Deadly Beloved (2 page)

"Have you ever noticed," he asked Vince, as the hired carriage bounded down the drive, its myriad twists and turns designed to establish in the minds of arriving guests an illusion of parkland and a rich man's estate. "Have you ever noticed," he repeated, "how often houses resemble their owners?"

Vince laughed. "Never. Aren't you confusing your similes? I thought that particular one referred to dogs and pets only. Come, Stepfather, not so glum. You'll enjoy meeting Mabel Kellar. And I'm sure there'll be excellent food and wine, and grand company too."

The first snowflakes were falling as they pressed the bell a second time. Faro, dragging up his greatcoat collar, tapped his foot impatiently. "What on earth can be keeping them? One would imagine an army of servants lurking about such an establishment."

He was to discover that servants were almost non-existent at the best of times, Dr Kellar's excuse being that he couldn't abide such creatures and more than an absolute minimum posed a dire threat to his privacy.

At last the door was opened by the housekeeper, her flour-covered hands explaining the delay. A lady of ample proportions in starched apron and large white cap over untidy wisps of grey hair, her chin was swathed in a large muffler.

"Come in. Missus will be with you in a wee minute," she whispered hoarsely and indicated the staircase. "You'll find master up there, drawing-room, first door left."

At that moment, Dr Kellar appeared on the landing. "Is that Flynn down there?"

The housekeeper with a nervous hand adjusted her spectacles and bobbed a curtsey. "Yes, sir."

"Your place is below stairs, Flynn. Where is your mistress?"

"In the kitchen, sir."

"I want her here — at once. Does she not know the guests have arrived?" And for the two visitors staring up at him with some embarrassment, he summoned a wintry smile. "Come away, gentlemen. Come away."

After they climbed the stairs, he greeted them with an apology. "My wife employs local domestics and allows them home at the weekend."

This indulgence was not, as it appeared, out of kindness, Vince told Faro later, but because Kellar's chronic meanness made him suspect servants of stealing food and so forth. Most men in his position would keep a resident coachman, too, but the luxury of board and meagre lodgings was the sole perquisite of the housekeeper.

As for the excellent company, Vince had been sadly mistaken and Faro was dismayed to discover their fellow guests were Superintendent McIntosh of the Edinburgh City Police and his waspish wife, known irreverently in the Central Office as The Tartar.

Faro suppressed a sigh. He had few off duty hours, especially as criminals took full advantage of the possibilities offered by long dark winter nights. He had no desire to spend one of his precious free evenings in the company of his superior, a man he found opinionated and tiresome at the best of times. McIntosh's acknowledgement, briefer than courtesy prescribed, spoke volumes on his own astonishment and displeasure at seeing Inspector Faro.

As Kellar ushered them into the drawing-room, Faro observed, sitting at the grand piano, an extremely pretty young woman in deep mourning. Since Kellar did not deign to introduce her, Faro presumed that this was a poor relative, recently widowed, and doubtless regarded by the doctor as just one more mouth to feed.

The atmosphere was less than cordial and Faro was heartily glad when the distant doorbell announced another arrival. A few moments later Mrs Kellar ushered in Sir Hedley Marsh.

Known in the Newington district as the Mad Bart, he was the last person Faro and Vince expected to encounter at the lofty police surgeon's dining-table. Their exchange of puzzled glances was a wordless comment on this odd company of dinner guests. How had the hermit of Solomon's Tower been lured away from his army of cats?

Faro looked sharply at his hostess. Since it was well known that Sir Hedley despised and avoided all human contact, perhaps Mrs Kellar did have extraordinary powers of attraction, not evident at first glance. Despite Vince's commendations, he was to remember no lasting impression when it was vital to do so. He recalled a plain woman, tall and thin with dark hair pulled tightly back from indeterminate features. What colour were her eyes, was her nose short or long, her face round or oval?

Faro shook his head. Even details of the elaborate velvet gown had vanished. Was it blue or green? The colour was unimportant for it served only to emphasise her lack of style, while her fingernails testified to her agitation, bearing traces of her recent domestic activity in the kitchen.

