The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [119]
With every passing sleepless moment, Mrs. Conway grew more anxious and bitterly resentful of those drunken celebrants robbing her of her rest. Rough sounds added themselves to the mix, grating upon her weary senses. Scuffling, shouting, angry curses. Coming from the Burke house just next door. That was no great strangeness in itself, for it was a turbulent and drunken house on any night, let alone this wild one, but there was a harsh extremity to the clatter and thumps and voices leaking through the wall. Mrs. Conway could hear William Burke’s voice chief amongst those raised in anger, and the noise of it seemed to go on and on. Until at last it faded, and a quiet settled. Mrs. Conway whispered a small thanks to God, and slowly, slowly drifted off to sleep.
Hugh Alston had a grocer’s shop on the West Port, and lived with his wife in the flat above it. The two of them made their way, only a little the worse for drink, towards their stair as the witching hour turned. It had been a long day. They were tired but happy, for trade had been good of late.
The racket that greeted them was out of tune with their contentment. There were men shouting indistinctly at one another, a violent quarrel. Tables or chairs being overturned.
“It’s coming from Burke’s house,” Mrs. Alston said, as they stood together on the street, listening in dismay to the cacophony.
Then, sharp, cutting through the male voices, quite clear, a woman crying out: “For God’s sake, get the police. There’s murder here.”
The Alstons looked at one another in consternation.
“Get yourself upstairs,” Hugh said to his wife, “and lock the door behind you.”
Once sure his wife was safely climbing the stair to their apartment, he ran up the West Port to the watch-house there, and beat upon its door. But the nightwatchmen of the Old Town had many calls upon their attention that night, of all nights, and there was no answer. Its windows were dark, its lock secure.
Troubled, Alston went cautiously back down to his shop and home. All was silence now. Not a whisper escaped the house of William Burke. He sighed, and shook his head, and followed after his wife.
They slept uneasily through what remained of the night. And as they slept, that night turned and the city’s frenzy spent itself, and All Hallows’ Eve became All Saints’ Day.
The morning came in bleak and cold and cloudy. Sergeant John Fisher was on duty in the entrance of the police house at Old Stamp Office Close, and looked out through the open doors upon a High Street rousing itself more sluggishly into life than was its wont. The excesses of the night before weighed heavily upon the Old Town, and it had woken with bleary eyes and sore limbs and aching heads.
A man—agitated, fidgety—came in off the street.
“I’ve seen a body in a house on the West Port,” he said without preamble or introduction. “A poor woman, murdered.”
Fisher went with the man—Gray, his name turned out to be—up along the quiet High Street, and down the arc of West Bow on to the Grassmarket. Bottles and rubbish were strewn about there. They walked its length to the West Port, and Gray showed Fisher the house of William Burke.
A dark passage led back into a tenement. At its end, a narrow stair descended into gloom. Gray let Fisher precede him down the stair, and thus it was Fisher who came face to face with another man, climbing up.
“That’s him,” Gray said in alarm. “That’s Burke.”
“Would you let me into your house please, Mr. Burke,” said Fisher, ignoring the ferocious glare Burke was fixing upon Gray.
The room to which Gray guided them was a picture of wretched squalor. Rags and straw were scattered all over the bare floor, and every