Blood Line: An Inspector Faro Mystery Read online

  As the housekeeper gratefully disappeared downstairs, Mrs Faro marched into the study and tried in vain to reach the high shelf. 'And now if you'll just push across that footstool, I'll get down your poor dear Papa's hamper.'

  'I'll do that, Mother.'

  'Very well.' And dusting her fingers she added accusingly, 'From the grime on it, I don't suppose you've even looked inside since I sent it down from Orkney.'

  'I haven't had time, Mother. I've been rather busy this summer.'

  'Then you should have made time. First things first, that's what we've always said in our family. And your poor dear father, he would have wanted you to show a little interest in his work, and respect for his memory. Especially when you took after him so greatly and went to be a policeman.'

  Once again, Faro was torn between guilt and irritation at his mother's reproaches on the subject of his 'poor dear father'. Constable Magnus Faro had been thus immortalised by his devoted widow, ever since the day he met his death making his way homeward at the end of a night's duty with the Edinburgh City Police.

  Being run over and fatally injured at night on Edinburgh's steep, cobbled High Street made treacherous by rain and fog was not unknown in the annals of the city. But according to Mary Faro, her husband's death was no accident. She insisted that it was deliberate murder, although no one would listen or give credence to her wild accusations, and her indignation burned undimmed by the passing of more than thirty years for that death unavenged.

  Jeremy had been nearly five. And looking back, he realised that his mother's hero worship of her dead husband, those epic tales of his marvellous exploits, had filled their son's earliest days with only a burning desire to leave Orkney. For as long as he could remember Jeremy Faro's one unswerving ambition had been to go to the mainland and follow in the footsteps of his illustrious father.

  When at eighteen he left, Mary saw glumly that her enthusiasm for her late husband had badly misfired and life in the Edinburgh City Police was not what she had ever imagined or intended for her only son. More than anything else, she had wanted to keep him near her, to see him settled down on a croft like his forebears. They had been farmers since the sixteenth century, when a Royal Stuart bastard had given a piece of land to the female Sinclair he had already bestowed twins upon.

  'Have you never even been curious to read all those notebooks your dear father kept?' asked Mary Faro. 'Every one of his cases, he would sit up writing half the night. "Getting the facts straight", he called it,' she added proudly.

  Jeremy didn't answer as he considered how best to transfer the hamper into some prominent position that would placate her. He had no wish to stress his neglect by confessing that he wasn't much of a reader of police reports. He'd seen and participated in too many in his twenty years as a policeman and, as far as he was concerned, they made very dry reading for an off-duty hour.

  Inspector Faro preferred his crime to be of the fictional variety, in the swashbuckling adventures of Sir Walter Scott's novels, the marvellous mysteries of Charles Dickens. Especially the latter, based on fact and a criminal element in London which had its counterpart in Edinburgh too. The intimate knowledge Mr Dickens displayed showed how well he understood crime and the courts of justice. How Jeremy admired and envied his talent to write such highly readable and entertaining novels where - unlike real crime or anything resembling life itself - virtue was always triumphant, with all the mysteries solved and all the loose ends tied together in a most satisfying way on the very last page.

  Jeremy's deepest regret was that he was still a child in Orkney when Mr Dickens was given the freedom of Edinburgh in 1841. How wonderful to have heard the great writer reading from his own works and how infinitely sad, like losing a friend, to read of his recent death.

  As he eased the hamper from its lofty perch, his mother hovered anxiously. 'Are you sure you can manage? It can wait until Vince gets home,' she added helpfully.

  Vince might not arrive until evening and the thought of being gently nagged on the subject of spiders and general untidiness set Jeremy's teeth on edge. Better to keep her quiet with her feather dusters.

  'Of course I can manage. It isn't all that heavy. Just a lot of papers,' he said cheerfully. However, he had reckoned without the footstool that lurked behind him. Stepping backwards, he staggered against it, lost his balance and both he and the hamper landed heavily in a painful collision with the nearby sofa.

  'Oh your poor leg,' said his mother. 'I hope you haven't made it worse.'

