Thrawn Thoughts and Blithe Bits by Lexie Conyngham

Author:Lexie Conyngham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: norwegian, mystery detective, historical 1800s, historical regency, scottish historical, short crime stories, scottish crime fiction, mystery 19th century, mystery and detective historical, ghost and horror stories
Publisher: Lexie Conyngham

Outside it was raining again, quite heavily. Back in the narrow alleys of Tyskebryggen, the water saturated everything, the wooden walls and floors shiny and oozing wet. The boards creaked underfoot as if they were on a ship. Murray had acquired the habit of ducking his head almost permanently as he walked about the place. At the end of Hansen’s passage, under the shelter of the first floor gallery, twenty-odd flour sacks slumped cosily together. In the damp air, Murray could imagine each one now lined with thick grey glue.

‘Oh, where is that boy?’ grumbled Hansen. ‘Even if he was late arriving this morning, you would think he would have had the wit to shift those upstairs!’

‘Shall I ask the kitchen boy to see if he’s at his home?’ asked Murray, by now used to the procedure of locating the apprentice.

‘No, better not,’ said Hansen with a frown. ‘Bergo is coming to dinner and he likes his food: the cook will be busy enough without losing the kitchen boy.’

‘Then can I go? Or can I help you?’

Hansen pursed his lips for a moment.

‘Let’s both go.’ Hansen was never that happy to let Murray out alone, even now. Murray was his responsibility. One of Murray’s late father’s old advocate friends had defended him, successfully, in a trade dispute brought to an Edinburgh court, and he took returning the favour very seriously.

Still in their outdoor clothes, they clomped with heavy, hollow steps back down the passage to the street, then along a few dozen yards to another timbered tunnel. They were remarkably alike, these wooden pends: the Hanseatic League merchants who had built them, or their predecessors, had stipulated widths and heights and tight rules: a Hanseatic apprentice would have known his place, clearly delineated between the journeymen and the errand boys, on the top floor of his master’s narrow wooden property, in a solemn, financially-focussed, men-only world – and no consorting with the native Norwegians. But the League was long gone, the merchants were all Norwegian and so were their wives, daughters, mothers and cooks, with many of whom Viktor had indeed consorted. Apprentices like Viktor could no longer be relied upon to enjoy the strictures of an earlier age.

At the back of this particular alley, across a busy courtyard, Viktor inhabited a two-room stone dwelling with his mother and brother. His mother, swathed in widow’s black, was sitting in the doorway, just out of the rain, as they approached, making the best of the light to knit a stocking. She had a face like a quince left too long on the tree: Murray could only imagine that Viktor was so cheerful through sheer youthful rebellion.

‘Well, Mr. Hansen, I suppose you are here to give me all those extra kroner for keeping my poor Viktor out working all night!’ she remarked sourly.

‘I’m not going to keep him working all night,’ said Hansen in bewilderment. ‘It’s as much as I can do to get him to work in the daytime.’

‘Well, where is he now, but working for you?’

‘I don’t know: I was hoping he might be here.

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