The Inspector's Daughter (A Rose McQuinn Mystery) Page 20

  I felt very happy and confident as I took my journal out on to the hill, sketched the Tower, to draw it as it looked when I first came to live here. Before all those trees and shrubs rendered it invisible from higher up the hillside.

  My other reason was that such concentration was the perfect activity to calm my anxious thoughts about the future.

  Thane found me sitting on a boulder. He greeted me with his usual animation and flopped down on the ground beside me.

  Comforted by his presence and our usual companionable silence, when it was too dark to continue drawing our ways parted. He declined to return to the Tower and loped away back up the hill. I wondered about his world, what fascinations there were that no human would ever see or understand.

  It had rained heavily during the night but the mist had cleared and a thin watery sun was with us once more when Jack arrived that afternoon.

  I put the book and the bottle before him. 'Let's see you work one of your miracles of detection,' I said.

  He regarded me solemnly. 'This is just a joke, Rose.'

  I smiled. 'A harmless game, something to impress one of my friends.'

  'Very well,' he said and I watched him as he dusted the book cover and the bottle with very fine black dust and, like magic, the fingerprints became clearly visible. The thumb was strongest, the four fingers tended to blur.

  By using a magnifying hand lens, a few minutes later I knew I was right, that thrill of pleasure, the delight in having my suspicions confirmed.

  I might have confided in Jack then and there, but fate deemed otherwise.

  A ring at the door and I answered it to Nancy, with wee George in the pram. 'I was walking past the circus, I wanted to have a look at it and when I knew I was quite near...' she said.

  I cut her apologies short. 'Do come in, Nancy. It's lovely to see you.'

  Jack was looking out of the parlour window, his back to us.

  'Oh, Mrs McQuinn, I'm sorry. You have a visitor.'

  Jack turned round. 'Nancy - Nancy Craig - isn't it?'

  'Jack Macmerry-'

  The next moment the pair were hugging each other, laughing delightedly. Suddenly they remembered me.

  Still holding Nancy's hand. Jack said: 'This is wonderful. Nancy and I knew each other long ago. We were next-door neighbours in Duddingston.'

  Pausing, he looked at her fondly. 'We were childhood sweethearts, weren't we?' he said shyly.

  Nancy regarded him gently, eyes bright, as if she too remembered. Then she shook her head, said sadly: 'We moved away. Things changed and I never expected to see Jack again.'

  'Nor I you, Nancy.' Jack seized the opportunity to give her another hug.

  'I heard you had gone into the police.'

  'I heard you were working in Fife.'

  'And now meeting again like this.'

  'It's wonderful.'

  I looked at them. Wonderful for them, I thought.

  The conversation over a cup of tea belonged to things past and I was no part of it.

  Listening and observing their closeness, I felt envious. I had been guilty of seeing Jack Macmerry as part of my new life, perhaps even of my future. Once again, I thought sadly, I had been wrong.

  Was I witnessing a lover's meeting destined for a happy ending, sentimental as any in Alice's romantic novels?

  Later, watching them walk away down the road together, if I were to be perfectly honest, I experienced another emotion. Once I had a husband, had been loved. And I knew the lack of that passionate lover. My body cried out for the need of a man to hold me in his arms again.

  Whether I wanted him for life or just for a passing hour, Jack could have fulfilled that role.

  And now I knew I was jealous.

  He never looked back. The two were absorbed in each other and I was forgotten.

  I went inside and closed the door, doubting whether there would be any more invitations to walk in Princes Street Gardens, or to meet his parents.

  At least not for me.

  They were well suited, an ideal couple. Jack with his new promotion, ready to marry. And Nancy would be the perfect wife and mother of his children. Of that I had no doubts at all.

  But for now, I had other dangerous business on hand. It was time to confront Matthew Bolton.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was half past three, and there was still time to tackle Matthew and to get this unpleasant business over with today.

