The Missing Duchess (17 page)

As Miss Fortescue looked at him he felt embarrassed by the pain in his eyes. Was she lonely too? Did this kitchen scene remind her of the years that were gone, of sad days and glad days and lost love?

Faro sighed. The Wagnerian storm outside with its lightning flashes and thunder-claps that shook the walls and guttered the lamps was all the passion this particular house would know tonight.

Midnight was past. Where had the hours gone? He wanted to call them all back again, to relive each minute, suddenly precious, each sentence, each burst of laughter in a perpetual motion of happy hours. Eternity should be such a night as this. Eternal bliss -

And now it was almost over. Miss Fortescue stood up, yawned. He regarded the dregs of his empty wineglass.

'Of course, you must be tired.'

She sighed. 'A little, yes. It has been such a day.'

He poured warm water into a ewer for her washing and took the candle off the table. 'I'll see you to your room.'

He followed her upstairs, opened the door of his daughters' room for Miss Fortescue. Turning, she smiled. 'Such a lovely day. A tremendous adventure.'

'I'll bid you goodnight, miss. Sleep well.'

'You too, Inspector. And thank you once again.'

Here today, gone tomorrow, a bird of passage, with plumage strange and rare. Only a fool would fall in love, Faro thought, closing the door on her.

His dreams were wild and strange, full of erotic images. The Crusader came from his tomb, stalking him across the years and thrusting the Luck o' Lethie into his hands. It turned into a snake becoming part of his own body.

He was awake. It was that strange hour twixt wolf and dog when familiar shapes of furniture become gross and ghostly aliens of nightmare and all the world holds its breath.

Someone was shaking him.

'Wake up - please, wake up.'

It was Miss Fortescue.

'Someone - someone is trying to break into the house,' she whispered. 'In the kitchen -'

Faro leaped out of bed and threw on his dressing-robe. An attempted break-in. There could be only one purpose. He felt sickened and confused by the knowledge that someone had followed Miss Fortescue and knew she was here. The assassin -

'You stay here,' he said, and ran lightly downstairs.

The kitchen was filled with grey uneasy dawn. But the door was still locked, bolted.

'They must have run away,' Miss Fortescue whispered. She was brave, he thought, she had followed him.

'What made you think - ?'

'I heard a noise. I was thirsty, too much wine, I suppose. You didn't leave me a carafe -'

Cutting short his apologies: 'My fault. I didn't ask. I came downstairs. And I saw a shadow - a man - at the window. Look -' She pointed.

Faro went to the window above the sink. A small pane of glass was broken. He opened the back door cautiously, walked the few steps to the window, saw the slivers of glass on the ground.

She watched him relocking the door.

'Well, you must have scared him off,' he said. 'I think you'd better go back to bed.'

'Are you sure he won't come back?' she said, pointing to the window.

'No. No one could climb in through that tiny space. I think we're safe enough now.'

She walked ahead of him up the stairs. She was wearing a light petticoat, prettily frilled with ribboned lace, and he realised that she must have slept in it in the absence of a nightgown.

He opened her bedroom door. 'You'll be quite safe now.'

'But - how -'

He shook his head, gently closed the door on her protests and went back to his own bed.

There he lay awake, his hands behind his head, pondering the night's strange events. In a little while he dozed, and opening his eyes, he thought he dreamed again, for she stood at his bedside.

'I'm so frightened. And I'm so cold. I've never been so cold.'

She held out her hands. He smiled and pulled back the covers, taking her into his arms. She was as passionate as she was clever, as tender as she was sweet.

At last the storm rolled away, and the golden light of early morning sunlight touched the bed where they lay still entwined.

Faro sighed, looking at her sleeping face. Soon it would be all over. The wild sweetness of one stolen night about to be obliterated by another day when dreams are quenched by the solemnity of duty.

She stirred in his arms. He kissed her hair and left her.

When she came down to the kitchen where he was stirring the embers of the fire, she looked towards the broken pane of glass.

'I can't believe it really happened,' she whispered.

'It didn't.'

'You mean - the break-in?'

'Exactly. It didn't happen. There was never a burglar.' He put an arm around her and laughed. 'So much trouble to come into my bed,' he whispered.

She understood. Laughing lightly, standing on tiptoe, she kissed him.

Chapter 15

Sergeant McQuinn arrived as they were leaving the house together. He managed to conceal well both his surprise and his curiosity at the presence of a young woman in Inspector Faro's hall at eight thirty in the morning.

Saluting smartly, for the lady's benefit, he said: 'Superintendent McIntosh's compliments, sir. He needs to see you urgently.'

'I was about to escort Miss Fortescue back to Aberlethie.'

McQuinn looked at Miss Fortescue. 'Perhaps I can do that for you, sir.' He pointed to the street. The carriage is there.'

McQuinn did not miss the lady's frantic look in Faro's direction, nor how completely the Inspector chose to ignore it.

'You will be quite safe with Sergeant McQuinn, miss. Er - I'll call on you later.'

Bowing to her, he felt that he failed completely to convey the emotion concealed within those few words. She darted him a frantic look as McQuinn reached out a hand for her bag. But refusing to be parted from it, she allowed him to hand her into the carriage.

Again Faro wondered what shopping had been so precious or heavy and, more important, where the money had come from. Obviously Lady Lethie had been generous with more than her wardrobe.

Helplessly he watched them go, lifting a hand in farewell, angry at Mcintosh's ill-timed command and with a shaft of jealousy for the young Irishman.

Would McQuinn exert all his ready charm on Miss Fortescue, Faro thought, remembering how successful McQuinn was with the ladies? All ages too, even his own young daughter Rose had lost her heart to him.

