To Kill a Queen (20 page)

Faro took it gratefully.

'Lachlan's away for your horse.'

As he waited whisky flasks were proffered, but he was already shaking like a man with an ague when Lachlan handed over the reins of Steady to him.

'Would you not rather have the carriage?' asked Purdie.

'No. No.'

'Are you sure?'

'I will be fine. I'm just cold. And one of us must stay with the Queen.'

By the time Steady had trotted briskly into Easter Balmoral and, unsaddled, was bedded down for the night, Faro was chilled to the bone.

But inside the cottage, the best sight in the world awaited him. Vince had called in only to find that Bella and Tibbie were out visiting neighbours.

Vince took one look at him, brought out the hip-bath, put it before the glowing peat fire, and while he boiled buckets and kettles of water, Faro gasped out the details of the child's rescue.

'And completely forgetting, of course, that you cannot swim.'

'It never occurred to me, lad. It didn't seem important.'

'You make me furious, sometimes,' said Vince angrily. 'Never did a man take less regard of his own skin. It's a mercy you weren't both drowned. Even a good swimmer would have been weighed down by the weight of those tweed trousers. And boots.'

He looked at the sodden heap, steaming by the fire.

'I'm afraid they'll never be the same again. But we hope you will.' Then he smiled, pouring another pan of boiling water into the hip-bath. 'A charmed life, that's what they say you have. I'm beginning to believe it.'

Half an hour later Faro, restored from his ordeal, was grimacing over a hot, strictly medicinal toddy as he related the events at Glen Muick. For Vince's benefit, he carefully omitted any sinister implications.

But Vince was not to be put off. 'How did you come by that very nasty bruise on your back?'

Vince had noticed it while he was sitting in the bath.

'When I fell down in the heather, I expect.'

'I thought you fell face forward?'

And when he didn't reply Vince continued with a look of triumph, 'Someone tried to kill you, Stepfather. Am I right?'

When Faro described what had happened, Vince said, 'Don't you think this has gone far enough? A daring rescue for a man who cannot swim is one hazard too many, when he has narrowly escaped death by walking in front of a shooting party.'

Vince shook his head. 'You are getting either very careless or remarkably absent-minded, neither of which are luxuries you can afford in your profession.'

It was scant consolation to realise that Inspector Purdie was not alone in failing to pick up obvious clues.

'Very well, but as you know, lad, I am the last to call "Wolf". There were a great many people milling about. Something hit me in the back, but it was over in an instant. I doubt if anyone noticed, all attention was on the wee lass. Besides, the gloaming can play tricks. Makes it damned difficult to see anything distinctly.'

'Sergeant Craig wasn't in the vicinity?'

'I didn't see him. I realise what you're thinking, but surely it cannot be Craig. After all, he is Purdie's right hand man. He must have had an arm's length of references to be trusted by the Yard.'

'And yet he did succumb to the money from Lachlan's bothy. Now that I would call irredeemable misconduct in a police officer. At the moment, Stepfather, I'd be prepared to lay odds on Craig and Lachlan, as prime suspects.'

Faro, beginning to feel the effects of the day's travail, grew weary of the conversation, the cut and thrust of speculation. Normally relishing such discussion he now saw it as a great tide that led nowhere, sweeping him helplessly along unable to divert the disaster awaiting in the wings.

There was one direction he did not want it to lead. To Lachlan Brown.

'What do you think of Lachlan, by the way?' he asked trying to sound casual.

'Pleasant enough. Yes, very pleasant when he chooses to be so, I imagine.' Vince shrugged. 'I did not feel that we had a great deal in common. Except, of course, for fathers who had abandoned our mothers,' he added bitterly.

Faro suppressed a groan. Little did Vince know that the link of illegitimacy they shared was more intimate than he could ever have imagined. That there might exist an even stronger reason for Lachlan's resenting Vince, who had usurped his rightful position by becoming Jeremy Faro's son in every way but the accident of birth.

