Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders by Allan Massie Read Free Book Online Page A

would never suspect me of going there, where I was so well known’, he says, displaying the same fallacious cleversilly reasoning that Poe exhibited in The Purloined Letter. It is rarely as intelligent to do the obvious in the expectation that the obvious will not be anticipated as ingenious criminals may imagine. The police, stolid rather than inspired, will competently cover the obvious. A criminal’s bolt-holes will not escape investigation because of some fanciful theory that they are too well known for him to use. Something of this may have occurred to David, for, uncertain of his logic, he hesitated a week in Berwick, during which time he watched the arrival of the Edinburgh coaches, his eye wary for police officers. Finding none arrive, he resolved to return to Edinburgh itself. It was after all home, the burrow towards which the instinct of the hunted animal directed him.
    He travelled thither with Mr Wipers whom he met at Dunbar. Mr Wipers, a stranger to the city and with no acquaintance there, took a fancy to Davy and importuned him with requests for his company. He pressed him with invitations for walks, for the theatre, for tavern evenings; but, `I always pretended to be unwell’. Mr Wipers persisted. Eventually Davy gave way - possibly Mr Wipers was asking awkward questions, possibly David was bored. He continued however to exercise unwonted prudence and selected Mrs Mackinnon’s on South Bridge as their rendezvous, notorious as the livelist of the city’s numerous houses of ill-fame. Mrs Mackinnon herself was to follow Davy to the scaffold within a few years for stabbing an officer whose custom had proved unsatisfactory. It was therefore a house where Davy could feel safe among friends, even in his unprecedentedly nervous condition.
    It passed off smoothly, without incident. Mr Wipers left the city, but David continued to lie low, quitting his lodgings only by night, and even then, in the additional security of female disguise. On one such expedition he encountered his poor father who failed to recognize his son dressed in `blones’ twigs’. No doubt that was just as well; there was enough to distress him already.
    Still such caution becomes wearisome. David was soon able to convince himself that the chase was cooling. It was after all inconvenient and boring to live like this. It was surely safe to resume the normal course. Such self-deception, allowing `what would be’ to represent `what is’, is common enough of course; it is though a habit of thought to which the criminal mind, with its inherent tendency to solipsism, is peculiarly given.
    David however was soon disillusioned.
    He made a visit - a business visit of course, for a criminal must steal to live - to his old haunts in Leith. There he was unlucky enough - yet it was of course the sort of luck that might, in the circumstances have been anticipated - to come face to face with old adversary, Captain Ross. They were no more than ten yards apart. `Mustering up my pluck, I plunged my fam into my suck’ (my hand into my pocket), as if for a pop (a gun). The cautious Captain, who knew me too well to engage me while alone, took to his heels.’
    It would be interesting to have Captain Ross’s version; yet Davy’s, Walter Mittyish though it certainly is, could be true enough. At any rate this encounter, or some similar alarm, was enough to persuade him it was time to get out again. Now, that he was positively known to be back in Edinburgh, nowhere in the city was safe. It is doubtful if the wretched boy had anyone he could rely on; it was too late to go back to his parents. Those days, when their home could afford sanctuary, were over. He had advanced beyond being a suspicious character whom the law would like to keep an eye on; instead he was well and-truly on the run.
    He made for Fife at once, taking a passage in a fishing-boat from Fisherrow and landing at Siller-Dykes (the modern Cellardyke, a village which adjoins Anstruther.) His movements