The Missing Duchess (3 page)

'It doesn't explain why a woman gently bred should feel obliged to change into a filthy beggar's gown. And what happened to her middle-class dress and middle-class undergarments?'

'The answer is really simple, Stepfather. No doubt she had to sell them for food and lodging. Hunger can do incredible things to even the most fastidious.'

'This woman wasn't half-starved. I have Dr Cranley's word for that and the evidence of my own eyes.'

Vince shrugged. 'Perhaps she wished to shed her identity with the clothes.'

Faro looked at him. 'You are suggesting the utter destruction of self, of the woman she had been.'

'Something like that. There is another possibility. That whoever found her decided that it was a shame to waste good clothes when they could be sold.'

Faro thought of Sandy. 'I don't think the lad would have that much ingenuity. He seemed quite terrified to go near the body.'

Vince sighed. 'I should stop worrying about it, if I were you, Stepfather. Vagrants are ten a penny and every month some unfortunate falls to the students' dissecting knives. After all, we have to be practical about it. And once dead, the fresher the bodies the better for our purposes.'

'You make it sound like a flesher's shop,' Faro said accusingly.

'And so it is.' Vince eyed him candidly. 'All in the interests of medical science. Remember that one dead body dissected may lead to a hundred - perhaps a thousand - live ones being saved from the ravages of disease.'

Then, almost eager to change the subject, for he know only too well what his stepfather was like once he got a bee in his bonnet, namely, an unidentified corpse in the police mortuary, Vince continued: 'But you wanted to ask me something about this new-found cousin.'

'I have invited him to dinner on Sunday. You will have your chance then to form your own impressions.'

Chapter 3

At their first meeting, when Faro had set down Leslie Godwin at the somewhat bleak lodging in the Lawnmarket, he had found himself thinking of his own comfortable house in Sheridan Place, run so smoothly by their housekeeper Mrs Brook, that model of efficiency. Guiltily, he had remembered the empty rooms upstairs and almost involuntarily this space had been filled with a satisfying picture of his cousin in temporary residence.

As the days had passed the idea grew in his mind. Faro had few relatives and Leslie was quite a find. A second successful meeting when he came to dinner and was very impressed by his surroundings confirmed that the two men had much in common.

Both had been subjected to danger from an early age, Leslie to wars, Faro to violent crime. Both knew how to deal with the unexpected, the art of survival perhaps an inheritance down the generations from that distant Viking ancestor.

Faro noticed with delight when Leslie dined with them that Sunday how Vince's air of reserve fast dissolved as the evening progressed and the talk veered from Leslie's recent progress as guest in the homes of Scottish nobility to his more exciting tales from the battlefield. Of how, confessing to the sketchiest of medical knowledge, acquired out of necessity, Godwin had used his own ingenuity and common sense to keep a seriously wounded prisoner alive until help arrived.

Faro, listening to the two men swapping medical experiences, decided that perhaps Godwin, who talked so cynically about taking enemy lives, was being excessively modest about those he had also saved.

The fact that Vince too was impressed by this relative reinforced the proposal Faro had in mind. He now felt certain that his stepson would approve of Godwin sharing their house during his short stay in Edinburgh.

Vince's reaction was exactly what he had hoped for.

'A capital idea, Stepfather. Let's ask him tomorrow night.'

Godwin, returning to his lodging the following evening, was clearly puzzled but pleasantly surprised to find the two of them waiting for him.

Faro had to put their proposal to him then and there, guessing by his cousin's nervous glances towards the window of his apartment as they talked that he was too embarrassed to invite them inside.

'My dear fellows. I'm grateful - touched even - by your kindness.' He shook his head. 'But I must decline. I am somewhat set in my ways, I've lived alone and lived rough, too long. It's no use trying to civilise me. I come and go and sleep and wake all hours of the day and night. I couldn't put you and your excellent Mrs Brook to all that inconvenience. I'm much better off with my Sergeant Batey, he's served me faithfully for umpteen years and he's used to my ways.'

'He could come too. We have plenty of room in the attics.'

Godwin chuckled. 'You haven't met him yet. I guarantee he's as eccentric as his master, which suits us both well. He'd drive Mrs Brook - and you - mad. No - no - I couldn't think of inflicting us both on you.'

'We might persuade him yet,' said Vince as they walked home. 'Incidentally, we're invited to Aberlethie for the weekend. Terence and Sara are having a few guests.'

The weekend house party was popular among Edinburgh's rich and fashionable merchant class - those with mansions grand enough and gardens magnificent enough to allow gratifying illusions of rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy. And this was the society, Faro thought cynically, that Vince, self-declared man of the people, now moved in.

Sir Terence Lethie was one of his stepson's new golfing friends, and the proximity of a course to the castle suggested to Faro that he might have to make his own amusement.

Faro had a solid lack of interest in golf; he was immune to its fever, declaring that he spent enough time on his feet without regarding the pursuit of a golf ball across a green full of holes and aggravating hazards as an agreeable way of spending his leisure hours.

When he protested that he would be out of place in such an assembly, Vince smiled.

'Some of Lethie's Masonic friends have been invited. And Terence wants you to come specially, a guest of honour.' He coughed apologetically. 'He wants you to tell them about some of your cases.'

'So I'm to sing for my supper, is that it?'

Seeing his stepfather's expression, Vince said: 'I thought you wouldn't mind. And since you are so interested in local history you'll have a chance to meet Stuart Millar. He's a near neighbour.'

The local historian came of a famous family of travellers, one of whom had accompanied Sir James Bruce of Kinnaird on his travels in Abyssinia in the last century.

He was also a Grand Master in the Freemasons. Most of Vince's new acquaintances belonged to the order and Vince was being urged to join as an 'apprentice', the first rung on the ladder.