Faro closed his eyes before the awful prospect looming ahead of him. Vince's bitterness and hatred were unrelenting towards the unknown man who had fathered him. How would he react to the knowledge that his stepfather had similarly abandoned Inga St Ola and left her shamed in her Orkney home, forced to have their child fostered?

If the lad ever found out, whatever excuses he made, Vince would never really forgive him. Their whole future relationship could be blighted, put in jeopardy by a truth coming home to roost after more than twenty years.

Bella's clock melodiously struck nine, reminding him that he was to have had tea with Inga five hours ago—a momentous five hours in which he had twice escaped death.

He swore with some feeling.

'What's wrong, Stepfather?'

'I had an engagement with a lady this afternoon. I forgot.'

'Inga?'

'The same. I had to go to Glen Muick instead, urgently. And it was too late to get a message to her.'

'Never mind, I suppose the Queen has precedence over all other ladies, including Inga St Ola.'

At Faro's faint smile, Vince said, 'How curious that she should come back into your life again. I mean, this connection with Lachlan Brown and so forth.'

'A strange coincidence indeed.'

'Do you know what I think, Stepfather?'

Although Faro knew perfectly well the pronouncement Vince was about to make, he shook his head obligingly.

'I think Inga and Lachlan are in this together.'

'Indeed. What evidence have you for that?'

'The evidence of my two eyes. You just have to look at them. Thick as thieves, they are.' He paused. 'I'm disappointed in you, Stepfather.'

'In what way?' Faro felt panic rising.

'Candidly, where are your powers of observation? They seem to be failing you badly of late.'

When Faro made no protest, Vince said, 'Obviously he wasn't born in Orkney or you would have heard all about him from Grandma. So it follows that the birth was kept secret. That some wretched man seduced her and left her. Just like my poor mother. But poor Inga did not have you-'

The wretched man in question wriggled uncomfortably, bit his lip. Listening to Vince's tirade, wanting to protest, No, it wasn't like that at all. He had not seduced Inga, although he was too much of a gentleman to say that it might well have been the other way round. Inga had loved him and his first experience of sex had not warned him of the consequences that might follow.

He wanted to protest that he never knew she was pregnant. If so, he would have married her.

Dammit, he had offered to do so.

'You knew her in those days, Stepfather.' Vince on the track of truth was relentless. 'You were a friend of hers, a cousin—'

'Much removed,' Faro interposed hastily.

'Could you not have advised her?'

'Vince, I was nineteen years old when I—when I knew her. She was twenty-one. Hardly the sort of thing she would seek to confide in me.'

'Did she never give any hint, I mean, about the man?'

'No,' said Faro shortly.

'Yet it must have been about the time you left for Edinburgh.'

Vince's earnest pursuit of right made him wince. 'Wait a minute, lad, here we are gossiping like a pair of old fishwives, tearing apart a lady's reputation when her story might be true.'

But Vince was not prepared to let go. 'You can't mean that Lachlan was fostered by her, really the son of a friend who died.' Pausing he gave a bark of laughter. 'Stepfather, you surely don't believe that. How can you be so simple? Why, that's the thinnest story I've ever heard.' And shaking his head sadly, 'I'm disappointed in you, really I am. Here you are, a master of deduction, unable to see through an obvious tissue of lies. Unless—'

'Unless what?' Faro demanded sharply.

Vince regarded him narrowly. 'Unless you don't want to solve this one,' he said softly.

And at that moment Faro suspected that in a flash of enlightenment Vince had solved the case for himself, the implication being that Lachlan was guilty of Morag's murder. Even as the monstrous thought took root, the scene at the river flashed vividly before him, touching a deeper, stranger chord of memory.

What was it? Something Vince had said earlier? But he was too tired to think and determined to be in bed before his aunt and Tibbie returned and subjected him to the inevitable ordeal of retelling the rescue story for their benefit, he bid Vince goodnight rather sharply.

