Quest for a Killer Page 18

  Fortunately Jack did not have a key, as locking doors was a new innovation, and if asked I would tell him that there was only one ancient key of enormous dimensions in existence, and should he suggest having another made, as his stay was only temporary, it was hardly worthwhile.

  The sound of a rap on the front-door knocker echoed through the house. We both jumped. I sprang from the table, motioned Danny to hide upstairs while I went to the door.

  The caller was impatient, and when I released the catch, my heart thumped. A policeman!

  I recognised Constable Hoskins. Looking like a drowned rat, he was holding out a piece of paper. I gazed at it in horror.

  ‘For you, Mrs McQuinn. From the Inspector, urgent, like. I live just along the road past Duddingston,’ he pointed to his bicycle, ‘so I said I’d hand it in.’

  He had a sudden bout of sneezing. I felt so sorry for him and, as this was an unexpected opportunity to get some information on Felix’s last hours in the hospital when Hoskins was on guard duty, I said, ‘Do come in. Maybe the rain will abate while you have a cup of tea.’

  I had some anxious moments but there was no sign of Danny, not a sound from upstairs as the constable gratefully followed me through to the kitchen.

  As he discarded his wet cape, I took the note to the lamp.

  ‘Sorry, won’t manage this evening. Urgent police matters out of town. May be very late, will try not to disturb you. See you tomorrow. Hope you enjoy the concert.’

  Concert? What concert? I had completely forgotten in the events of the last hour that I was supposed to be meeting Jack at the Assembly Rooms.

  As the constable ate the buttered scone I gave him, I asked after his family and said how delightful his children were and how the inspector and I had enjoyed the picnic at Yellowcraigs.

  He gave a rueful smile and said, ‘I’m in bad with the inspector just now.’ And obviously believing that his boss and I were on intimate terms, he said. ‘Probably told you about the… er…incident at the hospital. Never live it down. Feel badly about Mrs Miles Rice and her brother too. Nice folk, thoughtful too. Never came in empty-handed, every day always something tasty.’ He sighed. ‘Now looks like turning into a murder enquiry.’

  This was exactly the information I was hoping for. I murmured sympathetically and said, ‘You didn’t see anyone, then?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t. But one of the nurses saw a man rushing out in a great hurry. She just saw his back. Wasn’t much help.’

  I smiled and said nothing. It was obviously Peter whom I had met but I didn’t want to muddy the waters by having the police question him.

  He had returned to search for Elma’s missing earring. Hoskins had been absent. Was Felix already dead? Was that why he had rushed out, to find someone?

  He would not have had the slightest idea, until the police came to tell Elma, that his brother-in-law had been murdered and that he had just missed the killer by a few minutes.

  There wasn’t much Hoskins could add to what I already knew and, after some polite pleasantries, I looked out of the window. The rain had ceased, and thanking me, Hoskins went on his way.

  Danny came cautiously downstairs. ‘What was all that about?’ he said, and giving me an anxious look, ‘Bad news?’

  ‘On the contrary, it’s good news. My lodger, the policeman Inspector Macmerry, isn’t coming back this evening, so we have a few hours.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  So I told him about my new role in life as a private detective and roughly how that had come about through meeting an old school friend, hearing about a murdered servant and a husband who was behaving suspiciously.

  ‘Lady Investigator, Discretion Guaranteed.’ Danny laughed. ‘I like that. Good on you – always did have the knack of solving riddles. Do you make a living out of it?’

  ‘I’ve had my problems. Edinburgh society rather frowns on a lady riding a bicycle.’

  That amused him too. ‘You don’t say! They should have seen you fighting off Indian raids as well as being the confidante of the saloon girls.’ And nodding towards Thane, ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘He found me.’ I told him of our first meeting but I don’t think he heard all that strange saga. Exhausted, sitting by the warm fire, he nodded off.

  He looked so ill. His sleeping face was that of a stranger who bore no resemblance to the man I had loved and waited for. Only occasional glimpses of that other Danny in the sudden smile, the Irish brogue which he had never lost, a turn of his head.

