Edinburgh Twilight (Ian Hamilton Mysteries Book 1) Page 3

  Even the sun misbehaved in Edinburgh. At the height of summer, it refused to retire at a reasonable hour, shining bravely on well after nine o’clock. In winter, the land descended into perpetual twilight, the sun barely scraping the horizon as it slunk across the sky in search of rest, as if exhausted by its summer excess.

  She climbed up the High Street, past the Tron Kirk, its sharply pointed steeple slate gray in the chill rain. She pushed on to St. Giles’—Alfie always admired its grandeur and pomp; after all, as he liked to remind her, it was the center of Scottish worship. Behind her lay the house of John Knox, founder of the Scottish Reformation, who survived nearly two years as a French galley slave to lead the Scots away from French Catholicism. Though Lillian had no place in her life for Christianity, she admired Knox as a Scottish hero. She preferred Spiritualism, attending Madame Flambeau’s Friday night séances with regularity.

  She shivered as she entered the great stone building, her footsteps echoing through its solemn walls. In the main nave, a group of schoolchildren spilled out of a pew, giggling and poking one another.

  “Hush! Come along, children!” their teacher hissed, herding them like so many gray-and-blue-clad sheep. She was a sturdy matron in a thick woolen suit—sans corset, Lillian noted with disapproval. They followed her, whispering and stifling laughter, their leather soles clacking on the marble floor. A couple of the older the girls stared at Lillian in a way she found most impolite, and she glared back at them.

  Lillian knew she was old, but she couldn’t abide people dismissing her because of her age. She was still a lively woman with a keen mind and the energy of folks half her age, and it galled her when a young shopkeeper’s assistant spoke more slowly to her, or raised his voice, assuming she was hard of hearing.

  “Lower your voice,” she would snap at him. “I’m not deaf!” She enjoyed the startled expression that came over his face, but it didn’t make up for the indignity inflicted by the careless arrogance of the young. She remembered being that age, thinking the grace and ease of youth would last forever—getting old was something that happened to other people.

  Lillian Grey was a curious combination—the spirit of a revolutionary affixed to the stern sensibility of a conservative Scottish matron. She was aware of her oddness, but proud of it, too, in the contrary way of a true Scot. She shuffled to the rear of the nave, with its soaring stone arches, her movements hampered by the large basket on her arm. She stared up at the crosshatched, stained glass window on the western end.

  Lillian had studied art as a young woman—it was said among the family that she had “an artistic soul.” After Alfie’s death, she had taken up photography, rather by accident, having acquired a bulky wooden camera at a jumble sale. She gave her neck a cursory rub with her strong fingers as she stood beneath the depiction of the archangel Gabriel wielding his flaming sword. Lowering her head, she breathed a silent homage to her dear departed Alfred (she wouldn’t use the word “prayer,” because that would imply a faith in God she was proud not to have).

  When she was finished, she drew a small gold watch from her skirt pocket and peered at its face. She was astonished to see it was nearly five. She had half an hour to get home and put the kettle on before her sister’s son Ian, her favorite nephew, arrived at her flat. They had always gotten on, but now that dear Emily was gone, they had a special bond. The sausages in her basket were for him—she was making bubble and squeak for tea, one of his favorites. After Alfie’s death, she insisted on giving Ian a yearly stipend—she had more than she could possibly spend—and though he could have lived on that alone, he continued working as a policeman, bless him.

  She scurried from the church onto the High Street. As she passed the kirk’s western entrance, a couple of boys in school uniforms loped past, pausing to spit energetically on the heart-shaped mosaic built into the cobblestones. Known as the Heart of Midlothian, after the nickname for the infamous Tolbooth prison, the mosaic marked the former entrance to the building, now demolished. The prison figured prominently in Sir Walter Scott’s nationalist novel, The Heart of Midlothian, and was also the place of public executions. Spitting on the Heart was considered both good luck and a sign of Scottish patriotism—though Lillian considered it merely an excuse for boys to spit in public.

