Deadly Legacy Page 18

  It was all going very well, the last of the pancakes brought forth. I wished I had baked more. Thane would be sorry, shy of tea parties, that there were no leftovers, a rare treat.

  A ring at the front door. Another arrival.

  Beth smiled. ‘That will be Adrian. Shall I?’

  She rushed through the hall, opened the door to the tall young man whose exceptional good looks and attractive voice declared his profession as an actor. I could see him as Hamlet.

  As I went off to the kitchen to refill the teapot, Beth was proudly introducing the newcomer as ‘my fiancé’.

  When I returned I discovered that the merry atmosphere, the laughter, had dissolved into silences broken by the occasional polite remark.

  Amy was sitting very still, biting her lip and looking uncomfortable while Jane was endeavouring to engage a rather preoccupied Adrian into chat about the theatre, overlooked by Beth watching them narrowly and looking anxious. Everyone seemed ill at ease – all except me, blissfully unaware of the cause of this changed atmosphere, which I put down to Adrian’s entrance and the ladies perhaps being a little overawed by an unexpected meeting with the handsome actor.

  Adrian declined tea. He had just eaten, and smiling rather forcedly, said they must go or there wasn’t another local train for an hour.

  Amy and Jane exchanged glances, indicating that perhaps they should go too. Beth said, ‘Please, ladies, don’t let me spoil your party.’ Farewells exchanged, she took Adrian’s arm, and as I opened the front door, she said, ‘Oh, I have left my shawl.’

  ‘I will get it,’ Adrian said.

  I watched as Adrian headed in the direction of the kitchen and briskly retrieved the shawl from a chair. Returning to the front hall, where Beth was waiting to give me a hug, Adrian gave a smile and a bow and they both promised to come again.

  I closed the door and returned to the Great Hall where Amy and Jane were waiting to depart.

  ‘A handsome chap,’ said Jane. ‘Very interesting life. Loved his voice.’ And to me, ‘Did Amy ever tell you she used to teach elocution?’ Amy’s smile in response was somewhat strained. She looked at me very intently, opened her mouth and closed it again.

  I gave them the promised tour. They were impressed by that, pronounced it great, lovely and all the other flattering adjectives which would make stones blush if they were capable of such emotions.

  Downstairs again, the front door open, Jane said, ‘Well, Amy, shall we go?’ as her friend hesitated on the doorstep.

  In answer Amy looked at Jane and at me as if something was bothering her and she didn’t know how to express it.

  Suddenly she straightened her shoulders, gave me a hug and thanked me for having them, and Jane said again what a pleasure it had been – Beth and Adrian, such a nice couple.

  Amy looked merely bewildered and I got the impression she didn’t share Jane’s enthusiasm. Beth had talked so glowingly about her baby Lillie, perhaps Amy was shocked as, in her conventional way, she had presumed Adrian to be Beth’s husband and was taken aback to have him introduced as her fiancé.

  The afternoon was over. I wondered what had been bothering Amy, because something about that visit was bothering me too. I would very much like to know the identity of this policeman who had passed on to Adrian and Steven so much information about our very private lives.

  It could only be Wright, recently new to Jack’s team at the Central Office. This was a major indiscretion that would not readily be forgiven by his inspector, or overlooked when it came to recommendation for his promotion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Alone once more, I decided to resume my activities in the secret room where those ancient floorboards didn’t creak.

  And that triggered another thought: a picture of Adrian gallantly retrieving Beth’s shawl from the kitchen. From where I stood at the door, the offending floorboard could not be heard and yet I had heard it clearly from the secret room when M Debeau entered the kitchen far below.

  This was strange; Jack and I had long since discovered, when trying to communicate with each other, shouting was of no avail when confronted by high ceilings and stone walls, and since it was impossible to hear anything from rooms on the same level downstairs, there must be a secret to this puzzle.

  A hidden device. And I had the probable explanation.

