The Inspector's Daughter (A Rose McQuinn Mystery)

by Alanna Knight

  He paused. 'Blackadder told me about Danny. I'm so very sorry, Rose.' And, looking round: 'Did we do the right thing? Are you happy here all alone?'

  I looked at his hands holding mine and closed my eyes, wanting this moment of bliss to go on for ever. 'Happy enough, Vince, dear,' I whispered. 'And I can't begin to thank you for giving me this place - such a generous gift.'

  'Not at all. I knew you always loved it and I wanted it to be your home - yours and Danny's.'

  'It's more like a home than anything I've had since Orkney days. So much of Sheridan Place's furniture too.'

  'No thanks to me.' He laughed. 'You should have seen it before Livvy worked her particular brand of magic on everything.'

  I remembered how he had hated Sir Hedley and hardly ever set foot in the Tower while the old man was alive when he added: 'I never wanted it.' Again that searching look as he gripped my hands. 'Tell me about Danny. What happened?'

  'I wish I knew. He went out one morning after breakfast, just as he had done a hundred times before, and he never came back. It's a long story, Vince.'

  I was reluctant to step back into the past, to open up that page of agony again. It hurt too much to talk about Danny, even to Vince. Seeing him again so unexpectedly, I didn't want this moment of intense joy to be tarnished or spoiled. If I began I knew what would happen, I would want him to stay and comfort me as long as I needed him. I would want to cry at leisure with his undivided attention - not his occasional surreptitious glances at the clock ticking away the seconds on the wall. He would have to go very soon and I didn't want to be left once again drowning in my pool of tears while he switched on to this other life, rushing off, fearful of being late and displeasing his Royal mistress.

  'Well?' he said.

  I shook my head. 'He was working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency as well as for the Indian Bureau. Tracking down criminals, bank robbers, fraudsters - and there were plenty of them where the finances of the Indian reservations were concerned. He was good at his job - Pappa would have been proud of him. And as a loyal Irishman his sympathies were with the Indians.'

  Vince nodded. 'I gathered from our few talks together that he had a feeling for lost causes.'

  'He said that no man or woman from Ireland whose family had been exterminated, or from the Scottish Highlands who had been evicted by their landlords - any race at all who had suffered at the hands of the English government - could fail to identify with the American Indians.'

  Vince frowned and looked a little unhappy, as if anxious not to be associated with treasonable talk.

  'We had been settled in Dakota for a while when there was renewed trouble between the whites and the Sioux. Broken promises, broken treaties, land stolen from them, the usual thing. This culminated in a massacre at a place called Wounded Knee in 1890, five years ago. Two hundred and fifty women and children died at the hands of white soldiers. Renegade Sioux left the reservations bent on revenge, then a new religion - Ghost Dancers - held sway and brought belief in a future. After Sitting Bull, acting as mediator in an uneasy peace, was shot by an Indian agency soldier.'

  Trying to keep my voice calm, I went on: 'Danny never gave up hope, he worked for both sides, back and forth, having faith in a solution. When he didn't come back ... I knew he had always considered the possibility of a stray bullet, he had enemies, white as well as Indian, and he had made me promise that if for any reason he didn't manage to come home after some mission I was to wait a reasonable time and then come back to Scotland. He had set aside enough dollars to cover my journey.'

  Vince looked at me. 'The baby. What about the baby?'

  I looked away. Arthur's Seat had been replaced by a stark and ugly prairie, a tiny cross - but where? I knew I would never go back, never find it out there in the wilderness. Never in this life would I kneel down and pray by my baby's little lost grave. 'Danny never saw him. Our first child - I'd miscarried twice before wee Daniel was born. He was just three weeks old when we left. We'd been attacked by renegades and took refuge in a white settlement. There was an outbreak of fever. We both took it. I survived,' I said bleakly.

  'What kind of fever, what were the symptoms?' The doctor in Vince was waiting for more details.

  'I'm no authority - typhoid perhaps - I don't know. Only that an old Sioux woman nursed me back to life again, but my baby was dead and buried. And I didn't have much desire to live either.'

