Quest for a Killer (15 page)

Jack had returned. I hadn’t time to get dressed. He tapped on the window as I drew on my robe and rushed downstairs to open the door.

I was delighted to see him; he kissed my cheek briefly and would have extended that to something a little longer had I not backed away very firmly.

Seating him at the table as I prepared breakfast, I could hardly wait to tell him my news as I listened somewhat impatiently to the saga of what had been happening in Glasgow.

Jack’s late wife Meg had a married sister who was childless. She and her husband had decided that fortune had smiled on them and they would adopt ‘wee Meg’ who had already found a place in Pam’s heart.

‘It will all be done legally, of course. I’ll keep in touch and visit the wee bairn quite regularly.’

But this was a different Jack and he couldn’t conceal the relief in his voice, the problem of fatherhood and a motherless daughter solved.

Which, he pointed out, now gave him more time to 
devote to matters in Edinburgh. Namely, solving crimes and also – his affectionate glances in my direction said plainly – resolving the ongoing problem of our relationship.

At last, having consumed bacon and eggs, he buttered another slice of bread, took a second cup of tea, sat back and said, ‘And what has been happening here? Any news?’

‘Quite a lot.’ At last, patience rewarded, I got out my logbook and in a very businesslike manner went over all the details of events since last we met, including my meeting with the inspector.

When I told him that Gray wasn’t even interested in my theories, Jack shook his head.

‘He’s a busy man, Rose, and he doesn’t think there is a case. He and his colleagues are quite content to accept the two suicides, strange as they seemed—’

‘You haven’t heard the latest, then?’ I interrupted. ‘The newspaper report?’

And I told him of my visit to Belle’s grandfather and his concern that an innocent man could be charged.

‘Sounds as if he has some evidence,’ said Jack. ‘That could be the only reason he was so certain.’

‘A suicide note he has found, you mean?’

‘Or has concealed for his own reasons. I think it’s worth a visit. We’re still on the lookout for the bank robber; a miserable enough amount – just a few pounds – was stolen, hardly worth killing anyone. I suspect one man’s desperate need for money. The clerk was killed accidentally.’

He shook his head. ‘A small local bank too. It
certainly had no indications that this was an organised bank raid, carefully planned. And if that had been the case, there would have been more than one man, and a gang would certainly have attempted others. No sign of that and every day the trail grows colder.’

He shrugged. ‘Any day now I expect it will be officially written off as “by person or persons unknown” and that includes the verdict on the poor fellow’s death.’

Jack had heard about Hodge so I told him my theory regarding the carriage during the night going towards Duddingston Loch and the sinister possibility that Felix’s valet was already a dead passenger inside, to be conveniently dumped into the dark waters.

‘A pity you hadn’t been wide awake and able to give a description of the carriage.’

I looked at him sharply. He wasn’t taking this seriously either as he said, ‘What reasons have you for believing that he was murdered?’

I told him about our interview, how I was sure he was shielding someone, and he merely shook his head sadly.

‘Rose, you and your feelings! You never learn, do you?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Circumstantial evidence. Feeling that something is amiss is just not enough, you surely know that from all your experience as a private detective. As for the idea of that carriage – you are letting your imagination run away with you again.’

Before I could protest, he said hastily, ‘And to more
practical matters. Does your friend Mrs Rice report any improvement in Felix’s condition?’

‘Only the doctor’s reports. Peter and she go in every day and there’s this ridiculous policeman spending hours of wasted time – at the public’s expense, no doubt – sitting at his bedside.’

Jack frowned. ‘That ridiculous policeman at present happens to be Constable Hoskins, one of my best lads, and I can ill afford to be without him.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, I doubt whether they’ll be able to keep Miles Rice alive in a coma much longer. Too difficult. I don’t think he’ll ever speak again and no doubt there will be a decision to remove the police guard. Can’t come soon enough for me.’

As Jack changed the subject I was thinking of poor Elma, wondering if they would keep Felix in hospital until the end or let her, as I knew she would wish, have him brought home again with a private nurse, which she assured me they could well afford, to take care of him during his final days. I could sympathise, it was all very distressing for her.

‘Anything of more importance?’ Jack asked.

‘Yes, indeed there is,’ I said, proud of having saved the most important piece of information to the last. ‘Have you heard of Sam Wild?’

He looked sharply at me, leant forward. ‘Sam Wild. What do you know of Sam Wild?’

‘Only that I have good reason to believe he is also known as Joey the Clown at Hengel’s circus.’

Jack sat back in his chair. Frowning, he looked very thoughtful indeed, if not actually worried, although
when I asked him if he knew the man, he shook his head.

