Killing Cousins (An Inspector Faro Mystery No.4)

by Alanna Knight

'You'll have your dinner first,' said Mrs Faro. 'Dr Francis has just woken up and he is having a glass of warm milk.'

  There was no possibility of further discussion with Vince who left the table, as soon as decency would allow, to attend Francis. Meanwhile, Faro retreated to his bedroom where he wrote out a comprehensive report on the three murders on Balfray Island.

  By the time he laid aside his pen, he was almost certain who had murdered Mrs Bliss and why Troller had met his untimely end. Only the motive remained obscure and where it connected with Thora Balfray, linking the three murders.

  He had decided to put his new theory to Vince when he was distracted by the sound of rain drumming on the window. With the suddenness that characterises weather changes in Orkney, the golden afternoon had vanished into mist.

  Sighing, he went downstairs to the kitchen, wondering why it was so quiet. He smiled at the sight of his mother enjoying one of her rare periods of silence. He stood looking down at her, overwhelmed by a rush of love for his so-often exasperating parent. But even his gentle kiss on her forehead did not awaken her.

  At that moment he heard Vince on the stairs.

  'How is Francis?'

  'He's responding well, but I didn't feel that I ought to leave him for the afternoon.' He smiled. 'So you missed the picnic, too, Stepfather?'

  Tm just on my way there now...'

  The chiming clock behind them struck four.

  'Is that the time? It can't be,' said Faro, taking out his watch. With the same thought in mind the two men exchanged glances.

  'Shouldn't the girls be back by now?' Faro asked.

  They should have been ages ago, considering the weather.' Vince pointed to the windows. 'It's been pouring down for the past hour. And blowing up a gale too.' He made a helpless gesture. 'Look, I was sitting with Francis, reading. Naturally I presumed you had gone off without me.'

  Faro fought rising panic which began somewhere in the region of his heart. 'Inga has probably taken them home with her.'

  'With a wake in progress under her roof? I don't think that's very likely—'

  'Listen... listen...' Even above the wind, they could hear a rhythmic beating, the boom of an angry sea.

  Faro gripped Vince's arm. 'The tide's in. That's the high tide.'

  He was aware that Vince's face had drained of all colour. 'Dear God... you know what that means, Stepfather? The Troll's Cave must be under water...'

  But Faro hardly heard as he threw open the front door.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As they raced along the cliff path the sea was already roaring over the rocks, throwing up a boiling fury of spray which, allied to the rain, drenched them.

  'Where is this Troll's Cave, anyway?' Faro panted.

  'Up there, see that batch of arched rocks ... near the lighthouse.'

  'Dear God ... it's miles away.'

  Vince drew alongside. 'Don't worry, Stepfather,' he gasped. 'I'm sure we're worrying quite unnecessarily... Inga will have them sheltering somewhere ... they'll be perfectly safe ...'

  Faro had no breath left for an answer, saving every ounce of effort for the steep incline. But, before he reached the path where the lighthouse towered above the shore, he knew with a sickening jolt of terror that the cave where his children played was under water and had been for the past hour.

  Panic seized him, the ground shaking, the water roaring, the sound of doom, funnelling up the rock chimney, covering him with spray.

  'Rose! Emily!'

  But their shouts were in vain. The two men exchanged horrified glances for below them everything had ceased to exist and nothing remained but the sea. A grey sea, with billowing white-crested waves. Even the seals had deserted this angry monster, and only the sea-birds screamed above their heads, an endless litany, a mocking requiem for the folly of man's struggle against the elements.

  Both men were now incapable of reason. All they could think of was the two children drowned, drifting out to sea, hurled back and broken on the savage rocks below. As men have done since the beginning of time and upon these very shores, many a time and oft, they ran back and forward up and down the path, waving their arms, shouting.

  Stopping occasionally to peer out into that deadly implacable enemy, the sea, they were not only beyond reason, but beyond control. Few of their friends would have recognised Vince or Faro in their sodden clothes, in their extremes of grief their countenances distorted with fear as the tears ran unchecked, spurting from their eyes, blinding them, but brushed aside unheeded.

