The Unbelievers (17 page)

Every minute of the journey back felt like a leaden hour, even as the express train hurtled through the Highlands at up to fifty miles an hour. He tried to smoke to calm his nerves, but the tobacco tasted like bile in his mouth. When he closed his eyes he imagined little Alice tossing and turning in a feverish chill, then the image turned to Helen in her wild alternations between quiet delirium and fevered madness as she wrestled with typhoid for three weeks, her red hair spilling over the white pillow as she screamed and cursed in her final agonies before the infection finally conquered her. As the locomotive's whistle shrieked on entering a tunnel Allerdyce put his hands over his ears, but the shrieking continued in his mind.

At last, after nine o'clock at night, the train reached Waverley Station. He leapt onto the platform as the train slowed. He pushed his way to the head of the queue for cabs and told the driver to hasten to Cumberland Street.

He opened his front door, dropped his valise in the hall, and rushed up the stairs to Alice's room. As he entered he could see Margaret bent over the child's bed, sponging her with cold water. The stench of diarrhoea assaulted his nostrils.

He put his hand lightly on Margaret's shoulder. She turned, and he saw her eyes reddened by tears.

“How is she?”

“I'm so frightened, Archibald. I think we're going to lose her.”

“What happened?”

“She was a little feverish the first night you were away. I called the doctor but he said it was nothing to worry about, and just to give her some gripe water with a dash of laudanum and put her to bed early.

“It was awful, Archie, when I came in to see her in the morning. She'd had watery diarrhoea in the bed and had been too weak and fevered to get up. Her brow felt like hot coals and she was alternately sleeping and mumbling nonsense. I sent for the doctor again.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was cholera. I thought I'd die when I heard that, Archie. He said to keep her cool and give her a few more drops of laudanum to make her comfortable, but that we'd just have to watch and pray. She's got quieter during the day, and she's had less diarrhoea since the middle of the afternoon, but she's so weak. Oh Archie, I think she's slipping away.”

He knelt and looked at his daughter's pale face. Her eyes were darting from side to side and didn't seem to recognise him. Her mouth seemed to be forming, silently, the random syllables of a baby's babbling. He put his hand on her forehead and felt its heat.

“The doctor's an old fool, Margaret.”

“What?”

“He doesn't know how to treat cholera. The police surgeon treated a prisoner with cholera last year with a new method. He survived long enough to be tried and hanged.”

“What can we do?”

“She's not just lost a dangerous amount of water, she's lost a lot of energy and a lot of the chemicals her body needs. In every pint of water we give her we need to dissolve a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar and the juice of half a lemon.”

“I'll go and make that up. Are you sure it'll help?”

“I can't be sure of anything, Margaret, but it's the best thing we can do for her.”

Margaret left the room and he took over from her at sponging Alice's fevered face. It felt like a useless thing to do, but he had to do something. He couldn't just sit powerlessly and watch death claim her.

Margaret came back with a jug of water and a glass.

“I mixed it up like you said.”

“Thank you. Let's give it a try.”

He lifted Alice gently from her pillows and held the full glass to her lips. At first the water simply ran down her chin, but as he tipped her head back, her eyes still darting madly from side to side, more of it entered her mouth and she started to swallow by reflex.

“More, Margaret, more. We don't know how much she's lost. Keep it coming.”

After they'd made Alice drink four pints of the watery solution they settled down to a routine. They'd each take two hours vigil, and make her drink some more of the fluid, while the other tried to rest. Millie put a large pile of clean sheets in the room, in expectation of the diarrhoea starting again.

And start again it did. For each period of his vigil, as Millie brought up jugs of the special water, he had to change the sheets at least once. It felt like a race to make her body absorb the life-giving fluid faster than she was losing it. As he watched her rapid breathing he couldn't help praying for her to live through the night, though he didn't know why he should allow himself to pray to the cruel non-existence who'd brought his daughter to the margins of death.

At last some sunlight started to creep round the edges of the curtains of the sickroom. He couldn't honestly say that she looked a lot better, but she was sleeping more soundly and her eyes had stopped their crazy flickering. She was still hot, though, and her breathing was fast and shallow. He wanted to hope, but he knew her life still hung by a fragile thread.

He jumped when he heard the doorbell, followed by the maid's quick footsteps down the stairs. If that's the doctor, he thought, I'm going to kick his incompetent arse straight back onto the pavement.

Millie came back up.

“There's a soldier to see you, sir.”

“A soldier? What in God's name for?”

“He says it's very urgent.”

“More urgent than looking after my daughter? Tell him go away.”

“He's very insistent, sir. Can you just come down for a minute, please?”

“Oh, very well then.”

A young corporal in Highland dress was standing at the front door, his Glengarry bonnet under his arm.

“The ADC to the GOC presents his compliments, sir, and requests your immediate attendance at the Castle.”

“Try and make sense, man. I hardly understood a word of that. And I'm not going anywhere. I have a sick daughter to look after.”

“He says it's most important that you come, sir.”

“I'm sorry. I can't. Why should I?”

The soldier paused and bit his lip before answering.

