The Coffin Lane Murders

by Alanna Knight

  Faro looked thoughtful. 'Are you suggesting that Kate is having some kind of breakdown?'

  Vince nodded. 'That is a possibility.'

  Both men were silent. They were fond of Kate, and Conan's reaction alarmed them with its implications.

  It rained heavily that night. The snow was shifting at last. The tragedy on Duddingston Loch was reason enough to be thankful that the ice was melting and that no more lives would be lost in fatal accidents.

  The thaw set in faster than anyone had anticipated and although this was a cause of lamentation for folk who believed in the romance of a white Christmas as portrayed in sentimental paintings, the inconvenience was considerable and most of Edinburgh heaved a great sigh of relief, in particular those like Faro and other citizens who lived on the south side of the town. They had been faced with miserable journeys to work each day, forced to go on foot into the city centre since the horse-drawn omnibus notices read: 'Services withdrawn until road conditions improve.'

  As for hiring carriages, they had disappeared from the Newington area since the murders. Wise cabmen were either taking elaborate precautions to neither fall victim to a madwoman on the rampage nor invite influenza by sitting in a piercing wind awaiting a fare.

  In practical matters, now that the ice had broken into floats it made the dredgermen's job of recovering the student's body easier and they were out with grappling irons at daybreak.

  From the safety of the lochside their activities were watched by a group of onlookers whose curiosity was sufficient to bring them shivering from warm beds on a Sunday morning.

  Faro and Vince were not among the watchers. They had both seen more than enough dead bodies to satisfy even the most ghoulishly inclined. Their first indication that the boy's body had been recovered was when a constable arrived at the door to alert them and request their presence.

  Reaching the loch, they had to clear a passage among the spectators to where the victim's anxious friends were waiting.

  Yes, they had identified him, weeping as they did so. His father had been summoned from the friends' house where he had awaited this melancholy event.

  Even as Faro and Vince reached the group of mourners the boy's father was drying his eyes and, his voice a broken whisper, was making halting arrangements to have his son taken home.

  It was a heart-wrenching moment. Faro and Vince offered their condolences but the glazed look, the shake of the man's head, said it was doubtful indeed whether he saw or heard them.

  He had eyes only on the still figure of his son, lying dead at his feet, taking into oblivion all the proud hopes and dreams, destroyed in a moment's tragic accident.

  A hand touched Faro's arm. 'Would you come this way, Inspector?'

  Following the constable away from the sad-eyed group, he walked over to another group huddled over what looked like a large bundle of clothes by the lochside.

  'Have a look at this, sir,' the constable whispered excitedly.

  Faro stooped down and saw a dead face, plastered with dark hair staring up at him. Thin white hands.

  The corpse was that of a drowned woman.

  'We've just pulled the poor creature ashore; she came away in the grappling irons, floated towards us,' said the dredgerman. 'Must have got dislodged from the reeds when we were poking about with the rods for the lad.'

  'Where was she?'

  'Same place as him. Far side of the loch.'

  Vince came over. 'What have we here? I'm a doctor.'

  The man looked at him. 'Too late for that, sir.'

  As Vince knelt down, the man continued, 'We thought we saw hair, long human hair. Grabbed it, and there she was, sir.'

  Vince looked up at them questioningly.

  'Doubt you'll be much good to her now, sir,' said the dredgerman. 'Dare say she made sure of that when she jumped in.'

  'A suicide, you mean?'

  The man shook his head sagely. 'That's right. Mark my words, sir. There were two heavy stones, roped together round her ankles. She was making sure she wouldn't be rescued, this poor lass. Probably slipped across on the ice and where it was thinnest, she just plunged in.'

  'Where are the stones?' Faro demanded.

  'Back in the water, sir. They came off as we were trying to disentangle her from the reeds.'

  'Seems daft, doesn't it?' said his companion. 'She didn't reckon the ice-cold water was enough to kill her in seconds, poor silly woman.'

