To Faro's question regarding his intentions, Vince grinned sheepishly. 'A bit early for that, Stepfather. But I have hopes. I mean, Kathleen is always glad to see me, never refuses an invitation. And of course, the McGonagalls would be delighted.'
'Scarcely a valid reason for choosing a wife, is it, lad?'
'I know that perfectly well, Stepfather. I haven't asked the lady formally but her attitude has given me every reason to believe she will accept me.'
Observing Faro's veiled glance, he added hastily: 'No, no, Stepfather. Nothing like that. No unbridled passion this time. This is quite a different courtship, if that's what I might call it. And I'm very glad it is so. All very proper and up to now nothing more has been exchanged between us than a chaste goodnight kiss—on the cheek. But,' he added cheerfully, 'sometimes I suspect—and hope, dammit—that my chaste fair Kathleen has hidden fires.'
Faro received this information on the progress of Vince's courtship with mixed feelings. Did the cautious reserve on Kathleen's side involve the ownership of the milliner's shop and confirm his own suspicions regarding the possibility of a protector, a secret lover?
Vince was smiling happily. 'I'm glad that there has been this restraint between us. It has given me time to sort out my own feelings. I shouldn't like Kathleen to discover—or even to imagine for one moment—that she was my second choice.'
'Does she know about Rachel?'
Vince shook his head. 'I didn't consider that was necessary.'
The likelihood that he himself was a second choice had not occurred to Vince's unsuspicious nature. Direct and honest in his dealings, if he had a fault it was to believe that as he always spoke truth, then so too did others.
'I shall certainly tell her, if she consents to be my wife. That would only be proper.'
'I detect a certain reluctance. Are you afraid that your unhappy love affair might influence her?'
'At this stage, perhaps I am.' And with a heartfelt sigh, 'Let's face it, Stepfather, I can now see quite clearly that whatever my feelings about Rachel and hers about me, marriage between us would have been a complete disaster. Her fits of unreason—insanity, let's give it an honest name—were going to get worse.'
He paused and then added, 'The heightened emotions and physical demands of married life would have increased her instability. In such cases the bearing of children is a further hazard, quite capable of throwing the young mother over the edge.
'This is not conjecture on my part, it is alas a proven medical fact, and something not at all infrequent in unbalanced young women. Paul Ramsey, my new friend, lent me a very interesting book on the subject just last week.'
Was this all Vince needed to prove to himself that he had loved not wisely but too well, thought Faro cynically?
'There would have been little in the way of family life for us and a sad bleak prospect for any children we might have brought into the world. We would have been wise to make the decision to remain childless and I know now that willing as I was to marry her, eager for her to be my wife, my role would have been increasingly that of attendant, doctor rather than husband.'
As Vince left for Dundee, Faro said: 'Let me know in time when you are coming again and I'll drop in a note inviting Kathleen to dinner.'
'What a splendid idea.'
From Faro's point of view, hoping for a glimpse of Kathleen's hidden fires, that evening two weeks later was unremarkable and even, for him, a little boring.
Kathleen again seemed overwhelmed by her surroundings and spent a lot of time gazing around her and admiring the furniture. Otherwise he found her once again more inarticulate than he thought accountable from shyness and a certain awe of Vince's famous stepfather.
Reserved and retiring in company, with little to say for herself, Kathleen was also, Faro reminded himself, the shrewd business woman, whether as manager or owner of the Rose Street establishment.
That second meeting also confirmed her lack of sexual attraction. He realised from his limited experience that apparently shy women are capable of stripping off a colourless personality with their garments once the bedroom door is closed. But in Kathleen's case, the idea of her being anyone's secret mistress became increasingly absurd as the evening dragged to its weary close.
Only once did he succeed in raising her animation. In the drawing room was a grand piano belonging to the previous owner of the house, which Faro had acquired with other furniture. Apart from his daughters' visits when they taxed its grandeur with scales and pianoforte exercises, it remained untouched.
