Murders Most Foul (2 page)

The woman shrugged, closed her lips tightly. ‘She wasna’ from around here.’

And that was the end of the conversation as, without another word, the child now silent and safe, pressed close to her bosom, the woman hurried towards the stone stair.

‘A moment,’ Faro called. ‘What number are you?’

The retreating footsteps were his only answer. She either didn’t hear or more likely didn’t want to.

As he caught up with Gosse, heading up the Lawnmarket towards the Central Office, all around them footsteps skittered over damp cobbles, as if the city stretched itself on awakening from sleep. The sound of heavy boots, belonging to those who were rich enough to possess such luxuries, as working men headed towards the city’s areas of employment: fleshers and bakers and candle makers – respectable jobs in a world away from the lawless closes of the High Street areas, that last resort dreaded even by beat policemen as some kind of penance or punishment.

He knew from experience that he must be wary. Faro was ever conscious of Gosse’s hostility; the sergeant would enjoy any excuse of putting him back on the beat here again. He was aware that his remarks concerning the playing card had been the subject of whispered apology to the inspector.

Gosse was wary of this newly appointed detective constable assigned to him. Bad enough having an ex-detective superintendent’s protégé, but a foreigner from some godforsaken barbaric island in the far north tenaciously owing allegiance to Scotland! Faro, he was convinced, would never have the guts needed in the Edinburgh City Police.

But Gosse had another, darker reason for being wary of Faro.

Sergeant Gosse was a law unto himself and he didn’t mind twisting the evidence a little, or even a lot on occasions, to enhance his growing reputation as a renowned criminal-catcher. His efficiency was a byword at the Central Office and he claimed to have an intuition about criminals. The fact was that he was not above adding to or rearranging the clues in order to catch a malefactor and allow the course of justice to run smoother with the swift and gratifying conclusion of hanging.

Once he had been caught in the act by Faro. A trivial matter, perhaps, but having observed Gosse planting evidence in a suspected thief’s pocket as they grabbed him, Faro actually had the nerve to question him. Furious, mumbling an excuse, Gosse had to recover the offending piece and, for lack of all but circumstantial evidence, he was denied the satisfaction of seeing the man he had decided was guilty receiving the sentence of being transported.

After all his efforts to keep a clean record he could not forgive Faro and resolved to keep a sharper eye on him in future.

There might be something in Faro’s private life that would be useful. The fact that he kept himself to himself and wasn’t exactly popular with the other lads out for a pie and a pint and a bit of skirt on an evening off suggested that digging a little deeper might reveal secrets worth investigating.

A wife was a vital ingredient in the climb for promotion, assuring the public of the respectability expected of a God-fearing, churchgoing police officer. Gosse, a very plain lumpish figure with a face scarred by smallpox and a somewhat disagreeable personality, had an eye for the ladies, albeit he was notably unsuccessful, his excuse a long, loveless and childless marriage to a shrew of a woman who had recently gone south to take care of a dying sister.

At least that was her excuse; Gosse was fairly sure that her return was neither imminent nor intended. He thanked God for that, pleased to be rid of her, his sole consolation that his abysmal marriage to a woman belonging to the class above him, this local baker’s only daughter, included the prospect of inheriting a thriving business. Mrs Gosse was also distantly related on the distaff side to a local important and affluent family, a fact he never missed an opportunity of mentioning. In his wife’s absence, Gosse considered himself as something of a Casanova, much to the amusement and astonishment of his drinking colleagues. His lack of success was further cause for resenting his tall, well-set-up detective constable who had netted an exceptionally attractive
young lady with whom he seemed to be on excellent terms.

How had he achieved this? A puzzle, especially as Faro hadn’t much – except in the way of good looks – to offer.

‘Nice looking young widow lady I see you’ve got yourself,’ he said, having met the couple walking in Princes Street Gardens. Pausing, hoping for an introduction, he received a mere salute from Faro as they swept onward.

He was furious and next morning decided to tackle Faro again and was gratified by the younger man’s look of surprise – but no embarrassment – at his question.

‘A widow – what makes you think that, sir?’

