Mistress of the Just Land

Book 1: Jean Brash

by David Ashton

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Mystery

Synopsis

The first book in a new series by the creator of Inspector McLevy.

New Year's Day — and through the misty streets of Victorian Edinburgh an elegant, female figure walks the cobblestones — with a certain vengeful purpose.

Jean Brash, the Mistress of the Just Land, brings her cool intelligence to solving a murder, a murder that took place in her own bawdy-house (the best in Edinburgh and her pride and joy).

A prominent judge, strangled and left dangling, could bring her whole life to ruin and she didn't haul herself off the streets, up through low dirty houses of pleasure and violent vicious men — to let that come to pass. The search for the killers will take Jean back into her own dark past as she uncovers a web of political and sexual corruption in the high reaches of the Edinburgh establishment.

A young boy's death long ago is demanding justice but, as the body count increases, she has little time before a certain Inspector James McLevy, comes sniffing round like a wolf on the prowl.

Jean may be on the side of natural justice but is she on the side of the law? Or will the law bring her down?

Release date: September 8, 2016

Publisher: John Murray Press

Print pages: 336

Sample

Chapter 1

The cattie sits in the kiln-ring spinning, spinning,

And by came a little wee mousie, rinning, rinning.

Her bare feet hurt on the sharp cobblestones as the young girl ran for her life through the gnarled and twisted wynds of Leith.

 

A memory of the old woman, bent backwards, mouth agape as if trying to deliver a last word, burnt into the girl’s mind – a candle throwing pointed shadows on the wall as she had tried to shake some life into the dead body.

But Margaret was gone. The old woman was gone. On the table a bottle of cheap White Dog whisky lay on its side, last dregs soaking into the rough wood. It was Margaret’s custom to send the girl early to bed, then mumble her memories over a chipped glass before slumping into her own recess to snore the night away.

Jean Brash usually lay upon a thin mattress on the floor. Hers was a lonely, restless sleep, but this night jumbled dreams and desperate emptiness – a private emptiness she fought to keep at bay; fought to keep any unwanted tears from sliding down her cheeks to dribble salty drops into the corner of a mouth – all that had been arrested by a crack like a bone breaking. She sat up in an old dress, yellow now that had once been white, to see Margaret had jerked back, a baleful, harsh croak shooting out from her chapped lips. Dead as a doornail.

 

Where to now? Jean was running blind; the wynds she knew so well had been left behind and these wormy, slimy clefts, with a cold, dark Edinburgh night, the east wind driving a sharp, cutting rain, were unknown territory.

She stumbled and crashed up against the rough wall, scraping some skin on her bare arm, but there was no going back. With one fierce action, she had burnt her boats.

‘Buggeration!’ she shouted, and then told herself off for such. Bad manners to swear and Margaret had tried to instil some manners into the child of her keeping.

She had also managed to teach Jean the rudiments of spelling and numbers, for Margaret, as the old woman never tired telling, once worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy Edinburgh family and had been taught the bare bones of learning and kitchen craft. Margaret never said why she had lost the position, only that the family had moved from the city, leaving their faithful, loving servant behind.

They were both a cut above the riff-raff that swarmed outside their grimy tenement, pronounced Margaret. But that was not so. The old woman drank like a fish and Jean ran wild with the feral street-children.

Though she always held something back. The boys called her Queen Bee. They caught the other girls and had their wicked fun and games, but not Jean.

She never ran. Just stood her ground. And even Dirk Martins, who shook his mop of flaxen hair and grinned his grin, and then wee manky Jeb Summers like a rat up a drainpipe – a pair of dirty devils – hesitated to shove a questing hand where there might be plunder.

They had tried it once, mind you.

Only the once.

She attracted men and she could sense it. Even at her eleven years, she could sense it. Red hair, porcelain skin, green eyes, thin as a rake – but she attracted.

Jean could smell it coming off them like a dank spoor.

And on she ran, a small figure in a dark landscape, the faded yellow dress flapping like a broken wing.

