Murder in Paradise (3 page)

As they assembled in the dining room Faro decided this was as remote in its setting from any table he had ever supped at and, looking at the painted walls and ceiling, he doubted if there was one to match it in the rest of Britain.

The centre of the large room was held by a great round table and huge armchairs straight from the
Tales of King Arthur and His Knights
and the company were in keeping with their setting. The ladies in rich medieval gowns, vividly coloured, looked as if they might have stepped from the murals painted on the walls, for which they had doubtless modelled.

All took their seats and awaited the arrival of their host, William Morris, who to Faro’s astonishment was wearing a suit of mail and a helmet complete with visor.

Erland whispered that Morris had ordered it for one of his paintings and it had just arrived. Trying it on he liked it so much he was giving it an airing. Everyone seemed to like it too, and his choice was applauded. Faro, looking round, felt the scene at the dining table was one of their paintings personified, lacking only a title from some medieval romance. William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, bearded, both comfortably rounded and neither as tall as himself, suggested that, like their ladies, they might have stepped down from some painting, in their case the background of some early saint’s martyrdom.

Erland rose and introduced him to the assembled group, saying this was his cousin from Orkney. Rossetti immediately responded, stretching a hand across the table.

‘Dear chap, you are most welcome.’ And to Erland, ‘Did your cousin come direct and, if so, where is his dragon ship? I demand we see it and I trust we have found room for it.’

Everyone laughed and Erland looked bewildered as the men roared with mirth and Rossetti said, ‘Congratulations, Erland dear fellow. Don’t you know you have brought a Viking into our midst. Most acceptable. Don’t you agree, Topsy old chap?’

Morris chuckled. ‘I do indeed. Put a horned helmet on him – see if we have one somewhere, Gabriel – and he would look the part.’

Their reflections in the large mirrors showed Erland and the new man, Jeremy Faro, were a complete contrast. Faro was tall and slim with thick fair hair and dark eyebrows over deep-set, dark-blue, strangely watchful eyes. With the keen eye of the artist, Rossetti noticed the high cheekbones, long straight nose, and that sensual wide-lipped mouth, vulnerable in such a stern face, suggesting warmth, tenderness and even passion, unconcealed as it was by the fashion for facial hair run riot. Rossetti decided that, according to the Orkney legends, Erland belonged to the short dark-haired hunters who had built the mysterious brochs and the early cairns while Faro’s forebears, the tall, fair Viking invaders, had come many centuries later.

And Rossetti, who knew a lot more about human nature than most, shrewdly guessed that as a schoolboy in Kirkwall, Erland’s stammer and slight limp had made him the target of cruel torments and mimicry from other boys and that Faro had fought many a battle on his behalf, thereby winning his undying devotion.

Rossetti could not know that the story went further. When later the village girls in Orkney gravitated to handsome Jeremy, he did not seem to notice what was on offer, the one exception being Inga St Ola, the strange wild girl who was his constant companion. But his dreams and ambitions were to leave Orkney to follow his policeman father over to the mainland – to Scotland and the Edinburgh Police Force. Aware of the frailty of human hearts, where beauty was often all where love was concerned, Rossetti could well imagine that Faro had tried to direct the flutter of eager females in his friend Erland’s direction – without success.

The truth was that women of all ages had always found Jeremy Faro dynamic and, even in his short time in Edinburgh, he chose to ignore appraising glances from young females. He could not know how Erland had envied him, wistful that his friend could so easily find love if he wanted it, love that he had sought in vain until Lena, that miracle of his life, came along.

Now Gabriel Rossetti clapped his hands and, rising from the table, walked round and treated Faro to an inspection. ‘You’re right, we must find a painting to have him model for us. What have we – something suitably historical from those islands at the World’s End.’

‘Excellent, oh excellent.’ Morris leant over the table. ‘Tell us about yourself. Is it true what Erland says about seal people – selkies, they call them in Orkney?’

