Rose McQuinn 7 - Deadly Legacy

by Alanna Knight

  And it was sadly true. Unreliability was the name of the game. In my young days at Sheridan Place, my father, Chief Inspector Jeremy Faro, was never there, always chasing some criminal or other, when we children, my sister Emily and I, most wanted him. I sighed. No doubt Jack would have some fine excuse and explanation, as always, when he got home in time - or thereabouts - for supper.

  Until then I had a lot to consider. First and most important I must go to the address I had been given and see Meg, knowing how delighted Jack would be that she was to be so near at hand. Later, we would discuss her future.

  Then there was the matter of Mrs Lawers' package, still in my possession, its future weighing heavily upon my conscience. What was to become of it? I hoped Jack would tell me what progress had been made in the mysterious affair of the deaths of Mrs Lawers and Hinton. Should I now reveal the existence of a bogus maid and my own perils at her hands?

  I was suddenly very tired. The events of the last few days were catching up on me.

  Taking out my bicycle from the barn I discovered a slow puncture. And again the weather defeated me: the fierce cold wind hurtling along Duddingston Road, past the loch and round the base of Arthur's Seat, would be in my face on the hilly return journey.

  At that moment it was too much. Drained of all energy, I decided to abandon the plan and bring my logbook up to date with the events of the last few days, before attending to some wearisome and much neglected domestic matters, such as ironing, before preparing supper.

  The kitchen was cosy, the peat fire welcoming. I sat down in the armchair, book in hand - promptly fell asleep and awoke to the clock chiming seven.

  It was growing dark and Jack had not returned. Irritation with the whole of the Edinburgh City Police became alarm when, an hour later, there was still no message.

  Everything was so still outside. The hours passed slowly and the creak from a loose floorboard that had developed just inside the back door (which Jack had repeatedly promised to mend - when he had time), now influenced by the high wind, constantly alerted me to a familiar footfall that failed to materialise.

  I picked up a book but, too uneasy to read, concentration was beyond me. Midnight came; a full moon illuminated the garden and the sky was full of shining stars - all so peaceful, yet I was suddenly afraid, for Thane seemed to have caught my mood and had been unusually restless, roaming back and forth to the kitchen door all evening as if he too anticipated a visitor.

  I patted his head. 'Tell me what's wrong, Thane. What is it?'

  Gazing at me with that familiar intense look, I felt him shiver. I repeated what I had said so many times: 'Oh Thane, if only you could talk.' And as always he raised a paw, laid it on my knee, a gesture of protection.

  I went upstairs to bed. There was no point waiting any longer; it seemed doubtful now that Jack would return before morning, coming in the door with his usual cheery greeting, grinning apologetically, full of laments and excuses.

  I slept surprisingly well considering, to be awakened from a disturbing dream by someone knocking on the front door. The grandfather clock struck seven, and putting on my robe I ran downstairs. Thane was already there, waiting.

  I opened the door to a man in police uniform who I recognised as Con Wright, Jack's new sergeant. One look at his face, even before he uttered a word, told me that word was not good news. My heart sank.

  'It's the inspector, Mrs McQuinn. There's been an accident.'

  'How bad?' I demanded.

  The sergeant gulped, as if he found it difficult to find the right words. 'He's been shot.'

  My hand flew to my mouth. 'Is he ... is he ...?'

  'No, no. He's in the infirmary ...' He looked at me, trying to think of something consoling. 'I'm sure there's a good chance he'll recover ...'

  So there was hope, then. There had to be hope.

  Jack dying? No, that was impossible, but even as I whispered the words I knew that was a lie too. I had dealt enough with death to know there is no answer to its call.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  'What happened?'

  'We had a hostage situation in the Canongate. The inspector insisted on going in, reasoning with him, getting the woman and bairn to safety.' He paused. 'The wanted man shot him point-blank. In the chest.'

  I was shaking. I had to sit down. 'Come in for a minute, Sergeant.'

  He followed me into the kitchen, took a seat at the table, looked up at me as if awaiting comment or instructions.

