Quest for a Killer Read online

  He paused. ‘The stage was set. All I had to do was stay around after our usual visit until one of my wife’s delicious cakes that poor Hoskins appreciated so much took effect – just a little something in it, not to kill, but to give his bowels a very nasty turn. I’d located an empty small ward where I could patiently wait.

  ‘Then, at last, Hoskins rushed out. That was the moment I was waiting for.’ A grim smile. ‘The deed done, I did not expect to meet Miss Busybody on my way out. And she could ruin everything. But by the time they find her we’ll be on our way to France. There’s a ship at Leith.’

  I looked at Elma, one last plea, calm as I could. For all she had done, I still believed that she could save me. ‘You were my friend. Are you going to let him do this?’

  She looked at me and I knew the answer. The way I’d seen her so many times in Jenners considering a garment, a piece of material, a choice that was to be rejected.

  She shrugged, and Peter smiled. ‘She’s my wife, she’ll do anything I ask, anything. If I handed her this gun and said, kill her, she would do as I asked. Wouldn’t you, my love? Look away, if you don’t want to see.’

  Elma turned her head, but she made no move. And I knew it was true.

  I heard the gun click. And at that moment, a whirlwind entered the kitchen. It was Danny. I had never seen anyone move at such speed. His feet seemed hardly to touch the ground.

  Peter and Elma were taken by surprise. Danny leapt forward, pushed me aside.

  He was bigger than Peter, but the gun was cocked.

  I heard the shot. Danny staggered, and as we both fell, Peter laughed, levelled the gun.

  We were both to die. But this time the shot came from the door. Peter whirled round, he’d been hit and he yelled. As he fell, Elma, screaming, rushed to him, tried to wrest the gun from his hand.

  The room was full of people. Jack and Inspector Gray, as well as uniformed policemen and Hoskins…

  I was on the floor beside Danny, holding him in my arms.

  I saw Peter being led out, wounded, a last glimpse of Elma screaming obscenities at his side.

  Jack came forward. ‘Rose. Rose…’

  There was blood all over me. Danny’s blood.

  ‘I’m not hurt.’

  Jack knelt down, tried to take the weight of Danny from me.

  Danny’s eyelids flickered open. He looked at me. ‘Sure now, it’s a good place for a man to die – in a lovely woman’s arms.’

  ‘Danny, Danny, don’t…don’t leave me.’ I whispered as there flashed through my mind, in that timeless moment, the many times we had faced death together. As well as that dream of mine that one day I would open the door of Solomon’s Tower and Danny would be standing there, smiling, his arms outstretched to hold me. Only it was I who held him. And he was dying.

  Jack helped me support him. His eyes were closing again, like a weary old man.

  ‘Look after her, Jack,’ he whispered. ‘Do that for me.’

  He coughed. There was blood on his lips. His eyes closed, this time for ever.

  I sobbed, held on to him. Unwilling to let him go.

  Jack said, ‘The ambulance is here…’

  I looked up, sudden hope in my heart. Maybe?

  They were carrying him away. I held on to his hand. ‘No, please, no.’

  Jack shook his head, put an arm around me. I buried my head in the region of his chest as high as I could reach, mourning for Danny. For Thane.

  In the now silent Tower, we were alone.

  EPILOGUE

  Jack took over. Vince came from Balmoral and they saw Danny laid to rest, as Sam Wild.

  ‘Someday the truth will out,’ Jack said. ‘Meantime we stick with the belief that Danny died in Arizona.’ Perhaps that was the truth.

  The Lambsworths had been under investigation by the Edinburgh City Police since Felix Miles Rice’s obituary fell by chance into the hands of an old acquaintance of theirs now living in Glasgow. They had swindled him out of several thousand pounds in their London days. He had an account to settle and an interesting tale to tell.

  Elma Lamb and Peter Worth had met a decade earlier, thespians in a small local company. They discovered that they shared the same birthday and as both were fair, blue-eyed, fellow actors they laughingly christened themselves ‘the twins’. They fell in love, married, and took the name Lambsworth.

