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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Faro and McQuinn
- Sprache: Englisch
It is 1906 and the Faro family gather in Orkney after the sudden death of Inspector Faro's son-in-law Erland Yesnaby. The family try to support grieving widow Emily, but after witnessing strange behaviour from the royal yacht, the 'Victoria and Albert III', and when a body of one of its passengers washes up on the shore, both Inspector Faro and his investigator daughter, Rose McQuinn, struggle to resist the mystery of the Scottish coastline. When the ever-loyal gardener Sven starts acting strangely, and a shocking truth about him is uncovered, Inspector Faro and Rose McQuinn realise that the lives of more than one member of their family might be in danger. And with time running out, will these two renowned detectives be able to crack the case together?
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Seitenzahl: 371
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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The Darkness Within
A Faro and Rose McQuinn Mystery
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For Sheena and Allan
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Orkney 1906
Three mourning women, black statues against a heavy grey sky; seagulls screaming above their heads turned them into a monochrome, the prologue to a Greek tragedy.
Faro shuddered as the Stromness ferry touched the landing stage and as he leapt ashore the three statues became alive rushing down to welcome him, led by his two daughters Emily and Rose, followed a little slower by his mother, Mary Faro. The next moment he had gathered his girls into his arms, Emily the bereaved widow, murmuring his condolences suddenly changed into inadequate words.
‘My dear, you must forgive me for not getting here in time. We had just got back from France and I’m afraid any kind of news takes a while to reach Carasheen. Ireland is like that,’ he ended lamely.
Emily merely shook her head. The funeral was a week past and already seemed a long time ago, unreal, a kind of brutal nightmare from which there was no awakening. ‘No need for apologies, Pa. Erland would have understood – always travelling, he knew how difficult it was to get in touch with us.’
‘Imogen feels badly about it, too,’ Faro added awkwardly and Emily nodded in weary acknowledgement, leaving him more embarrassed than ever, never quite sure about how his family regarded Imogen Crowe, officially recognised as his travelling companion but everyone knew she was much more than that.
He kissed Emily’s cold cheek, guiltily aware that he had lost touch with his younger daughter after her marriage in Orkney. Now her husband’s untimely death had turned her into more of a stranger than ever. Even her looks had always been at variance with the Faros, with her long, straight black hair, round eyes in a face always pale, now stricken in grief. A throwback, she was, whispers ran, the image of Sibella, that scandalous selkie great-grandmother who had lived to be well past a hundred.
Rose was waiting for him, eagerly holding out her arms. Rose, his firstborn and dearest, so like his beloved long-lost Lizzie, the daughter always close to him who had followed in his footsteps.
‘Let me look at you.’ The passing years had been kind to Rose. Past forty she still looked young and petite with that cloud of yellow curls. ‘You look well.’
She smiled. ‘You too, Pa.’ He didn’t look seventy, this Orcadian-born policeman. The Viking warrior image was undimmed: thick fair hair, now white, the deep blue eyes, which she had once imagined would force the truth out of any criminal, because they seemed to look right through you, deep down into your very soul.
His mother, Mary Faro, watched the tableau, keeping a little distance apart, letting them give rein to their emotions, her main concern as always her only son, her beloved Jeremy, proud of him in his days as chief inspector in the Edinburgh Police Force, hoping and praying that retirement would bring him home again. But that had not happened; Jeremy had spread his wings to wider shores. Long a widower, she had brought up his two girls in Orkney always expecting – and even resenting, she had to admit – that he might remarry. Now he had this Irishwoman, the writer Imogen Crowe, famous they said she was, and him going all over the world with her.
He came to her, smiling sadly, and hugged her. ‘So sad, Ma, but you’re bearing up well – as always, you can be relied on.’
Her reply was lost in the noise of a shining motor car approaching down the road and braking alongside.
‘That’s ours, Pa,’ said Emily at her father’s look of surprise. She sighed. ‘Erland was so proud of it. Bought it only last year just when we were getting used to having the new motor bus between Kirkwall and Hopescarth, not that Gran would have anything to do with either.’
The driver was accompanied by a ten-year-old boy, tall for his age, fair, strong-looking. He leapt down and she put an arm around him.
‘Magnus, this is your grandfather.’ As they shook hands, Mary Faro came forward, beamed approval.
‘The very spit of you at his age, Jeremy,’ she said proudly. ‘The same island stock. He’ll make a fine man in a year or two.’
Magnus took his hand, a firm steady grip, a slight bow and a shrewd glance from eyes dark blue like his own. ‘Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard so much about you.’
As they walked towards the car, huffing and breathing a quantity of smoke as it waited, Rose came to his side and took his arm.