  She charged uphill on her sturdy legs before turning south toward her home near the university, passing students and professors on their way to Thursday evening classes, long gowns flapping behind them in the wind like great black wings. Arriving at her spacious town house, she shoved the sausages into the icebox next to a nice bunch of cress she had bought from a street vendor near the Lawnmarket. The doorbell chimed as she was pouring the cream into the bone china pitcher her sister had given her. Poor Emily, she thought as she hurried down the long hallway to the front door. She could see the outline of her nephew’s lean form behind the smoked-glass panels.

  “Hello, Auntie,” he said, kissing her on the cheek as she closed the door after him. He handed her a bunch of greenhouse carnations, and she inhaled their sharp cinnamon smell, reminiscent of spring breezes and hope.

  “Ach, ye shouldn’t have,” she said, her Glaswegian accent thickening in his presence.

  “You’d never forgive me if I didn’t.”

  She swatted him affectionately and bustled him into the front parlor, where a steaming teapot perched upon a lace antimacassar on the round rosewood table. She arranged the flowers in a vase and put them on top of the upright piano that had belonged to Emily. Lillian didn’t play, but she was determined to learn—the piano had been spared in the fire that killed her sister, which she took as a sign. Though she didn’t believe in a Christian God, Lillian saw no contradiction in being heartily superstitious. After putting the sausages and potatoes in a skillet over a low fire, she joined her nephew in the parlor.

  The gas lamps were turned low, and a fire blazed merrily in the hearth. A lump swelled in her throat as Lillian thought of all the tea she and Alfred had shared together at this table. Still, she had had forty years with him before the heart attack ripped him from her. Lillian was inclined to focus on the positive, a trait that ran in the Grey family—though not, alas, in the Hamilton clan.

  “Shall I be mother?” she asked as she reached for the pot.

  Ian inhaled the aroma of steaming tea. “Hot and strong, just the way I like it.”

  “You’re on a case,” she observed, handing him a cup.

  “You never did miss much, Auntie,” he said, reaching for a raisin scone.

  “Mind you don’t spoil your appetite for the sausages.”

  “No fear of that,” he said, biting into the scone, sending crumbs tumbling onto the carpet.

  “Who’s the lead detective?”

  “I hope I am.”

  “Oh, Ian—your first proper case!” she said, clapping her hands like a schoolgirl.

  “It’s not official yet—”

  “This calls for a celebration!” she said, ignoring his protestation. “We’ll have to break out something decent with supper.” She stood and reached for the empty teapot, suppressing a groan as her aging joints protested. The damp weather cut through layers of woolen clothing, making her knees swell and creak, but she was not about to let her nephew see that. She picked up the pot and headed toward the kitchen, doing her best to straighten her stiffening spine. She turned the sausages and potatoes, and returned with a bottle of single malt and two brandy snifters. After pouring them each a generous amount, she settled back into her chair. “All right—I want all the details.”

  “Did you happen to read about the young man who was found in Holyrood Park yesterday?”

  “One would have to be blind and deaf to avoid hearing about it—it was in all the papers.” She leaned toward him. “So it was murder? I thought as much!”

  “You never cease to amaze me. What made you think that?”

  She smiled. “If I give away all my secrets, I won’t surprise you anymore.”

  He took a sip
of whisky. “Perhaps you should be a member of the constabulary instead of me.”

  “Well,” she said, “we both know why you joined the force.” She saw his lips tighten, and veered away from the subject. “Do you have any promising leads?”

  “Not yet. That reminds me—are you still a member of the Amateur Photography Society?”

  “I’m the treasurer!” she declared proudly.

  “I wonder if you would be so kind as to lend me your expertise.”

  “I should be delighted.”

  “Are you free tomorrow?”

  “I am.”

  “Can you meet me at the morgue first thing in the morning—is seven too early?”

  “Ach, nae—I’m up with the sun. Have you cleared it with DCI Crawford?”

  “No, but I will.”

