There was a noise in the corridor. When the kettle clicked off, she thought no more about it. Poured the water into her mug, dunked the tea-bag a few times, then tipped it into the swing-bin. Took the mug back into her room, leaving the door open.
Kennet Lovell had arrived in Edinburgh in December 1822, aged barely fifteen. She couldn’t know whether he’d taken a coach, or walked. It wasn’t uncommon to walk such distances in those days, especially if money was an issue. One historian, in a book about Burke and Hare, speculated that Reverend Kirkpatrick had provided for Lovell’s journey, and in addition had given him an introduction to a friend, Dr Knox, recently returned from time overseas, during which he had worked as an army surgeon at Waterloo and studied in Africa and Paris. Knox had housed young Lovell for the first year or so of his life in Edinburgh. But when Lovell had started university, the two seemed to have drifted apart, and Lovell moved to lodgings in West Port...
Jean sipped her tea and flipped through the photocopied sheets: no footnotes or index, nothing to indicate the provenance of these apparent ‘facts’. Dealing as she did with beliefs and superstitions, she knew how hard it could be to sift out hard objective truths from the chaff of history. Hearsay and rumour could find their way into print. Mistakes, only occasionally pernicious, crept in. It galled her that she had no way of checking anything, had for the moment to rely on mere commentary. A case like Burke and Hare had thrown up any number of contemporary ‘experts’, who believed their testimony to be the one true and worthwhile account.
It didn’t mean she had to believe it.
More frustrating still, Kennet Lovell was a bit-player in the Burke and Hare story, existing only for that one gruesome scene, while in the history of medicine in Edinburgh his role was more negligible still. Large gaps were left in his biography. By the time she’d finished reading, she knew only that he had completed his studies, moving into the field of teaching as well as practising. He had been present at the Burke autopsy. Yet three years later he seemed to be in Africa, combining much-needed medical skills with Christian missionary work. How long he spent there she couldn’t say. His reappearance in Scotland came in the late 1840s. He set up a medical practice in the New Town, his clients probably reflecting the wealth of that enclave. One historian’s supposition had it that he had been bequeathed the bulk of the Reverend Kirkpatrick’s estate, having ‘kept in good graces with that gentleman by dint of regular correspondence down the years’. Jean would have liked to see those letters, but nobody had quoted from them in any of the books. She made a note to try tracking them down. The parish in Ayrshire might have some record, or someone at Surgeons’ Hall might know. Chances were, they couldn’t be recovered, either because they’d perished — been disposed of with Lovell’s effects when he’d died — or had gone overseas. An awful lot of historical documentation had found its way into collections overseas — mostly Canada and the US... and many of those collections were private, which meant few details of their contents were available.
She’d seen many a trail go cold, frustrated by her inability to know whether some letter or document was still in existence. Then she remembered Professor Devlin, with his dining table crafted by Lovell. Lovell, who according to Devlin was an amateur woodworker... She sifted through the papers again, sure that there was nothing in them mentioning this hobby. Either Devlin had some book, some evidence she’d failed so far to find, or else he was myth-making. This, too, she saw all the time: people who ‘just knew’ that the antique in their possession had once belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie or Sir Walter Scott. If it turned out she only had Devlin’s word for it that Lovell had worked with wood, then the whole notion that he had left the coffins on Arthur’s Seat would begin to crumble. She sat back, annoyed with herself. All this time, she’d been working on an assumption that could turn out to be false. Lovell had left Edinburgh in 1832; the boys had stumbled on the cave containing the coffins in June 1836. Could they have gone undetected for so long?
She lifted something from the desk-top. It was a Polaroid she’d taken in Surgeons’ Hall — the portrait of Lovell. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered the ravages of Africa. His skin was pale and smooth, his face youthful. She had pencilled the artist’s name on the back. She got up and left her room again, opened the door to her boss’s office and switched on his light. He had a shelf of thick reference books, and she found the one she needed, turned to the painter’s name, J. Scott Jauncey. ‘Active in Edinburgh 1825–35,’ she read, ‘chiefly landscapes, but some portraiture.’ After which he’d taken himself to Europe for many years before settling in Hove. So Lovell had sat for the portrait during his early years in Edinburgh, before his own travels. She wondered if such a thing was the luxury it seemed, to be afforded only by the well-off. Then she thought of Reverend Kirkpatrick... maybe the portrait had been at his request, something to be sent west to the Ayrshire parish, to remind the minister of his charge.
Again, there might be a clue buried deep within Surgeons’ Hall, some record of the portrait’s history prior to its arrival there.
‘Monday,’ she said out loud. It could wait till Monday. She had the weekend to look forward to... and a Lou Reed concert to survive.
Switching off her boss’s light, she heard another noise, much closer. The door to the outer office swung open and the lights all came on. Jean took half a step back, then saw it was just the cleaner.
‘You gave me a fright,’ she said, putting a hand to her chest.
The cleaner just smiled and put a bin-bag down, heading back into the hallway to fetch her vacuum cleaner.
‘Mind if I get started?’ she asked.
‘Go ahead,’ Jean said. ‘I’m finished here anyway.’
As she tidied her desk, she noticed that her heart was still racing, her hands shaking slightly. All her night-time walks through the museum, and this was the first time she’d been fazed. The portrait of Kennet Lovell stared at her from the Polaroid. Somehow, it seemed to her, Jauncey had failed to flatter his subject. Lovell looked young, yes, but there was a coldness to the eyes, and the mouth was set, the face full of calculation.
‘Heading straight home?’ the cleaner asked, coming in to empty her bin.
‘Might make a pit-stop at the off-licence.’
‘Kill or cure, eh?’ the cleaner said.
‘Something like that,’ Jean replied, as an unwanted image of her husband flashed up in her mind. Then she thought of something and walked back to her desk. Lifted her pen and added a name to the notes she’d taken so far.
Claire Benzie.
11
‘Jesus, that was loud,’ Rebus said. They were back on the pavement outside the Playhouse, and the sky, which had still been light when they’d gone in, was now dark.
‘You don’t do this sort of thing often then?’ she asked. Her own ears were ringing. She knew she was talking too loudly, overcompensating.
‘It’s been a while,’ he admitted. The crowd had been a mix of teenagers, old punks, right up to people Rebus’s own age... maybe even a year or two older. Reed had played a lot of new material, stuff Rebus hadn’t recognised, but with a few of the classics stirred into the pot. The Playhouse: last time he’d been there had probably been UB40, around the time of their second album. He didn’t want to think how long ago that was.
‘Shall we get a drink?’ Jean suggested. They’d been drinking on and off all afternoon and evening: wine with lunch, then a quick one at the Ox. A long walk down to Dean Village and along the Water of Leith. All the way down to Leith itself, with breaks on the way to park themselves on a bench and talk. Two more drinks in a pub on The Shore. They’d considered an early supper, but were still full from the Café St Honore. Walked back up Leith Walk to the Playhouse. Still early, so they’d gone into the Conan Doyle for one, then the Playhouse bar itself.