letter?’
Jean closed her eyes for a moment trying to concentrate her very being; the ground was sliding beneath her feet.
‘In my…travelling bag.’
McLevy spoke, examining one of the smears on the wall, back turned as if he had lost interest.
‘I took the liberty of examining the contents of your reticule. There is no such thing.’
‘You rifled my belongings?’
‘You are in custody now. You belong tae us.’
‘Anyone else see this disappearing letter?’ asked Mulholland sceptically.
Jean sighed. ‘No.’
‘And you went tae meet this man on your own?’ McLevy said to the smear. ‘No Hannah Semple? No Angus?’
‘They were busy, and I can look after myself.’
‘That’s what it looks like,’ Mulholland commented. ‘What with your knife planted in his corpse.’
‘Things are not always what they seem. He may well have been dead when I arrived.’
‘You couldn’t see?’
‘The room was dark.’
Jean sighed again. It wasn’t so much a matter of how she had got into the mess; there had been time to think on the hard bunk and she had a deep suspicion about who was behind all this. The problem was how to get out of it.
There was nothing she could do stuck in jail and Hannah Semple, redoubtable though she might be, did not have the wherewithal to untangle this web of deceit.
And her lawyers could do nothing. Not with the given facts. She was stuck like a cow in the mire.
No. There was only one hope.
And he was returning from the stained wall to stand before her.
‘I could say more. But it’s a waste of time. I’ll content myself wi’ this: I am innocent.’
‘That’s not much in the way of proof, Mistress Brash,’ Mulholland said remonstratively.
Jean shrugged. She had not taken her eyes off McLevy.
‘It leaves us with the facts as witnessed,’ he uttered soberly. ‘And I think they’re strong enough to seal your death warrant. Or if not execution, a long slow miserable demise rotting away in the Perth penitentiary.’
This was not music to her ears.
Not at all hopeful.
McLevy leaned in tight again and whispered the words, softly, as if he might utilise the mesmeric influences floating around Edinburgh.
‘Confess, Jean. Gang easy. Throw yourself on the mercy of the court; admit your guilt. It may work in mitigation. But you must confess.’
They were eye to eye now and she could not tell if he were challenging from what he truly believed or trying to push her to the limit of self-credence.
‘I’ll see you in hell first,’ she replied equally softly. ‘And answer me this: why would I want to kill him?’
‘Ye’d had a rammy the night before. He threatened you, perhaps. Self-defence, eh?’
‘Defence or no, I never touched the man.’
‘His blood on your hand, your knife in his rearward side. It’s more than enough.’
She shivered, not from any residual guilt but from a shaft of pain that had clamped around her neck.
As if in answer, McLevy moved ever closer. His white parchment face filled her vision and, for the inspector’s part, he gazed into her green eyes and caught the delicate scent of French perfume.
They say that you should only smell a woman’s fragrance when in the act of love.
But there are other times.
‘Look in my eyes, Jean, he murmured. ‘Tell me you are innocent.’
There was a long moment as she held his gaze, her own regard unwavering.
‘I am innocent,’ she finally answered.
From Mulholland’s point of view all he could see was two heads together, like horses whispering in a field.
Then the silence was broken by a soft cruel laugh.
‘What a pity,’ said the inspector of police to the bawdy-hoose keeper, ‘your whole life contradicts that wee notion.’
Jean still did not waver.
‘You are a bastard, James McLevy,’ she said calmly.
Then, under her breath, as if she did not even want to hear the words herself she added, ‘
‘
