Murder by Appointment: Inspector Faro No.10

by Knight, Alanna

  The tearful, sad-eyed group of women clung together in the white-washed fisherman's cottage in a close by the harbour. The constable's father laboured painfully to attend the needs of the mourners, offering drams, receiving their murmured condolences with a shake of his head, a grief-stricken parent walking through a nightmare from which there was no awakening.

  All his hopes had been buried with his only son in that grave near the stormy shore where the winds already played havoc with the bright wreaths so reverently laid.

  And Faro had brought home to him that day the similarity of his own family history to that of Charlie Thomas. His father was son of a poor Orkney crofter scraping a living from the sea. But Magnus Faro had been clever, the 'lad o' parts'. Sacrifices had been made to send him to the Scottish mainland to fulfil his heart's desire and become a policeman.

  Magnus had done well, only to be run down by a carriage in Edinburgh's hilly High Street late one night—murdered, as his son was to prove many years later—because his disclosures in the case of the mummified infant in the wall of Edinburgh Castle, perhaps the rightful King James VI, put the Royal succession in jeopardy.

  Faro had been four years old. His mother Mary took him back to Orkney where she in her turn made sacrifices for his education and upbringing, so that he might follow in his late father's footsteps.

  She had watched him leave with unspoken forebodings, but her fears that history might repeat itself had been unfounded and Chief Detective Inspector Jeremy Faro was touching the pinnacle of a brilliant career. The next step would be Superintendent, a step he had little desire to take for it meant sitting behind a desk issuing orders.

  A safe job, but not one cut out for him, he thought as he boarded the train and sat glumly silent beside Lamont and his colleagues returning to Edinburgh after the young constable's funeral.

  Never had he been so thankful to see the welcoming lamps in his own windows. He would be glad to shed the miasma of sorrow, share a drink with Vince and chat over the problems of a successful young doctor's practice.

  He heard voices in the drawing room.

  Olivia was home.

  He threw open the door, called a greeting.

  Olivia was holding Vince's hand as they sat alone close together by the fire. Something in their attitudes, in the shocked countenances they turned towards him, had his heart leap in a shaft of terror.

  'Rose? Isn't she with you?' Faro demanded.

  Olivia shook her head and began to cry.

  Chapter 22

  Faro dashed to Olivia's side. 'Rose—is something wrong with Rose?'

  Vince put a hand on his arm. 'I'm sure Rose is all right, she's been delayed, that's all,' he said smoothly. 'However, Olivia—Olivia has something to tell you, Stepfather. You had better sit down.'

  So saying, he poured a dram and thrust it into Faro's hand. 'Now, dearest, please tell him what you know.'

  Olivia nodded miserably, twisting the lace handkerchief around her fingers. 'At the beginning, it was just a trivial mistake, the kind of incident that happens to us all.'

  She paused and sighed. 'You remember the day Rose and I went to Duddingston Fair?'

  'I do indeed. That was also the day you announced your delightful news.'

  Olivia wavered, her hand went immediately protectively to her stomach. She nodded. 'Rose had promised to look up the great-aunts of one of her favourite pupils. And they were there, two dear old souls, sisters, full of chatter, bright as squirrels—'

  Her description brought Bessie McNair's chatty neighbours vividly before Faro.

  'They looked at May—I had called her forward to help carry some of the things I had bought at their stall. She seemed reluctant, she always behaved shyly, as you know, but, for a moment, she didn't seem to hear me and she seemed to— shrink away from them.

  'I laughed a little at her keeping her head well down as she gathered our purchases together. The sisters were chattering like magpies to another customer, suddenly one of them looked up and said, "Oh, it's you, dear, I thought I recognized you." And the other sister came forward at that. "Did you find the house that was for sale all right?"

  'Well, May just stared at them blankly and, with a quick glance at me, hurried away with Rose, clasping her parcels. I was curious. I wanted to know what it was all about. I waited till they had served the next customer and then I said, "You know my maid?"

  ' "Not exactly," said one, "but we've met before."

