Ghost Walk

by Alanna Knight

  On an impulse, I did something I had never intended to do in the whole of my stay in Eildon.

  Opening my reticule, I handed him my card.

  Reading it, his eyes widened and he whistled again. ‘“Lady Investigator, Discretion Guaranteed.” I can hardly believe it – Mrs McQuinn. You look so – well –’

  ‘Respectable, is that the word you’re searching for?’

  He laughed. ‘You’re just a young lass, no business dealing with nasty things like murders. What does young Jack think about – well, his future wife being in the same profession as himself?’

  I smiled. ‘He puts up with it.’

  ‘Good for him. Most men wouldn’t. Very unusual, a woman in what is strictly a man’s world.’

  And taking in my expression, he chuckled. ‘He hasn’t any alternative, eh? Is that it? Resigned to the fact that it was probably born in you, inherited it from your father. Well, well. I expect if you’d been a lad you would have joined the Edinburgh City Police,’ he repeated.

  I let that guaranteed assumption pass this time. I had no desire to argue with PC Bruce at this stage about the place of women in a man’s world.

  ‘It’s been a great pleasure meeting you, Mrs McQuinn,’ he said doffing his helmet to reveal that the cheerful still-round youthful face with the white moustache was late middle-aged, topped by a richly shining bald head. Smooth as a billiard ball, as Jack would say. A transformation that instead of adding ten years to his age made him suddenly more vulnerable.

  PC Bruce was probably near retirement.

  Smiling at me, apparently reluctant to relinquish my company, he said proudly: ‘Perhaps you would care to see our police station?’

  Which was exactly the invitation I was hoping for.

  Chapter Twelve

  I followed Constable Bruce along the street. He marched rather than walked, brisk and smart as an old soldier on parade, occasionally saluting passers-by, mostly women out with children and shopping baskets.

  At his side I felt uncomfortably aware of their eyes on our backs, anxious that his stern demeanour would not spread the rumour among local residents that they’d seen Jack Macmerry’s intended taken into protective custody.

  Finally we stopped outside an unassuming ivy-covered cottage. Set back from the main street with a path leading between two neat flower beds and a notice with the word ‘Police’ printed in large letters in the window.

  There was clearly no pressing need for the law in Eildon. Had I been short-sighted or in a hurry I’d have passed it by and again I marvelled at Father Boyle’s luck. Angels and a few well-directed prayers must have helped him find it that morning.

  Mrs Bruce opened the door, with two small children peering behind her skirts. She was about my own age, once pretty but with a mouth set in hard unattractive lines.

  The face of a young woman used to getting her own way.

  ‘Do come in. You don’t mind the kitchen, Miss Faro?’ The village gossips had been busy and she knew who I was. The constable’s apologetic glance told me that he would explain to her in due course.

  Mrs Bruce was also something of a surprise, since she and the children were younger than I would have expected from her middle-aged husband.

  Jack’s father told me later that this was the constable’s second marriage and Mary Bruce had for a short while kept company with Jack. His sly look hinted that she had had ‘hopes’ in that direction but had been disappointed.

  Perhaps that was in Mary Bruce’s mind as she set tea and scones before me and settled down at the kitchen table for a good old gossip. After all, Jack was a local celebrity and woman’s chat about wedding dresses, receptions, guests and honeymoons would be passed on through the village like wildfire.

  None of this, I have to confess, was of gripping interest to me, especially as the two children had decided I was a worthy target for their undivided attention. Drinking tea was a hazard, faced with keeping a good grip on the cup, eating a scone and bestowing smiling glances on the pair of little devils, while diverting the constant threat of those jammy hands clawing at my skirts.

  No easy task as I endeavoured to respond to their mother’s stream of polite conversation, interspersed with shrill instructions to her offspring to behave themselves, her hands constantly upraised, threatening imminent punishment.

