‘What?’
‘I like the boxing. I was informed there might be a good contest up at the university. I saw you in the ring.’
Indeed it had been a fine contest. McLevy stood well to the back as the students cheered on one side against another. The final bout had been Conan Doyle contra the squat form of a burly Welshman, the visiting college being St David’s from the land of leeks.
Doyle at first had found it hard to lay a glove on the man who was built like a small bull, had a low centre of gravity, and was crafty withal according to the popular conception of his race.
Arthur had hurt his hand punching down and a roundhouse swing from his opponent had hit him flush under the eye. The second round was more even but in the third, as the Welshman ran out of steam, Doyle finally landed a straight right that put the man on the floor and ended proceedings.
The winner was cheered on especially by the medical students, an unruly lot and more so by dint of some being recently qualified.
All this McLevy had observed, so when Doyle came charging into Leith station the next morning, his card was already marked and accounted.
The purveyor of the straight right had his guard down and jaw dropped.
‘So your deduction was completely false?’
‘Not at all. Completely true. I jist knew the facts before. Not after.’
Doyle gave the unperturbed inspector what could only be described as an old-fashioned look.
‘I might beg to differ with you on the matter of truth here.’
‘Differ away.’
‘You deceived me.’
‘Not at all. Had ye asked I would have told you. Ye didnae think tae ask. You were too caught up in the process tae consider otherwise. The mind is full of such traps.’
They had been speaking softly enough for such a potentially barbed exchange and McLevy hung his head out again to scan the street and rooftops.
Nothing. Silence. Back to Big Arthur. He had a disappointed expression; a dog lost its bone.
‘And your deductions of the Grierson burglary?
‘Based on experience. I told you.’
James McLevy rarely explained himself; the way he saw things, the more folk knew about you the more they jumped to erroneous conclusions.
However something about this young man dictated McLevy ignore his usual practice.
And nothing was stirring out there. Not even a mouse.
‘There are three intelligences we must bring to a crime, Mister Doyle. Forensic, intuitive and experiential.’
‘Which is most important?’
‘That depends on the crime. Mostly they go hand in hand.’
Doyle mulled that over. He had his own ideas. ‘Have you heard of Joseph Bell?’ he asked.
‘Uhuh. Even attended one his lectures. He’s a wee bit gabby but not daft.’
This description of the brilliant lecturer and forensic surgeon that Doyle worshipped and admired above all men came up a little short in his estimation but he now knew enough about McLevy not to rise to the bait.
‘I serve as his clerk at the Edinburgh Royal,’ Arthur said quietly. ‘He is certainly not daft.’
The lecture McLevy had attended by sneaking in at the back, having brandished his warrant card at a university porter, had been a bravura performance.
Bell was a compelling orator and the students hung on his every word. His deductive forensic qualities were striking but, to the inspector’s jaundiced eye, it was all theory. Murder is not theoretical. It involves passion and blood.
He could see how Bell would appeal to a hungry intelligence like Doyle’s and wondered if his niggling feeling of annoyance was jealousy of sorts.
Bell was famous. Admired. McLevy was a policeman.
He suddenly stiffened and put his hand warningly on Conan Doyle’s sleeve.
For a moment the young man thought the inspector was trying to distract from an argument he might lose, then he heard what McLevy’s sharp ears had picked up a moment ago.
A scraping noise, high above.
They both peeped out like two boys hiding away in a child’s game.
In the blackness, on the slates opposite, a dark shape was moving across the rooftops. Difficult to see in the mirk of this late October night but there was a moment when a shaft of pale moonlight pierced the sullen clouds and the shrouded figure of something showed for a second before the dark descended once more.
‘Come on!’
McLevy darted across the road and rapped sharply three times upon one of the doors opposite. A moment later, the frightened face of Walter Morrison peeped out.
The inspector signalled and a small horse and trap that had been parked out of sight, in fact a contrivance that Doyle had known nothing about, trotted up with a stolid driver who wore a cloth cap pulled over his eyes.
‘Take the gentleman to your mother’s abode, Murdo,’ said McLevy, urgently, ‘and wait till you hear from me.’
He virtually bundled Morrison into the trap and just before Murdo set the horse in motion, McLevy fixed the scared Walter with a cold implacable stare.
‘Eighteen years ago,’ he declared. ‘I know the story. When I see you next, I want the truth.’
Morrison’s face went a shade of sickly white as Murdo flicked the horse with a whip being used for proper purpose, and off they went.
As McLevy and Doyle went through the house and up the stairs, the inspector explained events so far.
‘Murdo is slow-witted but trustworthy. He was once accused over the murder of a bairn, but I cleared him. His mother is forever grateful and runs a respectable lodging house.’
They conversed breathlessly as they hurried to the top of the stairs where another small flight led upwards to the attic room.
‘I spoke tae Morrison some days ago and warned him that if he didnae wish to be slaughtered under his own roof, he should open the door instant to my signalled knock.’
‘You anticipated all this?’
‘It was a possibility. That’s the fourth intelligence I forgot tae tell you as regards crime. Predetermination.’
They now entered the attic room with the skylight window letting in faint light from above; McLevy signed Doyle to a corner in the gloom, and stood back so that he had a clear view of the window above.
He produced his old black revolver and took a deep breath.
‘You will observe only, Mister Doyle,’ he said softly. ‘With luck, the killer will be taken. Clean and simple.’
That wasn’t, however, the feeling he had in his bones.
They waited in silence. Doyle thrilled to be a part of the murder investigation, McLevy as if carved out of stone.
A creak on the roof above.
Wait.
Silence.
Then the skylight began to buckle as if some force were pressing it out of shape. A slow protest of hinges being wrenched and suddenly the window was hauled bodily off its moorings and a rush of damp evening air announced that the room was now at the mercy of the elements.
A grunting animal noise and then strangely a voice that was unlike any human sound but made words like an axe would splinter shards out of stone.
The hairs on the back of Doyle’s neck prickled and he felt a primitive fear that urged him to run. Do not meddle with the beast. Run. Run for your life.
