Murders Most Foul Page 13

  ‘I’ve never believed that was anything more than coincidence, Faro, and I have more important matters to attend,’ Gosse replied huffily, and gathering some of the papers on his desk he dismissed him.

  Faro felt relief that the murdered woman’s body had now been claimed for burial and that it would not suffer the indignity of ending up on a dissecting slab in Surgeons’ Hall. Most of all, that forlorn, frightened wee lass who had had such a horrific experience in Fleshers Close would have a future with a caring parent.

  ‘Wonder how the two of them met up again, sir?’

  But Gosse wasn’t interested. He sighed weary and handed him a slip of paper. ‘You talk to Page, see if there is anything I’ve missed – see if you can use those much-vaunted powers of observation and deduction to trap him into a confession,’ he added mockingly. And as the door closed, ‘But I doubt that. Another waste of time.’

  Gosse’s own time had not been wasted, however. He had seized the opportunity of Faro’s absence in Glasgow to exercise his charms and ingratiate himself with the lovely Lizzie Laurie.

  He found her polite, nice mannered and ladylike, but the awful truth was that he had not made much progress in the direction he sought, that was, to lure her into his empty bed. As a deserted husband he felt he was entitled to a little dalliance, even a mistress, although this would need careful concealment from the chief constable since any hint of a sexual scandal would considerably deplete his hopes of promotion. Bearing this in mind, he had taken care to craftily suggest that they meet away from Lumbleigh Green to continue his enquiries into her association with the maid Ida.

  Lizzie believed him and over tea and a cake in the Royal Mile café she also feared that three visits to interview her at the big house might be subject to misinterpretation. Even with her mistress’s kindly intervention on her behalf, she was conscious of the master’s displeasure and his suspicious surveillance.

  Watching her across the table with delight, Gosse was very pleased with his plausible explanation that no one could object to, especially as she anxiously confirmed that the presence of police detectives disturbed Mr Lumbleigh, to say nothing of his whole household, and upset him to such a degree that it put her own situation as lady’s maid to Mrs Lumbleigh in jeopardy.

  She sighed and told him that the master regarded her as a troublemaker who, instead of minding her own business, had brought discredit to his house by going to the police to notify them that Ida was a missing person.

  As they talked over a second pot of tea, no expense spared, Gosse was mentally rubbing his hands with glee. It was all working out so well; he scrutinised every change of expression on Lizzie’s face, and when she smiled into his eyes, he was certain that he was observing the onset of another emotion stronger, more daring than mere politeness.

  And should she mention their meetings to Faro, he had no legitimate cause for complaint. DS Gosse was within his rights – as far as the investigation was concerned, he was merely doing his work, interviewing everyone who had the remotest connection with the murdered girl.

  As Lizzie went over once more in scrupulous detail her vague association with Ida, he took out a notebook and wrote down once more in elaborate detail facts of which he could remember every word. Even he could not pretend there was anything further to be learnt from the murder investigation point of view. It was, to quote his own favourite phrase, a complete waste of police time.

  Even had there been new information it would have taken him by surprise. He was no longer interested. His own goal had started out as merely to seduce this lovely woman, take her from Faro and score a victory over his detested detective constable. However, he was now completely obsessed by her. Love would have put a kindlier interpretation on the lust lurking in the darker regions of his heart.

  On the evening of Faro’s return, Gosse set him to work on some urgent reports in the Central Office, and while he was so engaged, decided to call on Lizzie at the coachman’s cottage. She had been very accommodating and told him that their mistress allowed her to spend weekend evenings with her son when she was free of duties.

  Gosse was grateful indeed for any venue but the kitchen of the big house to further his cause, although his appearance caused an angry barking from the dogs outside and more than a flutter of annoyance inside. The coachman Brown and his housekeeper wife were at supper and quite plainly he was the last person they wished to see.

  A more sensitive man might have thought that his presence, with its repercussions from earlier interviews at the big house, and the resulting displeasure of Lumbleigh himself on all the servants, might have been responsible for that sense of strain in Mrs Brown’s cold reception.

