Blood Line: An Inspector Faro Mystery Page 6

  As the drive swept round towards the handsome mansion, lights blazed from the windows and the presence of several carriages with waiting coachmen indicated that Sir James had guests.

  'Looks like a party,' said McQuinn.

  Faro ignored the obvious. 'One more carriage won't matter then.'

  With instructions to McQuinn to wait, he limped up to the front door, which was opened with alacrity by a manservant.

  'Is Sir James at home? Detective Inspector Faro.'

  The servant was unimpressed. 'What is your business?'

  Faro thought hard. He could hardly present Sir James with one of his discarded jackets in the middle of dinner.

  'It won't take long, just a routine enquiry.'

  'Then you had better enquire again tomorrow and perhaps Sir James will see you then.'

  The servant stood firm, ready to close the door. Turning to leave, cursing this lost opportunity when time was such an important factor, Faro thought quickly. If not Sir James, then there was one other person who might have the information he sought.

  'Sir James's valet - I don't suppose he would be available for a word?'

  The servant smirked. 'You suppose right. Mr Peters is out for the evening and I don't know when he'll return. Besides, if you have questions to ask any of the staff, you will have to seek Sir James's permission first.'

  Retreating to the carriage, he was met with, 'Wouldn't see you, sir? Too bad.' McQuinn enjoyed seeing the Inspector discomfited.

  'I'll see him tomorrow. And I'll be obliged if you do not mention this visit. Keep it unofficial,' Faro added, disliking intensely asking this favour and thereby putting himself under an obligation to the Sergeant.

  McQuinn merely nodded, his thoughts plainly elsewhere. And so with the feelings of frustration so familiar to him in his role as detective, Faro sat back to gloomily endure the rest of the journey. If there was any satisfaction to be gained it was in bequeathing to the odious McQuinn the unenviable task of imparting to Superintendent Mackintosh that Clavers had escaped them once again.

  As he left the carriage outside his home, the sun had already set in scarlet glory behind the Pentland Hills. Another day ended. Faro's conscience smote him anew. Soon his family would be returning to Orkney, leaving him full of guilt at having spent so little time with Rose and Emily. Each time they met, he was surprised to find yet another stranger child. Taller, subtly changed, escaping into girlhood, and leaving him still yearning for the wee bairns he had unaccountably lost. One day, if he wasn't very careful, he knew that he might find to his eternal regret two young women, complete strangers, asking his permission to marry and the family life he had hardly known would be ended before it had properly begun.

  Stepping through his own front door, he was full of splendid resolutions. It felt good to be home, especially to have his little daughters waiting in their nightgowns to embrace him. Their well-scrubbed faces, their shining hair, their squeals of delight, indicated how much they had missed him. Here was dear Papa, the long-absent traveller returned at last. Such a welcome would have melted the hardest of hearts and Faro, who rarely shed tears, was choked with emotion as he gathered them to his heart.

  Mrs Brook was there with anxious enquiries about his supper. His mother fussed as usual. He smiled wryly. For her he would never be Detective Inspector Jeremy Faro, a man of responsibility and decision, approaching middle age. For her he was just one other child.

  'Now you've seen Papa home again. They were allowed to wait up for you,' said Mrs Faro. 'Do let Papa have some peace, girls. He has been working hard all day. So say good night and off to bed with you.'

  'Just a little longer . . . ' whispered Emily.

  'Please, Papa,' sighed Rose.

  'We would love a story - please, Papa.'

  'Oh yes, yes, indeed we would.'

  'Then you shall have one.'

  Climbing the stairs between them, holding two tiny hands in his large fists, while they accommodated their nimble steps to his awkward gait, solicitious for his poor injured ankle, Faro felt uncommonly cosseted and well blessed. The picture of doting fatherhood, he proudly settled them in the big spare-room bed.

  'Now, what sort of story would you like?'

  Emily pointed towards the window. 'Tell us about King Arthur.'

  'Yes,' said Rose reproachfully. 'You promised you would.'