  Where was this confrontation to take place? I could go into the High Street to the offices of Bolton and Bolton, but Matthew was a devious character and the chances of finding that this was one of his rare days at his desk were not encouraging, despite what Alice had told me at the bazaar while we were having tea.

  This was her evening of helping in the soup kitchen for the poor of the parish and, as she was never home until eight, poor Matthew would have to make do with a cold collation. 'He is very patient,' she told me.

  With Alice out of the way, I could go to the house, say I had an appointment with Mr Bolton. And risk being turned away by the maid. And should she mention it to her mistress, wouldn't Alice think that odd?

  So left with the coachhouse as the only alternative to catch Matthew on his way home, I made my decision.

  It was a sordid place to have to spend time waiting, my mind full of misgivings, but as the church clock struck the half-hour, my patience was rewarded by the sound of footsteps outside.

  The door opened and the rough-looking labourer strode in.

  Blinded by the sunlight outside, he didn't see me at first. The interior was dark, my presence concealed by the shadows.

  With the tired sigh of an exhausted man, he began to remove the scarf about his chin and his bonnet. Suddenly he knew he was not alone. Turning sharply, his eyes widened and he shouted hoarsely: 'What do you think you're doing, sneaking in here? Get out of here,' he added, his fist raised angrily.

  I stepped forward. 'It's no use. The game's up.'

  'What are you talking about?' he demanded. 'Get out of here - at once - or I'll tell the master-'

  As if he hadn't interrupted, I went on: 'I think not. The game's up, Matthew, for you and your eccentric friend. Except that there isn't any friend, never has been, eccentric or otherwise, living in this vile place.' I shook my head. 'No mysterious friend from the past to whom you owe a debt of honour.'

  He groaned as I added: 'It's always been just Matthew Bolton, playing a dramatic role, hasn't it?'

  Defeated, he sank down on to the rickety chair. 'And how did you find out?' he gasped.

  'By this.' I produced Jack's sheet of paper. 'These fingerprints at the top are from one of your novels, which I took the liberty of borrowing from your library. Underneath are prints from an empty bottle which I found lying on the floor here.'

  'So-'

  'So, if you look closely you'll observe that the two sets of prints are identical. They indicate without any doubt that there is only one man - yourself.'

  He was staring at the prints, ready, I was sure, to protest, to question the accuracy of such evidence.

  'Take them to the door, examine them properly in daylight,' I said.

  He shook his head, but made no move.

  'Well, perhaps you'd like to tell me instead just what is going on, Matthew.'

  'Does Alice know about this?' he demanded.

  'No one but us.'

  He sighed. 'Thank God for that. It's nothing illegal, you know.'

  'I believe you.'

  He groaned again, put a hand to his head. 'I have no idea what your part is in all this, what it can possibly have to do with you. But all I can tell you is that you are almost too late with your fingerprints.' He looked up at me. 'The charade, the game I have been playing for three months is almost over. Just two more days, that is all I needed to complete it.'

  He paused suddenly, demanded sharply: 'Did he put you on to it?'

  'Thomas Carless, you mean? No.'

  'But you do know him. Are you working for
him?'

  'No, Matthew. I'm working, if you might call it that - the term I use is investigating - at your wife's request.'

  His eyes widened at that. 'For Alice? I don't believe you. She has no idea. I've been at great pains to keep it from her.'

  'At such pains that she believes you are having an affair with another woman. Lily Harding to be precise.'

  'Lily Harding!' he exploded. 'I hardly know the woman. I saw her after we moved from Peel House, to help her sort out her finances and I've paid her several visits lately on legal matters. She wants to adopt her late sister's baby, but since her brother-in-law has recently remarried he now wishes to reclaim his son.'

  'Surely you could have told all this to Alice? She would have been interested and sympathetic.'

  'Interested I dare say. But sympathetic, no! Mrs Harding has long been a sore point between us. No doubt it relates to our change of fortunes and having to sacrifice Peel House to the Hardings. Even since the poor woman was widowed Alice has been quite irrationally jealous. She's got it into her head that Mrs Harding is some sort of a femme fatale and I've learned, in the interests of a peaceful life, to avoid mentioning her name.'

