The Strings of Murder (28 page)

24

I stormed out of the study, still clutching the Bible, and my eyes combed the hall. One of the maids was handing coats to some people at the door, and I noticed that most of the attendants were preparing to leave. I let out a guttural howl from the bottom of my stomach: ‘
Nobody will leave this house!
’

Everyone halted at once as if their feet had been put in irons; all their heads turned towards me. Among the crowd I recognized the shocked eyes of Ardglass and Downs.

I held my credentials up high so everyone could see them and headed to the door in long strides. ‘
I am in the service of Her Majesty’s CID
.
Anyone who refuses to follow my orders shall be prosecuted and will be under suspicion of robbery and murder
.’

There was a general gasp and many an indignant frown, but not a single person remonstrated. The only movement in the hall was McGray, who came briskly down the stairs.

‘What happened, Frey?’

I whispered in his ear. ‘Somebody took the Amati.’

McGray went white and his frown was the deepest in the house. ‘Ye ken what that means, don’t ye?’

‘Indeed. As we speak, that violin is in the hands of whoever murdered Fontaine and – possibly – Wood as well. We
must
act quickly; the bastard may still be near.’

Ardglass then approached us with a timid, almost blushing countenance.

‘Erm, Inspector, with all due respect, may I ask how long will it take to –’

‘As long as bloody necessary!’ McGray shouted, and so began one of the longest nights in my career.

We summoned all the officers that the police could spare and deployed them to search every corner of the surrounding streets. Constable McNair was among the first to arrive, and very keen to be doing something other than guard the entrance to the City Chambers.

McGray decided to lead the search of the neighbourhood; in the meantime I would stay at Caroli’s house, questioning every single person before letting them go.

After placing two armed guards by the main door, I turned back to a scene that was bizarre to say the least: mourning men standing still and casting me nervous stares, a few of the ladies fussing around smelling salts or being fanned by their relatives, the housemaids running about like chickens. The wax candles still burned around the coffin, but somehow it seemed as if the house had become darker. To sink the mood even further, we could hear the screams of Mrs Caroli, who was going through labour but a few rooms away.

I saw a maid still pouring whisky into the coffee of a grinning old man, and I swiftly snatched the drink. ‘
Do not serve any more spirits!
I need these people’s statements. Is there a quiet place, other than the study?’

The girl was shaking, and mumbled something while pointing at the kitchen door.

‘That will have to do.’ I turned to the guests. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the easier you make this for me, the sooner you can all go home.’

As the maid led me to the kitchen I saw shaking heads, heard whispers and whimpering. I knew that such a large crowd would not keep quiet; as soon as I let them leave, the news would travel through the city like fire. The faces of Campbell, Sir Charles and Lord Salisbury himself came to my head, aghast at the situation, but there was nothing else McGray or I could do.

I decided to worry about one thing at a time, and installed myself at the kitchen table, where a police clerk would help me take the name and address of every witness. The room was anything but peaceful: the servants kept running to and fro, boiling water and fetching cloths, and I could not bid them keep quiet, for they were attending Mrs Caroli. Her screams came and went, only slightly muffled by the walls and ceiling.

One of the hounds was lying on the floor, turning its head nervously as it watched the maids dashing.

‘I know how you must feel,’ I told the animal.

I dispatched the people as swiftly as possible, but it still took me long hours to go through them all.

The half-intoxicated neighbour who scratched his privates throughout the questioning:
‘D’ye know who I’ve got to kill to get another o’ those coffees?’

The youngest maid:
‘No one could have come in without us noticing, sir.’

The bony spinster (again), who had inhaled enough salts to deplete the Dead Sea:
‘What a ghastly, ghastly night, sir! I’m so shocked I can’t remember …’

The not so young maid:
‘There’s another door in the back yard, but only my lady and me have the keys.’

Alistair Ardglass:
‘Oh, Inspector, I hope this incident doesn’t give you a bad impression of Edinburgh, or keep you from joining us for the ball on –’

Each useless statement eroded my patience a little more. The coffin, which I could see clearly every time the maids or the witnesses in turn opened the door, was a constant reminder of how vital my assignment was.