  A ‘laird’s lug’. This crafty installation, hidden by the chimney in ancient Scottish castles, enabling the laird to listen in to the conversations of his guests or enemies in the dining room downstairs, had possibly been intended by an early resident of the Tower. However, as no chimney had ever been installed in the secret room, there was no laird’s lug or listening tube visible.

  After a careful but futile search I gave up and returned downstairs. The house seemed so empty and echoing after my cheerful tea party. I heard a train go by on the nearby Innocent railway – so named because no one had been killed or injured in its construction! – carrying goods and passengers to Dalkeith.

  I hoped Beth and Adrian had caught the local Musselburgh train and wished I felt more confident about their future. It was interesting to know that I would see Adrian and his friend Steven taking part in the Prestonpans play.

  With that in mind I sat down where the light was still good and spread Mrs Lawers’ documents on the kitchen table, along with the two pieces of map, minus the missing middle section. With the use of a magnifying glass, it seemed quite definite that the whole map had been drawn by the same hand and detailed the rough grouping of the battle plans – the various clans involved and the possible placements of the Hanoverians, the latter provided by Jacobite spies like Simon Reslaw, who had infiltrated Sir John Cope’s army.

  The magnifying glass also made clearer the words at the base of both pieces of the map.

  ‘Slow Moon Store’ on the left hand. ‘Simon’s Brass’ on the right. The former meant nothing, but the second was more meaningful. ‘Simon’ was the first name of the Jacobite spy; could ‘Brass’ refer to the thirty thousand he had stolen from Lord Tweeddale? My great sense of triumph rapidly faded when I realised that this plausible interpretation of ‘Brass’ did not bring me any nearer to solving the riddle. It merely added yet another dimension. If only we had the missing section and what decisive words, if any, it contained.

  If only Jack were here.

  The wretched mist had descended from Arthur’s Seat once again, as so often happened, and I went to bed, my head buzzing with the day’s events. Thinking of poor misunderstood M Debeau, it suddenly occurred to me that while we were in the realm of confidants he might have been the obvious person to interpret those letters, written by his fellow countryman a century and a half ago.

  Then I went over my visit to Amy and the slightly vain hope that Jane’s reappraisal of her aunt’s letters would produce more clues to Mrs Lawers’ odd behaviour other than the suggestion of approaching senility.

  Another thought. Had her attitude to M Debeau been dictated by the fact that he was a Frenchman who had come to live next door and might have some sinister connection with the dangers that threatened her legacy?

  I wasn’t likely to find the answer to that one now that she had gone. I remembered that Amy had also had the vague impression that Mrs Lawers’ confrontation with the bullying man involved him going on about his rights, which would suggest that he was no stranger and might be distantly related.

  Next morning, after a restless night, I awoke to a balmy sunny day. The mist had lifted and I desperately needed fresh air and exercise. A quick breakfast, then with Thane loping along the verge of the road, we headed in the direction of the loch.

  Suddenly he was rushing ahead, nose down. Ten yards ahead, he stopped, turned, looked at me.

  ‘What’s wrong? What have you found?’

  I reached his side and on the steep slope down to the loch, at the side of a small tree which had halted its descent into the sun-sparkling waters, a still, huddled shape.

  A body.

  Even
before scrambling down for a closer examination, I knew what to expect.

  There had been another death on the road outside Solomon’s Tower.

  While I was considering going back for my bicycle, riding into town to notify the police, a cart appeared labouring up the hill from the loch. I stopped the farmer, told him about the accident.

  ‘I think he’s dead.’

  ‘Better have a look, might just be injured,’ said the farmer, who leapt down the slope. I followed after and watched as he knelt down and turned over the dead man.

  He was a tall youngish man. The farmer sighed, took off his bonnet and reverently closed the bright, clear blue eyes, still wide open in death.

  The farmer shook his head sadly. ‘Poor laddie. Probably drinking too much, got lost in that damned fog last night, staggered and missed his footing. I signed the pledge years since, but I’ve lads of my own.’

