The Missing Duchess (24 page)

Vince started forward, then with an exclamation of pain: 'I can't, Stepfather. I twisted my ankle out there -'

'Look after Amelie -' Faro could move quickly but his cousin was even quicker. Pursuing him through the thick vegetation of trees and shrubbery, at last he emerged on the drive.

As he looked round, one of Sir Piers's racehorses jumped over the railings and galloped towards the gates, Leslie riding bareback.

Faro watched him go, cursing. An indifferent horseman at the best of times, he knew that pursuit was useless. Winded, breathless, he headed back to the dower house, to be overtaken by a troop of mounted policemen from Perth.

'Get after him.' But he knew it was already too late.

In the kitchen, Mrs Ashley sat at the table opposite the Perth detective, overlooked by Vince and Amelie.

'... and when my Davey, he's the local constable, came in for his supper, I told him about this Mr and Mrs Faro. Mollie thought there was something very sinister about the pair of them too.'

All heads turned in the direction of the maid who had served lunch at the dower house. This was her moment of glory.

'Aye, there was that - especially
him
.’

Inspector Macrae of the Perth Constabulary sprang to his feet as Faro entered. He didn't know how much he had overheard but had the grace to look embarrassed knowing Faro's reputation with the Edinburgh City Police.

'We were never alerted about any royal arrival,' he told him. 'I'm glad we got here in time to avert a tragedy. Dr Laurie was telling me -'

Faro smiled wryly. They had been too late. The drama was over and they had already lost their man. But Vince was still alive and so was Amelie.

'There's a wounded man out there,' he said, and Vince limped towards the clearing. But Batey, like his master, had disappeared without trace.

Perth Constabulary provided an escort to accompany Amelie, Grand Duchess of Luxoria, on her journey to Balmoral.

For Faro, seeing her into the carriage, this was a formal farewell. As they clasped hands briefly and he solemnly wished her godspeed, there was for an instant reflected in their eyes, the sad certainty that they were unlikely ever to meet again.

Worse than any parting with the woman he would always think of as Roma Fortescue was Faro's disillusion regarding Leslie Faro Godwin. Vince, whose first instinct about Godwin had proved to be the right one, realised how deeply his stepfather was shocked by the discovery that his cousin was a hired assassin.

Over and over, Faro asked himself - and Vince - where lay the difference between them? Was his own role as a detective merely one other facet of the same violence that erupted in Leslie Faro Godwin, making one man fight on the side of law and order and the other, of his own blood, into a hired killer?

And painfully he came to realise that the margin was very narrow indeed, as he remembered how uncovering the riddle of his father's death, he had learned that the highest and noblest in the land were far from incorruptible.

The surprises, however, weren't over.

While Faro wondered how he could spare his mother the awful revelation about her nephew, a letter came from Orkney in reply to his glowing account of their first meeting after many years.

'I don't know what you're on about,' he read. 'Whoever this man is who calls himself Leslie Faro Godwin, he certainly isn't a relative of ours. Your cousin Leslie took scarlet fever and died just weeks after your dear father's funeral. We were just back in Orkney. You loved Leslie and we tried to tell you but you just wouldn't - or couldn't - take it in. You were only four and suffering bad dreams over your poor father -'

And Faro paused, remembering that childish nightmare of his hero cousin and his father carried away from him by a carriage with black horses.

- You never spoke his name again. Neither did I, God forgive me -'

Faro put down the letter.

'Grandma wouldn't know about a war correspondent, would she?' said Vince. 'Then who on earth was this Leslie Faro Godwin?'

'I don't know, lad, but I intend to find out.'

His enquiries revealed that there was indeed a war correspondent called Leslie Godwin. All his exploits were quite correct. Alive and well, he lived mostly in America with his wife and children. At the time of his impostor's sojourn in Scotland, he was at the White House, receiving an award from the President of the United States.

Faro found the audacity of his counterfeit cousin deeply disturbing. It suggested an association of assassins readily available and funded by an international society which Faro had long suspected lay at the root of many unexplained and unsolved murders. A secret society with origins older and deadlier than the respectable Freemasons to which so many merchants and upper-class citizens were proud to belong.

The case of the missing Duchess had still one more card to play.

Winter came, the year turned, spring bloomed and summer blossomed, and found Faro once again involved in his daily business of solving another series of crimes.

One day, a small paragraph in The Scotsman drew his immediate attention:

Heir for Luxoria: After many years of marriage to President Gustav, Her Highness the Grand Duchess Amelie has given birth to an heir. Born prematurely, despite fears for his survival, the prince shows every sign of being a strong, healthy infant.

A week later, Faro received a letter with a Luxorian stamp. In it a copy of the announcement. Underneath, in ink, the words: '
We
have a son. Gratefully, RF.'

There are fifteen titles in the Inspector Faro series available from bookstores and on www.amazon.co.uk. Available on Kindle:

Enter Second Murderer

Bloodline

Deadly Beloved

Killing Cousins

A Quiet Death

To Kill A Queen

The Missing Duchess

Also available on Kindle in the Rose McQuinn series:

An Orkney Murder

Connect with Alanna online:

Author’s homepage:
http://www.alannaknight.com