  At last Faro stood still, stared up at what he could discern of where he believed heaven to be, if it existed at all. He threw his arms wide, prepared to make the supreme gesture of renunciation. He would give up everything, everything he possessed. He would walk the world a pauper, never take on another case, he would give his own life gladly, if only God would spare his two bairns.

  'Look... over there!'

  Not a divine answer, but sweet as the word of God, Vince calling again. 'Look, Stepfather, look!'

  And above the seabird's lament, a fainter human call.

  'Help!... Help!'

  Through the wild spray, one tiny figure precariously perched on a rock still above the sea, waving, piteously crying.

  'Rose! It's Rose!'

  Fleeter, faster than his stepfather, Vince was already leaping down the cliff face. But Faro was close at his heels. And, in the time it took to reach his elder daughter, he had already come to terms with the grief fate held in store.

  It ill became any father, a widower in particular, to have a favourite child. Rose was nearer to him, so like himself, clever, already showing signs of a keen perceptive mind. The apple of his eye was spared this day, but there was a price and he must pay it in full. To live for the rest of his life with the guilt of remorse for little Emily, his baby, who was lost.

  The thunder of that cruel triumphant sea, the scream of the gulls deadened all hope of coherent words. His vision blurred by tears, he held Rose close. His tears mingling with her own, he cursed his own folly, his own arrogance. In God's name why had he considered finding the Balfray murderer more important than his own loved ones' safety? Had he gone out with them this afternoon, instead of devoting himself to notes and deductions, both would still be alive.

  Lifting Rose in his arms to carry her to safety, he heard Vince's joyful voice and turned to see him clutching a tiny woebegone figure who had huddled unobserved in a crevice, sheltering against the blast of wind and sea.

  'Emily... oh my heart's darling, my little Emily.'

  And handing Rose to Vince, he took her, held her to his heart with such a cry of 'Thank God, thank God' that even the storm at that moment seemed stilled and held back in awe as one man's cry drifted to the very threshold of eternity.

  A few moments later and two still sobbing drenched children were safe on the cliff path.

  'Inga. Where's Inga? Why isn't she with you?' Vince demanded.

  And, for the first time, Faro realised the enormity of Inga's absence and what it might portend. It took some little time before Rose could answer through her sobs, by which time Faro feared the worst.

  'She ... lost... something. As we were going to the cave. She said... she would be back in a minute.'

  'Are you sure, dear?'

  'Yes, Papa. While we were putting out the picnic she said she had to go and look for her watch, but she wouldn't be gone an instant.'

  'When was this?'

  'I don't know, Papa. Soon after we arrived. The tide hadn't even turned. It was a long way out then, wasn't it, Em?'

  Emily tugged at her sister's sleeve. Tell Papa, Rose.'

  'No, you tell him.'

  'When she didn't come back, we were hungry and we ate all the fruit cake,' Emily said shamefacedly. 'Do you think she will be cross, Papa? We left the cheese and bannocks,' she added enthusiastically.

  Instead of scolding them, their lather laughed delightedly and the girls exchanged glances. Fancy Papa approving of their neglect of g
ood nourishing - and filling - food for forbidden treats.

  Hardly able to tear himself away from them, but aware of wet domes and growing chill, in sight of the castle, he put them firmly in his stepson's care. 'Vince will take you home and Grandma will give you both a nice hot bath and something special for tea.' He added so many instructions about keeping warm, and not catching cold, that Vince's mocking glance told him what he knew already. In matters of anxiety he sounded, even to his own ears, exactly like his mother.

  'I'll be back as soon as I can. I'm going to look for Inga.'

  Vince nodded. 'I wonder what excuse she'll have to offer.'

  'Excuse?'

  'Yes, Stepfather, isn't it obvious?' said Vince coldly. 'Leaving the children to go and look for a watch and then failing to come back for them. Quite extraordinary, don't you think?'

  Faro felt impelled to say, 'She's so fond of them, I can't imagine her letting them get into any danger. There must have been a very good reason.'

  'For leaving your children to drown?' was Vince's indignant reply. 'Can you think of any reason on God's earth to justify such behaviour?'

