Akin to Murder Read online

  A school week had flown by for Vince, who was doing well and not hating every lesson at the Royal High or the daily walk up to Calton Hill.

  ‘I have exams coming up soon, and I won’t be able to work this weekend,’ he reminded his mother. ‘I’ll be at the bookshop both days,’ he added proudly. However he arrived on the Sunday morning to be told by Mr Molesby that there was a change of plans and agreed that he should come on Monday instead.

  It was with some disquiet that when he arrived he found the shop door ajar, but Mr M (as he called him privately) was not in evidence. A quick look round confirmed that although most of the books remained on their shelves, there was an untidy scattering of papers on the floor, evidence that drawers had been opened, their contents searched.

  His heart pounded in sudden fear. These were unmistakable signs that there had been a burglary. The real treasures, the rare and valuable books, however, were kept with the cash box containing the day’s takings, locked away by Mr M each evening. The cupboard door hung open.

  But where was Mr M?

  He lived upstairs above the shop. Vince called his name but there was no answer.

  Still calling: ‘Mr Molesby. Are you all right, sir?’ he made his way up the steep ladder, leading to the attic above. The premises and the bookshop itself had once been a family home, often as many as twelve to a room. Two doors, a kitchen sink and some shelves with a few provisions occupied one corner of the one-time sitting room, crammed to overflowing with books from the shop. and through a half-open door with shutters, the outline of a bed.

  Vince peered in, tapped politely on the door.

  ‘Are you there, Mr Molesby?’

  Had he perhaps overslept, had a poorly turn as old folks sometimes did and that was why he had forgotten to lock and bolt the shop door?

  Vince cleared his throat, called ‘Mr Molesby!’ loudly this time.

  All was silence but in the streak of light from the shuttered window, a pile of bedding lay on the floor. With a scalp-tingling feeling of apprehension of what he was to find, Vince pulled open the shutters, let in the light and cried out at the appalling revelation.

  The bedding was in fact Mr Molesby. Kneeling down, Vince whispered his name. There were bloodstains on his head.

  Vince touched him gently but there was no movement, no breathing.

  Mr Molesby was dead. And had been for sometime, Vince guessed, his face cold, grey and waxlike.

  Vince sat back on his heels. What to do now? He had read and heard plenty about corpses from his stepfather and the medical books downstairs, but this was the first time he had ever seen a dead person.

  He looked around. Had Mr M hit his head? After a bad turn, had he fallen and this had been an unfortunate accident?

  Or was it … murder?

  He stifled a gasp of terror, put his hand to his mouth and looked around helplessly. Stepfather would have to be told. He hoped he would be at the Central Office.

  After covering the dead man’s face respectfully, he slid down the ladder. In the shop he paused. Was there anything he should do, anything to remember from what Stepfather had told him about police procedure at the scene of a murder crime?

  Still feeling as if this was all a nightmare and he would soon wake up, he rushed uphill towards the police station at the Central Office. On the other side of the road was Inspector Gosse hurrying along hoping for any news from the latest sighting at Liberton of a suspicious character who answered the description of McLaw.

  ‘Looking for the sergeant, are you? He isn’t here.’

  And without waiting for a reply, the inspector headed towards the office door, Vince out of breath at his heels. Turning, Gosse demanded, ‘What are you doing here? Did your ma send you? Tell her that’s not allowed, during working hours. She should know better, sending you—’

  ‘A minute, sir, if you please,’ said Vince trying to think of the right words to describe the scene he had just left. ‘This isn’t anything personal … I’m here to report an accident.’

  Gosse paused, his hand on the door and pointed. ‘Then go to the desk over there and give the constable the details, then. I’m a busy man, if you didn’t know that already—’

  ‘Actually, sir,’ Vince interrupted, ‘it might not be an accident. Might be, well,’ he gulped, ‘foul play.’

  Gosse stared at him and repeated, ‘Foul play, eh?’ That had got his attention. ‘And how do you know that?’ he demanded suspiciously.

  ‘Well, I … I found him. I think he was dead.’

