The Evil That Men Do.(Inspector Faro Mystery No.11) (11 page)

Langweil’s face was expressionless. ‘We did.’

‘And might I presume that the urgency of his visit was somehow connected with the original of the letter from San Francisco which you showed me earlier in the day—’

‘Damn your eyes, Faro,’ Langweil exploded. ‘Of course it wasn’t. I - I did—’ and then again he sighed, mollified. ‘I did mention it to him in passing, of course, just ensuring its safety, and he told me that it was locked in his office safe with the rest of the family documents.’

‘So after you had finished discussing urgent matters, you turned to more convivial things.’

‘Naturally. Old Mouldy had a rich treasure of wicked tales from behind the scenes in so-called respectable Edinburgh. I always enjoy listening to his stories. Besides, the weather was foul. A sudden storm of rain and hail. We hoped it would settle and when it did not, I invited him to stay the night. But he refused. He insisted on getting home to his own bed.’

Langweil thumped his fists together angrily, as if the full force of the tragedy had suddenly struck a chord of emotion. ‘Fool of a man, he would still have been alive if he’d taken my advice - for once.’

‘When he left, did you see him off?’

‘On a night like that?’ Theodore looked amused. ‘Why, that is what servants are for, Inspector.’

‘Your stableman Jock said Mr Moulton was in a rage. Thought he was very upset about something.’

‘Did he indeed? If the stupid fellow had used his head, he would have realised that any old gentleman, known at the best of times for his crusty temper, would have been upset and in a rage at the prospect of driving an open carriage back to Edinburgh in a hailstorm. You must have heard it in Newington?’

And Theodore stood up indicating that the interview was at an end. As they walked across the hall, he asked: ‘Any idea what caused the accident?’

‘A broken wheel pin, I gather.’

Theodore nodded. ‘I thought it couldn’t be just Moulton’s reckless driving.’

At the front door, Faro paused. ‘Tell me, Mr Langweil, did you have any reason for leaving the house last night?’

‘Last night? Of course not, I was entertaining Mr Moulton.’

‘Precisely that, sir. I mean during his visit.’

Langweil looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Inspector. There was a storm raging outside. I had a guest.’

And bidding him good day Faro rapidly walked towards the police carriage with the satisfaction of seeing Langweil’s expression change to one of open-mouthed astonishment as if the significance of the question had just dawned.

Theodore was either an exceedingly accomplished actor or else he was innocent. And if he was innocent there existed a strong possibility that someone else had hastened the old lawyer to his untimely end.

A possibility Faro viewed without any relish, that he might now have a second murder case to solve.

The carriage dropped him outside the consulting rooms Vince shared with Adrian Langweil, where the latter had just heard the news and was very upset. It seemed that of all the brothers he was fondest of the old lawyer, who had always made a great fuss of him.

‘He was like a father to me,’ he said gloomily, ‘I shall miss him.’

Having found Adrian alone and without any appointments for the next half-hour Faro decided to take full advantage of the situation. The time was long past when he felt obligated to respect Theodore’s desire to protect the Langweil family by withholding vital information concerning the missing brother Justin.

Perhaps there was indeed something Adrian was aware of, but had not put into words, which might give Faro the lead he so desperately needed. But at the end of his disclosure about the letter from the San Francisco lawyers, Adrian sighed. ‘Poor old Justin. And yet, I’m not really surprised, you know. Good of Theo to try to spare us, but I always had the strangest feeling that Justin had gone for ever, that he would never come back from America.’

‘How curious. Had you any reasons for this?’

‘None at all. But even when I was quite a little lad I had the feeling that Justin was dead. And that something quite dreadful had happened to - something terrible—’

He paused, biting his lips. ‘It was like trying to remember a dream - a nightmare.’

‘Could it have been a whispered conversation you overheard about Justin, between your brothers?’

Adrian brightened. ‘You might well be right about that. I was a sore trial to them in that I was a bad sleeper, still am, and I used to prowl about Priorsfield in the middle of the night - with a lighted candle - searching for Prince Charlie’s lost gold.’

He smiled at Faro. ‘You know what children are like, Mr Faro. I got this bee in my bonnet. I was addicted to adventure stories and I got this idea that someday I would find the secret of that lost French gold.’

‘I thought the legend was that the French count missed the Prince. That they never met.’

Adrian shrugged. ‘I know that. But it didn’t satisfy me. I remembered that the rightful heir to the Scottish throne had visited this house constantly when his troops were camped on Arthur’s Seat before the Battle of Prestonpans. It was marvellous ground for a young lad’s romancing. And then there was the murdered man - the skeleton they dug up in the grounds—’

Faro smiled. This was a new and surprising aspect of the hard-headed doctor.

‘There was - probably still is - a trunk full of dressing-up costumes, old clothes dating way back into the last century,’ Adrian continued dreamily. ‘In my satin waistcoat and knee breeches I tried to will myself into seeing what Priorsfield was like in those days. It wasn’t until my niece Grace was a little girl that I discovered I had a soul mate, someone who shared my feelings that the house was, well, haunted.’

Faro looked at him. ‘Yes, Vince said something of the sort.’

‘She had better luck than I ever did, although it almost scared her to death. She saw - or claimed she saw, no one believed her but me - the ghost of a man, in the costume of the last century. She saw him more than once—’

Now Faro remembered. ‘That was the reason she would never sleep there alone. Oh, how I envied her. I would have given anything to see her ghost. When I think how I used to sit on the stairs and try to escape back into the past.’