Gosse tapped the side of his nose. True, it was not a recent bereavement since she wasn’t in widow’s weeds, but as she was walking in public with Faro on a Sunday afternoon, it was unlikely that they were having an affair. Gosse was sharp, and did some quick calculations, especially as the young lad she was dragging along, sullen and rebellious, was protesting: ‘Let go, Ma.’

‘Is that her bairn? She doesn’t look old enough.’ Gosse decided on an approach by friendly observation. ‘Her man – a soldier, was he?’

Faro had the story ready. ‘Killed in India.’

Gosse nodded. ‘Lucky to find another man, especially with a bairn. Not every man wants second-hand goods. You know what I mean,’ he added slyly.

Faro knew exactly what Gosse meant but there was much more to it, had Gosse known the truth. Lizzie was no widow, there had never been a husband and Vince was the child of rape when she was a fifteen-year-old maid in a big house in the Highlands, the victim of an aristocratic guest there for
the shooting. In desperation she might well, like so many others, have taken to the streets to support the baby she refused to abandon. But Lizzie was made of stronger stuff; she invented a soldier husband and fought her way up the ladder of domestic service. Her dream, her one ambition, was to rise to the role of housekeeper in some great establishment and she was stepping up the ladder, recently appointed lady’s maid to the mistress of Lumbleigh Green in Newington, Edinburgh’s new and elegant south-side suburb.

Faro lodged with several other unmarried constables in a boarding house in the Lawnmarket. His room was up a spiral and dirty stair to the third floor, but at least for an extra shilling a week it was his alone – unlike some of the constables, who for the sake of economy shared a room and slept three or four to a bed. Faro was horrified, as he liked his space and looked forward to being alone at the end of the day and staring out of his narrow window. Across Princes Street Gardens with its line of shops and beyond the New Town Villas and over the distant waters of the Firth of Forth to the Kingdom of Fife.

The care Mrs Biggs bestowed on her lodgers was minimal. A strait-laced, heavily corseted lady, formidable, respectable, God-fearing and churchgoing – as she was never tired of pointing out to them – she would put up with no nonsense and that included female callers. The constables rolled their eyes at that – who would wish to take a lady up to a bedroom shared with three other blokes? Had she no imagination? There were plenty of rude and lewd rejoinders to that.

On the plus side, she was a reasonable cook; she prided
herself on good, solid food, and they certainly did not starve – porridge for breakfast, meat for supper and an occasional suet pudding.

On the minus side, a widow of uncertain age, she had taken a fancy to the handsome newcomer, tall and fair, so polite and reserved, and with such good manners.

‘Treats me like a real lady from the New Town, he does. Not like some,’ she said darkly to her friends, and whispered, ‘From the Orkneys, he is,’ with not the least idea where they were but they did sound so romantic. This air of reverence was not lost on Faro’s fellow boarders, nor was that extra helping of this or that sliding his way across the table, matters that did nothing for his reputation or their goodwill.

‘Orkneys, eh. Have they put doors on your caves yet?’

Faro merely smiled and refused to be provoked, which annoyed them even more. Goading him, they would have enjoyed an angry reaction and particularly the chance of some fisticuffs, which would have seen him ousted from their lodging.

‘Man, he dinna’ even get drunk on a Saturday. What sort of a bobby is he going to make?’

Heads were shaken. One thing’s certain, he’d never get any promotion. Hardly human. They grumbled, always ready to knock a captured thief about on the way to the station. Not so Faro – he was calm and restrained.

And what about the lasses? Always on the lookout for a night’s entertainment, some stolen kisses as a prelude and a promise of better things to come, off duty and out of uniform they haunted the howffs on the Leith Road, but Faro, invited along, shook his head.

‘Well provided elsewhere, are you?’ they sneered. It
was either that or he was that dreaded word, a ‘pansy’ – a pansy policeman. Wait till Mrs Biggs got wind of that for her fancy lad. Aye, that would put her off, right enough, and see him booted out.