  Once again, in this scene of everyday life in Eildon, I was out of my depth. It was soon obvious that PC Bruce was by no means a stern disciplinarian at his own kitchen table. He smiled awkwardly, pretended not to notice and brought to mind Pappa’s sage observation: that many a cock o’ the walk in the Central Office was just a poor feather duster in his own kitchen.

  After a particularly violent bout of infant screams, aware of my discomfort, he said, ‘I brought the young lady here to show her our police cell, Mary.’

  Mrs Bruce pushed the children aside and, loudly protesting, ‘Police cell indeed! You call it that! It had better not be!’ she followed us into the hall.

  ‘It’s just one room, with a few bars on the window,’ said the constable apologetically. ‘Not a proper cell.’

  ‘And better not be ever, Tom Bruce, I’m warning you,’ his wife repeated. Turning to me she added. ‘I’ve told him that if ever he locks a criminal in there then I’m off, back to my ma, and taking the bairns with me.’

  ‘Not much danger of that, I keep telling her,’ said Tom with a somewhat subdued laugh. ‘Besides, it would only be overnight, then he would be handed over to the official county police to deal with.’

  ‘I’ve told you, one night is enough for us to all wake up in the morning with our throats cut,’ was the angry response from a wife with so little faith in her husband as a stern guardian of law and order, that my immediate reaction was to wonder why on earth she had married him in the first place.

  Eager to change the subject, he turned to me, ‘Perhaps you’d like to see some of our records –’

  ‘Records, indeed. Just a lot of old rubbish. Things I never want the bairns to see. It would give them nightmares, those awful pictures. Enough to turn a woman’s stomach,’ was Mrs Bruce’s warning.

  However, as both bairns were now screaming at the top of their voices and going for each other hammer and tongs, as one might say, she rushed off to prevent imminent fratricide.

  The prison cell was fairly comfortable for a night’s lodging. A bed with pillow and neatly folded blanket, chair, table and washing bowl, all patiently waiting for a criminal who never came.

  As a place of correction and restraint I decided that with some minor additions, it could have done credit to many a wayside inn. In point of fact, it compared favourably with Sister Mary Michael’s retirement cell in the convent in St Leonard’s.

  Although the barred window was a minor deterrent, the lock and bolt on the outside of the door would never have restrained a determined lawbreaker’s bid for escape.

  But PC Bruce was very proud of his cell, busily spreading documents on the little rickety table. Crimes from The Illustrated London News, various newspapers and broadsheets with very graphic and imaginative artists’ impressions of gruesome stabbings, cut throats, hangings and sundry executions.

  When I expressed the polite interest that was expected of me, he kept repeating that this was a great day, a great day indeed, having the good fortune to meet me.

  I realised that he was practically bursting with pride. In a uniform never renewed and intended for his slimmer figure of some twenty years ago, each gesture threatened every tightly fastened button with explosion.

  ‘All these years, Mrs McQuinn. And at last, not a poacher, not a kitten up a tree, not boys pinching apples but a real crime, the possibility of a real life murder,’ he said, smiling blissfully at the prospect.

  I reckoned that whatever his wife’s emotions on the subject PC Bruce thought he had died and gone to heaven, for this was what he had dreamed of all his life and, had he not been a pious Christian, an elder of the Protestant kirk, I suspected that he mig
ht well have sent up a little prayer for just such an opportunity to solve a murder, to justify his long uneventful service. ‘And now, let’s have the facts – as you see them. Right from the beginning, if you please,’ he said briskly, words he must have rehearsed constantly in the forlorn hope of such an occasion.

  As I spoke, he produced a ledger from a locked cupboard. A log book, which was very seriously empty, it transpired, but nevertheless brought longings for my own casebook left behind in Edinburgh. Having any use for it in Eildon was the last thing I had ever imagined.

  ‘To begin at the beginning, I am certain that Father McQuinn’s death wasn’t an accident –’

  I was relieved that this dramatic outburst was received with none of Jack’s disbelief. Apart from his eyebrows almost disappearing into his bald head, he made no comments, calmly taking out pen and ink he prepared to record each detail, listening carefully to my discovery of the priest and the blood-stained candlestick, occasionally halting my story to ask me to repeat some detail and add a query of his own.