  To my question he nodded, ‘Aye, lass, I’m for the town. I’ll let the police know, but first things first.’ I waited while he went for a sack to cover the body.

  I knew I had seen eyes like that before. The eyes visible below the helmet of the bogus policeman who had lured me to the hospital to ransack the Tower.

  I felt suddenly very sick. I had met my burglar again.

  I must have looked shocked for the farmer said, ‘Don’t upset yourself, lass. You go on home; the police will know what to do about this.’ He had never heard of Rose McQuinn, lady investigator.

  Still preoccupied with the identity of the dead man and his connection with the break-in, I returned to the Tower, alert for the arrival of the police. I didn’t have long to wait.

  A police carriage hurtled past and a short while afterwards I opened the door to a couple of uniformed policemen led by Chief Inspector Gray. He bowed politely.

  ‘Have you a moment, Mrs McQuinn?’

  I indicated that he follow me into the kitchen.

  He sat down at the table, studied me with that intent gaze which must have disconcerted many an innocent man as well as the guilty.

  ‘Just a few questions. I gather you discovered the body …’

  Gray asked me to go through the details again. When I finished with the arrival of the farmer, he repeated, perhaps for the benefit of the policeman who stood by with his notebook at the ready, ‘A man’s body found on the roadside, just at the corner where the road goes steeply down to the loch. I presume he was a stranger to the area.’

  I wanted to say ‘not quite’, but bit back the words, utterance of which would have led into a long preamble. I shook my head and asked, ‘Have you identified him?’

  ‘Not yet. No papers or anything like that. But we’ll soon find out.’

  ‘Nothing in his pockets?’

  Gray gave me a hard look. ‘That’s elementary police work, Mrs McQuinn.’ A touch of scorn.

  In defence I said, ‘I just thought it unusual. He was well dressed; I would have guessed from my cursory look that he would be carrying money, a wallet perhaps.’

  ‘Well, this gentleman had empty pockets, not even a watch chain. It was most likely an accidental death. Drunk perhaps, fell out of a carriage in the fog. Or walking, hit by a passing carriage.’

  My mind was racing ahead. ‘If it wasn’t an accident, he could have been attacked, knocked unconscious, any valuables stolen and then pushed down the slope, his assailant hoping he would land in the loch. His body entangled in weeds could have lain there undiscovered for some time.’

  Gray sighed wearily. He was not impressed. ‘These are idle speculations, Mrs McQuinn. Circumstantial evidence,’ he reminded me, and I guessed, although he was being painstakingly polite, he found my questions rather irritating.

  He nodded to the policeman, who closed his notebook. The interview was over. I wasn’t a suspect.

  ‘Anything else I can do for you?’

  He stood up. ‘You’ll need to sign a statement. Your house is the nearest habitation and you were the first on the scene and discovered the body, down that steep slope to the loch. Surely a rather dangerous descent for a young woman.’

  He gave me a quizzical look and I said, ‘It was my dog here who discovered the body, not I. I only guessed something was amiss and went down to inspect in case the person was merely injured.’

  Thane had sat by my side, a silent observer to this meeting, glancing from one to the other as if he understood exactly what was being said. Very polite and respectful, he had the measure of CI Gray and made no overtures of friendliness to this man who had so far ignored his presence but now gave him a sharp glance followed by a dismissive shrug.

  Then to me a thin smile. ‘Apologies for taking up your time, but as you will be familiar in your own work, the evidence of the first person’ – he emphasised the word – ‘on the scene is of vital importance.’ Another pause, a quizzical eyebrow raised. ‘If you have anything to add?’

  He hadn’t asked directly if I recognised the body and I certainly wasn’t prepared to tell him that the dead man was the bogus policeman who had lured me to the hospital to visit Jack, then broken into the Tower but stolen nothing.

  That was my investigation, mine to solve and I wasn’t prepared to have him take it off my hands.

  More significant, I thought of M Debeau’s arrival – his distraught and dishevelled appearance – but closed my mind firmly on that. I had one more question. ‘When did this happen?’

