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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Inspector Faro
- Sprache: Englisch
1861. When the body of an unknown woman is found in an Edinburgh close, Detective Constable Faro assumes the killing is a random act of violence - until he finds a playing card, the nine of diamonds, underneath her corpse. His superiors scoff at his suspicions of a serial killer, but days later a man is attacked in the street, and left badly bruised and battered with the nine of diamonds in his pocket. Faro believes there's a connection. He must contend with other problems, though, if he is to solve the case. Detective Sergeant Gosse does his best to frame suspect after suspect, but remains constantly irritated by his detective constable. And although Faro's sweetheart Lizzie loves him deeply, he is not sure if he feels the same way. And what of Inga St Ola, Faro's first and only true love from his native Orkney? Amongst all this, a servant at Lizzie's place of work goes missing. Could her disappearance be linked to the playing-card killer? Beset by hostile superiors and a police-hating public, Faro feels he may never crack this confounding case.
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Seitenzahl: 377
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Murders Most Foul
An Inspector Faro Mystery
ALANNA KNIGHT
For Douglas Cullen, who gave me the playing card
Contents
FOREWORD
There are fourteen published novels and casebooks covering 1872 to 1887, Jeremy Faro’s legendary years as Chief Inspector of the Edinburgh City Police and personal detective to HM Queen Victoria at Balmoral.
At the request of his many readers worldwide, eager to know of his early days and how his distinguished career began, this is his third casebook, dated 1861. The first two, Murder in Paradise and The Seal King Murders, are available from Allison & Busby.
CHAPTER ONE
Edinburgh 1861
‘Got what she deserved.’
Detective Constable Jeremy Faro bit back a shocked rejoinder at the sergeant’s brutal words as the police surgeon’s head shake confirmed that life was extinguished and signalled one of the waiting constables to summon the mortuary van.
Faro looked with compassion at the dead woman. Young, twenties perhaps, but she could have passed for thirty-five, despite the paint and scarlet satin gown, now muddied and torn, that advertised her trade. She had been strangled in this dark foetid close watched over by the lofty heights of Edinburgh Castle, dark and forbidding, wrapped in its own terrible secrets and a long and bloody history, no stranger to violence.
This area surrounding Fleshers Close had gained notoriety nearly forty years ago in the 1820s by association with Burke and Hare, serial killers with their den in nearby Tanner’s Close. The stench of death and decay still lurked from the tanneries by which it got its name.
Faro hated this place, these vermin-infested tenements. Once they had been his own daily beat and he had never learnt how to establish communication with the inhabitants, who seemed part of an alien race. Occasionally he smiled to himself, for so was he; from the Orkney Islands, still regarded as a newcomer by the Edinburgh City Police – and that after ten years.
But the creatures who inhabited these foul closes seemed out with the general pattern of ordinary folk. Some lived out their short lives in indescribable poverty and neglect, never travelling more than a few streets away from the hovel where they were born. Some seemed hardly human, coated in filth, their speech never beyond a few words strung together, to read and write undreamt of, unattainable luxuries.
At Faro’s side, the police surgeon was muttering to Sergeant Gosse. ‘You in charge? Where the devil is Wade, then?’
Detective Inspector Wade should have been first on the scene of the crime. His non-arrival hinted at dereliction of duty. As Dr Grace departed with an angry shake of the head that threatened trouble at the Central Office, Faro said: ‘A sorry business.’
Sergeant Gosse laughed. ‘Who’s sorry for her? I’m not! One less whore on the streets of Edinburgh, one less disease to spread.’
‘The second murder in a week, Sergeant. Isn’t that going it a bit?’
His sarcasm was lost on the sergeant, but the truth was that this would certainly put a strain on the Central Office’s facilities.
The city was more or less peaceful during the long summer nights, apart from occasional eruptions with drunks, pickpockets and prostitutes, and a few easily suppressed riots – such were the general disorders they had to deal with. Except when Her Majesty or one of the Royals nipped up from London or down from Balmoral Castle to open a bridge or a hospital, or to graciously lend their presence to some other worthy cause, all of which necessitated a full muster of the police force. They might grumble but security had to be tight. Remember, ‘the Hanoverian upstart’, as some still called Victoria, had been the target of assassins several times. Occasions only known to the Central Office records and kept with difficulty out of the news-sheets.
Two constables clattered down the stone stairs behind them, sent to talk to the occupants in the six-storeyed tenement.
‘Well, get anything?’ Gosse demanded sharply, but even as he asked the question and before heads were shaken, he knew the answer and shrugged. ‘No surprises there,’ he grumbled.
