Enter Second Murderer (An Inspector Faro Mystery No.1)

by Alanna Knight

  The noise of raucous bustling Edinburgh faded. Salisbury Crags, the distressing scene of the two murders, seemed to stare down at him reproachfully from its lofty heights. Quickening his steps beneath its grim shadow, he walked up the ancient Gibbet Lane towards his new home.

  After Lizzie's death he had decided to remove himself from the more convenient house they had occupied in Cockburn Street. He needed a new beginning, and one day, walking in King's Park, he decided to take a look at Newington, which was rapidly developing as a popular suburb on the south side of Edinburgh.

  The recently built villas lacked the splendid proportions and classical character of the New Town's Georgian architecture and the house in Sheridan Place was too large and altogether too modern for his taste, having just managed to evade the gross exaggerations of the presently fashionable Gothic style, upon which curlicues and turrets ran rampant.

  Faro had been captivated by the views from its windows. Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh's dramatic extinct volcano, filled the eastern skyline, the Pentland Hills, with their ever-changing light, drowsed in the west. By coincidence, the house's first tenant had been an elderly doctor, recently deceased. The fully equipped surgery on the ground floor suggested the benign workings of fate, that this would be the perfect home for Vince and himself. He considered himself unlikely to remarry and enjoyed the most harmonious relationship with his stepson, who would soon be setting up his own brass plate, once he had served his term as assistant to the police surgeon, Dr. Kellar.

  The house had the added attraction of a nearby gig-hiring establishment, in addition to one of the new horse-drawn omnibus services, very convenient for the Central Office in Parliament Square.

  Perhaps most tempting of all, he had acquired with the house a modest but ready-made domestic staff: two kitchen-maids, who he decided were not at all necessary, and a housekeeper, Mrs. Brook, who would be a great asset, especially as she had long and faithfully served the deceased doctor and was well acquainted with the rapidly growing Newington area.

  Mrs. Brook agreed with him on the matter of living-in maids and seemed anxious to dispense with this additional expense. Thus Faro settled happily in 9 Sheridan Place, a move he most urgently needed as a lifeline back into some semblance of lost family life.

  "Ah, Inspector sir, the doctor was a widower, just like yourself." And with a vigorous nod. "Ye ken what it's like then, all too well. My late sir was right pleased wi' ma services. Came to him when the paint was just dry on the house-his poor wife was an invalid and I saw her through to the very end." She sighed deeply. "A melancholy life for a well-set-up gentleman like yourself," she added with a slyly admiring glance, "and that bonny young lad, too. Both of you surrounded by so many corpses. At least your last landlady didna' die on you, and that's a mercy."

  Faro was amazed that she knew so much of his history already and guessed that she had wheedled the story out of Vince, always eager for a gossip in her kitchen—an unfortunate trait which he would have to overcome in his chosen profession.

  Mrs. Brook had regarded him sympathetically. Not that she could blame any woman taking a fancy to the Inspector. Although she would have found it difficult to describe his features or his bearing exactly, beyond saying that he was tall and strong-looking, youngish still, with a good head of fairish hair and good features. "Stern he is, but he can make a body laugh sometimes. Mind, ye'd no want to get on his bad side. He's no' the kind of man ye'd care to cross. He'd make a terrible enemy, that he would," she whispered with an expressive shudder to her cronies, eager for more details.

  And, flicking away invisible dust from the photographs on the mantelshelf, "Have you no' thought of having these bonny wee lasses here with you?" And, with a sly look, "Perhaps wi' them to take care of, we may expect another lady-wife in God's good time." At Faro's expression, she realised she had gone too far and continued hastily, "There are some nice schools ..."

  He hoped she wasn't about to recommend the convent school with its unhappy association with two recent murders.

  "It's a weary life for those of us who lose a loved one. My own dear man has been gone these twenty years, but I still remember him in my prayers. We who have been spared should stick together."

  And stick together was quite plainly Mrs. Brook's earnest intention. She talked too much and too often for Faro, who was of a somewhat taciturn disposition, but otherwise he hadn't any real objections. She was an excellent cook and an admirable housekeeper.

