Rose McQuinn 7 - Deadly Legacy (11 page)

Gray was also eager to depart, consulting his timepiece in a manner of urgency. 'We will be keeping in close touch with Jack's progress and I will send someone immediately he is able to see visitors, Mrs McQuinn.'

With that I had to be content, although my inclination would be to haunt this corridor outside Jack's ward every day until I saw for myself that he was recovering.

As we walked out of the hospital Gray courteously offered me a lift in his carriage which I declined politely, indicating my bicycle. His nod contained relief, as well as faint disapproval, confirming his opinion of my eccentric and bohemian behaviour, out of keeping with the code of conduct for senior police officers' wives.

Too upset to return to Solomon's Tower and brood over my fears for Jack, I decided to continue into the town and call on Meg in her new home. That would be something to cheer him on my first visit.

Turning the corner on to South Bridge, Sergeant Wright was heading briskly towards the hospital gates. He too looked grave as he saluted me. I dismounted. He had been present at the shooting incident and I wanted to know every detail. Pointing to a cafe across the road, I said, 'Inspector Macmerry is still unconscious but they have successfully removed the bullet.'

Wright gave a sigh of relief as I went on, 'He is not able to have visitors, still unconscious, but if you have time to spare for a cup of tea, I would be most grateful to know exactly what happened.'

As we sat down and waited to be served, he said, 'The man we were after had shot his wife and her lover in a Glasgow tenement and fled to Edinburgh, taking refuge in a house in the Canongate, where he was holding the occupant, a terrified woman and her child, as hostage. He opened a window, and holding them as a shield threatened to kill them both if the police tried to take him.'

Evading my eyes and trying to keep his voice calm as he relived those terrible moments, he continued, 'Inspector Macmerry picked up the megaphone and said he would come alone and unarmed and talk about it, but first Jutley should release the woman and the child. But Jutley laughed at him and said, 'I am going to hang anyway, so what difference does that make now? I have nothing to lose. I'll count to ten and if you don't clear off and let me go free I'll kill them.'

The sergeant paused, closed his eyes as if the memory was too painful to relate. With a sigh he continued in almost a whisper, 'The inspector called his bluff. Shouted again that if he would release the woman and her bairn, who were both screaming their heads off, he would do the best he could, and promised Jutley a fair trial.' Again the sergeant stopped, looked at me and said slowly, 'Then he just stepped forward, said he was coming into the house unarmed. Jutley shouted, "I've warned you. Stand back!"'

Wright paused a moment. 'But it was no use. The inspector just started walking across the road ...'

For a moment I thought the sergeant was going to break down. He looked away, shook his head, said slowly, 'And that was that, Mrs McQuinn. You know the rest. Jutley had to release his hold on the woman to fire and the police marksman shot him too.' A shuddering sigh. 'Spared the hangman a job.'

As he spoke, I, who never cried, found the tears rolling down my cheeks for the second time that morning. I wiped them away remembering how Jack, in a reserved occupation with the police force, had always regretted not being eligible to join the Highland Regiment in the ongoing conflict with the Boers. Now it didn't matter any longer, one way or another, whether he had faced death as a soldier or a policeman serving his country.

Sergeant Wright was asking if I had seen the inspector and I repeated that there were no visitors permitted at the moment. He nodded and said he would come back again tomorrow.

What could I do? And suddenly I had the completely idiotic idea that I should try and smuggle Thane into the hospital to Jack's bedside. I had seen the deerhound's miracles as a healer - a boy from the circus mauled by a lion recovered without a scratch, Thane's own unscathed emergence from a death bullet. There had been other remarkable instances that I had witnessed, along with my own strange recovery from a raging fever two days ago.

There was something else too. As I bicycled down the High Street, I realised I had known a weird feeling listening to Wright's story. I was there by Jack's side, seeing it all, knowing his next words. It was as if I had been through all this before. The scene was so vivid, a kind of deja vu.