It was always the same. Where they were willing, by persuasion or implied threat, to open the door a couple of inches, still no one ever knew anything, had heard nothing. The sight of a uniformed peeler was enough to turn any of them mute. They would give away no information, bound together by a strange loyalty – anything to avoid being hauled into the dreaded ‘polis’ interview room at the station – especially those, and there were many, whose occupations would not bear even the feeblest scrutiny while further enquiries were made.
This could be a leisurely procedure and Faro knew that the suspect might be detained for some considerable time, left to rot in a prison cell, the cause of their incarceration overlooked entirely, the reason for his or her detention conveniently forgotten while more important matters of criminal justice were being pursued.
From their earliest days of comprehension, even the youngest inhabitants of Fleshers Close had dinned into them that one golden rule: ‘Have nothing to do with the polis; whether ye’ve done anything or no, once they have yer name on their books they’ll never be off sniffing about yer doorstep.’
Gosse looked thoughtful. ‘We’ve got our killer for the first one. Pity that, we could have nailed him for this one. Two for the price of one.’
The only similarity, Faro realised, was that the victims had been strangled, the first woman a victim of domestic murder in the Pleasance ten minutes’ walk away from where they stood. She had been strangled by her jealous husband who, contrite, had confessed all and was awaiting the gallows in due course. This was obviously a bitter disappointment to the sergeant’s eager expectations. Gosse enjoyed executions and had been known to bribe the hangman for a substantial piece of the rope used, to be sold on at so much per inch, a macabre but popular souvenir of the day …
Faro was aware of a small face in the gloom. A child’s face, watching them, white and scared. No tears or cries, already well trained in suppressing feelings of fear, knowing that in her short life, far from gaining any sympathy for pain or affliction – a struggle for survival did not include such luxuries as sympathy – all that cries of pain would incur was another brutal blow.
‘The bairn over there must have seen it all,’ he whispered to the sergeant, who after a quick glance, shrugged.
‘Too young to give us any help. Pity.’
‘Poor wee mite,’ muttered Faro, wishing he could approach and thrust a coin into that tiny hand, but well aware that such actions were forbidden and any approach would have her fleeing in terror. ‘What will become of her?’
The sergeant shrugged. ‘The workhouse – the usual – and the best place for the poor little bastard. Till it’s old enough to go out and work.’
‘It’ indeed. Neither male nor female as far as the sergeant cared. ‘She’s a wee lass,’ Faro protested indignantly.
The sergeant sniggered. ‘Aye, and chances are she’ll turn out like the one over there and get herself strangled too,’ he said, pointing his foot towards the body on the stretcher now being carried out to the mortuary van. Seeing Faro’s expression, he grinned sardonically. ‘You’ve either too much imagination or you’re too sensitive, Faro. Surprised you got your promotion when you’re so soft on the job.’
Faro knew that his promotion was a sore point at the Central Office. God knows he had earned it and almost lost his life down in England on his first case. Shot, barely escaping death, he had been sent to Orkney – home – to recover, and had promptly got himself involved in another violent death.
‘Don’t take it to heart, lad,’ said his one friend, the elderly now retired detective superintendent Brandon Macfie. ‘Envy and jealousy, they’ll get over it. You’ve proved yourself.’
And the superintendent’s regard for the young constable who reminded him so much of his only son, dead from consumption these five years, was, although the old man did not realise it, another thorn in Faro’s popularity with his colleagues, especially with beat constables older than himself, grinding away for years on dull and boring incidents hardly worthy of the word crime. Many were content – they didn’t want to put their lives in danger – but it gave them a good talking point, something to grumble about, that they had been overlooked by the authorities. Favouritism, aye, that’s what it was.
Dawn had turned into what passed for daylight, a dull twilight from which any luxury such as pure fresh air was forever excluded in closes like this one, so narrow that, separated by only a few feet, the occupants of the tall tenements could shake hands – or fists – at neighbours opposite.
‘We’re done here,’ said Gosse, their bullseye lanterns extinguished – necessary accessories for patrolling areas like this one where gas-lit streets were still a distant and not very welcome dream.
‘She might not be from these parts,’ Faro offered helpfully.
There had been nothing on the body to identify the woman and Gosse said: ‘Right enough. As you well ken, this wasn’t one of your whores with fancy clothes who offer beds for the hour like in yon Leith Walk brothels; this kind do their business against the walls here. “Gi’ ye a quick one for a penny, mister.”’ His laugh was a grating humourless sound. ‘“Next customer, please.”’
Faro had been woken up that morning by Gosse, summoned by the beat policeman who had discovered the body, and with enough examination by lantern light, had ascertained death by manual strangulation, the bruise marks clear about her neck. He had also noticed that her gaudy and provocative dress didn’t belong to the local variety of street women but signalled one used to patronising a better clientele.
Faro’s glance took in the immediate area. ‘She had no reticule, Sergeant.’
Gosse shrugged. ‘Probably stolen,’ he said, apparently unaware of the significance of its absence.
