Enter Second Murderer (16 page)

"Miss Goldie was on friendly terms with Mr. Timothy Ferris."

For a moment the Headmaster frowned, and then nodded slowly. "A former pupil of this school who took his own life. A disgraceful business. Ferris was one of our first boarders. He came to us when he was eight years old."

This was a stroke of luck. "And I believe Ferris Minor is a present pupil?"

"Ferris Minor?"

"Yes, his younger brother."

"You have been misinformed, Inspector. Timothy Ferris was without relatives."

"Are you quite certain?"

"Indeed I am." And opening a drawer, the Headmaster handed Faro a bound volume. "This is our register, a complete alphabetic list of our pupils for each year, back to the year eighteen-fifty when the school was opened. See for yourself if you can find a Ferris Minor."

When Faro, after glancing through, shook his head, Lochhead continued, "And may I ask what this Ferris Minor has done to warrant an investigation?"

"He was seen to be on friendly terms with the late Miss Goldie."

"And where, might one ask, were these friendly terms observed?"

"At the Convent of the Sisters of St. Anthony."

Lochhead sprang to his feet, a tower of biblical wrath. "Intolerable, intolerable. An outrageous suggestion, sir, outrageous and indecent. One of my pupils associating with a member of that establishment. I would have you know that the convent is out of bounds, strictly out of bounds. The punishment for fraternising is severe and none of my boys would risk such a thing." Recovering from the shock, he sat down heavily and pointed a finger at the Inspector. "Someone—someone has been leading you up the garden path, deliberately misinforming you in a desire to cast discredit upon my school. The matter, let me assure you, sir, shall not rest here," he added severely.

Faro was aware of the danger. Should the Headmaster complain to Superintendent McIntosh, there would be the devil to pay.

"That should not be necessary. You have my assurances, Headmaster. This is purely a private matter which will go no further than this room."

"I am relieved to hear that."

Faro rose to his feet. "Perhaps before I leave, you can tell me something about Timothy Ferris." The Headmaster made a restless movement, eager to end the interview, as Faro continued, "May I ask in what manner his fees were paid?"

"Such matters are highly confidential, Inspector. However, in Ferris's case there was a trust fund which dealt with all financial matters."

Faro was surprised and disappointed, remembering Vince's rumour of a rich benefactor. "Not an individual?"

"No. It is usual in cases of orphans with well-to-do patrons, who wish to remain anonymous, to set up a trust fund."

"I don't quite understand."

The Headmaster's lip curled. "Naturally, Inspector, if you are not a public-school man yourself. It is quite regrettable, but many pupils have, er, unfortunate backgrounds.''

"In what way?"

Lochhead sighed wearily at this lack of comprehension. "Many are illegitimate sons of noble families, or of prosperous citizens who wish to keep such information secret for the damage it might do to their reputations—or, alas, much worse, to their business or professional life." At that moment, Faro decided he looked almost human, as if he would have relished the sharing of a piece of gossip. Then, remembering himself in time, "I won't delay you any further, Inspector."

"To save embarrassment and litigation, a settlement is made through a trust fund. Yes," said Vince that evening. "Of course, I should have realised that. There were several cases in my own school, among the boarders."

Lizzie had insisted that Vince be "properly educated". "On account of his unfortunate background. We owe it to him, Jeremy," she had whispered. And nothing would move her. Not even the fact that they could ill-afford fees for a private school.

Faro sighed, realising that as his heart sang with joy at the thought of Alison Aird, he was thinking less and less of Lizzie, who had been up to now the only love of his life, without once proving to be the great love he had once anticipated.

Perhaps his practical mind had been cautioned by his mother's love for his father, love doomed and yet undimmed, impervious to the ravages of time, love about which she continued to speak with such eloquence and emotion after nearly forty years. Their little cottage in Dean Village, living only for each other, the sound of his footsteps, the creaking gate, at the end of each day's labour. Safe home, another day's battle behind him, glorious as a soldier, returning to her arms again. His violent death—his murder, she called it—cut like a knife through her world. After grief, and long before the Queen set the fashion for widows by dedicating her life as a shrine to Prince Albert, Mary Faro had been doing exactly that for her own dear Magnus for nearly forty years. The custom of Indian wives committing suttee and stoically following their husband into the funeral pyre met, not with her horror, but with her full support, as correct and fitting.

In his childhood, Faro remembered that hardly a day ever passed by without some reference to, "Your dear father—he would have loved to see you do so-and-so, your dear father would have loved to hear you say that"—and so on.

It was his father's ghostly advice during his adulthood that was to spur him on and lead him to the Edinburgh Police Force. Mary Faro was even prepared to accept the departure of her only son to Edinburgh by consoling herself with, "Your dear father would have been proud to see you this day." She had refused his offer to accompany him, firmly putting behind her any idea of returning to the place of her greatest happiness and greatest sorrow.

"Besides, you will soon find a wife—and even if I wished to come with you, I have my obligations." Her obligations were self-induced, to a tide of elderly invalids, mostly remote cousins she had made it her life's work to care for. All her pent-up maternal love had flowed into these bleak little houses on the wild shores near Kirkwall. No one in trouble or sorrow ever came to her door and left empty-handed.

"You are young and handsome, just the image of your dear father. You will soon make a life of your own—with a wife—and with grandchildren for your old mother."

Ten years were to pass. Constable Jeremy Faro walked his Edinburgh beat, his feet well and truly on the ground, surrounded by the most sordid aspects of crime, while his head remained stubbornly in the clouds, confidently awaiting the great romance his mother had promised. It never happened. He had given up all hope of what the romantic novelettes and the great classics alike describe as falling in love, an emotion he recognised among the great writers and poets: the passions of Romeo for Juliet, of Antony for Cleopatra, both ended in tragedy. Was the reason that such ecstasy, a love one would die for, could not sustain the less rarefied atmosphere of everyday life, the drier down-to-earth elements that constituted marriage? Marriage itself, he thought, must strike the death knell of romance.