 

She wrenched open the door of the tiny, cramped room and fell out into the narrow landing of the tenement, calling for help. No one answered. All the families, ten or more to a room, were asleep or pretending to be so. There were many screams and cries at all hours of the night up and down the landings, cutting through the thin walls, and it was better to pull a ragged sheet over your head and render the outside world beyond sight and sound.

One door opened. The one she did not wish to see. Alexander Moncrieff stuck out his head. A cadaverous lank figure, his age was hard to guess: about thirty or so but he seemed older. As if his blood ran thin. Cold and cruel.

Moncrieff ran the tenement, collected rents for the landlord, had the one swivelling eye and a habit of licking his lips incessantly. It was said he had once been in the army and he affected a military bearing – straight back, instant obedience – which went down well with those in command. In fact, he had recently been offered a better position at another establishment by the landlord in recognition of his many virtues, and he was puffed up with the resultant power. No one ever saw the landlord – he was like God in heaven, hidden in the clouds.

The man shoved past her into the room and leant over the remnants of Margaret Brash. She had given Jean her name but was not kith and kin.

There was no mother, no father, just a procession of the dead. According to Margaret, Jean’s mother had died at birth and her father had been up to no good and nowhere to be found. Jean had sensed a lie in these words, but the old woman would not be shaken. Now she was still as the grave.

‘Well,’ said Moncrieff. ‘That’s a peety. Drink is a terrible curse. I rarely touch the beast.’ He turned and drew back his moist lips in a liverish smile that froze her to the bone. ‘Nevertheless – the rent is owing and will have tae be paid. All things must be paid. One way or the other.’ A hand was held out, palm up. ‘Have you the money?’

Jean shook her head.

Moncrieff moved forward till he loomed over her. ‘I can take care of it. I can take care of you. I can take care of everything.’ His large, raw-boned hand came to rest on her shoulder and she could feel its heat through the thin material.

‘I am your lord and master now,’ he declared, his one good eye boring into hers like a demon in the fairy tale. ‘I am your lord and master.’

For a moment Jean felt something inside twitch in response. It must have shown in her face because Moncrieff grinned and his hand tightened, the fingers digging into her flesh like claws rooting her to his beck and call. Would she have been lost? Swallowed whole, like the child in the evil legend?

Then her leg swept up and a hard, bony shin hit into his groin like a hammer.

In all Jean’s life to come, no matter what hardships and dangers were dealt, no matter the evil on hand, this feeling would never leave her. A voice that said ‘Wait for your moment, then strike the blow. There will always be one moment – one chance to take – don’t miss. One chance.’

Alexander Moncrieff yelped, hunched over in the most excruciating pain and when after some time he looked up again, the room was empty save for him and the corpse. The girl was gone. The agony, however, was only too blindingly present, and his eye swivelled wildly to signal such condition.

One chance. One blow.

 

As she stumbled onwards, the breath catching raw in her throat, Jean could see some slivers of lamplight up ahead, faint in the mirk. Perhaps a street of some kind – she would be safe there.

Safe? Something had slid deep inside her when Moncrieff had spoken, an evil, insidious imprint that would always be there, waiting for a sign of weakness.

The devil’s calling card, and many men take on his countenance.

Her bare foot slipped on the slime of the cobblestones and Jean fell headlong, jolted face first, wind knocked out of her body. Through the buzzing in her ears she could hear footsteps coming towards where she lay.

Was it him? Or some other fiend from hell?

Two women looked down at Jean. One sported a bright scarlet feather boa to disguise her wrinkled neck, skin stretched like parchment over the sharp bones, and the other had flat features, almost primitive, with jet-black hair and a jaunty emerald-green bonnet perched perilously on the back of her head.

Both wore garish cheap gowns under nondescript shabby coats, one a bright blue, the other faded pink set off by a slash of livid orange.

Faces painted white like masks, red markings like a signal in the dark.

Nymphs of the Pavé, Fleurs de Nuit whose petals often opened at night, cowclinks in Edinburgh’s coarser tongue. Their names were Jessie Sheridan and Nan Dunlop.

Jessie was the older – men had passed below her like froth under the Bridge of Leith. Like paper boats.

From her and Nan’s point of view, they saw a small figure crouched like an animal on the stones – hard rain beating down to soak deep the thin, discoloured dress.

