Every work of fiction starts with a single idea. An assassin hired to kill a president (The Day Of The Jackal), an elderly fisherman who loses his prize to a shark (The Old Man And The Sea), a doctor who transforms into a beast at night and commits murder (Jekyll and Hyde). The last, of course, is by Robert Louis Stevenson. Although nominally set in London, the scenery is distinctly that of Edinburgh, in particular the Old Town. Edinburgh was Stevenson’s home and also mine. At night and on foggy days when a sea mist rolls in from the Forth, the streets appear haunted and forbidding. They speak of earlier times when vagrants roamed and criminals lurked in the shadows, ready to beat and rob the unwary.
On a corner of Lawnmarket is Deacon Brodie’s Tavern. A popular venue named after Edinburgh’s most notorious villain. William Brodie was a respected citizen by day and a thief by night, who was eventually caught and hanged for his crimes. His life was the inspiration for Stevenson’s character ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ and also for my own novel ‘A Leap In the Dark’. While Stevenson turned his story into a fable, I stick more closely to the historical narrative. Both works are similar in that they explore man’s duality: the good and the bad, lightness and dark. Stevenson once said: ‘Man is not truly one but truly two.’ We are all, to some extent, two people. The person we would like to be and want others to see, and the person we really are. Few of us, fortunately, develop a Jekyll and Hyde complex.
I used to frequent Deacon Brodie’s Tavern as a youthful drinker and was intrigued by his story. A charismatic man with a successful furniture business who changed into his thief’s garb at night and went about robbing his wealthy neighbours. I only discovered later during my research that Stevenson had based Jekyll and Hyde on the same character.
The question people ask about the Deacon is why did he do it? He didn’t need the money and the probability of capture far outweighed the reward. But Brodie didn’t care. He was a risk taker and a gambler. The act of theft was thrilling to him. He could live out the fantasy of having a double life without anyone suspecting. ‘Wanted!’ signs were pasted all over Edinburgh offering a reward for the ‘apprehension of the man with the mask’. Once, when he was on the run in London, Brodie stood next to such a sign pasted on the notice board of Fleet Prison and watched as people read it. Unsurprisingly the gentleman thief is a popular genre for writers. EW Hornung based his Raffles stories on such a trope.
The next task of the novelist is to garner as much useful information as possible. I spent many hours in the British Library reading about the history of Edinburgh and life in the eighteenth century. One of the most useful sources I discovered was an old map of the city. At least my protagonist knows where’s he’s going. I don’t want a lecturer at Edinburgh University saying: ‘oh dearie me, that street didn’t exist in 1798….no, no, that building wasn’t constructed until 1812’.
Another useful source was ‘A History of the Scottish People 1560-1860’ by TC Smout. It has a wealth of detail about society and how Scotland progressed from an essentially agrarian economy to one of industry and commerce. It’s the small details that intrigue me most: a popular tipple at the time was brandy and water with a side order of raisins. The top hat was introduced from France in 1797 and one of the characters in ‘A Leap In The Dark’ sports such fashionable headgear during a day at Leith Races.
Once I had done enough research I could begin. It’s important to note that you’re writing a novel and not a history book. The narrative and plot are key, you don’t have to weigh it down with extraneous detail. If you do you’re in danger of boring the reader who doesn’t want a history lesson. It’s like driving a classic car. You want the ride to be pleasurable, memorable even, but you don’t have to know everything that goes on under the bonnet.
Then you’re finished. You can go and make yourself a cup of tea, or like James Caan in the movie ‘Misery’ open a bottle of Dom Perignon and light a cigarette. Just hope that your ‘number one fan’ isn’t waiting around the corner with an axe.
Justin Kerr-Smiley is a writer and journalist, and author of A Leap In The Dark, published by Chiselbury.
