Murder by Appointment: Inspector Faro No.10 Page 2

  He removed the sheet as requested and Faro found himself looking down on the face, now tranquil in death, of the woman who had pleaded in vain for his help and protection.

  'They are going to kill me—'

  The sombre words echoed in his head. Ashamed that he had believed this unfortunate woman had set him up for a gang of thieves, he touched the sleeve of his coat as if to ward off the memory of those frantic clawing hands. If only he had reacted with more speed. If only his normal awareness of danger had not failed him.

  He sighed; his life story seemed characterized by those fatal words: If only...

  'Brought in early this morning,' said Dr Nichols.

  'So I was told. What about her injuries?'

  The doctor shrugged. 'Consistent with being run over by a carriage. What one would expect. Here—and here—' He drew the sheet down further. But Faro hardly listened.

  'Was there any possibility that she was already dead?' he asked, cutting short the doctor's clinical details. 'I mean, before the accident?'

  The doctor knew Inspector Faro and his reputation too well to regard this question with surprise.

  'Wheels run over her were enough to kill her. Did plenty of damage—liver, spleen, ribs—see for yourself—'

  Faro averted his eyes from the mangled corpse. 'Do we know who she is?' The doctor shook his head and Faro sighed. 'Any clues to her identity?'

  'You can see what we have for yourself.' As Nichols signalled to his assistant, Faro remembering the woman had been empty-handed, knew the answer. And if she had been murdered, as he suspected, her killers, in their own interest, would have made certain she carried no means of identification.

  As they waited, Nichols looked at Faro. 'Murder, sir. Is that what you have in mind?' And he spilled the bag of clothes out on to a spare trestle. 'This is what she was wearing.'

  Faro unfolded a black cloak and a grey merino dress. Even in better days undrenched by rain, they would have been shabby and threadbare. They were, however, neatly patched. The linen undergarments, chemise, petticoat, drawers, repaired and carefully mended, the stocking feet well darned. The condition of her clothes and the stitching indicated that their late owner was of a careful disposition, either a seamstress of some ability or lady's maid. The excellent quality of once-fine linen indicated that in all probability they had been passed down to her by some grateful well-off employer or benefactor. Her hands, neither rough nor red, were further confirmation of his suspicions.

  'That's all there was, Inspector. No reticule. Perhaps it rolled away somewhere. We'll never know. Nothing here to tell us who she might be, sir.'

  But the doctor too had come to his own conclusions. 'All the signs indicate a member of what we like to call the respectable poor, sir. Servant, like enough, I'd say.'

  Faro agreed but with some cautious reservations, based on bitter personal experience. Clothes did not always tell the truth and could be deliberately misleading. As he had found to his cost in the Case of the Missing Duchess.

  'Let me see.'

  He studied the woman's face carefully before Nichols replaced the sheet. The doctor looked puzzled at the intensity of Faro's gaze.

  'Something I missed, Inspector?'

  Faro shook his head. 'No. I thought when I first saw her that we had met before.'

  'And have you?' said the doctor hopefully.

  When Faro shook his head, the doctor smiled. 'You must have a good memory for faces, sir.'

  'Goes with the job, doctor. But I'm afraid it has let me down this time. No matter. Tell me, were there any marks besides those of the wheels?'

  'Then you are suggesting this might be murder, sir?'

  'Without going into the details of the assault on himself, Faro nodded. 'Could be.'

  The doctor whistled. 'Rum business, Inspector. That mighty crack on the back of her head might not have been contact with the carriage wheel, or the ground when she fell.'

  Faro winced, remembering the heavily nobbled stick, the kind carried by desperate men who meant business, rather than a gentleman's accessory, as the doctor continued, 'Her skull was fractured.'

  'Would that be enough to kill her?'

  'Yes, of course. But I must point out to you that this injury is also consistent with the carriage accident.'

  'Where was she found?'

  'In Dean Village.'

  Faro looked up. 'Hardly a busy thoroughfare. Not exactly the hub of the heavy carriage trade at five in the morning.'