  My voice broke. Vince took me in his arms. I could hardly breathe, trying not to cry. Talking, even thinking about it again, did that to me. As if there was a knife at my heart, chipping away at my soul. I wondered if that deadly sensation would ever go away.

  I had to break the silence that followed, aching to return to that ecstatic moment when Vince had arrived at my door, to recapture all that had been normal in my life in Edinburgh ten years ago: practical domestic moments, like a kettle briskly boiling.

  Vince kissed my cheek and I said: 'Some tea before you go, Vince. Foley lit the peat fire and told me how to keep it going so that I'd have a constant source of warmth and a hob to cook on.'

  'Foley?' said Vince, his thoughts miles away in a strange land. 'Oh, yes, our gardener at Sheridan Place. Decent sort of chap. Very reliable. After all these years, such devotion. Glad you found a use for him.'

  As we sat at the kitchen table I said: 'Peat fires always remind me of Orkney. What news of Emily and Gran? And Pappa?'

  'All seems well. Nobody in this family is a great letter writer, Stepfather least of all. He and Imogen travel a lot. He always wanted to see Europe.'

  Pausing, he gave me a searching look. 'As for Emily, you know, it might be a good idea to go back there. You should think about it very seriously if living here alone starts to get on your nerves.'

  'I can't imagine that happening,' I lied, brave now, for just before he arrived I had had the most bitter doubts.

  'Wait until you've had a winter, snow and sleet - Arthur's Seat can be grim and isolated.' He grinned. 'Of course, you could come and live with us in London. The climate's better there. And we have several rooms.' Warming to the idea, he took my hands. 'Why not consider it, Rose? I'm absolutely serious. And Livvy would be glad of your company, especially with a new baby-'

  I listened, smiling and grateful. But did he not realise what agony babies would be when I had lost my own? And as for the older children, would I be forever looking at them sadly and seeing wee Daniel in them, as he might have been had he lived?

  Any decision I might have made was cut short by a discreet tap on the door.

  Vince leaped to his feet, buttoned his jacket. 'Oh, Rose, darling, that's the coachman. I'll have to go.'

  'You've just arrived,' I protested. 'There's so much I want to ask you - how's Mrs Brook?'

  'We keep in touch. She's moved from the Highlands and is living in Fife now. Doesn't travel much, she's fairly crippled with rheumatism. Inverkeithing's just across the new railway bridge. Why don't you visit her - she'd love to see you. Always talking about you - you were her favourite-' he added. 'Number 24 Fife Road, that's her address.'

  The rap on the door knocker was louder now.

  'Must go, Rose, darling. I didn't know you were in Edinburgh. I wasted half an hour going to Blackadder's office for news,' he said. 'The old man's very worried about you, living here all alone with Edinburgh in the grip of a murder half a mile away.' Buttoning up his coat, he said: 'Seems they are rarer than they were in Pappa's day. He was always on a case as I remember.'

  'With you to help him, as I remember. Oh, Vince, come back soon, please. I wanted you to meet Thane-'

  I opened the back door as I spoke and called his name several times.

  'Who's Thane?' asked Vince.

  'A deerhound I found on the hill - a stray. I've adopted him. Thane!' I called again. There was no response. 'He's in the stable. He's a bit shy with strangers, I expect. Do come and see him, Vince, it won't take a moment.'

  'Next time. Rose. Must go. Royal trains won't wait for any man or w
oman.' At the door he turned round. 'Make sure your deerhound doesn't suddenly attack you. Strays can be unreliable.'

  Following him down the path I said: 'Not this one. He looks exactly like the one in the painting that used to hang in the parlour here.'

  Had I imagined that too? But Vince laughed. 'It was just an old print. I think Olivia put it down in the cellar. Didn't think you'd want it.'

  A swift hug, a kiss, he jumped into the carriage, leaned out of the window and called: 'I'll be back soon.'

  'Promise!' I cried.

