The Coffin Lane Murders

by Alanna Knight

  Uncle Hedley willingly provided funds for such alterations but turned his face resolutely against servants or housekeeper. Frail pretty Kate got her way by being allowed a daily maid to help out in the kitchen. 'That is all I need. I can do the rest.'

  The snow was heavier now and Faro decided on the short cut home along Coffin Lane. Once site of the town gibbet, in kindlier times and weather, it was a favourite haunt for lovers and a quick passage to the golf course.

  Newington lay ahead with its prosperous newly built villas. Candles gleaming in the windows threw golden shadows on ghostly banks of hedges and garden walls. Trees glistened white and thrust out spectral arms, dripping diamonds of snow where the light touched them.

  Uncurtained windows revealed shadowy glimpses of decorated trees while closer proximity brought sounds of children's laughter, indicative of parties afoot and still to come.

  'Christmas is a-coming ...'

  Here it was indeed, waiting just around the corner. All the excitement, and adding to the yearly magic, a visit from his beloved daughter Rose now teaching in Glasgow. Faro sighed happily, a contented man as he let himself into his front door.

  Leaving his snow-covered greatcoat and hat in the vestibule, he climbed the stairs to his study. He loved the smooth touch of the banisters beneath his hand and as always he sniffed the air. Mrs Brook's beeswax polish mingled with roasting meat and bread from her kitchen.

  These were the smells of homecoming through the years; at the end of many a long and trying day reaching this dear familiar place, his haven of rest.

  But he could not deny to himself that there was a wind of change blowing through Sheridan Place, a shadow of the future. He recognised with a pang of almost over-whelming sadness that in the years since Vince's marriage his own world had moved on. Every day he expected news that there would be another brother or a sister for Jamie and that his rooms would be desperately needed for nannies and maids.

  They would be tactful, on no account willing to distress him, of course, with a feeling of urgency. Nevertheless he secretly wondered how much longer he could remain in this house and if any of the family suspected the direction his own thoughts were taking.

  Once before, guiltily aware that his occupation of much-needed accommodation had made it necessary for Vince to take surgery premises in Minto Place, he had suggested moving out.

  Cries of indignation had met his proposal. Vince and Olivia had warned him never, never to mention such a thing again.

  'This is your home, Stepfather. Always was.'

  'No question about it,' Olivia put in. 'We are the intruders. We must take a larger house.'

  And that was that. Now there was a third partner in the ever-expanding practice in this thriving suburb. A newly graduated doctor had been introduced.

  Full of his own importance, Angus Spens seemed very young and know-it-all to the senior doctors. He also happened to be the only son of Superintendent Spens, head of the Central Office of the Edinburgh City Police and Detective Inspector Faro's superior.

  Superintendent Spens had succeeded Mackintosh, Faro's old sparring partner, who had retired, alas, without the knighthood he had hoped for.

  As the most senior detective Faro had been offered promotion. Much to everyone's surprise but his own, he had refused. The idea of sitting behind a desk watching other detectives solve his crimes appalled him. After thirty years, he decided that if he moved on, it would not be up into the superintendent's office but away from Edinburgh altogether, a clean break to indulge his dreams of travel. In a word, retire. And if boredom overtook him there was, he told himself, always the possibility of private investigations.

  Yes, travel was the answer, with his own bachelor establishment of two rooms in the heart of the city. An admirable idea.

  He had scarcely had time to remove his boots when he heard Vince's carriage arrive back from the loch and the swift patter of Jamie's footsteps on the stairs.

  'G'npa help Jamie - make snowman-'

  After Jamie, trooped the grown-ups followed by Mrs Brook, carrying into the dining room a late afternoon tea of gargantuan proportions. Smiling indulgently, the housekeeper was also Jamie's willing slave.

  'We won't wait for Dr Pursley, Mrs Brook,' said Vince, and to Faro, 'He's gone to the surgery to see if there are any urgent calls.' He shook his head. 'We're afraid this bitter weather might carry off some of our influenza victims. It looks like being an epidemic, unless we're very fortunate.'