Aware of all these whispers in the house, Faro was delighted to meet the lads one Sunday afternoon when they were wandering through the Gardens, on the lookout for ‘skirts’, as they called them.

He had Lizzie on his arm and the trio were taken aback. Small wonder, since Lizzie was an exceptionally attractive young woman, and from her attire, her gentility was never in question. She had a little lad with her. As Gosse had discovered on a previous occasion, there was no denying that she was a widow and ‘a damned handsome one at that’, the lads agreed with backward glances of envy.

Small and slender, she was undeniably pretty, her outstanding features the abundant yellow curls and bright hazel eyes. There was only one problem for Faro, a secret he nursed: the woman he longed for with all his heart was Inga St Ola, tall with long black hair and blue eyes, and she lived in faraway Orkney.

Faro sighed. Inga had been his first love, older and more worldly-wise, his initiation into manhood on a moonlit beach one summer night. Seventeen years old, he had wanted to marry her but she had firmly rejected him. Declaring herself a free spirit, she had scorned the idea of being a policeman’s wife living in a great grimy city full of people; her entire life was centred on an island with its wild seas among folk like herself whom she had known all her life.

The business of being in love was a mystery to Faro. He knew he had loved Inga, but would he ever experience
the ecstasy of being in love, a love that one died for, like the great romances of history, the kind Shakespeare wrote about? He shook his head solemnly. The prospect, alluring as it was, also scared him. He doubted if he even wanted to have his foundations being shaken by such an overwhelming destructive emotion for another human being.

And certainly he was safe enough with gentle, unassuming Lizzie Laurie, who offered no such threats to his existence. He respected her, was fond of her and wanted to protect her. Stretching a point you could call that love, he thought, and he was certain she loved him. But even after a wild party and far too much to drink, ending with a return to her tenement lodging and a night spent in her arms, he hadn’t woken up to feel anything but faint regret that he had perhaps let himself in for a future he wasn’t quite prepared for yet: marriage, making her an honest woman, which she would doubtless now expect as her right.

Inga would have laughed at such sentiments. She had advised him at their meeting in Stromness last year to go back and marry his Lizzie. She would make the perfect wife, Inga had said, attending to all his needs, ready with slippers before the fire after a long day, with food on the table, loving arms in a warm bed.

He sighed. Doubtless he would settle for that in the end. He did love Lizzie in a way and could maybe convince himself that was all he was ever to know, this mixture of tenderness and sympathy for all she had suffered in the past – but was that enough?

For there was another fly in the ointment, so to speak. The petulant eleven-year-old Vince who made no secret of his dislike and scorn for his mother’s suitor. The dislike was
mutual, the idea of living under the same roof with Vince as his stepson intolerable.

Faro shuddered, thinking of what such years ahead would involve before the lad reached adulthood and left home. He didn’t doubt that Vince was clever; Lizzie was delighted with his school reports, proudly showing Faro homework books with their neat writing and bright stars and teachers’ ‘excellent work’ comments.

The signs were there already that Vince would do well enough to make something of his life, have a future beyond that expected of a domestic servant’s offspring, and an illegitimate one at that. And certain that she had a brilliant son, Lizzie had always spent what little she earned only on the necessities of life, and she told Faro that since his birth when she had decided to keep him, she had been saving up, her dream to have enough money to send him to the university here with its grand reputation.

Faro said nothing but thought plenty. She was wasting her time. He saw the sad reality that, clever as Vince was, by the end of his schooldays in a few years, Lizzie’s tiny income would never have reached the money necessary to send her boy to Edinburgh University. And what of his future when he got there? She had no idea of the snobbery of the rich men’s sons from Edinburgh’s middle class, and his brilliance as a student would not save Vince from their scorn.

Faro did not care to disillusion Lizzie, but from his own experience, he had and was still suffering from being a policeman’s son. Only a miracle could answer Lizzie’s dream and miracles of that nature were in very short supply.

At the Central Office, Chief Inspector McIvor was lying in wait.