He slept badly, nightmare scenes engulfing him. Over and over he was drowning with hands outstretched in front of him. But as he seized them, the fingers came away like sticks in his hands and he hurtled backwards into the falls.

Next morning, hoping to escape with a light-hearted explanation for sodden garments left to dry by the fire, he found them all neatly pressed by Tibbie. As he related how he had slipped and fallen, how Inspector Purdie had rescued him, he remembered how strong his hands had been and the nightmare returned.

'You can overcome anything, if you will it.'

Anything but shrunken socks, it seemed, which he had placed on top of the hot oven.

But Bella, as always, had a solution close at hand.

From a drawer she took out a linen roll and withdrew a pair of kilt hose.

'This was the last pair I ever made for your uncle. Finished them the day he died and never had the heart to give them away. At my age, it's gey daft to hang on to things. It'll no' be long now afore we're t'gither again, an he'll say to me, "Bella, ye daft besom, ye always were a hoarder. Whatever came ower ye." So take them, Jeremy lad.' And burrowing further, 'This too, his skean dhu. Ye should have had it long since.'

Holding it, he remembered in an instant how his Uncle Ben had taught him to spin his bonnet on to the peg by the door. And by the same flick of the wrist, he had demonstrated how the skean dhu had been used in past ages with deadlier effect, to kill an enemy.

And Faro, saddling up Steady, was surprised to discover he had lost none of his expertise. He could still score a bull's-eye on the old beam above the door. But he expected less dazzling results with the excuses he had on hand to offer Inga St Ola.

On the way to her hotel he prepared himself for a very cool reception. Instead, Inga ran down the steps to meet him, grasped his hands.

Ready with his apologies he saw her expression was one of relief rather than anger.

'I am so sorry about yesterday—'

'It doesn't matter—'

'It is my own fault. I entirely forgot that I was to go out to Glen Muick—'

She shook her head. 'When you didn't arrive I realised that something had happened.'

Leading him to a garden seat, she sat down, spread her skirts and looked intently up into his face. 'I told myself that detectives are notoriously unreliable when they are engaged in the pursuit of criminals. And unexpected delays are the order of the day.'

At his startled expression, she continued, 'That's why you are here, is it not?'

Faro smiled wryly. 'I thought I was here for Aunt Bella's birthday and a fishing holiday. That, I assure you, was my intention.'

Inga laughed. 'Jeremy Faro, you'll be the death of me.'

'I'm glad you find me an object of mirth,' he said stiffly.

'I don't, I promise you.' And suddenly she was solemn. 'I don't. Anything but that. But I can guess that whatever you are supposed to be doing, the real reason is something very serious.'

A leaf fluttered down on to her lap and picking it up, she smoothed it out tenderly. 'I know you scorn this sort of thing, Jeremy, but I knew you wouldn't come.'

'Is that so? I assure you I do try to keep my word—'

'You don't understand. I don't mean it like that at all. Listen, I was looking forward to your visit. It was a lovely afternoon and then quite suddenly, it was all changed. Different. As if a giant shadow came across, between me and the sun.'

She looked around as if hoping to find some measure to fit the description. Then turning to him, she said, 'I knew you were in terrible danger. That your life at that moment hung by a thread. And there was nothing I could do—no warning I could give. So I concentrated hard, prayed, "Deliver him from evil."'

'What time was this, Inga?'

'Three o'clock had just struck on the hall clock.'

Faro looked away. He had checked his watch when he arrived in Glen Muick. Two thirty. He must have been walking for half an hour when he had fallen in the heather, the assassin's bullet cutting the air where a second before his head had been.

Mistaking his preoccupation, Inga sighed. 'I know it's silly and you disapprove, Jeremy. But I can't help it, I just know things. I don't want to but I do.' Smoothing out the leaf again, she shook her head miserably. 'I don't want to be a witch, but that's what I am.'