The Coffin Lane Murders Page 16

  He sighed. 'It reached the stage that they became recluses instead of having the sort of social life young people in their position should have enjoyed. Eventually there were rumours, a maid dismissed, hints that she had seen - well, goings-on between them.

  'Rumours ran rife and spread quickly, especially as the young mistress was seen to be pregnant. And who was the father, since no visitors came any more and the poor young lass was virtually her brother's prisoner? Suspicion grew, naturally, that he was responsible for her condition, especially when she walked into the lake and tried to drown herself and the newborn baby.

  'You'll remember that I was factor there before I took up the landscape gardening and by the merest chance I was out fishing on the lake. It was dusk and I heard the shouting and the commotion, saw her being pulled out screaming but alive. And alone.

  'The laird told me angrily to go about my business when I rowed over to help. I did as I was bid but I can tell you I watched those waters carefully for a sign of the poor drowned bairn. Then as I was mooring the boat near our croft, I heard crying, no louder than the mewing of a kitten. And there was this tiny babe, wrapped in a shawl, lying in the reeds.

  'I didn't know what to do, but some instinct told me not to take him back to the castle, but to let Maggie see him first. We'd just lost our second bairn with convulsions - our wee Conan.'

  He paused and, remembering, smiled. 'Maggie just took him in her arms. She still had plenty milk and she said it was a miracle he'd survived. I didn't know what to do but Maggie insisted that we couldn't take the wee soul back, that if his mother didn't succeed in killing him with neglect, then his uncle, who was also his father, would certainly find some means of putting an end to him.'

  Pausing, he shook his head. 'Our young laird was no credit to any of us. A scoundrel and a tyrant who had seduced his sister, still a child, and driven her to attempting suicide.

  'So we said nothing and passed the bairn off as our Conan. There was no need to worry, the laird never showed the slightest interest in his tenants' lives or their welfare. And he had never been known to visit any of the estate cottages. They hated him for his meanness and neglect so we knew that we could trust them.

  'But poor Maggie had nightmares; she was always afraid when we saw him on horseback nearby that instead of riding past, he would stop at our door. And so we decided to leave for the boy's sake. We came to Glasgow and you know the rest of the story.

  'We had misgivings at the beginning as to how he would turn out, given his parents, that he might not be - well, normal - but he was a fine sturdy wee chap. A bit irrational and violent sometimes, awful fits of rage, but we reckoned that was on account of his being so brainy. Sharp, clever, right from the start we knew we must give him the best possible chance in life, educate him properly, send him to college.'

  He sighed deeply. 'I can scarce believe we'll never see our lad again. Life's cruel sometimes. Taking our poor Kate with the influenza, poor sweet lass. We often wondered whether they were happy together, after he took it so badly that she couldn't have a bairn. But we were wrong. He must have loved her so much, didn't want to go on without her.'

  Faro said nothing, he had no more condolences left.

  William sighed again. 'This will break his poor mother's heart.'

  Before he left, Faro had some questions that urgently needed answers. 'What happened to his real mother? Did you ever hear?'

  'We never saw her again. We heard that the laird had sent her to friends in Italy hoping for a complete rest and recovery, and that she had unfortunately died in a cholera epidemic'

  'What was his mother's name?'

  'Celia. Lady Celia Belathmont.'

  And so the wheel had turned full circle, Faro thought, as the train carried him back to Edinburgh. By some hideous stroke of fate, with all the inevitability of Greek tragedy, after Celia walked into the lake to drown her baby son, retribution had waited thirty-five years, and Conan Pursley would never know that the patient he had cherished and finally murdered was his own mother.

  As for Faro, he could never forgive himself that he had not interpreted the clues earlier.

  'I had it all there, and I think I just refused to recognise what I was seeing, because I liked and respected Conan too much,' he told Vince. 'He was a grand person, a caring doctor and I would have fought anyone who tried to discredit him.'

  'I know,' said Vince. 'I feel as if I've lost a brother. I don't think I'll ever have as good a doctor or a friend that close again. I shall always blame his terrible inheritance, that perhaps it was not all his own fault. Maybe we'll have scientific proof some day that he was as mentally disturbed as many of his patients. Lady Celia, his poor mother - if she had known that it was her own son she was besotted with. Dear God. What a frightful end.'