‘Anything to report?’ he snapped, his voice curiously reminiscent of the bark of a very impatient small terrier. Before his promotion, he had earned the reputation of shaking criminals like a dog shaking a rat. With sharp-looking protruding teeth, a bush of gingery hair, heavy moustache and small eyes under bushy eyebrows, his resemblance to an angry terrier was unmistakable.

McIvor’s boast was that he did not suffer fools gladly and into that category he slotted all the constables and detectives under his command. Sergeant Gosse narrowly escaped this definition; he certainly produced results, and the overworked chief inspector was apt to close the book of evidence rather swiftly, without looking too closely at how such evidence had been obtained. He had a job to do. He was a busy man. McIvor expected results, results that a more moderate officer might have thought could only
be rendered as miracles produced with the assistance of a visiting band of angels.

Gosse, who hated to admit defeat, straightened his shoulders. ‘Nothing, sir.’

At that Faro came forward and held out the playing card. ‘There was this lying beneath the woman’s body, sir. Perhaps it might help.’

McIvor shifted his withering gaze to this new detective constable.

‘A playing card, eh,’ he yelped. ‘And what kind of evidence do you call that?’

‘All these women play cards one way or another – gambling and telling fortunes, sir,’ Gosse put in hastily, rewarding Faro’s interruption with a scowl that said, clearer than words, that the book containing the rules of conduct before senior officers had been disobeyed: ‘Know your place. Show respect for your superiors and speak only when you are spoken to.’

Ignoring him, Faro addressed McIvor: ‘Not just any playing card, sir. This is the nine of diamonds, sir, known throughout history as the curse of Scotland. With respect, sir, as you will recall—’

‘You’re not engaged here to teach me my history, Faro,’ McIvor barked. ‘It’s the present we’re interested in, not what happened a hundred years ago—’

‘With respect, sir,’ Faro interrupted again, ‘we found the same card in the room where the last woman was killed—’

It was Gosse’s turn to cut in. ‘As I have explained to the constable here, sir, the woman’s killer, her husband, was a known gambler, the room littered with cards.’

McIvor chewed on his moustache, regarded Faro from
under lowered brows and in the manner of a terrier putting his front paws together murmured, ‘So you are hinting that we have a killer who marks his territory by using a playing card as warning? A bit far-fetched, Faro. I can only suggest that this is a flight of imagination and a too-close adherence to coincidence which does not become a newly promoted constable to this force, whose wits should be heavily engaged on present crimes rather than reminders of Scotland’s past history.’

His words heavy with sarcasm, his head bent over the notes like a dog sniffing a ripe odour, indicated a gesture of dismissal. ‘Have to do better than that, Faro. Keep in step with your senior officer here and you won’t go far wrong.’

As Gosse and Faro backed smartly out of his presence with a respectful salute worthy of a royal presence, Faro mentally digested McIvor’s parting shot of ‘not far wrong’ as ‘not far right, either’.

Gosse did not intend to let the matter rest. ‘Watch your step, Faro. The boss is not a patient man and a few more fanciful ideas like that, instead of attending to detail, and you’ll find yourself demoted – back on the beat again, I shouldn’t wonder.’ And feeling that he had also been made an example of by implication, he added: ‘And don’t expect any recommendation from me, either.’

Faro’s thoughts were as gloomy as the weather that evening as he prepared to meet Lizzie at the servants’ entrance of Lumbleigh Green. En route, he paused in the Pleasance, staring up at the windows of the house where Andy Davy murdered his wife, claiming manslaughter rather than murder. His excuse, his violent temper and
jealousy – he had never meant to kill her. But the scene of violence, and pity for Davy, too, remained indelibly printed on Faro’s mind. The circumstances that would pass in France as a
crime passionnel
were not recognised on this side of the English Channel and Andy Davy would pay with his life.

The playing cards at the scene of Mrs Davy’s murder had misled him. Were they a coincidence, since the only connection with the more recent murder was distance, their apartment a mere ten minutes’ walk away from Fleshers Close? Beyond the Pleasance and St Leonard’s, the ‘Seton side’ of the city was striving to escape any connection with the nearby Old Town with its closes and teeming population housed in towering tenements on both sides of the High Street.

