Murder in Paradise
Page 21
CHAPTER THIRTY
For a long while time ceased. Day became night and turned into day again while Faro fought for his life in a hospital bed in Upton.
Then when all hope was fading, he opened his eyes to the world again to be told that only his excellent constitution had saved him. The doctors had shaken their heads, given up hope for the bullet had narrowly escaped a main artery and his spine.
Suddenly there were familiar faces at his bedside. Muir, awkward behind a bunch of flowers, Poppy, tearful, holding his hand but, most familiar of all, the blind man who he had last seen in the London train.
‘How are you? I thought my young friend was a goner.’
Faro blinked once, and again. Without the dark glasses, the man who sat at his bedside—
‘McFie,’ he whispered.
‘The very same,’ was the cheerful reply. ‘Now, you take it easy – you have still a lot of recovering to do.’
‘What about the trial? What about Edinburgh – does Noble know?’
‘Don’t worry about that, lad. When you’re stronger—’
Faro attempted to sit up. ‘I’m strong enough to hear the truth. I thought you were on holiday with your sister in Sussex. What are you doing here?’
McFie sat back in his chair and sighed. ‘Very well.’
A nurse hovered, frowning. ‘Sir, you are not to tire our patient.’
Faro smiled up at her. ‘This gentleman’s information is very important for my recovery, nurse. I will be out of here much speedier when I hear what he has to say,’
McFie gave the nurse a reassuring smile and, looking doubtful, she drifted off.
‘Now tell me all, sir. What were you doing down here? From the beginning, if you please.’
‘Never got to my sister. I’ve been staying with Constable Muir’s brother who has a boarding house in the village for railwaymen. A convenient arrangement as I had to keep out of sight while Muir brought me the answers to my telegraphs.’
‘I would have welcomed a sight of you,’ said Faro glumly remembering how he would have valued McFie’s advice regarding Erland and Madeleine Smith.
McFie shook his head. ‘I made a brief appearance at your friend’s funeral, in my role as a blind man. However, if Macheath was around, as I had good reason to suspect, then he was keeping a close watch on you and if he saw us together… Remember, I am still a well-kenned figure among the criminal fraternity in Edinburgh. He would have recognised me and then we might have lost him before I checked on Inspector Holt. And, as I suspected, there was no such man at the Metropolitan Police, by the way. That was his first mistake.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘In prison, awaiting trial for the murder of Bess Tracy as well as one in Scotland and an impressive list of burglaries.’
‘What about Lady Brettle’s jewels?’
‘Recovered with the Emerald Star in his travelling case, alongside a faked passport and a sailing ticket to New York.’ Pausing, he shook his head. ‘Bit of a scandal about her ladyship’s jewellery – turned out to be fakes.’
‘So she told me, when she was very anxious not to bring in the Metropolitan Police to investigate.’
‘Too late for that now. All has been revealed and I’m afraid the Brettles will not be living happily ever after in their nice new home and Macheath was expecting a big haul that did not exist. However, the Emerald Star would have made it very much worthwhile.’
‘Tell me, how did he find out about that particular jewel?’
McFie laughed. ‘That’s easy. There’s a criminal network in Britain who make it their business – and a very profitable business, I might add – to know about such matters. Precious gems, portable small items are vastly preferred. Big houses employ many servants and there is always someone who can pass on valuable information regarding the layout of safes and so forth. The Brettles also lost two valuable pictures.
‘Macheath was blamed. Apparently he found these two items too large to carry and they were discovered hidden under hay in the barn. Doesn’t sound like him, but that’s the story according to Sir Philip.’ He smiled, dryly confirming Faro’s theory that Sir Philip had hidden the paintings himself in the hope he might add them to his wife’s insurance claim.
‘What of his accomplice? Macheath told me he was a policeman – do they know who he was?’
‘They do indeed. And so do you.’
Faro looked puzzled and McFie said, ‘I was doing an undercover investigation for the Edinburgh police. That is why it was convenient for all to believe that I was visiting my sister in Sussex. As soon as I heard that Noble was sending you on what, as I told you, I completely disapproved of as a waste of time, a wild-goose chase indeed, I had my suspicions.
‘Still have friends in high places and they decided that Noble should be investigated. It soon became evident from a bank account that could hardly be justified by his sergeant’s pay, that the man was dishonest and it evolved that he was in league with Macheath, helping him with inside information about wealthy homes for years, even during his time in Glasgow and doubtless all ready to leave the country when the truth came out, as it would eventually.
‘However after it transpired that you were the only one who had ever seen Macheath face to face, in that other fight that almost cost you your life,’ he added grimly, ‘he realised that you were a tenacious stumbling block that must be got rid of.
