For his plan to work, he needed Dave’s assistance and he heard the gardeners’ voices in the orchard as he led her towards the summerhouse and told her wait there and try to be calm while he went in search of the policeman who was at Red House.
She was quiet now, but accepted this without question as the right thing to do. It remained for him to get Dave to play his part.
He took her in his arms, murmured reassurances and, trusting to the end, she hardly felt the knife thrust and died still smiling as he went in search of Dave to deliver the message upon which all his plans now depended.
Faro was leaving Red House considering with satisfaction how he had solved the case of the Brettle Manor burglary, the theft of the jewels and the missing pictures. There remained however the missing girl as well as the tricky business of how to confront Macheath.
Today it seemed he was in luck. The gardener Dave, clearing the first fallen leaves, preparing the ground for the onset of winter, called a greeting.
‘You know that lass you were so keen to meet? Bess Tracy.’ He grinned knowingly. ‘Well, there’s a message from her. She wants to see you – urgent like. In the summerhouse.’
At last. Faro felt jubilant, a sense of triumph. This was the moment he had been waiting for, certain that Bess was still alive and held the clues to what had happened at Brettle Manor.
The rustic summerhouse was surrounded by trees, an idyllic setting. Here he had sat with Poppy on a bright sunny day, wondering if he was falling in love.
He could not see Bess from the distance as he approached, only a moving figure in the gloom. Hurrying forward he ran up the steps and was roughly seized. He tried in vain to twist round to evade the hammer blow and fell to the ground and as the blackness descended his last thought was that he had been tricked and would never know how or even why.
Macheath looked at the two bodies with satisfaction. It had been so easy, fortune had smiled on him that day. He hoped it would continue to do so and that he would be safely in America before anyone entered the deserted cottage on the Brettles’ estate.
He grinned wolfishly as he placed the bloodied knife in Faro’s hand. Running across the grounds towards the gardeners, he shouted, ‘Help, help. Murder.’
Dave turned round. ‘What’s up?’
‘In the summerhouse – Bess – she’s been murdered…’
Dave was bewildered, confused and shocked. Assignations were one thing, murder quite another. He yelled to the other gardeners, who downed tools as they headed after the man they knew as Paul. As they ran he gasped out the story he had prepared, ‘I was passing by, heard her scream. Man had hold of her, tearing at her clothes. I was too late, he took out a knife.’ He gestured towards his throat. ‘Turned on me, he did. But I knocked him out. He’s lying there.’ He stopped, yelled, ‘You lads, don’t let him get away. I’m off for the constable.’
In sight of the summerhouse Dave shouted, ‘It’ll be that Scotch fellow, the queer cove from the house there, always asking about her. Always thought he was mad—’
* * *
Faro was dragged to his feet, roughly roused. He had hardly time to realise that he had a very sore head when he was struck across the face. Opening his eyes, the gardeners were around him, his arms pinned to his sides. Somebody took another punch at his face.
He stepped sideways, staggered, evading the blow.
An ugly murmur and Dave held up his hand. ‘Leave this to the police, lads. They’ll see that he hangs for this.’ He pointed to the knife lying on the ground. ‘Remember all of you, this was in his hand when we found him.’
There were angry yells, threatening gestures. ‘If the village doesn’t do the job first, then you’ll have us to deal with, you bastard!’
Faro’s senses were fully returned, and he pointed to the knife. ‘Look, all of you. I didn’t kill her. She was dead when he hit me.’
‘Who’s he?’ someone yelled.
Faro shook his head and it hurt. ‘One of you gardeners,’ he said lamely.
There were mocking jeers at that. Hopeless to try to explain that their comrade was most probably, as he now realised too late, also Macheath.
Dave said, ‘His name is Paul and he’s gone for the police. It’s jail for you – then you’ll hang. No funny business or you’ll regret it.’
There was a moment’s indecision as they all wondered what to do next. Then someone shouted, ‘Come on, lads, let’s take him to the police ourselves.’