Another surprise was still to come, for the Mad Bart had been introduced as: "My dear Uncle Hedley."

As they shook hands Faro decided that although Sir Hedley's dress was correct for the occasion, albeit a little out of date, he had not escaped completely from his cats after all. He had, at close quarters, brought their ripe odours with him.

"I believe you two know each other already," said Mrs Kellar.

"We do. Inspector and I are near neighbours. How d'ye do?"

Mrs Kellar smiled. "And I might add, Inspector, you are the chief reason for Uncle Hedley accepting our invitation."

Sir Hedley grinned sheepishly. "Like good conversation. See you often passing by. Haven't chatted since you took one of my kits. Big fella now?"

"Yes, indeed."

Sir Hedley nodded vigorously. "Gave him a name, I hope."

"Rusty."

"Rusty, eh. Like it. Like it. Good mouser?"

"Very." And aware of the old man's frowning glances in Vince's direction: "Let me introduce you to my stepson, Dr Vincent Laurie."

Faro suppressed a smile. He detected a certain distaste as the fastidious young doctor took the extended and none-too-clean hand.

"From these parts, are you, young fella?"

"I've lived in Edinburgh for most of my life, sir."

Sir Hedley frowned. "We've met before, of course. What kind of a doctor are you?"

Vince was saved a reply as Mabel Kellar ushered the young widow towards them. "Now, Uncle, you can talk as much as you like at dinner. I want dear Vince to talk to my dearest friend and companion, Mrs Eveline Shaw."

Not a poor relative after all, thought Faro, observing Mrs Kellar watching benignly as Vince and Mrs Shaw shook hands.

"The Superintendent is waiting to meet you, Uncle Hedley," said Kellar and led the old man, glowering ferociously, in the direction of the waiting McIntoshes. Turning, he addressed Mrs Kellar: "I take it that dinner is ready? Will you lead the way?"

Formal etiquette demanded that Dr Kellar lead in Mrs McIntosh; the Superintendent took in Mrs Shaw and as Sir Hedley was intent on questioning Vince rather loudly, Faro brought up the rear, offering Mrs Kellar his arm.

"You will be nice to Uncle Hedley, won't you?" she whispered.

"I will, indeed. You are to be congratulated on getting him out of Solomon's Tower. Quite extraordinary."

Mrs Kellar laughed. "Don't I know it! But as I said, I have you to thank — and the Superintendent."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, he is absolutely fascinated by crime. He's a great admirer of yours. And so am I, Inspector. I have heard so much about you from dear Vince. You have such kind eyes. You don't look at all like a policeman."

Faro intercepted the long glance over a fluttering fan, a look that in any other woman he would have considered highly coquettish. Embarrassed, he chuckled: "Indeed? I don't know quite how to answer that one, ma'am. What, pray, do policeman look like? 'If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?'"

Mrs Kellar did not acknowledge his smiling glance. She was staring straight ahead, white-faced, her expression one of sudden terror.

"Ma'am?" said Faro gently.

The fan had closed and was clutched tightly between white-knuckled fists.

"Ma'am?" he repeated gently, ushering her towards the table.

Suddenly aware of him, the fan fluttered free again and she laughed.

"Dear Vince told me of your passion for Shakespeare. Did you see Sir Henry Irving in
The Merchant
?"

"I did indeed."

"Are we not very privileged to have his annual visit to Edinburgh? We never miss a performance."

Acutely aware as he was of changes in atmosphere. Faro had sensed a dangerous moment, and wondered upon whom that dark glance had fallen. Now as he seated her at the table, she tapped him on the wrist.

"Not ma'am, Inspector. You must please call me Mabel — as your dear Vince does. For I hope we are also to be friends."

On the other side of the table Vince suppressed a smile, conscious of the admiring glances of both Mabel Kellar and Eveline Shaw in his stepfather's direction.

