Enter Second Murderer (9 page)

"The mourning lady from Greyfriars," said Vince at breakfast next morning. "Are you absolutely sure? After all, you only had a glimpse of her."

"A glimpse I will never forget."

"But what an astonishing coincidence."

"Is she a widow?"

"No idea. Sometimes actresses use Mrs. as a courtesy title. But she isn't Trelawney's wife."

"I know. She told me so."

"What about Tim? Did she offer any explanation?"

"There was no time to ask."

Vince thought for a moment. "I expect Tim was one of her many admirers. Come to think of it, we used to see him at performances."

"Alone?"

"Yes, always alone."

"There must have been some intimate connection, otherwise why dress up in all those ridiculous veils, so that she wouldn't be recognised visiting his grave?"

Vince smiled. "Really, Stepfather, you are quite an innocent sometimes. The answer is obvious. They were lovers. After all, she can't be more than thirty-five. Maybe we're wrong. Maybe it's she who rejected him, not Lily Goldie."

"The same thought has just occurred to me, lad."

"The sense of guilt would appeal to the actress in her, and visiting his grave be a kind of performance of grief."

"You make it sound very calculated, lad."

Vince shrugged. "I know actresses, Stepfather."

"What are they doing next?"

"Macbeth. Hugo's playing Second Murderer. And Mrs. Aird gives a riveting performance as Lady Macbeth."

Chapter 7

Urgent matters concerning a break-in at Holyrood Palace occupied Faro's immediate attention and, much as he chafed at the delays, he realised that he had taken on the case of Lily Goldie as a private investigation. In future, he could expect to devote only his spare time to it, and he was glad indeed of Vince's proposed assistance.

Later that week, with the prospect of a day off, he decided it would be opportune to make the postponed visit to Miss Burnleigh at Fairmilehead.

On his way to the gig-hiring establishment, he saw a figure emerging from the direction of Causeway side. Although she was too distant to recognise her features, his heart's sudden lurch told him this was Mrs. Aird. He was quite elated when she smiled and raised her hand in greeting from across the road. He obviously hadn't been forgotten.

"It is Mr. Faro, is it not?"

"You are looking well, Mrs. Aird," said Faro, bowing over her hand, wanting to say that she looked divinely adorable, her face flushed and her bonnet a little askew from the stiff breeze blowing down from Arthur's Seat.

Again she smiled at him, her manner relaxed, inviting conversation. Faro's mind had suddenly emptied of social chat and, sounding infernally dull, even to himself, he said, "I trust your lodgings are comfortable and to your liking?"

She nodded, frowning. Did she think him tight-lipped and unfriendly? Dear God, did he have to sound so stiff and formal?

"This area is no place for a gentlewoman these days."

"You mistake me, Mr. Faro. I am no gentlewoman, just an ordinary actress—"

"But the area is insalubrious—have you not been warned of its dangers?" He pointed to the wooden palisades that divided Minto Street, where they were standing, from Causeway side. "There is another such at Salisbury Road. What do you think they are for, Mrs. Aird? They are to keep thieves and vagabonds, the wild beasts who lurk around Wormwoodhall and the Sciennes from infiltrating into a decent respectable neighbourhood. The rowdies who break the peace are, alas, the New Town puppies from this side and the keelies from Causeway side." He stopped, breathless, not having meant to indulge in such a long speech.

"Indeed? Does that also account for the lodge gates at both ends of Sheridan Drive? To keep it select?"

Feeling uncomfortably that she was laughing at him, he replied, "I don't know about select, but I hope you will not be tempted into this area after nightfall."

"That is highly unlikely." And she looked away, like someone suddenly bored, as well she might be, he thought desperately. Politely, she said, "I will bear in mind your good advice. But I am delaying you ..."

"Not at all. It is a pleasure to talk to you again."

"Is it really?" There was sincere surprise in her voice and her accompanying smile which made him realise that her first impressions had been far from favourable. She doubtless thought him oafish, a pompous bore.

"I was on my way to hire a gig to go to Fairmilehead tomorrow. Over there," he pointed, "on the approaches to the Pentlands."

"I've been wondering about those hills. They are very tempting, some day I mean to explore them."

"Why not tomorrow, then? Why not come with me?" The words had burst out of him as if of their own accord as he towered over her, stammering, blushing like a schoolboy.

She put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, I did not mean to intrude ..."

"Of course you didn't. But as this is a purely routine matter of business, I would—would enjoy your company."

Faro walked home, conscious that his step had lightened considerably. He chuckled delightedly, feeling that he had shed twenty years in the past ten minutes.

Mrs. Brook met him with a message that Vince was to spend the night at Corstorphine. "I was to tell you that he would attend to the business you had discussed before returning to Edinburgh."

So Vince was to call on Miss McDermot. Good lad. And before closing his eyes that night. Faro said, "God, I know how busy you are and I haven't asked you for anything since you decided to take Lizzie and the wee lad away from me. But, please God, if you can spare the time for this small request, please, let it be a fine day tomorrow. Keep the rain off. That's all I ask."

His prayer was answered. He collected the gig in the radiant sunshine of early summer. Ten minutes later he was sitting outside Mrs. Aird's lodging. Tucking the blanket about her, he was again assailed by that feeling of lighthearted youth. When in recent times had he felt as young as this? As they jogged down the road together, her arm comfortably close to his own, their legs touching as they took a corner, he had to restrain the longing to put an arm about her shoulders and look into that pretty face instead of staring at the road ahead.

She was a convert to the Quaker religion, she told him, and had been visiting the Meeting House at Causeway-side. The actress in her brought vividly to life the characters she had met, those who remembered the area as a thriving weaving community, their Edinburgh shawls sought after as far away as New York shops.

