Ghost Walk (3 page)

Thanking her, but saying that wasn’t necessary, I was aware of her anxious expression as she watched me ride away, down past the stalls deserted after the rain.

The fresh air didn’t do much good. I still felt dreadful by the time I reached Solomon’s Tower. Dreadful – and angry too.

If Danny McQuinn was alive, for heaven’s sake, why hadn’t he got in touch with me, his wife, first of all. Did I no longer matter? Was I less important than the orphanage who had brought him up?

I told myself it couldn’t be true. There had to be a mistake
otherwise
the implications of the prayer note Sister Mary Michael had received were the stuff that nightmares are made of. And I was back in that constant dream made manifest by that renewed longing to see him again, the frail hope of the joy of opening the door and seeing his smiling face. He was taking me into his arms…

And then I woke up.

Now that fleeting moment of madness, of dream fulfilment, had been replaced by a sense of impending doom and I
remembered
the solemn pagan warning: Take care what you ask the Gods for. Their answer may not be quite what you expected or even find acceptable.

Despite the now bright day, the Tower seemed suddenly brooding and desolate, and I realised why local people thought of it as a sinister haunted place. In no mood for empty echoing rooms I sat on the wooden bench outside making the most of the soothing comfort, the solace of warm sunshine.

It was all I had. In a sudden orgy of self-pity I decided that when I needed tenderness and reassurance, a banishment of my fear, Jack Macmerry wasn’t there. No doubt he was busy tracking down criminals on Leith Walk. Even Thane had disappeared when I yearned for a friendly welcome.

Should I tell Jack about my strange experience? I quickly decided against that, recalling tight lips and cold eyes at the
mention of Danny McQuinn.

I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wall, letting the gentle scent of summer flowers and fresh cut grass drift over me.

Oh Danny – it can’t possibly be true. You would have come to me first. Sent me a message before anyone.

And that was the unkindest cut of all. I thought again of his life with Pinkerton’s Detective Agency and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, remembering his warning that there were plenty of
hazards
, for he had enemies, as he described it, in both camps. They were the unquestionable reason for his precise instructions about that six months waiting time before I returned to Edinburgh.

Or how he never knew that day he walked out of my life for ever that I was carrying his child after a long history of
miscarriages
and false alarms. Then when pregnancy had seemed beyond belief I bore the baby son we had both longed for, only to lose him with fever.

As I prepared to quit Arizona my frequent and frantic enquiries to Pinkerton’s branch in Tucson met with little response, even, I thought, with cruel indifference. Either they knew something they were not at liberty to tell me, or they were speaking the truth, equally baffled by Danny’s disappearance.

If only I could have talked to someone, a friend who knew him, but there was little hope of that, for, always on the move, staying in Arizona’s infamous shack towns, we had little chance to form lasting friendships.

There were none of his colleagues I could turn to. He had always been seriously noncommittal about his activities. An
occasional
visitor with an Irish accent about whom no information was volunteered made me aware that Danny’s sympathies lay with the Caen na Gael, a group of Irish Americans who funded a movement to free Ireland from British rule. There were other secret visitors and when my offered hospitality was
unceremoniously
declined, I suspected that Danny was also a secret
Government agent.

On one occasion I made the accusation. How he had roared with laughter at such an idea.

Jabbing a finger at me he said: ‘Ask me anything about Pinkerton’s and I’ll tell you what you want to know. Go on, ask me.’

And that invitation was irresistible. There was one matter
concerning
my own future I was most eager to discuss.

‘I know for one thing that they employ female detectives.’

Getting it wrong, he raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘So you think I have a fancy woman.’

I gasped for I had to confess that the thought had never occurred to me.

Taking my astonishment for anxiety, he kissed me gently. ‘No one but you, my Rose.’

‘I’m just interested, that’s all.’

Eyeing me doubtfully, he sighed. ‘Sure, Allan Pinkerton employs a few brave women. He is keen to employ females as he believes them to be at least as clever and daring as men in
detective
work – and more imaginative.’ His somewhat sceptical tone regarding Pinkerton’s confidence in this novel and daring
procedure
had raised a hue and cry within his organisation. And none was more concerned than Danny McQuinn, alarmed that his own wife might have inherited her famous father’s talents. He often said Pappa had wished for a son, interpreting this as a wish that I had been a boy rather than the wistful ache and guilt for the stillborn baby that had cost his dear Lizzie, my Mamma, her life.