  After Lizzie died, in those terrible weeks of disbelief and anguish that followed, he had been easily persuaded by his mother to let Rose and Emily remain with her in Kirkwall, in far-off Orkney. Mary Faro was a sensible woman. She had recognised her son's helplessness confronted by grief and the bewildering demands of two children under ten years old. Indeed, he seemed little more than a shocked child himself, this big strong man who could cope with violent crimes but when death knocked at his own door was found totally unprepared. His wounds must be allowed to heal before he was strong enough to resume the role of parenthood, and so he had moved into Leith with a remote cousin, a middle-aged spinster who ran a boarding-house. Her intentions were soon apparent. After the observation of the requisite period of mourning, she had expected to become the second Mrs. Faro, a revelation which involved Faro in speedily removing himself to a safe distance.

  Mrs. Brook met him in the hall as he picked up his mail. "Another wee postcard I see from Kirkwall," she said with a sigh. "Those bairns must miss their Da." And, with a return to her favourite theme of absent daughters, "There are always gentlefolk willing to act as governesses hereabouts."

  "My salary won't rise to private teaching," said Faro, promptly disabusing Mrs. Brook of any idea that detectives belonged to the wealthy classes. "They are happy enough at their school mean time."

  "They have proper schools up yonder?"

  Faro laughed. "Indeed—and very good ones. I was educated there myself."

  Mrs. Brook regarded this miracle with new respect. "Well I never, Inspector sir, who would have ever thought that. You have come a long way, haven't you? Like that hamper—"

  "Hamper?"

  "Yes, Inspector sir. It arrived this morning by the carter and I got them to put it in your study."

  Faro recognised the hamper, which had belonged to his father. As Mrs. Brook put it, Inspector Faro had come a long way. But perhaps not as far as Constable Magnus Faro, the Orkney-born policeman who had served with the Edinburgh Police Force in its earlier days. He had died in an accident, which his wife refused to believe was anything else but deliberate murder. Mary Faro had taken their only son back to her own people, never having got used to living in the city and wishing only to leave behind Edinburgh, which had held out so much promise for their future and had brought only bitter grief and sad memories.

  Memories of his father for young Jeremy were far from sad. Possessed of remarkable and almost total recall, which was to prove invaluable in his profession, he could remember in vivid detail the father who had gone out of the house one morning, waving him goodbye, and had returned, carried into the house, cold and still on a bloodied stretcher that evening.

  Jeremy had been four years old. But he was never to forget his father's stories of crimes solved and other baffling mysteries unexplained. These had so stimulated his childish imagination that, to his mother's surprise and much against her wishes, he had resolved early in life to make the police force his career. Later, he sometimes wondered whether hero-worship and stories from his mother had built an image that did not exist beyond the silhouette of the handsome policeman on the mantelshelf.

  "There's the young doctor now," said Mrs. Brook, "with another load for the washtub, I see. It's a good job I'm not queasy by nature being as how I'm used to doctors. All that blood, turns a body's stomach."

  Faro watched Vince striding down the street. Cornbright curls, deep blue eyes framed by black eyebrows and eyelashes, it was little wonder that the boy's presence was such a comfort, when his sweet
Lizzie haunted him every day from out of her son's face. Vince was twenty-one. Lizzie had been but four years older, mother of a nine-year-old son, when they first met. Faro thought wistfully of the future and of his strange fancy that if Vince and he stayed together in this house until they too were old, then his dear wife too would remain with him, never lost, through the years.

  The lad had inherited his mother's beauty without her gentle nature. In childhood, he had exhibited a will of iron combined with a violent temper. A nasty, truculent child, difficult for anyone to love, let alone a prospective stepfather. From the beginning Vince had made evident his dislike and disgust at his mother's choice of husband—and Lizzie had made many excuses, certain that being born with the stigma of bastardy had been the cause of it all. For her lapse, Lizzie had not been made to suffer in Skye as she might have done in a more Calvinistic city environment. Islands had sympathy for girls who got into trouble, especially fifteen-year-old servants in the laird's house who were seduced, or, more often, found themselves helpless against what amounted to rape, by rich callous guests.