A tap on the door interrupted him, announcing the arrival of his next patient.

‘How did we get on to all this, Mr Faro? We’ve come a long way from whatever it was you wanted to know. But I’ve enjoyed chatting to you.’

Faro went away very thoughtfully. Adrian’s story had brought him no nearer to finding the truth about Justin Langweil. This might be an opportune time to visit the old lawyer’s office. He had a sudden urgent desire to see the original of that San Francisco letter.

He found Mr Wailes, the lawyer’s assistant, in sole occupation of the office. Referred to by Mr Moulton as his ‘young clerk’, Faro was surprised to see that he was nearer fifty than the twenty years such a description would have merited.

When Faro announced himself as calling in connection with the accident, Mr Wailes regarded him gravely.

He looked very upset, near to tears, hovering over Moulton’s possessions returned by the police and spread on the table before him.

‘I cannot believe that he has gone, Inspector. He was such a brave, gallant old man—’

Faro listened sympathetically to a eulogy far removed from the irascible crusty old gentleman who left his mark upon the inhabitants of Priorsfield over the years.

Finally he interrupted. ‘I wonder if you could help us. I have just been to Priorsfield and Mr Theodore wishes urgently to have confirmation of a document from the family papers.’

It was taking a long shot indeed, Faro realised as both he and Wailes stared at the bunch of keys which had never left Moulton’s person until his death.

‘Mr Moulton never let them out of his possession for an instant,’ said Wailes, doubtfully touching them in the awed manner of a sacred relic. ‘In all my years here, I have never opened that safe, nor do I know exactly what it contains.’

He paused, frowning. ‘But I suppose now that I am in charge of the office until the terms of Mr Moulton’s will have been read and discharged—’ Pausing, he sighed.

‘There may well be other clients with urgent business,’ said Faro, realising that he was taking a mean advantage of the man’s distress.

‘That is true, sir. Very true. Might as well make a start.’ For a moment he hesitated, then picking up the keys he looked at them as if they might burn a hole in his hand:

‘Well, sir, at least I have the law present in case anyone should suggest what I did was improper.’

The contents of the shelves were neatly labelled, as Faro might have suspected: the old lawyer had been a very methodical man. The files were all arranged in alphabetical order from which Wailes withdrew that marked ‘Langweil’.

‘What was it you wished to see, Inspector?’

Faro told him he was looking for a letter from lawyers in San Francisco, marked private and confidential.

‘There’s only one sealed document here. “To be opened by Adrian Langweil in the event of the death of Theodore and Cedric Langweil.” Looks like a will, sir.’

‘That can’t be it.’

He stared over Wailes’ shoulder as the clerk skimmed through the old documents, many of which must have dated back to the original deeds of Priorsfield. But they, though of antiquarian interest, were none of his business.

‘You are quite sure of the date?’

Faro did not need to consult his notes to know that the date was right and that if Moulton had exceeded his authority by removing it from its envelope then he would also have filed it in the proper sequence.

Three times Wailes went through the documents. Finally he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. There is no such letter in the file. And you have my assurance that if Mr Moulton had it in his possession, it would have been here - right here, sir.’

Pausing, he looked at Faro. ‘I can only suggest, sir, that Mr Langweil has made a mistake and that you take up the matter with him again. Twenty years is a long time. Perhaps he reclaimed the document for some purpose and forgot to return it to Mr Moulton. That does happen with clients sometimes.’

Thanking him for his help, Faro walked down the front steps sure of one thing: that the original had never existed except in the fabric of Theodore Langweil’s imagination.

At the Central Office, McQuinn looked in to see him later that day.

Handing him the statements from the farmer who had found the lawyer’s body and the stableman Jock, he said: ‘I decided to have another talk to the servants at Priorsfield.

‘This will interest you, sir. Mrs Gimmond was grumbling about the hailstorm and the awful weather, especially as she had to give one of the maids a good ticking off. The lass had been in tears, swearing she had polished the front hall floor and that it had been left beautiful.

‘ “Well,” said Mrs G, “it wasn’t beautiful when I came downstairs this morning. There were muddy footprints all the way to the library and up the stairs. The master would have had a fit if he’d seen them when he came down to breakfast. A stickler for polished floors he is. Worse than the mistress.” ’

McQuinn sat back in his chair and regarded Faro triumphantly. ‘So what do you think of that, sir?’

‘I’d give a lot to know in which direction the muddy footsteps were going.’

McQuinn scratched his chin. ‘I think I can give you an answer to that, too. Remember the storm didn’t start until ten o’clock. By then Mr Moulton was with Mr Langweil. He was the only guest, the only one to leave the house.’

‘Wait a moment, McQuinn.’ And Faro remembered having asked Langweil if he had seen his guest off.

‘Well, sir, he lied. He or someone else must have been out of the house some time that evening after they ate. And it wouldn’t be one of the servants because the footsteps were leading to the library and upstairs. A servant would have gone through the baize door downstairs.’

‘You’re right. And if Langweil left the house in the storm, he had a purpose.’

McQuinn smiled. ‘Like tampering with the wheel of the lawyer’s carriage and then filling him with drink so that he’d be right fuddled on that twisting road by the loch.’

When Faro related the day’s events to Vince, he saw by his stepson’s expression that he still hoped for a miracle and that Grace’s family would somehow be declared innocent of what now looked like two murders.