Dangerous Pursuits (A Rose McQuinn Mystery) Read online

  He wished us good day and left. The General followed me into the library and said, 'Dr Pierce has served this family for many years. He is a fine man, a trusted friend as well as our adviser. You will no doubt have heard of him and of his contributions to medical science in Edinburgh.'

  I hadn't heard of him but Jack reinforced the General's opinion that Pierce was well known as a doctor of high repute who had, on occasion, been called in by the police to help them investigate suspicious circumstances where death by poison was involved.

  Tessa escaped the sore throat but seemed rather listless and when I arrived next day, Nancy was throwing a ball to Torquil in the gardens.

  'Why, hello, Rose!' She seemed surprised to see me. And indicating Torquil: 'He is much better. But Tessa was sick after you left yesterday. She made a great fuss about missing her lesson today, although the General was quite insistent.'

  Nancy stopped and looked at me. 'He intended sending you a note this morning.'

  I shook my head. 'There has been no word from him. And as I'm here anyway - I'd better see Tessa.'

  Leaving her I went inside, across the hall to the library and, hearing the General's voice, I tapped on the door and opened it.

  Tessa wasn't in evidence but the General had a visitor.

  There was a young man with him, standing by the window. Already the afternoon sun was falling low, shining into the room, and I couldn't see his face clearly.

  'I beg your pardon, sir,' I said to the General who swung round to face me. 'I thought that Tessa would be here.'

  'As you can see, Mrs McQuinn,' he said stiffly, 'she is not. Did you not receive my message this morning, that I wished her lesson to be cancelled?'

  'I received no message, sir.'

  'The stable boy was given a note to deliver to you. This is too bad,' he said shortly.

  Not wanting him to feel badly about my wasted journey, I said, 'It is just a short step back across the hill.'

  He made a gesture of dismissal and nodded towards the young man. 'Mr Appleton and I have business matters to discuss, so if you will excuse us...'

  The man seemed indifferent to the General's urgent tones and continued to look out of the window, turning his back on us. He leaned his hands on the sill and stared into the garden as if observing something of vital importance.

  I heard familiar voices outside and, apologizing once again, I closed the library door as Nancy and the children rushed across the hall to meet me.

  Tessa had seen me arrive from the nursery window.

  She took my hand. 'Can I have my lesson, please?'

  ‘Not today, dear.'

  'But I'm well again,' she wailed. 'I promise not to be sick again.'

  She began to sob, clinging to my arm. 'I love painting and - and just being with you, Mrs McQuinn.'

  Nancy looked at her, sighed and said, 'She was heartbroken when her uncle said there should be no lesson. They are the highlight of her day. Now, don't cry, dear.'

  But Tessa refused to be consoled.

  'Tell you what,' said Nancy. 'Why don't we see Mrs McQuinn home?'

  'Yes! Yes, please.' And both children brightened at that prospect.

  'The fresh air will do her good,' said Nancy, leading the way through the stable yard.

  'Catch!' shouted Torquil, throwing the ball to Tessa.

  She released my hand and raced after her brother across the lane and on to the hill.

  As we walked more sedately after them, I told Nancy of my embarrassing moment of dashing into the library as usual and how I had rather upset the General by interrupting a business meeting.

  'A young man with him and they were in earnest discussion.'

  'Oh, that would be Mr Appleton - his stepson.' And I remembered Nancy telling me of a similar occasion when Torquil had stormed in with a cut knee and disturbed his uncle. Now, lowering her voice in case the children were listening she said, 'Mr Appleton's visits are not very regular, thank goodness. And Mrs Laing believes - she's very confidential about it - that he only comes to borrow money. To get the General to pay his gambling debts. As you can imagine, the General couldn't bear a breath of that kind of scandal.'

  That was the day I heard from Bertha Simms. Back at the Tower there was a letter waiting for me.

  Dear Mrs McQuinn,

  Further to your investigation regarding my sister, would you please come and see me at your earliest, tomorrow if possible,

  This is very important.