On summer days fine weather offered Faro and Lizzie walks on Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Crags and the Queen’s Park or a stroll in the Princes Street Gardens where a couple might indulge in the gambit of normal courtship, gently getting to know one another, exchanging a few kisses – maybe. But when autumn came with darker evenings – and the signs were already present, with unpredictable heavy rainstorms and icy east winds across the Forth replacing calm autumnal sunshine, heralding snow soon to come – what then? Where would they go?

A notice in the hallway at his lodgings with Mrs Biggs announced the forbidden: No smoking in the bedrooms. Baths once a week – the latter a modern innovation to be arranged with the landlady (of which she was especially proud), the sequence sternly kept to. He had been warned by his fellow boarders: ‘If you miss your night, then you’ll
have to wait until it comes round again next week.’ The warning notice also sternly included ‘No followers’, sex unclassified but undoubtedly alluding, in that all-male boardership, to the presence of females.

Leaving the Pleasance, Faro was out of Edinburgh city, the open country lying ahead. Here there was little habitation beyond a few secluded mansions with wooded gardens and exclusive villas like Blasket Place.

Locked gates sheltered these precincts from the coach road that for many centuries had served the city, the carriage route still linking Edinburgh to the Border towns and across the Cheviots to England and then to the world beyond, always watched over by the glowering extinct volcano that was Arthur’s Seat, on whose slopes were still to be seen the rung lines of a bygone farming community. At the base of this prehistoric settlement, whose origins were lost in time, a modern innovation dear to the hearts of travellers – Waverley Railway Station.

Faro loved the fresh air of the road before him, a steep hill with glimpses far across of the Pentland Hills and, on a fine day, the heights of Sutra Hill. Trees, farming and a few mansions. Venturesome merchants having made their fortunes had, for various reasons, felt that while a town house in the New Town would be fine enough, it would be rather splendid to have one’s own estate on the city outskirts where land was cheap, and to build a handsome turreted mansion on the lines of a medieval castle in imitation of the Queen and Prince Albert’s new Highland home at Balmoral, the ambition for every man with a few thousand pounds in hand.

And so it was that Lumbleigh Green came into existence
on the edge of the Dalkeith Road, far from the less impressive home of William Lumbleigh, owner of a small coal mine near Leuchars, in Fife – not a fashionable place to live, William’s grandson Archie decided, while Edinburgh fairly zoomed in prosperity for the newly rich.

Approaching the gates, Faro was acutely aware that for his social life with Lizzie there was a limit to what he could afford in the way of entertainment, apart from the variety theatres and a few dance halls, which had such a low reputation that respectable young women avoided them. Besides, he couldn’t dance, so it seemed that their future in a fast-approaching season of inclement weather would be reduced to cups of tea in a High Street café.

And, as always, there was the problem, persistent as an angry wasp at their meetings, of the presence of Vince Laurie.

Earlier that week, however, Faro had discovered a welcome change in Lizzie’s life. She had run to the gate to meet him, smiling eagerly, full of excitement. Matters had been moving apace at Lumbleigh Green and Lizzie’s promotion to lady’s maid meant that she was now expected to live in.

‘Of course I want to live in, madam,’ she had said. ‘It’s an honour.’

In her efforts to save every penny, Lizzie had long occupied one room in a grim tenement in the Pleasance, in fact quite uncomfortably close to what was now being called ‘the murder house’, scene of the recent domestic killing of Mrs Daly by her husband. However, Lizzie’s lodging had one advantage: it was a ten-minute walk from Lumbleigh Green.

She was in a quandary. She did not know if she could
afford to keep that one room, nor did she want to, if she was honest, apart from providing a home for Vince. The attic room in Lumbleigh Green was magnificent by comparison, even in its spartan state, overlooking gardens far below and with a distant glimpse of the Pentland Hills.

The second Mrs Lumbleigh was young and quite lovely. Infatuated, Archie had married her for her looks in the same manner as he normally acquired beautiful possessions at auction houses.