He had come to terms with what promised to be lonely bachelordom, with the bleak conclusion that there was no great love set aside for him. Then, one day, a pretty young waitress with a beguiling Highland accent was serving dinner at the hotel where he was making routine enquiries after a robbery.

Lizzie was from Skye, and prepared to be friendly to the young policeman who took her to Jenners for tea on her afternoon off. It was an occasion he found extremely pleasant, as had other occasions when he had taken other young women out to tea, or to hear a brass band. No more and no less.

After the first time, when conversation had been difficult to sustain, for they seemed to have little in common. Faro had almost decided not to see her again, but Lizzie was never good at concealing her feelings, and her look of disappointment was his undoing.

At their second meeting, she was less shy and more expansive about her early life. She and her young brother had been only a short time in Edinburgh and had not made many friends. Faro himself had made few friends since he came from Orkney. He did not consider this a disadvantage, preferring the company of books and solitary walks in the country. Colleagues in the Central Office, of his own age, touching thirty, were mostly married men with young families.

Having thought her less than twenty, he was surprised to learn that she was considerably older than her brother. Her struggles to bring up the lad, whom she was trying to educate so that he might have a better life than had been her lot, created a further bond. Her island story found a sympathetic echo in his own Orkney background.

Conscious of her own inadequacies in the matter of education and the loneliness of city life in Edinburgh, she often sought refuge in the beckoning foothills of the Pentlands. On their third meeting, she brought along her nine-year-old brother. The occasion was not a success; the boy was handsome and extremely like his sister, but he was also sullen and rebellious, ungrateful, ungracious.

Jeremy decided not to repeat the expedition, and in fact thought it as well not to continue seeing Lizzie in case his continued attentions led her to believe that he had serious intentions. The idea of a permanent relationship with the odious brother tagging along filled him with dismay.

For several weeks he returned to his solitary life, then, one day, by accident, he met her walking in Princes Street Gardens with a companion, one of the hotel maids. He found himself genuinely glad to see her again. He had missed her, and told her so. Her suddenly tear-filled eyes, her hand on his arm, beseeching, told its own story of how wounded she had been by his neglect.

Six months of "walking-out" followed—without a single kiss, a fact which would have astonished his colleagues who from their teasing conversations imagined that the handsome, shy young constable from Orkney was "a regular dark horse". The pleasant undemanding relationship might have continued indefinitely had Lizzie not been dismissed by the hotel. Questioned as to why, she reluctantly admitted it was on account of a misdemeanour of her brother.

"He was very naughty and annoyed the manager. Rude to a guest, you know. He is so high-spirited, he didn't mean it."

Faro doubted that, for although his first impression of the boy had been softened on closer acquaintance, he knew from Lizzie that his behaviour was unpredictable and he could still be a bit of a handful.

"He needs a man—a father—in his life, that's what."

She and the boy had been asked to leave immediately. Poor Lizzie, in tears, was at her wits' end. She had nowhere to go, and although Faro realised it would hardly be considered proper or respectable to have her living in his digs, perhaps the presence of her young brother would lessen the inevitable eyebrow raising and heavy-handed teasing. His colleagues would inevitably see this step as a prelude to his forthcoming marriage.

One person was less than pleased—his young widowed landlady. Favoured with the largest servings, the best cuts of meat, even Faro guessed what were her hardly concealed designs. Of late, her overtures and hints had increased in boldness, bringing forth delighted guffaws from Faro's colleagues, and a somewhat hunted look into his own eyes.

An unpleasant week followed Lizzie's arrival: of smaller helpings, high dudgeon accompanied by door- and plate-banging from the irate landlady. The boy's behaviour was impeccable. Polite to everyone, to Faro he was friendly and helpful, even charming.

"He is so shy," said Lizzie, "but he does like you very much, Jeremy. Perhaps it is the uniform that made him a little nervous when you first met."

At the end of two weeks, Faro had decided it was very pleasant to have a smiling young woman to welcome him "home". He was taken aback when Lizzie announced that she was leaving that weekend for Peebles.

"Why must you go to Peebles?"

"I have a situation there, in a hotel, if I want it."

"Must you go so far away? Is there nothing suitable here in Edinburgh?"

"Nothing that keeps us here. The wage I'm being offered is far better too." She paused uncomfortably. "As you can guess, I have very little money left from my savings."

Suddenly Faro's future looked very bleak. Undemanding Lizzie replaced by the triumphantly predatory landlady. The alternative was a search for new digs, much less than a convenient stone's-throw from the Central Office and most likely with less of the good food and comfort that he had grown accustomed to for the past two years.

"Lizzie," he said, "could I persuade you to stay—I mean, if we married?"

She looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. "Of course I would stay then. Jeremy Faro, are you seriously asking me to marry you?"

"Yes, yes. I'd like that—very much. More than anything."

Conscious that he was making an idiot of himself with his first ever proposal, he leaned over to kiss her and was surprised by the warmth of her reaction, by her soft and loving arms tight about his neck as she whispered, "Oh, my dear, I have loved you for such a long time."

It was then he realised he had said nothing about love, that love in fact had never entered his head. He patted her shoulder, and clearing his throat stammered out, "There, there—I love you."

The effect of his declaration was to have Lizzie burst into tears, cast him aside and sit down at the table, beating her arms upon it like one demented. Her attitude of unutterable despair took Faro by surprise. It was not at all what he had been led to believe might be the reaction to his proposal and Lizzie's acceptance.