The Inspector's Daughter (A Rose McQuinn Mystery)

by Alanna Knight

  'You said you'd find a place for him in one of your acts,' I said indignantly.

  Howe shook his head, looked at the three men and said soberly. 'I'm afraid this young woman is having delusions-'

  As he said it I realised something odd and rather terrifying. Howe was the one person who had ever seen Thane with me. The only person, apart from his dead wife, who could prove that Thane existed.

  Gray frowned. 'This is definitely your belt, Mrs McQuinn?' When I said it was he asked: 'When did you last see it?'

  'Thane - the deerhound I brought here - was wearing it as a collar. He ran away when Mr Howe offered to take him off my hands.'

  Howe's snort of disbelief indicated that this was a pack of lies.

  'Why should the dog do that?' Gray asked gently.

  'Because he seemed to understand what was going on, that Mr Howe wanted to buy him.,' I said desperately, aware of how daft it sounded.

  'So he was still wearing your belt?' said Gray.

  'No. He broke loose and left me holding it. I pushed it into my pocket. Or I thought I did but when I got home it wasn't there. Next day I went out and retraced my steps across the hill, back towards the circus here, to search for it.'

  As I spoke I looked at Jack, knowing that whatever the others thought, he would believe me.

  Howe laughed again. 'That's your answer then, gentlemen. That bloody young savage found the belt on the hill and used it to kill my Daisy.'

  Gray looked thoughtful. 'A moment, sir. Was there any reason that you know of why he should kill her?'

  Howe shrugged and Gray continued: 'Had you seen them quarrelling, for instance?'

  'Not exactly. But these Indians all hang around with nothing to do between performances. My Daisy was good to them, kind - gave them food.'

  'They would hardly kill her for that,' said Gray gently. And, looking in my direction: 'What about ... other favours?'

  'If it's sexual favours you mean,' I put in, noticing how the men winced at the word, 'Sioux Indians don't want them from white women.'

  'And how does she know so much about it?' sneered Howe.

  'Because I've lived with Indians in Dakota. The same tribe as your riders.'

  'Mrs McQuinn has just recently returned to Edinburgh,' said Jack.

  Gray nodded, that seemed to satisfy him. 'Was there anything missing from your caravan?'

  Jack produced his notebook.

  'Some trinkets, jewellery and that sort of thing,' said Howe vaguely.

  'It would help if you could be a little more specific, sir. Descriptions and so forth,' said Gray.

  Howe shook his head. 'That's beyond me, I don't know the contents of my wife's jewel box-'

  'The box is still there?'

  'Yes. But I don't know exactly what was missing. She was always buying cheap earrings and bracelets to wear with her costume in the ring.'

  I remembered the dragon pendant his other woman was wearing at the performance last night and how the first time I came here with Thane, Daisy and Cyril were quarrelling about it, she screaming that it was a valuable piece that had belonged to her mother and he had stolen it. 'These Indians wouldn't steal cheap trinkets. They have good jewellery, the very best,' I said. 'The silver and turquoise they wear is real, sometimes with religious significance.'

  Howe gave me a murderous look. 'Whose side are you on, lady?' he sneered. 'Not Queen and countrymen, that's for sure.'

  Gray didn't like that, neither did Jack. 'If we aren't needing Mrs McQuinn any more, sir?'

  'Not at the moment, but we may need you again later. Is that all right?' said Gray.

  Jack went out with me. 'I'll walk you home.'

  'I have my bicycle.'

  He grinned. 'Then I'll run alongside if you promise not to go too fast, seeing it's uphill all the way.'

  'We'll both walk, then. I've just remembered there's something I'd like you to see.'

  As we fell into step I asked: 'Tell me something, why aren't you in uniform?'

  He laughed. 'Because I've been promoted. Came through two days ago. You've brought me luck. I'm now a sergeant, permitted to wear plain clothes.'

  Back at the Tower I produced my journal and showed him the drawing of the couple on the train from Dunbar.

  'That's jolly good,' he said. 'Wait a minute, that's Howe, isn't it? You've got him exactly - a perfect likeness. But the woman-'

  He frowned, studied it again. 'I couldn't be sure but...'