  The last sentence was heavily underlined.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  In response to Bertha Simms' letter I set off immediately. With a feeling of excitement and renewed hopes that perhaps the case was not closed after all, I took the sketch I had made of the dead woman.

  Bertha greeted me with a sigh of relief and led the way into the little parlour.

  I said, 'I take it you have heard from your sister.'

  She bit her lip and looked undecided for a moment. 'I know that she is well.'

  'Then I gather she is no longer a missing person at any rate.'

  Bertha nodded. 'That is so - thankfully. But she has met - someone - an artist, and has gone to Italy with him.'

  At first I did not understand her tone of reluctance. 'But that is splendid news,' I said, unable to account for her solemn expression. 'Such a relief for you.'

  She looked at me doubtfully. 'I don't know about relief, Mrs McQuinn. Actually I'm a bit shocked by this news. Of course, I'm happy for her if that's what she wants. But it is really quite terrible.'

  'Terrible? In what way?'

  She leaned forward, her manner confidential. 'This artist fellow is quite well known in London...' She mentioned a name that wasn't well known to me. 'But he has a wife and four children. There will be a dreadful scandal if - and when - this comes to light. She begs me not to tell anyone but I don't know what to do.'

  I thought that her sister going away with a married man should have been a lot preferable to receiving news that Mabel was dead, as she went on, 'I really don't know how I'll be able to face anyone at our church. We've always been such a good-living family, never had any call to hide our heads. And now this - it is awful, don't you agree?'

  And with a sigh: 'The police will have to be told, of course. I can only hope that we will be able to rely on their discretion.'

  I considered how her opinion of me would have plummeted had she known that I had a lover who was a detective sergeant in the Edinburgh Police.

  I wondered why she had summoned me with such urgency. Perhaps aware of my puzzled expression, she said, 'It is on another matter that I wished to see you, Mrs McQuinn. Remember when the police had me in to identify the dead woman, just in case-' she shuddered, 'in case it was Mabel. So dreadful!'

  I agreed and she went on, 'Of course, I was greatly relieved to see it wasn't my dear sister but I think I know who it was.'

  'You do!' Here was success at last, and from the most unlikely quarter.

  'I have been thinking about it ever since and I am sure that I have seen her before.'

  'You didn't mention this at the time though.'

  Bertha shook her head. 'I wasn't sure, it was days later and I racked my brains to think where and when. You know the sort of thing, the more you puzzle over something like that, the harder it gets to remember. Then in a flash, it suddenly dawns on you. Well, it wasn't until yesterday when I was looking through a box of letters that I found this.'

  And stretching her hand out to the sideboard she picked up a photograph of two girls, smiling arm-in-arm. 'That's her, I'm sure, the girl with Mabel.'

  There was triumph, success at last. 'What was her name?'

  Bewildered, Bertha shook her head. 'That I can't tell you, Mrs McQuinn. Ivy, Ida - something like that, I think, but I just can't remember exactly.'

  Success followed by instant failure, I thought. I was back at the beginning again. 'Why did you send for me, Miss Simms? Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to tell the police?'

&nb
sp; She looked away. 'You know why I'm not telling them, they would have to know all about her,' she touched the photograph, 'and where Mabel met her - in a mental asylum,' she added in hushed tones. 'It was when she was having fits, convulsions - they found it was epilepsy. But Mabel was so ashamed, she didn't want anyone to know that she had ever set foot in an asylum. You know what folks make of that, Mrs McQuinn. They'd think Mabel was going mad.'

  She shuddered. 'Poor lass, she would die of shame if that ever came to light.'

  'Miss Simms, illness is a disease, not a crime,' I protested gently.

  'You tell her that. She bore it nobly. She tried hard to keep it from her devoted pupils at the school. She said it was so degrading, like being marked with madness.'

  I wondered what her artist lover would think about epilepsy or if she had been too ashamed to tell him.