  'Aye,' said the first man, 'and she might have lain there till kingdom come, till the body rotted away, right over there close to the railway line.' Again he pointed. 'No more than a few yards from where the lad fell in. She chose a fine quiet grave; not much comes and goes there in normal times, nothing but the reeds for the swans and the geese to roost in.'

  'That's right,' nodded his partner. 'Could have lain there and never been found.'

  'Till she rotted,' repeated the first man.

  Vince was examining the woman's face and neck. Her skin was a ghastly grey.

  Who was she? Faro envisaged another search through the list of missing persons, another sad family to inform. He had scant experience in such matters, but she looked as if she had been in the water for several days.

  Among the morbid bystanders diverted from the departure of the drowned boy and his mourners heads rose, turning curiously in their direction. There was swift movement and excited voices alerted to the possibilities of this new tableau.

  'Been another accident, has there?' someone called.

  Vince hastily covered the woman with the sacking the dredgerman had produced. 'The police mortuary, I think, as soon as possible.'

  The first dredgerman, a big burly chap, effortlessly threw the now shrouded body over his shoulder and bounded smartly up the bank towards the road, followed closely by Vince and Faro.

  'If only we had those two stones.'

  'What on earth good would they do?' asked Vince.

  'Evidence,' was the reply.

  'Seems a fairly obvious suicide, I'd say,' panted Vince as they hurried after the dredgerman and his burden, ignoring the questions from the crowd who ran eagerly alongside.

  'Another goner?' one persistent onlooker demanded.

  By a stroke of fortune, the police carriage was still there. Summoned for the drowned boy, it had not been used since the bereaved parent had made his own arrangements and was to travel back to Glasgow with his son's body.

  With the woman's corpse hoisted on to one of the stretchers, Faro and Vince took their seats alongside.

  'A suicide?' asked the constable.

  'We don't know that for sure,' said Faro, aware of Vince's disbelieving shake of the head.

  As they drove past Solomon's Tower, Conan was walking back down the hill after taking the dog Nero for his daily exercise.

  He seemed surprised to see them.

  Faro leaned out. 'They've recovered another body from the loch.'

  'Not another accident. God, how awful.'

  'This time it's suicide,' said Vince.

  'As far as we know, at the moment,' murmured Faro, who already had some new and alarming suspicions about the possible identity of the woman.

  'We're taking her to the mortuary.'

  'I'll come with you,' said Conan.

  Thrusting Nero indoors, he called to Kate who ran out and, seeing the police carriage with Faro and Vince inside, asked, 'What's wrong?'

  'Another drowning. I'm needed,' Conan shouted back to her.

  As he climbed in Faro leaned over and removed the blanket covering the woman's face.

  Conan gave a horrified exclamation. 'Oh dear God. No!'

  'I take it you know her,' said Faro grimly.

  'Know her, of course I know her. It's Celia.' He took the dead hands as if to chafe life into them again.

  'Oh dear God, what a terrible thing to happen. What on earth was she doing on the ice?'

  'Not on. Under,' said Faro.

  'It wasn't an accident, Conan,' said Vince. 'It was suicide.'


  'Suicide!' breathed Conan. Bewildered, he shook his head and repeated, 'Suicide!'

  Faro shrugged. 'Well, that's what it looks like. We'll know for sure once the police surgeon's had a chance to look her over.'

  But Conan wasn't listening. Furiously he banged his fists together. 'If only she'd come to me, I could have helped her.'

  'She was past help, Conan,' said Vince, moved by his friend's grief. 'She obviously didn't want to live any longer. Tied two mighty great stones around her ankles to make sure she went to the bottom of the loch-'

  'Where?' demanded Conan.

  'Away at the far side near the railway line, where she was unlikely to be found - or rescued.'

  Conan nodded miserably. 'I should have saved her from all this. I failed,' he added sorrowfully. 'She believed in me, trusted me, and when I was most needed, I failed her.'

  'Perhaps she thought it was better than the hangman's rope,' said Vince. 'You can console yourself with that.'

  'What a consolation,' was the bitter reply, and turning to Faro who looked grave and was unusually silent Conan added, 'At least the loch has given up your murderer, sir. And you've solved your crime.'