  He told them how Arthur's Seat had got its name. How King Arthur and his knights fought the dog-faced warriors of the Hybee tribe on that very spot they could see where the last rays of the day's sunlight glowed red and faded into the dark. How bravely they fought for a day and a night and the sound of the battle reverberated like a thunderstorm over the surrounding countryside.

  Hopelessly outnumbered, bleeding from many wounds, defeat and death seemed inevitable. But the faery kingdom was on Arthur's side. When all seemed lost, a great door appeared in the hillside and the King with his loyal knights were whisked inside. There it was promised they would live for ever. Unless a day came when their country was in dire peril from other invaders and the horn which had slipped from King Arthur's saddle was found again. Should someone blow that faery horn, then the great door would again open and the King and his knights would ride out to victory.

  'Is the horn still hidden, Papa?'

  'I hope no one blows it by accident,' whispered Emily, who was inclined to be nervous.

  'I wonder if there are any clues as to where it might be hidden,' was the practical Rose's response. 'I shall certainly keep my eyes open, Papa. You may rely on that and I shall look for anything unusual the next time Vince takes us ... ' Her words were lost in a sleepy yawn.

  Having kissed them good night, Faro went downstairs somewhat cynically concluding that there was as much hope of Rose finding King Arthur's horn as he had of unravelling a thirty-three-year-old mystery. If it hadn't been for the coincidence of the two identical jewels he would have been almost inclined to let it stay unsolved.

  The dead man's identity was vital. Dowie, if he were still alive, would be the right age. However, he had been present at Vince's examination of the body which had revealed no injury or scars to account for the 1837 report of 'serious injury' and Magnus Faro's remark 'He is far gone' surely indicated approaching death.

  In a few days it would be too late, anyhow. Corpses couldn't be kept indefinitely and once the body was disposed of to the Medical School, Faro could not imagine Superintendent Mackintosh allowing him to waste his time on an investigation based on purely nebulous speculation. The Superintendent was a tidy man and he would be keen to have the case closed and the unknown Castle Rock victim would become just one more mysterious death in Edinburgh's turbulent history.

  Lost, unsolved, for ever.

  Chapter Six

  At ten o'clock next morning, Faro limped across the Castle quadrangle only to be told that his journey had been in vain.

  'Sir Eric has been summoned to Balmoral Castle - by HM,' said the young officer, adding 'Her Majesty', apologetically, in case the jargon of officialdom was unknown to a Detective Inspector.

  'Mr Forster, Sir Eric's personal assistant, is unable to be here. I have been left in charge: Lieutenant Arthur Mace,' he said by way of introduction. Then solemnly consulting a list: 'Yes, Inspector, you are expected. Sir Eric states that you are to examine the royal apartments in connection with the recent attempted break in.'

  Over the short distance to their destination, Faro observed his companion carefully. The smart new uniform somewhat self-consciously worn suggested that he was new to responsibility and to the regiment of Scots Greys. Faro would have hazarded a guess that the lad was little past twenty, and his upper-class English accent indicated that after leaving public school his family had bought him a commission.

  Unlocking the door, Mace turned. 'Sir Eric said I was to assure you that since your last meeting he had instructed Mr Forster to make a most careful search and Mr Forster was satisfied that nothing had been disturbed in the attempted burglary.'
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  Walking round the glass cases, Faro merely nodded. There was no evidence of locks being forced and a brief examination of the windows was enough to confirm the assistant keeper's report.

  Faro cursed silently. The trail, if any had existed, was already cold.

  'I have always been absolutely fascinated by Mary Queen of Scots,' said Mace with a sigh. 'Look at that dear little shoe of hers and the glove. Such tiny feet and hands and I'm told that she was six foot tall. Tall, indeed, for a man in those days.'

  'Or for anyone, if the height of doorways is to be believed.'

  Mace opened the door into the Queen's bedchamber and sighed again. 'I wish I had lived then.'

  Faro looked at Mace's high forehead, his long pale face and long slender hands. Quite remarkable. Mace might have stepped down from a portrait of that period and he smiled in sympathy.

  'A savage, cruel time, it was.'