  I studied the photograph again, trying to see a likeness to Mabel's companion, to recognize features that might belong to the same dead face on my drawing.

  Bertha said, 'She was a bit older than Mabel. Not nearly so bonny.'

  'Can you contact Mabel and ask her?'

  'I have no address, Mrs McQuinn. They are travelling around Italy. It may be some time before they return to London.'

  Time was not on my side in this investigation either, so I asked, 'Where is this hospital?'

  'In Dean village.' She scribbled down the address. 'I used to visit Mabel twice a week. When she came out she was not much better and, I feared, made a thousand times worse by her experience. However, she'd become great friends with this woman and they kept in touch.'

  I asked for details and that took a little time. There was some confusion over the right dates, which I wrote alongside the address. But at last I rode off promising Bertha I would be the soul of discretion and thanking heaven that I cared not a jot for the thin skin of conventional Edinburgh society which I had long since abandoned.

  The exterior of the Asylum for Diseases of the Mind, however, was enough to strike terror into the heart of anyone with a nervous disposition. A large grey gloomy establishment with high barred windows on the upper floor, it bore more resemblance to a prison than to a place that cared for and cured unhappy people who were sick in mind.

  Matters were not improved over the threshold, where the atmosphere was hardly calculated to inspire patients with feelings of hope and confidence about their future prospects.

  I made my way across the dark hall to a tiny desk occupied by a tight-lipped woman whose countenance suggested a no-nonsense approach to life. She eyed my approach with caution and suspicion, her expression indicating that frivolity would be instantly punishable by incarceration in one of their more forbidding rooms.

  Under that eagle eye I presented my business card and showed her my drawing. Hardly glancing at it, she demanded, 'Name, please.'

  'I believe it to be Ida or Ivy.'

  She looked at me contemptuously and handed back the drawing. 'Then I am afraid I cannot help you. You must understand that people who come here are treated with the greatest confidence. That is the earnest wish and command of their relatives who sign for them to be kept within these walls.'

  And once signed in I felt doubtful if they ever came out again.

  'It would be a tremendous help and a great obligement if you could possibly consult your book for the dates I've written down and see if there was a woman by the name of Ida or Ivy.'

  With a deep sigh of resigned toleration, she opened a drawer and took out a ledger, thumbed through it.

  'You have my assurance there is no one by either of those names resident here at the dates you are concerned about.'

  I had neither excuse nor desire to linger. It was raining steadily as I rode away, a fitting end to a frustrating interview. But at least I was one of the fortunates of this world. I could walk out freely and escape from those forbidding surroundings.

  And I thought with compassion of the plight of those whose relatives wished for many purposes, many quite nefarious, to put away some member of their family in such an asylum for the remainder of their lives.

  In the Tower I removed my wet garments, feeling that I had reached an all-time low, that I had now encountered and abandoned the last remaining straw, frail as it was, of my investigation. Unless Mabel could be contacted when she returned from her travels and provide more useful information than had been forthcoming from her sister, then this was indeed a lost cause.

  As for Bertha, I recognized that she could be wrong, that I could put no vote of confidence in her vague description and feeling of recognition for Mabel's companion at the asylum.

  I wrote up my logbook and wondered whether I should include a line drawn across marking 'the end'.

  But I closed the book, that could wait until tomorrow.

  And tomorrow was the opening of The Pirates of Penzance, bogus constables and all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Quite suddenly we were into the dead time of the year. I had forgotten in the ten years since I left Edinburgh that as winter progressed there were days when all colours faded, Arthur's Seat turned hostile, cold, forbidding and oddly lifeless, as became an extinct volcano.

  The days were short, so bitterly cold that I was careful never to let the peat fire go out, for the Tower with its stone walls and many draughts was highly uncomfortable and many times I wore my cape and scarf indoors, my hands freezing on the simplest household tasks.

  My sole companion through the day was Thane who spent long hours stretched out before the fire. Then suddenly he would sit up, alert as if hearing a command, and he would lift the latch of the kitchen door with his nose and trot across the garden.

