Read Online Shadow of the Serpent by David Ashton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Ashton
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fiddling for which he was most grateful, ‘about a murder in Leith. Yourself, the investigating officer.’
‘I am indeed,’ he replied. And waited.
‘The death blow was most … singular?’
‘That’s one description. Sadie Gorman was split like an old apple tree, but she did not bring forth sweet scent.’
He chuckled to himself in a macabre fashion but his eyes never left her.
She rose from the chair, walked restlessly away from him into the centre of the room and looked around. The wallpaper seemed to be composed of brown flowers. She’d never seen brown flowers in all of her life. The place had an air of neglect, like an empty box. The ceiling had cracks running all over like a spider’s web, two threadbare carpets lay like dead animals on the bare floorboards, the place was clean enough but sterile. As if McLevy lived his life somewhere else. Not even a picture on the wall, and, more importantly, not a mirror to be seen.
‘This lacks a woman’s touch,’ she said.
‘As Samson did Delilah’s?’ McLevy muttered as he shook the coffee pot hopefully and received a dry response. With a disappointed grunt, he banged it back on the hob.
The inspector was getting fed up with all this. A small fishbone had lodged in one of his back molars and he was dying to hook his thumbnail in there. Manners maketh man, however.
‘Did you come up here to talk about decoration or murder? There’s only the one that interests me, so declare yourself.’
The colour heightened in her cheeks for a moment, then she suddenly stamped her foot on the floor.
He noticed her boots were in the latest mode. Boots strangely interested him, of Italian leather he would surmise, tight to the ankle, the laces looped so neatly.
Her feet almost as large as his own. In fact … he walked towards her so that they were face to face. She was near the same elevation as himself, now what would all this equality produce?
She looked him straight in the eye, then delivered a body blow.
‘Thirty years ago in Leith. There was a similar death, was there not?’
13
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
And to keep off envy’s stinging,
JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.
Leith, December 1850
Sergeant George Cameron lay in a hospital bed of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, what a place to end your days.
He had no relatives to gather round and dab their eyes, for which he thanked his Protestant Redeemer. They were all up in the Highlands gutting trout and chasing sheep.
What a scunner. Some drunken fool in a tavern brawl sticks a penknife in his leg, the blade snaps off, the young doctor, Jarvis by name, just qualified, full of mince, opens up his flesh but cannae find it.
‘Dropped out,’ he says. ‘It must have dropped out.’
But it hadnae dropped out, the stupid bastard had missed the damn thing entirely. It had lodged just below the back of the knee and by the time inflammation had alerted Cameron, the thing found and removed from its hidey-hole, his blood was evil-poisoned.
Amputation had been suggested – that would be nice, on the saunter with a wooden leg. But even for that, the fever must abate, and it had not abated; it raged through him like a forest fire.
A hand came down with a big white hankie and wiped the sweat off his face. Dabbed the tangled eyebrows. Constable James McLevy. All his damned fault.
He should have been Cameron’s rearguard, what happened though he’d got carried away and had not observed the eleventh commandment. In matters of communal violence, always stay back to back with a fellow bulls-eye.
Somebody’d nipped the helmet from the young man’s head, he’d gone on the chase and while he was thus engaged a drunken sailor had stuck his ’baccy knife into Cameron’s nether limb.
See the big white face staring down, the agony and guilt in his eyes, serve the bugger right. At least he would be alive to feel such agony. A spasm of pain went through Cameron and he reared up in the bed,
‘I am indeed,’ he replied. And waited.
‘The death blow was most … singular?’
‘That’s one description. Sadie Gorman was split like an old apple tree, but she did not bring forth sweet scent.’
He chuckled to himself in a macabre fashion but his eyes never left her.
She rose from the chair, walked restlessly away from him into the centre of the room and looked around. The wallpaper seemed to be composed of brown flowers. She’d never seen brown flowers in all of her life. The place had an air of neglect, like an empty box. The ceiling had cracks running all over like a spider’s web, two threadbare carpets lay like dead animals on the bare floorboards, the place was clean enough but sterile. As if McLevy lived his life somewhere else. Not even a picture on the wall, and, more importantly, not a mirror to be seen.
‘This lacks a woman’s touch,’ she said.
‘As Samson did Delilah’s?’ McLevy muttered as he shook the coffee pot hopefully and received a dry response. With a disappointed grunt, he banged it back on the hob.
The inspector was getting fed up with all this. A small fishbone had lodged in one of his back molars and he was dying to hook his thumbnail in there. Manners maketh man, however.
‘Did you come up here to talk about decoration or murder? There’s only the one that interests me, so declare yourself.’
The colour heightened in her cheeks for a moment, then she suddenly stamped her foot on the floor.
He noticed her boots were in the latest mode. Boots strangely interested him, of Italian leather he would surmise, tight to the ankle, the laces looped so neatly.
Her feet almost as large as his own. In fact … he walked towards her so that they were face to face. She was near the same elevation as himself, now what would all this equality produce?
She looked him straight in the eye, then delivered a body blow.
‘Thirty years ago in Leith. There was a similar death, was there not?’
13
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
And to keep off envy’s stinging,
JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.
Leith, December 1850
Sergeant George Cameron lay in a hospital bed of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, what a place to end your days.
He had no relatives to gather round and dab their eyes, for which he thanked his Protestant Redeemer. They were all up in the Highlands gutting trout and chasing sheep.
What a scunner. Some drunken fool in a tavern brawl sticks a penknife in his leg, the blade snaps off, the young doctor, Jarvis by name, just qualified, full of mince, opens up his flesh but cannae find it.
‘Dropped out,’ he says. ‘It must have dropped out.’
But it hadnae dropped out, the stupid bastard had missed the damn thing entirely. It had lodged just below the back of the knee and by the time inflammation had alerted Cameron, the thing found and removed from its hidey-hole, his blood was evil-poisoned.
Amputation had been suggested – that would be nice, on the saunter with a wooden leg. But even for that, the fever must abate, and it had not abated; it raged through him like a forest fire.
A hand came down with a big white hankie and wiped the sweat off his face. Dabbed the tangled eyebrows. Constable James McLevy. All his damned fault.
He should have been Cameron’s rearguard, what happened though he’d got carried away and had not observed the eleventh commandment. In matters of communal violence, always stay back to back with a fellow bulls-eye.
Somebody’d nipped the helmet from the young man’s head, he’d gone on the chase and while he was thus engaged a drunken sailor had stuck his ’baccy knife into Cameron’s nether limb.
See the big white face staring down, the agony and guilt in his eyes, serve the bugger right. At least he would be alive to feel such agony. A spasm of pain went through Cameron and he reared up in the bed,
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