Observing that on several occasions Kathleen's wistful glance had strayed towards it, he asked in sudden hope: 'Do you play?'
She shrugged. 'A little and not well.'
'Mr McGonagall mentioned that you sang very sweetly and were very talented,' Faro said encouragingly.
She laughed. 'He told you about my "Song of the Forest", did he?'
'Your bird calls?'
'Yes.'
Vince beamed. 'I say, Kathleen, won't you give us a rendering?'
She looked at Faro for approval, but when he added his plea, she shrank back in her chair: 'Oh no, I don't think—really—'
Vince stood up, took her firmly by the arm. 'Come along, Kathleen. No use hiding your talent under a bushel. Now it's your turn to sing for your supper.'
She played a few chords hesitantly and then gathering courage, suddenly lost her shyness and trilled happily through the blackbird's call, the laverock and the nightingale and an assortment of wild birds, ending with the humble robin's song.
Faro and Vince applauded, their response instinctive. It was really quite remarkable. McGonagall had been right. Here was a girl with an astonishing gift.
As she closed the piano lid, Faro said: 'You could have made a very good career for yourself on the stage.'
Kathleen shook her head. 'I have little ability as an actress and I have been a great disappointment to poor Uncle Willie. He despaired of me when I couldn't learn all those long speeches in Shakespeare. I was always more at home with wardrobe, making costumes. That was how I first became interested in creating my own millinery.'
And that, as far as Faro was concerned, was her longest speech of the evening. Having bowed over her hand, as Vince escorted her back home to Rose Street, he closed the front door thoughtfully.
Vince, he decided, had exchanged the enigma of Rachel Deane for the enigma of Kathleen Neil with her downcast eyes, modest glances, and long silences.
Faro was disappointed. Oh dear, dear, this was not at all the wife he had hoped Vince would choose. He had always envisaged his stepson with a young woman of spirit, his intellectual equal, one who would respond to and enhance the camaraderie between the two men with her own wit.
Ideally, he realised, he was hoping for a stepdaughter-in-law who would grow as close to him as Vince. Now he recognised sadly that he was hoping for the impossible. Did such a girl even exist beyond the realms of fantasy?
Well, since his Lizzie died, he had but once thought he had encountered such a perfect woman.
And deliberately he thrust those sad thoughts aside.
To more practical matters, he knew that once the engagement was announced and the wedding date fixed, he had best set about moving out of Sheridan Place and finding himself another home.
He smiled suddenly, realising he was back at precisely that same hurdle where he had been four months earlier, when Vince had written to tell him of his forthcoming marriage. During the interval between Rachel's death and his decision to propose to Kathleen Neil, while summer had bloomed and faded into golden autumn, time had also gone about its business dulling the pain in the human heart.
So much had changed since then. Only on Tay Bridge, it seemed that little progress had been made. Passengers from both cities who had anticipated an easier journey between Edinburgh and Dundee grumbled more than ever and with reason. Older folk wondered whether they would live long enough to see it finished.
Stage comics made jokes about it.
And pithy sayings were springing up, parodies of Robert Burns:
My love is like a red, red rose...
And I shall love you, dear, always,
Till the first train steams over the Tay
Bridge.
If Vince's courtship of Kathleen Neil gave Faro cause for concern, then he was also delighted that Vince had made new friendships in Dundee, with the young police surgeon Dr Ramsey and, more surprisingly, with Wilfred Deane. On several occasions the two had travelled to Edinburgh together in Deane's carriage, a welcome relief to the abominable train journey.
Faro chided himself on his own base ingratitude. Vince could hardly be blamed for choosing a wife who did not meet his stepfather's requirements. Kathleen Neil might be somewhat lack-lustre, but she had been capable of repairing the damage and reconstructing some happiness from those sad ashes of Vince's first love.
