Akin to Murder

by Alanna Knight

  That was now old news. Vince had changed his mind. Wasn’t Stepfather aware that since his past friendship with the grown-up, Dr Paul Lumbleigh, and lured on by all those wonderful illustrated volumes on Mr M’s bookshelves, he had now turned his ambitions towards becoming a doctor?

  Faro continued enthusiastically: ‘I want to do this together, just in case there was something you saw and it didn’t register at the time. Something perhaps quite obvious on a second visit that you missed the first time. That often happens.’

  Vince was waiting for him outside the bookshop after school that afternoon. The shop seemed very lonely now, the blinds down and a padlock on the door provided by the police to keep the property safe from intruders. Faro produced the key and on the doorstep he turned: ‘Remember how you came in, go over it, step by step.’

  Vince obliged. He walked in slowly, opened the window blind, looked over his shoulder and said: ‘It was then I saw the disorder. I guessed there had been a break-in when I went to the cupboard where the cash box was kept. It should have been locked too but it was open, like now. I saw that the cash box was missing.’ Turning, he surveyed the room. ‘There were books off shelves, on the floor, the desk drawers opened, their contents scattered.’

  Faro nodded. ‘The main purpose of most break-ins. He was looking for money.’

  And he thought how desperately McLaw must have been needing money, to buy food to keep alive – and to travel from Edinburgh, perhaps south by train, to lose himself in London.

  He remembered that it had been raining all that Sunday, and had the old man been found before Monday morning, footprints would have been a useful clue.

  Vince said: ‘This burglar didn’t know much about Mr M or antiquarian bookshops, if he thought there would be great takings to steal.’ He shook his head. ‘There was hardly enough each week to keep the shop open, but Mr M was like that. He loved his books and having students come in to browse.’

  Faro was moving silently around the shop, frowning, inspecting everything. He signalled to Vince as he approached the wooden ladder leading to the premises above where Molesby had lived.

  Vince shuddered. He clearly did not relish revisiting what the police would call the crime scene again.

  Faro took his arm. ‘Up you go, lad. Let’s get it over with.’ When Vince arrived that Monday morning, enough daylight had filtered through to reveal the old man’s body lying on the floor. Looking round the tiny bedroom, Vince pointed to the shutters.

  ‘They were closed. I opened them.’ The police had left them open and now the tiny room was suffused by as much daylight as the small window offered.

  Vince shivered suddenly as he looked around. The bed had been stripped and the scene seemed impersonal, very different from his horrific discovery of poor Mr M.

  Faro was aware of his reluctance. The police had been thorough in their search for clues but had overlooked two picture postcards stuck in the mirror frame. They were from Germany and Russia, addressed ‘Dear Uncle’ and with identical messages: ‘a good voyage and glad to be ashore again’, signed, ‘Yours affectionately Tommy’. Obviously from the sailor he had been searching the docks for, but with no other means of identification, such as a surname, they would be of little help in finding him.

  Faro opened the wardrobe; Molesby had few possessions, a few shabby clothes, white shirts, some cravats; no Sunday best, worn boots. No clues there either.

  He put his hand on Vince’s shoulder. ‘Now, every detail, lad. See it in your mind just as it was then.’

  Vince didn’t need to think. That grisly picture would stay with him always. ‘He was lying on the floor beside the bed in a pile of bedding. Very still, a smear of blood on his head, but I knew when I knelt down beside him that he was dead – and cold.’

  ‘Had the bed been slept in?’

  The pile of sheets indicated bedding, but the thought came to Faro that Molesby could have become entangled when he fell out of the bed in the struggle with the intruder. But had he even been to bed?

  ‘Was he in his nightshirt?’ he asked. ‘Did you notice when he opened the door?’

  Vince shook his head. ‘He only opened it a fraction but I did see that he was in his underlinen, the kind old men who have money wear.’

  Faro smiled at that. Underclothes were a luxury for the poor, a shift for modest women, men hardly bothered at all. Now a picture was forming in his own mind.