“There's been a murder.”

Allerdyce was greeted at the Governor's House by the same officer who'd shown him into the Brigadier's office before, though this time his tunic was undone and he was pale and unshaven. He introduced himself as Major Edward Farquharson, the Brigadier's
aide-de-camp
.

“So, Major,” asked Allerdyce, “what's happened?”

“Come through to the Brigadier's room, please, Inspector. You too, Corporal.”

The Brigadier's office hardly looked changed from when he'd first seen it. The whisky decanter was still on the desk, though it was practically empty. Brigadier Sir Frederick Bothwell-Scott still stared cholerically from the portrait behind the desk. The only changes were that the Russian sword was missing from its stand and the wood-panelling door to the Brigadier's water-closet stood ajar.

“Through here, please, Inspector.”

The corporal opened the door to the water closet and Allerdyce went in.

The Brigadier was sitting on the lavatory, leaning against the wall to one side, his trousers and long-johns round his ankles, his tunic unbuttoned and a sword stuck through his heart. He stared lifelessly at the Inspector, a trickle of dried blood running from his mouth to his chin. But what stood out most, literally as well as figuratively, was the massively erect penis of the man who had, so briefly, been the 8
^th
Duke of Dornoch.

“We thought maybe we should cover it up,” said the Major. “Professional respect and everything. But then we thought you ought to see everything just as we found it.”

“Thank you. Might just be a touch of
rigor mortis
,” said Allerdyce. “Does strange things to a man's body.” He wondered, however, what the Brigadier had been up to in the moments preceding his death.

Looking carefully at the scene, he noticed that a piece of paper had been folded and left on top of the Brigadier's crumpled long-johns. Allerdyce picked it up, his nose closed against the sweaty whiff of the victim's underwear, and opened it.

The message was spelt out in letters cut from a newspaper and pasted onto the paper.

‘
RELIEVED OF COMMAND
.'

He showed it to the Major.

“We appear to be dealing with rather a droll murderer, Major.”

“Indeed.”

He folded the paper back up and put it in his pocket. He needed to get away from here, back to Alice's bedside, but he knew he had to ask the required questions.

“What were the circumstances of this discovery?”

The corporal answered.

“I'm the – was the – Brigadier's batman. I was meant to wake him up at seven o'clock with his shaving water and hot coffee. He wasn't there when I went to wake him, and his bed hadn't been slept in. I feared that he might have been taken ill – he was prone to fits of apoplexy, sir, and combined with the effects of strong liquor I feared he'd maybe had a stroke or a heart attack. It's been a constant worry to me, sir.”

“I don't think you need to worry any more, corporal,” said Allerdyce.

“No.”

“So what did you do next?”

“I came down here to see if he was in his office. I'd half expected to find him asleep on his desk if he'd had too much whisky last night, but he wasn't there. Then I saw the door to his water closet open and thought he'd maybe been taken ill there.”

“As indeed he was.”

“I couldn't believe it, sir, seeing him staring at me from the privy, with that old Russian sword through his chest. I went immediately to wake Major Farquharson and he told me to fetch you, since you'd already had some dealings with the Brigadier.”

“You did well, corporal.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Allerdyce looked at the polished wooden floor of the privy to see if the killer had left any other traces, but none was visible.

“Could anyone have got in here un-noticed, Major?”

“It's possible, Inspector. There's all sorts of tradespeople and visitors coming and going during the day. And at night there are the officers' invited guests, and the guards at the gatehouse also let the soldiers' bawds in.”

The corporal appeared to blush slightly.

“I see, Major. And what about getting into this particular building? When I was last here I recall there were sentries at the door. They would surely be able to identify anyone who entered?”

“They're not on duty at night, Inspector, unless the Brigadier is hosting a dinner or some other event. It would be quite possible for a stranger to be admitted unobserved.”

“Wouldn't the Brigadier expect you to open the door to a guest, Corporal? Or would he expect some other servant to do so?”

“I would be on duty if he was expecting visitors, sir. But last night he dismissed me after I had ensured that the whisky decanter was full and he had a sufficiency of cigars.”

“And did you remain in the house? Could you have heard any disturbance?”

“No, sir. I retired to the barracks. I spent the evening in the Corporals' Mess.”

“Thank you, Corporal. You've been most helpful. Might I prevail on you to pass a message to two of my colleagues, requesting their immediate presence?” He scribbled down the home addresses of Superintendent Burgess and Mackay, the police surgeon. “In the meantime I'll examine the Brigadier's room more closely for any signs his visitor may have left.”

“Yes, sir. I'll be right back.”

The corporal hesitated on his way out the room.

“Do you think he might have done it himself? Suicide?”

“No.”

He rushed back to Cumberland Street after briefing Burgess and Mackay, praying that he'd find Alice still alive. Margaret greeted him at the front door, crying and clasping him tight.

“Oh, Archie,” gasped Margaret, “she stopped breathing. My little angel, she stopped breathing.”

Allerdyce thought he'd collapse against her. He felt the tears start at his eyes as he cursed the late Brigadier for tearing him away from his daughter's deathbed.