Faro smiled assent; his own grandmother was believed to be a selkie and she had webbed fingers and toes. But he decided not to mention that, conscious of the uproar such a bizarre fact would arouse.

‘There must be legends, Tops, something we might use as a backdrop to one of our paintings,’ said Rossetti frowning.

This became the topic of eager discussion between the two while Faro looked on. No one had asked him what brought him to Edinburgh from Orkney or, even more importantly, what he was doing in the south of England or even how long he intended to stay.

Whatever their reasons, that no direct questions were asked was a considerable relief. He was not a very good liar and he realised that his ancestry was of much greater interest than his present state, the relationship Erland claimed and that imminent wedding, taken for granted no doubt as the reason for his being brought to stay under the roof of Red House.

And all the time they talked, the wine flowed, his glass never allowed to be more than half empty. This would never do, he told himself sternly, endeavouring to evade the bottles being passed round the table. Ale was the common drink and an occasional dram of whisky, but, unaccustomed to imbibing vast quantities of rich wines, he soon realised that he must exercise some restraint or he would not only be at the table but very shortly under it.

He observed that the ladies too indulged freely in the wine. Elizabeth Siddal, an ethereal creature with a cloud of golden hair that did not mask a vaguely unhappy and nervous expression. Janey Morris, tall, thin and gaunt, as dark as Elizabeth was fair, two wild-haired exotic creatures very different indeed to Edinburgh matrons and living depictions of paintings around them. Only Georgina ‘Georgie’ Burne-Jones paled very slightly by comparison.

Erland’s Lena was absent. Where was she, Gabriel demanded, and Erland said that she had gone to London, shopping with one of the other models, Poppy, for clothes for the wedding and material for their embroidered tapestries.

‘What a seamstress she is, an absolute treasure. And a great model. One of the best ever, isn’t that so, Tops?’ said Gabriel. ‘I’ve already put her into one of my paintings as Mary Magdalene at the Empty Sepulchre. Wait till you see it.’

Next morning, Faro, conscious of an acute headache and wishing he had not drunk quite so much wine at supper, was glad of a bracing walk in the fresh air and a duty visit to the police station. The door was open but the office devoid of Constable Muir once more. He scribbled a note and made his exit, witnessed by an ancient, bewhiskered man leaning heavily on a stick.

Staring up at him from under the brim of an equally ancient hat, he chuckled. ‘You must be a stranger here, mister. Constable’s out on his beat, never at the station afore ten. Is there owt I can do for thee? Folk call me Jim Boone. Live over yonder – Hope Cottage, can’t miss it.’

Declining the kind offer, clearly to his informant’s disappointment, who Faro felt would have enjoyed a deeper acquaintance, he headed towards Brettle Manor reflecting on the dismal prospects if ever serious crime should descend on the village.

A tree-lined drive gave way to a substantial but considerably less imposing villa than Red House and walking up to the front door he rang the doorbell vigorously. There was no reply.

A search led to the back premises. As he approached the kitchen door, he noticed again the tiny thread of smoke some distance from the house, now revealed as the ruinous cottage he had observed from the wagonette, stoutly fenced off from the rest of the Brettle estate, the much disputed home of the ancient gentleman he had just encountered.

As decrepit as its owner, with thatched roof sagging, tiny garden a defiant wilderness of weeds, it certainly did no credit to the handsome house at whose kitchen door he awaited some response.

At last his summons conjured up Mrs Lunn the housekeeper, large, red-faced and distinctly hostile, drying her hands on an apron and demanding to know what he wanted and she wasn’t buying anything.

Asking politely for the owner of the house, he was informed that sir and madam were not at home and, regarding him suspiciously, what was his business anyway. ‘I am here in connection with the recent break-in,’ he said, producing his official note of authority.

Hands on hips, evading his eyes, she swept it aside. ‘Is that so now? Who told you about it, I might ask.’

‘I am a policeman, madam, and I suggest you read that.’

‘You don’t look much like a policeman – where’s your uniform?’ she demanded suspiciously.

‘Read the note, if you please,’ he said sternly.

