Jean took another hungry gulp at the coffee and nearly spat it back into the mug.
‘That sergeant of yours is worried I might poison myself but he’s near beat me to it.’
McLevy handed back the letter without immediate comment on the contents.
‘Ye best keep that safe. Evidence at trial.’
‘Whit good will it do?’
‘Depends on the accused.’
The inspector had a big smile on his face and Jean was at once wary.
A policeman’s smile is second only to a politician’s in terms of potential treachery.
‘Alfred Binnie,’ he announced. ‘That’s his name as I am told by cable from London town this morning.’
‘Who might that be?’
‘The acid-pourer. Handy wi’ a knife as well.’
Jean had a feeling that she was being manoeuvred in the mind; was McLevy holding out some hope?
‘And I think I know where tae find him.’
She said nothing. It would come. McLevy chuckled annoyingly to himself.
‘How mony occasions have we twa sat together?’
‘Every time there’s misery in the land,’ she replied grimly as he chortled away, as if at some private joke.
‘How’s your neck?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Ye had an ache there.’
‘It’s better now.’
‘It’ll be worse after trial.’
His face was serious all of a sudden.
‘The Countess. She is too clever for you, Jean.’
‘I wouldnae say that.’
‘She set a trap and in you walked like a blind fool.’
Jean threw the dregs of coffee from the tin mug onto the cell floor and McLevy frowned to see such desecration, but she had used the displacement for her own calculation.
‘That means you believe me innocent.’
‘It is of no matter.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I can provide no proof.’
McLevy leant in close to the bars so that his big white face filled up the space like a huge balloon.
‘She has you beaten, Jean, every way you turn – admit the fact.’
‘I’ll never admit it.’
‘Then help me prove otherwise.’
‘How?’
This was the second time in days that the inspector had glimpsed a look of naked entreaty in her eyes and he wondered at the feelings it provoked in his heart.
A cruel affection. One fights the other.
Love like a trail of blood.
He ignored any depth of thought and returned to facts.
‘Maisie Powers. She left your establishment.’
‘I caught her jinking on the side. That’s against the rules of the house. They all know the rules.’
‘Yet ye dealt with her kindly?’
Jean nodded.
The girl’s brother had been a hopeless opium addict and the reason for Maisie selling her wares outside of the Just Land was to clear his debts with the suppliers.
By supplying them with her stock in trade.
But then you ran a high risk of the pox and it was instant dismissal for that reason. Jean ran a clean house; it could not be otherwise.
She had felt sorry for Maisie and given her a small sum of money to cushion the blow.
The girl had been grateful for small mercies.
The brother had died not long after, so it was all for nothing.
And Maisie?
‘She sells her body for the Countess now,’ McLevy offered, as Jean’s silence had stretched.
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘She may have inside knowledge. I need tae tap upon it. She will not talk to me.’
‘No wonder. You threw her mother in jail.’
‘I caught her shoplifting.’
‘For her own daughter’s wedding!’
Maisie’s older sister, rendering McLevy somewhat unwelcome in the family circle.
He glared at Jean.
This was developing into an unseemly fracas despite the deadly situation.
‘The law is the law.’
‘Aye. Kiss my backside, said the rich man.’
McLevy took a deep breath. He’d be damned if this woman would distract him from his bounden duty.
‘You must get word to her that I am to be trusted.’
‘How can I do that? I am in the jail.’
‘And liable to stay there!’
He bawled this into her face from short distance, eyes almost popping in fury.
Jean took thought. This was her only hope at present, popeyes or not.
It went against the grain having to provide a policeman with her official approval and if word spread, she would lose face amongst the fraternity, but needs must when Satan holds the reins.
‘Calm yourself down, James,’ she said primly. ‘You’ll give your body a seizure.’
She removed a thin gold ring with a tiny inset gem from her little finger.
‘Show Maisie this. She aye admired it. Say it’s hers with my blessing for the right information.’
Jean dropped it into his hand.
The tiny circlet of gold glinted against the hard skin of his palm. Resting where the line of life crossed over.
31
It’s a damned, long, dark, boggy, dirty, dangerous way.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH,
Maisie Powers looked at the ring as it lay in McLevy’s hand and near spat on it. The hand that is, not the circlet.
He had tracked her down to one of the smaller taverns by the dockside, the Green Lady, a respectable enough place where they at least washed the floor now and then, where she was in the habit of treating her aged mother, Molly, to a mid-morning dram before starting the day’s labour.
Luckily the old harridan had not yet arrived and the inspector was in a hurry to get out before Molly got in.
‘I dae this for Jean,’ said Maisie. ‘No’ for you. Give back the ring. This is for free.’