  'I thought Dr Spens was on duty this evening,' Kate sighed, rather peevishly, taking Jamie onto her knee.

  Vince laughed. 'He is indeed. But young Angus isn't quite conscientious enough to please Conan. Once or twice he's failed to make visits. And that's the unforgivable sin in a surgery like ours.'

  'Conan considers him quite inadequate. Too young and frivolous by far,' said Kate.

  Vince smiled. 'Time will change that.' He looked at her. 'Sometimes I think Conan cares more about the practice than I do.'

  'Before Jamie came I couldn't keep you away,' said Olivia, with an adoring glance in his direction. 'A succession of sleepless nights cured all that, made you value your leisure.'

  Kate, hugging Jamie close, kissing his soft curls, said wistfully: 'Children do change lives so much, don't they?'

  Her sad voice struck a forlorn chord. In the silence that followed, Jamie swooping off her knee towards Faro with a jam-laden scone was a welcome diversion.

  Holding the wee lad to his heart, Faro looked at the scene and wondered what had ever made him think of voluntarily leaving this beloved family.

  He looked fondly at Vince, who had always been an integral part of his criminal investigations. His attitude to life was more conservative than his stepfather's, and he bitterly resented changes, a conservatism intensified by his newly acquired social status as a middle-class Edinburgh doctor with an ever-increasing circle of influential friends and golf acquaintances.

  When Vince's previous partner in the practice had decided to go to Canada the search for a replacement had been less tedious than Vince had imagined. The 37-year-old doctor from Glasgow, Dr Conan Pursley, had applied for the vacancy as his wife wished to take care of an elderly relative in Edinburgh.

  Vince had never liked Sir Hedley and was disgusted by the sordid conditions of his establishment, but took consolation from the fact that Conan at least regarded staying there as a temporary measure.

  Weary of Vince's incessant grumbles, Faro advised him sternly that if the Pursleys chose to live at Solomon's Tower out of a sense of responsibility to Kate's uncle, then he must accept that their domestic arrangements were none of his business and learn to tolerate occasional meetings with the old man with good grace.

  Faro observed these meetings with suppressed amusement, aware that Sir Hedley, who had always doted on Vince and never neglected any opportunity of enlarging their acquaintance, had transferred his frustrated overtures of friendship to Vince's wife and child.

  Now each time Olivia walked towards the loch where ducks and geese were to be fed by Jamie, Sir Hedley would race out from the tower, waving some toy or object that he was sure 'your wee lad' would like. Vince might scowl as much as he liked, but Olivia had a soft spot for the old man. She felt sorry for him living alone all those years and was glad he was to be taken care of at last.

  In truth, she found his old-world charm and courtesy quite captivating and was prepared to listen for hours to his stories about the bad old Regency days before that young upstart Victoria came to the throne and made everyone painfully aware that they must maintain their respectability, or be shunned for lack of it.

  Olivia felt that people who had lived then had a high old time of it one way and another. She was impressed that Sir Hedley's acquaintances at aristocratic shooting parties had included many notorious actresses, as well as members of the Royal Family, and he had some interesting and wicked scandals to relate.

  Now helping himself to a second piece of cake, Faro listened idly to the
conversation around the table.

  Kate was having problems since Sir Hedley had met her maid in the area of the barred rooms on the upper floor.

  'He was furious, sent her packing on the spot.'

  'How awful,' said Olivia. 'What on earth does he keep there that is so precious?'

  Kate shrugged. Not even Conan or herself were allowed across the threshold of what he called his 'old charter room'.

  'An old man's junk room, according to Conan, full of mementoes of a misspent youth. A locked room, with the keys conveniently lost. I do confess that I feel it might be something more sinister he keeps up there.'

  Faro remained silent. He decided not to enlighten them on his own knowledge of what that upper room of the Tower contained. Such knowledge might lead to overwhelming and ill-advised curiosity. Best let the past be.

  Resisting further offers of tea, Kate groaned: 'I'll never eat supper after this.'