  Faro, wincing with renewed pain, made light of the subject, grateful that her first thoughts had been for him, since the hamper had been even less fortunate in its encounter with the sofa's wooden back.

  'Oh dear, oh dear, just look at that now,' said Mrs Faro, transferring her attention to its broken lid. Hanging forlornly by one hinge, it had burst open, spewing papers everywhere over the well-polished floor. 'No, son, you stay where you are, I'll get them.'

  Jeremy sank down thankfully on to the sofa as the noise brought Rose and Emily on to the scene. They added their lamentations, their offers to bring Papa a glass of water, while Jeremy rubbed the sore skin of his injured ankle. Weakly he suggested that they would be better employed assisting their Grandmama, down on her hands and knees, retrieving the hamper's contents and considerably hindered by the playful Rusty, who regarded anyone on the floor as fair game.

  Soon all three were reverently gathering together the yellowing notes that had burst out of covers, and papers tied with tape. A new sound was added, his mother's barely suppressed sniffs, as if it had been only yesterday that she had laid her dearest Magnus in his grave.

  As she retied the bundles and kissed each one, Jeremy watched in amazement, and some envy, that any love could be sustained so long or so deeply.

  Rose and Emily, kneeling beside her, exchanged helpless glances with their father over her head. At a nod from him, rightly interpreted, they saw immediately what was needed. They hugged and kissed and petted their grandmother, while she dabbed at her eyes and called them her 'wee darlings' and apologised for being so weak.

  At last all the documents were tidily restored to the hamper, the girls bringing additional contributions which had slithered over the polished floor and had vanished, with Rusty in hot pursuit, under the less accessible pieces of furniture.

  Before closing the damaged lid, Mrs Faro withdrew one packet. 'If you ever feel inclined to read any of your dear father's cases, I urge you to look at this one. His very last, the one he was working on when he was murdered.' And touching the faded ribbon tenderly, 'I tied these papers together myself on the day he was buried,' she said sadly, 'with the bow from my wedding bouquet.'

  Jeremy glanced at his father's neat handwriting.

  '"The Mysterious Corpse of a Baby Discovered in the Wall of Edinburgh Castle. 1837",' he read. 'Sounds intriguing.'

  Mrs Faro nodded. 'Yes, it does and I curse the day he ever became involved in it. Mark my words, son, I would not have been a widow all these lonely years, had he left well alone.' With a sigh she added, 'I still remember as if it were yesterday, just a few weeks after our dear Queen came to the throne it was, he came home so excited about some secret he thought he'd discovered. What it was we'll never know now.'

  Two hours later it was a vastly improved study that Faro entered, cleaned and tidied with a gratifying lack of any disturbance to his papers and books. His mother, on whom he had lavished abundant praise, was now taking a well-earned afternoon rest and the house was silent but for the poignant song of a blackbird in the garden mingled with his daughters' faint laughter downstairs.

  Faro sighed. He was rarely at home at this hour of the day and there was undoubtedly a most agreeable sense of repose and wellbeing in the domestic sounds of a summer afternoon. His investigations into the death of an unknown man lying in the city mortuary seemed remote and unimportant, along with his own monstrous suspicions that only days ago he had been the victim of a murderous attack.

  Aftern
oons like this, tranquil with sunshine, resplendent with birdsong, convinced a man of his own immortality. Small wonder the general populace of a respectable Edinburgh preferred to believe that crime and sudden death were none of their business, and he could find it in his heart to forgive their indifference to his plight on Castle Rock.

  He wondered how Vince had fared in his mission to the Castle. He had promised, if Dr Kellar released him in time, to take the cameo to Sir Eric and have its theft from the glass cases in the royal apartments confirmed. For once, Faro was quite happy to leave the routine investigation in his stepson's capable hands and decided that he might well profit from this unexpected break in his busy life by reading up his father's last case.

  The connection with Edinburgh Castle intrigued him and a casual skimming of the notes, left incomplete at Constable Magnus Faro's death, revealed that a tiny coffin containing the remains of a child had been found by workmen, entombed in the wall of the royal apartments.