  I wanted to weep. I had lost him, lost my one true love. But now I had to save him from prison, or worse, the hangman’s rope.

  But first I had to keep him hidden until his arm healed and he got back his strength again, while I devised a method for his escape. Somehow help him flee to a place of safety, far from Edinburgh. Even if it meant never seeing him again, at least I would know he was alive.

  I looked at him with compassion. Could this be the face of a murderer? I shuddered. My Danny, a killer. It seemed impossible. And yet, perhaps anything was possible of this stranger who had taken his place.

  I had to think quickly. First of all, Jack’s presence in the Tower must be ended. There was no possible way he could remain in the house at night sleeping in the great hall downstairs with Danny hidden overhead in the secret room.

  Making sure that the back door was bolted against any unexpected visitors, Danny never stirred as I moved quietly about the kitchen, gathering lamp and cleaning materials.

  Climbing the stairs, I opened the panel to the secret room with some difficulty, and once inside, covering my hair, I brushed aside the cobwebs, and choking against the dust, swept the floor clear of the debris of a hundred and fifty years.

  An hour later I looked round at the results of my labours. The palliasse would have to suffice meantime as I sought out blankets and pillows from the landing cupboard. At last I looked around, straightened my back. I felt as if every bone was aching, so tired that I longed to lie down and sleep – anywhere. But hard work brought a feeling of satisfaction, a sense that there was nothing like gruelling physical activity to keep at bay the true terror of a situation.

  Putting on those final touches, removing all evidence of the secret room’s previous occupant, I thought that once again in its history the room was to provide refuge for another man with a price on his head. Who had used it before? A deserter from the Jacobite army at Prestonpans, or one of the Hanoverian enemy? I would never know: time was silent on that, as on so many questions posed regarding the unwritten history of Solomon’s Tower…

  Closing the door and making sure that the inside bolt still worked, if somewhat stiffly, I regretted the necessary absence of a fireplace. The room would be less than comfortable for more than a brief stay. Daylight would reveal all its inadequacies but in the faint light that struggled through the slit window, invisible from the outside ivy-clad wall of the Tower, it would be safe enough for Danny until I could help him escape.

  Escape? I thought wryly after all these long years of dreaming of the moment we would be together again, this was to be the sad ending, which goes to prove the old adage that one should be careful about what one asks the gods to provide, seeing that it can also be answered in a way that is completely unacceptable.

  And never was a moment in my life more unacceptable than this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I went downstairs quietly, tiptoed into the kitchen.

  Danny’s head jerked round.

  ‘I’m awake.’ And yawning. ‘I needed that sleep, Rose.’

  ‘I’ve made up a bed for you.’ And I told him about the secret room.

  I expected him to be intrigued, but I could see that he was too tired to ask all the questions that its strange history involved.

  ‘Where do you sleep, then?’

  ‘Upstairs, just along the corridor.’

  He said nothing, avoiding my eyes. I felt suddenly embarrassed. It had never occurred to me that
this Danny, who wasn’t at all like the husband I had lived with for those ten years of married life in Arizona, would expect me to sleep with him.

  There were a lot of things that needed to be resolved before I would be able to make that decision. First and most important, I needed to hear his story of the events that had led him back to Edinburgh as a hunted man, a criminal.

  My first wild hopes fled when he said, ‘The police – your policeman, I expect, as well – are all out looking for me. I killed that poor guy in the bank. I didn’t mean to, it was an instinctive reaction born of many years with Pinkerton’s where we learnt in moments of danger to act first and think afterwards. And that was what happened. I just hit him too hard.’

  ‘What were you doing there in the first place, robbing a bank?’

  He shook his head. ‘I have to go back to the beginning for that.’

  ‘Before you do. Round about the same time as you arrived with the circus, just streets away from the bank, two girls who were friends committed suicide, hanged themselves in adjoining flats of the same tenement. At least that’s what the police thought originally. A weird coincidence, but the circumstances were so bizarre that it now seems possible that they were murdered.’