  Watching as Vince poured another dram, Faro said: 'I was completely off on the wrong track at the beginning. I suspected that Miss Errington was in it somehow and that she was hiding Molly's killer.'

  'There was that one patent slipper, planted, I suppose, by him to start us thinking that the killer was a woman.' said Vince.

  'I did give that a fleeting thought. It was rather too pat, somehow. But it was the pantomime that set me on the right road. Seeing Angus in a poke bonnet and some remarks of the women in the row alongside me that he looked exactly like a girl. And that clinched it. I knew that the killer was a man pretending to be Conan's escaped patient.

  'I had to go through all the people who knew about the missing Celia and I was left with our family - who I could dismiss - and Sir Hedley and Angus Spens. Remembering Angus' ghoulish delight in sudden death and corpses, I panicked.

  'What, I thought, if he's our killer? How am I to arrest the superintendent's son? What a dilemma that would be.

  'Then there was Kate. I considered the possibility that it might be Kate herself and that she'd written the note, especially when I realised the writing was by the same hand as the capital letters on the drawing of the owl moons clasper. I should have got that earlier too - clasper is such an unusual name for a brooch.'

  'Perhaps not for an antique brooch.' said Vince. 'They used words odd-sounding to Lowland ears in the Gaelic translations.'

  'Of course, once Celia's body was discovered in the loch I knew that she could not possibly have written the note or have been the woman who almost scared Kate to death. But I did think it odd that Conan - an experienced doctor - was ready to accept a corpse that had been in the water several days as one newly drowned.'

  Faro sighed. 'I believe that was the moment I began - most reluctantly - to suspect him.'

  'I must confess I suspected Kate - that she'd invented the whole story,' said Vince. 'Although she was the last one I would ever have thought capable of violence of any kind. Such exertion as wielding a knife and stabbing anyone would undoubtedly have brought on a massive heart attack. She would have died before they hit the ground.'

  'You're right, and the other clue that declared her innocent was when she told us that Nero hadn't barked a warning and that he raised the roof at the approach of strangers. That was very significant; if a dog doesn't bark then he recognises an intruder as someone who is familiar with the house, someone he knows.'

  'At least Nero has come out of it pretty well,' said Vince. 'Did I hear you saying that the City Police were taking him over? Did you arrange that?'

  'I did. We need tracking dogs occasionally and big fierce dogs are as good as any constable on the beat. They terrify casual lawbreakers and even innocent folk, come to think of it.'

  There was one more surprise in store.

  Vince's stony attitude to Sir Hedley melted after having nursed him successfully through pneumonia.

  There had been so much bitterness and hatred and he felt he had reason to be grateful to Sir Hedley for entrusting to wee Jamie a piece of wood that Vince would always believe had worked a miracle.

  'What about that?' asked Faro.

  Vince smiled. 'He has lost interest in it, lik
e all small children. I put it back where it belonged behind the cross in the chapel when I was visiting Sir Hedley.' He shrugged. 'It might be coincidence, but that is one question we are never likely to have answered.'

  Walking with Jamie one Sunday afternoon, picking snowdrops to give to his mama on Arthur's Seat, Faro looked down at Solomon's Tower.

  A shambling figure was beckoning them from the back door.

  Jamie was all eagerness. A toy horse, sadly lacking in paint and mane, who had seen many previous owners, was thrust into his hand.

  Jamie beamed. 'Love horsies.'

  'Come away in, sir, won't you.'

  Faro could hardly refuse and they followed him down the corridor into a room whose grandeur would quickly fade, with curtains torn and upholstery mangled by cat's claws now Kate's restraining presence was gone.

  'Do sit down. Smoke? Take a pipe with me.'

  Seated, with Jamie on the none too clean floor dividing his attention between the horse and one of the disdainful cats, Sir Hedley said, 'Been looking out for you. Your lad has been good to me. Saved my life. Hadn't much interest in keeping it - after all that happened. Kate dead, Conan drowned. Sorry business. Would have gone willingly to my Maker but for young Vince and the wee lad here.'

  Pausing, he leaned over and ruffled Jamie's curls as he wheeled the toy horse past his chair. 'Both remind me of my young days, see.' He frowned. 'Your lad is the image of someone I knew long ago, when I used to shoot over at the Finzeans' place.'