  ‘Where? Where was this?’ barked Gosse.

  ‘At the bookshop. Where I work, Mr Molesby’s … down the street—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know where it is.’

  ‘When I came this morning the door was open—’

  ‘Why weren’t you at school?’

  ‘It’s Founders’ Day, sir.’ Vince sounded surprised. He thought everyone knew that. As he spoke, Gosse was signalling a constable and said to Vince, ‘You come with us. We’ll need you.’

  As Vince needed all his breath to keep up with the two men, he gasped: ‘Mr Molesby wasn’t in the shop, and looking round, a few things … had been disturbed … and I immediately thought there had been a break-in.’

  ‘Why?’ shouted Gosse.

  ‘Because he always makes sure the door is firmly locked, last thing every night.’

  They had almost reached the shop. ‘I found him in the bedroom, upstairs.’

  At the door, Gosse and the constable pushed him aside and he said bleakly, ‘He’s dead, sir. I think he’s been robbed and murdered.’

  ‘Aye, and I’d bet even money that this was McLaw’s work,’ was the grim response.

  At that moment Faro appeared on the other side of the street. Surprised to see a scared-looking Vince with Gosse and the constable, he came over.

  Gosse, ignoring him, had disappeared into the shop while Vince retold his stepfather the whole story over again, what there was of it, and that didn’t take long.

  Telling him to stay in the shop downstairs, Faro followed Gosse up the ladder, murmured conversation, then a gravefaced Gosse looked down and told the constable to go back and summon the mortuary carriage.

  Faro came down, returned to Vince’s side and put an arm around his shoulders. ‘Sorry you had to see all this, lad.’

  ‘Did someone kill him?’

  ‘We don’t know that for certain, yet. But you go on home now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gosse, overhearing. ‘And don’t go too far away.’ Then to Faro, ‘We’ll be needing him later.’

  A hard look from Faro and he grinned, saying jauntily, ‘First on the scene, Faro, you know the rule. Often as not that’s our main clue to the murder.’

  And Faro remembered this preposterous assumption, which was Gosse’s favourite much-played theory. That the one who notifies the police is in many instances also the murderer. This particularly applied in domestic murder cases, where husband or wife was the victim.

  As Gosse and Faro proceeded with an examination of the bookshop, they discovered that the lock on the cupboard had been broken and the key had disappeared. When Vince, with an air of triumph, produced it with the empty cash box in the privy behind the shop where it had been overlooked in the police search, Gosse decided this was highly suspicious and pointed to evidence against the lad as prime suspect.

  He rubbed his hands together at the thought that this could be an easy investigation. Although this was undoubtedly McLaw’s work, to condemn and accuse the first person on the scene need not be limited to the criminal world of Edinburgh. That Faro’s stepson was not to be excluded appealed to him greatly. He had a natural antipathy to anyone or anything relating to his detective sergeant and sought to put him in his place and keep him there. A desire that could be interpreted as jealousy in any other context.

  Children of the poor in Edinburgh were often criminals and at almost fourteen, had Vince belonged to that unhappy breed, living in one of the verminous tenements or clos
es nearby, he would already have been earning or procuring a living, a few coins to hand over to his starving siblings. And Gosse had another reason for questioning him by virtue of his one-time friendship with Dr Paul Lumbleigh, son of the infamous rogue, Archie Lumbleigh, now safely out of the country and living in luxury abroad on the small fortune he had made by selling his house and land to the developers.

  So Gosse decided to tackle Vince with some searching questions, see how Mrs Lizzie Faro’s clever lad would stand up to a little police grilling. Questions such as how did he know about where to find the cash box? How was he so certain that the old man was dead? What did he remember of suspicious customers? What about the old man’s relatives?

  Faro was also questioning Vince, who shook his head. ‘The only one he ever mentioned was a young fellow, a cousin of some sort, who was a sailor with the mercantile marine. He looked in to see his uncle, as he called him, when his ship came into Leith.’

