The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [49]
“Oh,” Macdonald said again, a little deflated this time. “Yes, I suppose Mr. Anderson would not wish to involve himself in such matters. He’s most protective of the Society’s reputation, you know. Wouldn’t want it to come out that he’d reported matters that put the Society in an unflattering light.”
“You needn’t worry about that. It’s just that I’m wanting to know more of Ruthven. Something of his nature, his activities. You follow me?”
“Would you care to sit down, Sergeant?”
Macdonald led Quire to the far end of the storage rooms, where, in a cramped corner, two rickety-looking chairs flanked a little round table. Quire had to move a box of papers bound up with ribbons before he could occupy the one to which he was directed. He carefully laid the hessian sack down flat on the table before him.
“It was a small unpleasantness in our history, the Ruthven business,” Macdonald said with an air of world-weary regret as he took his own seat. “Nothing more than that by all accounts. You must understand, many of our members are men of considerable reputation, and intellect, and… let us say they are men of robust character and strong opinion, often on the most arcane and obscure of topics. There is always some dispute grumbling away to enliven our proceedings.”
“Must have been of some consequence, if Ruthven resigned from the Society over it.”
“Resigned… well, in a manner of speaking.” Macdonald fluttered a hand in the musty air. “Difficult to be precise about meanings. You might say, though, that Mr. Ruthven chose to leave our ranks rather than face the ignominy of expulsion. He had fallen out with a number of the other senior members over some considerable period of time. You’ve met him, you say?”
Quire nodded, but chose not to expand upon that simple confirmation.
“You’ll have formed your own opinion, no doubt,” Macdonald went on, recovering some of his initial animation. “He has—or had then, at least—some rather eccentric views on various historical and philosophical subjects, and a somewhat rough manner with those who did not share them. Matters came to a head… well, I believe some questions were raised over a number of items that went missing from the Society’s collections.”
“He stole them?”
Macdonald was alarmed. He raised a splayed hand to fend off the very words.
“I did not say that, Sergeant. I very purposely did not say that. Questions were raised and no satisfactory answers could be agreed upon, so he and the Society parted ways. That is all.”
“What items went missing?” Quire asked.
“Oh, nothing of especial significance or value, either monetary or historical, as far as I know. Some pieces from Major Weir’s house, a lock of hair reputed to have been cut from the head of a witch before she burned. A set of keys once owned by Deacon Brodie. That sort of thing. Minor relics of the darkest corners of Edinburgh’s past, if you like. Interesting to a local historian of macabre bent, but not central to our collections.”
Quire could not keep the look of disappointment from his face. A few inconsequential trinkets gone missing years ago were no kind of lever with which to prise open Ruthven’s—or Blegg’s—secrets. That disappointment went entirely unnoticed by Macdonald, who was carried along by his own more recondite lines of thought.
“All of a piece, really, with his interests and descent,” the curator mused. “You may not know, Sergeant, but Mr. Ruthven is distantly descended from a notable family of dabblers in the arcane. So he liked to imply, in any case. Men who, in less enlightened times than our own, were drawn to alchemy, and much darker arts. Delusional mystics, would be the current judgement, fortunate to have avoided the stake and the fires of witch-hunters.
“There was a namesake of his, a John Ruthven of the sixteenth century, who habitually carried about his person a bag filled with magical wards inscribed upon plaques of wood in Latin and Hebrew. To guard against evil spirits, or some such. He was executed as a conspirator against the Crown, so you may