  How had it got there and why? Here was a mystery worthy of Sir Walter Scott himself, thought Jeremy, but hardly the reason for foul play outside the imaginative realms of fiction. Even if his father's accident had been deliberate, and he had always been rather doubtful about that, it was hard enough solving crimes that happened last week or last month. There was no possible way of solving a thirty-three-year-old mystery.

  Faro came back to the present to the sound of voices upraised. Of shrill screams - issuing forth from the same region where only a short time ago had drifted his daughters' delighted laughter.

  His peace broken, resentfully he opened the study door.

  'Girls - Emily, Rose -' his mother's voice was added to the noise. 'Stop it at once. Stop. Jeremy - Jeremy, come and do something about your children.'

  Reluctantly emerging, he saw his mother's angry and flustered countenance.

  Clutching the banister, he limped downstairs. 'What's all this about, Mother? Can't you deal with it?'

  'No. They need a father's discipline.'

  Pushing open the door, he saw Rose and Emily rolling on the floor, fighting, clawing, screaming. Faro groaned inwardly. His little girls, happy and laughing, were angelic. Quarrelling had made them into ugly little monsters, charging his serene and comfortable bachelor existence, his retreat from the world of sordid crime and violence, with exactly the sort of unpleasant domestic situation he most dreaded.

  'Rose - Emily - please . . . ' His command went quite unheeded. Even to his own ears, it sounded most ineffectual.

  'I'm the princess and you're my wicked stepmother.'

  'I'm not. I'm not.'

  'You are.'

  'I'm older than you - and I get to wear it.'

  'Oh no you don't. I want it. I found it.'

  'You promised turns.'

  'You've had your turn, now I want it back. It's mine.'

  'It is not.'

  'It is.'

  'You wicked liar. I found it on the floor.'

  'I hate you. You're cruel and horrid.'

  'I would cut off your head if I had half a chance.'

  'You little beast - beast. . . '

  As the two fell upon each other with renewed frenzy, Jeremy entered the fray and separated them with difficulty, trying desperately to keep his injured leg away from flailing arms and legs as they tried to kick each other.

  'Girls - girls! Stop this at once. Are they often like this?' he asked his mother desperately. 'You told me they never quarrelled.'

  'They don't. I can't understand it. Something must have upset them,' she said, clutching Emily while Jeremy seized the opportunity to hold Rose in a firm grip.

  Red faced, tear stained, the two girls stared mutinously at each other.

  'Now, behave and say you're sorry to your sister, Rose.'

  'Shan't!'

  'Oh yes you will, if you want any supper tonight.'

  'Don't want any.'

  'Very well. You will stay in your room - no Arthur's Seat with Vince tomorrow.'

  'And no Edinburgh Castle either,' Mrs Faro added for good effect.

  The two girls looked thoughtful and distinctly mollified at this punishment.

  Then Rose shook her head defiantly. 'All right, I'll behave, if that's what you want, Papa.'

  'I do indeed. And you can begin by saying you're sorry to your sister. Ouch - what was that? What have you got in your hand?'

  Rose immediately put her hand behind her back.

  'Let me see. Come now . . . '

  'It's a brooch. I found it.'

  'No, she didn't, Papa. I found it,' yelled Emily.

  'Never mind who found it. Give it to me - at once.'

  And Rose placed in her father's hand a familiar cameo, the Queen Mary jewel which should, at that very moment, have been with Vince on its way to Edinburgh Castle.

  'You stole this from your stepbrother, didn't you?' Rose trembled at her father's angry expression. 'Didn't you, you wicked child?'

  'I did not,' was her brave reply.

  'Oh yes, you did. Rose - and Emily - I am ashamed of you.'

  'So that's what you were quarrelling about,' said Mrs Faro. 'You naughty, naughty children. Your Papa has you here for a holiday and you repay him by stealing things.'

  'We didn't steal anything, Papa. We - or rather I - found it on the floor, under the table in your study. Rusty was playing with it... '

  'What a dreadful lie. Really, Emily.'

  'It isn't a lie.'

  'It's true, Papa,' said Emily, now staunchly coming to her sister's defence. 'It was after we helped gather up the papers . . . '

  'And there's no use protecting one another now. It's too late for that,' said Mrs Faro. 'I'd never have believed the two of you were capable of such wickedness.'

