The Edinburgh Dead

Mr. Audubon’s Exhibition

A fog embraced the city the next day. It had the sharp scent of industry and smoke buried within it, but the salt tang of the sea, too; the work of both Man and Nature.

Amidst it, the gaslights along Princes Street burned: diffuse globes of pale fire suspended eerily in mid-air. They receded, each in the chain a little fainter than the last, into the grey oblivion that shrouded everything.

From that murk, the carriages emerged one by one, the clattering of their wheels muted by the dank air. They came to the Royal Institution and disgorged on to its steps Edinburgh’s moneyed, propertied elite. Men of the law and of science and of letters; landowners, merchants and clerics. They came in their finest clothes, with wives and daughters upon their arms, walking canes in their hands—though they were not much given to walking on a night such as this—and tall, stiff hats crowning their heads.

On a finer night, they would have lingered on the plaza outside the Institution; taken the air, greeted one another, measured the mood and appearance of their fellows. Beneath the damp weight of the fog, they were not so inclined. Each time the heavy doors were opened to admit a newly arrived party, there was a spill of light and of chatter out into the mist.

Quire stood amongst the columns, watching them arrive. He recognised a goodly number of faces; doubted whether any more than one or two of them could have put a name to him in their turn, for it was in the nature of the influential to be known by those they did not themselves know. He kept to the shadows, in any case, withdrawn behind one of the fluted stone pillars.

He had taken up his station later than he intended. There had been some slight disorder at the police house—a band of drunken apprentices disputing their detention, after putting in the windows of several houses—and it had delayed him. As a result, watching the carriages come and go in slowly decreasing number, growing ever colder and ever less comfortable, he began to suspect that he had missed his quarry. If Ruthven was attending, he was likely already inside.

Quire knew he should be in his rooms by now, warming his bones by the fire or his guts around one of Mrs. Calder’s stews. Such had been his intent, until almost the very end of the day, but a restless, nagging urge had hold of him. An anger, born in part of frustration at his inability to close the net he longed to set about Ruthven and his cohorts. It was Quire himself who felt ensnared, rather than his quarry. The Police Board were demanding his suspension now, and threatening an enquiry. Superintendent Robinson was fighting a rearguard action in his defence, but whether and for how long that would succeed he had been unable to say. Matters seemed clear to Quire: he was in a race, and its finish would see either him or his enemies brought low.

The accumulation of obstacles on that path only served to raise up to the surface his worst qualities: the stubbornness and the anger and the instinct for confrontation. Worst qualities now, perhaps, yet they had been his best once, when there had been battles to be fought.

So he meant to make Ruthven feel a little of the heat. See if that would make the man betray himself, through error or arrogance. Not a course Robinson would approve, but Quire could not stand to allow others to fight all his battles for him. That thought was enough to carry him over the threshold and into the Royal Institution.

Where as elegant an event as any he had seen was resolutely under way. Edinburgh’s finest drifted to and fro in small groups; or rather, its pre-eminent members occupied their chosen stations and the rest moved from one to another like roving bands of supplicants paying their respects at a succession of shrines. All was smart waistcoats and billowing skirts, immaculately pressed shirts adorned with flamboyant neckcloths; tiaras and brooches, and servants gliding about with silver trays bearing veritable thickets of champagne glasses.

As backdrop to all this, countless luminous paintings of exotic birds filled the walls of the small galleries through which the crowds ebbed and flowed. Every imaginable hue and form of bird was represented, all of them depicted with such startling precision and realism that Quire stood for a moment quite still, staring vacantly at the nearest of the images, wondering how a man might produce such a thing.

A tall, stiff waiter broke the spell with a rather pointed clearing of his throat. He extended his oval tray, but Quire could see in his eyes that he was not certain he was offering the champagne to quite the right man; it was an act of habitual duty rather than conviction. Quire glared at him until he moved off in search of a warmer welcome elsewhere.

Quire realised that Sir Walter Scott—near-destitute now, he had heard, but still the most lionised of all Edinburgh’s great men—was standing no more than a dozen yards away from him, surrounded by an appreciative gaggle of admirers.

“He is somewhat reclusive these days. A friend of the artist, apparently, so he makes an exception tonight.”

Quire looked round to find Alexander Macdonald at his elbow, the curator’s eyes gleaming with barely restrained delight as he watched the renowned writer hold forth.

“Very fortunate for you,” Quire murmured. Even he, to whom such things hardly mattered, was not wholly unimpressed by the presence of this most famous of all Scots, but his feelings hardly approached Macdonald’s devotional awe. He was not a great reader of historical romances.

“Fortunate indeed,” Macdonald said. “Quite the gathering altogether, don’t you think? Did you see Mr. Audubon? The American Woodsman, they call him. Extraordinary paintings, quite extraordinary.”

“They’re very fine,” Quire agreed.

Already his attention was elsewhere. He could see, beyond the intervening shrubbery of heads, John Ruthven.

“Excuse me,” he said to Macdonald, and moved away, weaving through the throng, letting the hum of genteel conversation wash over and around him.

He drew a number of curious, sometimes disapproving, stares as he went. That did not surprise or concern him. He was hardly dressed or prettified appropriately for the occasion, after all. A mongrel intruding upon a pedigree herd.