‘So good to see you, Pa,’ she sighed. ‘Two years is a long time.’
‘Too long, far too long.’ And guiltily Faro remembered that the last had been a very fleeting visit to Edinburgh, a pattern throughout the years of his retirement and his travels with Imogen, communication interspersed by the new craze for picture postcards, a blessed relief for those like himself who found writing letters burdensome.
‘Could have been a happier occasion, lass,’ he said. ‘Poor Emily.’
Rose nodded sadly. ‘Jack and I were shocked, a funeral when we should have all been meeting here to celebrate her fortieth birthday on Lammastide, the birthday she shared with Sibella, the very day it happened. I still can’t take it in, that Erland is dead.’ Looking up sad-eyed, she shook her head. ‘The most beautiful voice I ever heard, stilled for ever.’
‘I am sorry I couldn’t be here with you. Just couldn’t book a passage to Orkney in time.’ He sighed. ‘I never knew him, never got the chance,’ he added, too late now for the son-in-law he had only met when the cruise ship on which he and Imogen were travelling docked overnight in Kirkwall. A hasty meeting had been arranged, dinner at the local hotel, a return journey down to Stromness and Hopescarth impossible.
‘Magnus was just a baby, hadn’t even started school and just look at him now,’ Faro smiled, watching the others heading towards the motor car. ‘A fine young fellow. And how is your wee girl?’ Meg was Rose’s stepdaughter, the child of Jack Macmerry’s first brief marriage.
‘She’s fine, getting along very well with Magnus, her new-found cousin, as she calls him. I’m pleased – and relieved. I was rather anxious about this first meeting, and boys tend to despise girls at his age. But not Magnus, he’s very protective and kind. Seems to enjoy her company.’
‘Where’s Jack?’ Faro asked.
Rose giggled and pointed to the driver. Behind helmet and goggles, he recognised Rose’s husband, now Chief Inspector Jack Macmerry of the Edinburgh Police.
As they greeted each other with a warm handshake, Jack grinned. ‘You’re up here, Pa, beside the driver.’ Before assisting the women and Magnus into the four seats at the back, there would be a slight delay. Mary Faro, as housekeeper at Yesnaby House, took the opportunity of ‘gathering a few things from the shops’. Waiting for her return with Rose, Faro realised that a lot of things had changed in the last decade, progress had overtaken the island as Jack, patting the steering wheel, asked proudly:
‘Well, what do you think of her? Hammer Tourer, 24 horse power, 4-cylinder. And virtually brand new. Isn’t she just great?’
Faro nodded vaguely. With not the faintest notion about defining the merits of one motor car from another, he gratefully regarded this new species of transport, like the railway trains, an increasingly popular and painless method of travel.
‘They only provided horses, for the lucky – or the unlucky few, depending on how you cared for riding – in my day,’ he said.
Jack laughed. ‘They only provide motor cars for the lucky few now, provided that they are brave enough to learn to drive. I enjoy being behind the wheel and this was a rare opportunity, albeit a sad one, a chance to visit Orkney and bring Meg with us. She was quite determined, although it meant leaving Thane behind.’
Thane? Faro frowned. Oh yes, he remembered Thane was Rose’s deerhound. With her vivid imagination she tried to persuade everyone, himself included, that this mysterious animal had supernatural powers, that a kind of telepathy existed between them.
Nonsense, of course. He’d seen this Thane on an Edinburgh visit to Rose and Jack, and he seemed quite an ordinary likeable, well-behaved but exceedingly large dog, the size of a pony and more fitted to a stable stall than house room.
‘Just a short break to attend the funeral,’ Jack was saying, watching out for the two women coming back with their purchases. ‘You know what it’s like, sir.’
‘I do indeed.’
‘Of course, Rose has her own life in Edinburgh, too. She’s a very busy lady. Who would have thought that it ran in the family – must have got it from you.’ Jack’s laugh sounded slightly disapproving. More than ten years ago, Rose had returned from Arizona, widowed, believing that her husband, once his sergeant, Danny McQuinn, was dead. Against all the odds, she had set up very successfully as a lady investigator in Edinburgh.
Jack went on: ‘We have a housekeeper now, needed someone to look after Meg. Both of us are so actively involved, we haven’t much time left for domesticity.’ Jumping down, he saw the women with their baskets into the back seats. ‘Everyone settled now? Off we go.’
Mary Faro leant over and asked: ‘Where’s Imogen, Jeremy? Thought she’d be with you.’
Over the noise of the engine starting up, he shouted the delay in communication, apologised for missing the funeral and added, ‘She decided to go home to Carasheen.’