He didn’t convince me so I told him young Jimmy’s version: that Joey was a man of mystery who didn’t live with the other circus clowns.

Jack listened, nodding as if in agreement from time to time but he wasn’t as excited or even, it seemed, any longer as interested in this piece of information which I considered vital to the killer’s identity.

‘He must be still somewhere in Edinburgh, lodging near the circus. Think of the opportunity, the coincidence—’

Jack frowned. ‘Coincidence?’

‘Don’t you see – surely? All the deaths took place in the central area of Newington. It shouldn’t be too hard to trace a tall man with a badly scarred face – without the clown’s greasepaint, the wig and so forth, which he can hardly be wearing now.’

As we spoke Thane was dashing to the door and then back to me. ‘Oh, I’d almost forgotten. Thane was disturbed in the early hours this morning. I think he found something outside he wanted me to see, but I wasn’t tempted to go out in the dark.’

‘Let’s have a look, then.’

We followed him and he ran to the kitchen window, stood up with his paws on the sill.

I couldn’t see anything at first, then Jack pointed.

‘Nothing there. Just a smear of paint.’

What on earth could that mean? Had someone tried to break in and Thane had tried to warn me? When we went inside I showed him the note.

He took that seriously enough. ‘You should be careful, Rose.’

‘I’m not in any danger – after all, I have Thane.’

‘From what you’ve just told me – and that mysterious white paint – you could be in considerable danger.

I didn’t see the connection at first and he repeated, ‘White paint, Rose. Think about it. We’ve been talking about clowns and that is probably greasepaint. You know, the kind they use,’ he added heavily.

And all of a sudden a lot of things came together and I was suddenly scared as he looked at me and said slowly, ‘Rose, I think I should move in with you – just for a while.’

I laughed, although I suspected it was just the kind of opportunity Jack was looking for. ‘I don’t need a guard detective – I have a guard dog.’

He ignored that. ‘I was about to ask you, anyway, if I could be considered as a lodger – without any commitment, if that’s what you’re looking so nervous about,’ he added hastily. ‘I’m not trying to further my case, although you might as well know that I still love you – that has never changed – but I give you my solemn word that living under the same roof I would not take any advantages—’

Again I laughed rather cynically at that and he said severely, ‘I’m living in police lodgings at the moment but have my name down for a flat in Lutton Place. I need somewhere central, just a couple of weeks – maybe less – until it’s ready for occupation. Go on, Rose,’ he wheedled, ‘it’ll be fine and I promise to behave like a proper lodger. Pay you rent and I’ll sleep
downstairs, bring a bed down to the great hall.’

At my doubtful expression he went on, ‘A necessary precaution, if sleeping on the same floor worries you that I might sleepwalk and imagine it’s the old days again,’ he added impishly, hoping to sound sarcastic, but unable to conceal the bitterness such memories brought.

‘I’ll have to think about it, Jack.’

‘Well, don’t take long about it.’ He jabbed a finger towards the note on the table. ‘The writer just might mean business and you may not have a lot of time to make up your mind.’

‘Thanks for the cheery prospect,’ I said.

‘Maybe the attempted break-in doesn’t worry you – but it certainly has given me food for thought and I’d like to be near at hand until we have sorted out the whereabouts of this Sam Wild. Innocent or guilty, until we know the truth you might well be in danger.’

I wasn’t fooled by his solemn tone. Aware that Jack could always make the most of any advantage.

I refused to take it seriously…then. But Jack was right; I still had a lot to learn, as I found out sooner than I thought.

Jack moved in and suddenly my life changed. I did not think having him stay in the Tower would make all that much difference but it did. He had the ability to make himself at home and he proceeded to do so with a vengeance.

Although he would have denied it – perhaps it was because I was no longer used to having a man about the house – he seemed to be a very large presence and I was for ever tripping over him.

He came on a Saturday and by Tuesday I felt as if the time lapse of two years had never happened except that we slept apart. As proposed, he had moved the bed from the spare bedroom into the great hall. There it stood in a corner in solitary splendour, with only the table and that monstrous typewriting machine snug and unused under its black leather cover to keep him company.

The weekend was pleasant, I must admit. Glorious warm sunshine, almost unseasonable, with the trees doing a dress rehearsal of adorning their leaves in that splendid array of autumn colours.

We walked with Thane on the hill and Jack hired a carriage and drove us to East Lothian where we had a picnic at Yellowcraigs while Thane, apparently enjoying the role of a domestic pet, darted in and out of the water, much to the delight of Constable Hoskins and his wife who were on a similar expedition with their three young children.