  It was slightly unnerving watching him race up the hill, always with the thought for that inevitable day when my faithful deerhound might no longer return.

  One bright note on an otherwise gloomy horizon was the opening night of The Pirates of Penzance at the Pleasance Theatre. The Opera Society had worked hard on their production as had their accomplished orchestra and chorus, gathered from a talented piano teacher and the local church choirs.

  Desmond Marks sang 'A policeman's lot is not a happy one' in splendid voice and was so well received that an encore was called for. Even though I did not like the man, I realized that there should have been a better future than an insurance office for his talents.

  Jack was very impressed. At the interval I looked around for the Carthews, remembering that Lady Carthew had said when we first met that she was looking forward to the performance. As Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts, Nancy told me two weeks ago she had purchased tickets for them, in the front row. I craned my neck throughout the performance - but the two best seats in the house remained empty.

  As we gathered in the Green Room afterwards to drink coffee and mingle with the cast, Nancy came over carrying a large bouquet. Interrupting a congratulatory kiss on her cheek from Jack, I asked about the Carthews.

  'We're all disappointed. I can't understand why they haven't come. They are so supportive and it does help boost our sales having the General's name associated with the company.'

  She shrugged and added by way of apology, ‘Perhaps Lady Carthew had a chill, I've heard her coughing during the last day or two, and she's so delicate. But they might have let us know,' she added. 'We could have used those two front seats seeing we had a full house for the first night and we've had to turn people away.'

  I looked across from the table where we were seated and noticed Desmond Marks surrounded by admirers, mostly female.

  He saw us and Nancy smiled and acknowledged his greeting. Touching her bouquet, she said, 'Such a nice man. So thoughtful. This was from him. Nora should have been here to see him tonight. Any wife would have been proud of such a husband.'

  I gathered she had been told some plausible and uplifting version of Nora's sojourn in Glasgow.

  It was soon evident that Nancy was also a popular member of the chorus. Couples drifted past and shook her hand. Coffee and cakes we
re served and the room was very crowded, hot and noisy.

  As there was a spare seat at our table Nancy invited one of the constable players who was drifting past to join us. Introduced as Alec, he took a seat politely but continued to look over his shoulder.

  'Have you seen Mr Robson, Nancy?' She hadn't. 'He was coming tonight. He wanted to see the show.'

  Nancy smiled. 'It was you he really wanted to see, Alec.'

  Alec shrugged modestly. 'He's the manager of one of the big Glasgow theatres. They are casting for the Christmas pantomime.'

  'And Alec's been offered a part,' said Nancy proudly.

  We murmured congratulations as Nancy giggled. 'It's Cinderella and you'll never guess what Alec's to be playing.'

  I said, 'Buttons?'

  'No!' Again Nancy laughed. 'One of the Ugly Sisters.'

  I looked at him again. Pleasant-mannered, slim, slightly built - in no way outstanding...

  They were chuckling about the transformation scene, wigs and costumes. And for me, something clicked then although my brain wasn't quite ready yet to absorb what had been staring me in the face.

  But before I could say a word, Nancy pointed. 'There he is. Alec. Your Mr Robson talking to Desmond.'

  Alec leaped from his seat and began to weave his way through the throng.

  When we left all the hiring cabs were taken so we had to walk the short distance back to the Tower while Nancy regaled us with the excitement of a cousin's wedding in Queensferry on Saturday. The General had given her time off and Mrs Laing would put the children to bed.

  Jack showed little interest in our women's talk of what to wear. However, as Nancy prepared to leave us, he gallantly offered to see her and her bouquet back to Carthew House.

  It was a fine evening, no wind and a rising moon on the hill, so I decided that for once we should both escort her home.

  Trying to sort out what I had seen that evening, I hardly listened to Jack's talk about North Berwick. There was a lot I wanted to consult him about after we left Nancy. Instead, we quarrelled all the way back to the Tower.