She took a deep breath, mimed someone pushing her in, then pointed urgently upwards.
McLevy cursed to himself. This was the wrong place to be for a policeman searching out a murderer.
Now, moments later, after heaving himself up the stairs, he was in the right place. At the wrong time.
Two bodies lay on the floor. One Mulholland, the other Jessie Nairn.
A cold light came into his eyes and he raised the revolver to point at Binnie.
‘Give me an excuse,’ said the inspector of police.
But the little man had one more trick up his sleeve, darting to the side behind the paralysed Ballantyne and putting the sharp edge of his knife against the red patch that signalled a beginning to the birthmark.
‘I’ll cut his throat,’ he said softly. ‘No problem.’
McLevy sighted down the barrel but Binnie ducked behind Ballantyne and started edging towards the door using the other as cover, dragging the young constable like a dumb animal to slaughter.
‘Keep well back,’ he warned. ‘Or his head falls off. That’d be fun.’
The inspector performed as bidden. The little man’s calmness was oddly unnerving but that was not the reason.
McLevy had noted, as they shuffled past Mulholland, that the constable’s hand had wrapped itself once more around his stick. Good that the man wasn’t entirely dead.
Now what he needed was a chance.
McLevy suddenly let out a tremendous roar and pointed to the window as if Satan had just flown in.
An old trick for sure. But old are often best.
Alfred’s turn to be distracted. For a second his head turned and the knife came away a fraction from Ballantyne’s neck.
Not much, but enough.
Mulholland’s arm swept up in an arc and the hard tip of hornbeam crunched against Binnie’s left elbow, numbing the arm like a bolt from the blue and enabling Ballantyne to pull himself free while McLevy stepped forward to confront the cursing Binnie.
The little man flipped the knife over to his other hand.
‘I’m just as good with the right,’ he said.
‘That’s nice,’ replied McLevy.
He stepped up so that there was hardly arm’s length between them, and before Binnie could make his move, the inspector’s hand was a blur in the air as the barrel of his gun crashed against the side of the killer’s head.
As Binnie slumped downwards, McLevy adroitly relieved him of his knife, turned him, slapped on the restrainers to pinion his hands behind the back, and then threw the man bodily into the corner like a sack of coal.
In almost the same motion he moved to kneel by Mulholland who was wincing in pain, supporting himself on the one elbow.
‘How are ye, Martin?’ McLevy questioned anxiously.
‘Terrible, if that’s you on my Christian name,’ gasped the constable.
‘Jist asking.’
They both looked down to where the blood was oozing slowly through the thick serge of Mulholland’s uniform.
‘I think only a flesh wound,’ muttered the constable, ‘but it’s a deal of flesh.’
‘I can help,’ said Ballantyne, suddenly pulling a pure Egyptian cotton sheet from the bed of Jean Brash and ripping it in pieces.
He knelt down and gently undid the buttons of the uniform and pulled up the shirt to uncover a nasty looking gash mercifully not near any vital organs, which he neatly wiped clean and then began to wrap round with the makeshift bandage.
‘My mother’s a nurse,’ he explained.
Then he looked up for a second at Mulholland.
‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I brought this on.’
In spite of it all, Mulholland was oddly pleased to be called ‘sir’.
‘Just don’t do it again, constable,’ he replied with a grimace of pain. ‘Lest the luck run out.’
A low moan from Jessie brought McLevy over to her side. This wound was not so hopeful.
The death sheen was already on her face. It was something the inspector had observed before and he could see in her eyes that Jessie knew she was going into darkness.
‘Are you of the faith, McLevy?’ she murmured faintly.
‘No. Jist a policeman.’
She managed a crooked smile at the answer.
‘I need tae confess.’
‘Consider it so.’
He motioned the other two over to listen in as evidential proof; Mulholland had to inch along, wound or no wound. Every dying testimony needs a living witness. That’s the law.
Her eyes closed and McLevy knew there was little time.
‘You were planted, were you not, Jessie?’
‘Aye. The Countess had doubts on Simone. I was to go with her. Wherever. Spy the land.’
‘And Galloway?’
‘That jist happened by accident. But I sent word tae her that he might be an enemy of Jean’s. And the Countess made a plan.’
‘What would he get out of it?’
‘Promised him free rein. The Countess. A’ the women in the world.’
She coughed and a little smear of blood fell out of the corner of her mouth. Ballantyne leant forward and wiped it clean with a rag of Egyptian cotton.
‘Good looking boy,’ said Jessie.
Ballantyne retreated in confusion.
McLevy considered it time to help the girl along.
‘So Galloway was a dupe. He thought Jean was to be enticed, then kidnapped, stuck on a boat tae South America, lost at sea, whatever. Disappeared, at all counts. He didnae realise he was to be the corpse, and she get the blame.’
Jessie nodded slowly.
‘Aye. No flies on you, inspector.’
Jessie tried to laugh but the effort was too painful.
‘That’s whit I thought as well. That she’d be stuck away somewhere. But when the killing happened. Too late.
‘Why did ye do it all, Jessie?’
‘I’m jist pure evil.’
‘No, you’re not.’
For a moment she looked into his eyes.
‘Sure you’re no’ a priest?’
He smiled bleakly. Shook his head. She sighed.
‘The Countess. Promised me my own place. I’d be queen bee. Never had anything. Of my own. Ever.’
For a moment he looked into her eyes and saw a lonely child who had never known love or anything close to it.
‘And I’ll wager ye locked wee Lily in the cellar to keep her safe? Once the fire had started, let her out, say it was all an accident. No Mistress Brash tae worry you?’
Jessie nodded.
‘Jean was fair. I felt bad. But I did it anyway.’
An epitaph for humankind.
McLevy assumed official tones.
‘Jessie Nairn, do you swear in the presence of these witnesses that what you have told is the mortal