Clara was aware that her own origins would not bear too close a scrutiny. She liked Lizzie, who was so different from the friends she met in their social circle, women with whom she always felt she had little in common. She would look at Lizzie and wish she could be her best friend, longing to share with her the often scarring details of her early life. But she thought better of it, ashamed to confess such emotion even to herself, or to Archie, of whose disapproval she was a little afraid, and who made it his business to educate her, impress upon her their role in this new society. Had she even hinted about liking her lady’s maid he would tell her sternly that one didn’t express such feelings where a servant, a mere employee, was concerned.

She had no such problems with the other servants, had no desire to unburden herself to the formidable Mrs Brown or the two maids, the giggling, rather bold Ida, or Betty, painfully shy and inarticulate, a condition she shared with the coachman.

As for her lady’s maid, Clara felt more comfortable with her than anyone else in the house, even Archie himself. Laurie was a skilful hairdresser and seamstress; Clara
needed to have her on hand. Lately, however, she had sensed some preoccupation and agonised with fears that Laurie might be after another situation. Unable to bear the suspense any longer, she sat her down and asked: ‘What’s wrong? Is something bothering you, Laurie?’

Archie insisted on the use of surnames for servants. Clara thought this was silly, it made her uncomfortable, but Archie believed this was not only fashionable but proper in the upper echelons of Edinburgh’s New Town society. Questioned by his wife he wasn’t quite sure why, but believed it was to prevent servants getting on too familiar terms with their betters.

Lizzie had sat up straight and said: ‘I am happy to serve you, madam. I cannot turn this down but what am I to do about my little son, Vince? He’s at school at St Leonard’s, just a step from where I’ve been living in the Pleasance for the past few years.’

True, it wasn’t much, but it was her home, after all.

And so, the whole story rolled out as she dressed her mistress’s hair preparatory to an evening concert at the Assembly Rooms.

And Clara Lumbleigh, studying her reflection in the mirror, had the divine inspiration of a solution. At the far end of the extensive gardens were the remains of the small farm cottage that had once occupied the site of Lumbleigh Green. Dilapidated, almost a ruin, to Archie it presented possibilities. With a barn that would serve as a stable, he had decided to keep it as accommodation for the coachman Brown who had come to Archie with excellent references from long-term employers in Glasgow and Aberdeen. Brown was prepared to also do duty as gardener/handyman,
which pleased his tight-fisted master exceedingly, especially as Brown’s wife was an accomplished and experienced domestic servant, ready and willing to take on the role of housekeeper and cook.

Archie had rubbed his hands with glee at this splendid piece of economy. What a find! As for Clara, she remembered there was a tiny attic with a skylight window accessible by ladder where Vince could sleep, having his meals either with the Browns or in the servants’ kitchen.

‘What do you think of that, Laurie?’

Lizzie was dazed, almost speechless with gratitude.

‘Oh, madam, would you?’

‘Of course. The master may wish to make a reduction in your wages, but I will do my best.’

‘Oh, thank you, this is wonderful, wonderful.’

And this was what Lizzie had been waiting to tell Faro when they met that evening earlier in the week. It still did not solve the problem of future meetings in chilly winds and darkness with frozen hands and feet. Not much place for a lingering kiss either, because that and more, Faro suspected, was certainly what Lizzie now expected. Perhaps as Ida and Betty, the table and kitchen maids, didn’t live in, there might be possibilities of secret meetings over a cup of tea.

Lizzie would love to show him her attic, she said, but there were dangers. Such visits could be subject to misinterpretation, and she shuddered – if the master found out, it might well cost her her situation as well as her reputation.

Now, this evening, Faro had news of his own – for a special treat he intended taking Lizzie to the theatre.

As Faro stood by the iron gates framing a drive and a
large and very ornate front door, Lizzie, always so punctual, failed to appear. Wondering anxiously what was wrong, he was considering whether he should ignore the forbidden entrance and the even more forbidding presence of two large black dogs patrolling the grounds. Lizzie assured him they were friendly but past experience had taught Faro to view dogs as the beat policeman’s enemies.

At last a patter of footsteps announced the approach of Lizzie from the direction of the discreetly unseen tradesman’s entrance.