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Authors: Alanna Knight
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held Edinburgh’s spires, the smoking chimneys to St Leonard’s and the Pleasance with their grim tenements. And in between, the Innocent Railway with its daily trains, steaming their way back and forth to Musselburgh.
Just out of sight, down the road, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Queen’s residence, with the circus established in the area known as the Queen’s Park for a short season. A short season which had heralded, by coincidence or design, an outbreak of violence and mysterious death. Was it coincidence that all these landmarks close to each other were also linked with the tinkers’ encampment with its gaily coloured caravans?
It would seem even to the least suspicious mind that, if Jack’s theory was right, then either circus or tinkers might well be providing refuge for a killer.
CHAPTER NINE
I decided to set off for the tenement where the girls had died. A crumbling ruin among those marked down by the city developers for demolition to be replaced by more modern apartments.
Two hundred years ago, long before the wealthy of Edinburgh had moved on to build their splendid houses in the New Town, these high tenements were already warrens built without thought of style or comfort or hope of luxury, merely to herd together as many human souls into as little breathing space as possible to keep them alive.
After all, this section of humanity was not intended for comfort or luxury. Such bonuses in life would only make working people slothful and turn their families soft, thus spoiling their efficiency as human machines, provided by the good Lord’s bountiful grace to keep railways and canals in order, and to prosper their betters by providing a marked increase in their stocks and shares.
If the tall lands before me, and many well outof sight and conveniently overlooked, were soulless monstrosities, the reason was that it had never occurred to the builders that their wretched inhabitants had souls to destroy. As the decades passed, such properties lacked even the dignity of growing seedy-looking and the passing years did nothing to mellow the miserable conditions.
Where occupants struggled to raise vast families in one room, every drop of water had to be carried up and downstairs from a water main two hundred yards away, until ten years ago. Beds to make the night hours easier were most often crude mattresses thrown down on the floor, the moderately house-proud grateful for a ragged carpet from which all pattern had long since vanished, plus a few broken-down chairs and a rickety table.
Both girls, I knew from Jack, belonged in that peripheral army of servants and factory workers taking employment, however transient, that guaranteed enough money to survive. Their bolder sisters walked the streets of Edinburgh and sold their bodies instead.
Amy Bland occupied flat 6, Belle Sanders flat 5. A dignified description of what was one room, with a bed recess, kitchen sink and shelved cupboard known as an Edinburgh press. On the landing a shared lavatory for six tenants; in the absence of a nearby drying green in that overcrowded area, each flat was provided with indoor laundry facilities: a series of wooden lathes linked to the ceiling by a pulley. Sadly, this novel innovation assisted the two girls in their suicides, if such they were.
The ground floor of number 64 was occupied by a shop with the fanciful name of pawnbroker. Although his dubious connections were keenly observed by the police as a possible fence for stolen goods, he did a considerable trade as a rag-and-bone merchant, a valuable and much frequented addition to this sad poverty-stricken community.
The neighbour who had returned drunk lived in flat 2. A widow with four tiny children resided in flat 3 – presumably the kindly neighbour who could be dismissed from the enquiries as a possible suspect but might have helpful information.
Number 4 was unoccupied, utterly derelict after a burst water main, so that, too, could be eliminated.
As I
Just out of sight, down the road, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Queen’s residence, with the circus established in the area known as the Queen’s Park for a short season. A short season which had heralded, by coincidence or design, an outbreak of violence and mysterious death. Was it coincidence that all these landmarks close to each other were also linked with the tinkers’ encampment with its gaily coloured caravans?
It would seem even to the least suspicious mind that, if Jack’s theory was right, then either circus or tinkers might well be providing refuge for a killer.
CHAPTER NINE
I decided to set off for the tenement where the girls had died. A crumbling ruin among those marked down by the city developers for demolition to be replaced by more modern apartments.
Two hundred years ago, long before the wealthy of Edinburgh had moved on to build their splendid houses in the New Town, these high tenements were already warrens built without thought of style or comfort or hope of luxury, merely to herd together as many human souls into as little breathing space as possible to keep them alive.
After all, this section of humanity was not intended for comfort or luxury. Such bonuses in life would only make working people slothful and turn their families soft, thus spoiling their efficiency as human machines, provided by the good Lord’s bountiful grace to keep railways and canals in order, and to prosper their betters by providing a marked increase in their stocks and shares.
If the tall lands before me, and many well outof sight and conveniently overlooked, were soulless monstrosities, the reason was that it had never occurred to the builders that their wretched inhabitants had souls to destroy. As the decades passed, such properties lacked even the dignity of growing seedy-looking and the passing years did nothing to mellow the miserable conditions.
Where occupants struggled to raise vast families in one room, every drop of water had to be carried up and downstairs from a water main two hundred yards away, until ten years ago. Beds to make the night hours easier were most often crude mattresses thrown down on the floor, the moderately house-proud grateful for a ragged carpet from which all pattern had long since vanished, plus a few broken-down chairs and a rickety table.
Both girls, I knew from Jack, belonged in that peripheral army of servants and factory workers taking employment, however transient, that guaranteed enough money to survive. Their bolder sisters walked the streets of Edinburgh and sold their bodies instead.
Amy Bland occupied flat 6, Belle Sanders flat 5. A dignified description of what was one room, with a bed recess, kitchen sink and shelved cupboard known as an Edinburgh press. On the landing a shared lavatory for six tenants; in the absence of a nearby drying green in that overcrowded area, each flat was provided with indoor laundry facilities: a series of wooden lathes linked to the ceiling by a pulley. Sadly, this novel innovation assisted the two girls in their suicides, if such they were.
The ground floor of number 64 was occupied by a shop with the fanciful name of pawnbroker. Although his dubious connections were keenly observed by the police as a possible fence for stolen goods, he did a considerable trade as a rag-and-bone merchant, a valuable and much frequented addition to this sad poverty-stricken community.
The neighbour who had returned drunk lived in flat 2. A widow with four tiny children resided in flat 3 – presumably the kindly neighbour who could be dismissed from the enquiries as a possible suspect but might have helpful information.
Number 4 was unoccupied, utterly derelict after a burst water main, so that, too, could be eliminated.
As I
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