  Since the death of Lizzie and their newborn son, he had needed Vince, as all that remained to him of his beloved wife.

  From the unlikely spring of dislike and resentment, tolerance and friendship had sprung up between bereaved husband and son, as they sought forgetfulness in agreeable leisure activities, walking in the hills and canoeing on the River Forth. The only echoes of Vince's early rebellion shone forth in occasional lively and ill-timed student pranks, which gave his policeman stepfather a somewhat red face. But Faro was proud indeed of the boy he now regarded as his own son in every way except the accident of conception.

  Having made his escape from Mrs. Brook, he retreated to his study upstairs, reproached by the loving message from Rose and Emily—saying that they had not had a letter from dear Papa for some time. Resolving to write immediately, he opened the other letter and drew out a head-and-shoulders photograph of a handsome young man: "To my lovely Lily, Ever your T."

  The note enclosed was from the Mother Superior at the Convent of St. Anthony.

  This photograph was found by one of the nuns when she was clearing out the room which had been occupied by the unfortunate Lily Goldie. It had presumably slipped down behind the skirting-board and had been overlooked during the police search. I realise that the case is closed but I thought you might like to add it to the unhappy girl's possessions which I understand are in police-keeping awaiting a claimant.

  There had been no mention of "T" in the report on Lily Goldie's murder, of that he was certain. Was this new evidence in the case? With a sense of growing excitement, Faro carried the card to the window and was re-reading the letter from the Mother Superior when Vince's conversation with Mrs. Brook in the hall announced his imminent appearance.

  "Good-day, Stepfather. Caught any criminals today?"

  Faro smiled at the boy's usual greeting. "Not today, lad. I've just had a last interview with Hymes."

  "New evidence?"

  Faro shook his head. "No. Just the same old story, that he didn't murder Lily Goldie. I'm inclined to believe him, dammit."

  Vince was silent for a moment. "You know my feelings, Stepfather. I think—although the good Doctor Kellar nearly had a fit when I suggested such a thing—I think that Lily Goldie was killed by the fall—doubtless she was pushed, and that scarf was tied around her neck, afterwards, to make it look like murder."

  "That's precisely what Hymes maintains."

  "Ah, but how do we prove it?"

  "We can't, unless we produce a second murderer."

  "Or unless our second murderer strikes again. Talking of which, the Pleasance Theatre are putting on Macbeth this week. Shall I get you a ticket?"

  "I don't know that I'm strong enough to see the Immortal Bard murdered by amateurs just now."

  Vince laughed. "Don't be such a snob, Stepfather. They are professional actors: Mr. Topaz Trelawney's Thespians. You've missed a very popular season and there are only two weeks left. You must see them, some of the actors are very good indeed, particularly the leading lady. She's an absolute stunner, probably Mrs. T," he added regretfully.

  Faro smiled. His stepson had a penchant for actresses, but usually of the more frivolous variety.

  "Oh, talking of 'T'—"

  "What an outrageous pun, Stepfather."

  "I mean the initial 'T'—have a look at this."

  Faro handed him the photograph and the note.

  "Good Lord, I know who this is."

  "You do? Could this be our missing man—our second murderer?"

  Vince shook his head. "The likeness flatters him, but I'd swear it's Timothy Ferris. He was in my year at medical school."

  "Did he know Lily?"

  "Oh yes, indeed. He met her in January when we all went skating together on Duddingston Loch. He was quite infatuated—"

  "A missing suitor, by God. Now we're getting somewhere," said Faro excitedly.

  "Only on the road that leads to the grave," said Vince solemnly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that Tim is dead, Stepfather. By his own hand. Committed suicide, walked under a railway train."

  Faro remembered vaguely the case as just another of the tragic suicides that were encountered almost every day at the Central Office, routine investigations in which he wasn't concerned. Except to thank God it wasn't his son—or stepson—that had been driven to such an end. The association with Lily Goldie put the matter of Timothy Ferris into new perspective. But the time-factor was wrong.

