Fall From Grace

Book 2: Inspector McLevy

by David Ashton

Genres: Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

London had Sherlock Holmes.

The dark alleys of Edinburgh had Inspector McLevy.

Known as the father of forensics and a likely influence on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, real-life police inspector James McLevy is here reinvented by David Ashton in a thrilling mystery—the second in a series—set in dark, violent Victorian Edinburgh.

A burglary and murder at the home of Sir Thomas Bouch, the enigmatic architect of the ill-fated Tay Bridge, sets Inspector James McLevy off on a train of brutal killings, lethal liaisons, and double suicide which leads to a violent encounter with an old enemy, Hercules Dunbar.

Caught up in a terrifying storm as he tracks his foe to Dundee, McLevy watches the rail bridge collapse and plunge into the icy depths of the Tay. The aftermath brings the destruction of reputation and love as the inspector uncovers the secret passions which have led to murder.

Release date: May 5, 2016

Publisher: John Murray Press

Print pages: 320

Sample

To die the death, for naught long time may last;

The summer’s beauty yields to winter’s blast.

THOMAS SACKVILLE, The Mirror for Magistrates

Inspector James McLevy looked at his shadowy image in the glass of the window.

‘You are a miserable bugger,’ he thus addressed the standing figure.

Past and through the ghostly outlines of his face, he viewed the city of Edinburgh stretching out below him, the various lights reflecting up into the night sky.

For a moment he thought to see a shooting star far away in the distance but decided it was a firework left over from Bonfire Night.

Of late he had taken to prowling the bookstalls of Leith marketplace, randomly buying anything that caught his eye. His latest haul included some stories by Edgar Allan Poe and a tattered book of Arab legends. Poe had little to offer on shooting stars but the wise men of the East were of the opinion that these manifestations were firebrands hurled by the angels to keep out the wild spirits of nature, which seek to climb the constellations and peek into heaven.

No danger of McLevy climbing any constellation, he didn’t have the puff.

The inspector crossed to the coal fire where on one side of the hearth a black encrusted tin coffee pot had its domain, lifted the thing up and shook it gloomily.

Dry as a bone. And his fourth cup of coffee, some of the grains of which were still lodged in his teeth, had produced no discernible effect on his depression of spirits.

As he clattered the pot back down, there was a stirring on the other side of the hearth.

Bathsheba opened one yellow eye to gaze at this intruder upon her slumber; a regular visitor of the evening, she would scratch at the window for entry, insinuate her elegant presence, lap up some milk from the saucer, curl up and sleep for a time, then slide back off into the night.

McLevy envied her that. He was stuck. She was on the move, a black cat that had crossed his path.

‘Whit luck have you ever brought me, eh?’ he demanded fiercely.

The cat went back to sleep and McLevy walked back to look down at a small rickety table where the plate from his supper had been shoved aside and its place taken by a thick ledger of sorts with red covers which lay open, the white page staring up at him in mute accusation.

To avoid this silent indictment, McLevy concentrated his gaze upon the scrapings of his meal; maiden’s hair and dribbly beards, the coarse sinews of the meat boiled into pliant submission and the water then used to cook the curly kale as vegetable accompaniment.

It was a speciality of his landlady, Mrs MacPherson, who would hand the steaming mixture over to him at the door as if it was some sort of Dundonian ambrosia.

She did, indeed, hail from Bonny Dundee. He had many memories of that city, few of them happy and, in fact, he suspected that these dark submerged hauntings might be more than a contributory factor towards his present malaise.

That and a woman with gypsy eyes.

The page still gleamed white; he sighed, sat down and picked up a short stubby pencil.

Other diarists might have quills and parchment; he had a blunt pencil and an old ledger, which was a relic from a past case of embezzlement

He was in the habit of jotting down whatever came into his head most evenings; nothing that would change the fate of humanity but it would preserve a record of his intuitions and thoughts, perhaps even philosophical musings.

One day he might publish such jottings of sagacity and be hailed as a fountain of wisdom. More likely he would be laughed out of the Leith police station so best keep it confidential for the nonce.