Mary frowned, a little disappointed, as he continued: ‘But she wouldn’t have come anyway. This is a family matter, you know,’ he added gently. Imogen Crowe did not regard herself as part of the family, although everyone guessed she was, in Scottish parlance, his wife ‘by habit and repute’. Only from choice, as Jeremy Faro would have added hastily in his own words: he would gladly put the wedding ring on her finger before the priest if she’d just name the day.
Once the motor car got somewhat noisily under way, conversation was impossible and he realised he had never travelled far beyond Kirkwall in his young days, when even a trip to Stromness was regarded in awe as a hazardous adventure, not to be undertaken lightly, and spoken of solemnly in the same hushed tones as voyaging across the Atlantic to America.
It was that same Atlantic he now regarded beating its great heart in wild waves breaking on the rocks far below. A new experience after that brief meeting with Erland and Emily from the cruise ship in Kirkwall. Now he saw that memory had painted a false picture of homecoming. He was unprepared for the emptiness, wild and bleak, the glimpses of a harsh seascape, for this was a land whose waiting was not measured in passing centuries but in that darker millennia beyond the ken of God-fearing, worshipping Christians.
This was an inhabited land long before the saints were born in Ireland. ‘The isles at the world’s end’ mariners called them, to be feared as the home of wreckers and the legendary seal people as well as mermaids and trolls. Seeing distant Skailholm had reminded him that here and there man had been bold, and turning a blind eye on the vagaries of an unreliable climate ready to spit in the face of humans’ work, they had planted stone houses perched uneasily as summer flies on hillsides and a boulder-strewn terrain, intercepted by death-dealing bogland and stretching away to limitless horizons.
And here he was now, a descendant of those distant settlers, heading towards Emily’s home at Yesnaby House in Erland’s motor car. In the front seat beside Jack, a noisy engine limited conversation with the three Faro women and young Magnus crowded into the back, giving him plenty of time to enjoy – or perhaps a more apt word was to endure – the passing scenery.
The sea road was rough and dangerously narrow, running in many places close to the cliff edge and requiring care and skilful attention from the driver. It was not for a nervous passenger. Faro was glad that he had no fear of heights, watching the translucent, wild-green Atlantic rollers crash on to the long stretches of pale gold sand. Beyond the violation of the peaceful strand their progress was interrupted by small irregular shapes of islands, like basking whales, impossible to imagine as being large enough for human habitation.
A signpost loomed into view pointing landwards. Lobster creels and fishing nets, narrow steps cut out of the cliff rock down to the shore, the glimpse of a single street of stone houses huddled together as if to get the most out of the warmth of a rare burst of sunshine.
Oddly it awoke memories of a boyhood visit to Stromness, swimming in the sea and lying afterwards in the sheltering warmth of dunes, eyeing through the swaying tall fronds of marram grass the bluest of summer skies and serenaded by the joyous chorus of unseen skylarks. That shaft of pure joy was his first true happiness. Memory, though distant, threw in a shadowy companion.
He was not alone; there was someone lying at his side. It was Inga, Inga St Ola, his first love, long before his marriage to Lizzie. Sadly brief, she had given him Rose and Emily and died with the birth of their stillborn son.
He sighed. It was all a long time ago; the years moved relentlessly and seventy belonged in a different world to seventeen, with all the joyous rapture of youth gone for ever. His nostalgia vanished with Jack’s shout:
‘Almost there, sir!’
They were now on the twisting sea road to Hopescarth, followed far below by dark round shapes bobbing up and down in the sea. Seals, and Faro remembered their curiosity, keeping pace with human travellers at a safe distance. He wondered how they saw these new arrivals, having observed through past ages two-legged creatures who walked on land that were now being replaced by huge black monsters who travelled on wheels. What on earth was the planet coming to?
Following Jack’s pointing finger he saw Hopescarth for the first time. Not that there was much more than could be taken in with one glance. A dozen grey stone houses, all identical and staring into each other’s windows across a long winding street. At one end a stern square block of a building with two entrance lintels carved ‘Boys’ and ‘Girls’ indicated the village school, although Faro wondered why they took the trouble to segregate such a small number. The remainder of Hopescarth was hidden behind high walls concealing a couple of better built houses, he guessed for doctor and minister as the steeple of the church rose alongside a railed-in kirkyard where crowded gravestones of vanished generations told of more currently dead than alive in the village.
Jack slowed down respectfully as they drove past, close by the Yesnaby vault where Erland had been laid to rest. A steep hill, the motor car snorting at this effort, and there facing west into the drama of the Atlantic was Yesnaby House.
Jack grinned at him and mouthed, ‘Home at last.’