‘How come ye’re running wild, wee girl?’ asked Jessie. ‘Have ye cut a throat, maybe?’

The figure shook its head, auburn hair plastered to the skull.

‘Where are ye going in such a hurry, then?’

An answer came finally.

‘Nowhere, thank you.’

Nan grinned, revealing wide gaps in her teeth. Unlike Jessie, there was a primitive, unstable quality to the woman, eyes dark and shiny like a mongoose. She was yet young enough that her body still cradled a sensual challenge and invitation.

‘And whit are ye leaving behind, my wee chookie?’ she asked, green bonnet dancing with the movement of her head in the cold, damp air.

‘Nothing.’

The women looked at each other. A story would emerge eventually but this was not the time – it had been an unproductive night, the rain was getting heavier, and in Jessie’s case the beginnings of a consumptive cough were already stirring in the fragile casing of her chest.

They could leave the girl to the tender mercies of rats and bigger beasts – or take her in hand – yet what had they to offer?

Only a profession that ran out of hope, like water down the drain.

The girl scrambled to her feet – feet that were bruised and bleeding from reckless flight – and faced them with a spirited defiance undermined somewhat by the shivering in her body.

‘Whit is your name, wee girl?’

‘Jean. Jean Brash. And I am a Queen Bee.’

Nan let out a roar of laughter at this response to Jessie’s question, as the older woman smiled thinly.

‘Well, we better take ye tae the hive, then.’

Jessie and Nan shared a room and had done so for the past two years – they could squeeze her in somewhere.

At least she was skinny, Jessie surmised. Maybe she could sleep standing up.

There was an element of calculation in Nan’s eyes – if the lassie filled out, she might yet pay her way.

Everyone must pay their way. In this world, whatever you have to offer is always for sale from the moment you’re born.

The girl stepped between them and the trio turned to go with the women leading in front. As they walked on, Jean, impulsively, put slim, delicate hands into theirs.

And so the three figures departed, moving towards the glimmering rain-streaked lamplight ahead, like ghosts disappearing from view towards an uncertain future.

Chapter 2

This is the way the ladies ride,

Clippety clop, clippety clop.

The New Year bells clanged resoundingly from various pious pulls as Jean Brash shifted in her sleep. She had stumbled into bed in the early hours of that morning after her palatial bawdy-hoose, the Just Land, had entertained what seemed like half the professional ruling classes of Edinburgh city.

The medical and legal gentleman’s clubs, having drowned their sorrows at the passing year and then greeted with appropriate conviviality a new arrival from the loins of Old Father Time, had descended upon the Just Land with appendages aquiver.

They joined forces with a number of Bristol businessmen who were up to finance a deal with the powers that be of the city council and, having haggled with some success but not quite enough, had called it quits for the moment, thrown caution to the wind, and led by a merry but totally bald round-faced fellow, Sammy Deacon, and his equally boisterous but taller, more handsome and fully thatched colleague, Joseph Tucker, had brought some of the more adventurous councillors along to slake their carnal thirst.

Who knows?

A satisfied man faintly redolent of a smudge of French cologne might look more kindly upon funds and figures. Satisfaction is a fine financial bedfellow.

A wild party had ensued where many a purloined legal wig had decorated many an unveiled evidential body, and the magpies for their part knowing by rule of thumb that medical men tend to strive longer than advocates who are all talk and no great pith, clove to choice of profession in accordance with their preferred or pecuniary desires.

The Bristol boys would no doubt be a mixed bag of sweeties as men inevitably are – dip your hand in a brown paper poke, trust they don’t stick together, pop it in and hope for the best.

Amongst the gathering were also a number of wild young bucks of a more artistic bent, one, a sculptor, Jack Burns – a handsome devil whose high cheekbones set his face in conflicting sharp planes – had leant over Jean and most earnestly requested that he might immortalise her naked form in an innovative version of Pallas Athena.

‘You see, Mistress Brash, a woman unclothed is the most powerful weapon of any artist,’ he asserted, eyes blazing into hers part fuelled by creative intent, part by a fairly decent champagne. ‘I would consider it a great honour to mediate between your earthly flesh and the immortal goddess. Athena presided over the finer elements of man. Courage, strategy and heroic endeavour.’