With a reluctant sigh she did so and wearily stepped aside to allow him into the kitchen. Asked to detail the events of the burglary, she did so with some reluctance, on the grounds that the local constable knew them already, had been here several times and made notes which he could read at the station.

‘This is just wasting my time,’ she said shortly. ‘Once again, all I could tell them – and now you – is that I came down that morning at six-thirty as usual to find the window broken. When sir and madam are abroad, the safety of the house is my responsibility. Last thing at night before retiring, I check that all doors and windows are locked, also the one over there,’ she pointed, ‘leading into the main rooms of the house. As that hadn’t been tampered with, it must have upset the thief, so he just took some bread and cheese and a bottle of wine from the pantry. That was all. Hardly worth all the fuss – calling the police and so forth…’

Walking round the kitchen, Faro observed little beyond a rack of outdoor clothes on the door but he was conscious of her nervous gaze following him.

As he examined the window she sighed.

‘No use you doing that now. The police came that very morning afterwards and inspected everything.’

‘And they were satisfied that the contents of the house were intact.’

‘Of course they were. As I’ve already told you, I had to unlock the connecting door to get into my kitchen. There was no way a thief could get into the rest of the house,’ she said shortly.

‘Except by the front door, of course.’

She gave an indignant sniff. ‘Impossible. Never opened. Barred and bolted while sir and madam are absent.’

‘What about the window here – it was broken, you said?’

‘That was repaired the same day by the handyman.’

‘Does he live on the premises?’

‘Of course not. He’s lives in the village.’

‘His address, please.’

‘What on earth do you want that for?’ Mrs Lunn demanded suspiciously as he wrote it down.

Faro pretended not to hear and asked, ‘Are there any other staff I can talk to?’

‘Of course not,’ was the indignant reply. ‘I am in sole charge while sir and madam are away.’

‘No housemaids?’

Mrs Lunn hesitated. ‘A lass from nearby, but her services aren’t needed at present.’

‘The cottage in the garden?’

‘That is no concern of ours.’ Mrs Lunn made a furious gesture. ‘It is not in our garden either, and Jim Boone is just a wicked old devil—’ and as Faro had already guessed – ‘his property a disgrace to this house and to sir and madam. He refused to sell it to them although it encroached on our property and he got the law on his side. It shouldn’t be allowed, lowering the tone of the whole district, him and his mangy savage dog.’

Faro was silent, his sympathy with eccentric old people, defending the habitations where they had lived all their lives, as well as earlier generations. When the developing railways bisected the country or newcomers like the Brettles wished to move them on they were well within their moral rights for indignation and refusal to be put off or even bought off their land.

‘Have you any suspicions why this thief should have broken in?’

‘I have indeed. I think he was a vagrant, one of them gypsies that’s always passing through the village, always on the scrounge.’

‘Indeed. And had you seen any of the gypsies lurking about before the break-in?’

She shrugged. ‘Might have done, but I can’t remember exactly when. I wish now I had kept it to myself, felt it was my duty to tell the police anyway. Sir and madam would expect me to report things like that.’

‘And you did right, Mrs Lunn.’

That pleased her. She said, ‘Maybe they’ll catch him red-handed next time’.

If the vagrant was, as he suspected, Macheath, there was small chance of that. The trail was cold; any clues had vanished under Mrs Lunn’s meticulous housekeeping although her evasive manner hinted that she knew the thief’s identity.

If that was so, then why bring the matter so conscientiously to the notice of the police?

She could have had the broken window repaired on some other excuse, not that he guessed the owners of Brettle Manor would have even noticed anything amiss in their kitchen premises. However, he would check with the local glazier whose details she had given so reluctantly.

At the door, unable to conceal her relief at his departure, she said suspiciously, ‘You’re not from these parts are you?’

When he replied, ‘From Edinburgh,’ her eyes widened in a look of fear.

‘Oh, one of them,’ she muttered closing the door sharply as if he might have two heads and leaving him wondering what her reaction would have been had he said, ‘From Orkney.’

