End of the Line - short story-TPL Read online

  Strangely enough Senga Murdison seemed to know little about her fiancé. He had arrived out of the blue, swept her off her feet and marriage was mooted.

  But no hard facts.

  Pettigrew meanwhile was growing somewhat restive.

  ‘All I can see are peacocks.’

  ‘Ornamental, like so much in life,’ the inspector replied. ‘Keep looking, if you please.’

  While Pettigrew sighed and did so, Mulholland shook his head dubiously.

  ‘This is a long reach, sir.’

  ‘Not so far,’ McLevy defended. ‘I met with Jean Brash in her coach some time past, bowling along Great Junction Street. I remarked she had a new coachman atop.’

  ‘Some people are emerging,’ offered Pettigrew.

  ‘Good,’ said McLevy, then resumed a line of reasoning that Mulholland had already attended and by which he was still resolutely unimpressed.

  ‘Jean told me her usual man, Angus Dalrymple, was on a wee holiday. Jedburgh. By the Borders. And he would be back in a few days.’

  ‘Two women only,’ the guard declared.

  ‘Just keep on the qui vive,’ answered McLevy, and extended his line of deduction to Mulholland. ‘Angus is a giant of a man—’

  ‘With ginger hair. I know. It’s still a long reach.’

  ‘Newcastle,’ said McLevy, ignoring the disbelieving tone of his constable, ‘is the nearest main station from Jedburgh for the train to Edinburgh.’ He developed his theme further. ‘And at this time of the day Jean Brash is wont to take coffee in her garden along with her right-hand woman, Hannah Semple, while often accompanied by—’

  ‘That’s him,’ Pettigrew said reluctantly. ‘The very same.’

  They peered through the iron bars of the gateway like children at a peep show as Hannah poured out coffee for Jean, who watched as the aforesaid Angus, sandy-red hair agleam in the pale sunshine, began to chop lumps out of a dead tree trunk.

  ‘It is the man from the train,’ muttered the guard. ‘I am not mistaken.’

  ‘Sometimes, sir,’ Mulholland whispered with only the slightest trace of irony. ‘You amaze me.’

  ‘Only sometimes?’ replied a man who was, by his own perception, the eighth wonder of the world.

  * * *

  Hannah Semple was a pugnacious survivor who kept the keys of the Just Land and ruled the magpies therein with a rod of iron. The old woman feared neither man nor beast, and if one thing delighted her it was to watch Jean Brash and James McLevy at each other’s throats.

  Jean’s hair was also red but it was a deep auburn that brought out the green of her eyes – eyes that were glinting with controlled fury as they speared into the inspector’s impassive face. Porcelain skin betrayed no trace of the life she had led as a street girl and whore in various low-slung brothels before clawing her way up the greasy pole to a divine consummation, as she now owned the finest bawdy-hoose in Edinburgh, patronised by respectable loins of the ruling class.

  A tall, elegant woman, taller from her fashionable boots, she had at least an inch on McLevy which, having stood, she was using to great effect by looking down a disdainful nose at the man.

  Mulholland stood vigilantly to the side opposite Hannah, straight-faced, but she knew that he enjoyed these bouts as much as she did herself.

  Pettigrew, having formally identified Angus, had walked off to gaze at a rose bush, ostensibly to admire the blooms but it would seem in reality to put as much space between himself and sin as possible, lest it contaminate his Calvinist conscience.

  Angus, his axe dropped to the ground, was caught unhappily between Jean and McLevy, stringy ginger hair hanging over his face and bearing a passing resemblance to, in the words of the immortal poet, a coo looking ower a dyke. Although the image of a bovine female gazing over a small stone wall might be somewhat forced, there was a dumb, enduring quality to his stance that gave some credence to this conceit.

  The coachman admitted being on the train though had, he claimed, but a hazy recollection, having supped heavily on the ale of the Newcastle Station tavern.

  This was indeed, he further claimed, why he had rushed through the barrier at Waverley, being in dire need of relieving himself, accomplishing the function just in time, a feat in which he took no little pride. He had no knowledge of which carriage he had occupied, having slept through the whole journey.

