Killing Cousins (An Inspector Faro Mystery No.4)

by Alanna Knight

  Inga smiled. 'Nice enough. And very well bred. She had obviously been trained in high service. But not nearly as efficient as your mother,' she added quickly.

  'Middle-aged, was she?' he said.

  'Good heavens, no. Thirty, thirty-five at most. Handsome woman, well set up.'

  'Indeed. I got the impression that all housekeepers were homely and stout'

  Inga laughed. 'Not this one. Do you know, I even suspected that Saul had an eye on her at one time. And a good thing that would have been.'

  She stopped. 'Incidentally, your mother's good spring-cleaning discovered cupboards that had been overlooked for some time and she found a tin box belonging to Mrs Bliss. She didn't know what to do with it, full of papers, references and so forth, I think.'

  'Where is it now?'

  'I have it at Saul's.'

  'Didn't any relatives come to the funeral?'

  'After she died so suddenly we couldn't find any address of relatives, or next of kin. She hinted that she was alone in the world. But not, apparently, if the name Mr Leon Bliss in her notebook we found was anything to go by.'

  'Mr Leon Bliss?'

  Inga shrugged. 'Probably her estranged husband, poor soul.'

  'Nothing in this notebook to give any clues?'

  'Just recipes and so forth. Dr Balfray decided that Mr Bliss must be a relative and wrote to him at the address on one of her references. However, Norma said the letter came back "Not known".'

  'Perhaps she was a widow or the Mrs was a courtesy title.'

  Inga shrugged. 'I gather she wasn't exactly forthcoming about her life before Balfray.'

  'I'd like to have a look at the contents of that tin box sometime.'

  Inga laughed. 'Just curiosity? Or a challenge the inspector cannot resist, is that it?'

  Faro smiled. 'Something like that.' Holding out his hand he raised her to her feet and she threw away the stick with which she had been idly making patterns in the sand as they talked.

  It was a habit he remembered. But once upon a time those patterns had been hearts with their names elaborately produced and entwined. Now all she had written in the sand was 'Bliss'. The name of a woman dead as their own love.

  Chapter 10

  Inga's suggestion that he meet Saul Hoy offered Faro the chance he was looking for, to begin his investigations informally. And who better to give him information than the murdered boy's brother?

  The utmost tact would be called for, but he was a past master at conducting such revealing interviews without a hint that there was anything like murder involved.

  'Tell them there's been a murder or a serious crime and at once they'll close up like coffin lids,' he once warned his colleagues at Edinburgh's Central Office.

  To Inga he said, 'Yes, I should like to pay my condolences.'

  The tiny garden attached to the smithy was neat and tidy, much more feminine than he had imagined, until he realised it had been cherished by Inga's green fingers for some years past.

  Bees hummed over the herb garden and the perfume of sweet-smelling herbs threw him into a confusion of memories. Thyme he recognised from his childhood, green sage and basil.

  Closing the gate, Inga broke off a strand of rosemary and handed it to him. A gesture from a summer long past, and twenty years slipped into oblivion as if they had never been apart. Closing his eyes, he inhaled the herb's heady fragrance, twirling it between his fingers.

  Following Inga across the threshold, he realised the interior of the tiny cottage was typical of Inga herself.

  There was none of the spartan-like surroundings which typified the crofter's house in Orkney. Only the rich had stone-built mansions. The poor lived in hovels and those hovels were desperately bleak places inside. But here the walls held ornamentation, not practical pots and pans battered by constant use. Here there were samplers, texts whose comforting simplicity and worthy sentiments matched the large smithy kitchen with its uneven stone floor and walls, whitewashed to hide the scars of two hundred years.

  On either side of the fire, two hooded Orkney chairs, a colourful rag rug on the floor between them. A huge dresser displayed a collection of blue and white plates, while china figures graced mantelpiece and windowsills where late roses bloomed in vases with a mixture of herbs whose fragrance pervaded the room.

  Gesturing him towards a chair, Inga moved a half-knitted sock and placed it in a basket of home-dyed wool. Was it for Saul, Faro wondered enviously, with a sudden stab of longing that it might be himself who was the recipient.