In fact he had kept it so confidential this night, he had so far not written a word.

Time to unburden, but how to begin?

He had read in the Arab book the idea that man was a mixture of the materiality that made up the universe.

It was either that or the maiden’s hair and dribbly beards.

The inspector made his choice, tongue sticking out from the side of his mouth, head bent close to the paper.

It could be his near eyesight was failing, but he wrote anyway. Always the same heading, only the date changed.

Of all the elements, fire is the least forgiving. Examine hell for instance. Or take Icarus, flying like an angel till the flame of the sun melted the wax from his wings and sent him plunging through the air, which likewise didn’t give a damn, in a downward dive till he hit the ocean and sank like a stone. Water isn’t all that merciful either.

Come to think of it, earth is the only one of four that gives a body half a chance. The blessed earth. We trample it beneath our boots and gouge it like a butcher a dead animal or a surgeon his cadaver, yet the earth does its level best to forgive us. Our sins.

A case that began almost a year ago has come to its natural end, and tomorrow will see the lid closed.

As is often with my pursuits, at times I was like a whirling Dervish, and at others, a mere bystander as Fate rolled out the dice.

The result of that throw was to witness a disaster in which all four elements played their parts. The reluctant earth, savage fire, howling wind and ice-cold water.

Be that as it may, I shall attend the closing. The lady of the house will be concomitant. There’s always a woman to hand. And the devil’s never far away either.

As long as folk steer the middle course, we may all rest easy but that rarely happens. Someone somewhere, high or low, tries to bend occasion to their will without success and then, to gratify a hunger they barely comprehend, takes a wee step sideways, a deviation, and imperceptibly puts in motion events that set the gates of hell quivering with anticipation.

To strive beyond yourself is human aspiration and yet it is also an item on Satan’s breakfast table. Right next to the boiled egg.

I should stop now. I fear my thought is moving in a direction that might well land me in the asylum.

But why does the vision of Icarus still hold in my mind?

Man strains every muscle to rise and embrace that which cradles the seed of his own destruction.

An unearthly yowl broke into this meditation; Bathsheba was at the window ready to embark upon her midnight prowl.

McLevy, with a sudden burst of energy, leapt up, pulled up the sill to let her depart and then leant his head out to follow her progress.

He watched as she padded along the damp slates and then slipped out of sight.

A strange cheerfulness unexpectedly possessed him, as if he had left his gloom upon the page.

James McLevy, inspector of police, would attack his next investigation with appropriate ferocity.

Crime was like the blood in his veins.

He looked out once more over his city. Edinburgh. And somewhere, towards the sea, the parish of Leith. His patch, where he was King of the Castle.

The cold November air stung at McLevy’s face as he let out a whoop of laughter that echoed in the still night.

Incensed with indignation Satan stood

Unterrified, and like a comet burned.

JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost

Mary Rough looked grimly into the flame of the oil lamp as she listened to her son thrashing around in the recesses of the warehouse.

Noise enough to wake the dead, or, more to her concern, a distant night watchman walking the Leith docks. It had been a big mistake to let that boy near whisky but his nerves needed steadying, the great gowk, and a rinse of kill-me-deadly was all that would do the trick.

Unfortunately, it also gave Daniel Rough the illusion that he was ruler of the world, and, in addition, as is so often the result of whisky, brought out the cantankerous side of his nature.

Not that it needed much bringing out. He would take issue with his own shadow, but, in drink, Daniel would beat that shadow to the ground and stamp it to death with his big hobnailed boot. Many was the time Mary had witnessed him crashing his foot down with enough force to raise sparks from stone, as he tried to destroy the fiend below.

There are seven kinds of beastly drunk: Swine, who sleeps and pukes, Sheep, who cannot speak, Martin, who drinks himself back sober, Goat, who is lascivious, Fox, who is crafty, Ape, who leaps and sings, and Lion who is quarrelsome. Daniel was a combination of Ape and Lion.

It was Mary’s own fault. She had spoiled him as a wee boy because of his infirmity and now, as a huge man, he still bore the imprint of that indulgence.

