‘The beast that was once Magnus Bannerman. He said these words. Do you recollect them?’
He wanted her to know that however she twisted and turned, spirits, visions be damned. He was on her trail.
She registered that but shook her head anyway.
‘It is all a mystery to me.’
‘That’s my meat and drink,’ said McLevy, ‘mystery.’
He closed the door but just as she breathed a sigh of relief, it popped open again and he stuck his head in like an ogre from some fairy tale, the gaps in his teeth showing from a troll-like grin.
‘Don’t forget my ticket.’
‘What?’
‘The box office. At the Tanfield Hall. Wouldnae want to miss your last show.’
‘I have not yet decided.’
‘Oh, you’ll be there,’ said James McLevy. ‘I feel it in my bones.’
The door finally closed and Sophia moved swiftly to turn the key in the lock lest another visitation occur.
Then she leant her back against it and let the hot scalding tears flow down her face.
The vision she had seen. The pool of blood, the body in the street – had it been the good man?
Grief and rage.
One dead, one still alive.
37
There’s nothing of so infinite vexation
As man’s own thoughts.
JOHN WEBSTER,
It is a rare event for me to feel tired but I am driven to that conclusion this hour of four in the morning.
No wonder, however, I am exhausted.
In one day I have been near brained to death by ravening beast, watched a young woman breathe her last, shot the aforesaid beastie, rescued a bawdy-hoose keeper from a doom she brought upon herself, stuck another in jail for much the same thing, hammered a knifeman, been delivered by a projected cricket ball, near disgraced myself by passion inappropriate and forgot to feed the cat.
Indeed McLevy had returned, heated up a pot of coffee as best he could on the embers of the big late-night fire his landlady had left burning in the grate, then opened the attic window to scan the rooftops for Bathsheba.
But she was not to be seen. In the huff, probably. The inspector had then commenced to sit at his table and write.
A good way to get things out of the system.
The birdies are beginning to chirp away at the dawn chorus and I am too tired to go to bed.
Sophia Adler is a powerful creature and you may only wonder what would happen if such power were used for malevolent ends. As I believe it has been.
I have read a deal about mesmerism in my scientific journals and though there is great debate over the merits, there seems little doubt over its capacity to influence others through the medium of such power. Whether this triggers a kind of autosuggestion or is imposed from without, one of its striking offshoots is the ability to control the minds of others.
Hypnotic trance. Witchcraft by any other name, according to the good Christian folk who burnt those accused of sorcery right, left and centre to preserve the faith.
There is no doubt Sophia Adler has that power, I could have lost my very essence in her violet eyes.
Luckily, as in my dream, I was able to wrench myself to safety.
But what if you did not have the strength?
What if she was able to control Magnus Bannerman and then unleash a primitive anger and violence such as we all have lurking in the depths of our being?
It’s never far away. See what happens in war.
Civilisation. Skin deep.
I believe Magnus Bannerman to have been her instrument of destruction so she didnae get her hands dirty.
A perfect crime.
How do I therefore find her out?
She is like an amphibian that slips from one world to another. I am on dry land, she in the waters. By the time I get the boat launched, she’s back on shore.
And underneath it all I sense the Imp of Vengeance. A livid presence, an opposite figure to the Christian God with his white hair or saintly son, crowned in thorns.
Another primitive, dark force that dwells in the deep fissures of the psyche and cuts a swathe through any concept of morality or structured law.
It will have blood.
I am only too aware of this force in myself that I keep contained within the boundaries of justice.
Without them I too might be a beast on the prowl.
Seeking vengeance from the world for a wee boy who watched the blood drip from his mother’s throat onto the pillow where she laid her head.
We all seek reparation for past wrongs.
Or even present ones.
But it must be done within the bounds of law, otherwise the world is mad and the savage beast within holds sway.
Sophia Adler is such a beast. No matter how beautiful her face, how justified her cause – she has caused death for her own dark ends.
And I must bring her down.
But how?
McLevy slowly shut his diary and let his mind drift this way and that with the current of his unconscious.
What had she said?
Was there a challenge in these words? A part of the wrongdoer seeks to be discovered. To sabotage the guilty self.
For some reason Poe’s story of
A man kills another then buries his victim beneath the dead man’s own floorboards. The thud of the murdered heart haunts the killer, growing louder by the second until he screams out a confession to the police who are sitting in the very room come to investigate the disappearance but, in the main, probably just hoping for a cup of tea somewhere.