Jean nodded at this deific description, aware at the same time that one of the artistic champagne guzzlers was staring at her from the corner of the room.

She indicated the onlooker, who for some reason was dressed as a dusky-hued Arabian prince – many of the artists had affected exotic display, two had even come in extravagant ostrich plumes.

‘The small, dainty fellow from the Mysterious East: who is he?’

Jack smiled briefly. ‘Solomon Baines. Shows promise.’

‘In what?’

‘Portraiture.’

Jean inclined her head in a friendly fashion towards Solomon, who managed a jerky bob in response, then she and the sculptor got back to business. It could not be denied that a certain attraction was in the air along with the cigar fumes and aforementioned cologne. Art is a great leveller.

‘And how do you see the goddess in human form?’

The sculptor took a deep breath. ‘Lean-flanked, fertile-breasted,’ he ventured. ‘A long, slim body.’

‘Was she not also virginal?’ asked Jean. ‘I fear that might compromise me somewhat as a model example.’

Her green eyes were open and candid – for a moment Jack felt a tickle at the back of his throat.

The woman before him was in her prime. Indeed fertile-breasted as far as he could see from her discreet décolletage, red hair lustrous in the glittering candlelight, green eyes with a mocking glint echoed in the smile of her full lips, a porcelain complexion – all contained in a complex, withheld quality that radiated an almost feline powerful attraction.

But don’t mistake magnetism for invitation, that would be foolish.

‘Just give me the chance,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I will uncover your essential innocence.’

‘That’s what worries me,’ replied Jean, aware that music was stirring once more in the background as their one-eyed fiddler, Finlay Craigie, laid down his drink with a deal of regret to loose ancient fingers for other matters.

‘And once your garments are thrown to the four winds, it’s a devil of a job to gather them back up again. A devil of a job.’

She smiled at the sculptor suddenly and Jack felt a spasm of masculine response that had little to do with artistic leanings.

Then the music began, she had disappeared into the throng and he was left cursing the fact that champagne is, now and again, not quite such an all-embracing aid to seductive strategy as portrayed in fiction. It may oil the tongue and fire the blood, but does not necessarily provide sufficient speed of verbal response.

Jean turned in the sheets, smiled in memory at the man’s impudence and regarded her image in the long mirror beside the bed – red hair tousled from sleep, skin clear and innocent as a newborn babe.

In fact, was it not James McLevy, the thief-taker himself, who had muttered over a cup of the finest Lebanese coffee, ‘Tae look at you, Jeannie, ye’d never guess what you’ve done and where you’ve done it.’

Always wanted to be a muse, she thought. But I might end up as a mere plaything.

And yet she could not help but notice the strength in the sculptor’s hands, blunt powerful fingers that would no doubt exercise a strong and steadfast grip and a rough-hewn physicality that might have its own unclothed attraction.

Like Hercules unchained?

Certain licentious images were put carefully to the side but not completely forgotten as the Mistress of the Just Land reviewed the rest of that evening.

Couples had sped headlong for upstairs rooms to reappear later happily replete upon the fruits of Venus – a slippery goddess at the best of times – and then revelled in impromptu reels and jigs while the fiddler stamped his boots and big Annie Drummond shifted plump but dexterous digits over piano keys as if toying amongst so many cream buns.

While smooth legs emerged from flounced chemises and an exposed bare foot flexed itself in the dance, it would have been a cold fish that did not feel the blood-heat.

But hot blood can lead to hot deeds. Like murder, for instance.

A bang of sorts and then the bedroom door burst open to reveal Hannah Semple – Jean’s right-hand woman, keeper of the keys of the Just Land, old as the hills, with a basilisk stare that might arrest many a rampant satyr.

But now her eyes were wide open in shock.

‘Mistress, there’s a deid body in the cellar, hinging over the Berkley Horse, a big knife in the back!’

The New Year bells kept ringing.

Ding-dong.

Ding-dong.

Chapter 3

Robin-a-bobbin

Bent his bow,

Shot at a pigeon

And killed a crow.