  The kettle had been over the hob on the peat fire all night. I hoped it was hot enough for tea. Such a silly thing to feel that was important when at this moment Jack might be dying.

  Jack dying? The thought was impossible. It just couldn't happen. Not now, when I was planning to bring him and Meg together in Edinburgh.

  I set out two cups, hovered with the teapot, my hand shaking.

  'Let me do that, Mrs McQuinn.'

  I watched him put in the milk, sugar for him, none for me.

  'When can I go in and see him?'

  'Well, not today. But soon. They'll let us know when he can have visitors.'

  I gulped. 'That serious, is it?'

  He nodded. 'For a while, maybe. The bullet ... you know ... have to remove it and so forth.' A pause. 'The inspector is strong as a horse, don't you worry, Mrs McQuinn, he'll pull through all right. You'll see,' he added, that note of much needed hope mostly, I felt, to reassure himself.

  He drank his tea, made some conversation about Thane, what a fine dog, etc - anything to keep away from Jack perhaps bleeding to death a mile away. I interrupted, asking a question I knew was idiotic.

  'Will they let him come home once they've operated?'

  He stared at me as if I was mad, which I probably was at that moment. 'Well, it might take a wee while before he's ready for that.' And carefully putting down his cup, he seized his helmet and said, 'Have to be off now, Mrs McQuinn. Anything you need, get in touch with Chief Inspector Gray.'

  I closed the door, sat down and wept. It wasn't an indulgence I often allowed myself, but this morning I decided I deserved it. Thane came over and leant gently against my side, gazed at me imploringly.

  I got up. 'Things to do, Thane.'

  First of all I would walk across to the Royal Infirmary and talk to the doctors. I went to the barn for my bicycle and must have repaired the slow puncture automatically before setting out. The kit was on the barn floor when I returned, but I remembered nothing of that repair or of the short journey to the hospital, apart from propping up the machine outside and discovering which ward Jack was in.

  The receptionist's face was so serious I was almost certain that I had come too late.

  As I dashed along the corridor, there was Chief Inspector Gray talking to one of the nurses. His presence would have made me realise, if I had not already done so, the full measure of what to expect regarding Jack's condition. That he was holding on to life by a frail thread and I might already be too late.

  Gray was coming forward very briskly; he bowed and looked sympathetic before addressing me. Courteously this time. Jack would have been most impressed.

  But I was suspicious by nature. This change of heart also had a hint of finality, that he was already mentally composing the funeral eulogy for his best officer. Was I to be forgiven? Jack Macmerry could have gone so much further with a conventional lifestyle, a wife and family, but a long-term mistress or common-law wife did not sit well in the personal details on the promotion report. The sanctity of the family was everything. It even outdid a brilliant mind in the echelons of Edinburgh society, where conventions and respectability decided a man's merit, rather than sheer guts and bravery.

  Well, they'd had sheer guts and bravery this time, his cohabiting with a lady investigator (despised by the Edinburgh City Police and adherents) the only fly in the ointment ... if Jack survived.

  Gray was saying, 'This is an anxious time for you, Mrs McQuinn.' A grave headshake. 'Indeed, for all of us. Jack is a fine officer, the very bes
t and we don't want to-- We cannot afford to ... to lose him.'

  A man approached. White coat, serious expression and the dangling stethoscope announced 'doctor'. A door opened from the operating room and we stepped aside - a stretcher with a sheeted figure, a still white face barely recognisable as Jack.

  I called his name and the doctor held my arm. At least the sheet wasn't covering his face. He was still alive.

  Gray stepped forward, gave me a hard look and said to the doctor, 'This is Mrs McQuinn, a close friend of Inspector Macmerry.'

  He was introduced as Mr Wainland, which indicated the rank of surgeon. He bowed, arranged his face into the right aspect of cheerful but cautious optimism. I regarded the white coat, not covered in blood, quite pristine, substituted for the butcher's leather apron or even the greatcoat, white shirt and cravat of the dandified surgeons operating before medical students in the past century.