  ‘Let’s assume that Mr Molesby had been preparing to go to bed and had disturbed the burglar, shouted angrily and that was his downfall,’ Faro said slowly. ‘Time of death was established as late Sunday evening or the early hours of Monday morning, so that was most likely possible. The burglar returned, came up the ladder, asked for the money and was indignantly refused.’ He shrugged. ‘We can guess the rest.’

  ‘Do you think he was killed over a struggle for the key he kept on his bedside table with his false teeth?’

  ‘His teeth!’ said Faro.

  Vince looked grim. ‘Well, he still had them in, Stepfather. I noticed that ’cos his mouth was … was open.’

  ‘So he hadn’t been to bed.’ Faro thought for a moment. ‘No fatal injury, only bruises consistent with a fall, when he cut his head.’

  ‘Do you think that Inspector Gosse might have got it all wrong, Stepfather?’ said Vince anxiously. He sounded hopeful for the first time.

  Faro nodded. ‘I do indeed. The inspector likes to have his so-called murder cases all cut and dried. He is often too ready to assume the worst. But I think Mr Molesby might have died of a heart attack—’

  ‘Yes,’ Vince interrupted eagerly. ‘As a result of that struggle, that is possible, isn’t it, for an old man? And he was a bit frail at the best of times.’

  Before they went back down into the shop, Faro had a final look around the bedroom, opening the wardrobe again. Was the time of death wrong and had Molesby actually died before he had a chance to dress for St Giles’ and lunch that Sunday? As they left the shop, Vince did not share Faro’s sense of new purpose in persuading Gosse with his theory regarding the events leading to Molesby’s death.

  ‘Can you make him understand that it wasn’t me?’ he said bleakly.

  ‘I’ll do my best, Vince, to get him off your back.’ Then he laughed. ‘Your observations have been most helpful.’

  Vince almost jumped. A look of sheer panic.

  ‘What’s wrong? Is there something troubling you?’ he added, anxiously watching Vince’s expression.

  ‘Of course not, Stepfather.’ He recovered quickly. ‘Why should there be? I’ve told you all I know.’ And he closed his mouth firmly on that. No more to be said.

  When they reached the cottage, Lizzie said: ‘Mrs Brook came and brought us some of her delicious soup. Such a nice lady, said she’d made far too much, forgets she’s only cooking for one. I think she misses Mr Macfie.’

  She paused. ‘She seemed ill at ease, though, a bit nervous and disappointed that you weren’t here.’ Looking at him, she frowned. ‘I got the feeling that it was you she really wanted to see, the soup was just an excuse.’

  Faro shook his head, but he had guessed the real reason for her visit. He must go to Liberton and talk to Tibbie right away as he had promised.

  While Lizzie and his stepfather were discussing Mrs Brook’s progress and future achievements as Macfie’s housekeeper, Vince went out with Coll. He looked miserable and scared.

  Turning, Faro watched him go and Lizzie sighed. ‘What’s up with him these days, Jeremy? He’s not himself. I can’t make him out. He’s got me worried.’

  He tried to reassure her. ‘This is a difficult age for Vince.’ He still remembered what it was to be almost fourteen, neither boy nor man, in Orkney, with all those violent surges of emotion. ‘Maybe that’s what it is all about, Lizzie.’ He didn’t add his own feelings of resentment that the lad had probably plenty of problems facing him without being suddenly thrust by Gosse into the world not only of grown-ups, but of possible murder.
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  ‘I’ve tried talking to him,’ Lizzie said. ‘He used to tell me everything. Every little detail of his day. But no more. It’s as if he wants to keep his thoughts to himself.’

  She and Faro were closer than they imagined. For Vince was worried and preoccupied and it wasn’t anything to do with Inspector Gosse’s interrogation about the shop break-in.

  Vince had a secret.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  What Faro didn’t know, or anyone else at this time, was that Vince wasn’t sharing his secret with anyone, least of all his parents.

  All his life he had suffered from being overprotected. Of course, as he got older and guessed more about adult emotions, he gave his mother the excuse of being a sad war widow, one of many whose lives were ruined and left with young children. She had no one else but him and that was why he was so cosseted.