This was an invitation Faro had resisted personally for many years, despite Superintendent McIntosh's hints that 'it could do great things' for him. Although he refrained from saying so to his superior officer, Faro was happy to have reached his own particular niche in the Edinburgh City Police by his own merits, rather than by joining what he regarded as an archaic secret society for ambitious men.

He was also content to remain Chief Detective Inspector, since the next step up that ladder would involve sitting behind a desk issuing orders and signing documents, work which he would find extremely dull after twenty years of chasing criminals and solving crimes by his own often unorthodox methods of observation and deduction.

'The Lethies are having some quite illustrious visitors,' Vince assured him. 'None other than the Grand Duchess of Luxoria, the Queen's god-daughter.'

Faro had read about Luxoria, one of the bewildering number of European principalities set adrift by the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire, its borders forever under threat of annexation by other powerful states. But the tiny independent kingdom tucked away in central Europe had managed to survive centuries of warring and predatory neighbours.

He knew little of its complex politics since European history was not one of his interests, but he had been vaguely interested to read a legend connected with the Scottish Knights Templars, who had taken refuge there from persecution, rewarding the Luxorians with some holy relic brought from Jerusalem.

Luxoria might have remained in obscurity and never achieved even a small paragraph in the local newspaper but for the Scottish connection. The Grand Duchess Amelie claimed descent not only from Mary, Queen of Scots, but was related to both Her Majesty the Queen and the late Prince Consort.

'Didn't they have a revolution - oh, fifteen years ago? I seem to remember reading about it,' said Faro.

'Full marks, Stepfather. I had it all from Terence. The Grand Duchess inherited after her father's death. She was opposed by her wicked cousin, who had been set up, not against his will, as President and puppet ruler. She was then forced to marry him in what is to all accounts still a wretchedly feudal system of government.' Vince continued: 'A political marriage which would guarantee the succession and save further bloodshed. The Luxorians love their Royal Family, it seems, in spite of it all.'

At the thought of their own Royal Family, Faro smiled wryly. There were many disillusioned citizens in Scotland who applauded Ireland's demand for Home Rule. There were many others too in Britain generally who would have considered it a 'good thing' to bring down the Throne. The Queen was far from popular, spending most of her time in Balmoral Castle guarded by the fiercely protective John Brown, with only token appearances at the seat of government in London, to the dismay of her statesmen.

The French Revolution remained heavily in the forefront of men's minds. Less than a century old, others than the Luxorian Royal Family were feeling echoes of a drama that could still make princelings shake in their shoes. The secret files of the Edinburgh City Police held information concerning a tide of aristocratic refugees seeking sanctuary at the Palace of Holyroodhouse as privileged guests of Her Majesty.

On the eve of their departure for Aberlethie, Faro was summoned to Edinburgh Castle to investigate an attempted burglary. As he walked up the High Street from the Central Office along the West Bow, the bright moonlight and a sky wreathed in stars seemed to emphasise the sinister menace of the darkly shuttered Wizard's House.

Again Faro relived the child he had been, four years old, holding tightly to his weeping mother's hand as she took him on a pilgrimage past the spot where his father had died. Or had been murdered, as she maintained and as he was to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt many years later.

At the Castle, Colonel Wrightson, who had entertained him so regally at the regimental dinner, was surprised to see him again.

'Good of you to come, Faro. I appreciate your personal interest.' He smiled. 'Surely this is rather low-key for you?'

'Not at all. Anything that happens on the outside of the Castle walls is for the police. Once inside, then it's yours.'

There was little to see beyond a broken window and a displaced iron bar, but all suggested that the would-be intruder was a man of considerable strength as well as the possessor of a remarkable head for heights. It also hinted to Faro that this might be a situation worth keeping his eye on, a prelude to something even more dangerous.

When he said so, Wrightson smiled. 'I see from the newspapers' report that you had quite an interesting epilogue to your last evening with us. Another crime for you to solve.'

'Not this time, Colonel. Death was from natural causes. Some poor woman with a heart condition taking shelter.'

'I'm relieved to hear that. All these ridiculous stories about ghosts and ancient curses.' He sighed. 'They should spend a night here. That would set their imaginations going. Ghastly deeds in the Wizard's House indeed, they're nothing compared with the violence this castle has seen over the centuries.

'As for the Palace.' He sighed indicating Holyroodhouse, where he had been Captain of the Household Guard some ten years ago. 'It has an even worse reputation if that's possible. Rizzio's murder and God knows what other evil-doing. Yet I've spent many a night alone when the Queen wasn't in residence and I've never seen a single spectre. Lot of rubbish, if you ask me.'

Despite these reassurances, Faro was glad of the carriage the Colonel insisted on providing for him. As it made the tortuous steep descent of the West Bow, the horses' hooves striking sparks off the cobbles, the cloudless sky had vanished and a moon now trembled between clouds breathing life into the mullioned windows of the West Bow's ancient houses.

At one stage, the sergeant-driver reined in cursing, narrowly avoiding a closed carriage racing past at high speed. As they swayed dangerously, he heard the soldier shout:

'Not so much as a damned lantern. And black horses, too.'

Faro watched the carriage disappear, the sweating horses, their breath still on the night, the only evidence that this was no phantom coach.

A black carriage and black horses -

From the depths of memory loomed an almost remembered childhood nightmare that had engulfed his father and his beloved cousin Leslie.

The next instant he was faced with the unpleasant reality of the present. As the driver set their carriage to rights, there was an almighty crack as one wheel hit the high stone kerb.

Faro clambered out and shouted: 'What is it?'

The man was surveying the damage, swearing volubly.