The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [106]
“Can we go now?” Dunbar asked with a rather plaintive hint to his voice.
“We can, and the sooner the better,” Quire said. “I’m not sure how this is going to go, mind. There might be a problem or two.”
Dunbar rolled his eyes.
“Do you know where Blegg is?” Quire demanded of Durand.
“No,” the Frenchman said. “Outside somewhere. Beyond that, I cannot say.”
“I was going to get us straight into a hackney cab outside, but it’d be too easy to follow us. We’ll get down on to Princes Street. There’ll be plenty of hackneys down there, and it’ll make Blegg show himself if he’s about. We either shake him off, or deal with him a bit more roughly.”
Durand looked downcast.
“You are a capable man, but I rather doubt you can deal with Mr. Blegg, as you put it.”
“We’ve not exactly got a whole host of choices,” Quire muttered.
There was quite a crowd on the pavement outside the Assembly Rooms. Many of them were the drivers of the hackney carriages which, as Quire had predicted, were lined up on the street awaiting the custom of departing guests. The drivers leaned against the pillars of the portico, smoking pipes, quietly trading gossip. There were quite a few casual onlookers too. Those who would never be invited to such a gathering, and were curious at the light and music drifting out on to the street, and hoping to get a look at some of the elaborate costumes.
Quire and Dunbar moved their companion briskly away from the throng, keen to get a bit more space around them. They went from one pool of gaslight to the next along the street, the gentle whine of each lamp growing louder as they approached it and fading away behind them as they passed beyond it. It was late, and the fine shops were closed, most of the great houses quiet.
They turned down on to the sharp slope of Frederick Street and Quire looked back as they moved around the corner. A single figure was separating itself from the shadows beneath the portico of the Assembly Rooms, moving smartly after them.
He pushed Durand into a trot as they descended towards Princes Street.
“Is there going to be trouble?” Dunbar asked as he jogged along at Quire’s side.
He was entirely serious now, any notion of the evening’s events as some kind of game discarded. The soldier in him came to the fore less easily than did Quire’s, but it was there nonetheless.
“Maybe,” Quire said. “I don’t know. Should’ve brought a pistol.”
“They’d hardly let you carry such a thing into the Assembly Rooms. You’d have had trouble hiding it in that clown’s outfit, anyway.”
Quire glanced down at his motley dress, and was struck by what an absurd, and obvious, figure he cut, hurrying along the New Town streets like a fugitive from some wandering theatre troupe. He had vaguely thought he would have the chance to shed the disguise before leaving, but that, in hindsight, had never been likely.
They emerged on to the broad expanse of Princes Street with the soaring dark mass of the castle before them, like a vast umbrageous thundercloud detached from the night sky and settled down to rest atop the crags. It was dotted, though, with points of light: the windows of its huge barracks, and lanterns burning here and there along its meandering walls.
There were no buildings along the south side of Princes Street—none save the Royal Institution, a short way further east—just a long run of black, spiked railings and beyond them the sweeping gardens that plunged down and across to the base of the castle’s huge rock. Those gardens were a black, blank void, obscured by the glare of the tall gaslights lining the street.
Quire looked back. Blegg—he was almost certain it was him, though he could not make out his features at this distance—was coming down after them, walking quickly.
“We need to shake him off,” Quire muttered.
Directly ahead of them, opposite the foot of Frederick Street, a gate broke the line of the iron railings. It would be locked—the gardens were a private pleasure for the residents