  Vince nodded. "Yes, he died two weeks before Lily's murder. Remember, I told you? He failed his last qualifying exams and was thrown out at the beginning of the term. He wasn't a particular friend of mine, but rumour had it that he was deeply involved with some girl who was leading him on." And, picking up the photograph, "That would fit the character of Lily."

  "What about his family?"

  "Didn't have any. He was an orphan. However, he always had plenty of cash to spend on wine and gambling. Bit of a waster, was Tim. And there was a rumour of some rich relative supporting him through medical school."

  "I seem to remember you went to the funeral?"

  A look of pain crossed Vince's face. "It was at Greyfriars, Stepfather," he said, trying to sound casual as for a moment they fell silent, remembering that other beloved grave, the mother and wife who was gone from them. "I steeled myself," Vince continued. "Matter of courtesy, you know, from his year, when he had no relatives. We were the only mourners. No girls that I noticed. And I would have remembered Lily Goldie, especially as I had to assist at the post-mortem, one of my first cases," he added with a shudder. "Bad enough having to deal with the corpse of a total stranger, but to encounter a pretty girl one has met before, even on the slightest acquaintance ... I had nightmares."

  "Tell me again—about the postmortem."

  "Nothing much to tell—a lot of bruising, a broken wrist and pelvis, and contusions which would be the case for anyone falling from a steep crag—either falling naturally or grappling with an assailant wouldn't make much difference by the time she reached ground-level. Those marks about her neck were very different from what you'd expect of a labourer's strong hands."

  "You suspected that the murderer followed her down to. . . ?"

  "Exactly. And tied the scarf about her neck afterwards to make it look like Hymes's work. Unfortunately Doctor Kellar is a pig-headed gentleman and he laughed my idea to scorn. 'Enthusiastic young amateur doctors mustn't let their personal interest in cases take precedence over good sense. One must learn to be dispassionate.'

  "I think he rather gauged by my reactions—since I was very sick at one point—that I had been infatuated with her." Vince smiled grimly. "Poor Lily, in life we had the most superficial acquaintance which would hardly have justified the intimacy of a post-mortem. Ironically, I found myself remembering her effect on the more susceptible of my year. Not that she wanted penniless students, she had her sights set we
ll above the likes of us."

  He looked at Faro thoughtfully. "You know, her tragedy was being born in the wrong age. She should have been a Nell Gwynn or a Pompadour, a courtesan, who knows no allegiance except to her own ambition. She must have been desperate indeed to seek employment in a convent. By the way, I've kept all the newspaper accounts about Hymes that you wanted."

  From behind the clock on the mantelpiece, Vince withdrew a small sheaf of newsprint. "Let's see. 'GRUESOME CONVENT MURDERS'," he read in mock sepulchral tones. "'Chills of horror are being experienced in the respectable modern Edinburgh environs of Newington and Grange where the brutal murders of two innocent female victims from the Catholic Orphanage of St. Anthony have thrown a blight of fear and foreboding over sisters and pupils alike at the school whose activities are seriously affected.'" He paused before continuing. "'Sufferings of extreme ill-health prevented the well-known and exceedingly brilliant Detective Inspector Faro from solving these interesting and diabolically wicked crimes.'"

  "Give it here—it doesn't say that."

  "Well, it should."

  "This one solved itself—thanks to Hymes's confession." Faro sighed, with a shake of his head. "Nothing more to do."

  Vince regarded him narrowly, very much the doctor. "Feeling all right today, Stepfather? No more nasty griping pains? Appetite getting better?"

  "I'm still a bit shaky, more easily tired than I should be, but with a kind of typhus that isn't surprising."

  Vince scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "I still wonder, you know."

  "Wonder?"

  "Yes. About your illness. I think you were deliberately poisoned." Even when Patrick Hymes gave himself up, Vince stoutly defended his theory of a sinister plot to poison his stepfather. "I must say, though, you're looking better every day. Still rather too thin, I fear. By the way, I met Constable McQuinn in Rutherford's howff—he was very solicitous about your health.When were you coming back? Were you fully recovered? Etcetera, etcetera."