‘And she knows something about this doll?’

‘She might do.’ Gill paused. ‘According to Jean, this is far from the first.’

Rebus admitted to his guide that he’d never been inside the museum before.

‘The old museum, I used to take my daughter there when she was a kid.’

Jean Burchill tutted. ‘But this is quite another thing, Inspector. It’s all about who we are, our history and culture.’

‘No stuffed animals and totem poles?’

She smiled. ‘Not that I can think of.’ They were walking through the ground floor’s exhibit area, having left the huge whitewashed entrance hall behind. They stopped at a small lift, and Burchill turned to face him, her eyes running the length of his body. ‘Gill’s talked about you,’ she said. Then the lift doors opened and she got in, Rebus following.

‘Nothing but good, I hope.’ He tried hard for levity. Burchill just looked at him again and smiled her little smile. Despite her age, she reminded him of a schoolgirl: that mixture of the shy and the knowing, the prim and the curious.

‘Fourth floor,’ she told him, and when the lift doors opened again, they walked out into a narrow corridor filled with shadows and images of death. ‘The section on beliefs,’ she said, her voice barely audible. ‘Witchcraft and grave-robbers and burials.’ A black coach waited to take its next cargo to some Victorian graveyard, while nearby sat a large iron coffin. Rebus couldn’t help reaching out to touch it.

‘It’s a mortsafe,’ she said, then, seeing his lack of comprehension: ‘The families of the deceased would lock the coffin inside a mortsafe for the first six months to deter the resurrectionists.’

‘Meaning body-snatchers?’ Now this was a piece of history he knew. ‘Like Burke and Hare? Digging up corpses and selling them to the university?’

She peered at him like a teacher with a stubborn pupil. ‘Burke and Hare didn’t dig up anything. That’s the whole point of their story: they killed people, then sold the bodies to the anatomists.’

‘Right,’ Rebus said.

They passed funeral weeds, and photos of dead babies, and stopped at the furthest glass case.

‘Here we are,’ Burchill said. ‘The Arthur’s Seat coffins.’

Rebus looked. There were eight coffins in all. They were five or six inches long, well made, with nails studded into their lids. Inside the coffins were little wooden dolls, some wearing clothes. Rebus stared at a green and white check.

‘Hibs fan,’ he said.

‘At one time they were all dressed. But the cloth perished.’ She pointed to a photograph in the case. ‘In eighteen thirty-six, some children playing on Arthur’s Seat found the concealed mouth of a cave. Inside were seventeen little coffins, of which only these eight survive.’

‘They must have got a fright.’ Rebus was staring at the photograph, trying to place where on the massive slopes of the hill it might be.