"You might as well know, Stepfather, I can't stop you but I'm against it. It's far too dangerous. Take care, you may have gone too far this time and played into the murderer's hands."
Chapter 15
That Saturday night was brilliantly moon-lit. As midnight chimed from a vast number of distant Edinburgh churches solemnly proclaiming the Sabbath morn, a white-haired bearded old gentleman wearing a silk-lined cape, top hat and carrying an elegant cane was seen to leave the neighbourhood of the King's Theatre. Merrily, but somewhat unsteadily, he proceeded along Lothian Road and across the Meadows, heading towards the new villas by the short cut at Gibbet Lane.
If any had remarked upon his passing it would have been to the effect that he would have been wiser to hire a cab. Elderly, crippled in the left leg, his progress was further impeded by the condition of one who has imbibed too well. The further he walked, the slower and the more pronounced his limp. Now a shortness of breath, a wheezing cough, added to the picture of decrepitude as he stopped frequently, leaning on his cane.
The onlooker would have further decided that a man, obviously wealthy, was not quite in his right mind to choose such exercise at his time of life when he was so out of condition, as he disappeared from view along the tree-lined lane. But the path was deserted—or so it seemed to the limping man, when suddenly, from behind the trees, three masked men, two of average height and one very large, leaped out at him.
The old man cried out "Help!" in a voice surprisingly strong, and even as they descended upon him his bent back straightened and from the cane appeared a fine-bladed sword which flashed in the moonlight as, with limp miraculously cured, he turned upon his assailants.
"Scarper!"
The leader's warning came too late. The old man was using a whistle to ear-piercing effect and from every tree policemen erupted, racing down upon them. In the lead was Constable Danny McQuinn, who, for once, Faro was extremely glad to see.
"A nice piece of work, Inspector. You make a very convincing old man, to the life—as if it was yourself only without the beard."
Faro wasn't sure what to make of this enigmatic remark but chose, for once, to take it as flattery. "Put them on a charge and keep them inside. Send someone to get my stepson to identify them."
Black Tam and his associates were bundled into a cab and escorted to the Central Office. Dr. Laurie was at home. Presented with his stepfather's compliments, he was hustled into the second cab.
"What's this all about? Where is Inspector Faro?" he demanded, confronted by the back of the elderly gentleman still in his disguise and whom he failed to recognise in the dim light.
"Why, Stepfather! Your plan worked after all."
"Come with me, lad."
A look into the cell and Vince said, "Oh yes, those are the three who attacked me right enough."
"Good! You can formally bring charges, then. See the Constable and he'll tell you what's needed. The cab will take you back home."
"Aren't you coming too?"
"I may be a little while. Goodnight, lad. See you in the morning."
Faro then confronted Black Tam and his two bullies, and charged them with assault. "You know who I am?"
"God perhaps, with that white beard," said Big Tam sourly.
"It would pay you to be serious." And Faro removed his disguise, while watching carefully Black Tam's reactions.
"A copper as I live an' breathe," was the sneering response. "I might ha' kenned as much."
"You know me."
"I do?"
"My name is Inspector Faro."
"That's a funny name for a copper."
"It might be a very significant name in your case, my lad. I suspect that you've already heard it."
"Never. And I don't want to hear it no more, neither."
"Listen, Tam—I can make it easier for you, if you cooperate. Who paid you to leave a note in Doctor Laurie's pocket when you robbed him the other night?"
Black Tam stared at him blankly. "Do me a favour, Inspector. Don't know what you're on about. What would I be doing putting things into folks' pockets? Goes against the grain, that does. Opposite is what I'm at—taking things out, as you ken fine well." He grinned.
"Do you know an old gypsy woman—about your height, with large hands and feet, who sells clothes-pegs and tells fortunes?"
"Never heard of her."
"You don't know anything of a visit she made to Mrs. Penny at Marchmont Cottage, and delivered a note there?"
Big Tam shook his great head from side to side. "You're talking double-dutch, Inspector." And, appealing to the silent Constable McQuinn, "What's he on about the now?"