  'But there was beauty, such chivalry, don't you think, dying for a young and beautiful Queen.'

  Faro said nothing. The lad was half in love with a ghost, as he himself had once been. Let him keep his illusions. Romantic young fools like this one had gone to bloody death in their dozens, by way of the torture chamber and the block, their lofty ideals and sufferings vanished into the dust of passing centuries. Of that tragic long-ago only a few pathetic faded artefacts remained, objects which might, or might not, have once belonged to the Queen. He touched the bed curtains reputed to have been embroidered during her long years of imprisonment. What secrets, what thoughts of agony and grief had she woven into those delicate patterns which had alone remained impervious to time?

  'Isn't our present Queen the one you would gladly die for,' Faro asked, 'seeing that you have taken her shilling?'

  Mace looked confused and embarrassed. 'Yes, I suppose so. Of course,' he added, but without any true conviction.

  Faro smiled. The poor lad's heart wasn't in it, to die for the royal widow, whose preoccupation with mourning Prince Albert, unpopular and misunderstood by the masses, suggested neglect of important matters of government, as well as the rumoured neglect of her subjects. A Queen who, stout after much child bearing, could only command her generation of romantic young fools to die on the battlefield of yet another outpost of her ever-growing Empire, hard won and even harder to hold.

  Mace pushed open the door of the tiny room high above the Castle Rock. In area it was not much larger than a linen closet in Sheridan Place, yet here Queen Mary had given birth to the future King James VI of Scotland and I of England.

  Here, as in no other room in the Castle associated with the Queen, Faro was conscious of a lingering sense of disaster and doom well beyond a monarch's personal tragedy. Here, from these very stones, emanated the events that had reverberated through Scotland's subsequent history, when a once-powerful nation took the wrong turning to wither and die from the effects of Jacobitism and the Clearances.

  Standing by the window, he was engulfed by a miasma of foreboding. Distorted whispers, faint cries echoed around him, as if only a thin veil divided the long-ago from now. He closed his eyes, seeking desperately to renew his own link with that time, half remembered, hovering on the brink of what his mother called 'long memory': their Stuart blood, via the Orkney Sinclairs and the Wicked Earl, an explanation too fanciful for her son's fierce logic to accept.

  Again Faro considered the steep slope of Castle Rock. Inaccessible from inside or outside the barred window, he concluded that no man in his right senses would have the folly or initiative to attempt its scaling. He would have given much to have known how the dead man had spent his last hour.

  Mace locked the doors behind them. 'Is there anything else I can do for you, Inspector, any information I can help you with?'

  It was a forlorn hope, but Faro produced the two cameos.

  'Have you ever seen these before?'

  Mace studied the jewels carefully. 'No, I haven't, I regret to say. But I am almost certain these miniatures are of Queen Mary and Darnley, possibly at the time of their marriage.' His voice increased in excitement as he continued, 'May I ask how you came by them, Inspector?'

  'They came into my possession recently.' Faro was not prepared to say more that that.

  'Are they from a collection?' Mace asked eagerly.

  'Perhaps so. I know little of their history. I was hoping they might have come from the royal apartments.'

  'Stolen, you mean?' Mace sounded profoundly shocked.

  'Yes, that is why I am here, to discover if any items are missing.'

  Mace smiled sadly. 'I wish they were mine. You see, my family has a great many trinkets of this period, and I would be willing to swear that these pieces are authentic' He nodded enthusiastically. 'Yes, indeed, you can take my word for it. These are more likely to have been the personal possessions of Queen Mary than most of the artefacts in the Castle.' He paused. 'If you have a moment, Inspector, I should like to check the inventory of the Queen's jewels.'

  Mace walked quickly across the quadrangle and unlocked a room containing narrow stacks of dusty files. He pointed across to dismembered suits of armour, swords and pistols, heaped together with a rusty 'iron maiden' off its supports.

  'These are awaiting reconstruction, for exhibition in the new museum. I am something of an expert in this kind of work. A labour of love, one might say,' continued Mace happily.

