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

were agitated and apparently random. He headed for Dundee, where he robbed a jeweller and picked a pocket in a crowd, thence to Cupar, Kinghorn, Burntisland and back to Newhaven and Edinburgh. He lacked a base, could only keep moving and moved without purpose. There was nowhere as dangerous as Edinburgh; yet `I could not keep myself away’. Even the autobiography can hardly hide his agitation. What was he to do?

    The first thing he saw on return was a bill posted, which offered a reward of seventy guineas for his apprehension. Once he might have been flattered. Now the thought uppermost in his mind was the realisation that none of his many acquaintances in the city could be trusted not to shop him for that price. Safe houses were a thing of the past.
    Leith - Kinghorn - Dundee - Perth - the journeyings were resumed. There was at least safety of mind in movement; anything was better than waiting. And of course there was work to be done. He found Perth illuminated for the Queen’s acquittal; that offered good pickings, and there is an appropriate irony in Davy, this characteristic figure of the Regency underworld, feeding off a crowd which had assembled to proclaim their detestation of the Regent who was now George IV.
    For a few weeks he resumed his old style of life, though fear was ever with him and the old blitheness was never quite recaptured. There were no more periods of idleness and fine living. Dunkeld - Perth - Dundee - Kenmore Fair - Cupar Fair - Arbroath Fair and back to Perth again. A little bit of business here, a little bit there. Now came the moment already referred to when he only just escaped capture in his Perth lodgings. The change in his style of life, the acceleration of his movements, suggests what one might surmise without any evidence: that, as a wanted man, he was having to pay more for his lodgings, to buy even the most temporary and short-lived security.
    Even so, there were good moments, an exploit at Glamis Fair for example, which reads like a comic opera dry run for one of the most celebrated incidents in Stevenson’s `Weir of Hermiston.’
    `Towards evening I spied a farmer plank a run lay of screaves in his keek cloy and I determined to have them if possible. I soon after saw him mount his prad, and watching the way he went, I immediately got my prad and followed him, accompanied by Edgy mounted behind me and a snib, named Smith, on foot. On getting up with the farmer, we found that other two had joined him. Smith objected to make an attack, Edgy joined him…. Having parted with these cowards, I followed up my prey, and I soon observed my man stop to water his horse at a small burn; I got alongside of him, and very unceremoniously plunged into his keek cloy and brought the blunt up with me, and before he had time to challenge me, I hit him a very smart blow over the head with the butt end of my whip, which set him off at full gallop and I at no less…’
    Action could still drive out anxiety, but the course could not last. A new departure was necessary, and a trip to Glasgow suggested the answer: he might give Ireland a go.
    The crossing was not entirely without incident. He was a little disturbed to find himself being regarded with suspicion by one of the passengers, who turned out to be Provost Fergus of Kirkcaldy. The Provost had almost certainly seen the posters and it is a little surprising that he contented himself with staring. Possibly he had urgent business and knew how any attempt to assist the police could cause delay. At any rate he did nothing and Davy had another temporary reprieve.
    Ireland restored his spirits at once. In those days, long before the great famine of the eighteen-forties, it seemed a bustling go-ahead place, with, significantly, more to offer a lad of his profession than Scotland had. `Paddyland’, he says, `is the land for pickpockets, lots of money, oceans of drink’ (it is of course so much easier to rob a man well in liquor than one soberly vigilant and