  Battle lines having been drawn, the warring factions were getting stuck into each other.

  ‘You have only the word of that . . .’ Jean waved dismissively at Pettigrew, who was peering at a deep pink rose as if it contained the secrets of the universe, ‘wee railway man to place Angus on the scene – and proof of nothing else. As per usual.’

  McLevy drew up the artillery of heavy sarcasm.

  ‘Lucidity personified, Jean,’ he shot back. ‘I bow before you. But – if he was in that compartment?’

  ‘Whit does it prove?’ Hannah threw in, just to keep the pot boiling.

  ‘Proximity to murder.’ Mulholland made his own contribution for much the same reason.

  ‘I saw no dead body!’ Angus proclaimed loudly.

  ‘Calm yourself,’ said Jean, and sighted carefully at the inspector’s parchment-white face as if it were a target area. ‘You are full of wind, McLevy. As per usual. Puff, puff. Full of wind.’

  Angus took encouragement from the short-range salvo and declared grandly that he had nothing to hide.

  McLevy pounced.

  ‘In that case you will oblige me by turning out your pockets.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You heard me!’

  Jean yawned disparagingly. ‘Go ahead, Angus. Humour the poor soul. Think what a sad life he leads.’

  ‘Aye. So.’

  The coachman laboriously turned out his pockets and listed the contents.

  ‘A bit o’ string, sugar for the horses, my own handkerchief, plug of tobacco and some paltry coin. A poor man afore you!’

  ‘Whit about the inside pooch?’ enquired the inspector. ‘It hangs heavy.’

  Angus blinked at this unexpected observation and slowly drew out from his inside jacket pocket a battered and worn leather wallet, opening it to display the innards like a butcher flaying meat.

  ‘Paper,’ he declared. ‘Naething but paper.’

  ‘The world is full of it, eh Angus?’ said Mulholland, and while the coachman was thus distracted McLevy reached out and neatly flipped the wallet into his own hands.

  ‘Give me back!’

  ‘Oh let him pochle about to his heart’s content,’ said Jean. ‘Sooner he’s done, sooner I enjoy my coffee.’

  The inspector licked his lips. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance—’

  ‘No, there is not!’ Jean rapped back.

  ‘Damned right. Cheek o’ the devil!’ chimed Hannah.

  ‘In that case,’ McLevy muttered, fingers busy, ‘I will go about my business.’ He scrabbled in the guts of the wallet and looked disappointed at the result.

  ‘You are correct, Angus, nothing but bits of paper, yet – wait now – see here.’

  He had located a hidey-hole in the leather and as he fished therein, the rest gathered round a little so that the manoeuvre took on the appearance of a conjuring trick. The inspector played it for all he was worth as he pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

  ‘Abracadabra!’

  The ‘rabbit’ turned out to be a large bank note. It was waved through the air in McLevy’s podgy fingers.

  ‘Twenty pounds. Currency of the realm. That’s a deal of money, Angus.’

  The coachman said instantly that he had won it at the races. Jean asked what all this legerdemain had to do with anything. The murdered man was robbed, countered McLevy. Pettigrew heard the voices raised and peered all the harder at the damask rose. Mulholland took the note from McLevy, held it to the light and pronounced it genuine. Angus repeated he had won it at the races. Jean and Hannah looked at each other during this assertion as McLevy came in on another tack.


  ‘Whit were you doing in Jedburgh?’ he asked Angus suddenly.

  ‘I have friends there.’

  ‘You don’t have any friends, you’re an Aberdonian!’

  Angus growled at this insult and Jean shoved in lest he make the mistake of attacking McLevy. She had seen the inspector in action more than a few times and the level of pure violence was quite terrifying.

  Plus the fact that Mulholland’s hornbeam stick had laid low more criminals than the Fire of London.

  ‘This is ridiculous, James McLevy,’ she interposed. ‘You’ve not a damned bit of proof and you know it.’

  ‘I’ll haul him in just the same,’ he threatened.

  ‘You do that and I’ll have my lawyers round your head like a plague of wasps!’

  The inspector knew when his bluff had been called, dropped the bank note back into the wallet and near threw it at the hulking coachman.