  ‘What do you want this time? We have told you everything you wanted to know.’ Her husband barely glanced at him and continued applying his spoon to the soup.

  Gosse had his excuse ready: it was Mrs Laurie he wished to interview. ‘Again?’ murmured Mrs Brown and gave him a look that he might have considered coy, as if she knew perfectly well what was going on and all about his intentions.

  Brown’s bewhiskered face raised briefly from his soup. Spoon in hand, he demanded: ‘What’s she done this time, then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Gosse. Conscious that this visit was doing his cause no good at all, he added righteously, ‘A murder has been committed and this is merely part of our investigation.’

  ‘Even though the girl wasn’t murdered here on the master’s premises?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Seems your enquiries should be a little farther afield, officer.’

  Gosse’s response was a tight-lipped expression indicating that theirs was not to reason why, that this was duty and he was not prepared to argue about the merits or demerits of police procedure.

  The housekeeper did not question his silence; she merely shrugged, extracted a pie dish from the oven and over her shoulder said: ‘Mrs Laurie isn’t here, as you can see for yourself. She came and collected the lad, taking him to the shops for new shirts. Said they would have their supper later.’

  Gosse left polite but chagrined. Things were not going at all in the way he wanted and time was short. Not only for finding a murderer, but for his successful wooing of Lizzie Laurie.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The possibility that Gosse was seeing Lizzie other than as an interviewing officer had not remotely occurred to Faro. Had it done so, he would never have entertained any fears of the sergeant as a possible rival for her affections.

  To be honest with himself, Lizzie had not occupied a prominent role in his thoughts since his encounter with Inga in Glasgow. He knew he should get in touch with her, but decided to leave matters as they were at present until their next meeting.

  Meanwhile, he would seek out Doris Page’s common-law husband, see if he might provide some clues from her acquaintances and so forth, which would lead them to her killer. He doubted whether there was anything to be gained by this meeting. Reading between the lines of Gosse’s account, he saw a dreary, often violent relationship and possibly the only reason the woman stayed with him was for the child’s sake. Until that day dawned when she could take it no longer. Penniless, taking care of their small daughter, her distress must have been acute, Page a monster of cruelty, for her to take to the streets.

  He went to the address near the Haymarket. A boarding house offering vacant rooms. A woman opened the door and before he could ask for Mr Page, a man appeared behind her.

  ‘Have they come? Is it here – they’re early?’ he said, staring past Faro along the road.

  It was obviously not a good time to conduct an interview about his dead wife as Len Page was clad in mourning; the black crêpe around his tall hat announced that he was awaiting the arrival of the hearse to accompany it to the cemetery. Faro held out his card and, offering his condolences, he had a quick insight into the misery, the distraught confusion of a bereaved man.

  Page shook his head, stood aside, said: ‘You’d better come in.’

  The landlady ushered them in
to the parlour for receiving visitors and persons seeking lodgings. As Faro took a seat at the round mahogany table amid a profusion of potted plants, large ornaments precariously perched on shelves and a galaxy of framed family photographs, there was little room to put his feet anywhere without some violent encounter with a tapestried footstool. The armchairs had protective antimacassars, and among the threatening dark landscapes on the walls, an occasional interjection of a cross-stitch text sternly warned ‘Jesus listens to every conversation’, which must have effectively tongue-tied lodgers inclined to frivolity. And over all the smell of beeswax polish indicated a clean and efficient landlady who took a pride in her home.

  The door opened and a child’s face appeared. The little girl Faro had seen before and recognised from that first tragic encounter in Fleshers Close. No longer poor and shabby but prettily dressed, she rushed towards Page and leapt upon his knee. The sight of a policeman’s uniform aroused dreadful memories that had her burying her head in her father’s shoulder.

  Stroking her hair he said: ‘It’s all right, Jess, just a kind man come to see us.’ And to Faro, ‘It shouldn’t be long now, Constable. While we wait, what can I tell you?’