Jack was always good company and he was at his shining best, full of amusing anecdotes, throwing dignity to the winds and playing rounders with his constable and the children, light-hearted and happy to shed the solemn life of a senior detective.

Just occasionally I caught a wistful look as, laughing, he held the smallest and most beguiling two-year-old above his head. I felt a pang for Jack then, a glimpse of the father he might have been, and wished the wee lass in Glasgow had been a wee lad.

Overhearing his conversation with the constable while Mrs Hoskins and I discussed womanly topics and we all demolished the pile of picnic sandwiches, I learnt a lot of Jack’s two missing years, the places he had visited. He had even visited America – New York, in fact, which was a great surprise.

When I asked him about it later, he said, ‘Of course, I couldn’t afford it, this was a special assignment.’

But he refused to be drawn on the details and I didn’t pursue the subject. The voyage, however, with its dramatic moments of a storm whilst crossing the Atlantic was something else we had in common.

He was suddenly a friend, long lost and returned to me. He made no gestures in the direction of the
returned lover, in fact he was most scrupulous about that, taking my arm to help me over the rocky shore or into a carriage, but that was all. He kept his word and never referred to our earlier relationship. He never attempted to kiss me goodnight or make any gesture, or spoke any word that I might interpret as a romantic overture.

We sat by firelight in the evenings, which were drawing in, reading and often discussing books which we had both enjoyed and, apart from Thane’s new obsession for staring out of the kitchen window for hours on end, it was just like old times, with a good supper and a bottle of wine, mostly consumed by Jack, whose head for alcohol was better than mine.

The crimes and the connection with the circus, so much part of our recent lives, were laid firmly aside. Jack refused to discuss what he called ‘business’.

‘Let’s enjoy today, Rose. It’s all we have really.’

His voice was so sad that I looked at him intently. He was staring uneasily in the direction of Thane who, once content to lie at Jack’s feet, had now abandoned him to stand guard at the kitchen window, occasionally wagging his tail at the darkness or the starry sky.

‘I don’t know what he finds so fascinating out there. What on earth does he see? It’s black dark,’ said Jack.

He was quite hurt and I didn’t feel it was the moment to remind him that animals, unlike humans, had the gift of night sight.

Watching Thane, Jack gave me a bewildered glance and said thoughtfully, ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you put up some curtains, Rose?’

Curtains had never occurred to me. All the other windows in the Tower were shuttered, and as I hadn’t any prying neighbours, I had no feeling that my privacy was endangered, and besides, I rather enjoyed looking out at the starry sky above Arthur’s Seat.

‘Does it worry you?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘No, but it obviously worries Thane.’

And for the first time I felt a twinge of alarm, the unseen presence of violence and death. Was Jack making light of something that was in fact a warning? I was safe enough with him here, but would I ever again look out into the darkness beyond the Tower that had seemed so protective, once I was in the house alone, my footsteps echoing as I remembered that warning note?

‘I’ll think about it.’

And Jack grinned. That was my usual compromise.

No more was said, we wished each other goodnight and Jack bolted the door. He insisted on doing so despite any inconvenience to Thane sleeping on his rug at my bedside.

Insisting that it was just an extra precaution he said, ‘If Thane needs to go out, I’ll hear him.’

I thought that was doubtful. Jack would hear nothing from the great hall, and as I knew of old, his snores indicated that he slept very soundly indeed.

When he left after breakfast on Monday morning, I decided I must tell Elma about my new lodger when she arrived over the hill with Rufus for her morning walk, without Peter for once.

She crowed mischievously and wagged a finger at
me. ‘You are a sly one, Rose. Pretending when we met him at the circus that first evening that he was just a friend.’

‘And so he is,’ I said shortly. ‘He just needs somewhere to stay.’

‘I’ll bet,’ was her dry comment.

We went into Princes Street to look for suitable curtain material and she seemed less enthusiastic about shopping than usual, presumably because the subject of our quest, making curtains, was of little interest and belonged in the domestic province of the Rice Villa housekeeper: a treasure, I was told, who absolutely adored Rufus.

It was later as we were having tea together that another strange idea for her offhand behaviour occurred to me. I casually mentioned Peter and asked where he was.

In reply she almost snapped my head off. ‘Peter? I don’t know. Why ask about Peter now?’

And at that moment I thought I had made an important discovery.

In the short time we had known each other, much to my surprise, I was, in Elma’s own words, her ‘greatest friend’. I liked her sweet nature and generosity, and was prepared to forgive her snobbery, writing it off as a minor flaw, the result of our completely different upbringings: her family background, rarely mentioned, an estate in Surrey.

