The Missing Duchess

by Alanna Knight

  Miss Fortescue thought. 'A sapphire and diamond ring, gold bracelets.' She rubbed her wrist nervously. 'In the shape of a snake with ruby eyes. No earrings. And a pendant.' And touching her throat, 'Yes, she always wore a pendant. Just a simple gold cross.'

  Faro sighed. In that statement, Miss Fortescue was confirming his worst fears.

  'And underneath the dress?'

  Miss Fortescue was taken aback by the question. She blushed. 'The usual garments ladies wear, Inspector. Petticoats and so forth.'

  She sounded offended but Faro persisted. 'Can you be a little more precise, miss?'

  'No, I'm afraid I can't,' she said coldly.

  Faro gave her a hard look. 'I presume that as lady-in-waiting and sole travelling companion, you were also in charge of her wardrobe and of dressing her each day.'

  'I just can't remember, exactly.' She shook her head and pursed her lips firmly, indicating that particular subject was closed.

  Faro waited a moment. 'Did she by any chance wear corsets?' he prompted her gently.

  'Of course, all ladies wear corsets, Inspector.'

  Faro frowned. 'If you are finding this too painful and embarrassing, miss, perhaps you'd be good enough to write it down, as you kindly wrote the jewel-box list. And a drawing would be most helpful if you could manage that.'

  'A drawing. I couldn't possibly draw Her Highness,' she said indignantly.

  'I meant a drawing of her clothes.'

  Miss Fortescue sighed. 'Oh, very well. If I can.'

  'If you can, it would be most helpful,' he repeated.

  They emerged from the formal garden in silence and both were relieved to find that the castle was in view.

  Miss Fortescue's pace quickened and Faro was aware of the servant keeping then within range. He was desperately searching for some safe conversation when she suddenly said: 'When last we met you were rushing for a train. I presume you missed it.'

  'I met Mr Stuart Millar, the historian. He lives on the edge of the estate and I allowed him to persuade me to return to his cottage. He was kind enough to give me supper and a most interesting account of the Crusader and the Luck o' Lethie.’

  'Oh, indeed,' she said vaguely. 'You would see it when you were staying at the castle, Sir Terence is very proud of it.'

  'I had to leave early.' He consulted his watch. 'But perhaps, if I have time - I'm quite curious -'

  Miss Fortescue pushed open the front door. 'There is Sir Terence now.'

  Sir Terence, thought Faro, was looking mightily relieved to see her. He had the look of an anxious father repressing reproaches to a wayward and obstinate child.

  'Inspector Faro would like to see the Luck o' Lethie,' she called, and leaving them to it, she ran lightly upstairs.

  Sir Terence smiled. 'Our family mascot - come this way.'

  Faro followed him into the library.

  'This is the oldest part of the house, you will observe the original stone walls.'

  He pointed to a niche above the ancient fireplace where a glass case, its velvet backing long devoid of colour, had resting on it a golden horn anchored by metal clips. It was not like any horn Faro had ever seen, resembling a fiery dragon's head, with the mouthpiece at the back of the neck. Its eyes glittered with the blue of sapphires and its scales were embossed with green and red stones which Faro did not doubt were emeralds and rubies.

  At his admiring murmur, Sir Terence said: 'Brought back by our Crusader from Jerusalem. According to legend, one of the treasures the Templars stole from King Solomon's Temple after the city fell.' He paused. 'Or so Mr Stuart Millar tells us.'

  Faro didn't doubt there was something in the legend. The horn looked exceedingly old and not a little battered, but if this was the head of Solomon's Rod, then it predated Christianity by a thousand years.

  'Could do with a bit of a clean-up,' said Sir Terence apologetically. 'Has hardly left this room since the castle was built in 1670.'

  'So it has been carefully preserved by your family for two hundred years. Remarkable.'

  'Yes, indeed. We're very superstitious about preserving the Luck o' Lethie.' Sir Terence surveyed it proudly. 'As long as it survives, so will our line continue. It is supposedly a cure for barren women and the only time it has ever been removed from its case was when there were, er, problems.'

  His brooding gaze rested suddenly on a painting of himself and the first five of their eight children. 'Not one of ours, I need hardly add,' he added heartily. 'Our women are never barren.'