  The doctor sighed. 'The assumption is always that the driver was one of those young blades, reckless—and drunk.'

  Pausing, he regarded Faro earnestly. 'You know it as well as I do, Inspector. These young well-off lads will do anything to avoid trouble, bringing discredit on their families and so forth. Manslaughter is a difficult tag to have to live down if your heart—or your family's heart—is set upon seeing you as advocate—or doctor—or minister of religion.'

  But Faro was hardly listening. Dean Village was on the other side of the town, far beyond the Mound and the Georgian New Town with its staid streets and crescents of elegant houses.

  Thanking the doctor for his help, he returned grimly to his own office upstairs. The time that had elapsed and the distances involved suggested that after the two men's murderous assault on him, the woman had been similarly treated and was already dead or dying before the carriage accident was staged.

  He shuddered and touched the bump on his head tenderly. If his skull hadn't been thick, then he might have been occupying the adjacent trestle in the mortuary.

  'Bound to happen to him with his kind of life. All the enemies he made. All the villains he put away. Just got unlucky, that's all. You can't win for ever—'

  Such would have been the verdict of his colleagues. With a funeral service in St Giles, laid to rest in the quiet grave beside his beloved Lizzie, he would have been luckier in his demise than the dead woman. The fate of unknown corpses at the hands of medical students, although necessary for the progress of medical science, continued to trouble him.

  There was nothing he could do to avert the inevitable. Unless he could produce evidence before the Procurator Fiscal within three days that the woman had been murdered and produce an identity and a family who would make the necessary funeral arrangements, he would be left with another unsolved murder on his hands.

  Vince had insisted that Briggs bring him home again and Faro was not displeased to be carried back to Sheridan Place where the smells of baking greeted him as he opened the front door. Rich fruit cake and roasting meat assured him that Mrs Brook was preparing a banquet fit for his daughter Rose. With the assistance, sought or unsought, of the new maid, May.

  Faro sighed. Rose's imminent arrival presented problems momentarily more pressing than the dead woman's identity.

  As for Mrs Brook's behaviour, he suspected this might indicate a smouldering volcano threatening his peaceful domestic scene. Once in sole command of her two gentlemen, she had warmly welcomed the young mistress but, apart from dark glances, kept her own counsel, refusing to be drawn on Mrs Dr Vince's contribution of a mute servant into the household, despite the girl's tragic history.

  Chapter 4

  As Faro eagerly anticipated Rose's arrival, he realized her future was a major preoccupation. Rose and his determination to keep her away from Detective Sergeant Danny McQuinn, who as a young constable, had been for some years his right-hand man. Together they had solved many cases, put many criminals behind bars and, on more than one occasion, he had owed his life to McQuinn's speedy intervention.

  Faro tried not to remember such indebtedness since Danny McQuinn had become the love of Rose's life. The two were like magnets, each forever drawing the other. According to Rose she had loved Danny (so she claimed) since she was twelve years old and he rescued her from an abduction attempt on one of her visits from Orkney where she and her younger sister Emily had lived with his mother since Lizzie died.

  Faro had been tolerant of what he considered ch
ildish hero worship for the handsome young Irish policeman, an infatuation he was certain that Rose would outgrow. But she had proved him wrong and despite all his attempts to matchmake on her infrequent visits to Edinburgh, by introducing her to agreeable, eligible and highly desirable young men such as Olivia's brother, Dr Owen Gilchrist, he realized that she had no romantic inclinations towards any other man than Danny McQuinn.

  It was aggravating and Faro acknowledged that he was helpless to change the course of his daughter's lovelife until a hitherto unseen opportunity offered itself for an assistant detective in the ranks of the Glasgow City Police. A splendid chance for promotion and he immediately recommended McQuinn for the post.

  McQuinn was touchingly grateful for this boost to his career and Faro had the uncomfortable satisfaction of knowing that his not entirely altruistic action had succeeded in parting the two lovers.