The cellar of the Just Land was, to tell truth, a somewhat mildewed dungeon-like affair; however, that suited to a noteworthy extent its given purpose. That of bodily chastisement. The dank walls were festooned with whips of highest quality Spanish leather and there were many other implements of applied agony to hand, even the odd giant thistle if the season was in full bloom.

Nature is a generous soul.

Men of power, who spent their lives in complete mastery of others, whether as benign despots or harsh taskmasters whose very frown might set limbs atremble amongst the slaves who toiled in their offices, laid down meek as the lamb gratifying a perverse wish to experience the pain their decisions inflicted upon lesser mortals.

They groaned and yelped in a physical mortification that their employees would devoutly wish them but had little idea could actually take place.

Such are the ways of might and money. Only those who inflict suffering can afford to buy it as well. Of course a man can always get it for nothing, but then the suffering may not stop.

At one time the cellar had been the domain of Francine, an elegant angular French girl who dressed in the manner of an Egyptian priestess and could calculate precisely where and how to hang, how far up to haul, and then proceed to lay down stripes like a tiger. However, she had returned to Paris to resume her art studies.

Now the welts were dished out by Maisie Powers, a local lass, broad in the beam, strong in the arm, lacking a certain sophistication but aided and abetted by little Lily Baxter – Francine’s former lover, a sunny-natured soul, deaf and dumb, with the clear complexion and rounded body of a comely milkmaid, which was, to be precise, one of her fundamental functions.

Maisie laid it on.

Lily filled the pail.

Both were clasped in each other’s arms upstairs as the cellar door burst open and Jean arrived, as if shot from a gun, with Hannah trailing behind, grimly holding on to her lit candle because the passageway and dungeon itself were pitch black, now and then illuminated with torches to add an inquisitional atmosphere.

What you cannot see may terrify all the more.

What you can see is not to be sniffed at either.

The old woman had not been mistaken – a long knife was stuck into the man’s back as he slumped over the Berkley Horse – an apparatus that had cost Jean a pretty penny, designed to spread-eagle and manacle the willing participant, not however, to be a framework for murder.

The corpse lay face down.

‘Did you touch anything?’ asked Jean.

‘Certainly not, Mistress,’ was the offended reply. ‘I jist came down early doors tae make sure the place was intact, these girls are gey scattered at times. One look at him was enough thanks. My touching days are over.’

They moved closer to the shrouded figure and Hannah’s eyes narrowed in recognition as she did so.

‘That’s one o’ my kitchen knives,’ she announced with fierce indignation. ‘I cut the Sabbath roast wi’ that – stuck right intae the handle. Damn cheek!’

Jean reached out to the shoulder of the recumbent slumped corpse. Sticky to the feel, the material of the dark jacket inert and clammy, as if also moribund – some spread of blood but not a great deal. From her experience of blood, she would have expected more.

Slowly under Jean’s prising fingers the head swung round, with a grating noise to accompany the movement.

A pale snouty face, eyes wide and staring, gazed vacantly at them in the flickering light of the candle.

‘God Almighty,’ Hannah breathed as if afraid to wake the sleeper. ‘It’s Judge Abercrombie.’

The face swung away out of vision and went back to the contemplation of eternity.

Jean bit her lip. Hilton Abercrombie had indeed been in the place last night, sitting to the side as usual, sooking at his glass of whisky. He paid a visit once every year and perched by the fire with a face like a sore backside, watching his legal colleagues cavort out of court. He had never once taken part in the roistering, merely wet his thin lips and sooked his whisky.

And yet, despite his apparent disapproval, Jean sensed an element of voyeurism and cruel sadistic bent that was reflected in the harsh sentences he meted out to the poor devils found guilty in his court; a particular pleasure being to don the black cap that signalled a one-way passage to the hangman’s noose.

Hilton was not a popular man but he was one of the most eminent and scholarly judges in Edinburgh city.

And now he was dead. Or, to be more accurate, murdered, since it is well-nigh impossible to stab yourself in the back with a large carving knife.

Jean whistled tunelessly through her teeth, a habit of hers when deep in thought. A habit she had picked up from Inspector James McLevy. It had become second nature.

This was bad.

This was very bad. . . .