Enter Second Murderer (21 page)

"No, please, Jeremy, I don't want Mrs. Penny involved and the girls frightened—a murderer on the loose! And Mrs. Penny has been so good to me, and now I've brought this terror to her door. I beg you—please don't ..."

"I'm sorry, I have to do it, my dear. I have to follow up the attack on my stepson and every shred of evidence."

Hearing them coming downstairs, Vince emerged from his bedroom. Apart from the angry-looking bruises his appearance was considerably better than Faro had expected.

Alison ran to him with a little cry and put her arms around him. Again this display of maternal concern and affection moved Faro deeply. Vince liked her. She would have made a splendid stepmother,

"May I show him the letter?" she said.

Vince read it and whistled. "You too? That's jolly interesting. Handed in to Mrs. Penny's, you say? Well, Stepfather, where do we go from here?"

"'We' don't go anywhere, lad. I think it would be better if I worked alone from now on and didn't involve either you or Mrs. Aird."

Vince sighed. "If you must, but I do enjoy playing detective—and I have some ideas of my own I would like to put to the test."

"You take care," said Faro sternly. "I don't want any repetitions of last night's misadventure." And to Alison, "Let us go now. Rest assured I shall be very tactful with Mrs. Penny. You may rely on me not to make it sound like a police investigation."

Vince waved to them from the window, and Alison blew him a kiss. Closing the gate, she sighed, "Such a dear boy. Tell me, why doesn't he just call you Father? Or Jeremy, for that matter?"

"Never Jeremy. He wouldn't consider that quite proper."

"But you are such friends."

"That has not always been so. When I first knew him, as a little boy, it was Mr. Faro. But from the day his mother and I married, he called me Stepfather. And I must confess I rather like the title, seeing that it is perfectly accurate and it makes it somehow special."

They found Mrs. Penny in the garden attending to the roses. She greeted them both effusively and when Mrs. Aird went indoors was quite disposed to linger and chat with Inspector Faro, waxing voluble in response to his warnings about a spate of petty thievings from unguarded kitchens in the area, and the necessity of locking the door at night, at least until the criminals were apprehended.

"I've already been warned, Inspector. Constable McQuinn was saying the same things when I found him in my kitchen on Sunday." She smiled slyly. "Mind you, I thought it was maybe a wee bit of an excuse—I think Bessie, the pretty little maid I've engaged to help me with the washing, is the reason for his particular interest in these premises."

"What other callers have you had recently?"

"Apart from Doctor Laurie—he was worried about you all missing the ferry ..." She hesitated, her smile inviting explanation.

"I mean strangers, Mrs. Penny, during the last few days."

"Oh well, let me see now. On Saturday, there were two wee lads selling firewood, an old beggarman, the minister. And on Sunday, if you please, Inspector, a gypsy woman, selling clothes pegs and telling fortunes. Well, I sent her packing, such wickedness on the Lord's day. I didn't like the look of her." She frowned. "She was filthy. Inspector. In fact, I wondered if she could be a woman, she had this long stringy black hair and I thought her hands and feet were rather big and her voice a wee bit on the deep side."

"You thought she might be a man, eh?" said Faro, thinking here was a stroke of luck.

Mrs. Penny nodded vigorously. "I did indeed. She came just as we were leaving for church, too. What a cheek ..."

Faro escaped with difficulty and made his way to the Central Office.

"Is there anything on Black Tam yet?" he asked McQuinn, eyeing with disapproval the pipe that the young constable was smoking, since this was a privilege only allowed to senior officers and detectives.

"Nothing yet, Inspector. But do give us time—it's early days, as you know from your own experience."

Faro shrugged irritably. McQuinn never missed an opportunity of reminding him that once upon a time he too had been a humble policeman doing duty-patrol in the streets of Edinburgh.

"What about routine enquiries in the area?"

McQuinn produced a long list and Faro felt, instead of gratification, annoyance that his efficiency could not be faulted.

"What about Mrs. Penny at Marchmont Cottage?"

"Mrs. Penny? There was no reason to enquire at her house. The attack wasn't in her vicinity."

"And yet you went there on Sunday."

McQuinn blushed. "Oh, that! Nothing to do with official enquiries, Inspector. I was merely paying court to the pretty little lass in the kitchen. And when Mrs. Penny caught us, I felt obliged to make an excuse for my presence," he added with a smirk that infuriated Faro.

"Indeed, Constable. You might endeavour in future to keep your private life separate from your police duties. It would be a great help. In connection with the attack on my stepson, you might keep a lookout for a tall gypsy woman with uncommon large feet and hands and a begrimed appearance."

"You think it might be Black Tam in disguise?"

"Never mind what I think, Constable, and I will be obliged if you will keep your eyes open when you are on duty, less in the region of kitchen-maids and more in the region of possible suspects."

In the days that followed., there were no more threatening notes or suspicious incidents. With the healthy flesh of youth, Vince's bruises and cuts healed and he had almost forgotten his attack in his excitement about Mrs. Penny's mysterious gypsy visitor.

"I'm absolutely certain that she—or more probably he—is responsible for leaving the note for Mrs. Aird. Find him, Stepfather, and we have the man we're looking for—Lily Goldie's murderer."

Faro was inclined to share his enthusiasm, especially as neither McQuinn nor any of the other constables alerted found a trace or a hint of the existence of the gypsy, who had apparently vanished into thin air since the visit to Marchmont Cottage.

There was still the business of Vince's threatening note, which McQuinn swore was not in his pockets when he searched them in Gibbet Lane. That and the fact that McQuinn had also visited Mrs. Penny's that Sunday were matters that needed careful and tactful investigation, considering that he had also been "sweet" on Lily Goldie.