  Especially with wee George, I thought. The baby even I had suspected might have been fathered by Matthew.

  He frowned. 'Who told you of my visits to Peel Lodge?'

  'You were seen recently by your former next-door neighbour, Freda Elliott, who happens to be an old acquaintance of mine - and Alice's.'

  'I still don't understand why Alice involved you in this.'

  'Because, Matthew, she loves you and she's heartbroken by your current strange behaviour. Certain that you have changed and no longer love her. When we met again recently she was quite desperate. She had to tell someone and as we were once close friends, she pleaded with me to try to find out what was going on.'

  'For pity's sake - spying on me, was that it?' he said indignantly.

  'It's called investigating in polite society, Matthew.'

  He shook his head. 'I expect I have changed lately. I've been under tremendous pressure, but I've never ceased to love her. It's a long story, Rose. How much of it do you know already?'

  'Not a great deal and that only guesswork, I'm afraid. By piecing together information about your past.'

  'My past?'

  'Your love of adventure, how you wanted to be an explorer and how you rebelled against going into the firm.'

  'I still hate it, you know.'

  'I also knew from my stepbrother that you were a great climber, here in Scotland and in the Alps. Then one day I saw someone very like your bogus labouring friend on a scaffolding in the Pleasance.'

  He grimaced. 'I saw you that day, looking straight up at me when the lads were all whistling. I was fairly sure that you didn't recognise me, though.' And, with a grim smile: 'Well done, Rose. I think it's you should be in the legal profession, not me,' he added bitterly, 'putting all these odd facts together and coming up with a solution.'

  'I haven't quite reached that yet. All these facts, as you call them, were strange enough but the question remains, why did you take on this ridiculous charade in the first place?'

  I gave him a moment to reply, before asking gently: 'Do I take it that you are being blackmailed, Matthew?'

  He laughed. 'Indeed I am not. You are quite wrong about that. The correct answer is simply money. Steeplejacks are in great demand, since it's highly dangerous work. As you'll realise from the casualties you read about in the newspapers, there is a lot of money to be made by skilled climbers with good heads for heights.' He sighed. 'Truth is, I've always been a gambler. I can't help it or cure it and we are in desperate need of money. Although Alice hasn't the slightest idea, I might have been faced with bankruptcy and prison, if I hadn't met my old college chum, Thomas Carless, again at my club one night.

  'Thomas is a great gambler, always was, so when he heard my story, he bet me a thousand guineas that I couldn't work for three months as a steeplejack and keep it secret from everyone, including my firm, which was the hardest part of all. And my wife.'

  His eyes brightened. 'It was a challenge and dammit, one I enjoyed and was certain I could win. It was going very well, except that I was so tired by the end of the day that I was short-tempered and neglecting poor Alice.'

  'Couldn't you have told her? She would have understood-'

  'Which shows just how well you know Alice. She would have been appalled. She has a terrible fear of heights - witness those library steps the other day. And she's always hated me going climbing. I had to promise to abandon it when we married. The idea that her husband, a middle-aged man, was doing a dangerous job every day, perched on high scaffolding in all weathers, would have sent her into terminal vapours.'

  He smiled wryly. 'There is another reason, too, which probably has not occurred to you. What would the neighbours think if they found out that Matthew Bolton was working as a common labourer?' Sadly, he shook his head. 'No, Rose. She would never have forgiven me for that, for the scandal and the gossip. We would never have lifted our heads again, a laughing stock, the outcasts of our social circle.'

  'So that was why you invented the old friend in the coachhouse, the tramp who had fallen on bad times. A bit tenuous, wasn't it?'

  He shrugged. 'It was the only convenient way I could change into my labouring garb each day and back again into more gentlemanly wear when I returned home every evening. Don't you see, I had to have a safe place where I was unlikely to be disturbed - or observed.'