  As Inga stirred the fire's embers and set the kettle to boil, he considered that imagination rendered no greater contrast possible between the red inferno next door, with its continual ringing of hammer on forge and the smell of burning hooves, and this room. A room that begged the stranger to rest and be comfortable and invited the exchange of confidences over the tantalising odours of fresh baked bere bannocks.

  There was inexpressible delight in these four walls, indefinable magic, Faro thought, as if all the warmth and love that Inga had been unable to put into marriage and raising a family had been lavished into a cottage, full of tender warmth, homemaking skills and healing of body and spirit.

  He had taken no more than a sip of tea when Saul Hoy clattered down the narrow wooden stair, towel in hand. His giant frame, mophead of unruly white curls, black beard and gaunt appearance were considerably improved by recent ablutions. Only about his fine dark eyes the haunted images of the night seemed to cling, as if therein the horrors of the past few hours were still reflected. As the two men shook hands, Inga tactfully withdrew to bring in more peat for the fire.

  Saul came to the point quickly. 'Why won't they let me have the laddie's body? Reverend Erlandson tells me that I have to ask you for permission to have him home for the kisting. And what's all this business about getting the Fiscal over?' he demanded irritably.

  Faro explained that this was the usual procedure in any case where the death certificate could not be signed as 'natural causes', which included those who took their own lives.

  'Where do you fit into all this, mister?'

  'I'm a policeman,' said Faro simply. He wasn't prepared to lie or evade. The truth would have to come out sometime.

  'Oh, a policeman,' Saul repeated suspiciously. 'I thought you was just on a holiday.'

  'So I was ... and am. Policemen take holidays like everyone else, you know, and I wanted to visit my mother and my bairns.'

  Saul's expression softened. 'She's a good woman, your mother. An angel to everyone, she is. She was good to the laddie, too.' Suddenly he sprang to his feet and looked down on Faro with an undisguised air of menace.

  Shaking his head from side to side like a demented creature maddened by pain, he shouted, 'You'll never get me to believe the laddie took his own life! Never. He wasn't like that. As for that business—' he made a disgusted grimace '—of taking Mrs Balfray from her coffin and ... and ... lying down beside her. Such a thought would never have occurred to him. She was sacred to him. He never as much as took her hand when she was alive. As for touching her when she was dead...' Saul's eyes widened in horrified disgust. 'God, he thought the world of her, but he respected her so much that he would have been sick at the thought of anyone touching her.'

  Faro was interested to realise that despite his protests about his simple brother Troller, the idea of necrophilia had occurred to the blacksmith too.

  'Mrs Balfray belonged to a different world, see. There's them, and a long way down the ladder there's us.'

  At Faro's doubtful look, he prodded the air with his finger. 'If you don't believe me, ask any of the estate folk and they'd tell you the same. It would be like ... like—' he tried to find the word'—blasphemy. Yes, blasphemy, to lay a hand on the laird's wife.'

  There was a delicate pause before Faro said, 'There was then nothing carnal in your brother's devotion to Mrs Balfray?'

  'Carnal?' Saul thought about the word and what it might mean before shaking his head vigorously. 'If you
mean he wanted to ... to bed with her - no. She was a goddess to him. Like I said.'

  And, leaning forward, his face inches from Faro's own, 'What you don't seem to realise, mister, was that Troller was still a child, a peedie bairn for all his man's body. He thought like an eight-year-old. And it's the thoughts that count. You can ask Inga, too, if you don't believe me.'

  After a pause Faro said, 'Tell me about the night when you last saw him.'

  To be honest with you, I don't mind much of the last hours. We all had that much to eat and drink, a regular funeral wake it was, laird did us proud. The drams flowing...'

  'Did your brother indulge too?' was Faro's tactful question.

  'He did not. He stayed sober as a judge. Aye, at one stage,' he added sheepishly, 'I remember urging him to take more drams, to cheer him up like. But he wasn't having any, shrugged me off, turned his back on us all and just sat there, the poor lad, looking lost and sad.'

  'When did you leave this gathering? What time was it?'