  Relief was short-lived when Rose wrote to him that she had obtained a teaching post in a Glasgow girls' school. He did not doubt that McQuinn was the reason for her leaving Orkney and, worst of all, that he no longer had ways of keeping them from seeing each other, or indeed of playing chaperon.

  Vince was not sympathetic. His two-year-old marriage to Olivia had made him more aware of romantic possibilities for less fortunate couples. He refused to understand why Rose should not be allowed to make her own choice and follow her heart's desire, especially when that desire was reciprocated.

  'Don't try to play God in people's lives, Stepfather,' he warned Faro. 'Especially those close to you. You'll get no thanks.'

  And Faro wondered if Vince ever realized now how desperately his stepfather had willed the match between himself and Olivia, or of his sly attempts at matchmaking. Vince would never know how Faro had despaired at his 'long friendship' with Olivia and her twin brother Owen when she was so obviously the perfect wife.

  He had almost given up hope when, to his amazement, Vince casually announced that he and Olivia were to marry. And it was Olivia who refused to listen to Faro's suggestion that he move into a smaller apartment in one of the tenements near the Central Office where many of the unmarried constables lived.

  His protestations that a young couple should begin married life on their own were scornfully swept aside.

  'Not another word from you on that subject, if you please,' Olivia said firmly. 'This is your house and we are greatly obliged to you for allowing us to share it.'

  And with a smile, a warm kiss on his cheek, she added shyly. 'Besides, we would miss you dreadfully. And Mrs Brook. Whatever would we do without her? We'd never find a housekeeper like her again. It will take May years and years—she's so inexperienced. We're relying on Mrs Brook to train her.'

  Mrs Brook remained silent on the subject of May, the maid whom Olivia's aunt in Stirling had rescued from the workhouse. The aunt's recent death had left the girl destitute, orphaned as a small child, robbed of parents and siblings in a house fire, her powers of speech destroyed by the terrifying experience.

  Kind-hearted Olivia provided the perfect solution without having ever met the lass who had been well trained as lady's maid but whose efficiency below stairs was somewhat limited. She also failed to realize that Mrs Brook jealously guarded her realm and was exceedingly possessive regarding her supreme reign over 9 Sheridan Place.

  Faro treated such trivial domestic episodes as matters of no importance. They were strictly for a housekeeper to sort out while, above stairs, he basked in the harmony of Vince and Olivia's happiness. Daily he marvelled that his stepson's present bliss bore no resemblance to the previous condition of the young man forever losing his head to some unsuitable woman.

  Joy and pride in his pretty clever wife had transformed Vince into a solid, respectable Edinburgh doctor, with a thriving practice of respectable middle-class patients.

  Even the frivolity of his fair boyish curls now thinning rapidly gave his slightly balding appearance an extra dimension of solid reliability.

  If Faro was grateful for anything, it was that his younger daughter Emily showed every indication of making an early but entirely suitable marriage to a wealthy Orcadian widower of ancient lineage whose family had owned and farmed the land for more than two hundred years. A romantic tale of nursemaid to motherless child about to become lady of the manor.

  If only Rose had shown such initiative. His joyful anticipation of her visit was tinged with secret anxiety. Although Danny McQuinn's name was never mentioned, by common consent and their mutual affection for each other, where nothing was allowed to disturb the harmony of their rare meetings, he did not fool himself regarding that silence. Sooner or later he must face the inevitable: on one of these visits, he would hear the words he most dreaded.

  The scene was so engraved upon his mind that he often awoke in the middle of the night, scarcely able to believe that it had not already taken place. Seeing Rose's laughter suddenly fade, as she whispered, 'I have something to tell you, Papa. Danny and I are to be married.'

  For his part, Faro had rehearsed and discarded many attempts at how he would react. How he would put a brave face on it, wishing them well and hiding his bitter disappointment. He could do no less, for Rose was eighteen and no longer needed his consent.

  'Disappointment?' Vince had queried. 'I should have thought that Danny's future prospects as an inspector were admirable.'

