“I’ll manage, sir,” Dickerson muttered, reapplying himself to the task.
There wasn’t much blood. The worst injuries must have been internal, Ian surmised as he and Dickerson began removing the dead man’s clothes, carefully peeling away the green tweed jacket. It bore a London label from a high-end tailor shop Ian recognized. Turning it over, he noticed the cuff on the right sleeve was missing a button.
“What do you make of this, Sergeant?” he asked, holding it out.
Dickerson squinted at the jacket sleeve. “Left arm has two leather buttons for decoration, but th’ right sleeve is missing one, sir.”
“What does that tell you?”
“Could be Mr. Wycherly was in need o’ seamstress.”
“But look at the rest of his clothes—except for the damage sustained by his fall, they are in perfect repair.”
“So th’ button were lost—”
“In a struggle, Sergeant—the one that took place on the top of Arthur’s Seat.”
Dickerson scratched his head. “Beggin’ pardon, sir, but ’at’s hardly conclusive evidence.”
“True enough. I’m looking for something else to confirm my theory.”
“What exactly are ye lookin’ for, sir?” Dickerson asked, laying the jacket carefully on a nearby stool.
“I wish I could tell you, Sergeant,” he said, unbuttoning the collar of the linen shirt beneath the jacket. “I am hoping I’ll know it when I see it.”
And there, on the corpse of young Stephen Wycherly, was precisely what he had been looking for.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lillian Grey stepped from the butcher shop, treading with care on the uneven, rain-slickened cobblestones. She could call a hansom cab—several had already splashed by—but even at her advanced age, Lillian valued the effect of exercise on one’s complexion. Clutching a wicker basket containing a brown paper package, she threaded her way up the High Street in the direction of the High Kirk of St. Giles, to pay a wee visit before heading home. She tried to stop in for dear Alfie’s sake once a week. Lillian didn’t believe in any god of man’s creation, but Alfred had been a lifelong Christian, bless him, and she did it to honor his memory. After forty years of marriage, she owed him that much. He had left her a tidy fortune, for which she was grateful, but she would much rather have his warm body still next to her in bed on cold Edinburgh nights.
She pulled her woolen cloak closer as a spray of water from the wheels of a passing carriage slapped against her cheek. The coach driver ignored her glare, snapping his whip smartly against the flanks of two matching dapple grays. Lillian wiped the rainwater from her face with her gloved hand, lifting her skirts to avoid a puddle. She had lived in this town half her life and knew the weather well enough, but it was one thing to know it and another to become accustomed to it.
Even the sun misbehaved in Edinburgh. At the height of summer, it refused to retire at a reasonable hour, shining bravely on well after nine o’clock. In winter, the land descended into perpetual twilight, the sun barely scraping the horizon as it slunk across the sky in search of rest, as if exhausted by its summer excess.
She climbed up the High Street, past the Tron Kirk, its sharply pointed steeple slate gray in the chill rain. She pushed on to St. Giles’—Alfie always admired its grandeur and pomp; after all, as he liked to remind her, it was the center of Scottish worship. Behind her lay the house of John Knox, founder of the Scottish Reformation, who survived nearly two years as a French galley slave to lead the Scots away from French Catholicism. Though Lillian had no place in her life for Christianity, she admired Knox as a Scottish hero. She preferred Spiritualism, attending Madame Flambeau’s Friday night séances with regularity.
She shivered as she entered the great stone building, her footsteps echoing through its solemn walls. In the main nave, a group of schoolchildren spilled out of a pew, giggling and poking one another.
“Hush! Come along, children!” their teacher hissed, herding them like so many gray-and-blue-clad sheep. She was a sturdy matron in a thick woolen suit—sans corset, Lillian noted with disapproval. They followed her, whispering and stifling laughter, their leather soles clacking on the marble floor. A couple of the older girls stared at Lillian in a way she found most impolite, and she glared back at them.
Lillian knew she was old, but she couldn’t abide people dismissing her because of her age. She was still a lively woman with a keen mind and the energy of folks half her age, and it galled her when a young shopkeeper’s assistant spoke more slowly to her, or raised his voice, assuming she was hard of hearing.
“Lower your voice,” she would snap at him. “I’m not deaf!” She enjoyed the startled expression that came over his face, but it didn’t make up for the indignity inflicted by the careless arrogance of the young. She remembered being that age, thinking the grace and ease of youth would last forever—getting old was something that happened to other people.
Lillian Grey was a curious combination—the spirit of a revolutionary affixed to the stern sensibility of a conservative Scottish matron. She was aware of her oddness, but proud of it, too, in the contrary way of a true Scot. She shuffled to the rear of the nave, with its soaring stone arches, her movements hampered by the large basket on her arm. She stared up at the crosshatched, stained glass window on the western end.
Lillian had studied art as a young woman—it was said among the family that she had “an artistic soul.” After Alfie’s death, she had taken up photography, rather by accident, having acquired a bulky wooden camera at a jumble sale. She gave her neck a cursory rub with her strong fingers as she stood beneath the depiction of the archangel Gabriel wielding his flaming sword. Lowering her head, she breathed a silent homage to her dear departed Alfred (she wouldn’t use the word “prayer,” because that would imply a faith in God she was proud not to have).
When she was finished, she drew a small gold watch from her skirt pocket and peered at its face. She was astonished to see it was nearly five. She had half an hour to get home and put the kettle on before her sister’s son Ian, her favorite nephew, arrived at her flat. They had always gotten on, but now that dear Emily was gone, they had a special bond. The sausages in her basket were for him—she was making bubble and squeak for tea, one of his favorites. After Alfie’s death, she insisted on giving Ian a yearly stipend—she had more than she could possibly spend—and though he could have lived on that alone, he continued working as a policeman, bless him.
She scurried from the church onto the High Street. As she passed the kirk’s western entrance, a couple of boys in school uniforms loped past, pausing to spit energetically on the heart-shaped mosaic built into the cobblestones. Known as the Heart of Midlothian, after the nickname for the infamous Tolbooth prison, the mosaic marked the former entrance to the building, now demolished. The prison figured prominently in Sir Walter Scott’s nationalist novel, The Heart of Midlothian, and was also the place of public executions. Spitting on the Heart was considered both good luck and a sign of Scottish patriotism—though Lillian considered it merely an excuse for boys to spit in public.
She charged uphill on her sturdy legs before turning south toward her home near the university, passing students and professors on their way to Thursday evening classes, long gowns flapping behind them in the wind like great black wings. Arriving at her spacious town house, she shoved the sausages into the larder next to a nice bunch of cress she had bought from a street vendor near the Lawnmarket. The doorbell chimed as she was pouring the cream into the bone china pitcher her sister had given her. Poor Emily, she thought as she hurried down the long hallway to the front door. She could see the outline of her nephew’s lean form behind the smoked-glass panels.