Trick of the Light

‘Doctor Jarvis agreed wi’ me, sir –’

‘A wonder in itself, I know, but still not enough –’

‘A professional job, atween the third and fourth ribs, straight into the heart, one thrust.’

‘Scientific, almost,’ Mulholland offered.

‘A practised killer. Too professional. Even for Jean Brash.’

‘You think so?’ Roach looked across at Queen Victoria who seemed doubtful as well.

The monarch had been on that wall for a while. Stasis breeds doubt, no denying that.

‘Jarvis remarked the wound to be a touch wider than Jean’s blade.’

‘She may have sawed it back and forth to extract the weapon she had just used for murder. Not very professional, of course, which destroys your previous argument.’

Roach was pleased with this and glanced to see if Mulholland had appreciated the subtle riposte but for some reason the constable’s face registered a blank.

‘Again,’ McLevy hammered out, undeterred, ‘Jarvis agreed with what both Mulholland and I had previously noted; Galloway was stabbed from the left. “Sinister”, said he.’

‘Jean Brash is right-handed,’ Mulholland added.

‘Her only orthodoxy,’ said Roach dryly, however it did make some impression on him; left-handers were the bane of his life, he had lost in the President’s Cup to one not two months ago.

However it was still not enough.

‘All very circumstantial and does not justify an official search warrant to enter the property.’

This was the rub.

To apply successfully for such a warrant through official channels needed a lieutenant’s approval.

Of course McLevy could barge in unofficially and rampage through the Countess’s hotel but if resisted, if there were problems, he would need a force of men.

Without endorsement he could only rely on Mulholland at best and even that was not sure; and if by any chance the raid was unsuccessful the inspector ran the risk of the instant discipline of demotion.

McLevy had too many black marks on his record as it stood. A series of heavy scores. He had once got across the present prime minister, Gladstone, and was only rescued by the fact that he saved the man’s life.

The inspector indicated the cable that lay on Roach’s desk, read by the lieutenant but not, McLevy was certain, appreciated to full extent.

‘The knifeman frae the Rustie Nail, the acid-pourer at the market –’

The likeness of Lily’s was beside the cable and McLevy gestured again to make sure Roach realised the burgeoning significance of it all.

‘I sent the description to a colleague of mine in London…a professional killer, plump, left-handed, looks like a squashed toad, and he came back with a name. Alfred Binnie. A hired assassin. Apprentice at one time to Tom Partridge of Shoreditch, who was top of his trade. Binnie took over the mantle. Some say he killed his master to be the only one on hand.’

‘This colleague has done you proud,’ Roach muttered, skimming the contents once more.

‘Binnie has not been seen around his usual haunts in Shoreditch for a wee while. I believe he is in Edinburgh.’

‘And where does that get us exactly?’

This from Roach was quite hopeful in that he had not dismissed the cable out of hand.

Mulholland had been well briefed by McLevy before they entered and though he may have had lingering doubts himself, he took a deep breath as they went for broke.

‘Jean Brash may have walked into a trap, sir,’ he opined, moving off the door to the side so that they flanked Roach as if he indeed were a suspect.

‘Binnie made the kill. Laid it on Jean,’ McLevy said.

‘The Countess is behind it. A war between them, sir.’

‘I have a witness who has seen Binnie in the lair of the Countess,’ McLevy added, his eyes gleaming with hunting fever. ‘I know his hiding place. Take him and we crack the case but I need to get in the front door!’

‘We’ll cover the back with a few men,’ Mulholland said hopefully. ‘Diversion and deception, sir.’

Which might well describe what the two were about with their own superior officer.

‘Who is this witness?’ asked Roach, unmoved by all this diversification.

‘Her identity must be secret. For the moment. But I guarantee her veracity.’

The lieutenant sniffed at that unsatisfactory reply from his inspector and then asked the question that had been in his mind since the two had entered his office.

‘Inspector. Are you sure your feelings are not personally involved and that you are therefore indulging in what I can only describe as…wishful thinking?’

McLevy froze like a statue and Mulholland tensed, wondering if, as his Aunt Katie would have put it, the fox has bit the hen and watch the feathers flying.

‘I have no personal feeling where justice is concerned,’ the inspector said quietly. ‘But I believe there is a danger we may fail innocence in this case no matter how unlikely the accused is to deserve such designation.’

‘Belief?’ said Roach seizing on the word. ‘I need more than that. I need proof. Facts. Indisputable facts.’

‘Then you may have to take my word for it, sir. That we will find proof. Behind the door of the Countess.’

Roach said nothing.

Over the years he had borne witness to the fact that McLevy’s instincts had their own truth to tell. But they also invariably got the lieutenant into hot water.

Scalding, on occasions.

This could be one of those times.

Mulholland thought to say something more but a slight movement of his inspector’s hand stilled the voice within.

In the stretched silence there was a timid knock at the door and it sprang open, breaking the tension, to reveal the figure of Ballantyne who held out a dusty folder like some sort of sacrificial offering.

‘I found it, sir,’ he said. ‘It was gey well hidden.’

‘My thanks, Ballantyne,’ replied McLevy accepting the folder with due gravity. ‘We are lost without you.’

He turned to the questioning look of his lieutenant.

‘The Morrison case,’ he said. ‘Key information.’

‘Oh? You haven’t forgotten it then?’

To this waspish retort the inspector inclined a dignified nod. Dignity, as a poet had once told him, is a good way to keep your hat on your head in a howling gale.

‘My mind is full of many things, sir. Many of them awaiting action.’

Back to Roach.

His long jaw twitched from side to side, a sign of intense cogitation.

McLevy, a man who was rarely still, once more resembled a statue.

Ballantyne looked at Mulholland, who was taller than everyone else and could therefore stare off into space without being interrupted.

The young constable apprehended something was going on but he was buggered if he knew how it was constituted.

Then he saw to his dismay that just past Mulholland’s lanky figure, on the wall, a small insect was making its way up the portrait of Queen Victoria.

It looked like a churchyard beetle, which had the habit, when disturbed, of squirting a smelly, yellowish- brown fluid from the raised tip of the abdomen.

What if it did so over Queen Victoria?

However if Ballantyne raised the alarm, either one of these three merciless men, in defence of the realm, would spatter the insect where it strived.

But could he stand by and let such a creature crawl over the face of the monarch?

Decision, decisions.