Murders Most Foul

by Alanna Knight

  Turning at the gate, he was conscious of the woman’s watchful gaze. Not upon him but anxiously on the empty road beyond.

  Although he was reasonably near Lumbleigh Green, Faro was suddenly anxious to return to his lodgings and get out of uniform in preparation for meeting Lizzie, hoping as always that she would provide the calm his soul so weary of crime needed.

  She came to the front gate to meet him, wearing a new bonnet and cape handed down from her mistress. Faro’s reaction was a mere: ‘You’re looking very pretty,’ which was true. In his eyes, she was revealed as sweet, radiant and loving, a refreshing antidote to sordid danger and murder.

  At his side, her step light and looking so happy, as always at the prospect of spending an hour with him, she took his arm and he made a sudden decision.

  Hailing a passing hansom cab, he put her inside and said: ‘Princes Street.’

  She looked at him in amazement at this extravagance and said in reproach: ‘This isn’t my birthday any more, Jeremy.’

  He laughed and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Isn’t it? A pity. Then I think you should have a celebration every day.’

  She gave him a quick, rather anxious glance. Had he been drinking? He smiled and leaning down, kissed her cheek and sighed, ‘Had an awful day, Lizzie, that’s all.’

  Leaving the cab as it turned into Princes Street, he ushered her inside the Balmoral Hotel. Wide-eyed she was led towards the restaurant. The waiter bowed, showed them to a table, and once seated, presented the supper menu.

  Up to now Lizzie had been too taken aback to do more than murmur a protest. Looking around she whispered: ‘It’s very expensive, Jeremy.’ And scanning the menu, she whispered, ‘Can we have something light?’

  ‘No. This is my special treat.’ Ordering the set supper, Lizzie sighed, and listening to the quartet playing a Strauss waltz, she sat back, feeling more like Clara Lumbleigh than her lady’s maid as she looked around at the well-dressed, well-off customers.

  ‘Oh, it is so lovely. Thank you, Jeremy.’

  Leaning across the table he took her hand. ‘I’m the one to be grateful, Lizzie. Grateful to have such a friend as you.’

  She smiled gently, only slightly put down that he had used the word ‘friend’ when she would have preferred a stronger, more lasting word for their relationship. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful,’ she said at the end of the delicious meal, ‘if there were special moments we could keep for ever? Like those snowstorms in glass paperweights, bring them out, give them a shake – relive them over and over.’

  There were many moments in Faro’s life that he would not care to relive. Moments from hell in the past and he was keenly aware of deadly perils that awaited hidden by the future. But this present hour was not one of them, this was an evening he was to look back upon, when his heart raced ahead and made its own decision.

  As for Lizzie, walking on air remembering that goodnight kiss, her only thought was regret for the first time that she did not have a home of her own. Even the deadly tenement had its one precious memory of that solitary night of passion they had spent together.

  In her life now, there was no such place for lovers; even if Jeremy had been so inclined, they could have hardly gone to his lodging under the eagle eye of Mrs Biggs. As for her own room in Lumbleigh Green, Mrs Brown never missed anything either and discovery would be not only humiliation and embarrassment for them both but, for her, instant dismissal.

  Even Jeremy’s love was too great a risk, too high a price – not only for her own sake but for Vince’s future.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Collecting his reports next morning, one look at Gosse’s grim expression told him not to expect anything cheerful. ‘Well, making any progress on our murder enquiries?’

  When Faro shook his head, Gosse’s eyebrows raised mockingly. ‘Really? Thought by this time you would have had our killer in handcuffs. Obviously those rumours of what to expect from our splendid new detective constable were somewhat overrated—’

  Interrupting this flow of sarcasm, Faro quickly outlined his visit to the church, telling him that he had been unable to contact the priest yesterday but was returning immediately.

  Gosse sighed deeply. ‘All right, get going. Don’t waste my precious time standing here talking.’ And indicating the papers on his desk, ‘I have more than enough to keep me here.’ As Faro was leaving he shouted encouragingly, ‘And come back with some results this time.’