But in another part of his mind, Faro was secretly relieved that McQuinn's arrival had been so opportune. No words of love had been spoken between Roma Fortescue and himself. They had been two lonely people hungry for comfort. Of greater embarrassment would have been an explanation of why she had felt it necessary to pretend there was a burglar lurking on the premises.

That failed to make any sense at all.

In the Central Office, he found Superintendent Mcintosh pacing the floor anxiously.

'Where do you think you've been, Faro? I've been waiting for you here since eight o'clock.'

Faro did not feel up to explaining that his arrival had been delayed by Miss Fortescue's departure on the nine o'clock train for North Berwick. Superintendent McIntosh would doubtless have asked the question he was most anxious to avoid: What was she doing at his house and where had she spent the night?

There's a couple of lads downstairs. Claim that the man you found in St Anthony's Chapel is their father. They're with Dr Cranley now. He wants you to talk to them.'

The downstairs room was stark and bare with whitewashed brick walls and a disagreeable smell. Used for the questioning of criminals, its intimidating atmosphere offered little by way of consolation in breaking bad news to bereaved relatives.

Constable Reid was in attendance and Dr Cranley indicated a seat at the table. As he sat down opposite the pair, the doctor said: This is Inspector Faro.'

Introductions were unnecessary, the Hogan brothers knew him well already. Their paths had crossed many times before, and as far as Faro could see the only thing they had in common with the dead man was ginger hair.

'... They have identified the body as that of their father, Joshua Hogan, aged fifty-five, who went missing from home two weeks ago. I have explained the circumstances of his discovery to them and they have made a statement...'

As Cranley spoke, Faro studied the two men. The elder, Joe, was a petty criminal, a fence for stolen goods, the younger, Willy, a pimp for their sister, a notorious prostitute. All three had at some time been involved in fraud cases.

'Have you any idea what caused your father's death?' Faro asked.

'Bad lungs, he had,' said Joe, who had appointed himself spokesman. 'He was fooling around, drunk as usual. Fell into the horse trough outside the World's End Tavern. Lads he was with were all larking about, didn't realise he was dead, took him home, put him to bed. Will and me wasn't home - we was at the horse sales in Glasgow, so he lay for a week. When we got back, the lads was scared they'd be blamed, and so to cut a long story out, they carted him up to St Anthony's, dumped him there.'

'Have you names and addresses of these lads?'

'They're on the paper there,' Hogan said smoothly. 'Constable wrote them down along with our statement. Gave my word no harm would come to them. Gave my hand on it.'

And I dare say you had a lot of money pressed into it, thought Faro grimly. He looked at Dr Cranley, whose expression said he didn't believe a word of it either.

'And here's Da's birth certificate, if you want it,' said Willy carelessly.

'What next?' Faro asked Mcintosh after the pair of highly improbable grieving relatives had left.

'Not a great deal,' the Superintendent replied, glancing through their statements.

'Dammit, the man was murdered.'

'We can't prove it. You know that and so do I.'

'The Hogans are criminals -'

'And so are their friends. They'll all swear blind that the brothers are speaking the truth.'

'I want to look further into it, sir. I'm not prepared to let it go at that.'

'You're wasting your time, Faro.'

'I've done that before and I'm prepared to do it again in the cause of justice.'

'Then try not to bring down a hornet's nest on our heads.'

'If it means bringing a murderer to justice, I'll even do that, sir.'

When Mcintosh looked doubtful, Faro asked angrily: 'Look, you don't believe that story, do you, sir?'

'It's just daft enough to be true. The whole family is wild -'

'Extortionists, fraudsters -' Faro began heatedly.

'But always clever enough to evade arrest. There's money behind them.' The Superintendent shook his head. 'We all know that.'

'Stolen goods, smugglers, too. And no lack of alibis -'

'We haven't a hope in hell of finding who's backing them,-Faro,' Mcintosh interrupted impatiently.

'Why not?'

'He's not in our "Secret and Confidential" files, that's why. He could be a foreigner. Or a stranger - we have Highlanders, Irishmen, God knows all, passing through the warrens of the High Street, every day and lurking in the sewers of Wormwoodhall.'

Then we should be looking for whoever is behind them, the man who pays them.'

'Indeed we should. He should be the subject of your most scrupulous investigations,' said Mcintosh primly.

'And I'm starting right now, sir,' said Faro, picking up the statement that Dr Cranley had given him.

He spent the rest of the morning in the area of the High Street that the Hogans called home, known to the constables on the beat as the Thieves' Kitchen.

Much to his surprise he found the first two men on the list readily enough. They were sitting smoking their clay pipes on their front doorstep. For once they were not in the least troubled by the arrival of a senior detective. They greeted him genially, ready and agreeably available to answer his questions.

Too readily available, even anxious to corroborate in exact detail the statement that the Hogan brothers had made, thought Faro grimly.

'Aye, we kent the auld fella well, a demon for the drink he was, right enough. Ever since he left the sea, two months ago and arrived back in Edinburgh, nothing but trouble -'

Faro left with a warning that they could be charged with criminal activity. Concealing a dead man. They were not easily frightened by this threat of the law and Faro realised that it would be a waste of time talking to the other two youths on the list.

He walked down the street, conscious of their sniggers behind his back, knowing that for a couple of golden guineas they would have sworn that their grandmother was the Archbishop of Canterbury and their grandfather the Pope in Rome.

His way back to the Central Office took him past the head of Bowheads Wynd. He stopped and regarded it thoughtfully.

His cousin's observations had confirmed his own suspicions that the lad Sandy had been withholding vital information. A word with the lad might be all the use he was going to get out of an otherwise wasted morning.