  His infancy and childhood were a bit of a blur, punctuated only by strange scenes, sharp and vivid like pictures on a wall but isolated, tiny islands in his existence, with no idea of what had happened before or immediately after they appeared. He remembered little of his early life, except that it wasn’t easy, and as he left childhood behind, he often wondered if his mother’s behaviour, her sadness and reluctance to discuss the past, was not only because it wounded her to talk about his brave father being killed in India now so long ago. Was there something else, something missing? As he relived over and over the picture of that last battle his imagination had created, hearing the fatal gunshot but yearning to be told more, he had come to recognise this as a topic to be avoided for the distress, the anguished, haunted look it brought to his mother’s face.

  Until now he had told her everything, answered all her questions about those everyday things of his life, trivial things that seemed to be of such infinite interest to her, where had he been, who had he seen on the hill on the way there and back from school and who did he sit next to. In fact all the details of the classroom, however boring they seemed to him.

  But now all that had changed dramatically since he met the gypsy Charlie and had given him his word that he would keep silent about that encounter.

  Having his daily walk on the hill, with Coll as usual racing ahead, tail wagging furiously as he sniffed the ground for rabbits, out of sight Vince had heard a yelp of pain from the dog and prayed that he hadn’t been caught in a trap. He ran in the direction of the sound and there was Coll standing near a boulder, quivering, looking scared.

  He wasn’t hurt; his nose had led him not to a rabbit, but to a man lying concealed by a boulder. And this man had thought he was being attacked and had hit him.

  The man looked up wearily as Vince approached and sighed, ‘You’re just a lad, thank goodness. Sorry I slapped your dog, didn’t mean to hurt him. I was afraid when he rushed over that he was going to bite me.’ As he spoke he was rubbing his ankle. And Vince noticed a large bruise on his forehead.

  ‘What happened? Did you trip up?’

  ‘No, dammit, my horse did – and threw me.’

  Vince didn’t know what to say, but under his stepfather’s guidance he was fast learning the technique of powers of observation and deduction. The man, he guessed, was young, despite his beard, wild hair and ill-fitting clothes: a fine black jacket, too tight to button up properly and revealing a glimpse of a dirty-looking shirt, too short in the sleeves and trousers that only reached his ankles, as if he had outgrown them. These were hand-me-downs like those for a youngster whose parents were too poor to buy him new ones. Yet the clothes were of good quality, Vince could recognise that, the kind well-off men, proud citizens of Edinburgh like Superintendent Macfie wore.

  Listening to the man describing how he had been thrown off his horse, Vince realised Stepfather would have been proud of him. Judging by the man’s appearance, he decided he had most probably come from the gypsies’ camp on the far side of Arthur’s Seat. They had moved in recently, preparing for the winter months, scavenging for food and hoping to survive by moving closer to civilisation, with its rich pickings from clothes drying on lines to opportunities provided by open windows.

  More tinkers than real gypsies, their presence was generally unpopular with everyone, but the police, after the usual warning about trespassing, preferred to ignore them as long as no incidents were reported of thieving or assault. At least on that side of the hill they were well out of sight of the more heavily populated areas of the city. It would have been different, an outcry, if they had ventured into the Queen’s Park and the precincts of the royal residence at Holyroodhouse. That certainly would not have been tolerated. They would have had to move on, by force if necessary.

  If the wind was in the right direction, sometimes voices and smoke from the campfires drifted over as far as the Faros’ cottage. In the evening there was often singing too, a strange foreign, yet exciting sound, Vince remembered, as he asked politely what he could do to help.

  The man laughed, looking him over, and Vince guessed at his thoughts. Just a boy, what could he do?

  ‘I doubt whether you could get my horse back. I reckon he’ll be miles away by now.’ He paused: ‘How old are you?’

  Vince drew himself up. ‘Fourteen,’ he lied boldly.

  The man smiled. Those curls, not very tall, the boy looked more like twelve than fourteen.

  ‘Where were you going?’ Vince asked. A shrug was the answer. ‘You’re a gypsy,’ he added, trying not to make it sound like an accusation. ‘Did you steal the horse?’