  There was no evidence of life in the empty church. The priest had not returned and Faro’s footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone floor as he called ‘Hello?’ several times, not really expecting any answer.

  At the rectory, the door was opened by Mrs Casey, a very different, tearful version of the cautious housekeeper he had encountered yesterday. Attired in cape and bonnet, fingering the crucifix about her neck, flustered and distraught, she said: ‘Oh, the Lord be thanked, it’s yourself, Constable. You’ve saved me a journey this very minute, going to the police station.’

  Suspecting the report of a burglary of some sorts, Faro asked: ‘What has happened?’

  ‘It’s the father, Constable. He’s gone missing’ – a sobbing breath – ‘that’s what. And I don’t know what to do,’ she added, wringing her hands in agitation.

  In an effort to calm her, Faro said gently: ‘And what makes you think that, madam?’

  She pointed towards the staircase. ‘He comes and goes a lot, trying to make meals for him is a nightmare, I can tell you. I’m getting used to it now, though he says the Lord’s work comes before meals. But …’ She paused, looked around with a bewildered expression. ‘He’s usually back here at nights. He’d gone out, but I didn’t actually see him leave—’ An anguished sob. ‘I was a bit concerned when I saw that his bed hadn’t been slept in, but I thought he’d been held up somewhere. But when he didn’t come back last night—’ And wringing her hands she regarded him tearfully. ‘Oh, Holy Mother of God, save us. I don’t know what has happened to him.’

  ‘When I was here yesterday, you said he was visiting the hospital.’ Giving that a moment to sink in, he shook his head. ‘You should have told me of your fears, Mrs Casey. This is an important piece of information you were withholding,’ he added sternly.

  ‘I just didn’t want to believe there was anything wrong. But I should have known better. I’m sorry, Constable.’

  ‘Has he never done this before, perhaps been delayed with someone who is ill?’ he added weakly.

  ‘Never,’ she said firmly. ‘If it was last rites, he’d always get a message to me to let me know.’ And leaning weakly against the banister she whispered: ‘Oh, dear God, I know something dreadful has happened to him. I just feel it in my bones.’

  ‘May I look in his room?’ Faro asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, anything,’ she said as he followed her up the stairs. The room was spartan, indeed, and suggested a monk’s cell rather than a parish priest’s bedroom.

  ‘I changed the sheets the other day and the bed’s just as I left it, never touched. See, his nightshirt, just lying on the bed where I left it for him.’

  Faro looked round the room: a crucifix, a picture of the Sacred Heart and a shelved cupboard, known locally as the ‘Edinburgh press’. The housekeeper opened the door and looked inside. ‘He took nothing with him for an overnight stay, just went out in ordinary clothes—’

  ‘Ordinary clothes?’

  ‘Yes, he never wore his clerical garb – look, here it is – when he went out at night, taking God to the heathen, visiting the less privileged members of our society, as he called the down-and-outs.’

  ‘In Edinburgh?’

  ‘Not always. He often went down the coast, to Musselburgh and beyond.’ She sat down on the bed, smoothed the immaculate covers. ‘He has few possessions, Constable, and I could swear that he did not have one solitary piece of luggage with him, not even his case he carried for the last rites.’ And shaking her head, ‘Not even a clean collar or shirt, and he’s ver
y particular about that every day.’

  Faro looked at the empty table. ‘His diary?’

  ‘His appointments, you mean. I keep that for him. He needs reminding every day.’

  ‘Did he have many casual callers at the rectory here, without appointments, I mean?’

  She frowned. ‘Oh, quite often. Always on call, available to his parishioners, and anyone else who needed help.’

  Faro felt it was a useless question but he asked: ‘Any visitor you can remember before you last saw him?’ She bit her lip, thinking for a moment, then said: ‘There was one. A nice young chap came to see him. I showed him into the study.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  She shook her head. ‘He wasn’t one of us, from our church, if that’s what you mean,’ she added in faint tones of disapproval, and frowning. ‘Tall, well-spoken, good-looking.’

  ‘And did he have a name?’ Faro asked gently.