And Faro felt uneasily that unless Big Tam was an extremely good actor, which he doubted, then he was telling the truth.
"You maintain that you've never seen me before?"
"Never. Heard plenty about ye, kenned you was a copper to be avoided, but never been my misfortune to set eyes on ye afore."
"I also happen to be Doctor Laurie's stepfather."
With elaborate casualness, the man replied, "Is that a fact? Well now, wasn't it just ma bad luck to choose a lad who was copper's kin?" He spat on the floor. "An' all for a miserable two shillings."
"Read him the charge, Constable, the attack on Doctor Laurie."
Big Tam listened and shuffled his feet.
"Have you anything you wish to say that might be used in evidence?"
"Don't know my own strength, Inspector. Used to be a wrestler before I fell on hard times."
"Like robbery with violence. I believe you are also part of a conspiracy—"
"I ain't part of nothing. Work for meself, I do. Only rob the rich to give to the poor."
"Sit down—here at the desk."
Black Tam regarded him nervously. "What for?"
"Because I tell you to. Go on."
Faro produced the two notes, the one found on Vince and the one to Alison Aird.
"Here is paper. Take up that pen . . ."
Black Tam held the pen, rolling it between his fingers. "What's it about, Inspector. What's your game?"
"I want you to write something for me. Your name, for instance."
The pen scratched long and laboriously. "Thos Macandlish. That's me name."
"Now let's have your address."
"Haven't got one."
"Central Office, Edinburgh. That will find you for some time to come."
In answer, Tam drew a large and shaky cross under his signature. Looking over his shoulder. Faro said, "What's this? I thought you could write?"
Black Tam grinned sheepishly. "Only me name—learned it by heart lang syne. Was told it would be useful, but I canna write anything else, honest to God, mister."
"Maybe you can read then?" And Faro thrust the note in front of him. Black Tam looked at it solemnly and shook his head.
"Dunno what it says. Never learned letters, only numbers. I can read numbers," he said helpfully.
"Take them to the cells," said Faro in disgust.
There was not the slightest resemblance in Tam's shaky signature to the firm educated hand of the notes, and Faro was more than ever convinced that he was looking at the writing of the man who had murdered Lily Goldie. To his mind there were four classes of murderer. The once-only murderer who, of a violent disposition, often combined with poor mental powers, comes home and finds his woman in bed with another man. He picks up the nearest implement and murders her—and often her lover as well. There is no subtlety involved. He might make a run for it, but most often when his blood-lust has cooled, and he slowly realises the enormity of his action, his run is not away from the scene of the crime but to the nearest police station to give himself up. And even if he tries to escape the law, his getaway is usually easy to follow. He leaves plenty of clues. Almost as if he wanted to be found. Such a murderer was Hymes.
In the second category was the mad murderer, driven to kill for pleasure, or wreaking his revenge on society for some imagined wrong, working out of his syste
m some ancient grievance that had
twisted his mind. Prostitutes were their most common prey. Such mass-murderers often evaded the law by the use of cunning and ingenuity. However, they were rarely encountered, thought Faro, thankfully.
The third was the poisoner, the man or woman driven beyond all endurance, or by lust, loathing or lucre, to get rid of the impediment to what they imagined was peace, often accompanied by plenty. It rarely worked and, unless they had a considerable run of luck, they were most often caught and hanged.
The first-category murderer was often violent and ignorant, the two latter were considerably more wily and intelligent. So too the fourth and last, the man who employed a bully, a strong man with poor reasoning, "bought" for the purpose of committing murder or to intimidate the chosen victim. Such as Black Tam, disguised as a gypsy woman, delivering warning notes. No, it was too far-fetched.
So, in which category did Lily Goldie's murderer belong? Once he had reasoned that out, he would be much nearer to his goal. But somewhere, he realised, he had lost the track. There was a great muddle of clues, and none of them made any sense at all.
Again and again he returned to the two notes. Although the writing was doubtless disguised, it was definitely that of an educated hand.