  “How exciting. But let’s eat. I’m famished, and I’ll wager you are as well.”

  “Let me help you serve.”

  “Stay where you are.”

  “But—”

  “You can clean up, if you insist,” she said, bustling to the kitchen. Though utterly independent and self-sufficient, Lillian missed having a man around to wait on. She had enjoyed serving dear Alfie his tea, fussing and clucking over him, and now that Ian had taken his place, she was not about to let the opportunity slip by.

  “Eat up, Skinny Malinky Longlegs,” Lillian said, sliding a hot plate of sausages, potatoes, and cress salad in front of her nephew. She enjoyed trotting out archaic Scottish phrases.

  Ian grimaced. “Auntie—”

  “You’ll never catch the eye of a young lady if ye don’t put on a stone or two,” she said, spreading some fresh butter on a scone.

  “I’m not looking to catch anyone’s eye.”

  “Your brother never had a problem with his appetite,” she replied as she bit into the scone, savoring the flaky sweetness. “Have you heard from Donald lately?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “Last I heard, he was working his way through all the pubs in Glasgow.”

  His older brother, Donald, had been on his way to a promising medical career when the fire took their parents, reducing all of the family’s possessions to ashes. Donald never recovered from the shock of returning in the middle of the night to find their home in flames, his younger brother trapped in the basement, their parents perished in the fire. He dropped out of the University of Edinburgh, and had spent the past seven years slouching around Scotland and the Continent, working odd jobs as a longshoreman, sheepherder, and bartender.

  “Is he still gambling, then?” Lillian asked.

  “And drinking.”

  “What a pity,” she said, and silence settled over them. It was an uncomfortable subject, one she regretted bringing up.

  “A leopard doesn’t change its spots,” Ian remarked, and she was sorry to hear the bitterness in his voice.

  Outside, the rain beat hard upon the roofs of saints and sinners alike, hammering a steady, insistent tattoo upon the city’s ancient dwellings. Anyone with the misfortune to be out on a night like this might peer through the parlor window at the two people huddled before the crackling fire with envy at the cozy, peaceful scene. Lillian knew that her nephew’s mind was elsewhere, though—his long fingers fiddled with his napkin, and he gazed silently into the leaping flames.

  “More sausages?” she offered hopefully.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Go on with you, then.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “What?”

  “I know well enough when you need to be alone. Get along—go play that damn pennywhistle or whatever it is you do when you need to think.”

  He rose from his chair without arguing. “I’m sorry I’m not very good company.”

  She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Ach, gae on wi’ye,” she said in her thickest Glaswegian accent.

  “Tomorrow, then? Bring your camera.”

  “Seven o’clock sharp.”

  He smiled. “I do adore you, Auntie.”

  “Now you’re talking proper nonsense—get along, then!”

  With a quick kiss on her cheek, he went.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The lone figure standing on George IV Bridge looked out over the sleeping city and lit a cigarette. The match flickered briefly before dying out. He inhaled deeply, the ember of his cigarette a glowing red eye in the darkness. The night enfolded him in its arms like an old friend. He felt safe, invisible in the inky blackness.

  But even darkness was no protection when he was a child. He would creep up to bed, hoping his father was passed out from drink. If he was lucky, he would fall asleep to the old man’s snores shaking the roof rafters. The next morning, he would tiptoe past his father, who would still be sleeping it off, splayed out over the kitchen bench. Those were the good days. On the bad ones, the steps would creak with heavy footfalls as his father staggered upstairs, muttering curses. When he saw the dreaded crack of light at his bedroom door, he knew it was all over.

  “Get up, you little faggot! Time to prove you’re a piece of chicken sheit who couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”

  The covers would be thrown off as his father dragged him from his bed, down the stairs, out to the yard behind the house—or if there was snow on the ground, to the cold, damp basement. The two boys would do their best to satisfy their father’s commands, battling until they were slippery with sweat and exhausted, but even that failed to placate him. The fights only stopped when the old man ran out of booze or cigarettes, or fell asleep perched on the rain barrel.