  Faro, aware of someone behind him, turned to see Miss Fortescue framed in the doorway, his cape over her arm. Her gaze was watchful and she betrayed an air of listening very intently to their conversation.

  Thanking them both, Faro announced that he must hurry or he would miss his train.

  'Train, Inspector. By no means. You shall have the carriage.' He cut short Faro's protests. 'It is sitting in the coach-house idle, and you have already suffered enough inconvenience for one day. See, it's raining again.'

  As they stood together on the front steps, smiling, to wave him goodbye, Faro was not at all displeased to sink into the luxury of the Lethie carriage and be transported home to Newington, where he was greatly looking forward to mulling over the day's events with Vince.

  His stepson could be relied upon to be helpful. Vince's suggestions and encouragement were both urgently needed.

  Although Faro had, without difficulty but with considerable reliance on his intuition, found a plausible explanation to the two-hundred-year-old mystery of Major Weir's staff and the building of Lethie Castle, a ten-day-old mystery was at present beyond his powers.

  Chapter 11

  Vince was not at home. Much in need of his stepson's buoyant presence to banish his anguished thoughts, Faro had to wait until breakfast next morning to relate Stuart Millar's story of King Solomon's Rod.

  Vince was intrigued, knowing something of the Templars from his Freemason friends. 'I'm told that the oldest Scottish lodge at Kilwinning was founded by Robert the Bruce for the reception of those Knights Templars who had fled from persecution in Europe. A Templars contingent fought at the king's side, you know, on the field at Bannockburn.'

  'After inflicting such a crushing victory over King Edward II, one would presume that their future was guaranteed,' said Faro.

  'True. But there was more to it than that. Edward's army was considered invincible and some said that his was no normal defeat of a powerful army. Rumour had it that witchcraft and magic were involved -'

  Faro laughed. 'Not unknown sentiments for losers to indulge in. They have to have a better excuse than telling their people they just weren't good enough to beat the enemy.'

  'I agree. But rumour also claimed that the Templars had some holy relic, which they carried before their king. Certainly it was extraordinary that, even in the heat of battle and some fairly bloody hand-to-hand fighting, neither the Bruce nor any of their number suffered a single scratch.'

  'Ah!' said Faro.

  Vince looked at him quickly. 'You're thinking perhaps it was the Luck o' Lethie. You might be right at that, since the serpent's head goes back to the very origins of the Templars movement. I've often wondered -'

  'And what have you wondered?'

  'Well, about Solomon's Tower. As you know, it was built on the ruins of a twelfth-century religious house. And that could well have been a Templar chapel. A rich and powerful international brotherhood of religious warriors, Stepfather. Don't let us underestimate them.'

  'A secret society so strong that popes aware of their power had tried to suppress it,' said Faro. 'A society important enough to be taken under the King of Scotland's protection. Gives one food for thought, doesn't it?'

  Vince nodded. 'Especially when you now tell me there's a shrine-like upper room in the Mad Bart's cat-ridden establishment. What blasphemy.'

  All Faro's training, combined with an extra sense that had served him well in the past, now compelled him to believe that the disappearance of the Grand
Duchess was no coincidence, but the outcome of some international intrigue.

  As Vince's first patient of the day was announced by Mrs Brook, Faro considered what he hadn't told his stepson.

  Was Sir Hedley involved, his pose as an eccentric recluse a screen for less innocent activities?

  But aware of Vince's loathing for Sir Hedley, he decided to keep such speculations, as yet wholly without sufficient evidence to support them, to himself.

  'I won't be at home tonight, Stepfather. I'm staying at Owen's place. And I must get in a few rounds of golf,' Vince added, with a speculative sight at a rather threatening sky, 'if I'm to reduce my handicap in time for this Perth tournament.'

  Faro smiled. Both he and his stepson seemed doomed to disastrous affairs of the heart. But he felt encouraged that these overnight visits to Cramond, which were becoming more frequent, signalled that Vince might be considering the advocate's pretty sister Olivia as a suitable wife.

  At the door, Vince turned. 'Met your cousin Leslie last night. He was at the Spec with some friends and we had a most convivial evening.'

  Edinburgh's Speculative Club was famous as a meeting place for graduates where serious matters for discussion were leavened by youthful joviality and high spirits.