  Gosse had scribbled a note. It was a forlorn hope, even if the name was correct, and he secretly hoped that enquiry would fail as he had set his heart on this as McLaw’s work.

  ‘We need you to make a statement,’ he said with a stern look at Vince. ‘Come back with us.’ And handing him the note, he said, ‘See if there was a young seaman called Molesby on any of the merchant ships docked in Leith.’

  With a helpless and despairing look, Vince followed Gosse. He didn’t care for the inspector, thought him too pompous and opinionated, and was well aware that he didn’t like his stepfather or his mother. However, he tried always to treat him with the respect due to policemen and upholders of the law.

  At the station office, Vince was asked to turn out his pockets. Gosse watched the contents emptied on to the desk. Pieces of string, a pencil and a clean handkerchief, unusual for a school lad. Then the coins.

  Gosse counted them carefully, then whistled. ‘Ten shillings and four pence?’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s a grown man’s earnings,’ he said sharply. ‘An exceeding amount of money for a lad to be carrying on his person.’ Pausing to give Vince a hard look, he demanded suspiciously: ‘And where, may one ask, did a lad your age come by all that money?’ Was he pocketing the last book sale, for instance, or was it one of many?

  ‘Do you get pocket money from your parents?’ he added.

  ‘Yes, sir. Sixpence a week.’

  Again Gosse whistled. ‘That would keep a poor family down the road there from starving for a while,’ was his acid response.

  ‘I have been saving for some time, sir, since I got weekend work with Mr Molesby. He pays me sixpence for that, so I’ve been saving up.’

  ‘Saving? Is that what you call it. And stealing, no doubt—’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ Vince interrupted shortly. ‘I did not need pocket money once I got a job, so I’ve been saving, oh, for months now, to buy my mother a birthday present.’

  Gosse snorted disbelief, watching Vince pocket the coins again. ‘You can go now, but remember you might be called on when the official enquiry begins,’ he added sternly.

  On hearing this account of Gosse’s inquisition of Vince, Faro was both outraged and indignant. How dare he? He tried to console Vince, whose nerve broke down in the retelling, thereby also upsetting his mother and ruining their appetites for supper that evening.

  ‘He has nothing on you, lad. You were telling the truth.’

  Faro had had a shrewd idea that this was the work of McLaw, after a week on the run, now starving and desperate for money. Certain that this must have been the first thought that occurred to Gosse, it also made it unforgivable to have subjected Vince to this questioning.

  ‘The inspector is just doing what he thinks is his job, Vince.’

  But Vince was not to be consoled. He was scared. This was his first taste of crime, of being at the centre of a murder investigation, and he was left in no doubt that he was the prime suspect, especially when the inspector was waiting for him in the headmaster’s study next day.

  Although he shuddered at what the summons meant, his classmates were most impressed that he was helping the police with their enquiries regarding the bookshop owner’s murder. They, at least, never doubted his version that had circulated like wildfire round his class.

  Gosse beamed on him, an avuncular greeting to impress the headmaster that there was nothing but his pupil’s well-being at heart.

  The headmaster smiled. ‘Of course, Laurie, you have my permission to accompany Inspector Gosse back to the police station.’

  ‘This won’t take long, sir.’

  The headmaster waved a dismissive hand at Gosse. ‘As it is a fair distance, Laurie may take the rest of the afternoon off.’

  Vince bowed. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Holding his arm firmly as if he might have escaping in mind, Gosse led him back through the main gates on to Calton Hill. He indicated one of the seats and grinned.

  ‘Got off lightly, didn’t you? You went as pale as a sheet when you saw me.’ A chuckle. ‘Guilty conscience, eh? Bet you thought I had come to arrest you.’

  Vince sat down and managed to say lightly, with a confidence he was far from feeling, ‘As I haven’t done anything wrong, sir, that never occurred to me.’

  It wasn’t quite the reaction Gosse had hoped for. Somehow it showed the influence that his damned sergeant had on the lad.