Faro was at peace at her side, content to listen, as they climbed past fields and woods and the grey clutter of villages. Then a distant prospect of the castle brooding darkly down upon the smoking chimneys of Edinburgh, justifying Robert Burns's epithet of "Auld Reekie".

A train crawled, puffing importantly and thinly along the railway line, and tiny ships were tacking in the Forth. Their passing gig brought forth from every farm the warning bark of dogs, the agitation of barnyard fowls. A curlew swooped, crying, and for Faro the feeling of
déjà vu
persisted. Had his companion not already said those words, laughed like that at a solemn donkey staring over a hedge, exclaimed delightedly at the sight of children feeding a lamb? He looked at her, filling the empty corners of his life with such grace and harmony, amazed anew that fate had given no warning, no allowance for this intrusion into his life.

Alison Aird was a stranger, but already as she spoke each contour of her face shaped itself into a familiar pattern. As each gesture struck a chord of remembrance, he found himself at the mercy of his own background, which he was careful to conceal from public gaze and comment. The second sight his seal-woman grandmother had bequeathed to him had never seen an occasion for rejoicing.

That intuition accounted for perhaps ten per cent of his success as a detective, and had more than once been a factor in putting him in the right direction of vital clues. It did not always work in his private life, alas. He had no warning when his sweet Lizzie bore their son that she and the boy would be dead, lost and gone for ever, in a matter of days.

"And Hugo tells me that the handsome young doctor is your stepson," Mrs. Aird was saying. Could it be that she had been enquiring about him? He was flattered.

"Indeed. I am a widower, with two little girls living up north with their grandmother. What of you—is Mrs. Aird a courtesy title only?"

She shook her head and sighed. "Would that it were so. I am a widow." She cut short his commiserations. "It is a long time ago, and I was married for such a short time that I have almost forgotten the experience." Pausing, she added, "I was not so fortunate as yourself, my only child also died." Then, as a tactful indication that the subject was closed, she pointed a gloved hand. "Over there. Is that our destination?"

Before them lay Fairmilehead, a huddle of roofs and smoking chimneys with two thread-like roads joining beside a wood heavy with summer trees.

"Journey's end." He wondered, could it be the same for her? The completion of another journey they had begun together in a world whose shadowy confines were long lost to them?

He looked into her eager smiling face. How unbelievable that this feeling of familiarity was all wrong. This was but their third meeting. And he knew already, with painful certainty, that before the day was ended and they returned in the gig, his heart would be lost to her.

Faro's natural reaction was rebellion at the idea of falling in love again, with all that it entailed. Green love-sickness was the last thing a detective needed, especially a man nearly forty. He knew that his powers of detection worked more efficiently without domestic ties. That was his main reason for distancing himself from his young daughters in Orkney. Even happily married, he had known that he would be a better policeman on his own, with the kind of life he lived, with its uncertain hours, its possible dangers.

While delighting in the experience of having her by his side, he groaned inwardly, suddenly cursing himself for his own folly, wishing he had not asked her, or that she had refused to come. Damn it, how could he help this feeling of rapture? He was helpless to escape, rushing headlong into whatever torments lay ahead. He had thought with Lizzie's death that this chapter of his life had closed for ever, that nothing would again interfere with his dedication. Was he yet to discover that love was eternal, that as long as a man breathed it lurked inescapable on that road from birth to death?

"Do you wish me to wait for you here?"

"You may accompany me, if you wish."

She frowned."You mentioned a business engagement—I would not wish to intrude."

Faro smiled. "I am a police officer, Mrs. Aird—a detective. And this is a mere routine enquiry."

Mrs. Aird looked startled. "I had no idea, sir. I presumed you were a business man of some sort. You have the look of an advocate."

"I wish I was as affluent." Faro smiled.

She gave him a hard look. "I will remain here, Mr. Faro, and wait for you." She opened the large handbag she carried. "I have a script to read—my lines, you know."

"You are sure? I will be as quick as I can." And tucking the rug around her, Faro started off down the road, where he stopped an old man, bent double over a stick, and asked directions to Hill Cottage, Mill Lane. "Number fifteen, it says here."

The answer was a shake of the head. "There's no cottage of that name hereabouts. The general store'll mebbe know—newcomers, are they?"

"Burnleigh, did you say? Number fifteen?" repeated the woman behind the counter, with a shake of her head. "People don't go much by numbers here. I don't know the name and my man Jock's the posty. He'd be able to tell you but he's away in the far pasture. But there's Mill Lane, you can see for yourself, across there."

Mill Lane was old and cobbled, the cottages huddled in antiquity. The numbers ran out at eleven. Faro pondered, and took a chance on number eleven, where a young woman answered the door, obviously in the middle of feeding the crying baby in her arms. No, she had never heard of any Burnleighs. "Look, there's Jock—see him, he'll know."

Hurrying back along the lane, Faro once more repeated the story, this time at the top of his voice, as Jock was more than slightly deaf.

"There's no' many folk biding here and I ken them all. Besides, Burnleigh is an unusual name, I would remember a name like that."

"I was told that she had come back from Edinburgh—she was a teacher at the convent in Newington—to take care of her mother who was ailing and had sent for her."

Jock shook his head. "I canna help ye, I'm sorry."

Faro walked back towards the gig, deep in thought. Here was something odd indeed. Was this what he was waiting for? Why had Miss Burnleigh chosen to disappear at the time of Lily Goldie's murder, leaving a false address?

He felt the familiar twitch of danger alerted. Had he stumbled on a clue to the identity of the second murderer at last?

Alison Aird put away her script as he took his seat beside her in the gig. "Were your enquiries successful?" she asked, curious as to his preoccupation.