  The man’s eyebrows raised, he grinned. ‘Of course not. Just borrowed it for a while.’ A quizzical look. ‘How did you guess I was a gypsy?’

  Vince said: ‘You don’t sound like our local people. I mean, your voice is quite different.’

  ‘Is that so, now?’ The man bit his lip, watching him closely for a moment’s careful consideration. Then with a shrug, he said, ‘As a matter of fact, I was heading for the Borders, to the Faws camp at Kirk Yetholm. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it. They would protect me, I am one of them, you know. That is my right, my inheritance.’

  And Vince was delighted. He had guessed right as the gypsy, still rubbing his ankle, which was obviously very painful, sighed deeply. ‘I cannot go anywhere with this, can I now? I need a stick to walk, and a place to rest up, keep out of sight for a couple of days.’ He paused. ‘Get some food and my strength back,’ he added pointedly. ‘Do you live nearby?’

  Vince nodded, but said nothing. Telling his mother was out of the question. She had a weakness for waifs and strays of the animal kind, never turned one away, but would make a terrible fuss about him talking to strangers. And this one didn’t speak Scots like ordinary Edinburgh folk. That would be because the gypsies had their own foreign tongue.

  He did some rapid thinking. Stepfather was a calming influence on Ma, he might understand, but he was a policeman, the natural enemy of the gypsies and it sounded, between the lines as it were, that this man was running away from something or someone he had offended.

  Perhaps he was a sneak-thief, and that was how he had come by those strange, ill-fitting clothes that looked well tailored and expensive, not the kind a gypsy would wear.

  ‘That jacket doesn’t fit you very well,’ he said politely. ‘How did you get it, and those trousers too?’

  The man laughed sharply. ‘You are observant, aren’t you?’ He shrugged and Vince persisted.

  ‘They look like a gentleman’s clothes. Have you stolen them?’ he asked sternly.

  The man’s eyebrows rose again. ‘You’re very direct, young fella. Of course I didn’t. What makes you think that?’

  ‘They don’t fit you. But they’re very smart—’ He stopped himself in time, having almost added ‘for a gypsy’.

  Again the man laughed. ‘You flatter me. They belonged to an old chap who came for shelter to us at the camp and died. Had a terrible cough. They’d have sold them so I just borrowed them, when no one was looking,’ he added apologetically, straightening his shoulders. ‘For my journey, you see, I h
ave to look presentable.’

  Vince regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Have you done something wrong?’ he asked, hoping not to sound accusing. He was rewarded with a cold stare.

  ‘And what kind of wrong had you in mind?’ he asked, carefully choosing the words.

  Vince shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  A sigh. ‘Very well, I will tell you, seeing that you’ve taken such an interest and want to help me. The truth, lad,’ he added slowly, as if measuring every word, ‘but you must promise not to tell anyone. Just between you and me. Promise, now!’ he added sternly.

  Vince nodded.

  ‘That’s not enough. Say it. I promise—’

  ‘I … p-promise.’ Vince had an uneasy feeling that what he was doing wasn’t right as the gypsy went on:

  ‘They, back there –’ he jabbed a finger in the direction of the camp ‘– they wanted me to marry this … this old ugly woman. I didn’t want to. I refused. But she’s the chief’s daughter and things got a bit rough. She wanted me, so I had to make a run for it.’

  Vince vaguely understood the problem. This was one of the challenges of the adult world. Unhappy marriages, whispers overheard in their conversations, often a lot of significant nods and an unwanted baby involved. He felt suddenly flattered to have been trusted with this information.

  A short silence followed, then the man said: ‘All I need is a place where I can rest for a couple of days, perhaps a bit of bread, and some meat. Is there somewhere round here?’

  Around them the distant sound of hammering, the skeleton shapes of houses still to be built. The almost demolished Lumbleigh House gave Vince an idea.

  He pointed to it, and explained briefly: ‘You see all the building going on. That house was once owned by a rich man, part of a big estate, and there are still stables over there. You could hide there.’

  The gypsy nodded eagerly. ‘Good. But I do need something to eat.’

  ‘I’ll bring you something.’