  ‘Oh, I heard about that at the circus. A suicide pact.’ Pausing, he looked at me. ‘Do they think I was responsible for that too?’ he whispered.

  I didn’t answer and he said, ‘Rose, now what would I be doing killing a couple of girls I’ve never met?’

  I knew that was true, for the secret of whoever was responsible for their deaths lay with Will Sanders, Belle’s grandfather.

  ‘What about Felix Miles Rice?’ I asked.

  He looked bewildered, repeated the name. ‘Isn’t he the philanthropist I’ve read about – saw in a newspaper that he was in hospital with a heart attack and just died?’

  ‘That’s the man, Danny. Only there was a suspicion that it was no heart attack, that it was attempted murder. There was a police guard on his ward and when he showed signs of recovery someone came in and smothered him.’

  I paused, watching his expression as I added, ‘And the suspicion is that his attacker was Sam Wild.’

  He stared at me. ‘What are you trying to say, Rose? I don’t know the man, never heard of him until what I read in the newspaper. Why on earth should I want to kill him?’

  ‘Did you ever meet a man called Hodge?’

  ‘Hodge?’ he repeated. ‘Not that I know of. Who’s he?’

  ‘He was valet to Miles Rice. And apparently he committed suicide by walking into the loch down the road here at Duddingston, just days after his master was admitted to hospital.’

  Danny frowned. ‘And why on earth should he do such a thing?’ He frowned. ‘Unless he was responsible and his guilt drove him to it.’

  ‘That’s very unlikely. I talked to him and I was pretty sure he hadn’t told the police everything about Miles Rice’s mysterious visitor that afternoon. I thought he was protecting someone and now I’m pretty sure it was murder. What’s more, I think I have proof…’

  And I told him the cabbie’s tale about the two drunks.

  He whistled. ‘Three suicides and a murder, Rose. Deep waters you’ve got yourself involved in.’ And shaking his head. ‘None of them anything to do with me, I assure you. My only crime in Edinburgh is the accidental death of that poor guy in the bank at Newington.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I was desperate for money. I’d joined the circus in Glasgow but was told I wouldn’t be paid until they had seen me in performance. That’s the rule. I needed to find a place to stay, food to eat, and I had a few dollars I’d brought with me. All I wanted was to exchange them… Then I saw this bank.’

  He shrugged. ‘The guy behind the counter refused to give me any money for them. Very self-important, officious and suspicious, probably never seen American dollars before, said I was a stranger and how did he know they weren’t forgeries. We argued. He lost his temper, came round and tried to throw me out. He grabbed hold of me. That was it. I hit him, helped myself to a few pounds, the rough equivalent of the dollars, and feeling furious, left in a hurry.’

  There was a pause and I asked, ‘What brought you back to Scotland?’

  ‘To go back to the beginning. When we lost trace of each other I had a bad time. I’ll spare you the details. On a secret mission for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, captured by renegades…tortured…’ He looked away, his expression not wanting to remember. ‘They have their own vile ways of dealing with hated white eyes. It’s a long story, but when I escaped and got back to Pinkerton’s, the time we agreed you should wait if I disappeared had long since elapsed.

  ‘I still hoped you might be in Phoenix. I tracked you down as far as the Apache reservation to be told that you were dead. Died in a fever outbreak. They even gave me the gold locket you used to wear. It had my photograph and one of your sister in it.’

  I remembered that locket, lost or stolen so long ago.

  ‘So you never knew about our baby,’ I said.

  ‘Baby? What baby?’

  ‘Daniel, our son.’ The tears welled again as they always did.

  ‘Your son, Danny, born six months after you disappeared. We were attacked by those renegades. We took refuge in the reservation and there was a fever outbreak. But whoever told you got it wrong, it was our son who died, not me. I buried him out there in the desert. Thought you were dead too, so I came back to Edinburgh as we had agreed, if you ever disappeared without trace.’

  ‘A son,’ Danny whispered. ‘We had a son after all those years.’ There were tears in his eyes too when he looked at me, and I knew he was remembering all the disappointments, the pregnancies that came to nothing.