‘If Mr Pinkerton approves why can’t I – I mean – you could recommend me, Danny. Please. I would love to try my hand at catching criminals. You know I was well trained in
observation
and deduction by Pappa at a very early age.’

‘Observation and deduction!’ He shook his head, then added seriously, ‘And how far do you think that would get you in this lawless land where criminals shoot first and answer questions
afterwards?’

‘But –’ I began indignantly.

Danny held up his hand. ‘No, Rose. Definitely not – now or ever. You don’t know what you are talking about. I wouldn’t
consider
such a thing –’

‘But Danny,’ I pleaded, ‘I wouldn’t be alone. We could work together.’

He leaned back in his chair, regarding me narrowly, a
searching
gaze of critical assessment. As if seeing me for the first time, his look asked was I to be trusted, and made me feel not only uncomfortable but afraid.

The moment was gone in a flash. He laughed, took my hand. ‘So you think you’re a brave woman, Rose,’ he said softly. ‘You think you could deal with outlaws and murderers because your illustrious father taught you some clever method of observation and deduction.’

Shaking his head, he went on, ‘Believe me, you’d need a lot more than that in some of the situations you’d find yourself in, or the sort of criminals I encounter on a daily basis, little more than animals, the very dregs of humanity. Situations where I might not be around, or even in a position to protect you from rape – from torture and slow death.’

Ignoring that I said defiantly, ‘Whatever you say, I’d still like to meet Mr Pinkerton.’

Leaning forward, he laughed again, tenderly cupping his hand under my chin. ‘Is that so now? And don’t think I haven’t any idea what this famous meeting would be all about. I can read your mind.’

‘I would like to talk to Mr Pinkerton,’ I insisted. ‘He is from Scotland, after all. We would have that in common.’

‘Yes, he’s from Glasgow. Know why he came to America?’

‘I expect he thought like many emigrants that it was a land of opportunity.’

Danny shook his head. ‘Of necessity, in his case. His militant
activities in the ‘40s on behalf of the rights of the working man brought him to the close attention of the law and he was forced to flee the country.’

I knew some of the story from his autobiography,
Thirty Years a Detective
, published in ‘94 (the year he died), which I had read avidly.

In Chicago, he found like-minded thinkers, sympathetic folk and a job in what was a very rudimentary police force. A brave dogged hardworking lawman, he was soon rounding up small time criminals, powerful gangs and counterfeiters. Such was his success that after having been in America only eight years, he was able to set up his own agency.

From ‘60 to ‘62, Pinkerton was responsible for the personal safety of President Abraham Lincoln and for a time spymaster as Head of Intelligence to General McLennan, operating behind the enemy lines during the Civil War.

When the war ended the General was removed from office, his activities no longer needed and Pinkerton also returned to his detective agency.

Danny however, in common with many other Americans, had his own theory about Lincoln’s assassination. Had General McLennan stayed in the secret service, they felt certain that the quick-witted Pinkerton might have got wind of the plan and averted what was, for America, a national disaster.

‘Pinkerton was ruthless too,’ said Danny. ‘The end justifies the means if the end is justice, was his slogan. He behaved
outrageously
outside the law and was well known to have authorised illegal burglaries on behalf of clients. And the killing of bank
robbers
on the grounds that had they ever come to court, juries might not have convicted them.’

Pinkerton wrote several other books and, after his death, the agency he had founded went on, grew in splendour and fame. Known to the world by its slogan “We Never Sleep” with its logo of a wide-open eye, they were always on the lookout for
experienced 
lawmen like Danny McQuinn whose last word on the
subject
was a firm:

‘Detective work is no job for a married woman.’

His words had come home to roost with a vengeance. History was repeating itself with Detective Inspector Jack Macmerry who, whatever his emotions regarding his inaccessible and dead rival, would have shared his sentiments on that particular issue.

I had no idea what were the views of Edinburgh City Police on the subject of female detectives or the milder term ‘lady
investigators
’, but I could guess that they regarded criminal investigation as a ‘men only’ province.

I felt so impatient with authority. Would a day ever dawn when women ceased to be treated as playthings or breeding machines, when they would be given equal rights with men. My hackles rose in anger at the suffragettes’ gallant struggles as
portrayed
in a recent pamphlet which I had been at pains to keep concealed from Jack.