Once again the tide of thefts, assaults, embezzlements and arson took over. As Faro dealt with the routine investigations he hoped fervently that no major crime would erupt on Edinburgh society and cause him to miss the Trelawney Thespians' farewell performance of Antony and Cleopatra, and his last evening with Alison before her departure for Bournemouth.
He returned from the Central Office to be met in the hall by Mrs. Brook, who handed a note to him.
"Will you please remember to give this to Mrs. Aird at the next opportunity?" At his blank look, she said, "It is a recipe for my pancakes which I promised her. They were greatly enjoyed by those young actresses and it is a recipe they can make themselves. It is quite simple. I would have entrusted it to Doctor Vince, but he is so forgetful—"
Faro cut short the tirade with solemn promises and hurried up to his study and closed the door.
His desk was awash with papers and, carefully laying aside Mrs. Brook's recipe, he decided that with the impending visit from Orkney, he must placate the housekeeper by a brisk attempt at tidiness. His study was a constant affront to her sense of order and she insisted that before the family visit the room, from which her activities were normally barred, must be thoroughly cleansed.
The bright sunshine through the window revealed very clearly, even to his undomestic eye, the source of Mrs. Brook's anguish. Most of his desk was presently occupied by evidence relating to Lily Goldie's murder. Glad that the case was now finally closed, even if unsolved, he took out a large packet and gathered all the documents together. On top were the two warning notes received by Alison and Vince, which had led to his decision to abandon the investigation.
A sudden shaft of sunlight also took in Mrs. Brook's pancake recipe. Faro snatched it up with a surge of excitement.
Why on earth had he not noticed that before?
Taking out the two warning notes, he laid the new note alongside.
For a moment he sat back in his chair, dazed with certain knowledge that he had found what he had been looking for. That elusive link, something his acute sense of observation recognised but which lay dormant, nagging him, below the surface of his mind.
He rushed downstairs to the kitchen where Mrs. Brook was rolling pastry for an apple pie and, flourishing the recipe, he said, "Have you any more of this paper, Mrs. Brook?"
Somewhat guiltily, he thought, she went to a drawer and withdrew several sheets. "Here it is, sir. That's all that's left."
"Where did it come from?" And examining it closely, he said, "You've cut something off the top, Mrs. Brook."
"Yes, I did, sir. But how did you know?"
"Your scissors need sharpening, their cutting edge is rough."
"I might as well tell truth, sir, this paper belonged to the late doctor. Seemed a wicked waste to throw it away, with his name printed on it and all. So after he passed on, I decided to use it up for my recipes. Did I do wrong, sir?" she asked anxiously.
"Of course not. Such economies are admirable, Mrs. Brook. But, may I ask, where did the ink come from?"
"Oh, the doctor had his ink specially prepared. Very fussy about it clotting when he was writing out his prescriptions."
"So you've been using up the bottle."
"Yes, sir. It's rather thick now, not the kind you would want."
Faro sat down at the table. "Mrs. Brook, can you tell me who had access to this paper—apart from yourself—in recent weeks?"
Mrs. Brook thought for a moment. "Nobody—that is, except Constable McQuinn. That night when Doctor Vince was brought home. He wanted to write out a statement for the poor lad to sign. I was that flustered and upset, sir, I just gave him what came to hand."
Faro took a gig to the Central Office and extracted McQuinn's handwritten statement regarding Black Tam. Leaving a message for the Constable to meet him at the Pleasance Theatre at seven o'clock, he returned home. As he expected, the two warning notes and Vince's statement had all been written in identical ink, with the same pen on identical paper with a jagged edge.
But not in the same hand. And he knew he had solved Lily Goldie's murder. The thought gave him no satisfaction as even now, reluctant to believe what he knew to be true, he spread the notes out on his study table, pushing aside the smiling photograph of his two small daughters.
For himself, at that moment, he could see no future beyond the next few hours. How long he sat wrestling with his conscience, he did not know, hardly aware in his anguish that Vince had come in and was regarding his slumped shoulders, his downbent head with compassion.