  Smiling at the wee girl, Faro whispered: ‘How did you find her again?’

  ‘God, I was so lucky. In despair, I was wandering down the High Street and there she was, walking towards me. She was living with this old woman who looked after her when Doris was – busy.’ He shuddered. ‘She had given her shelter – after—’ His words failed. ‘She won’t talk about it, what happened – that night. Just shakes her head, poor wee sweetheart.’

  Faro decided that if she had forgotten, then that was just as well. Sorrow clung round the man and his child and he thought beyond it to the events that had led to this tragic ending, the funeral of Doris Page. It had been a fraught time for Page, getting the legal matters settled, her body about to be removed from the police mortuary and delivered into the waiting hands of eager medical students at Surgeons’ Hall.

  As Page began to talk rapidly, the words tumbling out in a steady stream, the necessity to have someone to tell it all to, to unburden his shock at the killing of the woman regarded as his wife and mother of his child. As he talked the child sat thumb in mouth still staring, glaring suspiciously at Faro who smiled at her but she immediately hid her face.

  Page said: ‘When I saw you, I hoped you were bringing word that you had got him – the man, you know, who did it.’ The latter words were in a whisper as he stroked his daughter’s hair not wishing to use the terrible word ‘murder’ in front of a child who might well have witnessed the fatal attack on her mother.

  ‘Can you tell us anything that might help to track him down?’ Faro asked.

  Page made a helpless gesture. ‘I went over all I know with the other man, the sergeant. Do you want it all again?’ he added wearily.

  ‘Was … Mrs Page a gambler?’

  Page looked bewildered, shook his head. ‘No. She was just stage-struck, always had been, that’s all.’ He gave Faro a puzzled look. ‘We didn’t have money for gambling. Why do you ask that?’

  Faro told him about a playing card that had been found beside her and Page shook his head. ‘She was no gambler, just dying to be an actress.’

  And Faro realised the irony of his words as he went on. ‘We were in Aberdeen, I was a gardener with the parks. Out of work, so I took anything I could get, temporary labouring. That wasn’t right for Doris and she would never have moved in with me, if it hadn’t been she was expecting …’ He paused and stroking the child’s hair tenderly, whispered ‘… wee Jess here. It was an accident but although I wanted to marry her, make it legal and proper, like, in the church or registry office, she would have none of it. Said she would have the bairn first, then we’d decide what to do next.’

  Pausing he sighed. ‘She was mad about going on the stage, being a dancer, and she had a lovely figure, fine legs and a good voice. Everything that was needed. One day she met a fellow from the London theatre, up with a touring play, told her he had great influence in all the right theatrical places. Said he was right struck by her, with her looks and voice she was wasting opportunity. He could easily get her a job on the stage, even just in the chorus to start with, that was how most stars began.’

  He looked thoughtful, shook his head sadly. ‘Always a bit flighty, ye ken, and this was a chance she said she couldn’t resist. Left a note saying to forget her. But I was determined to find her, talk some sense into her. And that has been my life for the past three months, trying to track her down. And now … this …’ His voice broke and he dashed a hand to his eyes. ‘Finding her too late.’

  As Page talked Faro regarded him intently. It didn’t take much reading between the lines to realise the story of this ill-matched couple. A middle-aged man, big and strong muscled who might have been good-looking long ago but was now stout and balding.

  ‘She didn’t like the only life I could give her,’ Page went on. ‘I was often out of work and when we hadn’t enough to eat she complained then that any money I earned I spent on drink. Drink was my escape but she didn’t understand that. We quarrelled, she had a sharp temper and could say cruel things, telling me that I was old enough to be her father and she was wasting her life with me.

  ‘And when I drank too much, I had a temper too and I would use my fists. God help me, I hit her often, and then, one day, it was too much and I came home to find that she’d gone, and taken Jess with her. I found an address in Glasgow among her things, I was there only last week looking for her.’