Returning to the police station, he found Constable Muir reinstalled, emerging from behind a cloud of redolent tobacco smoke from his clay pipe, established at a desk with his feet up on the counter and a glass of ale at hand.

Bidding him good morning, Faro introduced himself by handing over the note of authority. The constable, a fat man, bursting out of his uniform, read it reluctantly. It hinted at unwelcome activity and, scratching a large perspiring bald head, he glanced up at this most unwelcome stranger sent to destroy his comfortable existence.

Sighing over the neatly written details of Faro’s visit to Brettle Manor, he opened a drawer and produced the reports, which included the glazier’s bill for repairing the broken window, and which tallied with his own interview on the morning after the break-in.

Faro glanced through them. All were signed Constable P Muir, Florence Lunn but the statement regarding the break-in was signed ‘X’ (Bess Tracy). The time was 8.30.

‘The lass can’t read or write,’ Muir explained.

‘I understood that it was Mrs Lunn who notified you of the break-in that she discovered at six-thirty.’

Muir shook his head. ‘What gave you that idea? No, it was Bess Tracy. Maybe on Mrs Lunn’s instructions, of course. Thinks a lot of herself – the grand lady being housekeeper to the gentry. But it was Bess who arrived at the house that morning and saw the broken window.’

Handing the reports back, Faro said, ‘Then I will need to interview her. Her address, please.’

Muir stared at him and, scribbling a note, said, ‘Here it is. Half a mile away, just off the main road. Her father’s the miller. But you’ll be wasting your time. We made a note of everything she had to say. It’s all in those reports.’

He held out his hand for their return and pointed out rather huffily that he was sole occupant of the police station and in charge of any local investigations, despite Mrs Lunn’s turn of phrase, which had indicated a whole police force on the case.

Faro’s suggestions of opening up the investigation were met not only by scorn but by faint hostility. Was he hinting that Upton Police, as personified by Constable P Muir, did not know their job?

He left wearily, informing the constable firmly that he would report each morning. Meanwhile he was staying at Red House where he was to be informed immediately, at any hour, should there be any news of Macheath.

But he knew that there was little chance of a successful outcome. The trail was now cold indeed. Perhaps he had thought there might be some clues leading to Macheath at Brettle Manor. Instead it had been a waste of time, Mrs Lunn’s and his own, and he could not bear to sit around and wait in that dull, smoke-filled office every day in the vain hope of his quarry being sighted in the neighbourhood.

Walking along the road in the direction of Mill Cottage, he had an even closer look at the disreputable old cottage on the Brettle’s estate. However, he felt he could safely dismiss the old man as the pantry thief as well as deciding that Muir was probably right and that little would be gained from a meeting with the maid, Bess.

The mill straddled a fast-moving stream, the nearby cottage on the edge of a wood where trees were being felled with an agreeable smell of fresh shavings accompanying the sound of a saw at work.

He walked round to investigate and had to call ‘Mr Tracy’ twice before the man gave up, straightened his back and turned angrily.

‘Mr Tracy?’ A nod. ‘I would like a word with Bess – your daughter, I believe.’

Tracy looked at him coldly. A sullen brutal face under the leather helmet, a coarse mouth and beetle-black eyes.

‘She ain’t here,’ he said and picked up his saw again.

Faro was not to be dismissed. He went closer, stood over him and demanded, ‘When will she be at home?’

‘I ain’t got a notion about that. Ain’t seen her for a day or two.’

He did not sound in the least concerned.

Faro asked: ‘When do you expect her to return?’

Tracy put down the saw. ‘She comes and goes as she likes. No daughter of mine,’ he added angrily. ‘Just like her mother, the rotten sow. And going the same way.’

Here was a delicate domestic problem but Faro persisted. ‘Have you any idea, then, where I might be able to contact her.’

Tracy looked him over. ‘She likes a smart fellow now that she’s got in with them at yon Red House. You’ll be all right,’ he added candidly with a leering glance. ‘Try the gardeners first, they might be able to tell you.’ And deliberately turning his back, he returned to his task as if Faro did not exist.