  On tour with a Shakespearean company, by chance Felix Miles Rice came to a performance. Enchanted by Elma, he fell in love and, unaware that she was already married, he proposed – a wealthy man with much to offer. Peter, weary of touring and bad digs, decided that Elma should accept. She did so and by the time they had moved to Edinburgh, Peter had worked out a plan.

  Both were aware that, if Felix found out about his bigamous marriage, the consequences would be disastrous. They had to get rid of him. As his widow Elma stood to inherit everything.

  Peter had thought out the details meticulously. Among Elma’s friends she had learnt of a lady investigator, Rose McQuinn, and cultivating her friendship would provide the perfect alibi for Peter’s plan. He had left it too late. Felix was suspicious of their relationship. One step ahead, someone in the London branch of his firm discovered that Elma Miles Rice’s twin was in fact her husband.

  So Felix had made an appointment with his lawyer for the next day to cut Elma out of his will. But proud and successful and with a belief in his own infallibility, and wishing to avoid a public scandal at all costs, he could not resist the temptation to let this miserable little swindler know the truth; it was his undoing, for Peter meant to kill him.

  Unfortunately for him, he was seen in the garden by Hodge who, loyal to his mistress and her brother, could not bring himself to voice the suspicions which cost him his life. So he had to be disposed of by Peter, carried in a hiring cab, the one I encountered the day that Danny arrived at Solomon’s Tower.

  Jack honoured Danny’s last wish, a promise to be there when I needed him. I knew that marriage would be included, if that was what I wanted.

  I discovered that Jack was a better actor than I gave him credit for. One day he said, ‘How you managed to keep us both in the house without meeting was quite an achievement.’ He gave me a quizzical grin. ‘I guessed that the secret room had a new tenant.’

  ‘You knew?’

  He nodded. ‘Almost from the beginning. I knew from my visit to New York that Danny McQuinn, your heart’s darling, was also Sam Wild. I just wondered how long I could keep that from you and from the Edinburgh City Police.’

  ‘And risk everything – including your career, if they found out.’

  ‘That too.’ He shook his head and said warily, ‘Then, at my folks’ golden wedding, I had thought you would be safe in the house with Danny to protect you but something was wrong. I had one of my weird moments. You were in terrible danger. It’s happened before.’

  I knew it had, although Jack was always reluctant to admit that he might have a psychic side to his nature, defying all logic.

  ‘I’m grateful,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘I don’t want you to regard it as an excuse for a happy ending.’

  ‘The jury’s still out on that one.’ I laughed. ‘But it will be taken into consideration.’

  Jack and I are close, but not lovers. Crimes solved, cases closed, explanations found.

  All except one.

  Over and over I have relived that moment of agony when Danny had died in my arms. No words for my bitter grief overflowing. For Danny. For Thane.

  I had lost them both.

  Jack had held me, let me weep. But there was no comfort on earth in that scene of desolation and heartbreak, no one could help me. I was alone.

  But not quite alone. I looked down. My hand was wet.

  It was being licked.

  Thane!

  ‘Oh, Thane,’ I put my arms around his neck and cried, ‘That vile beast said he had killed you.’

  Jack said, ‘He certainly killed something. There’s a dead s
heep at the bottom of your garden. We almost fell over it.’

  Life goes on, but there is this one tantalising mystery still unsolved. Maybe it never will be.

  About the Author

  ALANNA KNIGHT has had more than sixty books published in an impressive writing career spanning over forty years. She is a founding member and Honorary Vice President of the Scottish Association of Writers, Honorary President of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club, and a member of the Scottish Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association. Born and educated in Tyneside, Alanna now lives in Edinburgh.

  www.alannaknight.com

  By Alanna Knight

  THE ROSE MCQUINN SERIES

  The Inspector’s Daughter

  Dangerous Pursuits

  An Orkney Murder

  Ghost Walk

  Destroying Angel

  Quest for a Killer

  Deadly Legacy

  THE INSPECTOR FARO SERIES

  Murder in Paradise

  The Seal King Murders

  Murders Most Foul

  THE TAM EILDOR SERIES

  The Gowrie Conspiracy

  The Stuart Sapphire

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  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  12 Fitzroy Mews

  London W1T 6DW

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2010.

  This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2013.

  Copyright © 2010 by ALANNA KNIGHT

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1452–0