There was nothing we could do. We were days too late, the trail already cold. I felt awful but my heart went out to Jack who looked dreadful, his face white, set in stone, trying his best to console Mrs Blaker that it was not her fault – never having met him anyone could have made the same mistake – and assuring her, which I wanted to believe but couldn’t at that moment, that all would be well and that Meg would be found.
We left the two women, and in the carriage I took Jack’s hand. He grasped it tightly until the pressure made me cry out. He apologised, and leaning back, he groaned.
‘What next – what will we do?’ I asked. And echoing Mrs Blaker’s words, ‘Who could have done this, who could have taken her? And why your child, Jack? I don’t understand.’
Jack shook his head, stared out of the window, seeing a grimmer prospect than the passing street.
‘She’s been kidnapped, Rose. We don’t know why – yet. But maybe this has nothing to do with me personally, maybe I’m just a link in the chain. We’ll soon find out,’ he added grimly.
And I knew he was thinking of the thirty thousand pounds when he said, ‘There will be a demand for a ransom. In fact, I’m surprised they’ve delayed contacting me. In these cases usually it’s the next day – why the interval? What are they waiting for?’
I didn’t want to be left alone, but I had Thane and Jack needed to report straight away to the Central Office.
He held me briefly at the door and said, ‘I know you’re worried sick, so am I. But I’ve handled kidnap cases before; there’s a definite pattern.’
I tried to be consoled, but those kidnappings were not personal cases and this one was his own daughter.
‘We’ll maybe need money, so I’d better see what I’ve got in the bank,’ he said shortly.
Then he was gone and I was left with Thane, who had been regarding us with the anxious expression that said his humans were in trouble. And because there was no one else I told him what had happened and he moved closer to my side, a gesture meant to be reassuring. But what could a deerhound do against kidnappers?
Jack knew the procedure but so did I. Kidnapping was a hanging offence, and if the kidnappers didn’t get the ransom they were demanding, they were quite likely to kill the child and disappear. They could not risk their victim falling into police hands and telling all. Not even a small child. No trail must be left.
This was one of the worst days in my life, and I did not dare to leave the Tower just in case. I hoped the ransom note would not be delivered while Jack was absent. But that was exactly what happened.
There was a knock at the kitchen door and I opened it. A man stood there, hat pulled well down over grey hair, eyes invisible under heavy eyebrows. A muffler to his chin completed the disguise, making certain that he would never be recognised again.
A hoarse voice. ‘Afternoon, madam. I have a message for Mr Macmerry.’
There was no use pretending otherwise – I felt certain that he knew I was alone in the house.
‘I will not beat about the bush. Give Mr Macmerry this message. If he wishes to see his daughter again, alive, he is to take a thousand pounds and leave it under a loose stone on the rim above the Wells o’ Wearie.’ The ancient well was half a mile from the Tower. ‘Meanwhile I will accept a package from you, madam, a package containing documents given you by the late Mrs Lawers, just for any trouble and as a goodwill insurance that no ill will befall the little girl while her father assembles the required ransom.’
‘I haven’t any idea what you are talking about,’ I said.
He moved forward menacingly, with a gun pointed at my heart. ‘Don’t try my patience, lady.’
As I backed away from him, moving further into the kitchen, I touched the derringer in my pocket. I could kill or wound him severely. As if he knew my intentions he said, ‘Remember, if anything happens to me, the child will be disposed of immediately. So, the package if you please.’
I shook my head and at that moment a floorboard creaked at his heels. No human footfall, no other presence except for Thane and myself. But the noise was so loud that it completely threw him off guard.
He swivelled round. And Thane leapt, knocking him to the ground and pinning him to the floor.
He yelled. ‘Call your dog off. Remember, if I die the girl dies too.’
Suddenly the door opened, and there was Jack with Gray, and never had I been so glad to see a bevy of uniformed policemen surging into my kitchen.
