The Evil That Men Do.(Inspector Faro Mystery No.11)

by Knight, Alanna

  The Evil That Men Do

  Alanna Knight

  ALANNA KNIGHT has published more than sixty novels (including sixteen in the acclaimed Inspector Faro series, and seven featuring his daughter Rose McQuinn), as well as non-fiction, true crime and several books on Robert Louis Stevenson, numerous short stories and two plays since her award-winning first book 'Legend of the Loch' in 1969. A founding member and Honorary President of the Scottish Association of Writers and of the Edinburgh Writer's Club, born and educated on Tyneside, she has two sons and two granddaughters and lives in Edinburgh.

  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter One

  Detective Inspector Faro was a contented man. Life was good and not even the approach of his forty-third birthday could detract from the pleasurable anticipation of the next few months.

  He didn’t feel middle-aged. As he buttoned his dress shirt in his bedroom in Sheridan Place, he would, had he been a vain man, have accepted the evidence of his own eyes and the admiring glances of those of his acquaintance. True, the once fair hair was thinly streaked with grey, but this enhanced rather than diminished the powerful Viking image of a born leader, a king among men.

  Now, as he tied his cravat, he whistled under his breath. Yes, life was good indeed and he had a strange feeling that lately things were getting better not worse in the Edinburgh City Police. It was six months since he had dealt with a murder case and he was almost persuaded that human nature had taken a turn for the better.

  He smiled wryly at such an idea. If things continued like this he would be out of a job.

  But his sense of satisfaction was more personal. Next week would see the end of his long separation from the older of his two daughters. Fifteen-year-old Rose was to enrol at the Grange Academy for Young Ladies, with special instruction in Languages of All Kinds; Emily, who was two years younger, would remain in Orkney meantime.

  Faro sighed. With Rose at home, he would be a family man again without the last desperate measure of taking a wife. For he could never rid himself of the guilty awareness that policemen made poor husbands and that his neglect had contributed in no small measure to his dear Lizzie’s death.

  Had his powers of observation and deduction encompassed his own four walls he might have realised that her health was too frail for the pregnancy that killed her - and took to the grave with her the son he had craved.

  But Lizzie had left him a stepson and no father could wish for a better son than Dr Vincent Beaumarcher Laurie - a son who also fulfilled the role of companion and colleague.

  In the spring one of Faro’s long-cherished dreams would come true when Vince married Grace, niece of Theodore Langweil of Priorsfield House, his present destination. It was also the home of his own secret love. Ridiculous at my age, he told himself, blushing like a schoolboy...

  As he closed his front door in Sheridan Place he recalled with gratification Grace’s indignation at the merest hint that Vince’s stepfather should move into a separate establishment.

  ‘We will try it out for a year or two,’ she said with a shy look at Vince, ‘and if - if we need nurseries and so forth, then we will move into a larger house.’ And taking his hand, ‘But you will come with us. No, sir, I will have none of your arguments.’

  Faro knew that they were useless in any case since Grace was a strong-willed modern young lady with a mind of her own.

  The Langweils continued the old-fashioned custom of dining at four o’clock. As he walked the familiar mile from Newington to Wester Duddingston, he thought of the many less happy occasions when he had travelled this road in urgent pursuit of criminals. Rarely had he leisure to admire the gloaming, that curious stillness when the trees and buildings are sharply outlined against an azure sky and the very earth stands still.

  Now the magic of a winter afternoon was enhanced by a rising moon, and from the loch three swans took flight, the sound of their wings audible, birds from an ancient legend come to life.

  Then, silence restored, his ringing footsteps were the only sound in the wine-clear air as he thrust open the iron gates leading into the drive of Priorsfield House.

  Birthplace of Langweil Ales Limited, the simple tower-house of centuries past had been enlarged in the eighteenth century. Overlooking the loch, tradition (which the Langweils were anxious to perpetuate) claimed that it had all begun with a humble medieval alehouse patronised by the kings of Scotland out hunting in the dense forest on the slopes of Arthur’s Seat.