  He shrugged and said apologetically, 'Delirious dreams from long ago, but it all came back, y'know, especially when I thought I was a goner. I expect you know from poor Kate that my family were a rum lot. I was glad to get away. Never regretted it. The Tower belonged on my mother's side. Nice and peaceful, no one to quarrel with. Only the cats. But I was telling you about the shoot and this girl.'

  'Girl?'

  'Did I not say that? The one your lad reminds me of. Just a servant lass she was, but I was head over heels about her. Even asked her to marry me. She turned me down, said she wasn't good enough to be a laird's wife.'

  He gave a hoarse, barking laugh. 'Can't say I blame her. Old enough even then to be her father. Eighteen she said she was, but she seemed like a child to me. Didn't intend taking no for an answer, though. Intended coming back at Christmas, persuading her to change her mind.'

  He paused, looking out of the window, remembering. 'Sent to India instead. But I never forgot. Next time I was at Finzeans' place, heard she'd left, gone to Edinburgh. Bitterly disappointed, decided I'd had enough of the East, the wine, women and song. So I came to Edinburgh to look for her. Too late though, she had married someone else. Young chap living here.'

  He shrugged, his face sad. He looked around the room as if recognising its shortcomings for the first time. 'Just as well, I would have made a poor husband.' Again he paused, and gave Faro a questioning glance from under beetling brows.

  Faro felt that favourable comment was expected of him and murmured, 'Nonsense, sir, I'm sure you would have found happiness in the married state.'

  Sir Hedley brightened visibly. 'You think so? Well, the way it worked out, she was to be my one and only, y'know. Never loved again. Never wanted anyone else but her all my life,' he added sadly. And then with a frown. 'What was I on about?'

  Faro smiled vaguely. 'Your early days, sir.'

  'No, that wasn't it. Your son Vince. Can't get him out of my mind. Never could all these years, never knew why. Only lately when he's been looking after me, y'know, once I thought it was her - come back to me. He's her very image - this girl - the one I fell madly in love with. I remember her name. Elizabeth. Elizabeth,' he repeated and laughed. 'Elizabeth. Fine feathers for a skivvy. The other servants called her Lizzie.'

  He shook his head. 'But your lad Vince. When he sat with me that night until the fever broke, I could have sworn it was my Lizzie come back to me again.'

  Faro was never quite sure how he got home. Once in his study, he closed the door, and laying down his head, he gave vent for the first time to the emotions that swept over him.

  His own sweet Lizzie. Fourteen years old, she had told him, with no knowledge of sex, terrified by this older man's ardent advances, fighting him off and failing, then believing that Vince was the child of rape. But in truth he was the love child of a middle-aged man who loved her and had offered her honourable marriage, had gone back to find her and in desperation had moved to Edinburgh to try and find her again.

  It didn't matter to Faro that his own marriage had been built on that misunderstanding. He forgave her his own betrayal. Perhaps she believed that if she did not protest her innocence, no respectable man would marry her and Vince would be fatherless. She had lied not only for her son's sake but because she loved him, Jeremy Faro, and was terrified at the thought of losing him.

  There was no man living surely who could not forgive such a motive.

  What was hardest of all to accept was that Vince's character had been moulded by his mother's protestations of rape, his outlook warped by the wrongful belief of his nativity. His hatred of the society which had betrayed his mother had extended to the unknown man who had fathered him.

  And by some strange instinct, that man had become personified in Sir Hedley Marsh.

  How would Vince now come to terms with his real father's identity? Was this yet another secret Faro would have to lock away in his own heart and carry to the grave?

  Giving it careful consideration, he decided to do nothing until he had come to terms with his own emotions, the dramatic shattering of the foundation of his own marriage.

  Enough damage had been done, too many lives lay bruised and broken around him, too many illusions lost for ever. He thought of them all and, remembering the old adage that sorrows could not cross water, he decided to point out to superintendent Spens that he deserved a long holiday.

  And tomorrow he would buy a ticket to Ireland.

  ###

  There are fifteen titles in the Inspector Faro series available from bookstores and on www.amazon.co.uk. Available on Kindle:

  Enter Second Murderer

  Bloodline

  Deadly Beloved

  Killing Cousins

  A Quiet Death

  To Kill A Queen

  Also available on Kindle in the Rose McQuinn series:

  The Inspector's Daughter

  Dangerous Pursuits

  An Orkney Murder

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