  At first, he thought his brother was as much a victim as he was, but later resented him for not intervening—after all, he was older. Was it not his duty to protect his younger brother? He began to hate his brother, blaming him for not standing up to their tyrant father.

  Stephen Wycherly reminded him of his brother, but that wasn’t what sealed Wycherly’s fate. Their friendship had begun well enough, over a pint at the local pub. Wycherly initiated the conversation, but the next day they were in his digs on Leith Walk, and Stephen made a play for him. That was when the poison began to seep in again. He had been trying to mend his ways—dear God, he had tried, even moving to Edinburgh from another continent in hopes of breaking the spell—but to no avail. He was attracted to Wycherly, and the idea of killing him held a thrill nothing else could touch.

  He began to think about killing Stephen, until he could think of nothing else. It was easy enough to lure him up to Arthur’s Seat by threatening to reveal his secret, which would ruin his law career. Wycherly took the bait, and agreed to pay his “blackmailer.” After strangling him, he pushed the law clerk over the ledge for good measure—maybe the death would seem like a suicide. The familiar feeling of power was irresistible, and the lust for more victims returned, stronger than ever. He realized Wycherly was just the beginning of a new cycle. He needed more.

  A faint moon struggled to break through the overcast sky, and for a moment the buildings in the eastern sky were sharply etched silhouettes in its pale light. The clouds soon won the struggle, vanquishing the pallid moon, and the streets lay once again in shadow. The man on the bridge finished his cigarette, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strode off into the darkness. He smiled a secret smile as he headed into the heart of the city. The thrill of the hunt tingled in his loins, and his blood quickened at the thought of new conquests. Oh, there was so much evil in a man, one hardly knew where to begin . . .

  Somewhere deep in the Old Town, a hound howled mournfully. Another responded, and soon the air rang with the sound of dogs baying to the moon. The moon had already succumbed to the darkness, but still they howled, the sound plaintive and hollow in the empty air.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Ligature strangulation, sir.”

  DCI Crawford looked up from his desk. The bell on Greyfriars Kirk had not yet struck nine on this Friday morning, he was still on his first cup of tea, and standing before him was his most irksome lieutenant. DI Hamilton looked triumphant
—smug, even. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes actually sparkled. By God, that was too much, Crawford thought glumly as he drained the dregs of his tea. He was exhausted, having been up half the night with Moira. He had sent the scullery maid’s son to fetch the doctor, but the good man was out all night attending to the cases of cholera that had struck the city like a bolt of divine vengeance. Crawford had finally administered his wife a dose of laudanum before taking some himself and falling into a comatose state until shortly before dawn.

  “Very well, Hamilton, let’s hear what you have.” He sighed, looping his fingers through the piece of string he kept in the drawer. Even that calming ritual sometimes failed him on days like this, he thought as he twisted it round his palm.

  Ian pulled an envelope from his coat pocket and dropped it on the desk.

  Crawford sniffed at it as though it were three-day-old fish. “What is this?”

  “Open it, sir.”

  As the chief inspector lifted the envelope, three photographs fell onto the desk. They showed the corpse of a young man—Steven Wycherly, no doubt. Ringing the lad’s neck were ugly purple bruises.

  Hamilton cleared his throat. “Judging by the placement and shape, I’d say most likely ligature strangulation, sir.”

  Crawford looked up at the detective. Why were people so damn irritating, even when they were admirable? Especially when they were admirable, he thought as he tossed the photos back onto the desk.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “My aunt took them.”

  Crawford sat bolt upright in his chair. “And how did your aunt get into the morgue, I’d like to know?”

  “I let her in.”

  “Where was the morgue attendant at the time?”

  “Nursing a bottle of single malt.”

  “Which he procured . . . ?”

  “The same place anyone would, I suppose.”

  “Do you find it strange that a morgue attendant could afford to drink single malt?”

  “‘The miserable have no other medicine.’”