Not deja vu, alas, but premonition.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Riding down the Royal Mile, the high street in the poorer part of the town, engulfed on either side by lofty grey tenements, brought my first misgivings. Consulting the scrap of paper - was this the right address, I thought? - I parked in the stone corridor and climbed the twisting stone stair to the fourth floor.

Two bleak doors facing one another. A name: 'Bourne'.

No reply. I knocked again. A flurry of footsteps, children's shrill voices as a door opened inside.

A woman's angry voice telling them to behave - a sound, like a sharp blow, resulting in a shrill cry of pain.

The door was being carefully unlocked, bolt by bolt and chain, like some fortress - or prison - but only opened enough to reveal part of a woman's tired angry countenance.

'Well, what is it?'

I consulted my piece of paper. 'Am I speaking to Mrs Bourne?'

A sniff, a suspicious glance. 'Aye, that's me. What d'ye want?'

'I am calling to see Meg Macmerry who, I understand, has recently been put in your care for adoption.'

A short silence followed as the woman's eye studied me as intently as she could through the barely opened door.

'She's not here ...'

And I was listening, appalled, to a repeat though less well-educated recital of my interview at the Lochandor orphanage.

I interrupted the excuses. 'Meg is the daughter of Detective Inspector Macmerry of the Edinburgh City Police.'

This jolted her. The eye temporarily withdrew, perhaps in a state of shock, as I continued. 'I am here on the inspector's behalf to see her and deliver an account of her welfare.'

The eye returned, a rattle of chains and the door opened a fraction more this time. 'We take children from the orphanage until other arrangements are found for them. The child you mention, Meg Macmerry, has been taken by a family who want to adopt her.'

'When did all this happen?'

'Soon after she arrived, the day before yesterday.'

Trying to sound calm I said, 'Their address, if you please.'

The door opened wider. The woman disappeared and children of assorted ages, mostly girls, came into view, peering at me wide-eyed, hopeful. Their pleading expressions wrung my heart - these were not reminiscent of children, but rather of stray dogs and cats abandoned and betrayed by their owners.

At least, I saw with relief, they looked well cared for, dressed alike, in plain grey dresses, like institutional uniforms. They didn't look cold or hungry but they were well past babyhood - the youngest must have been five or six years old.

The woman reappeared, pushed them aside with a warning growl and handed me a piece of paper, the address this time in Joppa on the far side of Arthur's Seat, familiar territory and thankfully not far distant from my home.

Now that I had a good look at the middle-aged Mrs Bourne, she was well dressed too and seemed no longer hostile or suspicious.

'You were misdirected to this house.' And choosing her words carefully, 'We merely provide a stepping-off place for unwanted children, orphans mostly, to be found suitable homes, where they will in time be trained to become useful members of a household.'

A kindly way of saying that the children I was seeing were being trained to be domestic servants, their entire young lives spent as cheap unpaid child labour in the kitchens of Edinburgh's better-off houses. All they would ever get were cast-off clothes and leftover food, their futures decided for them, bleak indeed. No education, rarely even taught to read or write.

A few might be lucky enough or strong enough to escape, but, for the majority, a life of toil and deprivation lay ahead.

The woman was saying, 'The child Meg was too young, you see - three years old, they can't do much at that age. They're just a burden. And I have more than enough to take care of at the moment, without another mouth to feed.'

There was something else I needed to know before I walked down the stairs and escaped into the fresh air again. 'Am I to presume that you received a fee for Meg Macmerry's care at the orphanage--?'

She glowered at me and interrupted. 'Aye, a fee mostly passed down the line to them at Joppa - for their trouble.'

'Trouble' was not the word I would have used to describe adoption, a business of delight and joy for a childless couple yearning for a baby.

I left with the expressions in those children's eyes following, haunting me, as well as the feeling that I had not been told the whole unpalatable truth. But at least Joppa gave me hope, as a respectable suburb easily accessible on my bicycle. And in the right direction to include Duddingston, where I was eager to discover from Amy Dodd the latest developments next door, in which the police and Chief Inspector Gray were showing so much interest.