Faro was disappointed. The Yesnabys were an ancient and, from all accounts, a wealthy family. The houses of their equivalent in Edinburgh were fashionably designed to resemble mini Balmoral castles, but this solid-looking square house squatting on a hillside lacked any architectural frills. In Orkney, weather dictated fashion, turning its face firmly against exterior ornamentation, a waste of time and money soon to succumb to fierce winds and winter storms. Here survival was the paramount issue and in that nothing had changed in a thousand years, when it had been enemies such as the Vikings on marauding raids that threatened. Their other enemy, the fierce climate, remained, a constant siege to be faced with solid stone walls, deep-set windows and sturdy strong doors turned away from the sea.
They were crossing a stone bridge leading up to the house and Jack drove carefully, for, below, the ground dropped sharply across a stretch of bright-green grass. Bogland, to remind new generations that once upon a time the building on the skyline had been a fortress against invaders from the sea.
A brisk wind had arisen; the horizons darkened with a flurry of rain. What would it be like in a storm? Faro wondered. The house must have endured many, for even at this distance at first glance it had the air of the ancient pele tower, which had been its origin.
A tower with a sense of waiting, he thought, windows like brooding eyes. Just a mite sinister, a building that had lived through much, shaped and reshaped by the passing centuries, and holding itself in readiness, preparing for the next catastrophe.
Catastrophe? Why catastrophe, why that word?
Jack stopped as close to the front door as he could. Rose, Emily and Magnus went ahead with Faro and his mother at their heels.
A warm day to welcome him; it was summer, after all. But nevertheless, he shivered, wishing he could obliterate that first sight of those three women on the skyline he had first encountered, the seabirds screaming … the sense of something bad.
An omen.
CHAPTER TWO
Rose had found the drive frustrating, longing to sit beside her father, to be close to him in that front seat where only the back of his and Jack’s heads were visible. Sighing, she realised that she was still a little girl where he was concerned. Afraid that the passing years would take their toll and that an old man might have overtaken her adored strong father, she was delighted that the years were being kind to him. Proud to note that he remained a handsome man of seventy who still walked tall. The Viking image everyone associated with him, the once fair hair was still plentiful, those deep-blue eyes had lost nothing of the piercing quality of youth.
Apart from shouted comments, with conversation impossible as the motor car had noised its way over the hazardous uneven cliff road, Rose’s thoughts drifted back to Emily’s urgent summons, the sickening news of Erland’s unexpected death, the frantic haste of their sailing from Edinburgh to Orkney in time for the funeral. She took her sister’s hand exchanging a sad smile, for Emily had resolutely decided that grief must be set aside and that she must find consolation and comfort in the joy of this unexpected family meeting, especially of seeing her father again.
Nearing Hopescarth was already reviving Rose’s memories of that visit ten years ago, especially the village of Skailholm, perched so perilously above the shore. Her bicycle had a puncture and she had been given a lift in a motor car. A more settled day than this, the sky blue to the horizon occupied by a few lazy drifting cumulus clouds, that the schoolteacher in Kirkwall reading Bible stories solemnly would tell the children who asked about where heaven was, that these were angels’ pillows.
Jack stopped after a particularly sharp bend, stepping down briefly to look at the engine, and in that short silence she heard the skylarks, tiny dots soaring into the blue. And that brought another childhood memory.
Touching Magnus sitting opposite, she pointed and said: ‘Skylarks.’
He grinned. ‘We all call them Our Lady’s hens.’
Rose laughed as the motor car restarted. ‘So did we!’
‘Almost there!’ Jack’s shout as they approached the stone bridge to Yesnaby House brought another flood of memories. Her last visit, the archaeologists at work, the mystery of the peat bog burial and its dire solution. Then there was Erland’s amazing garden, so lush and fertile in this otherwise barren wilderness with all its secrets.
As Jack helped his passengers to alight, it was a relief for Rose. Travelling by motor car was novel, much speedier than any bicycle, but she still preferred the exhilaration of fresh air and the feeling of well-being rather than sitting still in the back of noisy machines with cramped muscles after a few miles.
The door opened and Meg rushed out, straight into her father’s arms, as if they had been parted for years rather than hours, Rose thought wryly, remembering how much Meg had wanted to come on the car journey, disappointed and cross that there wasn’t room in the motor car for her to meet her new grandfather off the ferry. That wasn’t the only reason. She had a bad head cold and had been off school for a few days in Edinburgh. As she was just recovering, her father had insisted that sitting in the back of an open motor car with the more than likely probability of rain would be bad for her.
Now settled firmly back again on the ground by Jack, Meg shyly turned to Magnus, smiling as he introduced her to Faro: ‘This is our grandfather, Meg.’