As Jack called Thane off, the man was dragged to his feet and Gray stepped forward. Pulling off the bonnet and grey wig he arrested Adrian Dyce on suspicion of committing three murders.
It was my turn to feel rather ill as they led him away, cursing his captors. Jack put his arm around me.
I said, ‘Thank God you got here in time.’
He nodded. ‘Gray has had his eye on Adrian for some time on suspicion of drug smuggling, and we’re pretty certain he killed Steven.’ It fitted what Nanny Craigle had said and my theory that, far from being friends, Adrian was heavily under Steven’s influence, as Jack continued.
‘As you so rightly worked out, we’ll find that he was Sawler’s accomplice. Together they hoped to find the treasure. But thieves fall out. Maybe Adrian got greedy, decided he could go it alone, pretty certain that there was thirty thousand pounds hidden in the Tower here.’
I hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Jack, I haven’t told you before, but the policeman who lured me to the hospital to break into the house. I’m pretty sure that it was Steven.’
Jack looked at me. ‘How do you know?’
‘Well, it was one or the other of them. Adrian was the bogus maid, but he’s smaller and slimmer than Steven.’
Jack frowned. ‘And he could have known I was in the hospital. It was in all the local papers.’
He paused and then said gently, ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me all this at the time? About the burglary? I certainly would never have gone to Eildon and left you on your own.’
‘Which is precisely why I kept it to myself. And there had been no damage done. However, I thought I recognised the dead man at the loch as the policeman.’
‘And you still didn’t mention that important fact.’
I shrugged and he said sternly, ‘Withholding vital information, Rose, which would have been of considerable help, as well as saving precious time while we were trying to establish his identity.’
‘If I had told you, then Gray would have wanted a lot more information.’
‘For a murder you intended to solve yourself, of course,’ Jack said mockingly. ‘Rose, that was a chronically wrong decision. You must know that.’
‘With hindsight, I suppose so,’ I admitted reluctantly. ‘All I knew was that I had solved several murders on my own.’
‘And may I remind you, several times almost lost your life.’ Jack shook his head. ‘You must have used up more than a cat’s nine lives.’ He took my hand. ‘This is all about Gray – your own personal feud, isn’t it? A matter of female pride, not allowing him to catch the criminal, beating him to it because he refuses to take your role as a lady investigator seriously.’
Ignoring that, I said, ‘There are some questions I want to know the answer to. You say they could have known you were in hospital, but where did Sawler get the uniform?’
Jack laughed. ‘That’s easy. He was an actor, and the Portobello Players have mystery plays on their repertoire and must have a costume hamper full of police uniforms.’ Pausing, he looked at me. ‘What’s on your mind, Rose?’
‘Where did they get all this information – us and the Tower, I mean?’ I didn’t want to end Wright’s brief career in the Edinburgh City Police and added quickly, ‘I mean how widespread is your personal knowledge about each other in the Central Office?’
‘It’s all there, in the files; Gray and those above have it all on record. My career, my marriage, widowed, one daughter. And yours too, Rose – I’d be prepared to bet you have a dossier.’ He paus
ed, then added, ‘And of course, ours.’
‘Would anyone junior to you have access to this information?’
Jack thought about that. ‘Well, we do gossip in the local pub. All lads together, that sort of thing, over a pie and a pint. We’re only human after all.’ A quizzical look. ‘Is all this leading somewhere?’
It was, but I shook my head, determined not to incriminate Sergeant Wright, who I was sure held his inspector in high regard and had somehow allowed himself to be drawn into the Adrian-Steven conspiracy without the least knowledge of what dire crimes were intended.
‘So Meg was no secret.’
Jack laughed. ‘I don’t go on about her like some of the doting fathers, but if any of the lads ask me, I say yes, I have a wee girl, living with her aunty. I dare say Adrian and Steven frequented the same local pubs, had the same acquaintances, and for their vile purposes, learnt that I had a little girl who might prove useful.’
