Blood Line

Bloodline

An Inspector Faro Mystery

by

Alanna Knight

ALANNA KNIGHT
has written more than fifty novels, (including fifteen in the successful Inspector Faro series), four works of non-fiction, numerous short stories and two plays since the publication of her first book in 1969. Born and educated in Tyneside, she now lives in Edinburgh. She is a founding member of the Scottish Association of Writers and Honorary President of the Edinburgh Writers' Club.

Chapter One

When the body was found Detective Inspector Jeremy Faro was at home at 9 Sheridan Place, taking afternoon tea with his mother and two small daughters, Rose and Emily. Basking in the rare and somewhat ill-fitting role of father, he hoped that the recent decrease in crime would continue, encouraged perhaps by an August unusually hot for Edinburgh. It would indeed be a pleasant change if he, in common with the City Police and Sheriff Court, might enjoy the small miracle of a respite from vice and law breaking.

He was to be disappointed.

Earlier that month, his mother had written from Orkney advising him to expect her on the 'long-promised' holiday in his new house. After careful deliberation and much heart searching, she had decided to brave the voyage to the mainland.

'We must put our trust in the Lord', she wrote, 'that this horrid Prussian war will not spread to our dear land. I tremble at the thought of victorious French troops marching along Princes Street.'

Jeremy Faro had long since decided that his mother's morbid interest in wars and rebellions was worthy of the Queen herself, whose lengthy retreats to her beloved Balmoral much perturbed her Parliament and angered Prime Minister Gladstone.

Personally, Faro was more concerned with the chaos to be expected from this imminent domestic invasion, and, guilt-ridden by his own neglect of the duties of fatherhood, he lay awake composing particularly convincing letters to his determined parent. In the cold light of day the excuse that his house was not yet in order sounded feeble indeed. The truth was less palatable. 1870 had been notable for a tide of personal misfortunes: suspected typhoid, followed by a disastrous love affair, its wounds still too fresh and raw to leave him emotionally capable of dealing with his two exuberant children who, he had sadly to admit, were in danger of becoming strangers to him.

Needless to say, the letters remained unwritten in his head. Every inch the devoted parent, he awaited the Orkney boat at Leith and, with great tenderness, received his two small daughters into his arms.

Mrs Brook, housekeeper at Sheridan Place, regarded the scene with considerable satisfaction. A simple woman, she firmly believed that every man should have his mate. Not for his own amusement had the Almighty ordained that the animals should enter the ark two by two. In her below stairs stronghold, Mrs Brook nodded approvingly as the normally sober household of Inspector Faro and his stepson, Dr Vincent Beaumarcher Laurie, echoed to girlish squeals of delight.

'Come - see this - and this.' Rose and Emily, accustomed to the flat treeless landscapes of their Orkney home, exclaimed wide-eyed as Edinburgh's extinct volcano, Arthur's Seat, filled the horizon from the drawing-room window, while the dining room offered an undulating, sun-shimmering vista of the Pentland Hills. There was even a ginger kitten called Rusty, who had escaped from the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about.

The appearance of their stepbrother, alighting from a gig, brought a fresh wave of excitement. Especially as Vince, who never neglected to bring them gifts, unleashed an armful of picture books and paint-boxes.

Mrs Brook, beaming, delivered her
coup de grâce
. An afternoon tea, calculated to win the hearts of two girls and the secret envy of their grandmother. Pancakes, feather light, with jam made from the garden's strawberries, a Dundee cake stuffed with fruit and enticing small iced cakes.

Looking over the scene Faro felt unusually paternal, the bachelor quarters suddenly transformed into the home they might have been had he remarried, as his mother had sincerely hoped he would after Lizzie's death. Wistfully he thought of the difference that female presences brought with them and how this sometimes sterile dining room was now a place warm and glowing, echoing to the affection of these eager young people.

There were undoubted changes since his last meeting with his two daughters. After an absence of some months, he saw in six-year-old Emily for the first time an extraordinary resemblance to Vince, Lizzie's illegitimate son.

'Yes, of course I'll take you to Arthur's Seat.'

'And the Castle, please, dear Vince,' said Emily. Wonders were not over. The animated expressions of the two, their fair curls, brought to life his dear dead Lizzie as she had looked long ago.

'I want to go to Holyrood Palace, Vince. I want to see where Queen Mary lived. After all she was a Stuart too - like us,' said Rose, who would soon be nine. Her dark prettiness and delicate features were inherited from his diminutive mother, who had been a Sinclair Stuart before she married Police Constable Magnus Faro.

Vince and Jeremy exchanged wry glances over the girls' heads. Obviously Mary Faro had been at work filling those same small heads with romantic nonsense. All Sinclairs and Stuarts on the islands claimed descent from Queen Mary's half-brother the wicked Lord Robert, Earl of Orkney, who had tyrannised the islands and whose sons, legitimate and bastard, notorious for rape and seduction, were largely responsible for increasing the population with their innumerable offspring.

'At least Queen Mary couldn't claim a seal woman for a great-grandmother,' murmured Vince.

The girls' grandmother overheard his remark and said acidly, 'It happens to be true, young man, so do not give me your learned doctor's talk on the subject. I know what I'm talking about. I lived with her and she was a very, very odd lady. She even had webbed toes and her long black hair was just like a seal's coat. Why, I remember . . . '

Jeremy Faro finished his tea and retired to the sofa. There he sat back contentedly, happy to remain a spectator in a good-natured argument. Rose and Emily speedily followed his example. With four soft arms around his neck and two soft, sweet faces staring up into his, and a small plump hand occasionally reaching up to stroke his face or kiss his cheek, he was content. There was healing grace as well as pride in the almost forgotten rituals of fatherhood.