With handshakes and hugs exchanged, Mary Faro bustled towards the kitchen while Rose and Emily went upstairs to remove their black veils.
Faro was surprised to discover that, viewed from outside, this was a very ordinary house built in the traditional Orkney style, but once inside it was much larger, much grander. Through the front door, he walked across a marble tiled floor and ignoring the grand oak staircase sweeping upwards, he followed his mother down a corridor that emerged into a large kitchen, the domain of Mary Faro, which could have accommodated the whole of her tiny Kirkwall cottage where he had grown up. Indeed, this was a house with authority, stated and confirmed by the portraits of Erland’s ancestors staring sternly down from the walls, while outside, far below, were the remains of mysterious crumbling stone walls that went nowhere, hinting that this was not the first habitation to stand on top of the hill, a watchtower to the sea at the ready for invaders.
Upstairs, this was the first chance for Rose to talk about Faro with the sister who had seen him even less frequently in Orkney than she had in Edinburgh.
‘He has always looked young for his age,’ said Emily, ‘and don’t you remember we dreaded what it would be like if he married someone else?’ They had both been children then, when their mother died in childbirth, with a late baby, the son she had longed to give to Faro but who went into the grave with her.
Rose laughed. ‘Too many wicked stepmothers in fairy tales.’ Older, they hoped that he would marry again, and had suspicions that such a handsome man must have had many fleeting romances over the years.
‘Do you ever hear anything of Inga?’ Rose asked. Orkney recalled memories of a visit long ago when there had obviously been something between her father and Inga St Ola.
Emily shook her head. ‘No. According to Gran, she left Kirkwall years ago for a job on the mainland.’ She didn’t add that Mary Faro was thankful to see the back of this woman who she had never liked, fearing that she would ensnare her beloved Jeremy into marrying her. Inga had been his first love, but her name was never mentioned.
‘Any news of Imogen?’ Emily added.
Rose laughed. ‘We all had great hopes there, didn’t we? Ten years or more, and Imogen Crowe, the famous lady writer from Ireland as our stepmother!’
‘Yes, we were thrilled at the prospect, but no, the impediment to their wedding, I gather, is that Imogen is a dedicated suffragette who doesn’t believe in marriage.’ Emily leant across the table and nodded. ‘Perhaps their relationship is everything except being churched, if you get my meaning.’
‘A Scots’ marriage by habit and repute, we call it.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Emily. ‘Sounds so simple – just grab a couple of witnesses and say you are man and wife. Then if you get fed up in a year or two, no binding vows, you just say goodbye and go your own ways.’ A deep sigh remembered what she had just lost. She shook her head and Rose stretched out a hand, held Emily’s firmly as she went on: ‘Would never have done for me, Rose. I wanted it all legal, with a home and children – and so did Erland,’ she ended sadly.
Rose put an arm about her shoulders as she went on: ‘I still can’t believe that I will never be with him again, never have his head on the pillow beside me when I wake in the mornings. Oh Rose, he was my husband and like a father too. Now a light has gone out for ever.’
‘At least you have Magnus, something of Erland’s.’
‘Thank God for our dear lad. Poor Erland, we thought we were to be childless and then Magnus came along.’ She sighed. ‘We wanted more but it never happened. Strange, isn’t it, the way the Faro women seem to be doomed to one child only.’
‘I didn’t even get to keep my wee boy.’
‘Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean—’
Rose squeezed her hand. ‘Of course you didn’t.’ And Emily remembered the letter she had when Rose returned to Edinburgh after Danny disappeared and the baby he never saw died of a fever in the Indian reservation, and how Rose, sick almost to dying herself, dug his grave in the Arizona desert.
Rose was silent too, remembering, and Emily said: ‘Do you think it’s the St Ringan curse put upon us for some long-forgotten misdemeanour?’
‘That’s what superstitious Orcadians still believe. I hope it’s just a coincidence – at least that is what Pa would insist.’
Their solemn moment was interrupted by sounds of childish mirth from the next room.
Emily smiled. ‘At least you have Meg now.’
‘And she’s like the daughter I never had.’
‘You have Jack, and he is so good, I do like him – he’s solid and reliable. Such a good husband, just like Erland.’
Rose thought for a moment before asking: ‘What will you do now, Em?’