  As Faro hurried off again in the direction of the cliff path, he realised that leaving the children, as Vince had implied, was quite out of keeping with Inga's character.

  Unless ... unless ... Inga St Ola had a role in the sinister events at Balfray. And what about that tiny boat, bobbing on the tide, now far out to sea and once moored near the shore?

  His common sense told him that a desperate woman on the verge of discovery might consider that the loss of the Detective Inspector's two children would dismiss all other urgent matters, such as tracking down a clever murderer, from his mind. In that, of course, she would have been right. And how well she knew him. No one better, he realised grimly.

  The first and obvious place to look was at the smithy. Saul Hoy opened the cottage door wearing his Sunday-best clothes. He shook his head, surprised but unalarmed by the question.

  'She's not here. She left soon after dinner and told me she was taking the two peedie girls for a picnic down at Troll's Cave. That's what she does every Sunday when they're staying at the castle.'

  Pausing, he regarded Faro's expressionless face. 'You must have missed them somehow. Probably taken them home through the sea wood.'

  Faro retraced his steps. So where was she? Added now to the anger of her possible betrayal was fear that such speculation was not justified. Inga, he told himself, was not a monster who would leave two children to drown, or he could never have loved her long ago ...

  He stopped, suddenly chilled by a new thought Could that, in fact, be the reason why she had abandoned Rose and Emily so heartlessly? Because she still loved him and knowing she would never have any children of her own, she wanted to punish him for the past?

  It was not beyond the bounds of possibility. He had already witnessed a re-enactment of Romeo and Juliet, so perhaps Greek tragedy, too, had a place on this accursed island. Some instinct told him to be more charitable, that there was a more plausible explanation for her desertion, some event over which she had no control.

  Afterwards, he wondered why he had never considered that she herself might be in danger, a fact not without significance when it came to assessing his own feelings about her. Had he been in love, he realised, then the possibility of her being in danger would have been his first consideration. He would have been mad with terror, not calm and speculative.

  Baffled, calling her name occasionally, he had almost regained the cliff path when he heard a sound from a ditch alongside. Moving aside the weedy hedgerow, he saw Inga lying there. She seemed to be sleeping but when he shook her, she did not move. For a moment he thought that she was dead, then her eyes fluttered open. Sobbing, she clung to him.

  'The girls, oh, Jeremy, the girls,' she moaned, and struggled to sit up. 'The tide will be coming in. We must go to them.'

  'It's all right, Inga. They're safe.'

  Bewildered, she looked around her. 'But the tide ... what time is it?'

  'Five o'clock.'

  'Five o'clock,' she screamed and jumped to her feet, staggering back into his arms with the effort. 'The tide ... Jeremy. It's past high tide.'

  'They're safe, Inga, safe back at the castle. We rescued them. Don't you understand?'

  She sank to the ground again. 'Thank God. Thank God you were in time.'

  He sat beside her, took her icy hands in his. 'What happened, Inga? Whatever made you leave them?' And he heard his own anger rising now that she was apparently unharmed.

  'We'd just reached the cave, when I realised I'd lost my watch, dropped it somewhere on the way down.' She looked at him, appealing, 'It's my most treasured possession, Jeremy, you gave it to me for my twenty-first birthday. Sent it all the way from Edinburgh, don't you remember?'

  And, regarding his bewildered stern face, she sighed softly. 'No, I see you don't. You'd forgotten long ago.'

  'Go on,' he said, ashamed of his harsh unfeeling tone. A woman's silly sentimental whim about a watch had almost cost his children their lives.

  'I knew I must try to find it,' she sighed.

  'I see you're wearing it, so your search was successful.'

  Touching the watch, caressing it, she nodded. 'I found it near the ditch here, just a few steps away. I was looking to see if it had been damaged, when I heard footsteps running behind me. I turned, thinking it might be you, but - whoever it was - he, or she, wore a cloak. I saw an arm upraised and I knew nothing more until I saw your face looking down at me. That's the truth, Jeremy.'

  'You mean... you were attacked?'