His hulking form emerged from the shadows as he dragged out some large freight cases, still marked with the name of the ship, the Dorabella, which he began to pile up in the middle of the floor, whilst singing jaggedly under his breath,

‘Wee Willie Winkie, rins through the town,

Up stairs and doon stairs, in his nicht gown.’

It is doubtful if Daniel knew that in some Jacobite songs, Willie Winkie was supposedly the nickname of William III, but he crashed a last wooden crate into position to compensate for any lack of learning, and let out a bellow which echoed on and on in the emptiness of the building.

‘Mammy. I have it all in hand! Bring me my tools of trade!’

‘Can ye no’ be quiet?’ she admonished. ‘D’ye want the world tae know?’

A wild laugh came in response. The whisky may have calmed his nerves for a while, but now they were breaking loose again. It was always so when he came to this point, for he both loved and feared the fire.

It was a large warehouse, piled high with packing cases. All wooden. All grist to the mill. The ceiling was high and vaulted, a good updraught and plenty of gaps in the walls for the wind to whistle in and fan the flames.

Mary noted all this with a keen eye as she crossed towards him, carrying the lamp in one hand and a large sack, which she bore lightly enough, in the other.

The light from the lamp caught Daniel’s shadow and threw it in grotesque against the assembled pile, as he capered round it, dragging his twisted right foot behind like a horse would haul a ploughshare through stony earth.

His infirmity. It had twisted his nature as well.

Daniel snatched at the sack and emptied it out, shaking a thick mass of wood shavings on to the floor, and then scraped them round the heaped cases with his warped, misshapen foot, giggling like an uncontrollable child.

‘What’s sae funny?’ asked Mary, who was growing increasingly nervous, the sooner they were out of this place the better; she had a bad feeling which was getting worse by the second. Not helped by the fact that she had failed to move her bowels all day and was dying to sit on a midnight cackie-pot.

Daniel bent over and blew playfully at some shavings to propel them like a snowdrift towards the bottom of his created edifice. Then he straightened up and recited a fragment of what was swirling through his mind.

‘I says tae the joiner fellow, “Can I have these shavings kind sir?” Says he, “Whit for?” Says I, “They start a fine fire.” ’

He laughed at that then a following thought, not so pleasant struck him. ‘The auld bugger even wanted payment, is there nae charity in this thieving bastard world?’

His face suddenly contorted in anger and he produced a heavy hammer from the inside depths of his jacket to bring it crashing down repeatedly on the lid of one of the cases.

‘So, I gave him this blow, then I gave him another!’

‘Ye’re a liar,’ said Mary. ‘Ye gave him the payment.’

Daniel ignored this shaft of mother-wit and dashed his hammer down on the dislodged lid, breaking it into pieces which he added to the accumulation.

‘Ye don’t need all that,’ she remonstrated, ‘the place is dry as a bone. Go up like the flames o’ hell.’

Again he paid no attention and, his manic burst of energy far from exhausted, shoved the hammer back into his pocket then delved into the contents of the broken case, emerging with a small square box which he opened up and sniffed, in apparent ecstasy.

‘Stinko D’Oros, ripe and ready.’

‘Don’t touch the merchandise!’ came the sharp warning but Daniel, in response, bawled out like a market trader.

‘Best quality, dozen in the box!’

‘Quieten down, for the love of Christ!’

He bowed his head in seeming contrition, meekly closed the lid, handed the box over to Mary’s keeping, and then signalled for the lamp.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Mary.

‘Give it me.’

‘You’re no’ in control.’

‘Give it me!!’

There was a drunken evil glare in his eye that frightened her. Mother or not, she sometimes wondered if, one sweet day, her darling son would split the maternal skull with his big fine hammer.

She handed over the lamp and he snuffed out the wick, leaving them both in complete darkness. Then he swung the vessel round to release the oil, which spattered over the heap of shavings and wood; laughing wildly as some of the fluid landed and slid like mucus all down his front.

‘A wee lick here, a wee lick there, ach the whole damn thing!’

There was a crash of breaking metal and glass as he hurled the lamp to shatter on the sharp edge of the crates.