His arms seized, Faro did as he was told. Hopelessly outnumbered and trying to think of a way out of the trap he had walked into, he gazed at the pitiful figure of the girl wearing only a torn shift to cover her nakedness.
Bess Tracy, he realised too late, had been the bait in the trap that Macheath, alias Paul, had prepared for him. And preoccupied by the revelations in his logbook he had walked straight into it.
Constable Muir, comfortably smoking his pipe in his office, had never been summoned to a murder before. A new and daunting experience as his sanctum was invaded by a group of angry young men holding Faro, his arms pinioned, in their midst.
‘What’s all this about?’ Muir demanded
Faro shouted, ‘Bess’s body has been found.’
Dave said, ‘It’s like Paul said. He came to tell you—’
Muir frowned. ‘What’s happened to her?’
An angry growl from the crowd. ‘She’s been murdered. In the summerhouse at Red House. By this bastard—’
‘Good Lord,’ said Muir addressing Faro over their heads, having presumed quite wrongly that it was Faro who had discovered her until he was pushed roughly forward.
‘It’s him – who killed her. One of our mates, Paul, saw it all and he was too late to save Bess, rape it was – heard her screaming then and knocked this fellow out and came for us on his way to get you.’
Muir looked round, bewildered, not yet able to absorb what he was being told. ‘Which of you is Paul?’ he demanded
‘None of us, Constable. I keep telling you, he came for you,’ Dave sounded exasperated as Muir shook his head.
‘I haven’t seen him. He hasn’t been here – when was all this?’
‘Just minutes ago.’
Muir sighed. ‘That’s it then. I’ve just come in. He must have gone on to Upton. Let’s go to this summerhouse. And there’s no need to hang on to Mr Faro like that. I’m sure there’s been some mistake.’
‘Mistake!’ they yelled. ‘You’re the one who is making a mistake, Constable, if you think that.’
As Muir accompanied them back to the murder site, the gardeners kept Faro well away from him, still holding his arms as if he might make a run for it.
In the summerhouse, as Muir surveyed the grisly scene, he was still taken aback to say the least of it to find that the man who the gardener had witnessed murdering Bess was Faro, found according to these witnesses lying unconscious clutching a knife in his hand covered in Bess’s blood.
It looked bad. He bent over the body, guessed that she had not been dead very long.
Faro said desperately, ‘Muir, this was a trap, I tell you. A set-up. Macheath was behind it.’
Muir looked up at him. ‘You know the rules as well as I do. Of course, I don’t believe you killed this girl—’
Interrupted by an angry roar from the gardeners, he held up his hand for silence and continued, ‘Just the same, Faro, you’ll have to come back with me until we can sort it out.’
There was no denying it. Faro knew the procedure that must be followed. There was a witness to a murder and the accused, even if he was a policeman, must be kept in custody until the Metropolitan Police arrived on the scene.
‘May I collect some things from the house?’ Faro asked.
‘Of course,’ and to the gardeners, ‘All right, lads, I’ll take care of this. You can go about your business.’ But they were suspicious and not to be dismissed, following them both towards the house.
Faro turned as he opened the door. ‘I will be as qui
ck as I can.’ He hoped this extraordinary gathering, complete with Constable Muir, was not under observation from within, but all seemed quiet.
And as Muir shuffled uncomfortably, he said, ‘Don’t concern yourself, I won’t run away. You have my word – and I’m perfectly sure I can find the solution to this problem and the girl’s killer.’
But Muir did not share his optimism. He didn’t know Faro all that well and candidly, there was something deuced odd about all those telegraphs being sent back and forward between Faro and the Edinburgh police. He felt a lot of explanations were called for, although Faro seemed a decent enough cove on the surface, you never knew what lusts were brewing up under quite the guise of respectable gentleman or under the police uniform. As for the latter, well, they were human after all, no better no worse than the next man and equally at risk to temptations of the flesh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Faro realised that his best method of dealing with the situation was to stay calm while detained at what represented Her Majesty’s Pleasure, in this case a police cell in the local constable’s cottage. There, while awaiting the arrival of the Metropolitan Police, he would put his enforced solitude to good effect by writing up the case, perfectly satisfied that he could prove his innocence.
