Deadly Beloved (21 page)

At last they turned into the drive of Kellar's house where Faro sprang to life again and told the driver to set them down. "We'll walk the rest of the way. Wait for us here."

As the house came into view, there were no cracks of light visible behind the closed shutters. "We're too late. Presumably they're all abed," said Vince hoping this would dissuade his stepfather from proceeding any further.

"Then we'll have to wake them up," said Faro cheerfully.

The doorbell pealed, once, twice. Vince shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "Kellar will be furious if he catches us, Stepfather."

"Listen. Someone's coming."

"Who is it?" A woman's muffled voice.

Vince gave him a startled glance and whispered, "Mrs Flynn?"

"Mrs Flynn, it's Inspector Faro."

"What do you want? Master's not at home."

"It is you I want a word with, Mrs Flynn. Or Ina."

"Ina's away home." There was a short silence. "We're all poorly. Seem to have been poisoned with something bad we ate."

"Poison, eh," whispered Faro. He gave Vince a significant glance, his face unusually excited in the bright moonlight. "Mrs Flynn?"

There was no reply and he rapped sharply on the door. "Mrs Flynn. Open the door, please."

"I'm in my nightgown, Inspector."

"This is police business, Mrs Flynn. We have to see Mrs Kellar's room again."

"At this time of night! Who's with you, sir?"

"Dr Laurie, Mrs Kellar's friend."

"Come back tomorrow."

"No. Open the door. We'll be as quiet as mice and it won't take more than two minutes."

His wheedling tone succeeded in getting the door unlocked. As they set foot in the hall, Mrs Flynn retreated modestly.

"I've turned up the gas for you. I'm away back to my bed."

Faro led the way upstairs and opened the door of Mabel's bedroom. "All right, Vince lad, now you tell me what it was that I missed, because I'm damned if I know."

Vince followed Faro round the room. Soon the room was brilliantly illuminated under the glare of gaslight."It's all exactly as I remember it the last time I was here. Nothing odd, certainly nothing out of place."

Faro was standing by the dressing table. He lifted the silver-backed brushes as he had on that first visit.

"Exactly," he whispered to Vince. "And that is precisely what was wrong. What has been nagging at me all this time. Look at these, lad. What do they say to you?"

Vince frowned. "That they are exquisite, very valuable. Mabel was very proud of them."

"Then, tell me, why did she leave them behind?"

Vince watching his stepfather's reflection in the mirror, looked puzzled. "I have no idea. Mabel was very proud of her hair; brushing it was a bit of a ritual with her and that's why she mourned the loss of a personal maid."

"So you would agree that these are intimate articles that no woman would be without on her travels."

"Certainly Mabel wouldn't."

And Faro knew he had the answer to what nagged him since that first visit.

"Don't you see what this means, Vince, lad? There was something far more sinister behind Mabel Kellar's departure than a mere domestic tiff with her husband."

Vince continued to look puzzled and Faro went on solemnly, "What you are seeing now is the very first clue."

"Clue, Stepfather. I don't understand."

"Yes, you do, lad. Think. The presence of those hair brushes when they should logically have been absent tells us something vital about this whole case."

Leaving Vince still staring blankly at the silver brushes, Faro led the way downstairs. Once Vince stumbled and cursed.

In the hall, Faro paused. "We'll have a word with Mrs Flynn before we go."

"If Kellar arrives and finds us roaming about his house at the dead of night, there'll be hell to pay," warned Vince.

"This won't take a moment."

But they were out of luck. Faro went downstairs, tapped on the door of Mrs Flynn's room from which loud snores issued forth. He called her name several times, but the snoring seemed to have intensified. Turning the handle, he found the door firmly locked.

"What did you expect. Stepfather? With a madman still at large, and a maid who sees things, she's not taking any chances. And neither should we," he added with a shudder. "Do let's go. This house is cold as a tomb and it's beginning to give me the creeps."

Vince sighed with relief when he saw the cab driver's lights along the drive. "Home again, Stepfather. I'll be glad of a dram, I can tell you."

"Not quite yet, lad. In a wee while." And, leaning forward, Faro gave Mrs Shaw's address.

Vince looked aghast. "You can't be serious, Stepfather, calling on her at this hour."

"The later the better. With luck we might also find Harry Shaw there. An unexpected pleasure you have in store, lad," he added, ignoring Vince's grumbles as they boarded the carriage and headed towards Regent Crescent.

Chapter 15

Edinburgh asleep under its heavy blanket of snow presented a scene of enchantment and delight for those inclined to romance. At this hour there were few people about to enjoy this spectacular backdrop and Faro's entreaty to his stepson to admire such unexpected beauty met with a somewhat disgruntled response.

"All in bed and missing it, are they? I wish I was too, or I wish that my feet were warm. I'm frozen."

Faro suppressed a smile at Vince's return to the spoilt petulant child of former years. There was nothing to be done with him in this mood, his stepfather knew from experience, and instead stared out of the window, sighing deeply as if he could breathe in the moonbeams.

When at last they reached Regent Crescent, the fanlight showed illumination and their summons was answered with alacrity by Mrs Shaw. In a dressing gown with her hair unbound she presented a captivating sight. She did not seem perturbed by their late arrival and greeted them without surprise.

"As if gentlemen arriving on her doorstep at nearly eleven o'clock was a perfectly normal occurrence," Vince murmured later in shocked tones. The significant look he gave his stepfather indicated that Mrs Shaw had slipped from the pedestal of unsullied virtue into the realms of scarlet womanhood.

"Do come in," she said cutting short Faro's apologies for the lateness of the hour. "How nice to see you again, Vince. Barnaby is teething and refuses to settle. I have had him up and down since teatime." Ushering them into the drawing-room as she spoke, she stirred the embers of the fire into a welcome blaze. "Now what can I do for you?"