Watching him eat his supper that evening, I observed that this had not been one of his good days. He was in a bad mood, his perplexed frown told me all I needed to know. His current
investigation
was not going well and it would not be a clever move on my part to bring up the subject of Sister Mary Michael’s
mysterious
note from Danny.

So in my mind I went over and over the details of that brief and frustrating interview and realised that she had told me something of importance. That his relative Father Sean McQuinn, whom I had presumed would be dead by now, was not only alive but occasionally came into Edinburgh and visited the convent.

And suddenly I was quite eager to visit Jack’s parents on the off chance that the priest might have news for me.

Jack was surprised by this burst of enthusiasm but my
preparations
in the days that followed were accompanied by ghosts of the
past, the agonies of the last three years with their false hopes and dreams.

Reason and pride – of the wounded variety – insisted that if Danny were alive, he would never have allowed me to suffer so. We were a devoted couple. He was my only love and my despair, for I thought that love awakened when I was twelve years old would last forever.

I had never imagined the remotest possibility that I could love again, desire and marry another man – and yet, Jack Macmerry was on the threshold of disproving that theory.

I believed that Danny had loved me too, although doubts crept in sometimes that he was not quite as passionate or
single-minded
in his devotion as I had been. After all, I had pursued him to America and rather forced his hand if truth were told. That did arouse feelings of guilt, but I told myself firmly that such overwhelming emotions were more natural to womankind who stayed at home, raised families and waited on their men. Feelings which I had to admit sat uneasily alongside the women’s rights I so fervently supported.

In the end, it all came back to that inescapable wounded pride and the reassurance I needed that if Danny were still alive and well and in Scotland, I was the first he would have got in touch with, the most important person in his life.

And on days when logic needed extra sustenance I told myself that the old nun had been mistaken and for her, confused by the passage of time, three weeks could have been three years. So
taking
comfort and refuge in Sister Angela’s consoling explanation regarding common Irish names I looked forward to Eildon and meeting Father McQuinn.

He would confirm that Danny was indeed dead and that there no longer existed any impediment to my marriage to Jack Macmerry.

As it turned out, I was to travel alone by train to meet my future in-laws for the first time.

Jack was summoned to appear as a police witness in a Glasgow court. This last minute change of plans put me in an ill humour, recalling as it did childhood occasions in the household of a Chief Inspector where my sister Emily and I soon realised that Pappa was never there when we needed him.

In despair and anger, I thought, was this to be the set pattern of my life as a policeman’s wife – for the second time? Was I being foolish, indeed insane, to expect anything better?

I should have realised when I followed Danny to America that life was to be no romantic bed of roses. Hazardous and uncertain, it had eventually made me a widow. I had now learned to live with that bitterness and grief but was I in my right mind even to consider a second marriage to a policeman, especially since I was independent, with a successful career?

Although Jack certainly did not approve of my choice, he knew when to keep his mouth shut and to accept that I could deal with ‘discretion guaranteed’ cases that were not within the scope of the Edinburgh City Police.

Domestic incidents involving the behaviour of relatives,
cheating
husbands and wives, betrayed mistresses. My logbook was full of them. Where the arrival of a uniformed policeman would have caused alarm and despondency, a respectable young woman could, without suspicion, gain access to houses to track down thieving servants, or fraud by close relatives. Such a convenient arrangement thus avoided scandals well-to-do Edinburgh
families
were eager to avoid at all cost, which also meant paying handsomely for my services.

Such were my thoughts as I sat in the train awaiting its
imminent
departure from Waverley Station.

However, even here it seemed that there was no escape from the Little Sisters of the Poor. At the last moment, a young nun ran down the platform and entered my compartment. As she sank breathless into the seat opposite, I greeted her
sympathetically
about being just in time.

She merely nodded and fixed her gaze beyond the window.

Not wishing to be unfriendly I tried another tack and said: ‘Your summer fair was extremely successful I gather, apart from the change in the weather.’

She stared at me and nodded vaguely as if she had no idea what I was talking about. She looked embarrassed and I realised I was presuming she was from the convent. Such institutions were
hardly
thick on the ground in Edinburgh and I was certain that St Anthony’s was the only one of its kind.

She turned towards the window again and did not sink back into her seat until the train began at last to move.

Feeling rather uncomfortable I realised that my presumption was a natural mistake since all nuns at first glance look alike in their dress and hoods.

This one looked young enough to be a novice and as her
attention
was clearly elsewhere I made some mental notes. She had not uttered a word but surely a novice would not yet have taken a vow of silence.

