To Kill a Queen (23 page)

Perhaps, Faro decided uncharitably, disliking the Queen's faithful servant, he had relinquished any part of a conversation which did not allow him the full share of the limelight.

With a glance over his shoulder towards the card players, Brown said: 'Ken how I got Her Majesty to take tea? Never cared for it as a lass and made outdoors with tepid water, even with the Prince's patent stove which never worked...' His shudder was expressive. 'One day, ye ken, she asked what blend it was and so forth, said it was the best cup o' tea she had ever tasted. Do ye ken what I tellt her?'

Faro shook his head. 'Well, I said to her, So it should be, ma'am. I put a grand nip o' whisky in it,' Brown added, slapping his thigh.

As Brown was refilling his glass. Faro noticed that he was not quite steady on his feet. The reason for his absence now obvious, wondering how long he had been imbibing, Faro narrowly averted disaster to a small table bearing a collection of priceless Meissen china.

The Queen, alerted, said sharply, 'Brown, isn't it rather early in the evening for that?' and returned to her game.

Brown bowed, apologised and sat down in the chair rather heavily. He yawned. 'Dinna ken what's come over me. Inspector.' And yawning deeply again, 'I'm that sleepy, all of a sudden.'

As Brown's head dropped on to his chest, Faro turned his attention to Mr Gladstone, now slumped back into his chair and breathing heavily.

He was fast asleep. And snoring loud enough to alert the Queen. He would never forgive himself. He would be convulsed with embarrassment if his behaviour was noticed.

Faro leaned forward. 'Prime Minister, you were saying?'

There was no movement.

The Queen turned, frowning.

'The Prime Minister seems to have dropped off, ma'am'.

'So we hear, Inspector. So we hear.'

'Shall I waken him?'

A Royal gesture of dismissal. 'By no means, Inspector. All this healthy air, all these interminable walks have taken their toll. Let sleeping ministers be.'

Her eyes slid over Brown in the chair opposite. 'The drink makes him bashful.'

'He will sleep it off, ma'am,' said Lady Churchill wearily. 'He usually does.'

The Queen smiled at Faro. 'Silence is such a relief, do you not agree?'

And mercifully not awaiting an answer, she turned back to dealing the cards while Faro contemplated the sleeping Prime Minister with an ominous sense of dread.

He took up the glass again, sniffed it. Another tentative sip told him the truth. The hot toddies were drugged.

He walked to the window, stared through the curtains. The small astragals made it safe against breakage or intruders.

The card players were also out of range. Bowing himself out of the room, he glanced into the empty kitchen on his way upstairs to alert the two Captains.

There was no answer to his tapping on the door. Thankfully finding it unlocked he went inside. A candle burned between the two beds. Sprawled on one was the inert shape of Captain Dumleigh; on the other lay Tweedie.

Dumleigh was more heavily asleep than could be accounted for by the empty glass of bicarbonate of soda. The toddy glass on the bedside table accounted for the other Captain.

Faro ran downstairs. Where was Noble?

And most of all what had happened to Inspector Purdie?

As he stood indecisively in the kitchen, he realised that the two maids must have retired, leaving a scene of disorder.

Lachlan Brown too. Where was he?

At that moment he heard a scuffling from one of the large pantry cupboards.

Mice? Rats?

A faint voice, female, from inside. 'Help—please help.'

The door was locked.

'All right. All right. I'll get you out.' Faro looked round for the key. There was one on the windowsill. Would it fit?

As it turned in the lock and he threw open the door, the two maids who had been inexpertly tied up and gagged, stared sobbing up at him.

He unfastened the ropes that bound them, and removed the elder maid's gag first. She gasped, 'Oh, sir. The Lord be thanked. We thought you might be him again.'

'Him? Who did this to you?'

'Lessing. It was Lessing, sir.'

'Lessing—the footman?'

'Yes, sir.' The two were gibbering with fear.

'It was his ghost, sir. He came into the kitchen—'

'Back from the dead,' shrieked the other servant. Her voice rising to a horror-stricken

scream, she pointed over Faro's shoulder.

'There—there.'

Faro turned to see the bewigged footman standing in the doorway.

'It's me you want, Faro. I'm waiting for you. I've been waiting a long time.'

The face was half-hidden but he recognised the voice.

The two servants screamed again, but Faro had no time to attend to them.

'That's no ghost. And he intends to kill the Queen.'

With no further explanation, Faro plunged out into the mist after Lessing. Other footsteps passed nearby and he seized the man who was rushing towards him.

It was Lachlan Brown.

Chapter Fourteen

'I think I've just seen a ghost,' Lachlan panted. 'Lessing, the footman. Came at me like a bat out of hell. I thought he was dead—'

'He is very much alive, alas. Have you a gun?'

'Yes, but not here.'

'Take this, then.' As Faro handed him the gun, he looked at it doubtfully. 'Can you use one of these?'

'I think so.'

'For God's sake, lad, don't just think. The Queen is in deadly danger and I'm going after Lessing.'

'Where's Johnnie?'

'He's been drugged.'

'Drugged—Johnnie?'

'And the Captains and Mr Gladstone. In the hot toddies.' And cutting short Lachlan's bewildered questions, 'Where's Noble?'

'He took your horse. Said he had an errand. I thought you had sent him—'

Taking Lachlan by the arm Faro ran towards the sitting-room. Opening it cautiously, he was relieved to hear the Queen's voice and Lady Churchill's. Heavy breathing continued to emanate from the slumped figures of Brown and the Prime Minister.

As he had expected there was no key in the lock.

Lachlan watched him as if he had taken leave of his senses.

'Listen. You're to stand guard here. Outside the sitting-room. And do not leave your post. Whatever happens. Do you understand?'