  ‘No. Just said the father was expecting him. When I took the tea into them, they were talking about a drama group needing a place for practice. The hall over yonder, behind the church – the verger Mr Mundy lets it out from time to time. The money’s useful. He lives just across the road, in number 17, if you’re interested.’

  Faro made a note of it. He was very interested, particularly in her description of Fr Burren’s last visitor before he disappeared. He left with a pointless reassurance not to worry, that the police would do everything they could to find Fr Burren again. Meanwhile should he reappear she should let them know.

  At the Central Office, Gosse was installed behind the desk as usual and looked up briefly from his papers as Faro entered. ‘Back so soon, Constable?’

  ‘We’ve got another missing person, sir.’

  ‘Nothing new. That’ll be the third in the past two days.’

  ‘But this one may be related to our murder enquiry, sir,’ he said passing over his report.

  Gosse’s head shot up as Faro continued, ‘Fr Burren, the priest.’

  And as Faro related his conversation with the housekeeper, Gosse thumped his fists together with an air of triumph.

  ‘By God, by God, maybe this is our answer, what we’ve been looking for.’

  ‘I don’t see—’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ was the curt reply. ‘So much for your observation and deduction.’ And tapping the report, ‘This tells me, before reading a word, that we have our killer. He knows we’re on to him and he has scarpered. Cleared off. Probably on his way to a ship back to Ireland or God knows where, at this moment.’

  As Faro listened, his eyes narrowed at Gosse’s predictable reactions, seizing an answer, a peg at last to hang the murderer on, preparatory to the gallows.

  ‘Perhaps, sir, that is one answer,’ he put in. ‘The other is also obvious.’

  ‘Well?’ Gosse demanded.

  ‘The priest is the killer’s fourth victim,’ he said slowly.

  Gosse’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘Nonsense! How do you come by that idea?’

  ‘Because Fr Burren received Ida Watt’s confession before she was murdered. And she revealed to him the identity of this secret lover – who we suspect killed both her and Doris Page.’

  A little deflated, Gosse growled. ‘Perhaps you’re right but I wouldn’t bank on it. Well, as a missing person we have to find him, dead or alive,’ he added grimly. ‘So we’ll set the usual search procedures in operation. You’d better get back to the housekeeper, find out everything she knows, last seen and all that sort of thing.’

  At the rectory, Faro stood by the closed door which remained unanswered. He was about to cross the road to number 17 and speak to the verger when the door suddenly opened and a flustered Mrs Casey appeared carrying a basket of washing. She regarded him anxiously. ‘Oh, it’s yourself, Constable. Any news?’

  Faro told her it was all in hand and sighing she said: ‘Come in, come in, the kettle’s on and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ Laying the basket aside, she shook her head and sighed. ‘I was doing the washing. Can’t sit around just praying. Have to keep busy and leave it in the dear Lord’s hands, that’s what Sean – the father – would want us to do.’

  Putting cups on the table, she looked tearful, red-eyed with lack of sleep. Leaning on the table she smiled sadly. ‘Sean’s just like a wee bairn, not my parish priest at all. Known him all my life, I have, since he was a babe in arms. Same village in Connemara; the Caseys always worked for the Burrens. His father was Sir Aidan.’

  Then she was sitting down opposite and Faro was hearing that Sean Burren had his reasons for the priesthood: a high-born father whose lifestyle he deplored.

  ‘Sir Aidan’s heir, the elder son, would inherit more than the title. The very spit of his father in every way. Ten years older than Sean. Everything went to him and he was no model for the younger son. He had inherited all his father’s love of rich living: money, gambling, drinking – and women,’ she added grimly.

  ‘Sean wanted none of it, he had high ideals even then. He was to make his own way in the world. Ireland was a troubled place and he believed that God had called him so he took holy orders and came across the sea to Edinburgh. When he got this parish, he needed a housekeeper. We had kept in touch …’ She paused, smiling gently. ‘And I needed no second bidding. You know the rest. And if you think I’m going on a bit, being only a servant, to Sean I am the mother he never knew.’ Crossing herself, she said: ‘She died giving birth to him, God keep her.’