As he was walking round to the front of the cottage, the door opened. A woman looked out, stealthily beckoning to him.

‘A minute, sir, if you please. Don’t listen to him, sir,’ she said in scared tones. ‘He don’t know what he’s talking about. Our Bess is a good girl and—’ Looking beyond Faro, listening to the sound of sawing which continued, she whispered, ‘I’m worried about her. She was going a message for me, just to get a loaf of bread but she never came back. He had hit her again and she was that upset. I don’t know where she can have got to.’

The woman, pale, thin with wispy brown hair tied back in an untidy bun, looked ready to burst into tears. Faro noticed the bruise on her cheek which indicated more than any words that Bess was not the only victim and that both wife and daughter had reason to be afraid of the brutal miller.

‘They’ve never got along, those two. My Bess is a sweet lass, so gentle and kind, sir. I’m scared that she’s run away, but she’d never do that and not tell me.’

‘Have you any relatives or friends she might be staying with?’

‘We have no family. None of her friends can tell me anything. She usually meets with some lasses on a Saturday night but when I asked, they’d never seen her.’ Another startled look beyond Faro, listening intently to the sounds outside. ‘She had no money with her either, only two pence for the loaf of bread.’ She put a hand on Faro’s arm. ‘I don’t know who you are, sir, or what you want with my Bess, but you look kind.’ She paused. ‘Not in any trouble, is she, sir?’

‘Not at all.’ Should he say that he was a policeman. No, he decided against that. ‘Mrs Lunn at Brettle Manor sent me – Bess works for her occasionally,’ he added hoping this vague statement would be enough.

A look of relief passed over Mrs Tracy’s face. It vanished rapidly when he asked, ‘Does Bess have a young man?’

‘Do you mean, is she courting? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, sir, but she said she’d met a nice respectable sort of chap, a gardener at Red House up the road. When she didn’t meet the lasses, they thought she must have gone out with him instead and they weren’t worried until I told them she hadn’t been home. Three days is a long time, sir, without any word of her.’

If this was only a domestic incident, an angry tyrant of a father who assaulted his womenfolk, then it was not for him to investigate.

‘Have you mentioned this to Constable Muir, by any chance?’

She shook her head. ‘He—’ nodding towards the sawing sound, she whispered, ‘he would kill me if I did that.’

‘Then I shall do it for you, Mrs Tracy. Constable Muir is very reliable and he will keep a lookout and make some discreet enquiries.’

Tearfully she thanked him and he left, deciding to make some discreet enquiries of his own. The discrepancies between the two statements of Mrs Lunn and Bess regarding the break-in bothered him. Some instinct also told him that there was more to Brettle Manor and Mrs Lunn than had been immediately obvious. Her nervous manner while he looked round the kitchen for instance. What was she so anxious about? And why hadn’t she told him that it was Bess Tracy who informed Constable Muir and she was one person that he should talk to. A small detail perhaps but it made him uneasy. Was there was something amiss, some sinister connection that had been overlooked regarding the immediate disappearance of the girl who had notified Constable Muir of the break-in at Brettle Manor? And unless the long arm of coincidence had nothing to do with that incident, he had a feeling in his bones that Macheath was at large again.

As for tracking him down, it was of little consolation telling his conscience that he had begun his investigation with scrupulous care strictly according to his superior officer’s orders, obeyed so unwillingly on what he felt and now knew with certainty was a fool’s errand.

Walking the short distance back, he was not at all satisfied with his morning’s work. However, this was an errand which had a surprising outcome in turning out to be an unexpected holiday, with the pleasant prospect of attending Erland’s wedding as well as the privilege of staying in the magnificent surroundings of Red House. With a sigh, he decided he had in fact good reason to be secretly grateful to DS Noble in far away Edinburgh Police Office.