  ‘"When was that?" I asked.

  'They were more than willing to tell me. "Your maid, is she? She came to look for a house in Duddingston. There was a cottage next door to us, and we saw her peering in the windows. Apparently she was looking for a house. We told her it wasn't for sale." '

  Olivia paused, made a helpless gesture, 'I thought, the sly thing keeping it to herself, so I told them we gathered that she was going to marry our local policeman. They looked puzzled at that because she had said the house was too small for her. With a husband and four wee bairns.'

  Olivia stopped breathless and looked from Vince to Faro.

  'I asked them, "You mean, she actually spoke to you?" They were both emphatic about that and an argument followed about who said what to whom, which I interrupted to ask if they were absolutely sure we were talking about the same person. They said of course they were sure, her accent being Irish, like their dear mother.

  'I was shattered at being deceived by her. Pretending not to be able to speak. It took me all my time to be civil to her on the way home, I can tell you.'

  She was silent for a moment and Faro remembered their return from the fair and Rose saying that someone had recognized May and wasn't it a small world.

  And Faro cursed himself for not listening more carefully, detaching himself as he always did from any domestic chitchat, when he might have learned so much—

  Olivia sighed and continued. 'I was fairly shattered at her pretending to be dumb, but I told myself the two ladies might be mistaken and, when I mentioned it to her—tactfully, she just shook her head wildly, indicating that she must have a double.

  'I realized that was probably true. She's a plain little thing and the two ladies, well, let's face it, they did seem a bit dotty. Anyway, I determined to forget about it.'

  She stopped and took a sip of water.

  'When we were in Dunblane for the wedding, Vince decided that after he left May should go to Glasgow and bring Rose back to the Hydro, that we would be company for each other.'

  Again, she paused and Vince patted her hands. 'You'd better continue, dearest, if you're up to it. Or shall I tell Stepfather the rest?'

  'No. No.' Olivia sat up straight. 'At the wedding reception. I had met an old friend of Aunt Gilchrist who, I discovered, was also staying at the Hydro. At breakfast, in the course of our conversation, the inevitable subject of maids came up.

  'She said, "Your poor dear aunt was so shattered when hers died of a fever. She loved that poor dumb creature, treated her like a daughter. We were sure it hastened her end—" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I asked her to repeat it—'

  Olivia paused, shook her head. 'There was no longer the slightest doubt. The maid was May Moray. May, whom she'd taken from the orphanage, who had been with her for six years. The friend went on to say how Aunt had told everyone that when she died her great niece—me—was to take care of her.'

  She looked at them both, smiled sadly. 'Aunt Gilchrist had told everyone how proud she was that I had married into such an illustrious household, with a Chief Inspector of Police as stepfather-in-law.

  'I was so shaken by this information, I took a carriage to Stirling and visited the family burial plot. Alongside Aunt's headstone was May Moray's: "Devoted Servant and Friend".

  'Oh, how I wished you had been with me, dearest,' she said to Vince. 'I knew that we were in the hands of an imposter although I had no notion why, but I had to let Rose know what had happened. So I took a train to Glasgow—'

  Again she paused and Vince gave hi
s stepfather a look that said how proud he was of his enterprising young wife.

  'I went at once to Rose's lodging. Her landlady seemed surprised to see me when I said who I was. A couple of days earlier, a young woman, a maid, answering to the description of May, had come for her with a note. Rose left with her immediately, saying she was gong to Dunblane.

  'She had never arrived at Dunblane. That was three days ago and neither of them has been seen since. I panicked and rushed home, hoping to find them both here. And that someone would explain it all to me.'

  Tearfully she looked up at Faro, as if he might have the magical solution. 'If she isn't May Moray, then who is she? And why has she been living in this house pretending to be her?' she whispered.

  As the terrible pattern began to emerge, Faro could have supplied answers to several of their questions, answers that did little to comfort him and would have seriously increased Olivia's terrors. His greatest anxiety, however, concerned the safety of his daughter.