  Faro declined the invitation for a closer inspection and took the opportunity to rest his ankle. A much frayed and dilapidated velvet chair, upon whose interior he suspected rats had freely feasted, did not deter him. He sat down and a few moments later Mace emerged from the labyrinth triumphantly clutching a roll of yellowed documents.

  'This inventory of the Queen's jewels is absolutely fascinating and quite unique. Much of it dates from the time of her reign, written by her Lord Chamberlain. Later we have documents from the time of her first imprisonment at Lochleven and later in England when her possessions were being listed by her jailers at the request of Queen Elizabeth. The miniatures should date these two pieces fairly accurately. Most likely painted and exchanged at the time of their betrothal early in 1565 and certainly not later than Darnley's murder at Kirk o'Field in 1567.'

  'So short a time,' said Faro. 'Presumably they were disposed of immediately after she married the Earl of Bothwell.'

  Mace nodded, rifling through the parchments. 'Indeed, in the circumstances, it's highly unlikely that the Queen would wish to keep any mementoes of her second husband.' Mace paused and looked across at Faro. 'How very strange. The inventory of the jewels. It isn't here in its usual place. Quite extraordinary.' He shrugged. 'Perhaps it is away being catalogued. Yes, that would be the answer. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Inspector. Mr Forster will know. I'll find out from him and let you know.'

  'If you would be so kind, a note to the Central Office will find me.'

  'Very well. And now, how else can I help you?'

  'I'm not sure. You are very knowledgeable about Queen Mary.'

  Mace beamed. 'History is my speciality. My own family dates from the sixteenth century. Such a time to live, so rich in romance.'

  'And in mayhem and murder,' said Faro, a suggestion which Mace chose to ignore. 'Do you happen to know anything of a child's remains allegedly discovered hidden in the wall of the royal apartments?'

  'Oh, that fairy tale.' Mace laughed. 'We know now that it was a practical joke.' 'Surely someone with a rather macabre sense of humour?'

  'It was the idea of the officers of the guard apparently, to frighten the workmen repairing the wall.'

  'I dare say they succeeded,' Faro remarked drily. 'To be frank with you, a child's body doesn't sound like a practical joke in the best of good taste.'

  'But to the uneducated labouring class, Inspector? Take the bones of some small animal, most likely a monkey, wrap them in an old vestment. Tell them these are the mummified remains of a child interred long ago and such information, from their superiors, would be accepted without the least question. Surel
y you can imagine, Inspector, how irresistible such a prank would seem to young, high-spirited army officers. One knows how gullible Irish workmen are,' Mace giggled, with a touch of malice.

  Faro eyed him with sudden distaste. 'A highly reputable newspaper - the Scotsman - also accepted the discovery as fact and, indeed, reported it in considerable detail.'

  'Come now, Inspector, we are all aware that news reports are prone to exaggeration,' said Mace with a pitying smile. 'Sensational stories are what they rely upon to sell their newspapers. And I don't imagine, for one moment, that the writer was encouraged to examine the contents of the coffin in case he realised that these were not, in fact, the bones of a child at all.'

  'Not any child, Lieutenant. The remains were rumoured to be those of a royal prince, the son Queen Mary bore to Darnley.'

  Again Mace laughed. 'No scholar would take such a preposterous supposition seriously, Inspector. You are surely not suggesting that King James VI of Scotland and Queen Elizabeth's legitimate successor was an impostor?'

  Faro smiled. 'You know, I really hadn't got that far. But now that you mention it, yes, perhaps we have a point worthy of consideration.'

  Mace looked nonplussed. 'If this were true, Inspector, then a lot of history would have to be rewritten. And I can assure you that no loyal servant of HM would ever harbour such treasonable and sinister thoughts,' he added severely.

  Faro nodded. 'The Castle officials made absolutely certain that no one else would have any opportunity to investigate. The remains were immediately re-interred and the aperture scaled.' He took advantage of the Lieutenant's sudden bewildered expression to add sharply, 'Have you any idea why Colonel Lazenby committed suicide in 1837, at the time of the second discovery?'