The rain began as he made his way back and he rushed indoors to escape the heavy downpour. Obviously there would be no gardeners roaming the grounds in such weather and he had yet to work out a plan of approaching them on the subject of the missing girl without revealing his role as a policeman to the entire staff and occupants of Red House.

In the course of his daily visits to the police station, Faro was soon to discover that Constable Muir was far less concerned than he had presumed would be the case regarding the missing girl. In Muir’s opinion, based on the few words with her mother, she had found herself a fancy man somewhere and taken off with him.

‘Country matters, lad. You’re not in the big city now. These things happen all the time. Lasses tired of living at home and working their fingers to the bone meet flashy chaps who promise them the earth. Bess has always spread herself about a bit. Ask any of the local lads, they’ll soon tell you chapter and verse – if you really want to know.’ And with a shake of his head, ‘Don’t you worry – she’ll be back, right as rain – and no doubt in the family way – when her new man gets tired of her.’

Muir was curious about Red House. At last he had someone who had first-hand knowledge of its eccentric but famous inhabitants. Faro received many hints and nods and had questions to field concerning rumour and speculation drifting from the local alehouse and floating across the counters of local shops regarding exciting and perhaps slightly improper events that took place within its walls.

Most decidedly, Muir envied Constable Faro, who was exceptionally fortunate to have found such a lodging while officially on police duty. As for Faro, he was happy to be enveloped daily in a bewildering atmosphere that suggested everyone had just arrived or was on the point of departure. He was forever clambering over boxes and baskets with materials spilling out everywhere, books, paintbrushes, the smell of linseed oil and turpentine among canvases that fought for room over embroideries.

Erland’s tiny room at the back of the house, which he called his studio, wasn’t much better and Faro realised sadly that, although his friend was a good landscape painter, his expertise was merely that of a good copyist. Erland Flett had none of the stardust that fate had sprinkled on the Pre-Raphaelites and sadly could never hope to reach the dizzy heights of popularity attained by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or touch the splendours of Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown and Burne-Jones, the remaining members of the quintet who occasionally roared through William Morris’s Red House.

No one talked to Faro apart from during meals in the dining room where all were genially assembled fortified by good food and plentiful wine. During other hours, however, all he received for his polite greeting was a vague nod, a perplexed stare if he bumped into any of them in room or staircase or corridor. Sometimes he felt as though he was invisible.

‘You’ve been accepted,’ was Erland’s gleeful response to this state of affairs. ‘Wait until you see Lena. I expect her back tomorrow. I’ve missed her – can’t bear to be away from her. Hate sleeping alone – after the wedding we will be together for ever! Oh, how I long for next week,’ he sighed. ‘And before that – we’re to have a pre-wedding celebration, a masked ball, arranged by Topsy.’

On the following day, Faro returned from yet another futile daily visit to Constable Muir who had been making, it seemed, a ‘few enquiries among the customers’ at the local alehouse about the missing Bess. He shook his head over Faro’s persistence.

What on earth could he do? The girl would turn up, just wait and see. A lot of trouble over an everyday event.

Faro couldn’t convince Muir that some instinct warned him that there was a link between Bess’s disappearance and the mysterious atmosphere at Brettle Manor.

Another excuse must be found for a return visit. He left Muir’s office once more, relieved to breathe in fresh air. Although he enjoyed a pipe himself, he was prepared to spend money on good tobacco and considered that whatever the Constable was using had extremely doubtful origins.

But what happened a few minutes later banished all thoughts of the fate of the miller’s missing daughter right out of his mind.

As he reached the gate of Red House, Faro stood aside to allow the approaching wagonette access. Following it in, he saw Erland waiting. He was standing on the porch and rushed forward to greet the slender girl who alighted.

So this was his beloved Lena. Erland, wreathed in smiles, turned, saw him and waited, leading Lena forward to be introduced.

Faro stepped back in astonishment.

She was no stranger.

He had seen her before.

At the Edinburgh High Court three years ago in July 1857 where she had emerged from a murder trial, accused of poisoning her lover, walking free, set at liberty by a Not Proven verdict.