Her sister shrugged. ‘I haven’t had time yet for it to sink in properly. It was all so sudden, so unexpected. We never made plans for the future for ourselves.’ Her voice broke and she dabbed her eyes, then straightening her shoulders again, she went on. ‘I love this house and living in Hopescarth but I don’t think Magnus and I can stay here without him. Magnus is a clever lad, doing so well, and the school in Stromness is reportedly very good, but Erland always intended that he should go to university and that meant Edinburgh, as he did himself. Travelling back and forth to the mainland would have been nothing to Erland. He was always on the move, across to Bergen or to the Continent, mostly taking Sven with him. I don’t know what will become of Sven now …’
‘Tell me about Sven,’ Rose said. The tall, fair young man with outstanding good looks she had first seen as a pall-bearer at Erland’s funeral was part of the Yesnaby household.
Emily shrugged. ‘What do we know about him? Only what we were told. Erland always had close business connections with Norway, trading links and so forth – I was never sure exactly what – but when he met up with Sven, a couple of years ago, he brought him back and proceeded to treat him like one of the family, as he had none of his own in Bergen. He had been adopted. Said having him around was a great business asset, especially as Erland, bless him, who was so good at everything, was hopeless at speaking any other language.’
Rose found that strange, considering his beautiful voice, as Emily went on: ‘So having Sven as a fluent speaker with Norwegian his native tongue, was invaluable.’ But the way she said it and her frown suggested to Rose that her sister had not always approved of this newcomer.
‘Erland had many contacts over there and even took Sven to see the royal coronation at Trondheim earlier this summer.’
‘How exciting. Didn’t you want to go with them?’
Emily shook her head. ‘Not really. It would have been quite a voyage and I didn’t want to leave Magnus. He couldn’t have come with us,’ she added and Rose suspected that she hadn’t been happy at being left behind. She said, ‘I’m a terrible sailor. So that’s where our said selkie connection falls short.’
Rose looked at her. ‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘But as you know, Sibella couldn’t swim and hated the water. Strange as it seems, if the story was true, maybe she was scared, going into the water, that the sea would reclaim her, take her back to … to that previous life, before she was old and tired and ready to go.’
‘Anyway,’ said Emily, ‘about the coronation. As I expect you know, Queen Maud is the youngest daughter of our king, so there were quite a number of British people there and by all accounts, some very elegant receptions.’
‘I wonder how you could have resisted it.’
Emily shook her head, said again, ‘No, Rose. I’m a home bird, never like leaving the nest. I’d have had to dress up, buy travelling clothes, a wildly expensive wardrobe that I would never have occasion to wear again.’ She groaned. ‘And all that corseting! Being tightly laced up every day like an hourglass is an absurd fashion. I’m glad I never have to bother about such things here, I can just wear whatever I like.’
That was something they had in common. Rose had never followed fashion and refused the ‘S’ shape of bosom and bustle considered de rigueur among Edinburgh ladies.
‘And there’s always been Gran – she relied on me,’ Emily continued and Rose said: ‘Now, that’s just an excuse, Em. She had a perfectly good life in Kirkwall; a strong healthy woman, she would never have wanted you to waste your life looking after her. For goodness’ sake, her ambition was that we should get married, and practically as soon as we left school she was constantly on the lookout for suitable husbands.’
‘That may be so, but she was horrified, I can tell you now, when you went off to America to marry Danny McQuinn.’
‘I think that was more concern about going to the ends of the earth, as she would call it, to live among savages than an unsuitable husband.’ Rose paused. ‘How did you persuade her to move to Yesnaby when you married Erland?’
‘Oh, he did that. He thought after our early years – you know, the miscarriages before Magnus – that I was a bit frail and that she should come to us, especially when he was away so much, and that I needed help with a baby to look after.’
They were seated by the big window overlooking the sunken garden with its ancient wall, all that remained of the original medieval tower, and Emily looked down at Sven, who was also the gardener, busy, head down, trowel in hand. ‘Sven has been such a treasure and I am glad he is happy with us. Not married, he has no other responsibilities, although I did wonder when he enjoyed the coronation experience so much that he might have decided it was time to go back home.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Especially as Erland said the girls in Norway fell over themselves to meet him.’
‘He’s quite a stunner,’ Rose said. ‘I should think he has lots of chances here too. Seems odd to me that he’s managed to escape the matrimonial net.’
Emily nodded. ‘He’s young enough still, of course, but thirty is considered quite old up here. Most men his age have young families by now. But all he seems to want is the garden here by day and the lobster fishing. He takes the boat out every night and collects the creels, takes them into Stromness and puts them on the motor bus to be delivered to a dealer from Kirkwall to sell. In a good season it makes a reasonable income for him, and Erland always let him keep the proceeds. There was a limit to the lobster we could eat and I hated the business of cooking them.’ She thought for a moment. ‘He never intrudes on us, you know; when his day’s work is done he goes back home to his cottage, rarely ever stays for a meal.’
‘Does he cook for himself, then?’