With considerable effort I summoned up my other role, that of lady investigator. I regarded the contents of the package which had been entrusted to me, and hopefully the clue it contained which would lead to the bogus Hinton who must have been an intimate of the murdered woman. How otherwise could she have known about the legacy?

Before beginning these proceedings, which must inevitably take some time, my most urgent and immediate duty was to track down Meg and bring Jack good news of her.

As I rode towards Joppa my route took me through Portobello, much in demand as a summer playground for Edinburgh folk and a popular seaside resort for those further afield. The added attraction was a season of variety entertainment from popular vaudeville actors as well as the local Portobello Players.

Riding along the promenade, staring across the now-grey Firth of Forth towards the Kingdom of Fife, brought back nostalgic childhood memories of seaside picnics - great adventures they seemed to my sister Emily and me in the charge of our housekeeper at Sheridan Place, our dear infallible, unflappable Mrs Brook, always ready with delicious food, a hug and words of comfort.

And as all childhood memories turn golden with the years, I recalled only the warm sunny days, and never a picnic spoilt by rain and a chill east wind.

At Joppa I gave a sigh of relief as my destination revealed itself as a large and handsome villa, facing seaward, with a gate and well-tended garden, built some sixty years ago in the traditional exuberant style of the late Queen's reign.

I walked up the path and rang the bell. As it was not immediately answered, the old misgivings returned. I looked at the small box containing the new doll. Was this to be yet another wasted journey, a further frustration? At last the sound of footsteps and the door opened.

'Mrs Blaker?' I asked. The woman shook her head.

'Madam is not at home. I am the housekeeper.'

Again that sinking of the heart, as she asked, 'May I ask who is calling?'

'Of course.' I introduced myself as a friend of Meg Macmerry's father. 'I have brought her a present from him.'

The housekeeper glanced towards the box and smiled. 'The wee girl.' And I sighed - at least I had come to the right place. Then she shook her head. 'You have just missed Sir and Madam. They are off to Aberdeen to visit Madam's sister and have taken wee Meg with them to meet the rest of the family.'

'When will they be returning?'

'In a few days. I'm not sure precisely when.'

I left my card and the doll which the housekeeper promised would be given to the wee girl as soon as she returned. And Sir and Madam would be told right away that I had called. No doubt they would get in touch with me.

With that I had to be content. At least both house and housekeeper looked promising, along with the knowledge that Meg was safe at last. In a few days I would be able to meet her and perhaps be permitted to take her to visit Jack in the infirmary.

That should cheer him; one anxiety less would perhaps speed his recovery.

As wearily I cycled homeward, my sense of relief was more than slightly undermined when I considered the effects of all these sudden and bewildering changes of environment on a three-year-old girl. First the move to Tarnbrae, which was swiftly followed by the loss of the aunt who had been the only mother she had ever known. Then the introduction into her life of a large uncaring woman, in the role of her new mother, plus a quartet of rowdy unruly boys introduced as her new siblings. But not for long; suddenly she was uplifted, packed off into a great house full of more strangers, some of them children like herself, with a new set of bewildering unfamiliar grown-ups staring down at her, followed by a long train journey to Edinburgh, a strange city full of high buildings and hills.

Would she remember being carried up all those stairs into the tall tenement, to be handed over to an impatient angry woman who didn't want her, and children who were subdued and unfriendly? Hopefully these childhood recollections and their nightmare effects would be happily supplanted with this last move to Joppa with no other lasting memory than always being the daughter of a loving family.

But no more Meg for the moment, and although I was anxious for news of Jack, I had to briefly stop at Duddingston. Waiting for Amy Dodd to answer the door, Mrs Lawers' empty house looked sad and forlorn, as if already the recent tragedy had stamped itself indelibly on its ancient walls. From the house on the further side, a curtain moved, a man's face appeared at the window and was hastily withdrawn.

I sighed - no doubt the enigmatic French neighbour who kept himself to himself. Pointless to ask him Amy's whereabouts.

I was about to leave when she appeared bustling down the street, basket over arm. She greeted me breathlessly. 'Been down to the shops. Come in.'