There was something in her expression, not nun-like serenity but an expression furtive and anxious. I thought about her urgent attention to the windows not as trying to avoid conversation with me but perhaps expecting someone to join the train. She had now relaxed. Was she pleased – relieved even, that we were now under way?

Her nun’s garb too was incomplete. No cross or rosary and as she leaned back more comfortably and closed her eyes I caught a whiff of perfume. A quite exotic perfume. I could have accepted incense or lavender water but this was much too worldly for
convent
life. It aroused thoughts of seduction, of amorous evenings
with a suitor.

My eyes travelled downwards to an elegant silk clad ankle in a fine leather shoe, far from the hard wearing practical footwear of the sisters.

I didn’t look away hastily enough. Opening her eyes with a start as we came to the signals, she saw the direction of my glance and hastily thrust her feet out of sight under her robe.

But I kept thinking about those shoes and stockings. Perhaps they were a present, and as a novice, this might indicate her last worldly fling before entering the cloisters. Her slim ungloved hands as she had rearranged her robe also gave cause for
comment
. Such nails, neatly manicured, pink and shining, slightly longer than was usual: I was observing the hands of a middle or upper class Edinburgh young lady who had never done a day’s manual work in her whole life.

I was intrigued for I would never know the answer to this piece of observation, having fallen into the pastime I had learned from Pappa long ago. To while away the time on train journeys he had encouraged me to scrutinise fellow passengers secretly and make up character studies. After they left the train, we would
discuss
the results and decide who they were and what were their professions.

For me there was only one conclusion. The young woman
sitting
opposite, despite her garb, was no nun, novice or otherwise.

When the train reached our destination, to my surprise it was hers also. Which suggested the faint hope that she might have some business with the local church.

Seeing her hurrying out of the station while I waited on the platform for the Macmerrys how I regretted that wasted train journey. It was unlikely that a Border stronghold of the Scots kirk would have more than one Roman Catholic church and had I been tenacious enough to discover where she was heading, I might have learned something to my advantage about Father McQuinn.

An elderly man hurried breathlessly through the barrier,
red-faced
with the bewildered and anxious look of one who is
meeting
a passenger for the first time.

His complexion suggested the farmer despite the smart bowler hat, apparently seldom worn, since his hand went to it constantly as if its rare presence nagged him. Then walking along the
platform
he tugged at the jacket of that handsome tweed suit,
suggesting
Sunday best made long ago for a fitting now considerably more ample than the tailor’s original measurements.

Although shorter and more thickset, Andrew Macmerry’s resemblance to Jack was unmistakable. I smiled in his direction and he hurried towards me.

‘Rose, is it?’ His hand sought the familiar farmer’s bonnet and instead encountered the bowler hat. Raising it politely, face sweating with anxiety, he clasped my hand in a powerful grip.

Introductions over, he laughed and picked up my luggage. ‘What a relief, I would have kenned you anywhere, lass. You’re exactly like Jack told us.’ A sideways approving glance. ‘Except that he didn’t do you justice.’ Added shyly, with a slightly
embarrassed
cough, ‘You’re far bonnier, lass, far bonnier that we thought you’d be.’

‘We’ indicated the missing Mrs Macmerry. As I paused and looked around, interpreting my glance, he said hastily:

‘The farm’s a wee step from the station so Jack’s ma has taken the chance of a bit of shopping. Ah, here she is now.’

The picture in townsfolk’s mind is of farmer’s wives rosy and rotund. Jess Macmerry however was as far from that description as could be imagined. Taller than her husband and considerably thinner, her grey hair in a tight no-nonsense bun above a deep frown and a long rather sharp red nose, the kind that suggested a perpetual drip in winter weather.

As we shook hands there was a smile that might have come through a tea-strainer and walking towards the station exit, the shrewd all-enveloping glance told me much about her character,
as I read her summing up her son’s intended.

She was a disappointed woman. She had firmly decided long ago that had this Rose McQuinn even sprouted angel’s wings and borne a message from heaven itself she would still have been no fit mate for Jack Macmerry. A widow woman, I was soiled goods, second-hand, while she had set her heart on a fresh young virgin as daughter-in-law, the only decent and suitable choice for her one and only beloved bairn.

Seated together with Mr Macmerry in the driving seat of the dog-cart, she resumed her relentless scrutiny.