Now, as a new day struggled through heavy clouds frowning down over Salisbury Crags, the dark closes were coming sluggishly alive. Smoke poured from chimneys in residential areas where Edinburgh was opening its eyes and its newspapers to the second killing in a week.
Murder was news, although deaths were commonplace in a city where a vast number were carried to the local cemeteries each day – stillborn babies, blue as tiny monkeys, laid to rest beside the young mothers who had given their lives in vain.
For the very young and the very old – fifty was an average age – and those in between, the dreaded consumption was relentless, carrying off increasing numbers, many from the cream of society, whose young people were unable, by any means of wealth, position or medical care, to escape its deadly hold.
A rattle of wheels and the large frame of Inspector Wade emerged from a hired cab, looking flustered, angry and even somewhat sheepish.
‘Where’s Dr Grace?’
Gosse and Faro were aware that the body should not have been moved until his arrival. An explanation was called for and rapidly supplied. The inspector had not been at home.
‘I was away visiting friends for the night,’ he said shortly.
Friends, eh. Gosse gave Faro a wink. The inspector was well known as a womaniser. If he ever hoped to achieve chief inspector, he had better either reform or be very careful indeed at covering his tracks. Involvement in a divorce case would be the end of his career.
‘Anything to report, Gosse?’
As the inspector nodded vigorously to Gosse’s negative information, Faro noticed a piece of paper – no, a playing card – jammed in the cobbles where the woman’s body had lain. Crumpled and dirty, it had remained invisible until what passed for daylight entered the close.
‘Sir,’ he interrupted the two men. ‘This might be evidence.’
Silencing Faro with a look, Gosse sniggered. ‘Go on, so she played cards.’
Ignoring Gosse, Faro handed the card to the inspector. ‘Sir, I remember that at the first killing, that other woman in the Pleasance, there were cards. I picked up one like this.’
A sigh and a dagger-like glance from Gosse at this interruption. The inspector’s smile was thin and dismissive as Gosse said: ‘A coincidence, sir.’
‘I agree. The other woman’s husband was a notorious gambler.’
‘Whores all play cards, sir,’ Gosse put in eagerly. ‘Probably told fortunes too.’
‘Like enough,’ said the inspector, but Faro wasn’t convinced. He vividly recalled the domestic murder. A pack of cards scattered on the table. The nine of diamonds, the same card he now held in his hand. A coincidence or—
‘They’re always gambling, this lot, making a bit off the side,’ said Gosse.
‘Exactly,’ said the inspector, anxious to get into the fresh air again.
‘This one might be of significance, sir, to the killer’s identity,’ Faro insisted.
Wade gave him a withering glance and Gosse chortled: ‘Get away, you daftie.’
Faro looked round, suddenly aware of the child’s presence. She had been brushed aside or fled at the arrival of Wade, but there she was again, standing, watching them. Had the dead woman been her mother? He needed to know, overcome by reluctance to just abandon her to this tragic vigil.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ demanded Wade.
‘The child, sir.’
‘What?’
Faro nodded in her direction. Gosse had clearly forgotten all about her, a possible witness to that terrible act of violence.
‘Oh that! Someone will take care of her – none of our business.’
Faro stared at Gosse and at the small girl. He couldn’t leave a terrified child here. Should he take her to his landlady, Mrs Biggs?
The police van with its burden had left, accompanied by Wade. A woman, Faro presumed a neighbour who had prudently kept out of sight, appeared and scooped up the child who now gave way to sobbing long suppressed.
‘Whesht, now!’ And to Faro, ‘I’ll take her. She can bide wi’ me. I have six o’ my own, another wilna’ mak much difference.’
Faro said. ‘You know her?’
The woman regarded him through narrowed eyes. ‘Aye,’ was the cautious answer.
Faro halted her imminent departure with: ‘A moment! Her mother?’
It was a question and the woman’s expression tightened. She shrugged. ‘Seen her around.’
‘What was her name?’
‘I dinna’ ken that. Just like I said, she came here. Dinna’ ken where she bided.’
‘Last night—’ Faro began hopefully.
‘I saw naethin’, naethin’,’ was the sharp and not unexpected answer. ‘I was asleep in ma bed till yon noisy polis wi’ his rattle wakened us up, alarming folks.’
‘How did you know the wee girl was with her mother?’
The woman thought about that for a moment. ‘Saw her walking in the street yonder wi’ her one day.’
That was feeble enough, and conscious that the woman knew a great deal more than she was prepared to admit, Faro asked: ‘She must have lived somewhere nearby, then.’
The woman shrugged, closed her lips tightly. ‘She wasna’ from around here.’
And that was the end of the conversation as, without another word, the child now silent and safe, pressed close to her bosom, the woman hurried towards the stone stair.
‘A moment,’ Faro called. ‘What number are you?’