  'It's not Mrs Howe.' And I told him about the train journey, their furtive manner at Dunbar Station before entering my compartment. And how they had parted company at Waverley, like strangers, as if they did not wish to be seen together.

  'She was at the performance last night, sitting right at the front. I'm sure Daisy Howe knew of her existence. She could have reached out and touched her. And most important, even more outrageous when you come to think about it, she was wearing the dragon pendant, which I'm sure was what I overheard them quarrelling about the night I took Thane down-'

  'Thane? Oh, yes, the deerhound.' Jack didn't argue, he said: 'You realise that this gives us a new slant.'

  'I do and if you want my theory purely on circumstantial evidence, I think Daisy Howe recognised the pendant, tackled Cyril. They quarrelled and he killed her-'

  'With your Indian belt. His fingerprints will be on it, but that's acceptable as happening when he was trying to release her.' He paused. 'If it is yours, Rose, how on earth did it get into Howe's possession?'

  I thought for a moment. 'That's easy. I have watched his performance as a conjurer and magician. And I'm convinced that he took it out of my pocket that night when we were talking together, after the deerhound ran off. He said if I ever wanted a job I could join one of his circus acts.'

  Jack's brow darkened. 'The cheek of the man! What would a lady like yourself want to do with circuses?' He nodded grimly. 'And if that's the way of it, Rose, then this crime must have been carefully planned, waiting for the right place and opportunity.' He whistled. 'The vanishing Indian must have seemed like a gift from heaven. What a villain the man is! I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. An angry man, a jealous harridan of a wife, he seizes the first thing that comes to hand to shut her up and, in a murderous rage, strangles her accidentally.'

  'That's the usual way with domestic crimes, isn't it.'

  'I'm afraid so, but not this one. Well, we still have to prove it, Rose. But you're a genius!' And leaning forward, he kissed me gently on the cheek.

  'Thank you. Jack. That was very nice.'

  'And I meant it, too.'

  We looked at each other and said a lot of things that didn't need any words at all.

  He clasped my hands, held them tightly. 'Will you come to a concert with me in the Princes Street Gardens one evening?'

  'I'll be delighted. If you're not too busy solving crimes.'

  He grinned. 'I'll be there. And I'd like to take you to meet my parents-'

  'Steady on, Jack, first things first. We've just met, for heaven's sake.'

  He laughed. 'Oh, I don't mean right away. I was thinking ahead and besides, they live at Peebles.'

  As he was leaving he said: 'We'll be interviewing the circus people, just the usual routine business after a murder. But Chief Wolf Rider has asked to see where Wild Elk died. He's very insistent, seems that it's very important. Is that all right by you? No need to be scared. We'll send someone along with him to see you're all right.'

  I laughed. 'Jack, there's absolutely no need. I know enough about the Sioux to understand his motives. He isn't going to harm me. He might want to burn down the barn, of course.'

  I shouldn't have said that. Jack took it seriously and I had to persuade him that it was only tepees that were burnt when their owners died.

  'All right, but I'd be happier if one of us came too' he said darkly.

  I watched him go, not quite so hopeful now as I was when he first kissed me. I liked Jack although I was by no stretch of the imagination in
love and I doubted whether that ecstasy would ever happen with another man.

  But having Jack as a friend had interesting possibilities. Especially as if Howe was guilty, as all the evidence suggested, and Wild Elk was dead, we were no nearer to proving whether he had killed Molly Dunn. I was convinced that he was innocent of the servant girl's murder long before I met Chief Wolf Rider.

  So the question remained. Who was her killer? And more important was the nagging thought that he was still out there somewhere, laughing at all of us, a murderer on the loose perhaps even stalking a second victim.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Even without his feathered war bonnet Chief Wolf Rider was an impressive sight. One of the handsomest men I had ever seen with features that might have graced a sculpture of an Aztec warrior. In the course of our talk it emerged that his grandmother was a Sioux chief's captive. Offered to return to the white man's world, she refused, having settled down happily with her new family. Perhaps mixed blood makes a stronger race and Wolf Rider was a fine example of the true Westerner.

