The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [22]
“All right,” said Quire. “Give me a name, then. I know the one, but not the other. Who’s the young one? Where does he stay? How does he keep himself busy?”
“Can’t help you,” frowned MacQuarrie. “Not with either of them.”
Quire caught the whiff of the lie in the quickness of the response, and the shuffle of MacQuarrie’s eyes.
“I’ll not be well pleased if you’ve made me suffer the stink of this place for nothing, Donald. I can take a grudge for a lot less, and I’ll take it all the way to the excise men if you like. Get them in to measure just how many quarts of beer your customers are pissing out in the close each night.”
MacQuarrie laughed at that.
“You’re a wee man, Quire. No big enough by half to put a fright into me. You’re only the police, and you’re surely no thinking it’s the police that…”
Quire lunged across and pinned MacQuarrie’s hand flat to the table. He whipped his baton free from his belt and held it over the splayed fingers. MacQuarrie tried to jerk free, but Quire had all the strength of his good arm pressing down.
“You’ll not be washing many dishes with cracked knuckles, will you?” he said calmly.
“Do that and it’ll no be you with the grudge, and I ken plenty of bigger men than you.”
“Maybe, but you’ll still have a broken hand. And I’m thinking you know I’m not that easy frightened.”
MacQuarrie slackened, and gave a dry smile.
“By Christ, Quire. Can you no take a joke? Settle yourself down. I’ll give you a wee morsel, if it’ll get you out.”
Quire settled back into his seat and released MacQuarrie’s wrist. The big man shook his freed hand, and shook his head at the same time, as if in disappointment.
“I’ve only seen the younger one before,” he muttered, just loud enough for Quire to pick the words out from amongst the strains of Stevenson’s shrill tune. “Been in here once or twice. Likes seeing the lassies about, but no man enough to buy any more than the seeing. I’ve no heard his name, but I ken he stays out in Duddingston. Does labouring on the farms, I think. And digs graves.”
“He’s a gravedigger?”
“Aye. I think so. And maybe I caught mention of a burial when they were talking. Maybe there’s a man going into the ground at Duddingston Kirk tomorrow. You tell anyone you had that from me, though, and I’ll no be a happy man.”
“Hah.”
Quire leaned back in his chair, more than a little surprised. Whatever he had expected, however out of kilter he had thought the mood of Ruthven’s house and whatever scent of wrongness he had caught there, he had never thought it might lead to this. The discovery imbued him with a sudden vigour, like a child glimpsing if not the solution, at least a hint of the solution, to some frustrating puzzle toy.
“Do you know a man called Carlyle?” he asked. “Edward Carlyle.”
“I’m spent, Quire. I’ll no be spilling anything more for you this morning.”
“Something to spill, then.” Quire grunted. “Listen, Carlyle’s dead. There’s no trouble you could bring down on his head that’d bother him now. You tell me something about him, it means I don’t have to come back and start bothering your customers on the matter.”
MacQuarrie sighed.
“You’re just too dim-witted to ken when to stop aggravating folk, aren’t you, Quire? Look, there was a Carlyle in here a few times, the last month or two, with Emma Slight. He made for a bad drunk, and we threw him out. Told Emma not to bother bringing him round here again. That’s all.”
“Emma Slight. She’s one of the Widow’s tenants, isn’t she? In the Holy Land?”
MacQuarrie gave an ill-tempered shrug.
“You charge a penny entrance, is that right?” Quire asked as he pushed his chair back and rose to his feet.
“Aye,” grunted the proprietor of the school.
Quire withdrew Mrs. Mallinder’s carefully wrapped slab of butter from his pocket and slapped it down on the table. Its sharp edges had just begun to lose their definition. The two men regarded it in silence for a moment, both rather surprised at the noise it had made as it flopped down, and at how