The retreating footsteps were his only answer. She either didn’t hear or more likely didn’t want to.
As he caught up with Gosse, heading up the Lawnmarket towards the Central Office, all around them footsteps skittered over damp cobbles, as if the city stretched itself on awakening from sleep. The sound of heavy boots, belonging to those who were rich enough to possess such luxuries, as working men headed towards the city’s areas of employment: fleshers and bakers and candle makers – respectable jobs in a world away from the lawless closes of the High Street areas, that last resort dreaded even by beat policemen as some kind of penance or punishment.
He knew from experience that he must be wary. Faro was ever conscious of Gosse’s hostility; the sergeant would enjoy any excuse of putting him back on the beat here again. He was aware that his remarks concerning the playing card had been the subject of whispered apology to the inspector.
Gosse was wary of this newly appointed detective constable assigned to him. Bad enough having an ex-detective superintendent’s protégé, but a foreigner from some godforsaken barbaric island in the far north tenaciously owing allegiance to Scotland! Faro, he was convinced, would never have the guts needed in the Edinburgh City Police.
But Gosse had another, darker reason for being wary of Faro.
CHAPTER TWO
Sergeant Gosse was a law unto himself and he didn’t mind twisting the evidence a little, or even a lot on occasions, to enhance his growing reputation as a renowned criminal-catcher. His efficiency was a byword at the Central Office and he claimed to have an intuition about criminals. The fact was that he was not above adding to or rearranging the clues in order to catch a malefactor and allow the course of justice to run smoother with the swift and gratifying conclusion of hanging.
Once he had been caught in the act by Faro. A trivial matter, perhaps, but having observed Gosse planting evidence in a suspected thief’s pocket as they grabbed him, Faro actually had the nerve to question him. Furious, mumbling an excuse, Gosse had to recover the offending piece and, for lack of all but circumstantial evidence, he was denied the satisfaction of seeing the man he had decided was guilty receiving the sentence of being transported.
After all his efforts to keep a clean record he could not forgive Faro and resolved to keep a sharper eye on him in future.
There might be something in Faro’s private life that would be useful. The fact that he kept himself to himself and wasn’t exactly popular with the other lads out for a pie and a pint and a bit of skirt on an evening off suggested that digging a little deeper might reveal secrets worth investigating.
A wife was a vital ingredient in the climb for promotion, assuring the public of the respectability expected of a God-fearing, churchgoing police officer. Gosse, a very plain lumpish figure with a face scarred by smallpox and a somewhat disagreeable personality, had an eye for the ladies, albeit he was notably unsuccessful, his excuse a long, loveless and childless marriage to a shrew of a woman who had recently gone south to take care of a dying sister.
At least that was her excuse; Gosse was fairly sure that her return was neither imminent nor intended. He thanked God for that, pleased to be rid of her, his sole consolation that his abysmal marriage to a woman belonging to the class above him, this local baker’s only daughter, included the prospect of inheriting a thriving business. Mrs Gosse was also distantly related on the distaff side to a local important and affluent family, a fact he never missed an opportunity of mentioning. In his wife’s absence, Gosse considered himself as something of a Casanova, much to the amusement and astonishment of his drinking colleagues. His lack of success was further cause for resenting his tall, well-set-up detective constable who had netted an exceptionally attractive young lady with whom he seemed to be on excellent terms.
How had he achieved this? A puzzle, especially as Faro hadn’t much – except in the way of good looks – to offer.
‘Nice looking young widow lady I see you’ve got yourself,’ he said, having met the couple walking in Princes Street Gardens. Pausing, hoping for an introduction, he received a mere salute from Faro as they swept onward.
He was furious and next morning decided to tackle Faro again and was gratified by the younger man’s look of surprise – but no embarrassment – at his question.
‘A widow – what makes you think that, sir?’
Gosse tapped the side of his nose. True, it was not a recent bereavement since she wasn’t in widow’s weeds, but as she was walking in public with Faro on a Sunday afternoon, it was unlikely that they were having an affair. Gosse was sharp, and did some quick calculations, especially as the young lad she was dragging along, sullen and rebellious, was protesting: ‘Let go, Ma.’
‘Is that her bairn? She doesn’t look old enough.’ Gosse decided on an approach by friendly observation. ‘Her man – a soldier, was he?’
Faro had the story ready. ‘Killed in India.’
Gosse nodded. ‘Lucky to find another man, especially with a bairn. Not every man wants second-hand goods. You know what I mean,’ he added slyly.