  In so doing, he sucked in his lips, frowning and squeezing his eyelids shut in a manner that suggested deep thought and intense concentration and again I thought of how this was the moment he had longed for all his life, waiting patiently with that empty cell in the modest police house for his efforts to be appreciated, his skills to be put into operation.

  What a loss to the Edinburgh City Police! What an asset his enthusiasm would have been to the Central Office.

  ‘Let’s have a timetable, if you please, Mrs. McQuinn. I like that, helps sort out things tolerably well.’

  A man after my own heart, I decided, going over the events again in chronological order as he carefully wrote them down.

  ‘So you went across to the church to visit your late husband’s relative shortly after eight o’clock last night? That was the time when you discovered his body. You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I am. I gathered that was the time the Mass ended and I had been waiting at the farm, rather anxiously counting the minutes, as a matter of fact.’

  I didn’t want to go into details of why I hadn’t told the Macmerrys of my reason for visiting Father McQuinn, as I added, ‘I waited until their clock struck eight and left immediately.’

  Repeating once more the gruesome details and my suspicions that there was someone else in the church, the constable asked:

  ‘How long before you left and went in search of help?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not long. After making sure there was nothing I could do – that he was dead –’

  His frown was an interruption and I added hastily, ‘I have some experience in such matters – then I rushed back to the farm for Jack’s father.’

  ‘Did you not think the local constable or the doctor would have been more appropriate?’ he asked a mite reproachfully.

  ‘It would. Had I known where either of you lived – and there was no one around to ask,’ I responded sharply.

  He nodded. ‘At that hour, you could be sure of finding Eildon deserted except for the customers at our local pub. What about Mrs Aiden at the church house next door? Did that not occur to you – to go to her for help?’

  ‘It certainly did not. To go and tell her that the priest had been murdered! All I would have had were delays and a possibly hysterical woman to deal with.’

  Again he nodded and I continued, ‘As it so happened, Jack had just arrived off the train – and that delayed us – I’ll spare you the domestic upheavals I encountered regarding the deerhound he had brought with him. So it would be about quarter to nine before we ran back to the church together. As I told you earlier, the body was gone, the candlestick had been replaced. The bloodstains had been washed off the floor.’

  I waited a few moments while he recorded these details.

  He sat back. ‘And all in about half-an-hour. So what happened next?’

  ‘Jack thought I had imagined it all. He’s like that.’

  Did I imagine that wry glance as I went on, ‘However, when we went to the church house, Mrs Aiden explained what had happened. How she had found the priest lying at the altar when she went to tell him his supper was ready, and a stranger passing by had helped her carry him back to the house.’

  PC Bruce tapped his pen against his teeth. ‘If Father McQuinn was murdered as you believe, then it follows that this stranger who so conveniently appeared – and disappeared – might well be his killer.’

  ‘My own thoughts exactly!’

  ‘And this suggests that he was still lurking in the church when you arrived at roughly eight o’clock and heard those mysterious movements.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘So Mrs Aiden must have entered the church almost immediately after you rushed back to the farm. This stranger who was somewhere close by appeared and helped her carry the priest into the house.’

  Pausing, he said thoughtfully, ‘Did he then run back into the church and wash the floor and candlestick clean of bloodstains? Is that the way you see it?’

  ‘Yes. There is only one problem. Where did he get the water?’

  The constable smiled wryly. ‘Well, leaving out the use of holy water, there is a horse trough in the street just a step away from the church entrance. And if their vestry is anything like ours, there are cleaning materials – mop and bucket, in a cupboard.’

  Noting that down, he said: ‘When you came to the church house this morning, while Dr Dalrymple was writing Mrs Aiden’s death certificate, it was about ten o’clock.’

