David Ashton - End of the Line

He continued to leaf but McLevy, as well, could not resist further dissertation.

‘All documents, his diary and garnered newspaper clippings, a record of crime as long as your arm!’

‘Bigamy, sir. And seduction,’ added Mulholland.

‘Specialised in rich widows and susceptible young women in service.’

‘Some of these letters would break your heart.’

‘Would they indeed?’ muttered Roach — it was like having the recording angels for company.

‘Last port of call was Newcastle,’ pontificated the inspector. ‘Woman of a certain age swindled out of her dead husband’s hard-earned cash.’

‘Came back to squeeze the last drops!’

‘Wrote about it in his diary. Gloried in it!’

Roach picked up the aforesaid journal, then put it back down again for later perusal.

‘And so returning with his ill-gotten plunder,’ he remarked, unwittingly joining in the heightened exchange, ‘the malefactor met his fate on the late-night train.’

The lieutenant almost idly picked up a letter and waved it at them. ‘No doubt in the eyes of many he deserved to die, but who, if I may ask — killed him?’

McLevy frowned. It was a good question.

‘Angus Dalrymple tried to escape last night. In the cells now and we’ve hammered at him but. .’

The constable summarised the results so far.

‘All we got out of the man is that he was not asleep as he claimed, only said that to deflect suspicion. He got woken up by the collector for his ticket and there he was in the compartment with Borromeo, the fellow boasting about his coming nuptials, loud as hell, no manners at all and drunk as a lord.’

Mulholland ran out of steam and McLevy suddenly raised his head as if he’d just been stung.

‘And so?’ prodded the lieutenant.

‘According to Angus,’ the inspector said slowly, as though his mind was elsewhere, ‘when he left the train at Waverley, the fellow was alive and snoring fit to burst.’

‘What about the money found on Dalrymple?’ asked the lieutenant astutely.

‘Claims he won it on a horse. A fiction of course but. .’

Now it was McLevy’s turn to stop. Both policemen looked somewhat deflated.

‘Neither of you seem particularly convinced of his culpability,’ said Roach, with some asperity. ‘Pray tell me why?’

‘I can smell guilt,’ muttered McLevy. ‘And he’s hiding something. But not murder.’

Mulholland took up the theme. ‘Angus has hands like a navvy’s shovel. Break the man’s neck like a twig but not. . the garrotte.’

‘The police surgeon confirmed this to be the cause of death — slow strangulation from a twisted ligature,’ McLevy added. ‘A thin strip of cloth or leather snaked in from the back. Does not fit the man’s style.

‘Perhaps he did it to throw you off the scent?’ Roach suggested to his inspector.

‘That would take intelligence,’ McLevy growled. ‘We battered at him for hours but he stuck to his story. It just does-nae fit. I wish it did. But it doesnae fit.’

Silence fell. Roach looked at the letter he was holding.

‘Dear me,’ he murmured. ‘Listen to this. I will have to leave service because of my condition. Please honour the pledge you made to me. I beg of you. I will make you a good wife but do not leave me in disgrace. I could not bear the shame should my father find out what I have done. Yours in desperation and love, Christina P. ’

For a moment there was a silence as if this simple rendition had touched three hearts hard as leather, for this trio in their differing ways were well inured to the suffering of humanity at large.

They served the law and the law takes no prisoners.

‘I read that one as well,’ said Mulholland, and the remark brought them all back to business.

‘The man kept meticulous account of his depredations,’ McLevy declared. ‘All his victims. Just referred to by initials mostly. Newspaper clippings as well. Two mysterious deaths. Birmingham. Manchester.’

‘Women of course,’ added Mulholland, ‘of a certain age. Respectable. ‘

‘Aye,’ McLevy scowled at his constable, ‘your lusty widow had a narrow escape.’

‘She’s not my lusty widow!’

Queen Victoria frowned. Tempers were fraying.

‘Away and hunt out that address for me, constable,’ ordered McLevy, ‘and we’ll be on our way.’

The tone was in no way meant to mollify, and an indignant Mulholland marched out to do his duty.

Roach was never too unhappy when these two were at odds; normally they were thick as thieves and their superior the target for devious machinations. He looked at the letter again.

‘ I could not bear the shame should my father find out what I have done . .’ he read once more. ‘A sad tale such as you might find in a novel, eh?’

McLevy thought he might as well try to change what was proving to be an exasperating subject.

‘Whit about your own literary dilemma, sir? The reading society — what is your decision?’

A strange expression crossed over Roach’s face.

‘The offer was withdrawn,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The women spoke together last night and some felt that the. . advent of a man might. . upset the balance.’

The inspector let out a loud, jarring laugh, and the semblance of a wintry smile appeared on the lieutenant’s countenance as he twitched his jaw.

Then there was a long, sober silence.

‘So where do you go from here, James?’

‘Back to the beginning sir,’ answered McLevy. ‘All the way. Back to the beginning.’

* * *

Once more a sugar biscuit was dipped into tea, once more the soggy mess disappeared into a gaping maw.

Mulholland sighed. It had been his idea to bring the gift; old ladies were, in his experience, notoriously sweet-toothed. What he had not anticipated however was that his inspector would commandeer the offering and proceed to stuff his face.

‘Very nice,’ said McLevy and licked his lips. ‘Mind you, I’m more of a coffee hand.’

‘I’m afeart we don’t do coffee,’ Jenny Dunlop observed in her most genteel tones.

‘Too foreign,’ Margaret commented wryly.

They were all sitting in the small room which the old ladies shared. Two single beds, each in a recess, indicated it was both living and sleeping space, and the whole had a Spartan, monastic quality.

‘You keep it fine and neat here,’ Mulholland remarked as he glanced round. ‘My Aunt Katy always says that a tidy room betokens a Christian mind.’

‘We don’t cleave to possessions,’ said Jenny.

‘Just as well.’ Margaret’s lip twisted in a mordant smile. ‘Since we don’t have an option. Ye need money for possessions.’

‘Shared, this fifteen years,’ the other nodded.

‘Thick and thin.’ Margaret smiled almost fondly at Jenny, who often reminded her of a frugal wee sparrow.

McLevy’s own domicile was like a midden, with halfpenny books, forensic papers, scientific journals and the detritus of bachelor existence scattered right left and centre. If this signified his mental state it was small wonder he needed another sugar biscuit.

The inspector munched once more and, thus fortified, put forward a request.

‘The night of the murder. If you might relate events. From the very beginning?’

‘We’ve already told!’ replied Jenny.

‘Tell me again.’

‘The inspector likes a story,’ Mulholland said with no little trace of irony. In truth he did not know why they had returned to the cleaners unless it was one of McLevy’s slices of instinct. He also had the feeling that something recent had lodged in that strange morass of a mind and, as usual, it would only be revealed in the fullness of time.

He often felt that there were in fact, two James McLevys. One, the belligerent, sardonic, wild-humoured individual, and the other a deeper, questing entity that Mulholland glimpsed only too rarely.