  'I see there's a circus down the road. Happy days. Us all going together, with dear Mrs Brook. Go and see her. 'Bye, darling-'

  The carriage was moving. I watched until it vanished down the road, feeling as if my heart was breaking.

  I felt so unloved, so unwanted. Of course Vince loved me, but I was low on the hierarchy of loved ones now. I guessed all his visits would be like this one, a snatched hour while the Royal train rested in Waverley Station.

  I would have been stupid not to see how we had both changed and I doubted that the blood bond was strong enough to bridge the gulf that life had opened up between us.

  I was glad I had not mentioned Alice. Vince would never have understood. Indeed, he would have been horrified at the idea of his 'little sister' being involved in anything as unladylike as a murder investigation. Especially when he knew Matthew Bolton.

  There was a further consideration. How would Her Majesty feel about a member of her household - a physician - numbering a murderer among his friends?

  It had been a long day, emotionally exhausting, and I fell into bed and much to my surprise slept soundly and without the tortured dreams of Danny which I feared Vince's visit might have encouraged.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I looked out of the window hopefully, but of Thane there was no sign at all. Nor was he in the stable where Cat, curled up in the straw, had settled down comfortably. Observing my approach was empty handed, her resentful glare and half-hearted snarl were more an old woman's grumble at being disturbed than a threat of any kind.

  I decided to go in search of the old painting I had discussed with Vince, down the worn old steps into the cellar, the debris of Sir Hedley Marsh's long occupation of the Tower, among the spiders' webs and dust, stacked prints, valueless pictures and broken gilt frames.

  Searching through them, there at last was the picture that had intrigued me on childhood visits with Pappa: an old Highland shepherd, wrapped in his plaid. Crook in hand, he leaned against a rock, a deerhound at his feet - in the background the antlers of a slain stag, its corpse decently obscured by the heather.

  Blowing off the dust, I carried the painting upstairs into the light. Thane could have sat for the deerhound and the hill behind could have been some track on Arthur's Seat.

  I sat with it on my knee. Was it possible that I had allowed a childhood memory to influence me, a kind of déjà vu of safer, happier days with Pappa?

  Had it not been for Thane's intervention when I was attacked by the tinkers and my miraculous escape from them, I could have been convinced that I had invented my deerhound, as lonely children invent imaginary playmates - playmates as real to them as mine were to me.

  I decided then and there that I must get a grip on my emotions. I had suffered too many real hardships in recent times to give in to melancholy. For that way insanity lay.

  Although the deerhound was the image of Thane, common sense told me it could not possibly be the same dog. This print with the artist's illegible initials had a date: 1845 - and no dog lives for half a century.

  I must be sensible. I had a new life here in Edinburgh, given the challenge of this strange Tower as my home, four ancient stone walls in which I was determined to destroy any past alienation by an investment of respect and caring. If ghosts or a sinister atmosphere existed, I was certain they could be conquered and I refused to be scared into taking some safe, dreary lodging in the city.

  There was always the ancient chapel at the top of the Tower, somehow remote from the rest of the building, a kind of refuge once blessed by saintly hands, a place of sanctity and serenity.

  With so much to be thankful for I must learn not to be ungrateful. But at this precise moment I had to escape from this invasion of the recent past.

  Vince's visit had sharpened bitter memories, retelling the story of a lost and deeply loved husband and the tiny baby whom I had scarcely time to hold in my arms. Now more than ever, I knew how much I missed and longed for the security of a devoted family, blood kin of my own around me.

  He had offered a bleak escape clause. If all else failed, if perseverance and determination did not succeed I could, as he had offered, rebuild my life by going to Orkney or make a life with him and Olivia in London.

  My first choice would still be Emily. I could see myself reading her letter, saying of course you must come immediately, Rose. I could picture myself, assured of the warmth and promise of a sister's love and devotion, packing up and departing from the Tower, perhaps never to return.