  'Well, I didn't hit myself on the back of the head, I assure you. I have quite a bump ... ouch. Oh, please don't...'

  'Let me ...' The framed bonnet she was wearing was

  certainly slightly dented and had taken the worst of the blow, but when he touched her head, she winced again.

  Shaking his hand free she stood up with considerable effort, and took a few unsteady steps. 'I'm all right, Jeremy. Everything is all right as long as the girls are unharmed.'

  'Have you any idea who attacked you? Describe him again, if you please.'

  She shook her head. 'I didn't get a chance to have a good look at him, did I, whoever it was?'

  'Have you ever heard of anyone else being assaulted in a similar way?'

  'Of course not,' she said scornfully. 'Balfray folk don't go round viciously attacking each other.'

  But her assailant, Faro thought, sounded remarkably like the one Vince had told him about. The cloaked man with a taste for practical jokes Francis had encountered, with almost fatal consequences, on that same narrow cliff path when he was riding home on horseback.

  'So you have no idea who it might have been?'

  'Not the slightest.' With a sigh, she put her hand to her head. 'All I want to do, if you don't mind and you're finished asking questions, is to get home as quickly as possible. I have a splitting headache.'

  'Perhaps you should get Vince to look at it.'

  'If it's still sore tomorrow, I will.'

  How weary she sounded and suddenly ashamed of his false suspicions and his unchivalrous behaviour, Faro said, 'I'll see you to the door.'

  'If you would be so good. I'd be most grateful.'

  He offered his arm and she leaned on him gratefully. 'I really do feel rather groggy. I must go and lie down for a while. I promise to answer all your questions later. But I really haven't anything to add to what I've told you already.'

  'You will be all right?'

  She seemed surprised by the sudden concern in his voice and managed a small uneasy laugh. 'Of course I will.'

  He stood at the gate looking at her, wondering what he'd missed, what vital information was being withheld. 'I hope you aren't going to tell me that you haven't an enemy in the world, either,' he said sternly.

  'Oh no, Jeremy, you would never catch me saying that.' And smiling mockingly up into his face, she said, 'At almost any given moment, I could pr
esent you with an impressive list of people who don't like witches, even white ones - people who would be very glad to avail themselves of an opportunity to hit me over the head on a Sunday afternoon, or any other day of the week, come to that.'

  Faro left her thoughtfully. Had the attacker marked down Inga as his fourth victim? If so, what did Inga know and what piece of vital information was she withholding and for what reason?

  Or were his two children to be the next victims of a crazed and vicious murderer? He went suddenly cold at the thought Then anger overtook him, the clear-thinking merciless anger which was relentless in its pursuit of violent criminals who threatened the safety of his own family.

  And his feelings were stronger than ever that the answer to all three deaths lay with the first murder - of the housekeeper, Mrs Bliss.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the face of the day's happenings, and the sinister unknown elements at work, Faro was not prepared to risk another night with his two precious children under the roof of Balfray Castle.

  He made up his mind to leave on the evening tide, taking them back with him to the safety of their Aunty Griz's house in Kirkwall. There, on the following morning, he would set about tracking down, in the offices of The Orcadian and the police station, some answers to the question which plagued and baffled him.

  He was acutely aware of the difficulties of solving a murder case on a small island, where the word 'urgent' had not yet been invented and communications with the outside world, by telegraph, were non-existent. For the first time, Faro realised how greatly he had come to depend on the organisation of the Edinburgh City Police.

  Kirkwall, discernible as a whale-like shape on the horizon when visibility was good, seemed tantalisingly near. Lying twenty minutes away by boat, it might as well have been two hundred miles away. Balfray relied on the mailboat twice per week, or else made the short journey by acquiring a small craft with, mercifully, a boatman skilled in the ways of those treacherous waters.

  Mrs Faro was taken aback at her son's rash decision, which she considered was totally irresponsible, especially as his experience of rowing boats and navigating them across dangerous channels was nil. 'But I'll be getting the bairns ready for their bed shortly. Taking them but at this time of night. Can't it wait until morning? A peedie note to the teacher - after such an adventure, she'll surely excuse them coming in late.'