  Olivia went to the window. 'Kate dear, you can't possibly walk back to the Tower. The snow's heavier than ever - look, the garden's covered completely since we came in.'

  'Why don't you both stay the night here?' said Vince. 'Brent can go round and collect Conan from the surgery.

  'A great idea,' said Olivia enthusiastically. 'I'll get Mrs Brook to make up a bed for you-'

  But Kate was adamant. 'I must go. Nero has to be fed and Uncle Hedley will go to bed hungry unless I prepare supper for him. He's terribly absent-minded about mealtimes, you know.'

  'Then take our carriage, if you must go. And take some of this food with you,' said Vince firmly.

  'Do,' said Olivia. 'Mrs Brook will be delighted. She hates waste.'

  Ten minutes later Kate was on her way home. Good-nights said, the carriage departed through the snow and Olivia carried a sleepy Jamie up to bed while Vince and Faro returned to the dining room where Mrs Brook had stoked up the fire.

  Stretching out their legs to the blaze they shared a nightcap, a splendid single-malt whisky.

  Faro sighed contentedly. This was his favourite time of the day.

  It was a great life. A great life, here with his beloved family. Who could ask for more?

  Who indeed?

  He was to remember those happy hours that evening with the snow falling gently in the garden beyond the windows.

  It would be a long time before such content was to be his again.

  Chapter 3

  They found the first victim lying beneath the blood-soaked snow in Coffin Lane.

  PC Dean, heading towards Dalkeith Road on his normal beat, had taken the short cut and made the discovery by the merest chance of observing a hump of newly fallen snow with an effusion of pink.

  His immediate idea was that some wounded animal lay beneath. Closer inspection revealed a white hand, a cold, dead, unmoving woman's hand. She had been thrust into the snow-filled ditch during the night and the heavy fall of snow had hidden the terrible sight until morning.

  PC Dean knew what he was about. A practical, well-trained policeman not given to bouts of panic, he knelt down and, carefully scraping the snow away, followed that dead hand up to arm, shoulder and then to neck, although there was little possibility of the woman still being alive.

  At last the dead face was revealed, a ghastly grey with the snow melting on eyes that were wide open and frozen in death.

  She had been stabbed through the chest.

  He looked desperately around the still-empty landscape. The procedure to be followed was particular.

  Find a doctor in case there was hope of resuscitation and then summon his superior officer. In this case he was fortunate in having both nearby.

  It was unlikely that anyone would disturb the corpse or be in the vicinity in such weather but PC Dean lost no more time. Leaving the scene he plunged towards Sheridan Place. He moved as quickly as was humanly possible through several inches of snow, marking as he did so that, apart from a few animal tracks, the whole of Edinburgh seemed to have been brought to a complete standstill.

  He had the world and the corpse he had just left to himself, and trying not to keep looking back over his shoulder as if the old man with the scythe might be following, he was greatly relieved to find Inspector Faro and Dr Laurie at their breakfast.

  Dr Conan Pursley was with them, having been benighted and unable to return to Solomon's Tower after attending the deathbed of a sick patient in the influenza outbreak.

  Within minutes all three were hastening back to Coffin Lane with Dean, a passing errand-boy entrusted with a shilling in his pocket to alert the Central Office that the mortuary carriage would be required.

  Faro knelt to examine the woman's body, wondering why murders at Christmas time seemed so much more gross, their brutality a further blasphemy against the season of goodwill. As PC Dean explained the circumstances of his gruesome find, he knew that the heavy snowfall also helped to establish the time of death as sometime during the hours of the previous night. It also destroyed any hope of finding clues.

  PC Dean stood by watching them carefully scrape the snow off the body. Meanwhile the small crowd who wait in readiness to gravitate towards any disaster were gathering and had to be kept at bay.

  Faro shuddered for as the body was uncovered a great effusion of blood spread across the snow. The stab wound in the woman's chest re-opened allowing the blood to run freely again.

  The three men stepped back sharply and Faro remembered in horror the old adage about victims bleeding when faced with their murderer.

  He glanced quickly over his shoulder. Was one of the faces in the group of onlookers staring so curiously at the horrific tableau that of the killer returned to the scene of his crime?