‘Macheath was here for the Emerald Star and the fortune it would bring them both. A priceless jewel that could be reshaped and sold abroad, the fact that the lady was daft enough to keep it in the house, was irresistible. The rest was easy. He almost walked into the hands of the police at Abbey Wood to make them arrest him, lure you down and then made his escape. All he had to do then was wait until you arrived, on Noble’s instructions – and kill you.
‘He had a very convenient base for his activities,’ McFie continued seriously, ‘A recluse’s cottage no one went near on the Brettle estate. Kill the old man first and take his place. With his genius for disguise, it was easy. He had plenty of opportunities, no doubt.’
And Faro remembered that rifle shot while he was walking on the heath in the early morning after the masque.
McFie went on, ‘But it was an elaborate cat-and-mouse game for him. So he set a trap by killing that innocent lass and making sure that you would be blamed. A little too clever, and a little mad, I should say, but hang he most certainly will.’
‘Is Macheath his real name?’
McFie shrugged. ‘So he claims. No one knows for sure who he is really. As for you, lad, you will go back to Edinburgh when you are fit again without a stain on your character, with commendations for bravery – and promotion too. And, we all hope, a shining career in the future with the Edinburgh Police Force.’
Later that month Muir escorted them to the train bound for Edinburgh.
With a grin at Faro, he said, ‘Glad I’m handing you over to a real inspector. The last time we stood on this platform together, I had my doubts about Holt. I wanted to warn you but this gentleman here had given me strict instructions that all would be well, that he and the police officers would be on that train. When they weren’t in evidence – lurking out of sight at the end of the platform – you can imagine—’
And it was indeed left to Faro’s imagination as he and McFie boarded the train with hasty goodbyes and handshakes.
Faro leant out of the window, a final glance.
On the opposite platform, a woman awaiting the London train. Their eyes met. He saluted her, she raised her hand, smiled sadly and as the smoke hid her from view, he remembered her words about redemption.
The enigma of Madeleine Smith remained. He would never know the truth and neither would anyone else.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
And so it was that Jeremy Faro fulfilled that early promise with a long and successful career as a chief inspector and as Queen Victoria’s personal detective. He married Lizzie, a happy marriage sadly ended when she died in
giving birth to a stillborn son. Their two daughters Rose and Emily went to live with their grandmother in Orkney while Faro took over 9 Sheridan Place, Newington with his old friend McFie’s housekeeper, Mrs Brook. His stepson Vince became a doctor, helped solve many of his cases, and was eventually appointed as Junior Physician to the Royal Household.
Faro remained a widower and in his later years the Irish writer Imogen Crowe, whom he met on one of his cases, became his devoted companion.
Faro’s subsequent cases are chronicled in:
Enter Second Murderer
Blood Line
Deadly Beloved
Killing Cousins
A Quiet Death
To Kill a Queen
The Missing Duchess*
The Evil That Men Do
The Bull Slayers*
Murder by Appointment
The Coffin Lane Murders
The Final Enemy*
Unholy Trinity
* also contained in the trilogy Faro & the Royals
Rose Faro married her father’s sergeant Danny McQuinn and through tragic domestic circumstances returned to Edinburgh in 1894 to follow in her father’s footsteps, recorded in:
The Inspector’s Daughter
Dangerous Pursuits
An Orkney Murder
Ghost Walk
Destroying Angel
For those interested in true crime, Madeleine Smith married George Wardle in 1861 and they had two children. After he died of cancer in 1910 she went to America and married for the second time. Her ‘Not Proven’ verdict has been a subject of unfailing interest and speculation for more than a century. Most recent: The Strange Affair of Madeleine Smith: Victorian Scotland’s Trial of the Century by Douglas MacGowan (Mercat Press: Edinburgh, 2007).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to Edward Marston, author of the Railway Detective series by Allison & Busby, for information on Victorian railway carriages.
Other titles by Alanna Knight available from Allison and Busby
The Rose McQuinn series
The Inspector’s Daughter
1894. In a desperate attempt to recover from the loss of her husband and her baby son, Rose McQuinn returns home to Edinburgh from the American Wild West. Before long she unwittingly steps into the shoes of her father, the legendary Detective Inspector Faro, by agreeing to investigate the strange behaviour of Matthew Bolton, husband to Rose’s childhood friend Alice. From her isolated home at the foot of Arthur’s Seat and aided by a wild deerhound who has befriended her, Rose starts to piece things together, until she gets too near the truth and puts her own life in danger.
