Quest for a Killer (9 page)

Our conversation was interrupted by a dog barking. Rufus was heralding Elma’s arrival. As I opened the door, Thane slid past me, ignoring the terrier’s threatening growls. Once more it was as if Rufus did not exist.

Elma was surprised to see Vince and delighted too. And Vince was at his most charming. Before his marriage, he had a succession of unrequited loves, bemoaning his lack of success with girls – blaming his boyish appearance, his mop of fair curls, both of which had long since vanished into a balding high forehead, and a rather corpulent but still imposing figure.

A happily married man, now with an elevated position as physician to the royal household, I was witnessing a new side to my stepbrother’s personality. I realised that sex is not something we recognise in our siblings and this was a very different Vince, a man who was undoubtedly attractive and very successful with the ladies, and without question most appealing to his female patients.

The Balmoral visit, where he and Elma had first met, was casually mentioned. Then, as her face clouded, Vince offered sympathy for her husband’s appalling accident at which she switched to her usual angry comments. Not regarding his treatment in hospital, but her own reception and the extraordinary behaviour of those in charge of Felix, to say nothing of the grim presence of a policeman at his bedside.

Vince listened, an occasional shake of his head indicating silent condemnation of such outrageous behaviour.

‘I am so sorry, Mrs Rice. Is there something I can do for you? Would you like me to go in and have a look at him?’

She considered this for a moment, and then said slowly, ‘Oh, would you do that, Dr Laurie?’ And clasping her hands, ‘Yes, indeed. I would be so grateful. Obviously, with all your influence, they could not refuse to admit a
royal
physician.’

And as Vince shrugged modestly, she added, ‘I am sure they would never deny you the right to see someone you had met in Her
Majesty’s
presence at Balmoral Castle.’

The talk turned to how long Vince was staying and so it was arranged that Vince would visit Felix the next day.

I was certain, and so I imagine was Elma, that she would accompany him, but as if anticipating this suggestion, he said, ‘In the first instance I believe it would be more effective if I saw him in private, in my professional capacity, being acquainted with their patient and so forth.’

Elma agreed a little reluctantly and it was arranged that she should wait in the reception area and, when the moment was appropriate after Vince’s consultation with the doctors, once again pay her usual melancholy visit to her husband’s bedside.

She left us soon afterwards.

We watched her cross the garden and head towards the hill, with Rufus bounding ahead, barking fiercely.

Turning to Vince, I asked, ‘Any second thoughts?’

He gave me a quizzical glance. ‘What do you mean, “second thoughts”?’

‘I gather at first meeting you were not particularly impressed, and I am wondering whether, on closer acquaintance, your opinion has now improved?’

He grinned. ‘I think she plays her part as the adoring wife very well indeed.’

‘You think that’s an act,’ I said indignantly. ‘What a horrid thing to say, Vince. Quite unworthy of you.’

He made a modifying gesture, shook his head. ‘Perhaps she is as sincere as she appears in her affection. After all, it is not until we lose someone close to us that we realise their true worth. And in Mrs Rice’s case that worth is considerable – a vast fortune is involved.’

I felt disappointed. ‘That is extremely cynical, Vince. Not much evidence of your usual kindness of heart.’

He smiled. ‘And you, my dearest Rose, are once more a victim of your excess of that particular quality.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ I demanded.

He shook his head. ‘Only that you have known Mrs
Rice a very short while. What is it – weeks, rather than months and years?’

I felt angry and misjudged, wanting very much for him to like my new friend, but Vince carefully forestalled me. Observing my expression and guessing as of old that I was going to argue, he stood up and said, ‘It’s a lovely day, and do you know what I would like?’

I shook my head, still annoyed with him.

‘I would love to visit the funfair down the road,’ he said. ‘We had the circus, of course, at Balmoral, but I haven’t been at a funfair for ages. Shall we?’

‘A splendid idea.’

But before we left there were domestic matters to consider. I hadn’t any guest accommodation in the Tower. I thought of all those empty, damp and cold, dusty rooms upstairs and decided we could get by if Vince had my bedroom and I slept downstairs. So I asked, ‘Will you be staying here?’

Perhaps he recognised the anxiety in my voice, for he smiled. ‘Dear Rose, much as I would love to stay with you, I am bound to stay at the Station Hotel. There is a suite always prepared and ready for emergencies so that passengers on the royal train can literally be on call. Do you mind terribly?’

I didn’t. Although it was great to have Vince in Edinburgh for a day or two, it was also a relief that I was not to provide him with bed and board since I might make an accurate guess that Balmoral provided luxuries which were no part of my spartan existence.

As we strode down the road arm in arm I realised that Vince had never been able to accept the Tower as a place to live – the circumstances of its inheritance from the previous owner perhaps still aroused uneasy memories.

I resolved to enjoy every moment of Vince’s visit, whatever its length, short or long, and I was not going to let the subject of Elma sully our precious time together.

I would lay that firmly aside but it was not until I was alone that I felt sad. For as well as acquiring a new personality I did not immediately recognise, my dear stepbrother had added a cynicism, which could only be the result of his new lifestyle and the circles he moved in.

There were, however, vestiges evident of the boy I was pleased to see still existed. When we entered the funfair he threw away all dignity to the four winds, relishing the merry-go-round usually the province of small children. I was persuaded to join him a second time round, and he would have had a third.

We marched through the sideshows with their enticing lurid posters – Arab belly dancers very daringly underclad – and barkers enticing male audiences.

‘Do you remember Wordsworth’s great poem you learnt by heart and used to recite when you were a little girl?’

‘I still remember it.’

‘Do you really? Those were such fun days when our dear Mrs Brook inevitably had to take you and Emily to the circus in Stepfather’s absence. Some of the lines stick in my memory:

He paused and shook his head. ‘They’re all the bits I still remember.’