  Perhaps this romantic and colourful notion had some roots in history, for the name Langweil had drifted in and out of local records. But whether Mary Queen of Scots had stayed there benighted by a snowstorm on her way to Craigmillar Castle and whether Bonnie Prince Charlie had supped there in a secret rendezvous awaiting the arrival of French gold to support his cause were matters for conjecture only.

  What was undeniable, however, was that the Langweil fortunes had dwindled until Grandfather Langweil discovered an old recipe for ecclesiastical ale, reputedly served by the monks of Kelso who had owned the lands of Duggingston in the twelfth century.

  Grandfather Theodore’s recipe flourished. He bought a disused mill on the Water of Leith, whereupon Langweil Ales became a redolent part of the western approaches to the city and Priorsfield Inn became Priorsfield House as successful ventures into port wine and claret swiftly followed.

  The Langweils bore an unbesmirched reputation, not least as philanthropists whose names appeared on all the distinguished guest lists and charitable societies; and their loyalty to past Scottish monarchs was acknowledged by the coat of arms of HRH Albert, Prince of Wales, who was partial not only to Langweil Ales, but to the liqueur, their latest production, which he had graciously endorsed.

  Grandfather Theodore was less successful in a recipe for raising children. His one surviving son produced four sons and a daughter. The eldest, Justin, a sickly infant and invalidish child, was followed two years later by Theodore, then Cedric. A decade of stillbirths followed before the safe arrival of Adrian.

  As an adult Justin’s deteriorating health meant that survival depended on living far from Edinburgh’s cruel climate. In the 1850s he departed for North America, where he promptly severed all connection with the family.

  ‘In fact,’ Vince had said, ‘they don’t know whether Justin is alive or dead, which might make complications in the matter of inheritance. I mean, suppose a son or daughter walked in some day and claimed the Langweil fortune,’ he added anxiously.

  Faro had smiled wryly. Theodore’s first wife had died in childbirth long ago. If his second marriage and Adrian’s first were without issue then Grace would inherit the Langweil fortune, including two breweries and two very large houses.

  ‘I shouldn’t bank on your future wife’s expectations,’ Faro warned him good-humouredly. ‘Theodore’s young wife looks healthy enough and so does Adrian’s.’

  ‘Barbara is touching thirty and they have been married for twelve years,’ Vince reminded him. ‘Offspring don’t sound very likely.’

  ‘I imagine Adrian and Freda might yet produce a quiver of bairns to carry on the Langweil name.’

  ‘After six years? Do you
really think so?’

  Faro pondered. Six years was a long time for a couple who allegedly wanted a family.

  ‘Besides I sometimes think Adrian’s ruling passion for the golf courses leaves him little time or energy for the more important things in life,’ said Vince.

  ‘Be careful that ruling passion, as you call it, doesn’t also becomes yours,’ Faro warned the newest victim of golfing fever.

  Vince grinned sheepishly. Hitherto a reluctant morning riser, he now dashed off to play nine holes with Dr Adrian before their first patients arrived at the surgery. In his role as Cupid in Vince’s romance, Adrian’s word was sacrosanct.

  The two doctors had met at a colleague’s wedding in Aberdeen where Adrian was in general practice. Returning to Edinburgh for family reasons last year, Adrian had promptly invited Vince to set up his brass plate alongside his own.

  The wheel of fortune that was to change all their lives having been thus set in motion, it was no time at all before Vince, invited to Priorsfield, sat next to Cedric’s daughter Grace, and fell in love. This was in no way a remarkable or unusual event since Vince was particularly susceptible to pretty girls. Except that this time fate took a hand.