  He declined my invitation into the Tower and suggested we sit on the stone wall by the stable. As we did so, I had an odd sense of déjà vu, that I was reliving some past event. There were moments when I knew before he spoke what his next words would be.

  While he related the story of his early years, I recognised the way he took a broken branch and drew lines in the soil at our feet, that smiling, narrow-eyed sideways glance.

  With a sense of shock I knew whom he reminded me of.

  Danny McQuinn. I had never expected to meet a man of Danny's calibre again and I thought how he would have liked and respected Wolf Rider and how they might have been comrades. Two men born in different cultures, in different worlds, yet hewn from the same rock.

  He needed to see where Wild Elk had drawn his last breath. Wolf Rider, it transpired, was a shaman - a medicine man.

  'There is a ceremony to be performed on the exact spot where Wild Elk's spirit will linger until his soul is released to soar into that other world-' He took a deep breath.

  'Where the Great Spirit waits to receive his faithful disciples.'

  Disciples, Wolf Rider had called them. When I looked surprised he said: 'Wild Elk was a Ghost Dancer, a believer in the new religion of the Dakota Sioux with its promise of salvation, that a messiah was to come and save them.'

  He paused and smiled bitterly. 'Any new faith was good enough for a desperate people to believe in after the massacre at Wounded Knee. When we do the Ghost Dance in the circus, I wonder how many of the audience realise the significance of a new Sioux religion?'

  His glance was a question. I knew the answer. 'They believe that it will restore to them an earth soon to be covered with new soil that would bury all the white men. New grass and trees would grow, streams would run clear and the buffalo herds would return to the plains.'

  He laughed. 'You amaze me. How come you are so well informed, lady?'

  'They also believed that the shirts they wore were sacred and impervious to bullets.'

  ‘How wrong they were.' He sighed.

  And I told him that I had lived in his land and knew at first hand the appalling conditions by which the Dawes Land Allotment Act had robbed the Great Sioux Reservation of a hundred million acres of their land and left a hundred thousand souls landless and in direst poverty literally to starve to death.

  Wolf Rider nodded. 'Sitting Bull, our great leader, said that there was only one promise the white man made that he kept. And that was to exterminate the Native American race. The Ghost Dance scared the white people - a pernicious system of religion - which in fact was based on non-violence. When they came to arrest Sitting Bull, it was one of the agency policemen, one of his own tribesmen, who fired the fatal shot, as he had prophesied.'

  He went into the stable and I waited on the stone wall outside in the sunshine. Our talk had taken me back again to dangerous days in a harsh world I had only narrowly survived. At that moment I would not have been surprised if the hill had vanished and I was once more in the desolate landscape where I had last seen Danny McQuinn ride out, never to return. Where our little son lay in an unmarked grave.

  I heard him chanting but it was all over very quickly and when he came out, he handed me the crucifix that Wild Elk had worn. I held it to my breast and tears welled in my eyes. 'So he wasn't a Christian after all.'

  Wolf Rider stared straight ahead. ‘Only as much as we all worship one God whatever name we call him by. Be it Great Spirit, Jehovah, Allah-'

  'Then why did he wear this?'

  Shading his eyes. Wolf Rider searched the summit of Arthur's Seat as if it might provide an answer to where Wild Elk had received the injuries that had killed him. Then, turning to me again, he said: 'He wore the Christian cross as a penance, a reminder of a man he had killed in Dakota.'

  My heart pounded - I could feel the blood in my temples. 'Was this man-' I croaked. 'Was his name - Danny McQuinn?'

  Wolf Rider looked at me sharply. 'Your husband?' And with sudden compassion he shook his head. 'I have no idea, nor, I think, did Wild Elk ever know his name. I knew only that he was white. I had assumed he was one of the pony soldiers.'

  'Do you know what happened?' I gasped out.

  'No. Wild Elk never told us except that he had not meant to kill this man. They were not enemies. It was a terrible mistake - he had broken the Ghost Dancers' sacred vow.'

  There was a long pause. 'But he came from this land, your land - somewhere on this side of the great Atlantic Ocean. But whether England or Scotland I have no idea.'