  'Now that you mention it, you do look as if you might be suffering from a more urgent handicap than the state of your golf,' said Faro.

  Vince smiled weakly. 'You miss nothing as usual, Stepfather.'

  Faro laughed. 'I also observe that you declined a second helping of Mrs Brook's excellent sausages. Now that is cause for comment. What about Leslie?'

  'Tell you about it later. He was Colonel Wrightson's guest.' Vince chuckled enthusiastically. 'What tales he has to tell. Knows everybody who is anybody. Been a guest in practically every noble house the length and breadth of Scotland,' he added in tones of awe. 'Didn't get home till two. Tried to persuade me to go riding with him in the Queen's Park. Rises at six - dear God, what a thought.'

  'And what energy,' said Faro.

  And as Vince dragged himself off, still yawning, to his surgery, Faro hoped, for their own sakes, that all his patients were reasonably healthy that day.

  Shortly afterwards, as Faro was closing his front door, the familiar police carriage rattled round the corner.

  A young policeman leapt out and saluted smartly.

  'Constable Burns, sir. Glad I caught you, sir. Man out walking his dogs found a man's body in the shrubbery by St Anthony's Chapel. Dr Cranley's there. Wants a word with you before moving the body.'

  Faro jumped into the carriage with an ominous feeling of disaster. In reply to his question the constable shook his head.

  'No, there wasn't any identification.'

  'Any signs of violence?'

  'Nothing that a quick look would reveal.' The constable gave a grimace of distaste. 'Been there some time, I'd say.'

  Another mysterious corpse. Was this the missing coachman?

  'Indeed. Have you seen anything unusual - any reports of disturbance in the area?'

  'Nothing, sir. My beat is in that area of the park with Constable Reid. We don't usually patrol Arthur's Seat or Salisbury Crags yard by yard, unless we have special instructions to do so,' he added anxiously, 'I expect the dead man was taken with a heart attack.'

  Like the Grand Duchess, Faro thought grimly as they left the carriage and set off on foot up the steep bank which overlooked Holyroodhouse. The Palace's extensive gardens were now grey and empty, the trees stripped bare. A melancholy wind came from the sea beyond Salisbury Crags, hurling before it heavy clouds, towards a skyline dominated by Edinburgh Castle and the High Street's tall houses.

  Ahead of them lay the ruins of St Anthony's Chapel. There, according to tradition, a hermit had once tended the chapel altar and kept a light burning in the tower, to guide mariners safely up the River Forth. Built in the fifteenth century, i hospice for those afflicted with 'St Anthony's Fire' - epilepsy -the chapel guarded the Holy Well whose pagan origins predate J the Abbey of Holy Rood, site of King David I's encounter with a magical stag bearing a cross between its antlers.

  Faro paused to look back at the loch gleaming far below. A peaceful scene of swans gliding in majestic serenity untroubled by the follies of men, he thought, staring at the group of tiny figures who bustled back and forth high above.

  The corpse was half-hidden by shrubbery. Dr Cranley, Sergeant McQuinn and Constable Reid hovered nearby. And at a sale distance, looking rather green, was the man who had made the discovery.

  Introduced as Mr Innes, Faro recognised him as a Newington shopkeeper. Middle-aged, well-to-do, Innes was clearly unused to such dramas threatening the sanctity of his early-mornirg constitutional. He wore a look of outraged respectability that he should have found himself in the undignified predicament of discovering a body and having to associate with the police.

  'It was Daisy found him,' Innes pointed accusingly towards a small bright-eyed Skye terrier. Possessor of the only nose quire unoffended by the stench of decomposition, Daisy looked proud enough to burst. Overcome by a fury of tail-wagging and seizing every opportunity to dash forward, she whined softly, eyeing the body with the proprietary and almost predatory relish of a dog prevented from demolishing a particularly succulent bone.

  Mr Innes was much embarrassed by such ill-bred behaviour and Daisy was frequently called to heel, rewarding her master with a gentle-eyed reproach. When she was finally put on her chain she continued to whine in protest, deprived and ill-treated and looking as down in the mouth as a canine could manage.

  Mr Innes wasn't looking particularly happy either.

  'When will I be allowed to return home?' he asked.

