Killing Cousins (An Inspector Faro Mystery No.4)

by Alanna Knight

  Most transparent of all was her desperate anxiety that there should be no scandal connected with the family. The necessity of preserving that proud Balfray image of benevolence against which wicked thoughts and dastardly deeds were unthinkable was uppermost in Norma Balfray's mind as she talked to Inspector Faro.

  Into this picture of sweetness and light and universal love all were anxious to portray, Faro recognised that the time was inopportune to hint, however delicately, that Thora had been 'accidentally' poisoned. As for Troller and the death scene staged from Romeo and Juliet, apparently no one but his brother had envisaged the nastier implications.

  Necrophilia, rarely discussed in polite society but a fact of life, or death, was frequently encountered by Faro in his daily dealings with the lower echelons of society. He had Vince's assurances that it was often criminals who had a basic mind disorder and were deprived of the normal sexual relations with women who found in necrophilia a somewhat revolting satisfaction for their carnal appetites.

  Now, anxious to take his leave of Miss Balfray, he found an unexpected excuse in the appearance of Reverend Erlandson, who suddenly materialised from behind the hedge. Flushed in countenance and agitated in manner, he demanded of his betrothed, rather too sharply for politeness, 'I have been searching for you everywhere, my dear. I hardly expected to find you here,' he added sternly.

  Faro was acutely conscious that the accusing glance in his direction held a shaft of hardly hidden jealousy, of man-to-man assessment old as time. He left quickly, chuckling to himself. It was rather endearing to find the minister capable of such worldly emotions.

  As he hastened towards the castle, he considered that some time spent with his two daughters would be a refreshing change. His final thought on Norma Balfray was to wonder if it had been Francis who had persuaded her to impress Balfray's virtues on the inspector. Or had it been her own idea?

  Merry peals of laughter interrupted his reverie and in the distance, quite oblivious of his presence, were Rose and Emily, dancing through the sea wood, holding on to Inga. He stopped, suddenly not wanting to encounter them, not wanting to be a dull appendage to this scene of girlish merriment. But he found himself smiling. They did make a pretty picture.

  Fortunate indeed that Rose and Emily had found such a delightful friend. But he realised that he should have been gladder than he felt. Was it only because Inga's reappearance so unexpectedly in his life, as the devoted companion of his two daughters, nagged at him with the unfinished business of yesterday, reminding him that he should remarry?

  His girls needed a mother. Everyone told him so. He thought of how happy it would make his mother, and Mrs Brook his housekeeper at Sheridan Place. He thought of friends and colleagues and what an excellent choice, what an adornment, Inga St Ola would be to his bed and board.

  As for Vince, he had a shrewd suspicion that his stepson made no addition to this paean of praise. But whatever motives or reasons he might have for not liking his stepfather's choice of a new wife, he would be clever enough to conceal them at all cost. It would be the end, of course, of their shared and undeniably pleasant bachelor existence.

  Suddenly angry with himself, Faro turned on his heel and walked quickly in the opposite direction to where the haar gathered like a shroud about the sunshine and the seals increased their doleful lament.

  'I'm not prepared to be influenced in choosing a wife. I'll not take a wife to please anyone - except myself. And I'll marry when I'm good and ready, when I want a wife and not a moment before. As for Inga St Ola, with all her herbal cures, her spells, what would I do with a wife who might have the powers to ill-wish another human being to her death?'

  Chapter Twelve

  Faro decided to call upon Captain Gibb, pondering on how to make it all seem as casual as possible. By now he guessed that the whisper had gone all around sweetness-and-light Balfray warning them that the formidable Inspector Faro was asking questions about Troller's death.

  The house near the rectory was stone-built and had at one time been a watch-tower overlooking the bay. Luck was with him, for even as he considered a plausible excuse, the door opened and Gibb beckoned to him.

  'I was looking through my telescope watching the seals and I saw you on the cliff path. I was hoping you would come in and have a chat. I understand from Vince that you are interested in the Balfrays' family history,' said the Captain.

