With a muttered curse McLevy was out of his seat and trampling over the legs and feet of others as he struggled to get to the lunatic figure of Carlisle.
Screams and shouts rang out from the audience. Roach was also moving with surprising speed out of his row down towards the frail, deadly figure holding a gun that by all known science should have blown up in his hand.
As Carlisle waved the pistol round in a threatening arc, McLevy thudded in and brought the deranged man to the floor. As he hauled out the restrainers a hand pulled them from his grasp.
‘I’ll see to this,’ said Roach grimly. ‘You deal with the woman. She has the more need.’
McLevy ran for the stage and scrambled up onto the bare boards. Conan Doyle had already got there in one leap and leant over the still form of Sophia. The inspector was about to push the young man aside when he remembered that he was in fact a doctor.
Doyle by now had ripped a portion of the dress away to reveal the wound in her pale flesh.
One look in the man’s eyes and McLevy had his own dark suspicions confirmed.
It was a death wound.
Both men inclined over the veiled figure from either side and McLevy gently eased off the silver circlet to reveal the wan face below.
‘You are late, inspector,’ she murmured. ‘I thought better of you.’
‘I am here now,’ he replied.
She signalled him close while Doyle tried in vain to stem a wound that would never cease.
‘
‘Too risky,’ McLevy muttered.
She laughed and the convulsion brought some blood up into her mouth.
The inspector was reminded that this was the second young woman he had watched die in a few days.
A bad habit.
Her eyes were focused on something over his shoulder.
‘A black shape,’ she said.
The inspector glanced upwards. He could see nothing.
‘It was terrible luck,’ he said. ‘Jupiter couldnae hit a barn door.
‘Jupiter?’
‘That’s his name.’
She smiled, then a look of pain came into her eyes.
‘Not luck. Just…fate.’
He hesitated, she being on the point of death; but once a policeman, always so. He spoke quietly.
‘Is there aught upon your conscience, Miss Sinclair?’
Sophia registered his deliberate use of the name but made no more of it.
‘Should there be?’
‘As regards, say, the murder of Gilbert Morrison?’
‘He deserved it.’
‘What did you do to Magnus Bannerman?’
‘Whispered in his ear.’
With that she turned away to Conan Doyle who had heard nothing of their talk, being concerned to stanch the flow of blood even though he knew his efforts to be in vain.
Sophia reached up a hand to touch his face; Doyle held back his tears in the approved manly fashion, but his lip trembled and his eyes showed the feeling in his heart.
Perhaps a chivalric delusion.
Perhaps the love of his life.
Take your pick.
‘You are a good man, Mister Doyle,’ she said quietly. ‘You must always…be on guard.’
He bent his great head over her hand and kissed it with his lips in the manner of a gallant knight.
She closed her eyes and saw a vision of her father riding over the hill, ready to sweep her up in his arms.
‘You are a good man,’ she said.
Then she died.
Slipped from one world to another. Or Heaven. Or Hell. Or nowhere. Depending upon the point of view.
Doyle took her pulse as a medical man should, then laid the veil softly once more over her white face.
McLevy stood up. The members of the Spiritualist Society had restrained the audience from crowding round the stage and the shouts and screams had become low murmurs.
Then strangely, as if a hand had been laid across them, they stilled the noise and the place once more fell silent.
All eyes were upon him.
The inspector stood like an actor who has forgotten his lines.
His mind was full of thoughts he could not share.
Was it just bad luck or had the spirits taken revenge for the misuse of power?
McLevy would never know.
He bowed his head to signal death and the whole audience followed suit.
One voice broke that terrible silence. It came from a man face down on the floor, hands cuffed behind his back.
Jupiter Carlisle chanted to himself in a cracked harsh croak, like a frog in the night.
‘The Lord anoints. The Lord provides. He will weigh you in the balance. The Lord provides. The Lord anoints.’
41
Times go by turns, and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
ROBERT SOUTHWELL,
When McLevy entered the station next day, the first person to meet his eyes was Muriel Grierson.
In truth so much had happened in the interim that he almost did not recognise the woman. Also she had somewhat changed in appearance and attitude.
Her eyes gazed at him with level strength as opposed to their usual bird-like distraction, and she was dressed in a style more befitting to her age.
As if she had come to terms with something.
As if she meant business.
She was sitting on the little bench at the station desk, ignored by Sergeant Murdoch, who was laboriously filling out some official forms, and seemed content to be there, hands quiet and still upon her lap.
‘Can I assist you, Mistress Grierson?’ asked James McLevy.
‘No. I am being dealt with, thank you.’
She did not rise or particularly acknowledge him and so he went on his merry way. One problem less to solve.
Ballantyne looked up from his desk and shook his head warningly; was it the inspector’s imagination or did that birthmark seem not so livid this morning?
In any case for a moment he was reminded of Mulholland, who often shook his head in similar manner, and