  ‘At least I got you the rest of the afternoon off.’ And taking out notebook and pencil, he shook his head and said sternly, ‘I’m not altogether satisfied with your statement. There are some details that need filling in.’

  ‘Glad to help you, sir.’ It was a lie, of course, but still very pleasant sitting in the sunshine with its splendid view over the city, even though he would have preferred more agreeable company.

  ‘You discovered Mr Molesby’s body on Monday. That is correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Gosse gave him a sharp look. ‘According to the pathologists he had been lying dead on his bedroom floor since sometime on the Sunday.

  ‘And you found the cash box in the lavatory outside. Correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It had been opened and the money taken.’ And Vince said Mr Molesby told him once that the keys never left his person. At night he kept them along with his false teeth on the table at his bedside.

  ‘The cash box was large and unwieldy, not the sort of thing that a thief on the run would wish to carry. That was why I decided he would have opened it with the key and stolen the contents, but not wishing to linger in the bookshop, the privy would be a likely place.’

  ‘Ah-ha.’ Gosse seemed to find this significant and made another note. ‘You said first of all you were in the shop on Sunday with the intention of helping him to catalogue books.’

  Vince shook his head desperately. ‘No, sir. I was never inside the shop on Sunday. I served in the shop as usual on Saturday and when I went back on Sunday morning, he unlocked the door, looked out and said he had another engagement after church and that we had to delay the cataloguing until tomorrow—’

  ‘Wait a minute, did you see anyone inside the shop. Hear voices, for instance?’

  Vince gave him a despairing look. ‘The shop wasn’t open on Sundays.’

  ‘So you didn’t see anyone inside?’

  ‘That was unlikely, sir, that he had a visitor. When Mr Molesby opened the door he was only half-dressed.’

  ‘You went back on the next day as promised – so you said in your original statement.’ Gosse frowned and consulted his notes. ‘At his request, you said. Is that true? Did he expect you to stay off school on a Monday?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Vince patiently. ‘It was a school holiday. Founders’ Day, you know.’ Gosse grunted. The Royal High had that kind of reputation of keeping up its ancient traditions and in his opinion making its boys soft. Not what this lad would have got at the ordinary school in the Pleasance.

  He said slowly, ‘So, if Molesby didn’t have a visitor and he was killed that Sunday afternoon, you were the last one to s
ee him alive.’

  ‘Except the killer, sir.’ Vince said brightly.

  Gosse growled. ‘Don’t you get smart with me, young fella.’ And jabbing a finger at him, ‘That won’t do you any good. All that is required of you is to prove to the police that you didn’t kill him.’ He added smoothly, ‘And give us a lead to find out who did.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Which church did he go to? The minister might know who he was friendly with.’

  Vince said, ‘St Giles’, sir.’

  ‘St Giles’,’ Gosse repeated and shook his head. It was very doubtful, in what he imagined was a vast congregation of the cream of Edinburgh society, that the minister would know who Molesby was having lunch with that day. He sighed. A detective inspector now, he was expected to mark his respectability on the social ladder by being a churchgoer. He didn’t go to St Giles’, considering it too high class, in fact he rarely set foot in any church, which was the one thing he and Faro had in common. Faro wasn’t even sure about God, sometimes, although he would never admit that to Lizzie who went regularly to the church in the Pleasance, taking a somewhat reluctant Vince along with her.

  ‘So that Sunday morning you went straight home again, and how do you usually spend the rest of the day?’

  ‘Stepfather and I have a walk on the hill with Mr Macfie but he wasn’t with us that time.’

  A sharp look from Gosse. The retired superintendent was no friend of his. And only Faro could vouch for his stepson’s presence.

  ‘So you were at home the rest of the day until you went back on Monday morning and found the door open. Is that correct?’

  ‘Correct, sir. And Mr Molesby was upstairs lying on his bedroom floor. Vince paused. ‘Exactly as my statement says, sir.’

  It was the arrival of a police carriage on the road behind, patrolling the area for a possible sighting of McLaw, that put an end to the interview. Gosse flagged it down and without another word left Vince to make his way home.