  'How do I know that, mister? Who keeps count of time when folks are enjoying themselves? All I remember was that sometime, Troller was worried about me, shaking me by the shoulder, trying to wake me up. I can still see his face... oh God!'

  He covered his face with his hands and sobbed, 'Oh, the poor laddie. He was that concerned about me. He said he was going home and that I should come with him while I was still able to walk.'

  With a violent shake of his head, he added, 'And that was true enough, for no man could carry me single-handed. He managed to get me to the door of the hall, saying the fresh air would do me good. But I wasn't having any. I pushed him away. Told him to go home on his own if he liked, I wasn't ready to leave.'

  He stopped and stared out of the window, frowning. 'All I remember is seeing him going across the road and down towards the cliff path. He was walking slowly, shaking his head, talking to himself, as he did when he was sad. So sad he was, poor laddie.'

  'He was alone?'

  'When Troller was sad, he always wanted to be off on his own. Like a sick animal.'

  'Why did he go down the cliff path?'

  'He loved the seals. Said they talked to him. Even as a peedie bairn if he was upset he'd go down and tell them his troubles.'

  Saul sobbed again. 'Oh God forgive me. If I hadn't drink taken, I might have gone with him, let him take me home and none of this would have ever happened.'

  'What do you think happened?'

  'Isn't that obvious to anyone, mister? Why, he was talking to the seals, just like always, when he missed his footing and rolled down the cliff and into the sea. His clothes were soaking wet, Reverend Erlandson said, and all seaweedy when he found him on that stone.'

  'You believe it would have been possible for him to fall down the cliff and into the sea without doing himself any harm?'

  Saul looked surprised. 'Yes. Why not?'

  'Well, one would imagine that he - any man - would have received dreadful injuries in the fall and would have been rendered incapable of climbing back up the cliff, as he apparently did.'

  Saul sighed and shook his head. 'But Troller wasn't any man, mister. He was a very strong lad ...' Stifling a sob, he continued, 'Poor laddie, poor laddie, when he climbed back up, he just didn't realise how badly he'd been hurt, his head cut and all. I reckon he felt a bit groggy-kind and dedded to lie down and take a rest on the Odin Stone. There he collapsed and ... and... passed away.'

  Faro was silent, seeking the right words. 'Do you think there was any possibility that someone followed him that night?'

  'Followed him? You mean, to do him harm?'

  'There is that possibility. Someone drunk, wanting to frighten him,' he added awkwardly.

  Saul laughed harshly. 'Not on this island. Everyone thought the world of Troller. And I'll tell you one thing, they'll be just as keen as I am to see justice done and his name cleared. So, Mr Policeman, anything you can do will be greatly appreciated.'

  Leaning forward, he shook a large fist in Faro's face. 'Someone else put Mrs Balfray beside him and when I find the bastard who did that to my brother, I'll kill him,' he added ferociously.

  Faro left with a very clear picture in his mind now of the first part of the puzzle, that prelude to murder. The simple Troller walking down the cliff path, as he had done a thousand times before in his life, for his lone vigil with the seals. Perhaps they knew the answer, the only ones who saw what really happened and could never tell. .

  'Jeremy!'

  It was Inga hurrying towards him, wrapping a shawl about her shoulders. 'Thank you for spending so much time with Saul. It will have helped him, I know, to have you to talk to,' she added breathlessly. 'My goodness, you do walk quickly.'

  He smiled. 'Especially when I'm thinking.'

  'You always did that.' Her smile was tender, the words spoken softly. There was a short silence and, almost embarrassed now, her tone brusque, she said, 'Well, is there anything I can tell you?'

  'You were at the wake?'

  'Until the end. And I had a clear head. I never touch the stuff.'

  'So you would have seen if Troller had got into

  any disagreement with anyone...anything like that?'

  She stopped walking, staring down at the sea. 'It's like Saul told you, Jeremy. Troller didn't have an enemy in the world. Besides, they would have Saul to reckon with - physically he's the strongest man on the island.' They walked in silence and then she said, 'Poor Troller, that climb, injured as he was and then taking Thora out of her coffin. The effort must have been too much for his poor heart. He just lay down and died. There just isn't any other explanation, whatever Saul wants us to believe.'