Ruthven stood with a glass folded into the crook of his elbow, and a snuff box in his hand. Between thumb and forefinger he pinched up some of the brown, dusty powder and raised it to his nose, the other three fingers delicately fanned. He sucked it into the nostril with a single sharp sniff. The snuff box was not, Quire noted, the silver one Shake Carstairs had liberated from Carlyle’s corpse.

Durand stood at Ruthven’s side, his air that of a man craving anonymity. Nothing like the robust, insistent presence of Isabel Ruthven, who was drinking deeply from her own glass and scouring the room at the same time with a lively gaze. She wore a red gown with a great cascading bustle at its back like a crimson waterfall sculpted in cloth. Her hair was coiled up atop her head, and pinned there with an ivory comb.

She was the first to see Quire as he approached, and she lowered her glass slowly from lips already easing into an anticipatory smile. Ruthven followed her gaze, and his response was of an entirely different sort.

“Can I be free of this irritant nowhere?”

“Do try not to cause a scene, dear,” his wife murmured before Quire could reply. “I am sure the sergeant has no wish to spoil the evening for everybody.”

Her voice had the liquid ease and looseness of one who had already greatly enjoyed the Institution’s hospitality.

“And I am equally sure he is not here to speak with you, my dear,” Ruthven said. “I would not have thought you a patron of the arts, Mr. Quire.”

“Sergeant,” Quire corrected. “And you’re right. I’m not here for the paintings.”

“No, indeed,” smiled Ruthven. “Your dress evidences that rather clearly. Come, your face is thunderous, man, but surely you should be in good humour? I’d have thought you in the mood for celebration, as a former foot soldier in the Duke’s army, now that he’s risen to the highest office in the land.”

Quire looked away. The Duke of Wellington, victor of the Peninsular War and of Waterloo, had become prime minister just a week or two before, but whether that should count as advancement, or cause for celebration, was not obvious to him. He did not have the highest opinion of politics, or its practitioners, since it seemed an underhanded art to him. Still, it interested him that Ruthven knew of his army past; the man had evidently been making enquiries.

“Your Mr. Blegg is not with you tonight?” Quire asked.

“Of course he is not. This is hardly the sort of occasion…”

“No. Perhaps he has other business to be about once night has fallen?”

“I’m not sure I follow your…”

“Other matters to attend to,” Quire said. “Did he mention that he and I met the other night? He must have done, I suppose. We didn’t have the chance to exchange as many pleasantries as I’d have liked.”

“You are a slow learner, Mr. Quire. One lesson in the costs of making baseless accusations not enough for you?”

“Oh, when it comes to threats and the like, I’m the slowest of learners. But if I was after a schooling in slander, you can be sure you’re the very man I’d come to. Would you rather discuss Edward Carlyle? I’ve learned one or two things about his concerns, and his employment with you, since last we spoke. No? Perhaps I could speak with Mr. Durand, then, if you’re not feeling talkative?” Quire suggested, switching his gaze to the Frenchman, in whose eyes he saw quite plainly the alarm the very notion awoke.

“Leave my guest out of this,” snarled Ruthven.

Quire drew considerable satisfaction from the fury boiling up through Ruthven’s veneer of restraint. He would goad the man to the point of eruption, if he could. If that was what it took to let a little light in on the secrets Quire could smell hidden away in there.

“Do keep your voice down,” Isabel Ruthven said, never losing her grip upon the elegant smile she wore like paint.

“If I need advice on comportment, I will find it elsewhere, beloved,” Ruthven hissed at her.

But he did take a couple of breaths to compose himself, and smooth the anger away from his features. Quire was more interested for now in Durand, who was, with the utmost discretion, edging behind and away from Ruthven. Removing himself from the fray.

“You should be aware, Quire, that I will take it as the most grave personal insult if you persist in your harassment,” Ruthven said.

“Well, that’s what it would be, right enough,” Quire said, watching Durand sink into the throng. He knew a man desperate to escape a trap when he saw one.

“Ah, there’s the Sheriff Depute,” Ruthven said, suddenly bright and loud. “Do you know him? Shall I introduce you? He might be glad to discuss the proper conduct of police affairs with you.”

That, Quire recognised very clearly as the cue for withdrawal. His sense of caution was not so entirely withered as to blind him to the dangers of sparring with those whose reach he could not match.

“Not leaving already, are you?” Mrs. Ruthven said, evidently reading some preparatory shift in his posture. He was at a loss to know how she layered such simple words with so many flavours: regret, protestation, suggestion. Appeal, perhaps.

“There’ll be another occasion, I’m sure,” he told her, and took one sharp step closer to Ruthven, dropping his voice to a rasping whisper.

“You’ve picked the wrong man for a fight, Ruthven. I thought you should know that. If you think you can tangle me up in enough knots to keep me away, you’ve misjudged me, much to your disadvantage.”

Ruthven gave him a chill smile, and his eyes carried an animosity that Quire found surprisingly steady and calm.

“I promise you, Mr. Quire, that the error in selection of opponent lies entirely with you. I have a great deal more weapons in my armoury than you would imagine, and after tonight’s performance, I think I can promise you an education in the matter of disadvantage that you will not soon forget. Now go. I do not think we will meet again, and for that I am entirely glad.”