Edward Kane, Advocate in The Supernal Sisters. Chapter 13: ‘Eeny Meeny Miny Mo’

The events at the séance had disturbed Horse more than he cared to admit. Not the floating table. He had seen fairground conjurers do that in darkened tents (and learned later of the hidden hooks up the sleeves hoisting up the table as the empty hands hovered over it). No, it was the message from beyond. From the French lad. The one that Horse had killed in a fair fight. A message. Now. After – what? – nearly forty years? Why now?

Horse’s grandmother had always scolded that the Devil makes work for idle hands, so the cure for the brooding would always be to get to work. What was it that Mr K had said about the source of the dead bodies? Something about a funeral system? Was there not that bloke in The White Hart pub – Barry Alcott – oh, maybe six months ago and he said he was working at the undertakers during the day and then getting some extra money at another job at night – labelling the bodies that were being sent to the university. Where did he say he worked again? That little shop entrance with the red door down on The Cowgate?

*****

They hadn’t won the case yet, but client, Harry Humbie, didn’t seem to mind: ‘Queer old coot that sheriff, eh?’ He laughed: ‘Didn’t like your argument one bit, did he, Mr Kane?’

The Advocate smiled: ‘He was somewhat antic, but one can’t fault his logic. If we already know – as we seem to do – that the coffin in the Humbie burial plot contains the body of a stranger, then what is the point of digging it up? The focus ought to be where your father has…’ (the verb escaped Kane at this point – so Harry Humbie filled it in): ‘“Landed”, Mr Kane. Where my father has landed.’ Kane nodded and acceded to the wording: ‘Where you father has landed.’

At this point, the animated head of the instructing solicitor, seemed to appear and bob between the Advocate and the client: ‘And that, gentlemen, will I hope become clear when we receive Professor Peterson’s inventory of the bodies. I understand that he is having a copy made as we speak, and it ought to be delivered to us this afternoon. Mr Kane, sir – are you available to consult at, say, 4.30?’

The young Advocate had recently looked at his work diary, the conspicuous feature of which was the blank page and the emptiness of the days and weeks ahead.

Kane frowned: ‘I shall consult my diary, gentlemen and endeavour to accommodate you.’

Mr Horse would have been proud.

*****

Was that laughing?

Or -to be more precise – giggling?

In this room?

A room of dead bodies?

It had to be conceded that the little red door had been locked when Horse had tried the handle, but its shoogly nature meant that a little dunt of the shoulder had led to it being amenable to being opened.

A great room full of long tables. Maybe about fifteen of those. Most tables covered in long cloth. Dark. Still, in the dark, you could make out the shapes on the tables. Covered with cloth, the unmistakeable shape of human bodies.

But the giggling?

Here?

In what was essentially a mortuary of the unclaimed dead?

Horse edged his way between the tables, careful not to touch the long cloths or what they covered. At last he came to the source of the merriment. He frowned. Was it coming from under one of empty tables. He knelt down, lifted up the cloth that had reached down to the floor and – as if drawing aside the curtain of a four-poster bed – peered into the darkness. And there sat two old women. One of whom was drinking from the neck of a bottle of rum. Entirely unperturbed, one of the women turned to Horse: ‘Can I help you, son?’ Horse blinked in the darkness: ‘I’m looking for Barry Alcott.’ The other woman finished the slug from her bottle, then wiped her mouth with her sleeve:

‘Barry disnae work on a Wednesday.’

Horse nodded: ‘Then I’m sorry to disturb you, ladies.’

Silence for a moment, then the lady with the bottle held it out towards their unexpected visitor: ‘Do you fancy a drink, son?’

*****

Mr Horse and the two lubricated ladies, nestled in a spot under a draped table in a room full of dead bodies, the location now seemed as comfortable as the interior of a Bedouin tent. It is well understood that in vino there is often veritas. As it happens, the same goes for rum. Six slugs in, the veritas flowed freely. The older lady – the possessor of the bottle – drummed her fingers against its label as she regaled Horse with her exploits with the dead: ‘…but they had forgot to take a look at his back teeth. and there were two golden ones in there. Foreign fella. So, I soon get them out and I takes them down to the Surgeon’s Hall to get a good price. And, I’m telling you, son, some of the beautiful shoes we get – I could open up my own shop…’

Horse, now joining the ladies in their convivial hideout, laughed and waved the story away: ‘I wager that you could, madam, I wager that you could.’ He reached for the bottle, took it and gave it a hearty pull. Rubbed his mouth with his sleeve and grinned: ‘It’s some job, ennit! But I’ve often wondered – how do you keep track of who’s who? So many bodies on so many tables.’ The lady gave a sage nod: ‘We put wee signs on them, where they had came from, where they had been found, the age and that. The signs keep us right. But…but….’ She put her hand to stifle a laugh. At this point, the other lady – ‘Violet’ by name – glowered at her friend. Undaunted, the lady with the bottle pressed on: “A few weeks ago, Violet there,’ she nodded towards her friend in the gloom, ‘Violet thought that the smell was getting too much, so…’.

Violet – more defensive than irate now – interrupted: ‘Don’t blame me - it was bowfin’ in this place…’

The lady with the bottle resumed her narrative: ‘Violet decided to open one of those big windows over there. And a great big gust of wind blew in. And all the signs from the bodies blew everywhere.’ She laughed: ‘We were all running about the room trying to catch them, like trying to catch leaves in the wind.’

Horse nodded: ‘But how, my dear, did you work out afterwards which sign went on which body?’ The lady took a slug from the bottle and gave a sigh: ‘That was quite easy. Wi’ most of them. The signs had written on them whether it was a man or a woman, where they came from and a guess at their age – ye mind, some of these bodies had just been found in the street and that.’ She took another swig: ‘We remembered where some of the signs went, so that was easy. For example, there was a buddy that had been hangit at the Lawn Market – so that was easy enough wi’ the marks on the neck and that. And a wifie that they think had been poisoned. And a couple of weans. The problem was the last two…’

‘The last two?’

The lady nodded: ‘The last two bodies, I mean. It was the end of the shift and we had to get everything back in its place before the foreman got back. Except we had two bodies left. Two gentlemen. Looked the same age. Same shape. Both were to gang down to the Edinburgh University. I mind they said that one had took ill in a coach and died in Falkirk. And the other one had fell down dead in the street in Portobello.’

‘So how did you tell them apart?’

‘We couldn’t.’

‘So how did you decide which sign to put on which body?’

The lady took another slug and looked at her partner. They both started to giggle: ‘Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Mo…’

Edward Kane and Mr Horse Collected Short Stories Volume 1 is available on Amazon, Kindle and from all good bookshops