  Vince and Conan rose from their knees and he wondered if the same thought was in their minds as the woman's open eyes stared beyond them, beyond the confines of Coffin Lane towards the heights of Arthur's Seat.

  Even so, the gaze of the three men followed in the same direction and rested on the only habitation, Solomon's Tower, which would have been encompassed in that wild-eyed, horrified last look at the world.

  In ancient times this area had known many such grisly occurrences, thought Faro grimly: men slain in battles over the centuries, criminals hanged whose last earthly sight had been thus.

  The silence was broken by the clanging bell of the police carriage; swerving dangerously, it finally came to rest some fifty yards away. There were sounds of protesting wheels and horses, men's shrill curses and at last two policemen struggled through the snow carrying a stretcher.

  Young Dr Spens followed at their heels. 'Am I too late then?' His eagerness and barely concealed excitement as he stared down at the dead woman seemed all out of context with his young rosy face.

  Conan muttered, 'Obvious, isn't it?'

  'Been dead long, has she?' asked Angus cheerfully.

  'Some time,' said Conan.

  'Oh really?'

  'Yes. If you were hoping for a chance to practise survival methods you are several hours too late,' was Conan's sarcastic reply.

  Angus ignored him, pushing Vince aside. 'One moment please. May I?'

  Kneeling down he carefully scrutinised the body on the stretcher as if he saw a murder victim every day. He pursed his lips at the stab wound and nodded authoritatively while over his shoulder Vince and Conan shook their heads.

  As the policemen prepared to carry the corpse to the waiting mortuary carriage, Faro stretched forth his hand and carefully removed the woman's reticule, which was twisted round her wrist. 'I was about to do that myself, Inspector,' said Angus indignantly, a spoilt child deprived of a trophy. 'It may contain evidence, you know.'

  'Indeed? Her murderer's name and address, perhaps?'

  Angus coloured. 'No, her own, of course.'

  Faro nodded. 'All right, lads, you may proceed.'

  The small crowd let out a sigh as the body was bundled out of their sight as swiftly and in as dignified a manner as rigor would permit in the circumstances.

  'You may accompany
them if you so wish, Dr Spens, said Faro, anxious to be rid of him.

  'May I really, Inspector?' Angus replied with almost indecent eagerness to visit the mortuary.

  Turning, he smiled sarcastically at Faro: 'Knowing your reputation, sir, no doubt you will have solved the case or at the very least produced a promising list of suspects by the time I get to the Central Office.'

  Faro merely nodded. He had reached a few conclusions about the woman's identity, merely from observation. The soaked, shabby, dark dress and thin cloak indicated a servant girl, most probably from this area. Death had not been kind; she could have been anywhere between eighteen and forty.

  The onlookers lingered and then dispersed unwillingly, trudging away back whence they had come, their drama over for the day. There was nothing more to see, but it gave them plenty to talk about for some time.

  Vince and Conan remained with PC Dean in attendance, carefully scraping the snow from where the corpse had lain, but apart from the blood-stained ground there was a complete absence of any clues as to why the unfortunate woman had been murdered.

  'Any sign of the murder weapon?' asked Vince.

  'It could be anywhere in the vicinity,' said Faro. 'But we'll have to wait until the snow clears to be absolutely sure.'

  They were aware that it could lie hidden for weeks before the thaw set in and indeed the heavy grey sky suggested there might be considerably more snow to fall, further hampering investigations.

  Vince frowned. 'A broad-bladed knife was used and with considerable force, I should think.'

  'Possibly a knife of the domestic kind. Kitchen, most likely. Crime passionel, perhaps. Looked like a servant,' said Conan, pointing to the reticule Faro was opening which the woman had not relinquished in the attack.

  'It wasn't theft, that we can eliminate,' said Vince.

  Faro nodded. 'Which leaves us with the first question of why, if this wasn't a random attack merely for theft, and rape seems unlikely.' They would not know for sure but there had been no disturbance or dishevelment of the woman's clothing.