The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [143]
By the time midnight was past, Dumfries high street was deserted. It was littered with stones and broken glass and abandoned clubs. The militiamen were gone, their brutal duty discharged with rare efficiency. The rioters were gone, to nurse their bruises and their sore heads, and no doubt spin happy tales of the day’s excitement. Only Quire remained, sitting at the foot of a wall, just a little way down that lane, far enough from the light of the street lamps to keep himself safely hidden in shadow. He could see the jailhouse from there, and waited with the most profound, perfect patience for it to reveal its secrets to him.
He had not killed Jack Rutherford. The temptation had been there, certainly, but Quire had no wish to become any more of an executioner and a widow-maker than he already was. Than he needed to be. So he settled for knocking out a few teeth, and putting a mortal fear into the man.
He had not slept since then. There had been too much to do. He had gone to Major Weir’s house. Alone, almost overcome by fear, but finding there only the dead. Lying close by one another in a derelict room: Isabel Ruthven and what remained of Blegg. Quire had covered his mouth against the stench of rot and charred flesh that wafted from Blegg’s horribly disfigured corpse. The rats were already at work upon the flesh. They scattered from the body as Quire brought unwanted light into their dismal domain, flowing like brown shadows across the ground and vanishing into their tunnels.
He had formed himself a plan quickly after that, but it had taken much of the night to turn it from thought into deed. He had traded his French pistol to a disreputable dealer in curios and oddities who kept a dingy little shop on St. Mary’s Wynd. The man had been furious to be roused from his sleep for no better reason than a trade, but he was somewhat mollified when he saw what Quire proposed: a fine French flintlock, complete with case, in exchange for an old Brown Bess and a score of prepared cartridges. It was a transaction so imbalanced in the dealer’s favour that he could hardly demur. Quire regretted the loss of that pistol, but there was nothing to be done about it. For hunting, a man needed a long gun.
Thence, Quire went to find the Widow, and he made himself her debtor. He needed ten pounds from her to pay for Maclellan’s message from the prison. He needed a carriage to carry him along the road taken by the southern mail. Mary Coulter had smiled, and Quire had foreseen in that smile all manner of difficulties and regrets in his future, but she asked nothing of him now, and gladly gave him money and the loan of her own black coach.
Last, a kiss to Cath’s sleeping forehead—she stirring at the touch of his lips but not waking, which was as he wished it—and he was away.
So he found himself sitting in an alleyway in Dumfries, in the bitter cold early hours of the morning, when the police brought William Hare out from the jailhouse. They did it cautiously, surreptitiously. They had a jacket hung over his head, but that made no odds to Quire. He would not have recognised the face in any case. The anonymous figure the police escorted down the steps of the jailhouse to the waiting carriage wore black gloves, though, and that was enough to make Quire sure he had the right of it.
He waited until he saw which road the carriage was taking out of town, and then ran for the King’s Arms. It was a big, ramshackle coaching inn of the old-fashioned sort, built around a wide yard, with stables and plenty of bedrooms and even a little smithy and wheelwright’s workshop. All quiet now. All still.
Fleck was dozing, stretched out on the seat inside the coach, with his legs crossed and his tall black hat settled over his face like an upturned pot. Quire shook his boot to rouse him, and the man sprang instantly, almost unnaturally,