"Stepfather? What is it?"
Faro wearily handed him the three notes, and described the events of the last few hours. "We've solved the case. Haven't you guessed, Vince lad?"
Vince sat down opposite. "This lets out the Mad Bart, doesn't it? And McQuinn," he said, comparing the handwriting. "We've eliminated everyone else. Except ..."
"Except?"
"The schoolboy. Yes, it has to be him."
"A schoolboy who never existed. Except to murder Lily Goldie."
"Therefore it had to be someone acting the part of a schoolboy." Vince smiled wanly. "And as soon as you put the words 'acting the part' into context, everything else falls into shape."
"It was Hugo who gave us the answer, yet neither of us could see it."
"We didn't want to see it."
"Dear God, I don't want to see it now, staring me in the face."
Vince laid a hand on his shoulder. "What will you do, Stepfather? You can't mean ..."
Faro stood up, buttoned his coat. "Lad, I can and do mean just that. And I need you as witness. Will you do this for me?"
And, aware of his stepson's appalled expression, he went out, closed the door behind him and set off for the Pleasance Theatre.
Chapter 16
He found Alison in her dressing-room. He knew she would be alone as the make-up for Cleopatra took some time.
The mask of beauty took his breath away. How skilfully before his eyes the Queen of the Nile, she whom age could not wither, nor custom stale, was coming to life, as the short, red-gold curls disappeared beneath the heavy Egyptian headdress.
"Don't hover, Jeremy. Take a seat, please. You can talk to me while I put on the finishing touches."
He sat down heavily, his resolve shattered. Yet there were so many indisputable facts. If his emotional involvement had not blinded him, he would have recognised them immediately. Smiling, she regarded him through the mirror. "You're looking so solemn, Jeremy. I've promised to be your friend and I will write to you, if that is what you would like. So do cheer up, we want our last evening to be merry." Merry, he thought. Would he ever be merry again?
"I have something to tell you."
"Oh, something nic
e, I hope."
"Not nice. Something very serious."
"Oh?" She swung round to face him. "And what is that?"
Trying to keep his voice and emotions under control, he said, "I want you to tell me how you lured Lily Goldie up to Salisbury Crags by pretending to be Tim Ferris's schoolboy brother. We believe you then pushed her over the edge and knotted a scarf about her neck to make it look like the work of Patrick Hymes."
The make-up was too thick for him to see if she paled at this accusation, but it was a little while before she asked quietly, "You have proof?"
She did not deny it. Oh dear God, why didn't she deny it, laugh at him? "You wrote these, didn't you?" She merely glanced at the notes he held out but made no attempt to examine them. Had she been innocent, she would have snatched them from him with cries of indignation. Had she been innocent . . . but she merely smiled.
"You are clever. You must tell me where I went wrong."
"First, your reluctance to be seen as a boy, in your Portia costume. You almost slammed the dressing-room door in my face."
She shrugged. "I was tired. I had been on stage for hours. Perhaps I do not like being seen by men alone in my dressing-room, 'showing off my limbs' as I seem to remember Beth called it."
"Actresses have no such modesty, as well you know. The girls at Vince's party assured us that you made a splendid boy, and yet you refused to appear with them as one of the young gentlemen from Venice."
Still she smiled but, watching her, he repeated Hugo's mocking words. "'Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness..."
Her lips moved, but no words came and he remembered that other time, her startled look which he had interpreted as embarrassment, was fear, deadly fear.
"Are you going to arrest me?" she asked lightly and went back to looking in the mirror. How could she sound so casual, uninterested even? Faro realised he had not thought that far ahead. He went to the door.
"Come in, Vince. McQuinn, you take a seat—over there."
And to Alison, "Mrs. Aird, you are charged with the murder of Lily Goldie—for God's sake, woman, why?" His voice shook and, fighting for control, he added quietly, "It might make it easier for you if, in your statement, you have good reasons."
Enter Second Murderer (An Inspector Faro Mystery No.1) Page 16