However, try as I might, I had never felt drawn to Peter, although the twins were so close. Now it occurred to me in a lightning flash of intuition why she was so
upset about the possibility that Jack was moving back into my life: the reason was Peter.

I thought of all the occasions when she was desperately anxious that I should like him, insisting that we were to be great friends, always drawing the three of us together, while I was sure he did not enjoy those morning walks across the hill from Rice Villa.

They were just to please Elma. As I endeavoured to arouse her enthusiasm on that shopping expedition, it suddenly dawned upon me that Elma was less interested in curtain-making than matchmaking.

Inspired by the heroines of the Jane Austen novels we both loved, Elma had decided that I should marry her twin, Peter.

I also remembered that, without even a meeting, she stubbornly refused to accept the young woman Peter had been courting while in London. I could hardly with decency query Peter about her – we were not on such terms of intimacy – and as she was never mentioned I presumed that she had been discarded, whether or not at Elma’s insistence, when he came to Edinburgh, in the hope that he would marry her new best friend.

What a preposterous idea! I longed to have it out with her, tell her that life doesn’t work like that. To say tactfully, without causing offence or hurt, that I did not want, or would ever even consider, marrying her twin.

If I needed confirmation of her displeasure it was when neither she nor Peter appeared during the next few days.

I thought little about it, busy with a tape measure
and scissors, and longing for a sewing machine; I had not been this domestic since my pioneering days with Danny when we were always trying to put a temporary home together just a step or two ahead of the next Apache raid.

I had stood back to admire the result of my new kitchen curtains when my life as a private detective suddenly gathered pace. A letter from a prospective client urgently requesting a meeting to undertake an investigation.

Paid work at last, another item for the logbook, another much needed addition to my income and off I went on my bicycle the short distance to South Newington.

Mrs Craig lived in one of the large houses almost next door to the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor. An elegant lady, most welcoming, and I received a most civilised reception as I was led into the handsome drawing room, with afternoon tea brought by a uniformed maid. As we nibbled dainty sandwiches, she leant closer and whispered the details of her domestic problem.

A valuable ruby ring had gone missing and she suspected her personal maid, inherited by her three months ago, a long-serving much loved member of her recently deceased mother’s household.

Had she thought of informing the police? I asked. Mrs Craig shook her head vehemently. ‘There are reasons why I wish this to remain a private investigation. First out of respect for my mother, who was devoted to Winton.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘The stolen ring is very old. It is also, I think, rather ugly and old-fashioned. But it is a family heirloom, two hundred years old and my husband will take its loss very badly indeed. Mr Craig, I am afraid, will not hesitate to notify the police.’

The shudder which accompanied this said louder than any words that the domestic strife envisaged would be intolerable and was to be avoided at all costs. So making a note of the details, a description of the ring, I agreed to take it on.

My first visit, as always in cases of stolen jewellery, would be to the local pawnshops.

Wheeling my bicycle past the convent, I had just reached the road when I was hailed by Sister Clare. She was alone and heading in my direction.

‘I thought I recognised you, Mrs McQuinn. I am so glad to see you.’ Tactfully she did not enquire about my business with one of the convent’s neighbours. ‘I don’t wish to trouble you when you are so busy and,’ pausing she shook her head, ‘the incident is of little significance really.’

She looked at me, her anxious expression clearly asked that I be told, so I walked down the drive with her.

‘Every Sunday after mid-morning Mass we provide a soup kitchen for the lonely and needy in the district. Despite the opulence we see around us in this area, just down the road there are still many poor people, ex-soldiers among them and disabled veterans unable to obtain employment.’

I thought of Will Sanders as she added, ‘Poor starving folk, God help them.’ We had almost reached the convent steps. I waited patiently for her to get to the point.

‘This Sunday, Marie Ann – you remember her, our young novice we gave your cloak to; so kind of you! – well, she was on duty and came back in a bit of a state, poor girl. Terrified she was – I finally got it out of her, she had recognised among the men coming forward for their bowl of soup, the man with the scarred face…’

She paused dramatically. ‘The very same who accosted her in the garden that day. Of course, he was well wrapped up, scarf and so forth, and she could have been wrong, but I had no idea what should be done about it. Hardly a matter for the police, or for you, Mrs McQuinn, to deal with.’

I was in silent agreement. Alarming, maybe, but again not a shred of real evidence.

‘I thought, when I saw you, that I should mention it. I’ll tell her I talked to you.’

And as she stood there looking at me, she smiled, head on one side, and said a strange thing. ‘Marie Ann is so like you – I mean what you must have looked like as a young girl, both so small and neat, same height, that lovely curly hair.’

Just an ordinary polite remark. It wasn’t until much later that the significance struck me.