  'If anything has happened to dearest Rose, then it's all my fault,' Olivia sobbed. 'All my fault for not telling you after Duddingston when everyone presumed I was out of sorts,' she paused and touched her stomach, 'because of the baby—'

  And, flinging herself into her husband's arms, she looked at Faro and said hopefully, 'Have you any idea where they are?'

  Vince stared at him over her head. 'We must find them, Stepfather. And quickly.'

  If there had been room in his heart for any emotion but horror, Faro would have regarded the scene before him and the information he had been given with something akin to triumph.

  He had been given a thread leading through the labyrinth. The first clue lay in the Stirling connections, a nest of Fenian activities according to McQuinn. And through some passing association with the real May—and he was not dismissing entirely that they had not been responsible for her death in some way. There were drugs that could simulate deadly fevers. Had she communicated Aunt Gilchrist's connections with Inspector Faro and someone had seen a golden opportunity of planting one of their members in his household, especially a detective responsible for saving the Queen from numerous Fenian attempts on her life?

  The feet that the real May was dumb was an advantage. It saved the false May from concealing an Irish accent.

  Watching Olivia being consoled by Vince, Faro's mind raced ahead. He guessed that Constable Thomas's sharp wits had enabled him to divine the truth of May's real identity. And that was the urgent message. He had indeed 'cracked the chiefs case for him' but at the cost of his own life. At the 'maid's' instigation. Faro thought grimly.

  And suddenly he sat upright.

  The birthday present.

  The package that Thomas had left to be delivered to May's bedside when she awoke. 'Poems he'd written, that sort of thing,' according to Mrs Brook.

  He ran downstairs to the kitchen but the housekeeper was absent. He stood by the table recalling in meticulous detail what she had told him. How, when May had appeared, Thomas had tipped Mrs Brook a wink and said sternly that this was for Inspector Faro. Urgent.

  Faro imagined the scene. May at the door, overhearing, had taken flight, believing that Thomas had somehow got hold of the Queen's journal. Perhaps besotted by her, he had been indiscreet about his investigations in the McNair murders.

  'Put it on his desk,' Thomas had said.

  Which was why May had seized the excuse of 'tidying' to ransack his study. Searching in vain, she had been convinced that Faro still had it in his possession.

  And there was only one way to bargain with him.

  Rose.

  Rose as hostage.

  Sick with apprehension, he steadied himself against the kitchen table, seeing the package in Mrs Brook's hand as she thrust it back into her sideboard drawer

  It was still there. Carrying it up to his study, he opened the envelope so expertly that it could be resealed again without anyone knowing the contents had been examined.

  As he expected, it contained some papers and a small leather notebook.

  He began to read.

  Chapter 23

  Faro's reading was interrupted by the shrill ringing of the front doorbell. Within minutes he heard Vince telling the caller to wait, that he would get his bag and his instruments.

  Two minutes later, the bell again jangled through the house.

  Faro sprang to his feet. Could it be Rose, returned unharmed at last?

  He opened the door to hear a man, rough voiced, speaking to Mrs Brook in urgent tones.

  Another of Vince's emergencies, Faro thought, picking up the book again while downstairs Mrs Brook desperately confronted the gypsy beggarman who first wanted to tell her fortune and then wanted her to buy clothes pegs from him.

  'Be off,' she said bristling with rage as he put a foot in the door and, leaning forward confidentially, whispered, 'A cup of tea in your cosy kitchen then, ma'am, if you please.'

  'How dare you suggest—' Mrs Brook was not long lost for words. 'The owner of this house is a detective inspector—'

  But before she could protest further he murmured, 'Thank you kindly,' and, pushing her aside bolted up the stairs.

  She puffed after him in hot pursuit, but before she could do more than scream a warning he had thrown open the door of Inspector Faro's study.

  Warned by the commotion, Faro had time only to thrust the little book into the desk drawer where he could most conveniently lay hands on his revolver, ready to confront one of the Fenian terrorists.