‘You’re much smaller than we thought you’d be,’ she said
candidly
and, with the expert eye of the farming community, that quick glance over my figure was assessing whether it was strong enough to produce – among an assorted bevy of lively and healthy grandchildren – a lad to some day inherit the farm.

‘There’s grand stuff in small bundles, Jess.’ I detected mild reproach as Mr Macmerry came to my rescue. ‘And that’s a right bonny head o’ hair ye have on ye, lass,’ he added gallantly.

It was my turn to be embarrassed by my wild mop of yellow hair inexpertly tamed under a small and now, alas, unfashionable bonnet bought in a moment of optimism in an Edinburgh millinery sale.

‘I’ve always been told that a lot of hair drains your strength away.’ Mrs Macmerry’s sniff was a stern reminder that a man’s admiring eye could be deceived and turning to me: ‘Jack tells us you’re living alone in Edinburgh. In some old tower on Arthur’s Seat.’

Her tone conveyed that living alone was not quite the done thing, and the tower unseen was exceptionally squalid and extremely ruined.

‘I would be terrified sleeping in a place like that all on my own. Doesn’t it scare you?’

‘It doesn’t bother me in the least. I feel quite safe.’

She seemed surprised by this and I could hardly confess that
most nights Jack slept by my side.

‘Rose is a right bonny name,’ said Mr Macmerry desperately.

His wife regarded me solemnly. ‘Rose? Not very Scotch though, is it,’ she reminded him.

He shook his head, his gentle laugh indicated that I was not to be offended. ‘I don’t suppose you know, Rose, but your father was once on a case in this area. I canna mind exactly, it was a fair time ago.’

Pausing, he smiled. ‘But we never imagined then that our wee lad would one day be marrying the daughter of the famous Inspector Faro –’

‘Oh, did you meet him?’ I interrupted eagerly, ignoring Mrs Macmerry’s stony glance and grasping this new talking point for what it might open up.

‘Nay, lass, it was market day in Peebles that Friday.’ He
sounded
disappointed and as I was left wondering what the case had been, Mrs Macmerry put in sharply, ‘Of course, it was nothing involving any of our friends or the farming folk, thank goodness.’

Mr Macmerry frowned. ‘Something to do with Fenians. I think that’s what it was.’ His vague tone suggested that national politics were beyond the range or interest of local farmers.

As a silence ensued above the horse’s clip-clopping along the leafy road I suppressed a sigh. What I would have given for Jack’s presence at that moment.

Surprisingly, his father must have sensed my anxiety. ‘The lad shouldna be long now,’ he said heartily, as if Jack had just gone down the road for a message from the shops.

I smiled weakly, hoping that he was right. How little he knew the machinations of the criminal courts, where days were known to stretch into weeks and even months during trials. Again I
suppressed
that burst of resentment against the absent Jack for I
didn’t
relish the immediate future of unspecified days at Eildon Farm under his mother’s relentless gaze.

‘Jack said you were a teacher,’ said his father.

‘Yes, that was before I went to Arizona.’

‘Arizona?’ queried his mother.

‘That’s America, Jess, over in the west,’ she was told.

‘Ariz – ona,’ she repeated, making it sound what it was to folk who had never travelled further than the nearest town: the very ends of the earth, beyond imagination. ‘How long were you there?’

‘Ten years.’

‘You must have been just a bairn at the time,’ said Mr Macmerry kindly.

‘Not quite, I had been teaching for a few years.’

And I was conscious of Mrs Macmerry at my side. She was moving her lips in some sharp mental arithmetic, shocked to realise what Jack maybe had not told them; that I must be at least thirty, perhaps even older than himself. Another altogether appalling revelation.

A rather more uncomfortable silence followed, in which I received some searching glances. I was no doubt expected to carry on the conversation with accounts of my life in Arizona, what had taken me to this remote wilderness.

I was saved. Crossroads and a signpost loomed into view. A sharp turn to the right and the leafy lane revealed distant houses, a village nestling in the folds of the Eildon Hills.

Soon be home now, I was told.

I felt a warming of the heart, my natural affinity to living in the shadow of ancient hills. There had been hills too, gigantic ranges of prehistoric red rocks, in Arizona, fringed by red desert. Perhaps that was what had endeared it to me, a place of destiny that I would never again see in this world.

A life and a child lost forever.

A husband too. For at that moment I did not doubt that the old nun had been mistaken and I would never see Danny again.