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upright, fur rising like a hairy nimbus from the back of her neck. A creaking board on the stairs outside. Gardyloo!
    Mrs MacPherson, his landlady, up to get his dirty plate, though God knows she was always complaining about the stairs and hated the fact he had his meal brought up from the dining room.
    He hoped most earnestly she wasn’t accompanied by her West Highland terrier, Fergus, a decent enough wee tyke but representative of what McLevy considered a vastly overrated breed rejoicing in the name of man’s best friend.
    Fergus loathed the feline species and so, for his sake, did Mrs MacPherson, though she did not possess the dog’s olfactory abilities.
    McLevy quickly shooed the cat into his small bedroom, shoved the saucer of milk inside to keep company, and shut them both in just as a knock sounded at the landing door.
    As he made his way to answer, something nagged at the back of his mind. Mrs MacPherson was a rap-a-tap-tap, that was just a rap-a-tap, what was going on here, surely the woman wasn’t adjusting her habits?
    He threw open the door, gaze automatically adjusted to the eye-level of the dumpy Dundonian frame of his landlady, only to find that he was, in fact, staring at a female bosom. Safely ensconced in material right enough, pale purple, deep collar, glimpsed behind the dark outdoor coat, but a not inconsiderable statement of undoubted femininity.
    A polite cough brought him swiftly up to the face. The light from his room shone past his shoulder and illuminated her in the shadows of the hallway; the countenance was part hidden by her bonnet but the skin was clear, apparently unlined by travail, peaches and cream, and yet it had a tight stretch. Blue eyes, but there was a darkness to the colour. A troubled sky.
    The mouth was firm, lips a touch on the thin side. A very beautiful face though. The kind you’d see in the old paintings, damsel in distress with young men dying all around her; fatalities of a misplaced desire to rescue what was perfectly capable of looking after itself.
    McLevy’s sympathy was always with the dragon lurking at the back.
    As they stared at each other, the landlady’s voice floated up from under.
    ‘I hope ye don’t mind, Mr McLevy,’ she called. ‘But the young lady says she knows of ye and I am covered all over in flour.’
    ‘That’s all right, Mrs MacPherson,’ he shouted back. ‘Tend tae your oven, that’s the important matter.’
    Sure enough, the enticing smell of newly baked bread could be discerned wafting up the stairway.
    The dog barked below, perhaps it sensed the cat. The woman took a deep breath.
    ‘Are you James McLevy?’
    ‘You have heard me so identified.’
    ‘I must apologise for disturbing your supper.’
    He quickly wiped at his mouth with the back of a hand. Damn herring that left an oily spume.
    ‘My name is Joanna Lightfoot. I … have great need of your assistance.’
    He glanced doubtfully back into the recess of his room.
    It wasn’t exactly a midden but, not unlike his own mind, nothing seemed to know its place.
    Seeing his hesitation, she took another deep breath, then her eyes closed and she slumped forward.
    He grasped her by the elbow. They were stuck mid-portal. The indignant cat started scratching at his bedroom door.
    Between women. A fine predicament.

12
     
     
    Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot.
    JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.
     
     
    The cat cast a final, baleful, slant-eyed glance at the female sitting in the cracked leather armchair by the fire, slid out of the open window then ghosted off into the moonlight.
    McLevy closed the frame and remained gazing out over the rooftops. He could feel the heat of the woman’s gaze on his back but resisted the urge to turn round immediately.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I am not in the habit of giving in to weakness.’
    ‘Neither am I,’ he muttered.
    Now he did turn and gave her a long hard scrutiny, making no attempt to hide the