I thought it would be all in vain, but then came the declaration of a very old, yet lucid enough gentleman who claimed to have been seated by the door to the study almost the entire evening. The only people he’d seen passing through that door had been the Carolis, McGray and myself. Senile as he seemed, he described accurately how Ardglass had tried to intercept me and how I’d slammed the door in his face.

‘Did you move from that seat after you saw us come out?’

‘Nae, sir. I stayed there all the time until Mrs Caroli screamed, and you went back into the room, I remember, and it was then when you came out shouting.’

I let out a weary sigh and let the man go. Right then I heard yelling in the main hall: another hound was at large, and it had pulled away the black cloth that had been covering a large mirror. I had to step out to restore order, but the oldest lady would not cease yelling until the glass was concealed again. Everyone considered that a terrible omen.

There were a dozen people left to question, but none gave me useful information. Once they were all gone the
clerk and I went through the list of names and his notes, and then I had more liberty to inspect the house without curious eyes around.

The first place I looked over was the study.

A quick scan was enough to tell me that, if nobody had entered the room after us through the door, there was only one other way.

‘The fireplace!’ I remember saying out loud. I instantly kneeled by the hearth and felt the ashes with my fingertips. They were quite cool, reminding me that the fires had not been burning since before McGray and I arrived. The ashes were freshly disturbed, but I could not make out any clear footprints; on the other hand, two small stains in the fireside stones immediately caught my eye. I bent over until my nose almost touched the bricks. Undoubtedly, those were two marks of fingers, smeared in a hasty movement … coming from inside the chimney.

I cannot remember how many times my eyes went from the marks to the narrow fireplace, for their conjunction was utterly impossible; that flue was incredibly narrow, only a little wider than the head of a grown man. Larry the chimneysweep would have fitted in there, but only just.

I grabbed the first oil lamp I found and made haste to the back yard, which I found dark and silent like a grave. Looking up, I saw that the study’s chimney ascended with other shafts on the back wall of the house. The roofs of the neighbouring houses were too far for anyone to jump to, and I felt a chill when I realized this, for it meant that the only way to leave the house was by descending to the very yard where I was standing.

I unholstered my gun at once. I was not expecting the robber to be still about, but decided to inspect the entire place all the same.

The Carolis owned only one old horse, and the somnolent beast barely moved when I threw some light into the stable. As I expected, there was nobody hiding there, only a very thin layer of hay scattered on the floor.

Next to the stable, and almost as large, was the hounds’ shed, with its door ajar and a soft snoring coming from within. I kicked the door open and found that the third hound was there, dribbling and sleeping at leisure.

The animal lay on a neat pile of straw, covered with some ragged blankets that gave off the distinctive stench of dog. I thought wryly that many East London beggars would envy the hounds’ lodgings.

I poked the improvised bed, looked under the blankets and through the straw, even though I already knew there was nobody hiding there. My fingers did touch something smooth though; a small glass bead. I pulled out what proved to be a rosary. I could not look at it properly under the dim light of the oil lamp, but I saw enough to know that the beads were made of colourful Murano glass. I assumed that Mrs Caroli kept it there to ‘protect’ her dogs, so I left it where it was and went back into the house. I had nothing left to do but help McGray and the officers outside.

I dragged my feet towards the door, my back aching, and heard Mrs Caroli letting out further piercing yells. Her voice, together with the hounds now lurking around the lonely coffin, made one morbid scene.

A young maid was coming downstairs, carrying a
basket with bloodstained towels. The girl’s hands were trembling – her entire body, in fact, like an old woman balancing on strained legs.

‘How is she doing?’

‘She’s holding up well. It should all be over soon …’ She inhaled deeply, her eyes darkened with tiredness.

‘Is she having a difficult labour?’ I asked and the girl stuttered, her cheeks blushing. ‘It is all right, you can speak freely. I have some medical experience.’