  ‘Here are your ill-gotten gains, but mark this, my mannnie!’

  The inspector stuck his face close to Angus and spoke softly, as if the words might worm a hole in the coachman’s mind through which the truth would shine.

  ‘I have you in my sights,’ he whispered. ‘Wherever you go, I’ll be watching, waiting, every time you take a breath. No escape. I’ll be there. Watching. Waiting.’

  The coachman’s eyes were filled with a primitive fear. He opened his mouth as if to defy the laid curse but nothing came out.

  ‘Go and tend tae the horses, Angus,’ said Jean. ‘You like the cuddies.’

  The giant stumbled off, leaving Jean and McLevy staring at each other. It seemed that everything else had melted out of sight and all that was left was the naked man and woman.

  As near and far away as they have ever been.

  ‘I know what you are about, James McLevy,’ she remarked quietly. ‘Angus is a simple soul. You plant doubt in his mind, poison the imagination and wait for him to make a foolish move.’

  ‘If innocent,’ he replied, ‘the man has nothing to fear.’

  ‘Leave him alone, I warn you.’

  And yet beneath all this something else was being exchanged. Equally dark, equally dangerous.

  McLevy took a deep breath.

  ‘Whit is that perfume you’re wearing?’

  ‘It’s French,’ said Jean, leaning in. ‘Ye have to get close. To release the aroma.’

  He let out a sudden harsh laugh and drew away as if emerging from a spell of his own. He nodded brusquely to Hannah and would have left without further word had not Jean decided to have the last one.

  ‘You just have to see Angus wi’ the horses to know how harmless he is,’ she called at his departing back.

  McLevy turned slowly, his face curiously immobile for a moment as if a different reality had struck deep.

  ‘I arrested a man once,’ he said, ‘for the murder of three sad and lonely women. Took me two whole years to track him down, a vicious and unprincipled killer. He had a small mongrel dog he doted upon. All that concerned him upon apprehension was who would look after his boon companion. He had dismembered the women. And fed the dog.’

  The peacocks broke into a series of ululations, a weird plaintive cry that rang in the silence.

  Jean gave not an inch. Who knows what is real and what is not from a tale that’s told?

  ‘Stay away from my coachman.’

  ‘I’ll do my job.’

  ‘I’m telling you—’

  ‘You’ll tell me nothing!’

  The inspector turned abruptly and stomped off, catching Pettigrew by the elbow and almost hauling the little railway man along, scattering the peacocks who, though foolish birds, knew trouble when they saw it.

  The departing duo was followed by the tall figure of Mulholland, stalking behind like a heron.

  But it is aye in the nature of women to hammer in the nails.

  ‘Don’t you dare slam those gates when you depart the grounds, James McLevy!’ Jean flung after them.

  Moments later, a resounding metal clang reverberated through the garden to indicate that Jean’s command would seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

  The ghost of a smile hung round her full lips. The man was so predictable. Like frost in winter.

  Hannah joined her, and the old woman’s brow was creased in thought.

  ‘Whit do you think tae Angus?’ she queried.

  ‘He’s hiding something,’ Jean replied tersely, ‘but there’s no use asking. He’ll just get that glaikit look on his face.’

  ‘Whit was he doing in Jedburgh?’ ‘Perhaps he’s got a woman there.’

  Hannah sniffed to indicate the unlikelihood of that possibility.

  ‘Ye don’t suspect him guilty?’ she continued.

  Jean returned to her coffee. In a way she regretted not offering the inspector a cup but he had sore vexed her and could damned well do without

  ‘It’s not what I suspect,’ she answered finally. ‘It’s McLevy. What is in his mind.’

  Hannah thought further.

  ‘Angus doesnae gamble,’ she remarked at last.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jean, taking a sip of the now lukewarm Lebanese. ‘He’s an Aberdonian.’

  * * *

  The three men walked down the hill from the quivering gates, each silent for their own reasons.