Faro knew exactly what Gosse meant but there was much more to it, had Gosse known the truth. Lizzie was no widow, there had never been a husband and Vince was the child of rape when she was a fifteen-year-old maid in a big house in the Highlands, the victim of an aristocratic guest there for the shooting. In desperation she might well, like so many others, have taken to the streets to support the baby she refused to abandon. But Lizzie was made of stronger stuff; she invented a soldier husband and fought her way up the ladder of domestic service. Her dream, her one ambition, was to rise to the role of housekeeper in some great establishment and she was stepping up the ladder, recently appointed lady’s maid to the mistress of Lumbleigh Green in Newington, Edinburgh’s new and elegant south-side suburb.
Faro lodged with several other unmarried constables in a boarding house in the Lawnmarket. His room was up a spiral and dirty stair to the third floor, but at least for an extra shilling a week it was his alone – unlike some of the constables, who for the sake of economy shared a room and slept three or four to a bed. Faro was horrified, as he liked his space and looked forward to being alone at the end of the day and staring out of his narrow window. Across Princes Street Gardens with its line of shops and beyond the New Town Villas and over the distant waters of the Firth of Forth to the Kingdom of Fife.
The care Mrs Biggs bestowed on her lodgers was minimal. A strait-laced, heavily corseted lady, formidable, respectable, God-fearing and churchgoing – as she was never tired of pointing out to them – she would put up with no nonsense and that included female callers. The constables rolled their eyes at that – who would wish to take a lady up to a bedroom shared with three other blokes? Had she no imagination? There were plenty of rude and lewd rejoinders to that.
On the plus side, she was a reasonable cook; she prided herself on good, solid food, and they certainly did not starve – porridge for breakfast, meat for supper and an occasional suet pudding.
On the minus side, a widow of uncertain age, she had taken a fancy to the handsome newcomer, tall and fair, so polite and reserved, and with such good manners.
‘Treats me like a real lady from the New Town, he does. Not like some,’ she said darkly to her friends, and whispered, ‘From the Orkneys, he is,’ with not the least idea where they were but they did sound so romantic. This air of reverence was not lost on Faro’s fellow boarders, nor was that extra helping of this or that sliding his way across the table, matters that did nothing for his reputation or their goodwill.
‘Orkneys, eh. Have they put doors on your caves yet?’
Faro merely smiled and refused to be provoked, which annoyed them even more. Goading him, they would have enjoyed an angry reaction and particularly the chance of some fisticuffs, which would have seen him ousted from their lodging.
‘Man, he dinna’ even get drunk on a Saturday. What sort of a bobby is he going to make?’
Heads were shaken. One thing’s certain, he’d never get any promotion. Hardly human. They grumbled, always ready to knock a captured thief about on the way to the station. Not so Faro – he was calm and restrained.
And what about the lasses? Always on the lookout for a night’s entertainment, some stolen kisses as a prelude and a promise of better things to come, off duty and out of uniform they haunted the howffs on the Leith Road, but Faro, invited along, shook his head.
‘Well provided elsewhere, are you?’ they sneered. It was either that or he was that dreaded word, a ‘pansy’ – a pansy policeman. Wait till Mrs Biggs got wind of that for her fancy lad. Aye, that would put her off, right enough, and see him booted out.
Aware of all these whispers in the house, Faro was delighted to meet the lads one Sunday afternoon when they were wandering through the Gardens, on the lookout for ‘skirts’, as they called them.
He had Lizzie on his arm and the trio were taken aback. Small wonder, since Lizzie was an exceptionally attractive young woman, and from her attire, her gentility was never in question. She had a little lad with her. As Gosse had discovered on a previous occasion, there was no denying that she was a widow and ‘a damned handsome one at that’, the lads agreed with backward glances of envy.
Small and slender, she was undeniably pretty, her outstanding features the abundant yellow curls and bright hazel eyes. There was only one problem for Faro, a secret he nursed: the woman he longed for with all his heart was Inga St Ola, tall with long black hair and blue eyes, and she lived in faraway Orkney.
Faro sighed. Inga had been his first love, older and more worldly-wise, his initiation into manhood on a moonlit beach one summer night. Seventeen years old, he had wanted to marry her but she had firmly rejected him. Declaring herself a free spirit, she had scorned the idea of being a policeman’s wife living in a great grimy city full of people; her entire life was centred on an island with its wild seas among folk like herself whom she had known all her life.
The business of being in love was a mystery to Faro. He knew he had loved Inga, but would he ever experience the ecstasy of being in love, a love that one died for, like the great romances of history, the kind Shakespeare wrote about? He shook his head solemnly. The prospect, alluring as it was, also scared him. He doubted if he even wanted to have his foundations being shaken by such an overwhelming destructive emotion for another human being.
And certainly he was safe enough with gentle, unassuming Lizzie Laurie, who offered no such threats to his existence. He respected her, was fond of her and wanted to protect her. Stretching a point you could call that love, he thought, and he was certain she loved him. But even after a wild party and far too much to drink, ending with a return to her tenement lodging and a night spent in her arms, he hadn’t woken up to feel anything but faint regret that he had perhaps let himself in for a future he wasn’t quite prepared for yet: marriage, making her an honest woman, which she would doubtless now expect as her right.