Later he said, ‘Don’t worry, Rose, under pressure he will reveal Meg’s whereabouts and all will be well.’
I wished I felt as sure as he did. I could not rid myself of that ominous feeling of disaster – one that I was quite used to and which, alas, often proved to be right.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Next day, in my role as a private investigator, I was to be present in the interview room in the Central Office while Jack questioned Adrian Dyce. This procedure had been approved, somewhat reluctantly, by Chief Inspector Gray, who poured scorn on the activities of female sleuths. However I had become a valuable witness, involved right from the start when I agreed to deliver Mrs Lawers’ legacy, and gaining possession of it was the motive for her murder.
There was a policeman present and I wondered why it wasn’t Wright taking notes, as Adrian began throwing all the blame on Steven, who, he said, had killed the two women because the legacy belonged to his branch of the family by rights – a lot of money, thousands of pounds stolen by his ancestor who was a Jacobite spy.
‘I hadn’t much faith in it personally but he persuaded me to go along with him. Said it would be easy, a sick old woman not long for this world. But she defied him, and when she refused to part with it by peaceful persuasion, he said he lost his temper and … well, he hit her – too hard. The maid tried to intervene.’
A pause; there was no need for further comment.
‘And what about Steven’s unfortunate death, did you have a hand in that too?’ Jack asked.
‘Of course not, that was an accident coming back from rehearsals. Birthday party for one of the cast. We both drank too much. Past midnight, we ran out of money for a hiring carriage. Nothing for it but to walk – took the short cut back by Duddingston. By that time, the fog was so bad over Arthur’s Seat that we could hardly see our hands before our faces. We reached the turn of the road leading down to the loch. A carriage was coming up the steep hill. Steven tried to get it to stop and give us a lift. I didn’t see what happened next. He staggered and fell down the steep slope to the loch.’
A pause. ‘Naturally I went down after him, but I couldn’t do anything to revive him. I guessed he was dead.’
He made the statement totally without emotion, and in the short silence I guessed that Jack and the other policeman present, who was taking notes, had also decided that this was an unlikely story.
Jack asked, ‘Why didn’t you go for help?’
Adrian thought about that. ‘There wasn’t any place nearby. That part is completely isolated.’
‘What about Solomon’s Tower?’
‘In the middle of the night?’ A sneering glance in my direction. ‘A woman on her own with that great watchdog?’
That was significant, I thought, as he added huffily, ‘Frankly I didn’t want to get involved.’
‘Why were you so worried? If you were innocent of your friend’s death – an unfortunate accident – you had nothing to fear.’
‘Indeed? I know what you lot are like.’
‘Indeed you don’t, Mr Dyce. We would be naturally suspicious of a man who callously left his friend lying dead at the edge of the loch and went home.’
I fancied that Adrian shrugged this aside. ‘If I was detained for questioning, there was the Portobello play to be considered. It was imminent and I couldn’t risk delays. Had the rest of the cast to think of, cancellations and so forth. We couldn’t afford that sort of thing – or to disappoint all those people,’ he added piously.
‘All, in your opinion, more important than Steven Sawler’s dead body? And, of course, wasting police time trying to discover his identity by emptying his pockets, removing any possessions.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I am talking about means of identification, a wallet, watch – the sort of thing you carry yourself, but all were missing from Sawler’s body when we found him.’
A grim laugh. ‘Then some of your lot must have helped themselves. It certainly wasn’t me.’
A pause and Jack went on, ‘Now, tell us where the kidnapped child is.’
‘Can’t help you there. Haven’t the slightest idea. Steven arranged that and kept it to himself, as he did a lot of things. I was only the messenger.’
‘The messenger?’ Jack interrupted. ‘With Sawler already dead, I think you invented this role – didn’t you?’
Adrian was trapped, a note of desperation in his voice. ‘I tell you this was all Steven’s fault, right from the beginning. He wanted those documents Mrs McQuinn had been given by Mrs Lawers to hand on to some relative in the Highlands. That maddened Steven, said he was a closer relative by descent. Reslaw was his real name.’