Faro and Vince exchanged uncomfortable glances staring at the baby lying on the sofa, attacking a teething ring with cannibalistic venom. It wasn't going to be easy.

Mrs Shaw went over and, after kissing Barnaby, smiled at them. "Let me guess the purpose of your visit. I suppose it's about the late Captain Shaw."

Faro nodded, cleared his throat a little, while Vince shuffled his feet and tried to look unobtrusive. "That is so."

Again she smiled, sadly this time. "I realised that the police enquiries would be very thorough if you were in charge, Inspector. It was bound to come out sooner or later that I did not in fact have a husband and have never had one."

Barnaby uttered a yell of protest and she swept him up into her arms, laid one scarlet cheek against her cool one.

"Perhaps you would give us the whole story. That would help enormously and save a great deal of time."

"There is not much to tell. I met Harry Shaw when I went to live in Caithness after my parents died. Harry asked me to marry him but his taste for adventure decided me against it. He wished to go to America and I wished to remain in Scotland. There seemed to be no solution. We quarrelled and I sent him away. A few weeks later Dr Kellar came on a shooting holiday and was very attentive."

She coloured slightly at the memory. "I am very ashamed of what happened next. I had discovered that I was carrying Harry's child. I was desperate. Harry had gone out of my life for ever. My relatives would show me the door when they found out. There was only one solution left and however despicable it must sound to you., I had to find a father for my baby."

"I need not elaborate on the rest of the story, Dr Kellar's infatuation and our subsequent association. I knew he was married but I followed him to Edinburgh and allowed him to set me up in this house, believing, God forgive me, that Barnaby was his child."

She smiled sadly. "His eagerness to do so astounded me. He never questioned or doubted my word. And he loved Barnaby from the first moment he set eyes on him, so proud to be a father at last."

"Did he say he would marry you, if he were free?"

"Of course, but we both knew that was quite impossible and a scandal would have ruined him, destroyed his career, his hopes for the future. For me there was another factor: as I got to know Mabel and she was eager to befriend me as a young widow, I could not bear to have her hurt."

She paused, looking at them from one to the other. "But perhaps my strongest reason of all was that, despite our relationship, I in no way responded to Melville's infatuation. I knew how foolish I had been to reject Harry. I had given my heart. I still loved him and would do so always, even if I never saw him in this world again."

She let the words sink in before continuing. "I was the happiest woman in the world the day that Harry Shaw walked into this house, told me he still loved me and met his son for the first time." Her eyes filled with tears. "Oh, what a joyous meeting that was. The answer to a miracle indeed."

She spread her hands wide in a gesture of hopelessness. "Until I remembered Melville Kellar and his demands upon my life. What was I to do? I decided there must be no more secrets between Harry and myself and, I must say, he took it all remarkably calmly. He said he forgave me, but that I must write to Kellar and tell him the true facts. I'm afraid I tried several times, but always my courage failed me. My rapturous joy over Harry's return was every day slipping further into the realms of nightmare as we began to quarrel once again, for he thought my cowardice was lack of love for him."

Barnaby began to whimper again as if in tune to his mother's sadness and she took him into her arms.

"It would be best, don't you see," said Faro gently, "if you were to write that letter."

She looked up. "But I have just done so. Harry posted it on the way to the station. I thought that was why you were here."

"Where is Mr Shaw?" asked Faro.

"On his way to Yorkshire, for an interview with a firm of architects."

"Then you are here alone?"

Mrs Shaw smiled at Faro's tone of alarm. "I am used to being alone. I have my maid."

"And yet you open the door to callers at this late hour?"

"I never gave it a second thought."

"Then I urge you to do so."

Her amused expression turned into a frown. "Are you trying to warn me, Inspector. Am I in danger? I assure you I have no enemies."

"All of us have enemies, whatever face they choose to wear."

"You think Melville, when he finds out about Harry?" Her eyes widened in shocked surprise.

"I think nothing. I merely warn you to take extra care who you open your door to, especially at night."

As they took their leave, bowing over her hand, Faro again urged her to be vigilant.

In the cab carrying them homeward at last, Vince mulled over the interview with Mrs Shaw. "I still think of her as that."

"And so she is under the Scottish law, Harry Shaw's wife 'by habit and repute'."

"Of course. Well, this demolishes all our theories about the three of them conspiring to get rid of Mabel. I'm pleased about that." He sighed. "And if there were any reasons for joy in this miserable business I'm delighted that Melville Kellar has got his deserts and that Eveline Shaw's child isn't his after all."

"It has a happier ending than perhaps she deserved."

"The oldest trick in the world, Stepfather. Women have played that particular game since time began. And I have nothing but contempt for them. It is utterly vile, the ultimate unforgivable deception."

"We must not let Mrs Shaw's revelations divert us from the main issue, lad."

"I'm not forgetting, Stepfather. But you seemed remarkably worried, warning her about enemies and so forth, when she made it plain that she has none."

"Oh yes, lad. She has one at least. I just hope to God that her letter arrived in time to avert yet another calamity and save her becoming the next victim."

"Kellar, eh? I'd have liked to have been a fly on the wall when he read her letter of rejection," said Vince with some relish. "He must have been devastated, don't you agree?"

"I'm too tired to think straight any more, lad. What we both need is a dram and a good night's sleep. Everything will seem a lot clearer in the morning."

But Faro, for once, was wrong.

He and Vince were indulging themselves with breakfast later than usual when the doorbell pealed shrilly through the house. They heard Mrs Brook come up from the kitchen, and by the time Faro had sprung from the table, Sergeant McQuinn was standing in the hall.