  Again he stopped talking; frowning he stared towards the summit, the look of a searcher. But for what? 'When we arrived here in Edinburgh, Wild Elk went out with the others to exercise their horses on the hill here, but he became distressed, certain that he was being followed.'

  'Followed? But he was a stranger. Who would be following him out there?'

  I didn't believe in ghosts. Most likely it was policemen keeping an eye on him. They were taking no chances. Foley had seen an Indian near Saville Grange and they were on the lookout for possible suspects. 'You say he liked going out alone? Did he by any chance extend his riding to other parts of the town?'

  Wolf Rider looked at me and with that strange insight into my mind. He said: 'If you mean over there' - he gestured towards Newington - 'where this young woman was murdered, the answer is no. Very definitely no, as I have told the policemen who keep asking this same question. They are very eager to believe that someone of his description was seen in the area.'

  His smile was sardonic. 'To white men, all Indians look alike. A bunch of red savages. This particular Indian was seen on foot. On foot indeed. As I keep telling them, we are under very strict rules that our troop of riders remain in the Queen's Park area. They are at liberty to exercise their horses singly or in groups but are required by the terms of our contract - as foreigners - to check in and out, in case of any misunderstandings.

  'As for Wild Elk, he would never go anywhere without his horse. He had a cautious nature and it was out of character for him to wander off on his own.'

  'Can that be proved?' I asked.

  He shook his head. 'Alas, no. Wild Elk had problems like many young men, but they would not be solved by killing a defenceless young woman in a remote part of Edinburgh.'

  'Have you any theories about Mrs Howe?' I asked, changing the subject to yet another murder.

  He looked grim. 'I have plenty. One in particular, but it does not concern Wild Elk. The Howes were always quarrelling. And they did not keep their voices down.' He shrugged. 'Maybe that means nothing but it might have some significance. That is for your policemen to find out. But as far as our riders are concerned, Mrs Howe showed only the usual contempt for anyone who was not white - and rich.'

  'Her husband says she was kind to Wild Elk. Gave him food and suchlike.'

  Wolf Rider laughed. 'Whatever suchlike means! He is either mistaken or lying. And if he is accusing a dead
man of his wife's murder, there is only one logical reason.'

  'You mean that he killed her himself?'

  Again that mocking sideways glance. 'Exactly. One thing is certain. Wild Elk never believed that one of your policemen was following him.'

  He paused thoughtfully before continuing: 'Who or what was stalking him, setting him apart, singling him out from his comrades was not as simple as that.'

  My spine tingled with fear as I stared over my shoulder, over and away up the blank and empty slopes and ridges towards the summit of Arthur's Seat.

  Wolf Rider could feel my fear, I was certain, although he stared ahead impassively. 'We believe that the spirits of those who die by violence can then enter into animals. In Wild Elk's case he began to believe that the soul of the white man he killed had followed him.'

  'Surely not here - in Edinburgh?'

  Wolf Rider nodded solemnly. 'In this very place. He believed his victim was hunting him, tracking him down. Seeking vengeance in the body of a giant dog.'

  My heart thumped wildly. ‘What kind of dog?'

  'A huge creature.'

  'A deerhound?' I whispered.

  'Is that what they are called? Are they hunting dogs?'

  'Yes.' I could hardly speak.

  'You have seen this creature, then?' he demanded sharply. 'He is real?'

  'Yes, very real. He saved me when I was attacked on the hill out there by drunken men.'

  Wolf Rider thought about this, said nothing but continued to regard me as if reading my thoughts. Confused and terrible thoughts to which I could give no name. He breathed deeply. 'You are aware how Wild Elk died, what killed him.'

  'His horse threw him. That is what they say.'

  'I think there is more to it than that.' Again he took up the branch and began drawing patterns on the soil at our feet. 'I believe that this animal - the spirit of the man he had killed - caught up with him, spooked the horse.' He stopped. 'And so he was avenged.'

  I put my hands over my ears. What he was suggesting was outrageous. Everything I had ever learned, even been taught to believe in, refused to touch it, give it logical thought.

  As for Danny, he would have been horrified too. As a staunch Roman Catholic, it was against all the tenets of his religion to believe that Thane was the embodiment of a human seeking vengeance, protecting me-