Faro, so shrewd and observant, could never see himself as he appeared to others, thought Vince, especially to the ladies — certainly not as a sober widower approaching forty and therefore to be dismissed as thoroughly ineligible. True, his interest in dress was negligible, but despite his declaration that the only function of clothes was a decent covering for nakedness, he managed by instinct to choose the right thing to wear.

Examining his stepfather feature by feature, Vince noted the heavy silver-gilt hair and the wide-set dark blue eyes of the psychic. They didn't look at you, but right into you as if they read a fellow's very soul, a fact which many a criminal had found disconcerting. True, his nose was rather long and his lips were thinner than made for beauty but that was out of the habit of pressing them together in contemplation rather than their natural shape.

He had inherited good looks and a splendid physique from his Orkney ancestors, but there the resemblance to those fierce warriors ended. Vince, from the threshold of youth, had long guessed the secret of the Inspector's attraction to the opposite sex: an irresistible combination of those qualities which appealed to women, strength and reliability with that most disarming of manly features, a gentle smile and a compassionate heart. Here was a strong man who could also cry and was not ashamed of his tears.

Vince's attention was distracted from his stepfather as Dr Kellar poured the wine and Mrs Kellar excused herself.

"Mabel," bellowed her husband from the other end of the table. "Mabel, where are you going now?"

"Just to the kitchen, my love. To look at the oven."

"Can't Flynn take care of that?"

"I've told you, dearest, she's most unwell." And to the guests she fluttered nervous hands. "The poor creature. She has such a cruel toothache. You saw her, didn't you? Her face all swollen?"

The guests murmured sympathetically and Mrs Kellar continued: "I couldn't possibly ask her to prepare dinner, swooning with agony."

"Go on then, woman, but hurry up," was Kellar's ungracious dismissal. And as the door closed, "I must apologise. My wife is too indulgent. She thrives on waifs and strays."

Sir Hedley squeezed Faro's arm and whispered hoarsely, "He means me. Doesn't like me much. Came for Mabel's sake."

But Faro observed that the barb had also been intended for another guest, as he caught Dr Kellar's hooded glance in the direction of Mrs Shaw, who studied her plate intently.

The food served failed to come up to Vince's hints of excellence; it was uninspired, insipid and disappointing to both men used as they were to their housekeeper Mrs Brook's abundant and excellent cooking.

Faro could, however, sympathise more than most with Mrs Flynn's problem. He knew all about the agonies of toothache since he frequently cornered desperate and violent criminals and disarmed them of deadly weapons with considerably more aplomb than he ever faced a dental surgeon's chair.

Considering the housekeeper's malady which necessitated their hostess's frequent excursion below stairs to give 'a hand', Faro, a kind and sympathetic employer himself, would have readily overlooked tepid soup and the long delays between courses, had the wine — even Dr Kellar's somewhat substandard table wine — continued to flow in agreeable abundance.

After a longer wait than usual, during which the guests, and Sir Hedley in particular, with much clearing of the throat stared meaningfully into empty glasses, Mrs Kellar reappeared looking warm and flustered, bearing before her a serving dish from which blue smoke issued forth.

Dr Kellar sniffed the air and, it seemed in retrospect to Faro, looked up quite murderously from the task of sharpening his carving knives, an action which he had carried out with the pride and expertise to be expected of a brilliant surgeon. Later Faro was to wish he had paid a little more attention to those knives, one of which went a-missing and whose reappearance in sinister and dramatic circumstances was to play a vital part in the murder evidence.

Overcome with rage, Dr Kellar had shouted, "This is an outrage — and I hold you directly responsible, Mabel. We seldom have guests to dinner these days and when we do, I expect perfection. Perfection, do you hear, madam? Intolerable food and intolerable serving, a housekeeper who cannot even cook a decent meal! This is an unforgivable insult to our guests — "

"Her references were quite excellent, my dear, you read them yourself and approved," Mrs Kellar interrupted defensively. "Please be patient, she has such dreadful toothache, in awful agonies."