Opening arguments for legal drama as Edward Kane returns to The Scotsman

Then – as a lawyer – you have to scratch your head and wonder: ‘What to do next?’

In brief, in her early twenties, Margaret (‘Maggie”) Dickson was abandoned by her sea-faring husband and she took work as a barmaid. She soon struck up a relationship with the innkeeper’s son – and found herself pregnant. Maggie concealed the pregnancy. Nobody knows if the baby survived the rigours of being born in secrecy in the 1720s, but a carefully-wrapped baby’s body was later found on the banks of the river Tweed and the trail led back to the hapless barmaid. Maggie Dickson was found guilty by an Edinburgh jury and was sentenced to hang at the Grassmarket on 2 September 1724.

One account says that a fight broke out immediately after the hanging. Medical students tried to snatch the body and take it to the dissection rooms. But Maggie’s family fought them off and recovered the corpse for a proper burial in Musselburgh.

Maggie’s body was loaded onto a cart. The cart bumped along the cobbled streets. On the journey, the coach drivers decided to drop into a local inn for ‘a quick one’. According to one version, they parked the cart and coffin in front of the pub window, looking out to make sure that no-one could steal the body.

While they sat with their jugs of beer, they saw the lid of the coffin start to move. The carters ran out and removed the lid, and there was Maggie inside – alive and groaning.

The problem then became a legal one: what to do with Maggie now that she had apparently come back to life?

It was a fiendish legal conundrum for a number of reasons: (1) Maggie had already stood trial (possibly under the 1690 Concealment of Pregnancy Act), so she could not be tried again for the same crime and (2) Maggie had served her sentence – she had already been hanged, as directed by the court.

The legal question became: “In those circumstances – what can be done?” After much legal consideration, the answer was “Nothing”.

Maggie Dickson was released and lived for another 40 years. Incredibly, her errant husband re-appeared, they reconciled, and Maggie had more children and ended up running her own pub.

How did Maggie survive the noose? Nobody knows. One theory is that she seduced the hangman the night before, so that he would bungle the job; other theories involve the rope getting wet, thus becoming unfit for purpose - but we’ll never know.

The other strain of the new Edward Kane serial involves the use of tarot cards.

I admit now that I know nothing about the tarot and – to be honest – I always found the whole thing a bit creepy.

Still, I remembered that there was a card called “The Hanged Man” and – after a bit of research – I was able to work that into the story.

I never had anything to do with the tarot – mainly because, as I was growing up, I was told repeatedly that the whole tarot thing was ‘un-Christian’. (This is the view that our hero, Edward Kane – son of the manse – adopts in the story itself.)

Tarot was taboo – along with the other kinds of divination, Ouija boards and crystal balls and – that old Scottish favourite – reading the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. (I wonder if that practice died out when they invented tea-bags).

It was only much later, as an adult, when a friend insisted on doing a tarot reading of me that I sat and watched him deal the cards. It was only then that I realised how truly strange they were. The bizarre imagery – ‘The Hanged Man’, ‘The Female Pope’, ‘The Tower’, ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ (although no sign of Carol Smilie) – and the ultimate creepy card: ‘Death’.

My friend dealt. I drew the Death card.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” – my friend was keen to insist. “Death is a good card.” For my own part, I wasn’t convinced that a card showing a skeleton riding a gnarly, pale horse could be the bearer of glad tidings. My friend insisted that the card meant the death of something bad, a release from a difficult situation, perhaps the end of a bad relationship.

Oddly enough – soon afterwards – my long-term (and incredibly unhappy) relationship came to an end.

So – there we have it. The main ingredients for the new Edward Kane serial all rooted in fact. Just fold in a good pinch of Kane’s manservant, Mr Horse, trying to borrow a dog (don’t ask) with the dash of a difficult client who has just survived a hanging – cook nicely from Monday until Christmas Eve and there it is: Edward Kane, Advocate in ‘The Hanged Man’.

I hope you enjoy the story.

And – as Cockney manservant, Mr Horse might say:

‘Oh, Mr K, sir – would you Adam and Eve it!”

Edward Kane, Advocate in ‘The Hanged Man’ begins in Monday’s Scotsman and continues Mondays to Fridays until Christmas Eve.

Edward Kane and Mr Horse: Collected Short Stories - Volume I and the full-length novel: Edward Kane and the Parlour Maid Murderer are available now on Amazon and Kindle.