  'But we didn't do anything wrong...'

  'Honestly, Grandma . . . '

  'Let me see that, will you, Jeremy? Oh dear, oh dear.' Mary held it in her hand, and then with a shudder, she handed it back.

  'You've seen it before, Mother?' Jeremy looked again. At first glance identical to the cameo he had found on Castle Rock, there was a difference. The tiny miniature in its centre was not of a man, but of a woman in sixteenth-century dress.

  'Aye, I've seen it before, lad,' said his mother. 'Your poor dear father came across it during his last case. When he was killed. It might even be the reason why he was killed. I never wanted to see it again. That's why I put it in the hamper with that letter.'

  'What letter, Mother?'

  'From some antique dealer he knew - an old man in the High Street.'

  'What did it say?' asked Faro eagerly.

  'Oh, I don't know. I can't remember. All I know is it was too late to save my poor love,' she added with a sniff. 'There was a curse on it - and there still is. Look how it turned our two darlings into wee devils, tearing at each other's throats,' she ended dramatically.

  'This is the envelope that it fell out of, Papa,' said Rose, taking a crumpled packet out of her pinafore pocket. 'You see, Papa, we weren't lying,' she added triumphantly, taking Emily's hand.

  'And we didn't steal anything from anyone, did we, Rose?'

  'Rusty found it under the desk.'

  'It was so pretty we only wanted to play with it while Grandma was resting and you were busy in your study.'

  From the envelope Jeremy withdrew the antique dealer's letter.

  Dear Magnus: This is undoubtedly an interchangeable piece of jewellery particularly popular in the sixteenth century in the Court circles, when the monarch would give one part to a particular favourite as a love token, bearing his or her likeness. Also among wealth noble families, for sentimental reasons, parts were exchanged between lovers and parents/children. There are usually two or more pieces which can be worn separately or together as a pendant. In my opinion, this work dates from the mid-1500s and as the miniature is undoubtedly of Queen Mary may indeed have originated from her collection of jewels. Incidentally, the rubies and diamonds are authentic, making this a very valuable piece. I am
intrigued to know more of its history. When next we meet you must tell me how you came by it - I am. Your obedient servant, Chas. Pilter.

  There had been no next meeting. The letter was dated 3 August 1837, the day after Magnus Faro died. The address, 'Fayre's Wynd, High Street', and presumably Mr Pilter had both vanished a generation ago.

  'That lady in the little painting, Papa. I've been thinking,' said Rose, looking over his shoulder, 'isn't she like the drawing we have at home of Queen Mary?'

  Jeremy looked at his daughter approvingly. Rose might be only a child, but he was pleased to note that already she showed signs of having inherited his keen powers of observation.

  Queen Mary. And the matching cameo, he was certain, would prove to be a portrait of her consort, Lord Darnley, to be worn together or separately as the antique dealer had said.

  'Well done, Rose,' he murmured approvingly.

  'Am I right, Papa?' she beamed at him.

  Hugging her to his side, he asked his mother, 'Didn't you know this might be valuable?'

  Mrs Faro shuddered. 'All I knew was that it brought bad luck. It had taken your poor dear father. I never wanted to see it again.' And listening to her, Jeremy Faro heard another echo from the past and knew why the jewel he had found on Castle Rock had been so tantalisingly familiar. Memory clicked into place and presented a small boy whose curiosity had led him to the mysterious hamper so revered by his mother. Caught with the forbidden cameo in his hand, he was scolded severely. He remembered her anger clearly, her tears and his desolation, his fears of God's wrath for naughty children.

  What did it all mean? Where was the vital link? For the facts remained. The two pieces had indeed brought a trail of destruction. His own father, Constable Magnus Faro, had died. More than thirty years later a mystery man had also died. And, but for the grace of God, Jeremy Faro himself would have been the third victim.

  His mother called it cursed. That label was too easy for Faro, who was not a superstitious man. His logical mind refused to accept the existence of curses. If they existed, then he believed they were brought about by man alone, by his folly and greed, which had a habit of rebounding upon him.