  He frowned. ‘According to the doctor’s rough estimate, the poor lady had been dead for probably five or six hours. I don’t know much about time of death, but she was certainly stiff and cold when I touched her, regardless of the mild night temperature.’

  We were both silent, then he continued, ‘So if the killer returned to the house to silence Mrs Aiden, he would most likely choose the early hours as the best time to take her off-guard. And even if he didn’t know Eildon, he could be almost sure of a village’s street being deserted at that time.’

  ‘So where did he go in the interval – from eight o’clock to say, three or four in the morning?’ I asked.

  ‘Our local pub is out. Closes at 10 promptly. There is a tea room provided in one room for the benefit of visitors to the Abbey and much frowned upon by landlord Donald, who has strong views about the propriety of women crossing the threshold of his public house.’

  While I was wondering what use I could make of this information, he went on. ‘Anyway, although it’s open during the summer months it closes at five o’clock. So our killer couldn’t have taken refuge there and he would have stood out like a sore thumb in the public bar since Donald and his wife are very curious about strangers, well-known as a source of village gossip. And our stranger certainly would not want to be questioned.’

  ‘So we must presume that he returned to the church, which is never locked, and bided his time there.’ I paused. ‘You said he most probably took her by surprise.’

  ‘That was doubtless his intention. And what better way to get someone off guard than to knock on the door at four in the morning.’ He frowned and added. ‘No, that won’t do. She was almost completely deaf.’

  I was picturing the scene. ‘The door wasn’t looked so he crept upstairs and – What then? Did she recognise him as the helpful stranger? He would need some excuse for coming at that hour. Perhaps begging a place to stay.’ I paused. ‘And then he threw her downstairs.’

  PC Bruce mulled this over and then said triumphantly, ‘Know what I think? She wasn’t killed by the fall – I think she was already dead before he arranged that scene –’

  ‘You mean he broke her neck – first.’

  He nodded grimly. ‘Yes. To make sure –’

  ‘And then he took a knife and cut the fraying carpet to make it look like an accident. Thought of everything, didn’t he?’

  ‘Indeed he did. If we are dealing with two murders, Mrs McQuinn, we aren’t dealing with an amateur,’ he said g
rimly. ‘We are dealing with a professional.’

  Pausing, he regarded me intently. ‘This man is clever, not just a bungling amateur, a burglar caught in the act, who loses his temper.’

  He thought for a moment and said slowly, ‘Our man is probably a trained killer, perhaps even a mercenary soldier, well-versed in the art of how to kill.’ And rubbing his chin thoughtfully, ‘So what brings such a man here. What is his mission in a place like Eildon?”

  A chill went through me. A fragment of conversation from my days in Arizona when Danny told me how Pinkerton’s trained men in unorthodox ways of survival, of dealing with dangerous outlaws and criminals, as well as those employed in that other side of their detective agency – a highly confidential and secret service for the Government. Such as permanently silencing those who were a danger or a personal embarrassment to the President or some influential member of the Senate.

  ‘The Queen’s Jubilee? Could it have something to do with that?’

  The constable considered for a moment, shook his head. ‘Here in Eildon? Surely not.’

  I wished Jack had been more forthcoming about that police business as I thought about Mrs Aiden’s attacker, hearing again Danny’s words, ‘They teach you how to break a man’s neck as easily as snapping a twig.’

  And I thought of how I had shuddered and asked quietly: ‘Have you ever done that, Danny?’

  Danny had looked away from me, smiled narrowly. ‘That would be giving away State secrets, Rose. But let’s say that in an emergency, if I’m called upon, I know exactly how.’

  The constable was asking a question. He had to repeat it twice:

  ‘What we need to know is where is our killer now?’

  Still thinking about Danny, I shook my head as he continued, ‘His job done – whatever it was, I expect he’s gone from Eildon long since.’

  I thought about that. ‘But how did he get away? How did he get here in the first place. On foot, horseback, by carriage? What about trains?’