  A weary sigh from Gray, eager to be gone. ‘Our police doctor speculates sometime during the hours of last night.’

  That let M Debeau off. This was Thursday. I did a quick calculation. It was on Tuesday that M Debeau staggered into the Tower lost and injured in the heavy mist on Arthur’s Seat. It cleared during the day but came down again last night and set the stage for a further victim. And although M Debeau lived in nearby Duddingston and had been detained by Inspector Gray for questioning in connection with the deaths of Mrs Lawers and Hinton, it was highly unlikely that the Frenchman had recovered sufficiently from his ordeal to tackle the mist once again as the bogus policeman’s killer.

  I followed Gray to the door, where his two men were lingering by the gate. They were grinning at some secret joke but the approach of the chief inspector wiped the smiles off their faces.

  They saluted him, turned and looked me over with an interest that suggested I had been under discussion and they knew that I was the woman who lived with Inspector Macmerry. I wondered what else was common knowledge and whether either of them knew the actors’ friend who had passed on so many details of Jack’s personal life.

  Gray turned. ‘Interesting old house, Mrs McQuinn. Wasn’t sure whether you’d be at home. Thought you might have gone down to the Borders with Jack.’

  I smiled. ‘Not this time.’

  ‘You’ll have him home very soon. We had a letter, telling us to expect him back for duty at the beginning of the week.’

  That was nice, I thought, closing the door, especially as I hadn’t had as much as a postcard. To be truthful, business was business with Jack and I hadn’t expected one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  That evening I was still battling with deciphering the map and the other documents spread out on the table in the Great Hall and making notes. Had it a connection with the dead man, my bogus policeman? Then from the kitchen a familiar voice. ‘Anyone at home?’

  ‘Jack!’

  I rushed through and he had hardly time to put down his case before my arms were around his neck.

  He grinned. ‘You missed me.’

  ‘Yes! Let me look at you. Well, you certainly look as if you’ve had a good rest; I’m relieved to see that.’

  ‘Ma’s cooking, good fresh air, that’s the ticket – you should try it sometime.’

  I promised to do so and he said quickly, ‘She sends you her love, talks a lot about you.’ I acknowledged this with a grateful smile and he added, ‘Any tea forthcoming?’

  In his favourite armchair stretching out his legs with a sigh of contentmen
t that indicated he was happy to be home, he added, ‘What news?’

  ‘Just that there’s been a body found near the loch – this morning.’

  ‘Yes, victim of another of Arthur’s Seat’s seasonal mists, I gather.’

  ‘You gather? You knew?’

  He nodded. ‘Looked into the Central Office on my way home. Just to keep up with events. I gather you were asked a lot of questions by Gray.’ He grinned. ‘Did they line you up as a possible suspect – first on the scene, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Thane was first on the scene.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, you know the rules – always the person nearest or the one who finds the body.’

  ‘So they think it is murder? I thought Gray was regarding it as an accident.’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re just biding their time. What with the Duddingston business, perhaps being overcautious. And they have yet to find the man’s identity.’

  I looked at Jack; at that moment more than any other I wanted to tell him about the break-in, the bogus policeman. But I hesitated as I had with Gray. Had I told Jack the morning he was leaving for his parents, he would have insisted that he stay. Worse, he would have insisted that this was police business. More questions from Gray. And there had been nothing stolen; my standing with the chief inspector, already one of scorn, was hardly going to improve with a tale of a break-in I couldn’t prove, the burglar a bogus policeman I couldn’t identify. I could see even Jack’s reactions – his doubts, hints that I was becoming obsessive about the Lawers legacy.

  After all, I had never been in any danger apart from that first train journey. I would tell him sometime, but not until I had solved the case. I said merely, ‘I found the absence of a wallet or a watch chain in a well-dressed man very suspicious.’

  Jack nodded in agreement. ‘The absence of identity fits in with robbery and murder. The killer disposing of his body by throwing him down the slope into the loch, to be found, at some future date, drowned.’