And why should Black Tam be concerned with the murdered girl? None of it made any sense.

Faro now had his own reasons for personal anxiety, which tended to make him less enthusiastic or vigilant about following clues to the identity of the second murderer. In a few days, the Trelawney Thespians—and Alison—would be gone from Edinburgh. At least she would be safe from any vengeful attacks. He had already made up his mind, despite her protests, not to let her go out of his life for ever. No one who had made such an impact on his senses could say goodbye and walk away.

Soon, too, he would be once more involved in domesticity, in his sorely neglected role of father to his two daughters. A letter lay on his desk from Orkney.

Dearest Papa,

We are looking forward to being all together again, with our dear brother Vince, in your new house in Edinburgh, as you promised. We hope you will like the enclosed which Granny says is a good likeness . . .

He looked at the smiling photograph and it made him acutely aware of time passing. How they had grown—soon they would be young ladies and he would have lost their childhood.

He groaned as he re-read the letter. ". . . as you promised" reproached him. He had forgotten, or rather pushed it to the back of his mind. However, unless the mystery of the threatening letters was solved and Lily Goldie's murderer apprehended and safe behind bars, he felt the presence of any other members of his family would be an added hazard.

Already he was wary of providing Vince with any additional information that might lead him recklessly to follow "clues" on his own with disastrous, and this time perhaps fatal, results.

Faro knew of only one way to resolve his difficulties, and that was to set a police trap. Vince listened gravely to his plan.

"You might as well know, Stepfather, I can't stop you but I'm against it. It's far too dangerous. Take care, you may have gone too far this time and played into the murderer's hands."

Chapter 15

That Saturday night was brilliantly moon-lit. As midnight chimed from a vast number of distant Edinburgh churches solemnly proclaiming the Sabbath morn, a white-haired bearded old gentleman wearing a silk-lined cape, top hat and carrying an elegant cane was seen to leave the neighbourhood of the King's Theatre. Merrily, but somewhat unsteadily, he proceeded along Lothian Road and across the Meadows, heading towards the new villas by the short cut at Gibbet Lane.

If any had remarked upon his passing it would have been to the effect that he would have been wiser to hire a cab. Elderly, crippled in the left leg, his progress was further impeded by the condition of one who has imbibed too well. The further he walked, the slower and the more pronounced his limp. Now a shortness of breath, a wheezing cough, added to the picture of decrepitude as he stopped frequently, leaning on his cane.

The onlooker would have further decided that a man, obviously wealthy, was not quite in his right mind to choose such exercise at his time of life when he was so out of condition, as he disappeared from view along the tree-lined lane. But the path was deserted—or so it seemed to the limping man, when suddenly, from behind the trees, three masked men, two of average height and one very large, leaped out at him.

The old man cried out "Help!" in a voice surprisingly strong, and even as they descended upon him his bent back straightened and from the cane appeared a fine-bladed sword which flashed in the moonlight as, with limp miraculously cured, he turned upon his assailants.

"Scarper!"

The leader's warning came too late. The old man was using a whistle to ear-piercing effect and from every tree policemen erupted, racing down upon them. In the lead was Constable Danny McQuinn, who, for once, Faro was extremely glad to see.

"A nice piece of work, Inspector. You make a very convincing old man, to the life—as if it was yourself only without the beard."

Faro wasn't sure what to make of this enigmatic remark but chose, for once, to take it as flattery. "Put them on a charge and keep them inside. Send someone to get my stepson to identify them."

Black Tam and his associates were bundled into a cab and escorted to the Central Office. Dr. Laurie was at home. Presented with his stepfather's compliments, he was hustled into the second cab.

"What's this all about? Where is Inspector Faro?" he demanded, confronted by the back of the elderly gentleman still in his disguise and whom he failed to recognise in the dim light.

"Why, Stepfather! Your plan worked after all."

"Come with me, lad."

A look into the cell and Vince said, "Oh yes, those are the three who attacked me right enough."

"Good! You can formally bring charges, then. See the Constable and he'll tell you what's needed. The cab will take you back home."

"Aren't you coming too?"

"I may be a little while. Goodnight, lad. See you in the morning."

Faro then confronted Black Tam and his two bullies, and charged them with assault. "You know who I am?"

"God perhaps, with that white beard," said Big Tam sourly.

"It would pay you to be serious." And Faro removed his disguise, while watching carefully Black Tam's reactions.

"A copper as I live an' breathe," was the sneering response. "I might ha' kenned as much."

"You know me."

"I do?"

"My name is Inspector Faro."

"That's a funny name for a copper."

"It might be a very significant name in your case, my lad. I suspect that you've already heard it."

"Never. And I don't want to hear it no more, neither."

"Listen, Tam—I can make it easier for you, if you cooperate. Who paid you to leave a note in Doctor Laurie's pocket when you robbed him the other night?"

Black Tam stared at him blankly. "Do me a favour, Inspector. Don't know what you're on about. What would I be doing putting things into folks' pockets? Goes against the grain, that does. Opposite is what I'm at—taking things out, as you ken fine well." He grinned.

"Do you know an old gypsy woman—about your height, with large hands and feet, who sells clothes-pegs and tells fortunes?"

"Never heard of her."

"You don't know anything of a visit she made to Mrs. Penny at Marchmont Cottage, and delivered a note there?"

Big Tam shook his great head from side to side. "You're talking double-dutch, Inspector." And, appealing to the silent Constable McQuinn, "What's he on about the now?"

And Faro felt uneasily that unless Big Tam was an extremely good actor, which he doubted, then he was telling the truth.

"You maintain that you've never seen me before?"

"Never. Heard plenty about ye, kenned you was a copper to be avoided, but never been my misfortune to set eyes on ye afore."