  Faro shrugged impatiently. Vince had always liked Danny and was now prepared to take his side in this domestic matter.

  'I don't want Rose to be a policeman's wife. I hardly thought you needed reminding of the hazards involved,' Faro protested weakly.

  'Surely she is best qualified to decide what kind of a life she wants, Stepfather. Or what kind of a husband.'

  Faro winced at the word. Vince saw through his subterfuges and he was guiltily aware that his stepson guessed he wanted Rose to make a 'good' marriage and that Danny McQuinn, a bog Irishman and a devout Catholic who went to Mass regularly, was not quite the ticket for a chief inspector's daughter.

  Faro had never questioned her on the delicate matter of their differing religious beliefs for if his daughter's wavering doctrine wasn't strong enough, he had himself to blame. He had hardly set a good example through the years since his appearances in church were dictated only by the decorum of deaths, marriages and ceremonial police occasions.

  Rose and Emily had fared no better in Orkney with his mother who had severed any connection with the established church after the murder of Faro's policeman father. She had reverted to the almost pagan beliefs in the God of the early Celtic Church which had predated both Catholic and Protestant. Neither one had done anything good, according to Mary Faro, but set men at one another's throats. With such unconventional upbringing Rose could hardly be expected to let religion interfere with marriage to a man she loved.

  He was writing up his log on the unknown woman when the doorbell clanged cheerfully through the house.

  Rose was here.

  He looked at his watch. He hadn't expected her until teatime and thought delightedly that she had caught an earlier train.

  Finishing the sentence he was writing, he heard Mrs Brook's footsteps on the stairs. Wondering, he rose from his desk and crossed the room as the housekeeper tapped on the door and announced, 'A gentleman to see you, sir.'

  And Faro found himself face to face with almost the last person he ever expected to see in his house.

  The newcomer was Lachlan Brown.

  'I do apologise for disturbing you, sir.'

  'Not at all. Please take a seat.' And watching him narrowly across the table, Faro was conscious of his own confusion and anxiety at this totally unexpected visit.

  The years since they last met had turned the handsome but sullen youth into an uncommonly good-looking man. He had an undoubted charisma, especially with the distance between concert platform and auditorium removed.

  'May I take this opportunity of congratulating you on your performance of the Beethoven Sonatas?'

  Lachlan looked
pleased. 'Why, thank you, sir. So you have been to the Assembly Rooms.'

  'I have indeed. And it is a great pleasure to meet you.'

  'Not for the first time, Mr Faro. But I don't suppose you remember?'

  'Oh yes. At Glen Gairn.'

  Lachlan frowned. 'Not a happy occasion. I hope you have not had many such Royal hazards to cope with.'

  Faro dismissed the suggestion with a gesture, aware that plots to kill the Queen such as that he had been investigating were fairly commonplace for the police, especially with an unpopular monarch. Such information, however, was not for the likes of this young man.

  'Uncle John—Mr John Brown, that is,' said Lachlan consolingly, 'He takes jolly good care of Her Majesty.'

  'So I believe,' said Faro drily and Lachlan's glance was not altogether innocent as he continued hastily, 'That must be a great relief for everyone.'

  He guessed that Lachlan could not be unaware of the scandalous rumours that drifted down from Balmoral. Tales of an indiscreet association between the Queen and John Brown, and of late-night drams in the Royal bedroom with her favourite ghillie performing the services of a lady's maid and putting her to bed.

  It was not the first time that widowed Scottish queens had been enamoured of commoners but it fitted ill into the stern moral code Victoria wished to impose on the mass of British society.

  'Mr Brown is well?' said Faro to break the uncomfortable silence.

  Lachlan brightened. 'Oh yes, very. I visited him at the beginning of my tour. When I was in Aberdeen.'

  Again he fell silent, inspecting one of his fingernails as if it was in imminent danger of disintegration.

  Faro continued to watch him, his polite smile becoming fixed as he wrestled with the burning question: What on earth was Lachlan Brown doing here in his study just two hours before his next appearance at the Assembly Rooms?