‘Watch your body now!’ Mary called out in the pitch-black surrounding her, an edge of panic in her tone. She had a superstitious terror of the dark, and always slept with a candle by the bed lest night-demons came to steal her soul for his Satanic Majesty.

Daniel fumbled in his pocket for a lucifer, which was struck up to illuminate his sweaty distorted face, eyes bulging in the sudden light.

‘This place will fire like a tinder-box,’ she warned, moving back to safe distance while she could still see.

‘And I’m just the boy tae do it,’ said Daniel with pride. But as he moved towards the pile, his boot crunched on a shard of glass and he staggered slightly.

‘For Christ’s good sake guard yerself!’ Mary hissed, shoving the box that he had given her inside the deep pocket of her old coat, a souvenir from the time when she had once been a shoplifter of high repute.

‘Ach, it’s my bad foot Mammy,’ came the derisive, muffled response.

Daniel bent over, cupping the lucifer in hand, now it was time, now would see his fear go up in smoke. He crooned some more of the song, giving the words a sinister lilt.

‘Tirling at the window, crying at the lock,

Are the weans in their bed, for now it’s ten o’clock?’

For a moment time stood still, then tragedy which had been biding its occasion in the shadows, made a dire and purposeful entrance.

As Daniel dropped the lucifer on the shavings, they flared into life, leaping up like a tiger from ambush and found a sympathetic response from the oil spilled on his trousers and coat. He howled in pain, lost his footing and fell forward on to a blaze of his own creation as the rest of the dry tinder exultantly joined the conflagration.

In a matter of seconds, a wall of flame had formed a barrier between the horrified Mary and her combustible son.

She could hear his screams and reached out her arms helplessly to call his name as he burned like a pillar of fire.

But he led no tribe towards the Promised Land. The fear that had always haunted him had been well founded. The fire had claimed him, embraced him like a loving father and was teaching its child the secrets of white heat.

His shrieks of agony rang in Mary’s ears as the flames leapt towards her, seeking another convert to the cause.

Like pilgrims to th’appointed place we tend;

The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.

JOHN DRYDEN, Palamon and Arcite

Margaret Bouch watched on, as her husband’s coffin was lowered into the ground. The ropes held and it went smoothly enough into the appointed slot. She blinked a little as the icy, slanting November rain which had swept across Dean Cemetery from the moment the pitifully small cortège had entered the gates, stung her face through the black veil in retribution for tears unshed.

She recollected that as a child, funerals had always provoked in her a perverse desire to cock a snoot, to whirl a mad cartwheel, heels in the air, petticoats a’flying, to scandalise the moon faces of the mourners with flesh and bone.

What if she did so now, she pondered to herself?

What if she ripped the dripping bonnet from her recently widowed head, flipped it neatly to join the lumps of earth already falling on the coffin lid as the ropes were hauled out of the grave, and called aloud, ‘I’ll dance the hornpipe with the sailor boys tonight, how does that recommend itself unto you, Sir Thomas, my darling one?’

Perhaps not, was her decision. Save it for another day.

Margaret looked across to where their three children, all grown now, huddled together under a weeping umbrella.

Her son’s pale face was set in stone and manly forbearance.

Everyone thought him an absolute brick, and who was she to disagree? He had accompanied them every day to the Court of Inquiry and they had both watched as his father’s proud façade cracked like the very bridge itself.

Every day she had observed Sir Thomas ignore her and lean more and more heavily upon the filial arm as the clouds of shame and disgrace gathered above his head.

And then they had burst.

As she brought this to mind, another squall of rain hit her through the veil, the sudden violence driving some of the mourners back from the edge of the grave.

But Margaret Bouch stood firm. She was the widow after all. Widows don’t give an inch.

The minister droned on, something about the Kingdom of Heaven and how to get there, surely better to quote from the Psalm? ‘Praise the Lord upon earth: ye dragons, and all deeps; Fire and Hail, snow and vapours; Wind and storm, fulfilling his word.’