  'Yes, we can all sleep easy in our beds now, Stepfather,' added Vince. 'Wait until the newspapers get this. Relief all round. Everyone can relax and enjoy a merry Christmas without a madwoman with a knife on the rampage.' He smiled across at Faro. 'What a blessed relief. Another case closed, Stepfather.'

  Chapter 18

  The madwoman was dead.

  Within hours of the discovery the newsboys were out on the High Street. Among the crowds at Duddingston Loch there had been present one lucky young journalist, an eyewitness to the sensational recovery of the woman's corpse. The headline ran, 'Gruesome Find. Suicide of Lady Killer.'

  In Newington residents sighed and went about their Christmas preparations with a feeling that a load of terror had been lifted. No longer need servants or their mistresses feel afraid walking out at twilight to post a letter down the street or to buy a pound of sugar.

  The screeching maniac who had descended out of nowhere with knife upraised, slashing, cutting, felling them to the ground and vanishing wraith-like into the night, was dead. And by her own hand.

  The feeling of reprieve was like the end of an epidemic. Among the greatest to sigh with relief was Kate, marked down as the next victim.

  'Celia must have pushed that warning note through the door just hours before she walked into the loch,' said Conan. Faro looked at him, was about to say something but changed his mind as Conan continued. 'Thank God it's all over, although I can't help feeling compassion for that poor tortured soul.'

  'I don't feel anything but gratitude that she's gone,' said Kate. 'My heart almost stopped - I nearly died of fright.'

  Conan was not to be placated. 'I shall always feel a measure of guilt about what happened. If only I could have found the means to deal with her mind, just as one would heal a sick body.'

  'It will be interesting to know what the post mortem reveals. Conan is expecting some disease of the brain,' said Vince to Faro after the Pursleys had left. 'He is far too soft-hearted for a doctor,' he added. 'Such a profession is not for the faint-hearted.'

  He was mistaken as Conan, somewhat white-faced it was true, insisted on being present when Vince and Faro visited the mortuary.

  Dr Craig greeted them cordially. There was nothing of the sombre dealer with sudden death in his cheery face fringed with a Father Christmas beard, which always took Faro by surprise until he realised that the police surgeon was an older version of Angus Spens: a doctor who didn't allow his work to prey on his mind or suffer from excesses of imagination.

  Angus Spens had beaten them to it. He was already there, chattering excitedly. In his opinion this was an occasion not to be missed. Both doctors, the young inexperienced tyro and the older man who saw dead bodies every day, were a contrast to the sombre Dr Pursley who was looking askance at the police surgeon. He appeared to be rubbing his hands exuberantly, but they had merely caught him in the act of drying them after an examination.

  As Craig laid the towel aside, his expression indicated that even he was a little taken back by Dr Spens' enthusiasm and relish for post-mortem examinations.

  At a safe distance, watching his stepfather's disgusted expression, Vince shook his head and whispered, 'You must admit young Angus has the better temperament for doctoring, just you wait and see. He'll be a splendid physician in another ten years or so. He is still in the textbook phase and when he sees corpses he thinks of them only as material for dismemberment. He cannot somehow identify them with living people.'

  'Downright callous, if you ask me,' said Faro.

  Dr Craig beckoned to them. 'Well now, gentlemen. If you would step this way.'

  Vince and Faro exchanged glances. If the unpleasant chemical smells had been less evident his manner might suggest they were being received into a select gentleman's outfitters in Princes Street.

  As he raised the cover on one of the white-sheeted bodies, something between a gasp and a groan escaped from Conan.

  Craig turned to him quickly. 'This woman was one of your patients, sir? You can identify her?'

  Conan's affirmative was scarcely above a whisper.

  'Come a little closer, gentlemen, if you will.'