  'Is he going to be all right?' I asked. It sounded so banal but it was precisely all I wanted to know.

  The surgeon straightened his shoulders and I could see how exhausted he was. 'It has been a long and delicate operation but we managed to remove the bullet without damaging the main artery.'

  At this information CI Gray nodded eagerly. A lot of technical medical detail followed which I didn't understand, but was relieved to see it ended with the slightest of smiles.

  'We have reasons for hope, especially as the patient has a good health record, and given a little time, should make a good recovery. Rest assured, we have done all we can. The rest we leave in God's hands,' the surgeon ended piously.

  'When can I see him?'

  He frowned. 'Not immediately, I'm afraid. In a day or two, let us see how he progresses ...'

  A nurse hovered. His attention needed urgently, the surgeon bowed and was gone, bustling down the corridor.

  Gray was also eager to depart, consulting his timepiece in a manner of urgency. 'We will be keeping in close touch with Jack's progress and I will send someone immediately he is able to see visitors, Mrs McQuinn.'

  With that I had to be content, although my inclination would be to haunt this corridor outside Jack's ward every day until I saw for myself that he was recovering.

  As we walked out of the hospital Gray courteously offered me a lift in his carriage which I declined politely, indicating my bicycle. His nod contained relief, as well as faint disapproval, confirming his opinion of my eccentric and bohemian behaviour, out of keeping with the code of conduct for senior police officers' wives.

  Too upset to return to Solomon's Tower and brood over my fears for Jack, I decided to continue into the town and call on Meg in her new home. That would be something to cheer him on my first visit.

  Turning the corner on to South Bridge, Sergeant Wright was heading briskly towards the hospital gates. He too looked grave as he saluted me. I dismounted. He had been present at the shooting incident and I wanted to know every detail. Pointing to a cafe across the road, I said, 'Inspector Macmerry is still unconscious but they have successfully removed the bullet.'

  Wright gave a sigh of relief as I went on, 'He is not able to have visitors, still unconscious, but if you have time to spare for a cup of tea, I would be most grateful to know exactly what happened.'

  As we sat down and waited to be served, he said, 'The man we were after had shot his wife and her lover in a Glasgow tenement and fled to Edinburgh, taking refuge in a house in the Canongate, where he was holding the occupant, a terrified woman and her child, as hostage. He opened a window, and holding them as a shield threatened to kill them both if the police tried to take him.'

  Evading my eyes and trying to keep his voice calm as he relived those terrible moments, he continued, 'Inspector Macmerry picked up the megaphone and said he would come alone and unarmed and talk about it, but first Jutley should release the woman and the child. But Jutley laughed at him and said, 'I am going to hang anyway, so what difference does that make now? I have nothing to lose. I'll count to ten and if you don't clear off and let me go free I'll kill them.'

  The sergeant paused, closed his eyes as if the memory was too painful to relate. With a sigh he continued in almost a whisper, 'The inspector called his bluff. Shouted again that if he would release the woman and her bairn, who were both screaming their heads off, he would do the best he could, and promised Jutley a fair trial.' Again the sergeant stopped, looked at me and said slowly, 'Then he just stepped forward, said he was coming into the house unarmed. Jutley shouted, "I've warned you. Stand back!"'

  Wright paused a moment. 'But it was no use. The inspector just started walking across the road ...'

  For a moment I thought the sergeant was going to break down. He looked away, shook his head, said slowly, 'And that was that, Mrs McQuinn. You know the rest. Jutley had to release his hold on the woman to fire and the police marksman shot him too.' A shuddering sigh. 'Spared the hangman a job.'

  As he spoke, I, who never cried, found the tears rolling down my cheeks for the second time that morning. I wiped them away remembering how Jack, in a reserved occupation with the police force, had always regretted not being eligible to join the Highland Regiment in the ongoing conflict with the Boers. Now it didn't matter any longer, one way or another, whether he had faced death as a soldier or a policeman serving his country.

  Sergeant Wright was asking if I had seen the inspector and I repeated that there were no visitors permitted at the moment. He nodded and said he would come back again tomorrow.