Praise the Lord indeed, was her unhallowed thought. He had shown no mercy that dreadful night towards the last year’s end, nor, in Margaret’s experience, had he ever demonstrated much inclination towards clemency upon earth.

The Reverend Jeremiah Sneddon of the Episcopalian Church of Scotland, a man in her opinion who more than lived up to his name, had insisted upon being bare-headed and his wispy white hair, plastered to his skull, left him to look like a monkey caught out in the rain.

Margaret had a quick glance round to make sure no one was aware of these profane contemplations but she was safe behind the veil. What a dreadful woman she was to be sure. Last night had she not drunk of strong whisky? And more than one glass. In the morning she had noticed her fingers tremble as she donned the widow’s weeds.

She fumbled for her handkerchief, slyly raised her hand under the damp veil as if touching the cloth to her face, breathed out and sniffed. No. Not a trace. A faint redolence only of violets, from the lozenges sucked so assiduously after her toilette that very morning.

Toilette, Margaret reflected, now there’s a respectable word, for was she not a respectable lady?

She felt as if her husband had been an iron band around her body and now, free of its constraint, she was shaking to pieces as the train roared overhead.

Margaret shivered. One of the newspapers had as its front page an artist’s impression of the calamity, men, women and children falling into the bleak December sea like so many brittle leaves. Although almost a year ago, she could not rid her mind of that image.

And what of Sir Thomas, she wondered? What pictures were frozen inside the cold obstruction of his mind?

She had experienced an impersonal kind of compassion for the man despite the secrets he had concealed. A dutiful pity. But he had shut her from his life and locked her out like a poor beast in the rain. Year by year, the little wife had withered and dwindled while he and his true love kissed and fondled to heart’s content.

Now, Mistress Bouch was free. Free to destroy herself in any way she saw fit.

The minister closed his bible with a dull, righteous thud and Margaret became conscious that she was the focus of many eyes.

For a moment she was confused then remembered the protocol of interment. The widow knelt down, groped for a portion of the damp, sodden earth and cast it into the grave before her. The muddy mass landed on the polished oaken lid, stuck to one of the brass fittings, then slid slowly out of sight towards oblivion.

She hoped sincerely that would do the trick.

And it did. She watched the others follow suit, the rain herding in their thrown clods like a drover, and then the pallbearers began to drift away. Just like her mind.

Margaret had felt such a welcome separation from reality since her lord and master had died and prayed most earnestly for its continuance.

In the meantime, all ceremonies were to be observed and she would play her part. They would all reconvene at the house in Bernard Street; a little too near the Leith docks for some, but Sir Thomas had it purchased as his base in Edinburgh because he liked to walk to the sea and gaze upon that which he planned to conquer.

Reconvene. She could just see it now. Tasteful funeral meats would be passed from hand to hand, malt whisky raised to lips, not the grieving widow’s of course, and then after a respectful time the mourners would take their pious departure, surreptitiously scraping heels on the kerbing stone outside lest some oozing stigma had attached itself to their shoes along with the earth from the cemetery.

Margaret became aware that a man was standing before her muttering words of comfort she could scarcely hear such was the blessed separation.

A fellow engineer to her husband, bound by professional code to attend; a few of these, the family, and that was all Sir Thomas had to see him on his journey.

Not much of a show to be sure, but then the bridge builder had few intimates, certainly not her, no, few intimates, save the one.

She brought his face to mind.

Alan Telfer, his personal secretary, who scarcely bothered to conceal the look of cold disdain in his eyes if she dared to visit Edinburgh and disturb them at their work; this stupid interfering woman, this dowdy squashed creature who witnessed them with their heads together over the sacred drawings.

A fine combination.

But Mister Alan Telfer was missing from the scene due to the undisputed fact that he had, some time ago, blown out his brains.

Quel dommage. So regrettable.

A dreadful sight to be sure, she remembered.

She had borne witness to so many things.

In truth, there were two participants missing from the scene. Where, she wondered, was the other?

A gust of wind blasted the rain almost horizontally into the face of Reverend Sneddon, and the man of god moved hastily to follow the straggle of departing mourners towards the waiting carriages.