  I pointed to the wooden box. 'There lies the real Matthew Bolton.'

  He nodded and smiled. 'Correct. I have to hand it to you, Rose, you've been very clever. I expect it's your upbringing, living in a policeman's house.'

  'Maybe so. But you scared the life out of me at our first encounter here. You were a very convincing labourer. I almost gave up that day you yelled at me. You should have been an actor-'

  He laughed. 'You've guessed it. Another of my unfulfilled ambitions. A pity we have only one life to live.' And then, soberly: 'I was even more scared than you were. I could see the whole charade falling to pieces, my hard-won wages and Carless's thousand guineas vanishing into dust.'

  'Even without the fingerprints, your hands were too elegant for a workman, although your nails were very dirty when we spoke in the library the other day.'

  'That was always a problem. Steeple-jacking is dirty work and although I could wash my face and hands reasonably, I needed hot water and a brush to clean them after some of the dirtier work.'

  'What are you going to do now?' I asked.

  He straightened his shoulders. 'Tell Alice, confess all and throw myself on her mercy. And then whatever she says, I must finish the job.' He looked at me. 'Trouble is, Rose, I shall miss it when I'm sitting safely back behind a desk again. It's been a challenge and has renewed my taste for danger. There is something so ... exhilarating about being way up there above the city, almost like being back in the mountains again,' he added wistfully. Then, taking my hand: 'If you'll forgive the grime, Rose, I hope now we can be friends, that we will laugh - some day, with Alice when the shock has worn off - about this escapade.'

  I wasn't too hopeful about that and, leaving him to change back into Matthew Bolton and tell his wife the whole story, I would have given much to be a fly on the wall.

  As I returned to the Tower I was glad that I had been wrong about Matthew, all those fears that he had killed Molly Dunn because she was blackmailing him over Lily Harding.

  Such flights of fancy. But the frightening fact remained. Even if the police were ready to close the case and mark it 'unsolved', someone had killed her.

  And that faceless 'someone' was still at large.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Thane was in the garden when I reached home. He was investigating Foley's trench and the plants that lay alongside.

  It was a beautiful, soft, calm summer evening, an unseen army of insects buzzing in the gorse bushes, a pair of hawks hovering
on the summit of Arthur's Seat.

  As I sat on the wall with Thane at my feet, my hand on his head, I felt at peace with the world and quite proud of myself. I could hardly wait until tomorrow to see Jack again and tell him of the successful experiment with the fingerprints. My first case!

  At that moment I believed I would be ready to congratulate him even if he told me he was wildly in love with Nancy and that he intended to marry her.

  I had survived worse things and, considering what I had lived through during the last two years, another disappointment would hardly seem a major catastrophe.

  Thane was oddly restless, though. He wasn't sharing my feeling of peace and kept getting up, loping across the garden, staring up at the hill. On any other face but a dog's his expression could have been described as puzzled and anxious.

  I guessed there was something in the wind that night beyond my human ken. Could it be the restless hovering birds of prey reminding him he hadn't eaten for some time?

  I patted his head. 'What's wrong? Are you hungry? Is that it? Are they hinting there's food ready for the picking?'

  He turned his head on one side, giving me his wise look. And then, with that oddly human grin, he jumped the wall and loped away up the hill.

  I stayed outside until the last of the sunset faded over the Pentland Hills, then I went inside and lit the lamps. I fed Cat and, taking up my book, I thought about tomorrow.

  Perhaps it was because the mystery of Matthew Bolton was solved that I had no positive plan. Suddenly there seemed no future, as if everything had ceased.

  This was my first case. Perhaps it was a normal reaction after the day's excitement and when I had established myself as a professional investigator I would get used to it.

  A noise outside alerted me. Was it Thane returned, his appetite satisfied? Opening the door I met only blackness. The moon would rise later but at the moment nothing separated Arthur's Seat from the horizon. The outline of hill and sky were one.