I saw her gulping painfully, repressing tears. ‘Babies in this family never do well, my mama told me … and now I know what she meant.’ I was about to ask for details, but then the girl said something that shocked me: ‘This would have been difficult enough with a proper doctor to help us, but we had to fetch the first midwife we could find and I’m afraid we hurt more than we helped.’

‘Why, a midwife! Mr Caroli could not find the doctor?’

The girl grimaced and cast me a sombre look. ‘Mr Caroli hasn’t come back, sir.’

She curtsied and hurried back into the kitchen, leaving me standing by the staircase, flabbergasted.

I left the two officers guarding the door and instructed them to keep a record of anyone coming in and out. I specifically asked them to inform me as soon as Caroli returned. I did not like his sudden disappearance at all.

The air outside was damp and frosty, and even though the fog had cleared a little, the world still looked as if painted only in hues of white and grey. I saw a couple of our officers patrolling the street and asked them where McGray could be found. One of them led me to a
neighbouring road, where McGray was questioning a young watchman. Once he was done I told him about the finger marks in the fireplace. He was thrilled to hear that, but when I told him about Caroli not returning home, his jaw almost fell to the pavement.

‘I cannae believe it!’ he murmured, ‘with the wife givin’ birth and all! Something must have happened to him.’

‘That is my same thought; this feels very wrong. Caroli seems to adore his wife.’

McGray pondered for a second. ‘I’ll ask the lads to look for him too. Ye can check with the men from Hill Street to the east and I’ll look on the west side. My home’s that way so I ken the area; that might help.’

We walked in opposite directions and went on searching for a couple of hours.

While trotting about the darkened streets of Edinburgh, surrounded by officers, yelling commands and almost passing out from exhaustion, it seemed almost as if we were not after a person, but a handful of that very fog around us.

A horrendous feeling of hopelessness invaded me. The case was doomed; McGray and I were meant to fail … I felt it in my guts with cruel certainty. We would find nothing in that blasted mist, then we would go on interrogating useless witnesses and making ludicrous assumptions, while Campbell and Monro would keep pressing ever harder for results, and my career would be in ruins even sooner than I had predicted in my most pessimistic predictions. As I dwelled on those thoughts my feet felt heavy, as if the Scottish mist had turned into shackles.

Just when my frustration was about to become unbearable, a grey figure emerged from the fog. I recognized Constable McNair, running towards me as he yelled.

‘Inspector Frey! We found something!’

‘The violin?’

McNair bit his lip. ‘Not … quite, sir.’

Trotting ahead, he led me to a narrow close between two large Georgian mansions. The first thing I saw was McGray’s tall figure, black against the beams of five bull’s-eye lanterns, all directed at the cobbled street.

‘What is it?’ I asked as I approached, but McGray only pointed at the spot that the officers were lighting. A wave of nausea invaded me when I looked down. I saw a pool of freshly spilt blood, a black mess that turned out to be a charred human hand … and a familiar twisted symbol roughly drawn in red.

Nine-Nails took one step ahead.

‘Ye had a good look at this, Frey?’

I nodded, speechless, and then, before I could even open my mouth to protest, McGray swept away the five-eyed scribble with his shoe.

‘
Why did you do that?
’ I howled. ‘That was evidence, you idiot! It should have been properly documented! Photographed!’

‘We can document the rest as much as ye please, but that’s a damning symbol, Frey,’ McGray retorted, reminding me of the superstitious lady screaming at the uncovered mirror. ‘It invites the Devil to watch. I don’t want more people to see it.’

I snorted, my face reddened with indignation. Infuriated as I was, there was nothing I could do but resume my
work. Dawn was approaching and we did not want to attract curious stares, so some of the officers managed to find a dirty canvas to keep the scene from public view.

Once the site was properly covered, McGray and I kneeled down by the charred hand to look at it in detail. The smell of burned flesh made my stomach churn. We found that it was a rather long hand, undoubtedly of an adult man. Half hidden in the ashes I saw the golden spark of a wedding ring.