Inga would have laughed at such sentiments. She had advised him at their meeting in Stromness last year to go back and marry his Lizzie. She would make the perfect wife, Inga had said, attending to all his needs, ready with slippers before the fire after a long day, with food on the table, loving arms in a warm bed.
He sighed. Doubtless he would settle for that in the end. He did love Lizzie in a way and could maybe convince himself that was all he was ever to know, this mixture of tenderness and sympathy for all she had suffered in the past – but was that enough?
For there was another fly in the ointment, so to speak. The petulant eleven-year-old Vince who made no secret of his dislike and scorn for his mother’s suitor. The dislike was mutual, the idea of living under the same roof with Vince as his stepson intolerable.
Faro shuddered, thinking of what such years ahead would involve before the lad reached adulthood and left home. He didn’t doubt that Vince was clever; Lizzie was delighted with his school reports, proudly showing Faro homework books with their neat writing and bright stars and teachers’ ‘excellent work’ comments.
The signs were there already that Vince would do well enough to make something of his life, have a future beyond that expected of a domestic servant’s offspring, and an illegitimate one at that. And certain that she had a brilliant son, Lizzie had always spent what little she earned only on the necessities of life, and she told Faro that since his birth when she had decided to keep him, she had been saving up, her dream to have enough money to send him to the university here with its grand reputation.
Faro said nothing but thought plenty. She was wasting her time. He saw the sad reality that, clever as Vince was, by the end of his schooldays in a few years, Lizzie’s tiny income would never have reached the money necessary to send her boy to Edinburgh University. And what of his future when he got there? She had no idea of the snobbery of the rich men’s sons from Edinburgh’s middle class, and his brilliance as a student would not save Vince from their scorn.
Faro did not care to disillusion Lizzie, but from his own experience, he had and was still suffering from being a policeman’s son. Only a miracle could answer Lizzie’s dream and miracles of that nature were in very short supply.
CHAPTER THREE
At the Central Office, Chief Inspector McIvor was lying in wait.
‘Anything to report?’ he snapped, his voice curiously reminiscent of the bark of a very impatient small terrier. Before his promotion, he had earned the reputation of shaking criminals like a dog shaking a rat. With sharp-looking protruding teeth, a bush of gingery hair, heavy moustache and small eyes under bushy eyebrows, his resemblance to an angry terrier was unmistakable.
McIvor’s boast was that he did not suffer fools gladly and into that category he slotted all the constables and detectives under his command. Sergeant Gosse narrowly escaped this definition; he certainly produced results, and the overworked chief inspector was apt to close the book of evidence rather swiftly, without looking too closely at how such evidence had been obtained. He had a job to do. He was a busy man. McIvor expected results, results that a more moderate officer might have thought could only be rendered as miracles produced with the assistance of a visiting band of angels.
Gosse, who hated to admit defeat, straightened his shoulders. ‘Nothing, sir.’
At that Faro came forward and held out the playing card. ‘There was this lying beneath the woman’s body, sir. Perhaps it might help.’
McIvor shifted his withering gaze to this new detective constable.
‘A playing card, eh,’ he yelped. ‘And what kind of evidence do you call that?’
‘All these women play cards one way or another – gambling and telling fortunes, sir,’ Gosse put in hastily, rewarding Faro’s interruption with a scowl that said, clearer than words, that the book containing the rules of conduct before senior officers had been disobeyed: ‘Know your place. Show respect for your superiors and speak only when you are spoken to.’
Ignoring him, Faro addressed McIvor: ‘Not just any playing card, sir. This is the nine of diamonds, sir, known throughout history as the curse of Scotland. With respect, sir, as you will recall—’
‘You’re not engaged here to teach me my history, Faro,’ McIvor barked. ‘It’s the present we’re interested in, not what happened a hundred years ago—’
‘With respect, sir,’ Faro interrupted again, ‘we found the same card in the room where the last woman was killed—’
It was Gosse’s turn to cut in. ‘As I have explained to the constable here, sir, the woman’s killer, her husband, was a known gambler, the room littered with cards.’
McIvor chewed on his moustache, regarded Faro from under lowered brows and in the manner of a terrier putting his front paws together murmured, ‘So you are hinting that we have a killer who marks his territory by using a playing card as warning? A bit far-fetched, Faro. I can only suggest that this is a flight of imagination and a too-close adherence to coincidence which does not become a newly promoted constable to this force, whose wits should be heavily engaged on present crimes rather than reminders of Scotland’s past history.’
His words heavy with sarcasm, his head bent over the notes like a dog sniffing a ripe odour, indicated a gesture of dismissal. ‘Have to do better than that, Faro. Keep in step with your senior officer here and you won’t go far wrong.’