  The domain of Captain Gibb was very much of the bachelor variety. It sadly lacked a woman's touch and survival, rather than comfort, were the matters most in mind. A general air of untidiness pervaded everything as if each time the Captain took something down from a shelf he made only a half-hearted attempt to replace it.

  Much as Faro deplored his busybody mother he had inherited from her a sense of neatness, and living in perpetual disorder outside the confines of his study was painful for him. Following the Captain up the winding stone staircase into what he called his living quarters, Faro observed through a half-dosed door an unmade bed.

  Another flight of stairs and Captain Gibb opened a door, announcing, 'This is my den.' No description could have been more apt since books toppled from every shelf and papers gushed out of envelopes on to the floor. Somewhere underneath this mountain of words lay a table where, presumably, the Captain sorted through documents concerning the Balfray family. He seemed oblivious to the untidiness. Sweeping aside in one gesture a large heap of rolled documents, he offered Faro a seat, regarding him eagerly from behind a paper hill.

  'What can I tell you?' he asked.

  This was a poser since Faro hadn't the least idea what Vince had imparted to the Captain. 'Just their history generally. I believe you've found some interesting documents?'

  'Indeed, I have. Yes, indeed.' Burrowing for a moment, he at length brought out a tattered notebook. 'I expect you know of their connection with the Earl of Bothwell, Queen Mary's third husband?'

  'I have heard some mention of it.'

  The Captain nodded delightedly. 'But we go back much, much further than that. There has always been the suggestion of myth and legend about this island. There are certain curiosities, for instance.

  'Have you ever considered why there should be trees and vegetation on Balfray when most of the islands have so little?' he added dramatically. 'Has it really something to do with an advantageously sheltered position, or, as legend would have us believe, because it was blessed by St Ola?'

  The saint himself?'

  'Yes, a hermit with divine vision, a kind of eleventh-century St Francis. Birds and animals flocked to him and trees grew miraculously to give them shelter. The seals in particular have always haunted Balfray.'

  'So I've noticed.'

  'Oh dear, I suspect they are rather too noisy at this time of year, St Ola's Summer, that's what it's always been called. The time when, despite what the calendar says, nature forgets it should be preparing for winter and drifts back into summer for a week or two.'

  'I'm very glad I timed my visit so well. Orkney, as I remember, at this time of year is plagued with high winds.'

  'The rest of Orkney,' Gibb corrected him, frowning at this interruption. 'That is so.'

  'I beg your pardon, you were telling me about the saint.'

  The Captain shook his head. 'Obviously there had been people living here before St Ola came. The Dwarfie Ha' belongs to pagan days. Have you see it yet?'

  'I was much impressed.'

  'Good. Good.'

  'I presume the Odin Stone is of the same period?'

  'Yes, indeed. I'll come to that later,' said the Captain hastily. The island was called St Ola, after the saint. It was the Balfrays who changed its name. There is a big gap in the history until St Ola is referred to again in documents dated about 1567 ...'

  '1567? When the Earl of Bothwell was on the run after the Battle of Carberry Hill?'

  Gibb chuckled delightedly. 'I see you know your history, Mr Faro. At that time, St Ola was referred to as a place of magic powers which was capable of vanishin
g into thin air and reappearing every few decades.'

  'Eynhallow has a similar reputation.'

  Gibb nodded. 'Indeed, indeed it has. Around the time of the Stuart Earls, the island had a reputation which kept sailors and the Earls' men at a respectful distance. Its thick woods and trees were reputed to be the home of a warlock and his sister. No one knows what their names were rightly but they were known to history as the first St Olas.'

  Pausing, as if to allow Faro to absorb the significance of this fact, he continued. 'One man wasn't afraid of their reputation. The Earl of Bothwell. Perhaps his own background did not bear too close a scrutiny. He was on the run to put it bluntly and when his ships were refused anchorage they took refuge behind a mist which obligingly hid them from the Kirkwall Castle guns - in this very bay.

  "The Earl sought, and found, refuge for several days, made welcome as the guest of the warlock of St Ola and his sister, and waited upon by a strange assortment of creatures, trolls and hogbens, enough to strike terror into human hearts. His compensation was that the warlock's sister was possessed of extraordinary charms, to which the Earl had a known weakness.