Confident that DS Noble would substantiate his claims regarding Macheath as well as an excellent character reference, he never doubted that he could prove not only that his arrest had been a mistake but that it was also a plot engineered by the same Macheath who had murdered Bess Tracy.
But why? The motive remained obscure, although now he was almost certain that she had been concealed in Boone’s much disputed cottage on the edge of Brettle estate. Whether as prisoner or a willing accomplice of Macheath, now that she was dead, he would probably never learn the truth
Murder had an unfortunate tendency to spread like waves in a pond, linking innocent and guilty alike. In Bess’s case, they would most surely engulf the robbery at Brettle Manor to the exasperation and despair of the Brettles, who because of the murder of their maid would now most likely find themselves being thoroughly investigated by the Metropolitan Police. And despite their desperate attempts to have the robbery kept within the confines of the local police, those shaming secrets and scandals would become sensational public news.
Morris and Rossetti looked in to visit Faro briefly, embarrassed by the circumstances and strangely inarticulate, murmuring reassurances that they did not believe a word of such a dreadful accusation and that they would readily support his excellent character at the trial, if summoned to do so.
Considering that they knew little of him on a very short acquaintance, merely that he was a friend of Erland’s, Faro was grateful indeed. There was a great deal of clearing of throats and eyes straying uneasily towards the bars on the window as they attempted a normal conversation about his health, some futile observations concerning the mild weather but they left tactfully without any mention of the reasons that accounted for their late guest’s arrest for murder.
Faro was well taken care of in his unusual prison cell. Constable Muir brought regular meals prepared by Mrs Muir no doubt regarded by her merely as an extra mouth to feed.
As he spent his time writing down his theories, the Brettles’ shattered future concerned him considerably less than his compassion for Bess’s grieving mother, an innocent victim of this terrible news.
The visit of Morris and Rossetti was shortly followed by a surprise appearance from Lena bearing fruit from the orchards and cake from the Red House kitchen.
Ushering her in, Muir made a bad joke about hoping that a file was not hidden in that basket and then went off briskly to brew up a cup of tea.
Faro bowed his visitor to the one chair and took a seat on the bed. The constable had made the cell as comfortable as possible. But for the presence of a barred high window, it could have passed as the parlour of a small cottage with the necessary toilet facilities discreetly out of sight.
Lena smiled, gesturing away his stilted thanks for the visit and the gifts. Unlike his previous visitors, she came straight to the point.
‘I am sure you are not guilty of killing that girl.’ She paused and said slowly, as if repeating a lesson, ‘For murder there has to be a motive and what motive could you have had? You who had, according to all accounts, never met her before and knew only of her reputation. Attempted rape, is the whisper.’
She shrugged. ‘And that doesn’t seem to fit your character at all,’ she added, and cupping her chin in her hand, a gesture that took him back to her Edinburgh trial three years ago, she studied him intently. ‘Such a pity they do not have a Not Proven verdict in England. As you know, it has been found very useful in Scotland.’
The look on Faro’s face surprised her, for she laughed. ‘Come now, Mr Faro – or is it Constable Faro?’ Before he could answer, she wagged a finger at him and said, ‘I knew you were a policeman, despite dear Erland’s attempts not to give the game away with some vague descriptions of your business here.’
She paused to give him a triumphant smile. ‘You see, I have a very good memory and as soon as Erland mentioned Edinburgh, I remembered that you were the kind young constable who escorted me across to Slateford to meet my brother – and safety. After the trial.’
Her expression darkened, the incident vividly remembered. Then again she smiled. ‘I rather liked the look of you,’ she said, eyeing him candidly. ‘Being a policeman seemed quite wasted on your good looks. I felt you were meant for better things.’
A pause with some embarrassment on Faro’s side before he said, ‘Is that the reason for – for your deception at the masque?’
