Death of a Sweep - M. C. Beaton [31]
He had an uneasy feeling that the seas were coming back to claim the land they had lost.
Chapter Six
The shadows now so long do grow,
That brambles like tall cedars grow,
Molehills seem mountains, and the ant
Appears a monstrous elephant
– CHARLES COTTON
Betty Close did not lose her job because when it came to grovelling, she could out-grovel Detective Inspector Blair. Instead, she was suspended for a month.
She decided to use her time off following up the death of the Edinburgh prostitute instead of moping in her flat in Glasgow. She got off at Waverley Station and made her way up the Mound to the Royal Mile.
People have been living in the Royal Mile for the last seven thousand years. It runs from the Castle to Holyrood Palace down the shoulder of a former volcano. Betty’s grandmother had told her that when she was a child, she remembered the tall tenements on the Royal Mile containing some really dreadful slums. But restoration and cachet had turned the famous street into somewhere desirable to live.
Betty found the actual address, which she had discovered by trawling through back numbers of the Edinburgh papers. The death of Sarah Brogan had only qualified for a small paragraph in the Scotsman. The procurator fiscal had refused to pass a verdict of suicide, and it said the police were still investigating.
The tenement was up a close off the Canongate, a close being the narrow passage that led to the flats. She had brought with her still photographs of the four men. Betty started at the top flat where Sarah had lived. There was no police tape on the door. She pressed the bell, but nobody answered. There was no answer at the flat across the landing, either.
Betty tried a flat on the next floor down. The whole building seemed expensive and well maintained. She reflected that the late Sarah must have been very good at her job. This time someone did answer the door, a small thickset man with a balding head and small black eyes.
Betty showed him the photographs and asked if he recognized any of the men. She explained that she was investigating Sarah’s death for a television documentary. He put on a pair of glasses and carefully studied the photographs.
‘No, I can’t say I recognize anyone,’ he said at last. He had a voice which the Scots would describe as ‘refeened’, rather strangulated as he tried to imitate a ‘posh’ English accent.
‘Can you think of anyone who lives here who might have known her?’ asked Betty.
He shook his head. ‘We keep ourselves to ourselves. The other residents are practically all out during the day. I’d suggest you come back sometime after six o’clock. It’s a good thing the fire brigade were quick off the mark or I’d have lost my flat as well.’
She found that what he had said about the other residents being out during the day was true. She pressed bell after bell on her road down without success. She tried a few of the neighbouring shops and a coffee shop, still failing to find anyone who had known Sarah.
Betty passed the time by going down to Princes Street and looking at the shops. A true Glaswegian, she felt out of place in Edinburgh and found herself longing to get the train back to Glasgow. But just before six o’clock, she wearily trekked back to the Canongate and entered the close leading to the tenement. The aristocracy, she remembered, used to live in the Royal Mile but had deserted it in the eighteenth century to move to the New Town behind Princes Street. It was still daylight outside but the close was dark and the lamps had not been lit, no doubt as one of the new measures to leave lights off as long as possible to save energy.
There was a dark alcove in the close. Just as she was passing it, she received a smashing blow on the skull. She died instantly and did not feel the hands that shoved her small inert body into a large suitcase on wheels.