  McLevy was fuming at the icy contempt shown to an officer of the law, dying for a coffee, and calculating what effect that barb he had stuck into the coachman’s thick hide might produce. He would also contact his police acquaintances in Jedburgh to find out if the bold Angus had left a trace of sorts in the streets or taverns. The man was huge; surely there would be some nosey bugger to recall his exploits.

  Mulholland kept his face straight but inside was hugging himself with glee. Not often did he witness his inspector under the cosh, and he cherished the experience though there was nothing malicious in this delight, just a slight buzzing in the ears. There had always been rumours that Jean Brash and McLevy were once at close quarters in grappled love but it was hard to see one way or the other. Dark and deep the pair. Well matched.

  Pettigrew had a deal running through his mind to render him silent. Unexpected and unwelcome emotions that troubled his conscience. He shook his head as if to clear his mind. That was the first bawdy-hoose he had ever seen and he sincerely hoped it would be the last.

  ‘The roses were very nice,’ he said finally.

  No response was forthcoming.

  ‘My dear wife was very fond of roses. I often leave them on her grave,’ he added. ‘My daughter and I pray for her everlasting peace.’

  Again silence reigned.

  The guard sighed. It would be good to get back to the refuge and sanctuary of his timetable.

  Mulholland loped along and thought about the case. No doubt McLevy would have all sorts of schemes and intuitions that he would not yet deign to share with his constable, but in the meantime there was the compensation of this faint but joyful auditory buzzing.

  Of course had the constable known what was heading his way he may not have hugged his glee quite so tightly.

  * * *

  Senga Murdison dipped a sugar biscuit in her tea and swiftly transferred the soggy half into her mouth with a contented gulp. The said aperture was wide in the extreme with rather small teeth, which gave it a somewhat feral air, as if the woman might take a sharp bite out of you at any given moment.

  Mulholland was installed stiffly opposite in an armchair. They sat in her flounce-bedecked sitting room and there was a cage with a morose-looking canary directly in his eye-line.

  He tried to avoid gazing at the masticating mouth or the bird, and also to evade contact with the woman’s eyes which last seen had been brimming with tears but now might appear to be gleaming with obscure intent.

  ‘I am impressed with your alacrity, constable,’ Senga remarked, daintily nudging a crumb of biscuit away from the aforementioned orifice with her pinkie.

  ‘Lieutenant’s orders,’ Mulholland said formally. ‘When I go
t back in he told me I had to get back out. I have to get back in though,’ he added quickly.

  Indeed he and McLevy had arrived back at the station to find a grimly amused Roach waiting with news for his constable. The lieutenant had been paid a visit by Senga Murdison, who told him amongst many other things, the woman gushing like a fountain, that she had recalled something possibly helpful to the investigation.

  It was personal and could only be confided to someone of a gentle disposition as it concerned her former betrothed who was now unfortunately dead, and murdered to boot. To relay this confidence she needed a sensitive soul, comme il faut, a soul of discretion, which, in her opinion, effectively ruled out McLevy.

  And Roach as well, it would seem, though she imminently welcomed him to the embrace of the reading society of which she and Mrs Roach were founder members. The lieutenant had flexed his jaw at this prospect and finally managed to shovel the woman out of his office with a promise that the soul of discretion would be winging her way as soon as he inserted his size-twelve boots within the station.

  Senga had left happily enough, only pausing to inform Roach that the first book for the society’s perusal would be Wuthering Heights, a tale of tragic love, which she felt resonate to her very bones.

  Most of this Roach reported, omitting the reading society references, and Mulholland had left for MacDonald Street with his large ears burning red, the cause of much simple-minded amusement to both his superiors as they contemplated his looming predicament.

  The constable had so far refused the sugar biscuits, accepted a cup of tea and was now awaiting elucidation.

  The bird let out a frustrated cheep, and with a little cry Senga arose, crossed over and pushed a few crumbs through the thin bars of the cage.

  ‘I have named him Archibald,’ she murmured. ‘After my first husband.’

  ‘How many have you had?’ Mulholland asked curiously.

  ‘Canaries?’

  ‘Husbands.’

  ‘Only the one,’ she replied taking no offence at what might be deemed an intrusive question. ‘I had high hopes for Count Borromeo but . . .’