At that moment Mrs Brook entered with a constable at her heels.

Taking in the scene, he said, 'May I have a word, sir?'

Trouble, thought Faro. Dammit.

Out of earshot in the corridor, the constable said, 'There's been an accident, man's body found near the foot of Castle Rock.' Hearing the laughter and excited children's voices issuing from behind the closed door, he said, 'Sorry to disturb you like this, Inspector. We were all for moving the corpse straight to the mortuary, but we've been warned by Superintendent Mackintosh that you and Doctor Laurie, as the Police Surgeon's assistant, are to have a look first. Is that right, sir?'

'It is indeed, Constable.'

Returning momentarily to the dining room and consoling his family with a murmured, 'Something we have to look into. We'll be back soon,' he summoned Vince and boarded the waiting police carriage, which bounded across the Meadows and along Johnston Terrace past the King's Stables Road.

Climbing over the railings and up the steep slope to where the two constables stood on guard, Faro and Vince looked down at the twisted broken body under the rough blanket. The sight outraged Faro's senses. Used as he was to sudden death, the contrast between the world of childhood's innocence and family life he had just left, and the cold clay that had once been a dignified elderly man, that dark unholy violence lurking within a summer's day, seemed obscene in its sudden transition.

'Nothing has been touched, Constable?'

'Nothing, sir. Just as we found him after he was spotted from the battlements. One of the Castle guards. Thought it was an old sack.'

Darkness overtook the sun, a clap of thunder followed by a sudden heavy shower. Above them the Castle shimmered through a rain shroud, wrapped in ancient sinister majesty.

Vince followed his stepfather's upward gaze. 'If I am not mistaken, those are the windows of Queen Mary's apartments.'

'Aye, lad. And what a treasure trove for any thief.'

The constable hovered. 'Sure you don't want the corpse taken in, sir? You'd be a lot more comfortable in the mortuary.'

At Faro's sharp refusal, the man's expression as he buttoned up his cape clearly indicated that he thought his superior officer was mad. And it was no secret that Superintendent Mackintosh thought so too: that it was carrying things too far for everything to be left precisely as it was whenever they found a corpse where no corpse should rightly be. If there was a mystery to be investigated and maybe a murder to be solved then they were to wait for Inspector Faro.

Most of the constables agreed that it was very high-handed behaviour, but the Inspector had been adamant. There were too many cases of vital clues being lost for ever, he pointed out, when a body was removed to the mortuary before on-the-spot examination.

Faro knew of one case personally where a policeman had even tidied up a bedroom in the New Town when a woman was brutally murdered, so that her modesty would not be outraged by appearing naked. By the time Faro reached the scene all evidence had disappeared. Evidence, he was certain, that would incriminate her jealous husband as her murderer and not her lover who, protesting his innocence, was found guilty. Helpless to prove his theory, after that incident, as senior detective he reserved the right, unpleasant as it was, to first view all victims at the scene of the crime.

'How did it happen?'

'He must have been trying to break into the royal apartments - there's a window right above us. Up to no good, Inspector, mark my words.'

Vince stood up from his brief examination. 'Rigor has set in a long while past. He must have been here for some time, concealed from the road by this ridge and the hours of darkness.'

'It also rained quite heavily last night, just like this, I suspect,' said Faro, gloomily turning up his greatcoat collar. With a last searching glance at the great bulk of the Castle, which continued to stare down malevolently through the rain sheets, he and Vince turned the body over, trying as they did so to disturb as little as possible, in that first vital search for clues.

'Take particular notice of his garments, Vince. Do they suggest anything to you?'

Vince shook his head and his stepfather continued. 'Here is additional proof of his lying on this very spot for some considerable time. Feel how wet the back of his jacket is, and yet underneath where he lay, face downwards, his shirt and the front of his breeches are quite dry, as is the ground beneath him. Interesting.'

There was no means of identification forthcoming. The man's pockets were empty and leaving the constables in charge of a somewhat cursory routine search, Faro and Vince once more boarded the police carriage, with the corpse on a stretcher in the back.

By the time they had arrived at the Central Office of the Edinburgh City Police, Faro, who remained silent throughout the short journey, had already reached several significant conclusions.

'I doubt whether you will find this unfortunate gentleman in police records as a potential thief and housebreaker,' he told the constable who accompanied them to the mortuary, notebook at the ready. And as the clothes were removed from the body, 'Observe that he is well fed, and tolerably well groomed. Note that his face and lower arms are suntanned or weather beaten, also we may deduce from the fact that this tan continues below the collar line that he does not normally wear a cravat. His hands are calloused, but he is not, I fancy, a railroad worker or a labourer.'

As the shirt was removed, Faro continued, 'Note all the scratches on his lower arms. These swellings, are they insect bites, Vince? What would you deduce from that?'

'That he works out of doors, often with his sleeves rolled up,' said Vince triumphantly.

Faro nodded approvingly. 'I would hazard a guess, judging by the man's respectable appearance, that we have here a factor, a gamekeeper - someone of that class.'

Vince held up the jacket which they had removed from the corpse. 'I'm more interested in this, Stepfather. Feel it, such excellent material, certainly not the kind a labourer would wear.'