Emily shrugged. ‘I imagine so. I gather he has a woman from Hopescarth looks in to clean and do his laundry. Erland gave him the cottage rent-free and a few pounds each month. He has asked me if that arrangement can continue and said that he didn’t need much money as he is a man of simple taste.’
And a bit of an enigma, thought Rose, who would have liked to take the top off that handsome head and look inside. What was he really like? she wondered. His hermit-like existence seemed all wrong somehow for this good-looking Norwegian living alone in that cottage on the estate, isolated from the community at Hopescarth and people of his own age.
There was a pause and Rose felt her sister had more to say about Sven but her concern was what was to happen in the immediate future.
‘If Magnus and I can’t manage here, perhaps it would be best if we moved to Edinburgh. The idea appeals as it would be quite a novelty after living here most of my life. Ever since Mama died all those years ago and Gran took us on, I’ve hardly ever set foot on the mainland for years—’
‘You could come and live with us in Solomon’s Tower, there is plenty of room, Em,’ Rose replied eagerly, delighted at the prospect.
‘I must stay here for Gran, although I sometimes have a feeling that she misses Kirkwall and would be happy to go back to her cottage. She must be past ninety, although she’ll never tell any of us her age. And she’s getting frail, too frail to manage a house as big as this with all its stairs and corridors and empty rooms. She wouldn’t give in until she had a nasty fall and hurt her leg. Erland insisted then that we should have a younger housekeeper.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘You could have heard her indignant protests in Stromness.’
Rose said, ‘Well, I know one thing. She wouldn’t be happy coming to Edinburgh. It has never been her favourite place. She’s hated it since all those years ago our policeman grandpa, the one your Magnus is named after, was killed in a traffic accident when Pa was just a wee lad. And now, she doesn’t even have the lure of Pa living there. He has always meant more to her than either of us.’
Emily looked at her. ‘Do Imogen and he have any permanent home these days?’
‘They have a house in Dublin, more convenient for ships and the like than Carasheen tucked away in Kerry.’
‘What about London or Edinburgh?’
Rose shook her head ‘Alas, no. You know Imogen was regarded as an Irish terrorist in the United Kingdom police records until fairly recently, when the King granted her a Royal pardon for a miscarriage of justice in his mother’s reign.’
‘I remember. She was just fifteen when her uncle brought her to London and planned to assassinate the Queen. When he died they kept her in prison, didn’t they?’
Rose nodded, ‘They couldn’t prove anything against her and she was sent home to Ireland. This was thirty years ago, but police records have long memories. There is always trouble in Ireland and it wasn’t helped that Imogen never made a secret of being known to the British government as a dangerous Irish nationalist.’
‘Nor do they look kindly on suffragettes.’
Rose laughed. ‘As are so many women of our generation, myself included. Anyway, Imo is no longer an exile threatened with prison every time she sets foot on British soil.’
‘That must be such a relief, especially to Pa, knowing they can both visit us. Whatever folks say about Bertie’s morals, I think we have a good king.’
‘And I for one am prepared to forgive him everything for clearing Imogen’s name.’ She was about to tell Emily that she had met him briefly in Edinburgh with their stepbrother, Vince, then junior physician to the Royal household and again on holiday in Balmoral last year, but their conversation was brought to an abrupt end.
Mary Faro bustled in and stood over them. ‘I’m needing help with setting the table downstairs if we are ever going to get something to eat. Your husband, Rose, is in need of a good meal, and we have beds to prepare since that Millie didn’t come in this morning. Fine housekeeper she is, I must say.’
‘What is it this time?’ Emily asked.
‘Just problems with that daft lad of hers. Goes missing from time to time.’
‘Is it serious?’ Rose asked.
Mary shrugged. ‘I’m just saying he isn’t all there, wanders off and sees things. Dr Randall says he has the “doonfa” sickness.’ She paused and added darkly, ‘There was that business with Sibella.’
‘Sibella? What was that?’
Rose was intrigued at the hint of a mystery. But she would have to wait for an answer as Jack came in, wearing an expression she recognised. It meant something vital and urgent.
CHAPTER THREE
‘Where’s my clean shirt?’ Jack demanded. ‘Does it need ironing?’
With a sigh of relief that this was just another of Jack’s domestic crises, Rose took it down from the rack and handed it to him solemnly.
He kissed her and smiled. ‘Have to go, love, as soon as I can get a ship to Aberdeen. Leith would be even better. I wish I could stay.’
Mary said shortly: ‘Surely even detectives get a summer holiday. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is. No respect for a family funeral, insisting you go back to work.’
Jack shrugged. It was pointless arguing with his grandmother-in-law.