At first, Faro had regarded the entry of Kathleen into their lives as perhaps holding some vital clue to Polly Briggs' disappearance and subsequent death. But Kathleen was vague on the subject of Polly except to say that she didn't know where she went after they parted in London. Her refusal to be drawn into any discussion amounted, Faro thought, to almost callous indifference to her friend's fate which in any other person than Kathleen Neil, might have aroused his suspicions that she was involved in Polly's demise.
He had long prided himself on being a shrewd assessor of character but as he failed completely to get beyond those mouse-like qualities of timidity and shyness, Kathleen did not strike him as being capable of calculated murder.
The further explanation was simpler. The friendship which Jean McGonagall had described 'so close, like sisters' but which Briggs had described as 'a bad influence' had been on Polly's side rather than Kathleen's.
And Polly Briggs must remain an enigma, while the mysterious circumstances of her death were strictly the concern of the Dundee City Police. Faro still had hopes of learning the truth some day. In the words of Voltaire he was fond of quoting: 'Love and murder will out.'
They did not fail him now.
On one of his visits home, Vince told him that Dr Ramsey, in his cups, had confided certain disturbing medical facts about his post-mortem on Polly Briggs.
'Paul is certain that she didn't take her own life and that she was already dead before she was put into the water.'
'What are you suggesting?'
'Drowning, as you know, Stepfather, is death by asphyxia, caused by air being prevented from reaching the lungs. Whether or not suicide is intended, the body instinctively reacts with an initial struggle during which water is gulped into the lungs. Eventually they become waterlogged and this weighs the body down enough for it to sink. The unmistakable sign we look for is a fine froth in the mouth and nostrils but the main internal indication is a ballooning of the lungs as a result of distension with water.'
Vince paused dramatically. 'Paul has been seriously concerned about his findings.'
'Which were?' Faro demanded.
'The signs of death by drowning were absent. There was every indication that the girl had been dead for several hours and rigor had already set in before the corpse was disposed of by throwing it into the water. Paul's further examination revealed a contusion at the base of the skull, not immediately obvious because of her thick hair, but this he firmly regarded as being the fatal blow.'
'And what were his conclusions?'
'In his opinion the girl did not drown. She was murdered.'
Then why in God's name hasn't he done something about it before now?'
'He did. All that he told me, and I believe him, was written in his report. He left it on his desk in readiness to send to the Procurator Fiscal. Then, in the middle of the night, two men arrived at his lodgings. There had been an accident, would he come quickly.
'When he got outside they bundled him into a cab, beat him up and advised him if he wanted his family to stay healthy and his career likewise, then he had better accept that Polly Briggs committed suicide.'
'Naturally, he did as he was told,' said Faro contemptuously.
'Naturally. Not all men are brave, Stepfather. Some value a future and a peaceful life. He has a wife and two young children. And now not only are they in danger, but also if at this late date he reveals all to Superintendent Johnston, he will no doubt lose his position as police surgeon.'
'So what has he decided?'
Vince shrugged. 'He is suffering enough, haunted ever since by assisting this miscarriage of justice and several times he has attempted to make a clean breast of it. On that day when we visited the mortuary, soon after he was beaten up, he was absolutely terrified.'
Observing his stepfather's expression, he said: 'I am only telling you because the case of Polly Briggs is beyond your jurisdiction. Otherwise I would have remained silent, respecting Paul's confidence, and I must ask you to do the same.'
'Tell me one more thing, if you please?'
'And what is that?'
'Has your friend any suspicions of the murderer's identity?'
'Oh yes, indeed. He suspects that this was no jealous lover's crime passionel. The fact that his confidential report on the post-mortem was read and action so immediately taken, suggests to him that Polly Briggs' murder is part of a much larger crime, carried out by an organisation so powerful that they have spies in the police department.'
'Deane Enterprises, in fact,' said Faro slowly.
'Possibly.' Vince made the admission reluctantly.
'And how does this affect your friendship with Wilfred Deane?'