‘Did he know what these documents contained?’
Adrian laughed. ‘Of course. He was obsessed by them. The key to the whereabouts of a missing treasure – called it a “king’s ransom”.’
‘And presumably you were to have a share in this vast fortune.’
‘Yes, that was the general idea. But I would never have willingly become an accessory to murder. I was an actor, his best friend, and he needed my help to get hold of this hidden money that was to set us both up for life. He thought it might have been hidden all these years in the house where the prince had lodged.
‘So he sent me to have a look around as a prospective buyer for this historic house and a distant relative of the Lawers family. But I refused to kill the old lady and the maid – he did that accidentally he said, and then he tried to make it look like a gas leak. He was desperate, and because I was shorter and slimmer than him and had played female roles, I was to pretend to be the maid and get the documents from the McQuinn woman over there on the journey.’
‘Attempted murder,’ said Jack grimly.
‘Prove it, Inspector.’ He jabbed a finger in my direction. ‘Go on, tell them. You felt faint, tried to open the window and all I did was grab you to stop you falling out. I saved your life!’
I merely shook my head and Jack continued sharply: ‘After being an accessory to murdering two innocent women.’
A short silence. ‘I’ve told you. I had no part in that.’ He laughed. ‘Where’s your proof?’ With Steven dead that was true.
He went on: ‘It wasn’t in the house, so he decided that this ancestor of his, the Jacobite spy, must have been billeted with some of the prince’s men on Arthur’s Seat, and as the only building was Solomon’s Tower, the money might still be there.’
‘So you went disguised as a policeman, lured Mrs McQuinn away, so that you could have a look for them.’
‘That wasn’t me. That was Steven.’ And Adrian realised too late that he had just revealed that he knew all about the break-in.
Jack returned again to Meg’s kidnapping but Adrian remained adamant in his denial of having anything to do with that, perhaps believing that this was something he could use – assisting the police – that would reduce his sentence.
I lingered by the door waiting for Jack, who was with the young policeman obviously going over the notes.
/> As we left the building, I asked why his sergeant hadn’t been with him during the interview with Adrian.
‘Con asked to be excused, on the grounds that Adrian would recognise him. He was very apologetic, mortified. The two actors had befriended him over the past few weeks, finding out in the pub that he was stage-struck and admired the Portobello Players; they even hinted at the chance of some walk-on parts. When he recognised Steven’s body he realised what was going on, that he was being pumped for information and had unwittingly aided them in their murderous intent. The kidnap of Meg was the bitter end.’
Jack shook his head. ‘Poor Con was almost tearful, offered to hand in his resignation. I said no, he’s got the makings of a good copper, we all make mistakes in judgement and I trusted that this indiscretion would make him more careful in the future not to gossip about his colleagues.’
He added, ‘As Dyce was taken down to the cells, Gray came over and said, “All that murder and mayhem for a mythical thirty thousand. After all that time, the idea of it still existing is preposterous. Sawler must have been insane to believe it.”’
Jack laughed, ‘I said nothing.’
‘You didn’t tell him that at home we had a souvenir?’
‘An envelope full of mouse-chewed shreds?’ Jack added. ‘No, I think we keep that piece of information to ourselves.’
But we had more to think about; a king’s ransom wasn’t worth the life of a child, at this moment in deadly peril.
The terrifying question remained: where was she?
And the dreadful reality was unshakeable. Steven was dead and, if Adrian hadn’t lied, the secret of where she was hidden had died with him.
Who could we turn to? I thought of Nanny Craigle – she knew Adrian and Steven and possibly actors’ favourite haunts. I would go and see her, trying not to think of Beth – of coming face-to-face with her terrible distress that the man she loved and hoped to marry was a ruthless killer. I thought of Lillie …
And suddenly I had an idea.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Deadly Legacy Page 21