  As for Vince's invitation to live with them in London, I wasn't even tempted. I loved Olivia but I would have no real place, a relative who would be a convenient nanny living among aristocrats more alien, by their upbringing, than the pioneering stock I had lived with in the American West. At least mutual hardships and dangers - and poverty cheerfully shared - were sufficient to clear the social hurdles.

  A short visit to London would be agreeable, but never could I imagine living there. I feared that England might be for me, as it had been for Pappa as well as Danny, an alien land.

  Footsteps outside and cheery whistling announced the arrival of Billy the milk lad. 'Like a daily paper, too, missus?' An excellent idea. In my new role as an investigator it was important to keep a sharp eye on local events.

  'There's a letter for ye. It's from Orkney. Do you ken folk there?' he asked in amazed tones, as if it might be South America or Alaska.

  I laughed. 'My sister and my granny live there.'

  'Your granny's still alive?' asked Billy, wide-eyed. 'She must gey auld.' Since old Bess was his grandmother, the idea of an elderly lady of thirty (as I seemed to him) also having a granny must have seemed one of the marvels of the age.

  'She's eighty-eight.'

  'That's nigh a hundred!' gasped Billy, shaking his head as he went off whistling down the road, a young lad fortunate indeed to have as his inheritance Bess's farm in the Pleasance.

  I looked out of the kitchen door, hoping that Thane had returned. He was nowhere in sight. At least, when I went to Orkney, I would take that print of a deerhound to remember him by, I thought, tearing open Emily's letter.

  In my head I was already replying. After the disturbing events of the last few days, culminating in my recent encounter of the tenant of the Boltons' coachhouse, I had no doubts at all about accepting Emily's proposal that I pack my few possessions and take the boat to Kirkwall immediately.

  I did feel some guilt, I must confess, about running away and letting Alice down, with her matrimonial problem unsolved. But Matthew Bolton's weird friend was too much for me. I was quite frankly scared of digging deeper into that particular mystery. I felt that there was something very sinister going on and I had been too impulsive in my promise to Alice. As I had neither the courage nor the expertise, let alone the experience, to cope with such an investigation, discretion seemed advisable as the better part of valour.

  Such were my thoughts as I eagerly read Emily's letter. But the words I had expected were missing. There was something wrong - this was a reply to my first letter.

  Horror of horrors, what I was reading was that Emily did not want me. This was not the enthusiastic invitation I had expected, quite the reverse:

  Gran has been poorly lately and we have taken her in to live with us. She is getting rather frail to live alone.

  We have a lot of problems of our own just now and could well do without any additional ones. So I do wish you well in your new life in Ed
inburgh - I am sure you will be happy.

  Your loving sister ...

  I flung the letter on to the table. Not even the suggestion of a brief holiday much less a permanent home. Nothing!

  I realised that Orkney had presented a loophole, an escape from the future that now seemed to stretch empty and bleak ahead of me. I had been relying on Emily, certain of her reaction since we were sisters and because I was now a widow.

  In sudden need of fresh air, I went into the garden. Shading my eyes, I called 'Thane'. But today there was no eager shadow loping down the hill. In that moment I was sure Thane had gone, never to return.

  I felt very near to despair, to letting go, but that had never been my way in far worse situations than this. So, drawing a deep breath, I went back indoors and, taking up the newspaper, tried to concentrate on the Edinburgh news. It was sadly difficult as the cold words of Emily's rejection swam between me and the print.

  How could she treat me like this? As sisters we had been so close and that hurt most of all.

  I had to read twice over the latest on the murder of Molly Dunn:

  In the interests of safety for themselves and their families, the citizens of Edinburgh are alarmed that her brutal killer remains at large, ready to strike down other innocent victims. They are demanding that this monster of depravity be apprehended forthwith.

  As a desperate measure the police are calling urgently for any persons who might have been in the vicinity of Saville Grange during the twenty-four hours before the murdered woman was discovered to come forward at once with information-

  I thought of that tree-lined road, and how few people went that way apart from the residents and those with legitimate business in the area. The off-chance of meeting anyone who happened to be innocently strolling near the murder house and might come forward seemed very remote.