  Angus sprang to the fore. As Vince and Faro approached Craig said, 'The body you see before you is apparently that of a woman who died by drowning. I expected a suicide but the post mortem has revealed some unusual aspects.' Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, he continued: 'As you will know from your textbooks, Dr Spens' - again in the limelight, Angus beamed delightedly - 'the cause of drowning is asphyxia. In other words-' he paused as if conducting an anatomy lecture, speaking slowly and particularly to Faro on the off chance that the Inspector might be completely ignorant of medical knowledge. 'In other words, the air is prevented from reaching the lungs, and the oxygen supply vital for survival is cut off.'

  He sighed solemly, regarding the dead woman again. 'Of course, there is "dry drowning" in which the subject dies of cardiac arrest or laryngeal spasm caused by the shock of falling suddenly into water. Icy water would be particularly responsible for this effect.'

  'Which could well be the cause in her case,' said Conan. 'We are aware that she plunged into the loch-'

  'Yes, yes, Dr Pursley.' The police surgeon did not like this interruption. 'But as I told you there are other aspects which do not conform to that theory. The presence of foreign matter - the cadaveric spasm - in which weeds or similar material from the water are sucked into the lungs; even suicides, alas, cannot forgo this spasm. This last fight for breath is the body's automatic reaction-'

  'What are you trying to tell us?' demanded Conan.

  Dr Craig looked at them. 'We have every reason to believe, since her lungs were clear of any foreign matter, that life was already extinct before she had contact with the icy water.'

  'How long has she been dead?' Faro put in quickly.

  'From the bleached and wrinkled condition of her skin which you will observe, gentlemen, - see, in places it has become loose, almost detached from her body - I should say at least six days.'

  'Six days,' Faro repeated thoughtfully. 'Are you surer'

  Dr Craig gave him a supercilious smile. 'As sure as my years of dealing with drowned corpses can accurately assess, Inspector. Although it would be difficult to give an exact time since the icy water might have had a slightly delaying effect on these skin changes.'

  There was a horrified gasp of disbelief from Conan.

  'We have evidence that she was alive yesterday,' said Faro.

  The doctor frowned. 'Then I am afraid, Inspector, that your evidence is unacceptable - for once.' He added a somewhat mocking bow, acknowledging Faro's superiority in such matters.

  'The state of the body is indisputable. The corpse has without a shadow of doubt been in the water for six days at least.'

  The post-mortem findings could hardly be ques
tioned and as they left Conan was visibly shaken.

  Faro was also perturbed. This was not at all what he had expected. If Celia had lain in the loch for more than one day, least of all several days, how could Kate have possibly seen her at the Tower? How to account for the warning note pushed through the door?

  But if the face at the kitchen window and the note could be accepted as truth, and the evidence of the post mortem was indisputable, then the case of the Lady Killer was by no means solved. The existence of a second assassin had become a powerful possibility.

  And as if interpreting his thoughts, Conan said, 'There is one explanation. Suppose Uncle Hedley wrote that note himself. ..'

  'Wait a moment. You're surely not suggesting that he was trying to scare her?' asked Faro.

  Conan thought for a moment, then shook his head. 'You know what he is like, eccentric, quite wild at times.'

  'By wild, do you mean mad?' said Vince.

  'Not at all. Not like - like-' Conan stopped. 'His wildness is of the harmless kind; it lies more in the region of practical jokes, of springing out at people, a schoolboy's pranks. Kate's mama said he was a terror for that sort of thing, frogs in the soup, dead mice in the bed - all the nastinesses small boys get up to-'

  'Conan,' said Faro patiently, 'are you trying to say that he doesn't know the difference between childish but unpleasant practical jokes and murder?'

  'No, sir, of course not. I'm just trying to find a reasonable explanation,' said Conan desperately. 'The note might have lain under the doormat for several days and he had just found it.'

  The explanation seemed lame indeed and he was aware of their stern glances.

  'As a matter of fact he had a difference of opinion with Kate, now I remember, earlier that day. Something about his precious cats, one of them stealing a pork chop off the kitchen table and being sick all over our best bedspread. Kate smacked the little beast.

  'He doesn't seem to notice such things but Kate is a stickler for cleanliness. To put it mildly she's fed up with her uncle's cats; they have precedence over humans in the house. It's one of the reasons she is anxious to find another place to live.'