‘Bravo!’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Ah, and here are the freak shows. The very thing.’

‘No, please!’ I hoped to avoid them but Vince insisted, sternly reminding me that from a medical point of view this was a challenge.

The fat lady and the smallest man he pronounced were all done with mirrors. He was restrained from a closer examination of a calf with two heads and a pony with five legs and came away shaking his head, sure that these miracles could be achieved by a piece of clever grafting.

At the shooting range, always a good shot thanks to his recent practice during the grouse-shooting season at Balmoral, he excelled himself until the proprietor begged him to leave.

‘Go away, sir, or I’ll be ruined. All my trophies gone, the stall laid bare,’ he pleaded despairingly.

Vince graciously returned all he had won. Glad I was of that, too, as I watched in horror an accumulation of dreadful china dogs and hideous vases – trophies that could not possibly accompany him back to St James,
destined to remain with me, their splendours hidden behind the closed doors of a cupboard in Solomon’s Tower.

‘Fancy having your fortune told, Rose?’ And there was the booth: ‘“Seraphina, clairvoyant to the greatest in the land.” You couldn’t get a better recommendation than that.’

As we walked past, the beaded curtain raised a moment and I caught a glimpse of a large lady, with a very full head of intensely black hair, her eyes outlined in kohl.

‘Very exotic. Except that I would never believe a word of it. We make our own destinies, Vince.’

He shrugged. ‘Some of us do. But there are others… How did William Blake put it? “Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.”’

‘You may be right. But for most of us, I think life is a mixture of both.’

And I thought of how the loss of Danny, the waiting time that had become my own endless night.

As we were leaving the funfair breathless and exhausted, we were hailed by a familiar voice.

Inspector Jack Macmerry, resplendent in uniform.

Vince was delighted and rushed forward to warmly greet his old friend who he had once hoped would be his brother-in-law.

Jack indicated that he was just leaving and Vince said, ‘Been enjoying the sights, have you?’

Jack smiled vaguely and I realised that, far from such luxury, he was on duty, probably here in connection with his suspicions that the circus was
involved in the recent rash of sudden deaths in Edinburgh.

His job done, and now having met us, Jack was in no hurry to depart. As the two men talked, some of the tinker bairns, who were indulging in a shrill and noisy game chasing each other, cannoned into me as they whirled past. I staggered, Jack yelled at them and grabbed me.

He put an arm around my waist and kept it there.

Vince looked on approvingly. I could see by his smug expression that he was hearing those elusive wedding bells once again.

It is one of my curious instincts that I can always feel eyes watching me intently or sense conversations, in which I am the topic under discussion, switch off hurriedly when I enter a room.

And there, within the radius of Jack’s arm still possessively around my shoulders, I turned sharply and saw that we were being closely observed by one of the clowns leaning against the entrance of the circus. And although he turned aside quickly, by his height I was sure it was Joey.

The incident went unnoticed by the two men deep in conversation, but it left me wondering if and when this particular clown ever removed his stage make-up. It seemed odd at midday when there was no circus performance.

Indeed, for the first time, I thought there was something decidedly sinister about this man calculated to arouse guffaws of merriment and delight.

And that was possibly the moment of truth for me,
when a lot of things I had seen and heard no longer aimlessly floated at the back of my mind but loomed into steady focus.

At that instant, Joey the Clown, under whatever happened to be his real name, became my prime suspect.

A perfect disguise. I realised that a criminal could hide out most successfully under greasepaint, the equivalent of a mask worn each day. I was also aware that my suspicions should have been first aroused when I realised that this Joey was not the same King of the Clowns I had seen when the circus was last here in the spring.

I would have loved at that moment to share my discovery with Jack, but there was no hope of a mere woman interrupting an intense discussion as they caught up on two missing years and man-related topics, including golf and whisky.

Apart from Jack’s arm, from which I skilfully disentangled myself, my presence or absence would not have been noticed. But as we walked down the Pleasance and up St Mary’s Street to Princes Street, Vince insisted that this meeting was a call for celebration and that we should dine at his favourite Café Royal, while my thoughts were busy building up the case against Joey the Clown.

What was his real name? Had he a criminal background? Where had he come from before taking refuge and anonymity at the circus, and how many of the performers knew his real identity? Did they know he was a criminal and were they banded together, out of loyalty shielding him from the police?

To return to that first incident. The bank robbery and the murder of the clerk. Was that when my prime suspect sought refuge in the circus? I was certain, as was Jack, of a possible link with the so-called suicides of the two girls.

I remembered the neighbour who claimed a man had bumped into him that night rushing out of the tenement where the girls died and heading in the direction of the circus. A tall man. Had he killed them both by identical methods, merely through the accessibility of the ropes on the drying racks?

But there had to be a reason and that, of course, led me reluctantly to the Miles Rice household. Did the root lie there? Had the two maids who were friends found out something to their employer’s discredit?

The reason was almost always blackmail, from Jack’s vague hints about Felix’s finances. Was Joey a further connection, another blackmailer, the mysterious intruder who had come through the french doors that night and, when Felix Miles Rice refused his terms, viciously attacked him…?

There were a lot of ‘ifs’ but I felt sure there was a link somewhere and that I was going to find it.

We had almost reached Princes Street when Jack stopped and said, much as he would like to accompany us, duty called. He knew of old that lunches with Vince and at least one bottle of wine could wear away an entire afternoon and he had business to attend to.

Vince was genuinely sorry, but Jack was not to be persuaded. He promised, however, to look in and see us later.

I watched him go. Should I tell him of my suspicions? Reason said yes, share your discovery. But I cast aside reason: this was something I wanted to do on my own – unmask the killer. And that was my first and very costly mistake.