  He took my hand, held it tight. ‘Never mind, my darlin’. We are together again. We can have more babies.’

  And even as he said the words, just looking at this new Danny who had come into my life again, I knew it would never happen. It was just part of that other dream.

  There would be no marriage renewed, no babies. The future was a dark void, promising nothing but sorrow. When I made no reassuring response, perhaps Danny realised it too. There’s an old Scots proverb: ‘What cannot be changed must be endured.’ And it looked as if we had been made for that, I thought bitterly as Danny sighed and continued his tale of disaster.

  ‘I’d had more than enough. I was finished with the Indian Bureau. The thought of staying in Arizona but imagining you dead somewhere out there in the desert became unbearable. So I got Pinkerton’s to transfer me to their New York office. All went well; then, last year, I got into an argument with one of my colleagues, a detective I was working with.’

  Pausing, he added slowly, his eyes sad, remembering. ‘A fight over a girl, Rose. Someone I had become friendly with.’

  For friendly, I read by his expression ‘in love with’. Who was I to complain? I had believed he was dead when I took up with Jack Macmerry.

  He sighed. ‘She was beautiful, a showgirl. And he was torturing her trying to get information about the gangster we were looking for.

  ‘I shot him, killed him and then I knew my time with Pinkerton’s was over. I had to leave and quickly, so I stowed away on the first boat I saw weighing anchor, heading for the River Clyde. When we landed it was to discover that news of Sam Wild, the alias Pinkerton’s had given me for New York, had reached the UK. I was wanted for murder.

  ‘By a mere chance I met up with Hengel’s, and what better disguise for a wanted man than being a clown in the circus? Especially as you know there was nothing I couldn’t do with horses. Rodeos, trick-riding, came as natural as breathing.’

  As he spoke I remembered, as I should have done long since, a clue I had missed, that Danny McQuinn was a superb horseman.

  ‘They were coming to Edinburgh. Edinburgh – what memories of the past: of you and Emily as youngsters, of being your father’s sergeant.’ Pausing, he smiled, shook his head. ‘You were always determined to marry
me; I warned you, my poor darlin’ Rose, you got a bad bargain there.’

  I took his hand and held it. ‘No, I got what I asked for – ten years of happiness with the man I loved, the only man I had ever loved from being twelve years old, Danny. That was a long time to be faithful to a dream.’

  He nodded. ‘As you say, as you say. When I arrived here with the circus, I had no idea you were alive, much less living a mile down the road. Then a strange thing happened. I knew no one, I was totally among strangers and the sadness of that, of reliving those past years, bothered me. So I decided to look up the nuns at the convent, see if any of them who brought me up were still around.

  ‘It would be great to talk to them. I didn’t want to be apprehended by a policeman, just in case word of Sam Wild had reached Edinburgh, so I approached by the back road I remembered as a lad.’

  He paused, staring at me. ‘And there, by the grace of God, was this girl – you – at least I thought it was you. I couldn’t believe it. The years hadn’t changed you. I seized her hands, talked to her, called her Rose, asked, “Is it you?” She went white as a sheet, shaking, absolutely terrified. I thought she was going to faint. She obviously hadn’t listened to a word—’

  ‘She couldn’t, Danny. She’s a deaf mute. One of the nuns, Sister Clare, told me about this wild man who scared the young novices working in the vegetable garden. Her name is Marie Ann.’

  ‘So you’ve met her.’ He gave me a quizzical look. ‘Haven’t you noticed that she is the spitting image of you at her age? Of course, I suddenly realised, fool that I was, that my Rose was past thirty and must have changed quite a lot from the girl who followed me to America, and now there was going to be trouble. She suddenly pulled away from me and rushed inside.’

  Again he shook his head. ‘Trying to explain was beyond me. I fled. Then I thought I saw you sitting in the front seats at the circus. I was sure it was you this time, an older Rose. After the performance there you were again, this time talking to a policeman. As I guessed they might be looking for Sam Wild for the bank robbery, I didn’t linger. I was confused. I had thought for years that you were dead, and now, I still couldn’t be sure, couldn’t believe my eyes…’