  What could I do? And suddenly I had the completely idiotic idea that I should try and smuggle Thane into the hospital to Jack's bedside. I had seen the deerhound's miracles as a healer - a boy from the circus mauled by a lion recovered without a scratch, Thane's own unscathed emergence from a death bullet. There had been other remarkable instances that I had witnessed, along with my own strange recovery from a raging fever two days ago.

  There was something else too. As I bicycled down the High Street, I realised I had known a weird feeling listening to Wright's story. I was there by Jack's side, seeing it all, knowing his next words. It was as if I had been through all this before. The scene was so vivid, a kind of deja vu.

  Not deja vu, alas, but premonition.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Riding down the Royal Mile, the high street in the poorer part of the town, engulfed on either side by lofty grey tenements, brought my first misgivings. Consulting the scrap of paper - was this the right address, I thought? - I parked in the stone corridor and climbed the twisting stone stair to the fourth floor.

  Two bleak doors facing one another. A name: 'Bourne'.

  No reply. I knocked again. A flurry of footsteps, children's shrill voices as a door opened inside.

  A woman's angry voice telling them to behave - a sound, like a sharp blow, resulting in a shrill cry of pain.

  The door was being carefully unlocked, bolt by bolt and chain, like some fortress - or prison - but only opened enough to reveal part of a woman's tired angry countenance.

  'Well, what is it?'

  I consulted my piece of paper. 'Am I speaking to Mrs Bourne?'

  A sniff, a suspicious glance. 'Aye, that's me. What d'ye want?'

  'I am calling to see Meg Macmerry who, I understand, has recently been put in your care for adoption.'

  A short silence followed as the woman's eye studied me as intently as she could through the barely opened door.

  'She's not here ...'

  And I was listening, appalled, to a repeat though less well-educated recital of my interview at the Lochandor orphanage.

  I interrupted the excuses. 'Meg is the daughter of Detective Inspector Macmerry of the Edinburgh City Police.'

  This jolted her. The eye temporarily withdrew, perhaps in a state of shock, as I continued. 'I am here on the inspector's behalf to see her and deliver an account of her welfare.'

  The eye returned, a rattle of chains and the door opened a fraction more this time. 'We take children from the orphanage until other arrangeme
nts are found for them. The child you mention, Meg Macmerry, has been taken by a family who want to adopt her.'

  'When did all this happen?'

  'Soon after she arrived, the day before yesterday.'

  Trying to sound calm I said, 'Their address, if you please.'

  The door opened wider. The woman disappeared and children of assorted ages, mostly girls, came into view, peering at me wide-eyed, hopeful. Their pleading expressions wrung my heart - these were not reminiscent of children, but rather of stray dogs and cats abandoned and betrayed by their owners.

  At least, I saw with relief, they looked well cared for, dressed alike, in plain grey dresses, like institutional uniforms. They didn't look cold or hungry but they were well past babyhood - the youngest must have been five or six years old.

  The woman reappeared, pushed them aside with a warning growl and handed me a piece of paper, the address this time in Joppa on the far side of Arthur's Seat, familiar territory and thankfully not far distant from my home.

  Now that I had a good look at the middle-aged Mrs Bourne, she was well dressed too and seemed no longer hostile or suspicious.

  'You were misdirected to this house.' And choosing her words carefully, 'We merely provide a stepping-off place for unwanted children, orphans mostly, to be found suitable homes, where they will in time be trained to become useful members of a household.'

  A kindly way of saying that the children I was seeing were being trained to be domestic servants, their entire young lives spent as cheap unpaid child labour in the kitchens of Edinburgh's better-off houses. All they would ever get were cast-off clothes and leftover food, their futures decided for them, bleak indeed. No education, rarely even taught to read or write.

  A few might be lucky enough or strong enough to escape, but, for the majority, a life of toil and deprivation lay ahead.

  The woman was saying, 'The child Meg was too young, you see - three years old, they can't do much at that age. They're just a burden. And I have more than enough to take care of at the moment, without another mouth to feed.'