  The lady in question was equally entranced by the handsome young doctor and the rejoicing from both their families was mutual and spontaneous. The Langweils were known for their lack of side; ‘a man’s a man for a’ that’ could have been their motto on their coat of arms, if they had chosen such niceties. Although Vince was illegitimate, and his stepfather a ‘common policeman’ who had risen through the ranks to become detective inspector, such social limitations aroused no feelings of resentment. After all, the liberal-minded Langweils were proud to claim descent from an alehouse keeper.

  As Faro climbed the front steps of Priorsfield he looked back towards Edinburgh. The twilight sky was dominated by the silhouettes of Salisbury Crags on one side and the Pentland Hills on the other. Not lacking in imagination, he still found it difficult to realise that Duddingston, now so accessible to the new villas on the rapidly developing south side of the city, had, according to the historians, once been covered by the dense Caledonian forest now as extinct as the volcanic origins of Arthur’s Seat. There, legend claimed, in a hidden cave the valiant king whose name it bore slept with his true knights, awaiting the clarion call that never came.

  The Romans had marched here, and with the Christian era came the priory lands. In relatively modern times, the armies of King Edward of England, of Cromwell, and of Bonnie Prince Charlie had stumbled along the once inaccessible cart tracks now transformed into Queen’s Drive, a handsome carriage road from the royal residence of Holyrood Palace where it frequently bore illustrious guests to dine with the Langweils.

  The imposing mansion was considerably more ancient than the Gothic towers and turrets which had been added fifty years ago. In the fast fading light the sky was bright with a thousand stars and a pale moon touched the ancient central block and throwing into sharp relief corbie stepped gables and gun loops, a grim reminder that Priorsfield had survived dangerous times when this part of Edinburgh was a wilderness threatened by wild beasts and wilder men. After the Jacobite forces’ defeat at Culloden, rumour had it, the Langweils had ‘bought their way’ into the favours of King George II and had so remained intact while other royalists, dispossessed, saw their men ride into exile or execution in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket.

  As Faro waited for the door bell to be answered, he remembered something Vince had said only recently. ‘As you told me long ago, Stepfather, and as you’ve never allowed me to forget, history is written by the victors.’

  ‘Or rewritten, if they’re clever enough to destroy the original records,’ had been his laconic response. But he little knew how he would have cause to remember his words.

  Now he heard footsteps and returned his thoughts to the present, and to a living example of this very situation. The door was opened by Gimmond, the butler, who greeted Faro politely and removed his cape and top hat. Only the merest flicker of an eyebrow would have revealed to the observant that the two men were old acquaintances. Gimmond, or ‘Jim Gim’ as he was better known, had been involved in shady dealings, and his common-law wife, a known prostitute, had died in mysterious circumstances. He was saved from the hangman’s rope by Faro’s evidence and the Scottish verdict of ‘Not Proven’. A verdict which those concerned with justice wryly dismissed as ‘We know you did it, go away and don’t do it again.’ Five years had passed and Faro, on his first visit to Priorsfield, had recognised Gimmond who, with his second wife, was now respectably established as butler and housekeeper. Gimmond’s relief had been considerable when he realised that Faro was not going to ‘shop’ him with ‘the boss’. Faro’s philosophy, unlike many of his colleagues, did not subscribe to ‘once a murderer, always a murderer’. He considered in the case of the crime passionnel that this was unlikely to recur and believed profoundly that men and women can be reshaped for better as well as worse by bitter experience.

  Now he followed Gimmond across the vast panelled hall and up a great winged oak staircase, its landing adorned with ancient tattered flags and rusted armour, proud mementoes of battles long ago. Alongside were portraits of generations of past Langweils and a fine rare painting of Bonnie Prince Charlie, his modern-day royal successors represented by an imposing array of signed photographic portraits. Such displays, Vince informed him, were essential for any well-off family who were going anywhere and had pretensions towards aristocratic connections.

  As Faro approached the drawing room, voices raised in heated but friendly argument were hastily hushed as Gimmond announced him.

  Grace, with a beaming Vince at her side, rushed forward to introduce a middle-aged man wearing a clerical collar.