  The man who stood before him had one of the most villainous countenances Faro had ever beheld.

  A black patch over one eye, hair an entangled mass that had seen neither comb nor water for many a long day, while all resemblance to recognizable garments had long since vanished into the shredded rags that covered him. The gold earring declared him a gypsy.

  The man had seen Faro's movement towards the half-open drawer. Raising a finger he pointed. 'I shouldn't do that, sir, not if I was you.'

  And, leering at him across the table, he nodded in Mrs Brook's direction. 'Send her packing,' he said roughly, putting a finger to his lips.

  'Inspector, sir!' she protested.

  Again the man shook his head, grinned, and that grin was familiar.

  'It is all right, Mrs Brook. This er—fellow is known to me.' And as Mrs Brook hesitated, he led her gently to the door. 'Don't you worry. It's police business.'

  Mrs Brook departed in a deep huff, muttering for all the house to hear, 'Police business indeed.' And that she didn't know what this house was coming to, really she didn't.

  She would have been taken aback by the scene she had just left to see Inspector Faro dancing delightedly around the appalling beggarman.

  'McQuinn!'

  Like the answer to his prayers, McQuinn had arrived.

  'I got your messages—both of them. Came as quickly as I could, sir.'

  Handing him a dram, Faro related the events leading to Olivia's disclosures and the spy who had been infiltrated into his house.

  But it was Rose's abduction that most concerned them both.

  'We haven't much time,' said McQuinn, 'I know there's something big on. A ship leaves on the midnight tide for Rosslare and their ringleader will be on it—and if their plan goes well, the Queen's journal will be in her pocket.'

  'I don't give a damn for any journal. All I want is my Rose safe home, do you hear?'

  McQuinn looked grave. 'They're holding her as hostage. I'm glad I got here first.' He looked at the clock. 'Someone'll be arriving shortly. They don't have time to waste. Once they have what they came for, they'll be off for Ireland.'

  'How can we stop them?'

  'The answer is that we can't—it's the journal or Rose. We don't really have a choice, do we?' So saying, he held out his hand.

  Faro watched him as he turned the pages, smiling as if the contents amused him.

  Then he pushed it back across the table. 'Let them have this, Inspector. It's our only hope. Do what the
y want, I'll be keeping watch.'

  McQuinn nodded towards the window. 'I seem to remember there's a way out across the washhouse roof into the back lane.'

  'Yes, but be careful.'

  'Sure now, Inspector, have you ever known me not to be?'

  McQuinn's soft laughter, his mockery, infuriated Faro. How could he take it all lightly with so much at stake?

  'McQuinn!' he said sharply.

  ‘Yes, sir?'

  'If—if it all goes wrong. Save Rose. That's an order, do you hear?'

  'Inspector, sir, you hardly need to tell me that. She's the girl I intend making my wife.' He pointed to the book. 'Give it to them,' he repeated sternly. 'And God save Ireland.'

  McQuinn had not been gone more than a minute when the front doorbell rang yet again. Faro thrust the book and the loose papers into his pocket as Mrs Brook came upstairs.

  She opened the door and seemed surprised to see him alone.

  'There's a lady to see you, sir. I put her in the dining room, sir, thinking you already had a—a—visitor,' she added reproachfully with a quick look round as if to see whether such a creature's presence might have sullied her much polished furniture.

  Faro followed her downstairs.

  He opened the door. The shadowy figure by the window moved.

  It was Imogen Crowe.

  For a moment his heart beat wildly, the images in his mind those of a fantasy come true. Imogen had changed her mind. His blood leaped at the thought. She wanted him, this meeting had nothing to do with Fenians or with his daughter Rose, their hostage.

  But even as she turned to face him, he knew that relief from the agony of a doomed love was not yet to be his.

  Her face was expressionless, a mirror from which all emotion had been wiped clean.

  'What have you done with my daughter?' he gasped.

  'If you want to see Rose again, you had better come with me and bring the Queen's journal with you.'

  'Where is my daughter?'

  At Leith. I'm to take you there.'