As Gosse and Faro backed smartly out of his presence with a respectful salute worthy of a royal presence, Faro mentally digested McIvor’s parting shot of ‘not far wrong’ as ‘not far right, either’.
Gosse did not intend to let the matter rest. ‘Watch your step, Faro. The boss is not a patient man and a few more fanciful ideas like that, instead of attending to detail, and you’ll find yourself demoted – back on the beat again, I shouldn’t wonder.’ And feeling that he had also been made an example of by implication, he added: ‘And don’t expect any recommendation from me, either.’
Faro’s thoughts were as gloomy as the weather that evening as he prepared to meet Lizzie at the servants’ entrance of Lumbleigh Green. En route, he paused in the Pleasance, staring up at the windows of the house where Andy Davy murdered his wife, claiming manslaughter rather than murder. His excuse, his violent temper and jealousy – he had never meant to kill her. But the scene of violence, and pity for Davy, too, remained indelibly printed on Faro’s mind. The circumstances that would pass in France as a crime passionnel were not recognised on this side of the English Channel and Andy Davy would pay with his life.
The playing cards at the scene of Mrs Davy’s murder had misled him. Were they a coincidence, since the only connection with the more recent murder was distance, their apartment a mere ten minutes’ walk away from Fleshers Close? Beyond the Pleasance and St Leonard’s, the ‘Seton side’ of the city was striving to escape any connection with the nearby Old Town with its closes and teeming population housed in towering tenements on both sides of the High Street.
On summer days fine weather offered Faro and Lizzie walks on Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Crags and the Queen’s Park or a stroll in the Princes Street Gardens where a couple might indulge in the gambit of normal courtship, gently getting to know one another, exchanging a few kisses – maybe. But when autumn came with darker evenings – and the signs were already present, with unpredictable heavy rainstorms and icy east winds across the Forth replacing calm autumnal sunshine, heralding snow soon to come – what then? Where would they go?
A notice in the hallway at his lodgings with Mrs Biggs announced the forbidden: No smoking in the bedrooms. Baths once a week – the latter a modern innovation to be arranged with the landlady (of which she was especially proud), the sequence sternly kept to. He had been warned by his fellow boarders: ‘If you miss your night, then you’ll have to wait until it comes round again next week.’ The warning notice also sternly included ‘No followers’, sex unclassified but undoubtedly alluding, in that all-male boardership, to the presence of females.
Leaving the Pleasance, Faro was out of Edinburgh city, the open country lying ahead. Here there was little habitation beyond a few secluded mansions with wooded gardens and exclusive villas like Blacket Place.
Locked gates sheltered these precincts from the coach road that for many centuries had served the city, the carriage route still linking Edinburgh to the Border towns and across the Cheviots to England and then to the world beyond, always watched over by the glowering extinct volcano that was Arthur’s Seat, on whose slopes were still to be seen the runrigg lines of a bygone farming community. At the base of this prehistoric settlement, whose origins were lost in time, a modern innovation dear to the hearts of travellers – Waverley Railway Station.
Faro loved the fresh air of the road before him, a steep hill with glimpses far across of the Pentland Hills and, on a fine day, the heights of Sutra Hill. Trees, farming and a few mansions. Venturesome merchants having made their fortunes had, for various reasons, felt that while a town house in the New Town would be fine enough, it would be rather splendid to have one’s own estate on the city outskirts where land was cheap, and to build a handsome turreted mansion on the lines of a medieval castle in imitation of the Queen and Prince Albert’s new Highland home at Balmoral, the ambition for every man with a few thousand pounds in hand.
And so it was that Lumbleigh Green came into existence on the edge of the Dalkeith Road, far from the less impressive home of William Lumbleigh, owner of a small coal mine near Leuchars, in Fife – not a fashionable place to live, William’s grandson Archie decided, while Edinburgh fairly zoomed in prosperity for the newly rich.
Approaching the gates, Faro was acutely aware that for his social life with Lizzie there was a limit to what he could afford in the way of entertainment, apart from the variety theatres and a few dance halls, which had such a low reputation that respectable young women avoided them. Besides, he couldn’t dance, so it seemed that their future in a fast-approaching season of inclement weather would be reduced to cups of tea in a High Street café.
And, as always, there was the problem, persistent as an angry wasp at their meetings, of the presence of Vince Laurie.
Earlier that week, however, Faro had discovered a welcome change in Lizzie’s life. She had run to the gate to meet him, smiling eagerly, full of excitement. Matters had been moving apace at Lumbleigh Green and Lizzie’s promotion to lady’s maid meant that she was now expected to live in.
‘Of course I want to live in, madam,’ she had said. ‘It’s an honour.’