'Not at all. Why should it? I doubt whether Wilf has ever heard of Polly Briggs,' he added loyally. 'Besides, Stepfather, there are others who might wish to buy silence. The shareholders of the gentlemen's select clubs, for instance.'
As autumn spread a golden glory of sunsets over Arthur's Seat and leaves fell like drops of blood on the banks of the River Tay, Faro found his hands full with two particularly brutal murders and a plot to assassinate a royal personage (neither of which have any place in this chronicle).
One day, looking for notes he had made on an earlier case with some similarities, he was searching through a trunk in the attics of Sheridan Place. Once the property of his late father, Constable Magnus Faro, this receptacle had become the last resting place for clues and objects relating to unsolved murders. When he moved from Sheridan Place into a smaller establishment, it would be prudent to discard this detritus of twenty years with the Edinburgh City Police.
As he pushed back the lid, there were the slippers and reticule belonging to Rachel Deane. Long since past any hope that they might conceal some amazing truth that had escaped him, he might as well begin his clearing-out operations by consigning these to Mrs Brook's rubbish bin.
Weighing them in his hands, he wondered why he had retained these mementoes of that distressing event, storing them with this battered collection of clues that had not led anywhere. Was it only a faint hope that one day he might still find an answer? Why had he not got rid of them immediately he unpacked in Edinburgh and discovered them in his luggage?
He had kept them secret too long. He could not produce them now without renewing for Vince the terrible emotions of Rachel's death.
Replacing them, he closed the lid hurriedly. But their presence in the trunk upstairs continued to haunt him, arousing emotions for him too. Emotions of dissatisfaction. Certain of a mystery concerning Rachel's suicide, he felt that somehow he had failed Vince and himself.
In view of Dr Ramsey's confession to Vince, Faro also felt guiltily that he had failed Polly Briggs' father and it was no consolation to tell himself that there was nothing he could do, since Dundee crimes were none of his business.
But Faro was not used to failure, it left a bad taste in his mouth. Considering that he had a high success rate with people who meant nothing to him at all, it was very humiliating that results were dismally lacking in a case involving those near and dear to him, particularly his stepson.
He w
ished he could wipe clean the slate of the nightmare that persisted of the suicide he had witnessed and had been so helpless to prevent. An indelible scene that must for ever link his memory with that short disastrous visit to Dundee.
Chapter Sixteen
Vince's next visit brought news that William McGonagall was to appear in Edinburgh, at an open air production before Her Majesty the Queen in the park adjacent to the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
This was to be a gala variety and an elegant version of the penny gaff circus. Her Majesty was well known to have a surprisingly unsophisticated, even childlike taste in entertainment. And circuses, it seemed, were irresistible to her. She had approved a programme including clowns, a juggler and a magician called Alpha Omega, but clapping her hands with quite unqueenly glee, had asked especially for lions and trapeze artistes.
Her Majesty, it was observed, had a penchant for watching other mortals risking life and limb on the high wire or with wild animals. She had a wistful partiality for brave lion-tamers in leopard-skins. This savage form of amusement did not go unmarked by her courtiers, suggesting as it did wry comparisons with a less tender-hearted, sentimental monarch, the Emperor Nero feeding Christians to the lions in Ancient Rome. Her Majesty's wish granted, the lion act was found and
commanded to appear, although no setting was less like the Colosseum than Queen's Park overlooked by the grandeur of Arthur's Seat, its slopes resplendent in a purple blaze of autumn heather.
On the other hand, all was far from sweetness and light in the Central Office of the Edinburgh City Police, feverishly drafting in extra constables from outlying areas. Faro listened patiently to Superintendent McIntosh's grumbles about the considerable expense involved.
As senior detective, protecting the Queen on twice-yearly visits was Faro's responsibility and constant headache. He could well have done without the hazards involved in mounting this additional event.
The Superintendent smiled grimly. 'Sometimes I think that Her Majesty is either remarkably courageous or lacks imagination.'
A Quiet Death (An Inspector Faro Mystery No.5) Page 13