  'I requested that he remain here until you arrived,' Dr Cranley called across to Faro, neatly side-stepping the responsibility.

  'My wife will be anxious,' Mr Innes consulted his watch. 'I have already missed breakfast and we have a business to run.'

  McQuinn came over and said to Faro: 'Constable Burns came for me. I've taken a statement from the gentleman.'

  'In that case, sir, we need detain you no longer,' said Faro.

  Innes turned to leave, took a few steps and changed his mind. Pointing to the body, he said to Faro, 'However long that - that - has been here, it certainly wasn't there last night.'

  'Are you sure?' asked Faro.

  'Certain sure. This is our evening walk, regular as clockwork and in most weathers too. It's Daisy's favourite. She's a great ratter and is always in that shrubbery after them, sniffing around. I can vouch for that, if necessary.'

  Faro took the card Innes handed him, and thanking him for his help, he watched them depart, the man relieved, the dog dragged reluctantly from her scene of triumph. Her reproachful whimpers indicated that this was what a dog's life was all about.

  Dr Cranley, who had been bending over the corpse, strode towards Faro. Removing the handkerchief covering his nose and mouth, he said: 'Thought you'd better have a look before we move him.' He shook his head. 'This was no heart attack. Can't tell until we do the post-mortem but, at a rough guess, I'd say he most likely drowned.'

  'Drowned?'

  'Yes, drowned.'

  'When?' Faro demanded sharply.

  'More than a week ago, I'd estimate.'

  'Which fits in with what Mr Innes suggested,' said McQuinn. That the body wasn't here last night. Probably dumped a few hours ago.'

  Dr Cranley nodded. 'I'd say he was right about that.' He jerked his head in the direction of the loch far below. 'Probably down there.'

  'So where has he been all this time?' Faro demanded. 'He certainly didn't get up here unaided.'

  The doctor shrugged. 'That's your business, Faro. Mine is restricted to the facts regarding the cause of death, not his whereabouts since death occurred.'

  Faro hardly listened. He was a very worried man. The significance of the time-lapse was ominous, it slotted almost too neatly into the grim discovery in the West Bow.

  The two fatalities,
he felt sure, were unlikely to have been coincidental.

  'Any identification?'

  'None. Pockets empty.'

  Faro sighed like a man whose worst fears have come to pass as he followed Cranley, who said: 'You'll need to cover up.'

  And as Faro withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket, Dr Cranley continued: 'it's not a pleasant sight. Damn rum business, I'd say, in more ways than meets the eye.'

  The doctor was strongly addicted to rum and cliches and Faro would have appreciated a less sensitive nose as well as a fortifying strong drink as he looked down on the remains of a middle-aged man. Of middle height and middle build, no longer with any features of distinction except for thinning ginger hair, his clothes worn but respectable, his description when circulated, Faro decided wearily, might fit one-quarter of the male population of Scotland.

  McQuinn had been listening attentively to the conversation between the doctor and Faro. 'If he drowned down there, sir, why carry him all this way uphill to leave him in the shrubbery? It doesn't make sense.'

  Faro sighed. 'His body was obviously concealed somewhere.'

  'Not in the open air, that's for sure,' said the doctor. 'Animals would have got at him and there would have been maggot infestation by now.'

  'There's been a lot of rain and his clothes would have been ruined too,' said Faro, examining the man's hands. Smooth, with no callouses, not the hands of a labouring man. And whatever his occupation, the dead man had not been a professional coachman with palms hardened by daily contact with horses' reins.

  Watching Faro, Cranley said: 'He wasn't in the water long. Was that what you're looking for?'

  Faro nodded. Within a few hours of being immersed in water the skin on the hands and feet of a dead body takes on a characteristic bleached and wrinkled appearance, commonly known as 'washerwoman's hands'.

  'We'll see what the post-mortem reveals. But I can tell you one thing. I'd be prepared to swear that he's been kept in a closed dry place since he died.'

  'Such as?'

  Cranley shrugged. 'A trunk, or a closet,' he said grimly. 'Or some airless space, like a cupboard. Well, well, here's another little mystery for you to work on, Faro. If you want my opinion on this one - although I don't suppose we'll find any marks of violence - I won't be surprised if there was foul play involved somewhere.'