“Much obliged,” Derek mumbled through a mouthful of bread smeared liberally with sweet creamery butter.
Lillian regarded the boy with fond satisfaction. Ian knew how she loved feeding people, remembering with a pang it was a trait she shared with his mother. “You’d best have a bit o’ tatties as well, laddie,” she urged the boy, who didn’t need to be asked twice.
His aunt had a way of sprinkling her conversation with Scottish words and phrases, as though trying to reinforce her identity. Edinburgh was undoubtedly the country’s most cosmopolitan city; at times one could almost forget it was Scottish at all, so filled with visitors from every part of Europe and beyond.
“Do you remember the hypnotist I saw at the Theatre Royal?” Lillian asked as she tucked her napkin under her chin. No one in Edinburgh’s polite society would think of doing such a thing—but she was a Glaswegian, born and bred.
“How could I forget? You gushed on about him for days,” Ian said, helping himself to boiled potatoes and fried cod.
Derek let out a snicker, which he attempted unsuccessfully to smother in his napkin.
“Young man, it’s unseemly to mock your elders,” Lillian reproached sternly.
“Sorry, mum,” he mumbled through a mouthful of mushy peas.
“Monsieur Le Coq, wasn’t it?” said Ian. “Or something similarly preposterous. He’s still playing there, I believe.”
“I was thinking of going again—that is, if you’d like to join me.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Derek. “Was he stayin’ at the Waterloo Hotel?”
“I have no idea,” Lillian replied. “Why do you ask?”
“I passed by there on me way t’meet you,” he said to Ian.
“I suppose their clientele offer choice pickings?” Ian remarked.
Derek ignored the barb. “I were passin’ by and I ’eard some fellas what worked there standin’ jes’ outside, sayin’ as how this fancy performer had jes took ’is own life in ’is hotel room, like.”
“What—how?”
“These blokes said ’e was found hangin’ from the rafters in ’is own room.”
“That can’t be!” Lillian cried.
“And you’re sure this was at the Waterloo Hotel?” Ian said.
“Yep, ’at’s what I said.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,” Ian said, rising suddenly from the table.
His aunt looked alarmed. “What’s the matter?”
“I need to assure myself of something,” he said, hurrying out to the front hall.
Lillian scurried after him, her napkin fluttering beneath her chin like an oversized clerical collar. “What is it, Ian?”
“Don’t worry, Auntie—I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said, kissing her papery cheek. “But I must be certain.”
“But your dinner—”
“I’ll return later. Don’t wait up for me.”
“It will get cold,” she said forlornly.
“Then I shall have it cold.”
“Kin I come?” Derek said from the doorway.
“No,” Ian replied firmly, throwing on his cloak. “Stay here and take care of my aunt—and mind you help her tidy up.”
He was out the door before either of them could utter another word.
Seated in the back of a hansom cab rumbling over North Bridge, Ian pulled from his vest pocket the letter he had so carefully plucked from all the others. Beneath the elegant crest of the Waterloo Hotel stationery were the words that had so struck him at the time. Catch him before I kill him.
Perhaps at last, he thought, all the disparate story elements were finally coming together.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
All around him, the city lay in Sunday evening stillness, a great sleeping beast at rest before gathering itself for another Monday morning assault. The cab took the turn onto Princes Street, passing the Duke of Wellington statue, gleaming cold and dark in the moonlight, the Iron Duke captured in bronze, forever a young warrior on a charging stallion.
Waterloo Place, the eastern extension of Princes Street, was the city’s premier shopping venue, with its elegant stores and well-dressed denizens. The neoclassical architecture of Edinburgh’s New Town had no better example than in the Waterloo Hotel, with its grand arches and magnificent view of Holyrood Park.
Ian flashed his badge at the front desk clerk, a sleepy bulldog of a man with muttonchop whiskers attempting unsuccessfully to hide a severe underbite.
“Sir?” said the clerk.
Ian cleared his throat officiously. “Detective Inspector Hamilton, investigating the—incident involving Monsieur Le Coq.”
The clerk leaned forward eagerly, his sluggishness vanished. “Oh, you mean Henry Wright. Poor fellow.”
“I was given to understand his name was Le Coq.”
“That’s his stage name. Poor bloke wasn’t French any more than I am! He used that as an alias to make his act seem more sophisticated. I heard the ladies went for it.”
“Is the body still there?”
“Far as I know—but the lads from the morgue just showed up, so you’d better hurry.”
“Thank you,” Ian said, turning away.
“Room Two Twelve,” the clerk called after him. “Second floor—you can take the lift.”
Passing the lift, Ian bounded up the stairs two at a time, arriving at the room in time to see two morgue attendants enter with a stretcher.
“Just a moment,” Ian said, pulling out his badge. “DI Hamilton, Edinburgh City Police. I have one or two matters to investigate before you remove the body.”
The older of the attendants, a bear of a man with beery eyes and a gut like a bedroll, scowled at him. “The poor blighter offed hisself, mister. Wha’ else d’ya need ta know?”
“I’ll let you know when I find it,” Ian replied stiffly, pushing past them into the room.
The elegance of the suite was marred by the presence of the body lying upon the settee. Ian recognized him at once from the posters in front of the Theatre Royal. The handsome face was pale, the only visible sign of violence the purple discoloration on his neck, just above his shirt collar. A leather belt lay on the floor next to the body. Ian searched the victim’s pockets carefully for the usual playing card, but found none. As he was puzzling the reason for this, he heard footsteps behind him.
A reedy, worried-looking man in an elegant frock coat stood over him, wringing his hands. Balding and avuncular, he wore wire-rimmed glasses upon his beak of a nose.
“Alan McCleary,” he said, extending a thin hand. “I’m the night manager.”
“Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton, Edinburgh City Police.”
Mr. McCleary appeared suitably impressed by his credentials. “Dreadful business!” he said, continuing to wring his hands as he paced the plush carpet. “I fear it will bring bad repute upon the hotel!”
The manager’s lack of concern about the dead man struck Ian as more than a little callous, but he held his tongue. Mr. McCleary might yet prove useful, and Ian was too much of a pragmatist to scold him and risk losing his cooperation.
He pointed to the leather belt. “Was this used in the hanging?”
“Dear me, yes—shocking, it was! The chambermaid came in with clean linens and found him hanging from the beam in the bedroom! Poor girl, she was quite distraught.”
“Where is she?”
“I sent her home.”
“You did what?”