  ‘Meet our second cousin, Stephen Aynsley.’ And as the two men shook hands, ‘Stephen has just arrived from America.’

  ‘Not quite, my dear. I have been in Scotland several months now. In St Andrews, where I recently took holy orders,’ Stephen explained with a shy fond smile in Grace’s direction. ‘I have only recently had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of my charming family.’

  All this information surprised Faro since Aynsley looked considerably more mature than the usual run of students nearer Theodore in age than Adrian. Stoop-shouldered, presumably from carrying the cares of the world, with the skeletal thinness of the aesthete, Stephen, he was informed, was son of Grandfather Langweil’s only sister Eveline.

  Little of the Langweil good looks had descended by the distaff side, Faro decided. Learning that Aynsley was shortly to leave for missionary work in the unexplored regions of Africa, he realised that a superabundance of the Langweil famed zeal and enterprise more than compensated for this deficiency.

  The second stranger was Piers Strong. Introduced as an architect, Faro suspected that his agitated manner and heated complexion concerned the yellowish documents he clutched so anxiously and were possibly the cause of the argument he had interrupted.

  ‘Congratulations, Stepfather,’ muttered Vince. ‘You arrived just in time.’

  ‘Nonsense, Vince. Blood hasn’t been spilt yet,’ said Theodore. And to Faro, ‘We are merely trying to sort out whether to have or to have not some new alterations and additions to the house. Vince has given me to understand that you are a traditionalist, so I am relying on you to take our side.’

  Traditionalist, eh? Vince’s quick glance in his stepfather’s direction pronounced that word as a rather less flattering ‘old-fashioned’.

  ‘My dear sister-in-law here’ - with a gesture in the direction of Grace’s mother Maud, Theodore continued - ‘has succeeded in tearing the town house apart and now, aided and abetted by young Adrian and Freda, with their infernal notions about hygiene, they are directing their missionary zeal - beg pardon, Stephen - towards Priorsfield. All I say is what was good enough for my grandfather - and his grandfather - is good enough for me.’

  ‘Rubbish, brother. Rubbish,’ said Adrian.
‘Bathrooms and water closets are an absolute necessity if we are to stay healthy. I’m sure Barbara as a modern young woman will agree.’

  Barbara. Where was she?

  Faro had known on first entering the room that she was not there. Now at the sound of her light step outside the door he turned and once again felt as if he had been thumped hard in the chest by a sledge hammer.

  She came straight to him, took his hand. ‘Welcome, Mr Faro, it is good to see you again. I trust you are well.’

  Faro stammered something appropriate in reply, conscious that he was blushing like a lovesick lad. Then she was gone.

  ‘I have spoken to Mrs Gimmond as you suggested, Theo.’ And to Adrian: ‘And what is this I am to agree about?’

  Feasting his eyes, his whole being upon her as Adrian reiterated the argument, Faro was amazed that the rest of the company were oblivious to her effect upon him. She was so strikingly lovely. Quite the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Not only in the composition of her looks, but the essence of womanhood without which, he knew, good looks are as dead as the portraits that stared down from the walls.

  Again he found it difficult to realise that she was touching thirty. She could have passed for eighteen. Here was a woman who would grow more beautiful with time’s passing. Like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra whom ‘age cannot wither, nor custom stale her infinite variety’.

  He suppressed a sigh. She was not for him, could never be for him. But every man has his own fantasy, his own goddess, and Barbara Langweil was his.

  Drawn once again into the round of domesticity, the argument resumed over the merits of a bathroom, Faro observed that Barbara’s smile contained a nervous glance at Theodore.

  ‘Oh, come now, I’m sure you’d appreciate more than one bath a week,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Well, I do manage that—’

  ‘I dare say you do, with the maids carrying pails of hot water upstairs.’

  ‘Um - yes.’

  ‘That was good enough for most folk,’ Theodore repeated.