He left a space where piety had endured and through that frame, past the attendant gravediggers who stood patiently biding the time to begin their labour, Margaret saw a shrouded figure in the distance under a threadbare dripping tree.

The inspector. He had come after all. How like the man.

And take upon ’s the mystery of things,

As if we were God’s spies;

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Lear

Murder is a dirty business. The corpse of the old man lay in a dismal posture on the stone flags of the scullery floor where it had fallen, body wrapped in a heavy outdoor coat, the blue serge still damp from last night’s rain.

An apologetic little dribble of blood led from the crushed head at the foot of the stairs where the fellow had rested quietly enough until assailed by the shriek of a hysterical kitchen maid who had arrived at the crack of dawn, to help prepare breakfast.

Indeed some ham and a slab of liver, fresh bought that morning from the butchers, were huddled together upon a plate near the sink where the selfsame maid, who had entered from the side door, had dumped them down before turning to discover the carnage lurking behind.

The liver also bore traces of blood though McLevy doubted if it would receive the requisite cleansing.

He also doubted that even if treated so and fried up with some onions and the ham, there would be much appetite in the house.

Nothing tempers the carnal like a cadaver.

Unless you are a policeman.

Constable Mulholland was upstairs exercising his Irish charm on the maid who was a hefty specimen, and one of those glandular females that the inspector avoided like the plague. Mulholland, however, was good with glands.

McLevy was left with the dead butler.

The inspector had painstakingly scrutinised the floor slabs down to the very cracks. Just under the man’s skull he found fragments of flesh and bone. Difficult to tell whether they had spilled out after his head had been split and he had fallen, or if they were the result of the fall itself. But from the depth of the wound, he would have to assume a blow. A savage blow.

He then poked into the myriad moist crevices of the scullery but found nothing untoward.

A few cockroaches scuttled guiltily into hiding but they, undoubtedly, had an alibi. He remembered reading once in one of his books the fact that cockroaches were revered in Ancient Egypt. A mysterious bunch, the Egyptians.

It would seem as if entry had been forced by the jemmying open of one of the windows at the back garden, which provided access to the lower ground-floor level where the kitchen and scullery were based.

The question was, had the fellow been on his way in to commit the robbery when he encountered the butler, or had he already committed it and been on his way out? The inspector fervently hoped the latter. If nothing had been taken, then nothing could be traced, and that would shut off a fertile source of inquiry because in McLevy’s experience the pawnshops in certain low areas of Leith were veritable mines of information. And he knew how to dig up the lode of crime therein, pick and shovel.

There were some scrapes down the stone steps which suggested that the old fellow may well have been struck at the top wee landing where the door led out into the hall and then fallen like a shot crow. Minute examination of these steps in turn had yielded nothing. The servant’s skull had been cracked open, that was obvious enough, but the murder implement was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the murderer. Not a clue. What a pity.

He leant over and looked into the sightless eyes of the corpse; the old man’s skin was stretched tightly over high cheekbones, the sockets above them deep and hollow, lips drawn back over the teeth as if the butler had sucked in death from a silver cup.

‘I don’t suppose, Archie,’ he said, having been reliably informed that the man’s name was Archibald Gourlay, ‘I don’t suppose ye might pass me a description of your assailant?’

No answer was forthcoming, but McLevy persisted.

‘Anything that might help, no matter how small, rack your brains, sir.’

However the aforementioned brains had a chasm bashed into them, leaving the head looking like an indented round of cheese, and, with a sigh, the inspector brought the one-sided conversation to an end by pulling up gently a blanket which had been laid on the body to cover the bewildered frightened face, then made his way up the stairs to search out some live members of the household.

He emerged into the narrow gloomy hall, with a high, pale, consumptive ceiling, which did nothing to dispel the claustrophobia always induced in McLevy by the trappings of middle-class decorum. Queen Victoria would have been proud of this hallway; it was a testament to her glorious reign. The epitome of denied joy.

A little, grudging natural light came through the cold blue and green stained-glass window above the heavy street door, to be absorbed by the brown mo. . .