Dangerous Pursuits
During a peaceful walk out on Arthur’s Seat, high above the city of Edinburgh, Rose McQuinn stumbles across the body of a woman in the ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel. Reporting her discovery to a nearby police constable, she assumes that the case is in safe hands. So she is shocked when she returns to the scene to find that both the body and the policeman have disappeared. Rose determines to pursue a discreet investigation into the mystery, but soon finds herself in a terrifying situation, cast in the role of the murderer’s second victim…
An Orkney Murder
On a long-anticipated family visit to Orkney to see her sister Emily, Rose is unprepared for the sinister and unexpected events that occur following the discovery of a body by an archaeological team excavating a nearby peat bog. But the find is not that of the legendary thirteenth-century Maid of Norway, as they had expected, but that of a local woman, long presumed to have drowned. In this the most personal of all her investigations, Rose realises that revealing the killer’s identity can destroy for ever the happiness of those closest to her.
Ghost Walk
Rose McQuinn is on the threshold of marrying her lover, Detective Inspector Jack Macmerry of the Edinburgh Police. But pre-wedding jitters become the least of her worries when a nun from the local convent claims to have received a letter from Rose’s deceased first husband. Is the elderly nun simply confused, or could he really still be alive? Unnerved and determined to find out the truth before her wedding, Rose begins to investigate. However, after two suspicious deaths, all the signs suggest that a ghost is about to walk back into her life…
Destroying Angel
Autumn, 1897. Rose McQuinn has lost the love of her ambitious fiancé, Jack Macmerry, and now it seems she is to lose her elusive deerhound as well. Hubert Staines claims his mortally ill stepdaughter is Thane’s rightful owner, and Rose cannot refuse to return him. But when she arrives at the family home near Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, it soon becomes clear that Hubert has a hidden agenda. The family’s tragic history unfolds, revealing dark secrets that haunt those involved and a series of suspicious deaths… Is Rose to be the next victim?
The Tam Eildor series
The Gowrie Conspiracy
July 1600. After rescuing King James from a runaway horse, the enigmatic Tam Eildor finds himself in the monarch’s favour, and the royal benevolence is furthered when Tam agrees to investigate the murder of Margaret Agnew, the Queen’s midwife. As Tam and his good friend Tansy Scott set about discovering who could have attacked her and why, they come across rumours of a buried secret from the King’s past – a secret that could put the King and members of the court in danger. With treacherous forces at work, the King is led away from the palace to Gowrie House in Perth, and into the heart of a mystery that still puzzles historians today…
The Stuart Sapphire
August 1811. George, Prince of Wales, has his own reasons for welcoming Tam Eildor to the Royal Pavilion. His latest mistress, Sarah, Marchioness of Creeve, has been murdered in the royal bed; strangled with her own string of pearls. Newly created Prince Regent, George realises that a sordid scandal must be avoided at all costs, and enlists Tam’s services to quickly and – more importantly – quietly find the killer. But murder isn’t the only crime Tam has to solve: on the same night as the Marchioness’s death a priceless gemstone, the Stuart Sapphire, was stolen. With a double investigation on his hands and his own life in constant danger, Tam struggles to outwit the sinister forces that seem determined to prevent him from discovering the truth.
Other paperback titles by Alanna Knight available from Allison & Busby
The Rose McQuinn series
The Inspector’s Daughter
978-0-7490-8203-1 £6.99
Dangerous Pursuits 978-0-7490-8244-4 £6.99
An Orkney Murder 978-0-7490-8181-2 £6.99
Ghost Walk 978-0-7490-8266-6 £6.99
Destroying Angel 978-0-7490-7937-6 £6.99
The Tam Eildor series
The Gowrie Conspiracy 978-0-7490-0699-0 £6.99
The Stuart Sapphire 978-0-7490-8115-7 £6.99
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALANNA KNIGHT has written more than fifty novels (including fourteen previous titles in the successful Inspector Faro series), three non-fiction titles on RL Stevenson, two true crime books, numerous short stories and several plays since the publication of her first book in 1969. Born and educated in Tyneside, she now lives in Edinburgh. She is a member of the Scottish chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association, a founding member of the Scottish Association of Writers, and Honorary President of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club.
www.alannaknight.com
Available from
/> ALLISON AND BUSBY
The Rose McQuinn series
The Inspector’s Daughter
Dangerous Pursuits
An Orkney Murder
Ghost Walk
Destroying Angel
Murder in Paradise
Quest for a Killer
The Tam Eildor series
The Gowrie Conspiracy
The Stuart Sapphire
COPYRIGHT
Allison & Busby Limited
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Hardback published in Great Britain in 2008.
Paperback edition published in 2009.
This ebook edition first published in 2012.
Copyright © 2008 by ALANNA KNIGHT
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