‘I’ll help you pack,’ said Rose. As they left she saw that look of yearning on her sister’s face and realised how many times Emily must have said those same words to Erland.
Upstairs in their bedroom, Jack didn’t really need help to pack, but it was one of the housewifely duties Rose enjoyed, making sure shirts were carefully folded and ready to wear as he had a tendency to push things into a case rather haphazardly and then grumble about the creases.
Removing clothes from the wardrobe, with Jack whistling rather tunelessly as he stared out of the window watching the two children playing tennis on the lawn below, he looked happy.
‘She’s getting along fine with Magnus and without Thane.’
Rose said, ‘I have to admit I was dreading it.’
Jack laughed. ‘That’s a moment I’ll never forget. Back home, the kitchen door opening and this enormous dog rushing towards her as if he was ready to swallow the wee girl, in one gulp. I expected tears and screams of terror but she sat there smiling, calm as you like, reached up and put her arms around his neck.’
‘She was delighted. He was hers from that moment.’
Jack shook his head. ‘Weird it was, almost as if she had been expecting him. And the family was complete. We were all happy.’
Rose kissed him, glad to be past forty, settled and happy, content with a husband and a little girl after the strangeness of her early life: how at twenty, against all advice, she had left a teaching post in Glasgow to follow Danny McQuinn out to Arizona where he was working for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, determined against all odds to marry the man she had loved since she was eleven years old.
Emily, however, had been content to remain with her grandmother in Kirkwall before moving to Hopescarth to be Erland’s housekeeper at Yesnaby House, and when his wife died, he asked her to marry him. Emily could hardly believe her good fortune. Although he was some years older, she had never been in love, never had a man in her life and Erland, childless, wanted children. So did she and they were almost desperate after several miscarriages. Then at last Magnus was born, strong and healthy, fated to be their only child.
As for Rose, her second marriage to Jack Macmerry seemed doomed to be childless. Now she was thankful and heartily glad to have Meg, a stepdaughter she loved and could not have treasured more had she brought her into the world.
The bond was shared by Meg, who regarded Rose not only as her mother but as a confidante with whom she could share her joys and her sorrows. And Thane, Thane was hers. From the moment she had set foot in Solomon’s Tower as a three-year-old, the great deerhound seemed to recognise her as a kind of soulmate. A strange affinity sprang up between them, the same he and Rose had shared from their first meeting, and utterly devoted to Thane, Meg refused to do anything, go anywhere unless he came too. This devotion had its drawbacks. He could hardly come over to Orkney with them, although Meg was adept at ignoring obvious difficulties of transporting not a small lapdog but one the size of a pony and much larger than herself.
It was a difficult and not infrequent argument and one that Rose was used to. Meg was determined. She would not move without Thane, but Meg loved visiting new places and this time desperately wanted to see Orkney. It sounded quite magical to her and as one without any siblings, or indeed any relations apart from much-loved Macmerry grandparents in Peebles, there was a new cousin to meet – Rose hadn’t the heart to tell her that Magnus Yesnaby was not blood kin – and there were fascinating, exciting stories too about a great-great-grandmother who was a selkie.
A compromise was reached: Thane would stay in Edinburgh at home in Solomon’s Tower, but he would be well-cared-for by Sadie Brook, part-time housekeeper, who moved in and looked after Meg when the master (Mr Jack) was away on police business and the mistress (Mrs Rose) was heavily involved in her work as lady investigator. By an interesting coincidence, Sadie’s Aunty Brook had been Faro’s housekeeper in Sheridan Place. Not that Thane needed looking after: he was quite capable of taking care of himself by hunting for rabbits and small animals as did normal dogs on Arthur’s Seat, his mysterious home long before he ‘adopted’ Rose McQuinn.
Voices downstairs. Mary and Emily were laughing about something with the two children. How strange life was, Rose thought. Here she was with Jack, a policeman who faced violence and even death each day of his life chasing evil criminals. And there was Emily, whose husband, when he wasn’t travelling, lived a peaceful, tranquil life; an elderly, yet strong, healthy man who, while sitting at home in his own beloved garden and in the warm sunshine of a summer afternoon, closed his eyes and died.
Jack put his arm around her. ‘Thanks for your help. Don’t know what I would do without you,’ he grinned. ‘Our Meg’s a cheerful little soul and Magnus must be glad of her company just now.’ He sighed. ‘Thank God someone can get some joy out of this sad business.’
‘Erland was such a lovely man. Poor Emily, she’ll never get over it. The love of her life. Pity you never met,’ Rose added. ‘You would have liked him.’
Jack frowned. ‘I did meet him once. In Edinburgh.’
‘You never told me. When was that?’