'I wish I did—'

'The Queen is in deadly danger. If Lessing tries to get into that room: Shoot him.'

As he rushed outside, the fog enveloped Faro like a shroud. An unhappy simile, he thought shuddering. Perhaps that was the reason he had hated and feared the fog, that somewhere out there lay his death.

Angry with himself he switched from fear to practicality. How could he find anyone in this murk? He could not stray from the house but it was imperative that he should intercept Lessing, disarm him before he could get back inside. If he failed then only Lachlan stood between the Queen and murder.

He realised with growing horror that he was not ready for this, had never been ready for it. The momentum of events had taken him by surprise. Lessing's plan was brilliantly calculated to seize full advantage of the weather and the Queen's unexpected isolation.

He should have taken into account the cunning of his adversary. He should have stayed one step ahead but even visibility now ended at the garden wall and with it all hopes of taking the murderer by surprise.

From out of the mist every faint sound alerted him that the positions were reversed. Hunter into hunted, pursuer into pursued.

Lessing. The letters jumbled together in his head. Lord Nob's aliases were all anagrams of 'Noblesse oblige', the enigmatic clues to his real identity.

For once Faro had been blinded by his own deduction. By taking coincidence as fact, he had committed the worst transgression of a detective. He had under-estimated the power of his adversary.

He was still considering his next move when he heard Purdie's voice.

'Faro. Faro, I'm over here. Where the devil are you?'

Turning, Faro saw through the gloom the kitchen door open and close. As he raced towards it, expecting to find it bolted against him, it flew open and the muffled cries from inside the pantry indicated that the maids had been locked up again.

His back towards him, Lessing was bending over a huddled form on the floor. Lachlan Brown.

'Did you need to do that?'

Lessing turned round. Without the wig and livery jacket, Faro still had difficulty in recognising him as his old adversary from the Case of the Killing Cousins. A man with a hundred faces, the chameleon features of the born actor.

But when he spoke it was in Purdie's voice.

'So we meet again. Hand over your gun, if you please.'

And waving a gun towards the still figure of Lachlan Brown, he urged, 'Come along, Faro. If you tarry, I'll be forced to put a bullet through his head.'

'I am unarmed. I gave him my gun.'

'So that's where it came from. I'm much obliged to you. I need your help—'

'You'll get no help from me—'

Lessing ignored the outburst. 'But you are the key figure in my drama,' he said reproachfully.

Ignoring that, Faro asked, 'Who is buried in Lessing's grave?'

'Sit down. Do as I say. That's better. How should I know who they buried? Drowning fitted my plan excellently. Craig had already been recruited by our friends and sent here to await "Inspector Purdie's" arrival. A gossip in the local inn was all he needed to find out Purdie's childhood associations with the area, while he kept a sharp lookout for a likely candidate to double as Lessing's poor drowned corpse. The tinkers' arrival for the Ghillies' Ball would doubtless provide a conveniently drunken vagrant roughly my height and size. Unless we were very unfortunate.'

He shrugged. 'The rest was easy. Our last encounter on a clifftop in Orkney has, I am sure, convinced you that I am a swimmer of considerable ability, with a talent for survival. Indeed, I was once awarded a medal for life-saving.'

His laugh was without humour. 'Life-saving, Faro. Is that not capital, considering your present circumstance? But I digress. Craig had dry clothes ready and a corpse awaiting my swim downstream. When Morag saw her ring on his finger, she was certain to reel from closer examination of features battered beyond recognition. Meanwhile Craig kept me conveniently hidden in an empty cottage until it was time for Morag to leave us.'

'Did you have to kill the girl too?'

'I am afraid so. She was becoming burdensome. I did not much like being followed or the prospect of being father to her child. The idea of luring her to the mill and transporting her body on to Brown's doorstep, as it were, appealed to me.

'Surely you get the picture, Faro. That it was absolutely essential for someone at Balmoral to be murdered so there would be a police investigation requiring the skills of the bogus Inspector. We had to have a murder suspect and we both know how eagerly the local police would seize upon Lachlan Brown. Especially when that ridiculous custom of Scots marriage and the anonymous and highly suspicious annuity, which we had so generously arranged, became known. The Prince's Party leave nothing to chance and their forged papers are a credit to them. We even killed the Queen's spaniels in case they raised the alarm about the bogus footman.'

'Who
are
these people?' Faro interrupted.

'That, I am not at liberty to disclose. Not even to you. Faro, as your dying wish—'

'Is the Prince involved?'

'Bless your innocence. Faro. Can you see the future King of England condoning regicide—not to mention matricide. After all, this is the nineteenth century, we are supposed to be civilised.'

Again the laugh that accompanied his statement chilled Faro's blood.

'As far as His Royal Highness knows, we are a bunch of harmless fanatics, worshipping at the shrine of his popularity.'

'And the real Inspector Purdie?' asked Faro, eager to keep him talking, aware that his one forlorn hope lay in playing for time. And that Lord Nob's vanity and pride in his own cunning were his only weaknesses. He could never resist telling his victims how he had outwitted them.

Before he killed them.

'Our information from a source at Scotland Yard was that the Inspector was to be on a fishing holiday in the north of Scotland. Beard and spectacles were always a problem. I realised that this was a role I could not sustain indefinitely or indeed for more than a few days. And that if you saw me as Lessing, as I appeared to Nessie Brodie as her last visitor, then the game would be up. But see how beautifully it has all fallen into shape. Even Her Majesty has obliged us by her change of plans. I can tell you, it was going to be deuced difficult at Balmoral. But this, my dear Faro, is a walkover. Almost too easy.'

'What about Craig?'

'He had to be disposed of, alas.'