The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [52]
On a finer night, they would have lingered on the plaza outside the Institution; taken the air, greeted one another, measured the mood and appearance of their fellows. Beneath the damp weight of the fog, they were not so inclined. Each time the heavy doors were opened to admit a newly arrived party, there was a spill of light and of chatter out into the mist.
Quire stood amongst the columns, watching them arrive. He recognised a goodly number of faces; doubted whether any more than one or two of them could have put a name to him in their turn, for it was in the nature of the influential to be known by those they did not themselves know. He kept to the shadows, in any case, withdrawn behind one of the fluted stone pillars.
He had taken up his station later than he intended. There had been some slight disorder at the police house—a band of drunken apprentices disputing their detention, after putting in the windows of several houses—and it had delayed him. As a result, watching the carriages come and go in slowly decreasing number, growing ever colder and ever less comfortable, he began to suspect that he had missed his quarry. If Ruthven was attending, he was likely already inside.
Quire knew he should be in his rooms by now, warming his bones by the fire or his guts around one of Mrs. Calder’s stews. Such had been his intent, until almost the very end of the day, but a restless, nagging urge had hold of him. An anger, born in part of frustration at his inability to close the net he longed to set about Ruthven and his cohorts. It was Quire himself who felt ensnared, rather than his quarry. The Police Board were demanding his suspension now, and threatening an enquiry. Superintendent Robinson was fighting a rearguard action in his defence, but whether and for how long that would succeed he had been unable to say. Matters seemed clear to Quire: he was in a race, and its finish would see either him or his enemies brought low.
The accumulation of obstacles on that path only served to raise up to the surface his worst qualities: the stubbornness and the anger and the instinct for confrontation. Worst qualities now, perhaps, yet they had been his best once, when there had been battles to be fought.
So he meant to make Ruthven feel a little of the heat. See if that would make the man betray himself, through error or arrogance. Not a course Robinson would approve, but Quire could not stand to allow others to fight all his battles for him. That thought was enough to carry him over the threshold and into the Royal Institution.
Where as elegant an event as any he had seen was resolutely under way. Edinburgh’s finest drifted to and fro in small groups; or rather, its pre-eminent members occupied their chosen stations and the rest moved from one to another like roving bands of supplicants paying their respects at a succession of shrines. All was smart waistcoats and billowing skirts, immaculately pressed shirts adorned with flamboyant neckcloths; tiaras and brooches, and servants gliding about with silver trays bearing veritable thickets of champagne glasses.
As backdrop to all this, countless luminous paintings of exotic birds filled the walls of the small galleries through which the crowds ebbed and flowed. Every imaginable hue and form of bird was represented, all of them depicted with such startling precision and realism that Quire stood for a moment quite still, staring vacantly at the nearest of the images, wondering how a man might produce such a thing.
A tall, stiff waiter broke the spell with a rather pointed clearing of his throat. He extended his oval tray, but Quire could see in his eyes that he was not certain he was offering the champagne to quite the right man; it was an act of habitual duty rather than conviction. Quire glared at him until he moved off in search of a warmer welcome elsewhere.
Quire realised that Sir Walter Scott—near-destitute now, he had heard, but still the