  'When he took his leave of them, he persuaded the warlock to accompany him on his voyage, a kind of good luck charm, I suppose. He left as payment for Inga St Ola's bed—'

  'Inga?'

  Gibb nodded. 'Inga St Ola - an extraordinary coincidence, don't you think? Where was I? Oh yes, he left her from his treasures two magnificent emeralds and a chaplet of precious stones - no doubt booty from some of his Border raids, the treasure he was now using as his ransom for his wife, the Queen of Scots. Well, as we know, imprisonment and death awaited him in Denmark, but the warlock escaped, returned to St Ola and built the original castle.

  'Rumour had it that Inga St Ola bore Bothwell a child and, with her brother, founded the Balfray dynasty on the booty he'd managed to salvage from the Earl's treasure ship.'

  Smiling, the Captain sat back in his chair. 'It's all here in the papers Francis' grandfather found in a leatherbound chest of great antiquity, when he was tearing down the original castle to build the present one. The warlock was a very shrewd man. Magic did not blind him to the practicalities of life on the island. He found a use for everything—'

  'Even to using the chambered cairn as the Balfray vault?'

  'Clever of you to spot that, Mr Faro. Not quite Maes Howe, but very interesting.'

  'What became of the treasure?'

  Gibb's eyes gleamed. 'Wouldn't we all like to know that? Most of it vanished into stones and bricks and lost speculations by the family over the years. The Balfray emeralds are all that remains.'

  'The ones that Bothwell gave to Inga St Ola?'

  Gibb nodded. The very same. The family would never part with them. There was a legend that the line would die out if they did. That's here, too, in the papers, if you would like to read it.'

  Faro took one look at the cramped ancient writing and winced. 'That's not my interest, alas.'

  'Nor mine,' said Gibb cheerfully.

  'But how...?'

  'Oh, I do know old Scots, but not Latin. I have Reverend Erlandson to thank for translating for me. I desperately needed the help of a scholar. John has been an enormous help, quite tireless. I could never have managed that without him.

  'I'm just an old sea-dog,' he added, with a sudden disconcerting roar of laughter, digging Faro in the ribs. 'Am I not, eh?'

  Without awaiting an answer, he opened a drawer and after a deal of searching produced a crumpled parchment and a paper. 'Here's one of John's translations.

  The wicked Earl, the wicked Earl,

  Naen rich as he shall Bee

  'Til Odin's stayn and Ola's laird

  Doun tae the sea Bee fall.

  It still doesn't make a great deal of sense, does it?' Gibb asked with a chuckle. 'As you'll observe on the original, in the place of a word that was missing there was this symbol.'

  He pointed to the tiny drawing of a bee and it was a moment before Faro remembered where he had seen a carving exactly like it.

  'Remarkable,' he said, handing back the paper. 'And have you ever seen the emeralds?'

  Gibb laughed. 'Of course. Everyone has. Thora wears them...' He shook his head sadly. 'I mean, she wore them constantly. Earrings as big as pigeons' eggs, set with diamonds. Beautiful, and these days I reckon still worth a queen's ransom.'

  Faro took his departure and returned to the castle, deep in thought. Approaching by the kitchen door he decided that the time had come for a good old gossip with his mother who prided herself on knowing everything.

  He was not unduly surprised to see Rose and Emily at the kitchen table, heads poised over the book that Inga was reading to them. As he stood at the door unobserved, it was a cosy domestic scene, the kind he realised that many fortunate husbands experience and take for granted most of their lives, part of their daily homecoming. A sigh escaped him, for he was never to be a husband again, despite that sudden knowing look his mother sent in his direction.

  This time the girls leaped up and fluttered to his side with cries of delight Was it instinctive? was his immediate reaction. Were they glad to see him or was this in response to Grandma's stern lecture on dutiful children?

  Smiling, Inga did not linger. She left on some slight excuse and, with Rose and Emily sitting on his knees, a far from comfortable arrangement but one that he was prepared to endure without protest, he tried discreedy to question his mother on events at Balfray Castle.