  And Faro realised that this distraught man and himself had both been in Glasgow within a matter of days, each searching for a lost love. He gave a fleeting thought to his own disillusions, for this man’s experience was the far greater agony.

  ‘I didn’t know what I would do if I found her, I just had to know, that’s all. If she wanted to be an actress, I decided I’d let her go, I wouldn’t stop her as long as I could keep Jess – I would manage. We were never right for each other and that’s the truth …’ He sighed. ‘And I wasn’t much of a provider.’

  Faro guessed the rest, saw the curtains opened on the life that was so familiar among most of the working men and women he met on his beat in Edinburgh. Men like Page, who asked not much of life beyond a working wage, an evening spent in the pub with wages left over from the rent, food and clothes for the bairns. Not much future beyond a few carefree hours, a pint or two of ale with mates and staggering home in an elevated state of pretending the world was a better place than the dreary streets, going home to a wife’s arms and warm body for the comfort of the night.

  Faro sighed. Whatever Page might be, he decided that this man might have killed his wife in a passion of rage but it was beyond the bounds of possibility that he had also killed Ida Watts.

  ‘Have you found work in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Aye, thank God. Used to be a gardener and I got a day’s work with one of the big houses off the Dalkeith Road.’

  ‘Was it Lumbleigh Green, by any chance?’

  Page made a face. ‘The very same. Hard, back-breaking work and a rotten boss, a miserly owner who worked us eighteen hours for a handful of coins at the end of it. One day was enough, I can tell you.’

  Faro wondered if this was what the interview had been all about, the chance remark that often holds a hidden clue. ‘Did you meet any of the servants, the maids …’ He didn’t want to ask directly. ‘Did you know Ida?’

  ‘No time for that. We were kept working well away from the house.’

  Faro wanted to ask more, such as when was he there, but the sounds outside and the doorbell announced the arrival of the hearse, behind which Page would follow Doris’s coffin, walking to the graveyard half a mile away.

  The woman looked round the door, whispered, ‘They’re here.’

  Page stood up and she took the now sleepy child from his arms. Jess awoke, shouted, ‘Pa, don’t go.’ As if aware of what lay ahead for him, she strugg
led out of the landlady’s arms, ran to his side and clutched his hand.

  He kissed her, picked her up and handed her back to Mrs Reid, saying soothingly: ‘Now you be a good lass for Pa. I’ll be back very soon. I’ll bring you sweeties,’ he added encouragingly.

  The word ‘sweeties’ worked wonders. Such treats had been few and far between in her short life. Now they seemed like landmarks and, consoled, she took the woman’s hand and was led into the kitchen but still with that anxious backward look. ‘Come back soon, Pa, you promised.’

  On the steps, Page said: ‘You’re a good listener, Constable. Sorry I had nothing useful to tell you.’ And looking towards the hearse, the black-plumed horses, he grasped Faro’s hand. ‘Find the man who did it, will you?’

  Helmet in hand, watching the sad cortège, Faro considered what he had learnt. Page had been a gardener at Lumbleigh Green. Was it true that he had never met Ida? Even though, after finding his wife again, he might have killed her, Gosse had checked his whereabouts. An unshakeable alibi, in a Glasgow jail at the time of her murder, locked up for the night, drunk and disorderly after a pub brawl.

  But he had no alibi for Sunday in Edinburgh, possibly roaming about the area of the North Bridge, most likely drunk again. But the facts did not fit and Faro was glad they didn’t. There was one vital element missing. Not by any stretch of imagination could this middle-aged, working man in search of his absconding wife fit Ida’s description of her young, handsome and wealthy lover, wanting her to elope with him.

  Making his way back to the Central Office he had one consolation. The fate of the wee girl which had so concerned him was now safely in the hands of her devoted father. And he decided to keep to himself that Page had been a temporary gardener at Lumbleigh Green. If Gosse had that piece of information he would be at Page’s lodging with the handcuffs before the words were out of Faro’s mouth.