She clapped her hands and laughed. ‘Why, of course! Men are such an entertainment – I wondered how a handsome young policeman would react to a little lovemaking from a woman whose trial had been a matter of nationwide interest.’
Faro, shocked, stood up sharply. ‘Your behaviour was outrageous.’
She stared at him, frowned. ‘I don’t know—’
‘Not at the trial, I mean, at the masque. A betrayal of Erland, as well as Poppy, your so-called best friend.’
She stood up to leave. She shrugged. ‘Betrayal – of course, you are right, I am sure. But I think we both enjoyed it, did we not?’
And Faro could think of no answer that would not be an outright lie. They were just inches apart; he could feel her warm breath, smell her perfume.
‘Why did you come?’
‘To bring you sustenance, of course, a goodwill visit.’ A sly smile as she added, ‘No cocoa, of course.’
At his stony expression, she moved away. Suddenly serious, she turned and came back, standing again close to him. He felt his heart racing and wondered if she could hear it.
‘There was another reason.’ She gazed up into his face. ‘I was curious. I wanted to ask you a question. The answer to which you have now many hours of solitude to reflect upon.’
‘And that is?’
‘How does it feel, Constable Faro, to be accused of a murder, to be innocent and yet quite unable to prove it?’ Her voice rose, almost in a crow of triumph as her finger pointed at him. ‘And in your case to have no expectations of a sympathetic jury of men who will save you from the gallows.’
Faro bowed, his expression a calm he was far from feeling at that moment. ‘I trust that I will survive long enough to provide you with an answer – indeed, to compare notes,’ he added with a note of sarcasm.
Gathering her basket, she laughed and walked lightly to the door.
‘Tell the constable to keep his tea—’
‘A moment,’ Faro said. ‘Tell me one thing before we part – are Morris and Rossetti aware of Lena Hamilton’s real identity? That she is also known as Madeleine Smith?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Of course! They have always known. It was something of a thrill for them, a delicious prospect to have a woman who might well be a notorious poisoner under their roof, an added secret excitement to their daily bread.�
��
‘Did Erland also know?’ he demanded sharply.
She shook her head. About to leave, at the door she turned and said sadly. ‘Jeremy Faro – have you never believed in redemption?’
A moment later the door closed and she was gone.
He would never know the truth. Perhaps he had been wrong about Madeleine Smith and her role as Lena after all. But somehow it seemed less of a major problem now that his own future was in doubt.
He had been less than two days in the police cell when Muir told him he had received a telegraph from Inspector Holt of the Metropolitan Police, who was arriving that evening to escort him to London to be tried for the murder of Bess Tracy. Muir was to take him to the railway station at Upton to hand him over to the inspector.
There was a second telegraph, but he was not yet at liberty to disclose contents or sender.
Faro had no chance to say goodbye to Red House, or to thank Morris and Rossetti for their kindness to him. But he had one more visitor just an hour before he was to leave with Muir.
It was Poppy. A very tearful Poppy, who put her arms around him and sobbed on his shoulder.
He tried to comfort her but all she could gasp out was, ‘This is so terrible. I never believed any of it. No one looking at you could ever believe that you were a murderer.’
Stroking her hair, he thought but did not say that very few murderers ever looked the part. In general they looked like ordinary citizens and, in Macheath’s case, their very ordinariness was the best of all possible disguises.
‘Come now, dry your tears,’ he whispered. ‘It isn’t the end of the world.’
Her look suggested painfully that this was indeed the end of her world and all her future hopes as she gasped, ‘I had no idea that you were a policeman, until Lena told me. It’s outrageous, the very thought of it. Don’t they understand that policemen like you are here to protect us, they don’t go round murdering people.’
Again he thought and did not say that sometimes they do just that, as she went on, ‘You were so gentle and kind and you didn’t even know that girl.’ She shuddered. ‘To hint at such wickedness, they must be out of their minds to even think of such awful things about you, a well-educated gentleman, that you are.’
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