  Faro considered her thoughtfully. Interesting that she had abandoned the arsenic theory.

  'Besides, none of the young folk except Troller would dare walk down the cliffpath when the moon is full and the seal king is on the rampage,' she added firmly.

  'They surely don't believe that, Inga, this is 1871... '

  '1871 or 1371 - it's all the same to them. They believe that the seal king takes human form and steals a mortal bride. And there isn't a girl on Balfray would walk down this cliff on a dark night at this time of the year. Or any other time of year.'

  She paused to let the words sink in and then added,

  'The very day Mrs Bliss was drowned, in broad daylight, Letty, who is Saul's cousin and was maid at the castle, was going out to meet her young man's boat coming across from Kirkwall. And she saw, or so she claimed,' she said with a sidelong glance at his mocking expression, 'a seal leap up from the water and drag poor Mrs Bliss under...'

  Faro stopped walking. 'Is that so? I understood no one witnessed the accident'

  'No one would believe her, being Troller's cousin and always a bit, well, highly strung.'

  'Highly strung, indeed. The girl might have been witness to a murder.'

  Inga laughed. 'Murder? By a seal man? You can't possibly believe that Jeremy Faro, after all these years in Edinburgh, I'm surprised at you.'

  Faro ignored the taunt. 'And I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this before, Inga. That it was kept so very quiet.' He looked at her. 'Even by you. When you told me how you discovered her.'

  Inga shrugged. 'I didn't want to be laughed at,' she said uncomfortably.

  'Laughed at indeed. I think I had better have a talk to this...Letty, did you say?'

  Inga shook her head. 'She left Balfray just after the accident. Terrified to stay any longer, according to Saul, so she went to Kirkwall and married her fisherman.'

  'How can I get in touch with her?'

  'Oh, Saul will have her address if you want it.'

  'I most certainly do - and soon.'

  Inga regarded him steadily. 'You're wasting your time, you know. Letty is only one stage brighter than poor Troller, Alas, it runs in Saul's family. Too many cousins intermarrying.'

  'That was one good reason for you not marrying him.' Faro smiled. 'Aren't you glad now that you didn't?'

 
Ignoring the question, Inga said, 'Fortunately my side of the family didn't inherit madness, only the second sight.'

  Faro was silent 'You should have married, Inga.'

  'What makes you say that?' she asked sharply.

  'On the evidence of the house we've just left, you would have made a good wife.'

  She stopped in her tracks. 'Aren't you a little late with that observation, Jeremy Faro? About twenty years too late,' she added bitterly.

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Oh, don't be sorry. I've had enough regrets for both of us. Especially when I see Vince. Do you realise we could have had a son about his age?' she added softly, watching his face intently. 'A pity you never had a son of your own.'

  'But I did. For a whole week. And then I lost him... and my wife too ...'

  She took hold of his arm. 'Oh Jeremy... I'm sorry ... I'm so sorry.'

  'You can never be as sorry as I am,' he said harshly. 'As for Vince, he is like my own son, the only one I am ever likely to have.'

  His deep sigh, his look of anguish told her how much he still suffered. 'And now, please, may we change the subject? Aren't we getting a little too personal?'

  She returned his smile. 'Just about ready to quarrel. Just as we used to. But there'd be no reconciliation this time, would there?'

  Determined to be immune to that soft whisper, the wistful pleading, he replied shortly, 'And no quarrel either, if I can help it.'

  They walked in silence and then he asked, 'How well did you know Thora?'

  Inga thought for a moment. When she replied Faro detected a certain diffidence, as if she was holding something back.

  'Until she took ill, I didn't know her particularly well. I knew Norma much better.' Her tone also indicated that she liked Norma better and Faro, encouraged, asked, 'Tell me about Norma.'

  'Oh, I suppose I was sorry for her, having Francis stolen from her by her rich young stepsister. Everyone guessed that Francis was weak and had married Thora for her money. You're not to take anything sinister from that, Jeremy. Women are always sorry for older sisters who are jilted more or less at the altar steps.'