  There was one serious omission in Faro’s report to Gosse regarding his interview with Mrs Casey.

  As she was showing him out of the rectory, she said, ‘Wait a minute, Constable, that young chap I told you about. I remember his name now; the father called him Paul.’

  And that description, fitted very precisely one man …

  Paul Lumbleigh had been the priest’s last visitor before he disappeared. And what did that signify, Faro thought grimly as he went across the road to talk to Mr Mundy?

  Thankfully the elderly verger, a businesslike picture of cheerful, bright-eyed efficiency, was at home. Oh yes, he remembered the young gentleman. Enquiries about an amateur group involved looking for a suitable hall. Shakespeare, they were doing.

  He made a face. ‘A bit ambitious for the church hall, but this young chap’ – pausing to consult his ledger – ‘Mr Paul Lumbleigh, he was very enthusiastic, had great hopes for them.’

  Faro had decided that the most effective way of a meeting with Paul was in the informal atmosphere of one of his fairly regular after-school visits to Vince, at the Browns’ cottage. But how to disguise a searching interview with the boy doubtless hovering on the sidelines?

  He sighed wearily. Vince’s antagonism was the last thing he wanted, losing whatever friendly ground he believed had been recently gained.

  As he made his way back to the Central Office, the weather was worsening. A heavy mist was descending, a thick white shroud already covering Arthur’s Seat. The weather conditions emanated from the Firth of Forth and could render the south-side suburbs invisible regardless of sunshine in the city a couple of miles distant.

  ‘Seen the weather?’ said Gosse looking out of the window. ‘This will hamper the search for the priest, I’m afraid.’

  The police routine began at the last known sighting of the missing person. In this case the rectory in the Pleasance, under the shadow of Salisbury Crags, already vanished beneath the enveloping mist.

  ‘If he’s been killed as you suspect, Faro, then the hill is the most likely place where his body has been concealed,’ Gosse said grimly, consulting a police map of the area. ‘A favourite place for malefactors to hide their evil deeds.’

  Faro knew that was sadly true. The extinct volcano held many hollows and deep secret caves, some only revealing themselves by the accidental movement of the glacial deposits which every decade or so came loose and thundered down onto the Duddingston Road, a dreaded avalanche and a mortal danger to travellers.

  Late afternoon was mo
st promising for an encounter with Paul. Heading towards Lumbleigh Green, ignoring the weather conditions, he decided to take the short cut across the hill to the back gate.

  On his way, occasionally visible looming out of the mist, were a group of constables who shook their heads and, shivering, complained bitterly.

  Weather was never on the side of the police; it always seemed bent on aiding and abetting criminals. Unless the conditions improved, the search would have to be abandoned for the moment, since the result would be general confusion with chilled, angry constables losing each other and in imminent danger of injuries from a treacherous terrain of unseen hazards.

  ‘Useless looking up there in this weather,’ one grumbled, pointing in the direction of Hunter’s Crag.

  ‘We’re more likely to be the casualties,’ said another.

  ‘Aye,’ said a third, ‘nearly broke my ankle in a rabbit hole.’

  Faro commiserated with them, deciding that the search also provided an excellent excuse for his ‘accidental’ encounter with Paul.

  The weather conditions were getting steadily worse and by morning Edinburgh’s Newington residents would wake up trapped in a cotton-wool world, with visibility no more than a few feet beyond their windows. He pitied the men who had to make their way to work amidst the unseen traffic hazards, as carriages collided with horse-drawn tramcars, the carriage horses, scared and uncontrollable, upsetting pedestrians.

  In the railway station, stately trains puffed away like outraged dowagers, marooned at platforms or in sidings, waiting for signals, at present rendered invisible, to proceed with their journeys while irritated passengers lamented at such enforced delays.

  Faro was also now considering the folly of having taken the short cut when it would have been more sensible and much safer to walk on the main Dalkeith coach road and enter the house through the front gate. However, as he walked towards the familiar part of the steep incline which led directly to the garden gate, the mist thinned momentarily, the lower reaches of the hill becoming visible again.