In her efforts to save every penny, Lizzie had long occupied one room in a grim tenement in the Pleasance, in fact quite uncomfortably close to what was now being called ‘the murder house’, scene of the recent domestic killing of Mrs Daly by her husband. However, Lizzie’s lodging had one advantage: it was a ten-minute walk from Lumbleigh Green.
She was in a quandary. She did not know if she could afford to keep that one room, nor did she want to, if she was honest, apart from providing a home for Vince. The attic room in Lumbleigh Green was magnificent by comparison, even in its spartan state, overlooking gardens far below and with a distant glimpse of the Pentland Hills.
The second Mrs Lumbleigh was young and quite lovely. Infatuated, Archie had married her for her looks in the same manner as he normally acquired beautiful possessions at auction houses.
Clara was aware that her own origins would not bear too close a scrutiny. She liked Lizzie, who was so different from the friends she met in their social circle, women with whom she always felt she had little in common. She would look at Lizzie and wish she could be her best friend, longing to share with her the often scaring details of her early life. But she thought better of it, ashamed to confess such emotion even to herself, or to Archie, of whose disapproval she was a little afraid, and who made it his business to educate her, impress upon her their role in this new society. Had she even hinted about liking her lady’s maid he would tell her sternly that one didn’t express such feelings where a servant, a mere employee, was concerned.
She had no such problems with the other servants, had no desire to unburden herself to the formidable Mrs Brown or the two maids, the giggling, rather bold Ida, or Betty, painfully shy and inarticulate, a condition she shared with the coachman.
As for her lady’s maid, Clara felt more comfortable with her than anyone else in the house, even Archie himself. Laurie was a skilful hairdresser and seamstress; Clara needed to have her on hand. Lately, however, she had sensed some preoccupation and agonised with fears that Laurie might be after another situation. Unable to bear the suspense any longer, she sat her down and asked: ‘What’s wrong? Is something bothering you, Laurie?’
Archie insisted on the use of surnames for servants. Clara thought this was silly, it made her uncomfortable, but Archie believed this was not only fashionable but proper in the upper echelons of Edinburgh’s New Town society. Questioned by his wife he wasn’t quite sure why, but believed it was to prevent servants getting on too familiar terms with their betters.
Lizzie had sat up straight and said: ‘I am happy to serve you, madam. I cannot turn this down but what am I to do about my little son, Vince? He’s at school at St Leonard’s, just a step from where I’ve been living in the Pleasance for the past few years.’
True, it wasn’t much, but it was her home, after all.
And so, the whole story rolled out as she dressed her mistress’s hair preparatory to an evening concert at the Assembly Rooms.
And Clara Lumbleigh, studying her reflection in the mirror, had the divine inspiration of a solution. At the far end of the extensive gardens were the remains of the small farm cottage that had once occupied the site of Lumbleigh Green. Dilapidated, almost a ruin, to Archie it presented possibilities. With a barn that would serve as a stable, he had decided to keep it as accommodation for the coachman Brown who had come to Archie with excellent references from long-term employers in Glasgow and Aberdeen. Brown was prepared to also do duty as gardener/handyman, which pleased his tight-fisted master exceedingly, especially as Brown’s wife was an accomplished and experienced domestic servant, ready and willing to take on the role of housekeeper and cook.
Archie had rubbed his hands with glee at this splendid piece of economy. What a find! As for Clara, she remembered there was a tiny attic with a skylight window accessible by ladder where Vince could sleep, having his meals either with the Browns or in the servants’ kitchen.
‘What do you think of that, Laurie?’
Lizzie was dazed, almost speechless with gratitude.
‘Oh, madam, would you?’
‘Of course. The master may wish to make a reduction in your wages, but I will do my best.’
‘Oh, thank you, this is wonderful, wonderful.’
And this was what Lizzie had been waiting to tell Faro when they met that evening earlier in the week. It still did not solve the problem of future meetings in chilly winds and darkness with frozen hands and feet. Not much place for a lingering kiss either, because that and more, Faro suspected, was certainly what Lizzie now expected. Perhaps as Ida and Betty, the table and kitchen maids, didn’t live in, there might be possibilities of secret meetings over a cup of tea.
Lizzie would love to show him her attic, she said, but there were dangers. Such visits could be subject to misinterpretation, and she shuddered – if the master found out, it might well cost her her situation as well as her reputation.
Now, this evening, Faro had news of his own – for a special treat he intended taking Lizzie to the theatre.
As Faro stood by the iron gates framing a drive and a large and very ornate front door, Lizzie, always so punctual, failed to appear. Wondering anxiously what was wrong, he was considering whether he should ignore the forbidden entrance and the even more forbidding presence of two large black dogs patrolling the grounds. Lizzie assured him they were friendly but past experience had taught Faro to view dogs as the beat policeman’s enemies.