  But mere mention of Thora brought a shake of the head and a frown in the direction of the two girls. Surely this must be one of the oddest police investigations on record, he thought cynically, thankful that Superintendent Mcintosh could not see him now.

  'Captain Gibb was telling me about the magnificent Balfray emeralds...'

  'He's always on about something. History is coming out of that man's ears. Can't get any other conversation out of him...'

  'Did you ever see the earrings?'

  'We did, Papa,' said Rose. 'And put them on.'

  'Yes, Papa, Mrs Balfray let us wear them,' said Emily proudly.

  Faro realised that the two girls, obediently seen and not heard as was required of them, were not completely indifferent to the grown-ups' conversation.

  'I would love some earrings,' said Rose. 'Wouldn't you, Emily?'

  'Can we have our ears pierced, Papa? Grandma says it doesn't hurt.'

  Faro's placating murmur was immediately taken as assent.

  'Mrs Balfray took her earrings off when we came to see her.'

  'She let us play with them, Papa.'

  Faro suppressed a tender smile at this gross exaggeration and the picture of two little girls 'playing' with jewels worth what Captain Gibb had called a queen's ransom.

  "Yes, they were so lovely,' sighed Rose.

  'Like pigeons' eggs, Papa,' said Emily, with astonishing accuracy, Faro thought, remembering the Captain's description.

  'And Mrs Balfray said that maybe some day she would give them to us.'

  Mrs Faro exchanged an amused glance with her son. 'I don't think she meant quite that, dear.'

  'Yes, she did. Didn't she, Em?'

  'One pair of earrings, however valuable, wouldn't be much use between two little girls. And I doubt that you'd want to share them.'

  'Mrs Balfray knew that, Grandma. She said we could wear one each, like a pendant'

  Mrs Faro sighed. 'She was very proud of them, the poor love. Her only treasures.' And to Faro, 'She was very fond of these two little lasses of ours.'

  'Will we get them now that she's gone to Heaven to be with Jesus?' piped up Emily, shocking her grandmother with this undue display of avarice.

  'Yes, Grandma. She did promise,' said Rose.

  'Grown-ups often promise things when they are very ill, like Mrs Balfray was,' said Faro, feeling it was time he stepped into the fray, the morals of which had got a little beyond his mother.

  'They don't mean to break their promises,' he continu
ed hastily, 'but they aren't always able to keep them. In families when someone dies there are other people who have first claim on jewels and so forth. Do you understand?'

  Rose gave a disappointed shrug and as she and Emily returned to their paints, he said to his mother, 'I would very much like to see these emeralds.'

  'I expect Dr Francis would show them to you. Shall I ask him?'

  'Not at the moment,' he said hastily. 'Before I leave, perhaps it could be mentioned.'

  'Oh, I'll mention it You know how tactful I can be, Jeremy.'

  Faro suppressed a smile as she added, 'It would sound better coming from me than from a perfect stranger.' And, setting the kettle to boil, said, 'What else was Captain Gibb telling you?'

  'Just Balfray history.'

  'All that stuff about the original St Olas, was it? Do you know what I think?'

  Expecting some profound observation, Faro shook his head.

  'I think—' she lowered her voice so that the children would not hear and whispered '—I think he dyes his hair.'

  'That's very observant of you, Mother.'

  Mrs Faro gave a nod of satisfaction. 'Funny thing for a respectable gentleman, don't you think?'

  'Just human vanity. Men in public office often do it very discreetly.'

  'Do they really? But for a Navy man,' she added, 'it just doesn't seem right somehow. Now if he'd been an actor or such like, that would be different.'

  A sudden chilling thought jolted Faro. 'How long has he been with the Balfrays?'

  'Six months or so, on and off, when he isn't in Glasgow or elsewhere, consulting old records. You'll gather there's not a lot of factoring done by him at the best of times. That was just his excuse to sponge off poor Dr Francis.'

  'Is he married?'

  'Not him. At least he never mentions a wife or family,' she added with a sniff- of disapproval, thought Faro. Any man who chose bachelordom was a 'queer fish' in his mother's simple maxim of life and how it should be lived.