The Coffin Lane Murders (16 page)

'I don't suppose any of them suggested searching the Tower,' Faro said.

Sir Hedley grinned savagely. 'I'd have given them short shrift if they had,' he said grimly. 'Keep a shotgun handy for that sort of thing. They're all scared of me, anyway, don't you know. They think I'm mad - I could teach most of those young bucks a thing or two-'

Faro cleared his throat apologetically. 'But you can trust me, sir, can't you?'

"Course I can - you and your young lad. Best friends I ever had till m'niece came along. 'Course I trust you - no question. Ask away.'

'Well, sir, it's like this. This woman we're looking for, she might possibly be hiding in the Tower-'

Sir Hedley stared at him, and then laughed. 'In here - in my house, you mean?'

'That is a possibility.'

'Hiding here, without young Conan and m'niece knowing.' Again he laughed. 'Well, sir, if that's what you believe, I can only suggest you take a look around yourself. Go on.'

'Thank you, sir, I was hoping you'd say that.'

Faro's search did not take long. The few rooms downstairs were neat and orderly, the cellars cold and dark, but with no evidence of anyone taking refuge there.

He doubted if there were any secret panels or apertures since the entire building was made of stone.

He searched the upper floor: Sir Hedley's bedroom, with five cats happily resting on his ancient four-poster bed. They gave him reproachful looks, a few plaintive miaows and then settled down again.

A large table, a comfortable decrepit chair and a large bookcase, with its contents tumbling everywhere, had all escaped Kate's rigorous onslaught of order and cleanliness.

There remained the strictly forbidden 'old charter room'.

Faro hesitated, then salved his conscience with Sir Hedley's permission to search everywhere.

He tried the door. To his surprise it was unlocked.

The ancient chapel was as he remembered it. He walked round carefully but there was no hiding place visible to a casual but determined searcher.

Across the corridor was Conan's study or laboratory, as he called it, with its test tubes and lingering smell of mice, noxious chemicals, and scuttling rats. He had no desire to linger. Satisfied that the Tower was not concealing Celia he returned downstairs.

Sir Hedley greeted him triumphantly. 'Could have saved you all that. Should have believed me.' He tapped the letter he was reading. 'Young Conan is writing to the Society of Antiquaries about Kate's brooch - you know, the owl moons clasper, as they call it. After his father found that stone outside, they think there's a connection with the Tower. She meant to post it. Here, read it. You like this sort of thing,' he added, thrusting it towards Faro.

Politely skimming the contents of the letter, Faro promised to give it to Conan, pushed it into his pocket and began what now seemed a long walk back to Sheridan Place.

He took the short cut through Coffin Lane quite fearlessly. He was quite sure from some interesting fragments of information he had picked up in the last few hours that he at least was quite safe from the attentions of the 'Lady Killer'.

Chapter 17

Calm reigned over Sheridan Place once more.

Conan had persuaded Kate to return to the Tower that evening.

Vince was clearly worried.

'Although he said not one word to indicate such a thing, or reveal his own misgivings, he behaved as if the whole incident was a figment of Kate's imagination. I know him well, Stepfather, I know what I'm talking about. He didn't believe a word of her story.'

Faro looked thoughtful. 'Are you suggesting that Kate is having some kind of breakdown?'

Vince nodded. 'That is a possibility.'

Both men were silent. They were fond of Kate, and Conan's reaction alarmed them with its implications.

It rained heavily that night. The snow was shifting at last. The tragedy on Duddingston Loch was reason enough to be thankful that the ice was melting and that no more lives would be lost in fatal accidents.

The thaw set in faster than anyone had anticipated and although this was a cause of lamentation for folk who believed in the romance of a white Christmas as portrayed in sentimental paintings, the inconvenience was considerable and most of Edinburgh heaved a great sigh of relief, in particular those like Faro and other citizens who lived on the south side of the town. They had been faced with miserable journeys to work each day, forced to go on foot into the city centre since the horse-drawn omnibus notices read: 'Services withdrawn until road conditions improve.'

As for hiring carriages, they had disappeared from the Newington area since the murders. Wise cabmen were either taking elaborate precautions to neither fall victim to a madwoman on the rampage nor invite influenza by sitting in a piercing wind awaiting a fare.

In practical matters, now that the ice had broken into floats it made the dredgermen's job of recovering the student's body easier and they were out with grappling irons at daybreak.

From the safety of the lochside their activities were watched by a group of onlookers whose curiosity was sufficient to bring them shivering from warm beds on a Sunday morning.

Faro and Vince were not among the watchers. They had both seen more than enough dead bodies to satisfy even the most ghoulishly inclined. Their first indication that the boy's body had been recovered was when a constable arrived at the door to alert them and request their presence.

Reaching the loch, they had to clear a passage among the spectators to where the victim's anxious friends were waiting.

Yes, they had identified him, weeping as they did so. His father had been summoned from the friends' house where he had awaited this melancholy event.

Even as Faro and Vince reached the group of mourners the boy's father was drying his eyes and, his voice a broken whisper, was making halting arrangements to have his son taken home.

It was a heart-wrenching moment. Faro and Vince offered their condolences but the glazed look, the shake of the man's head, said it was doubtful indeed whether he saw or heard them.

He had eyes only on the still figure of his son, lying dead at his feet, taking into oblivion all the proud hopes and dreams, destroyed in a moment's tragic accident.

A hand touched Faro's arm. 'Would you come this way, Inspector?'

Following the constable away from the sad-eyed group, he walked over to another group huddled over what looked like a large bundle of clothes by the lochside.

'Have a look at this, sir,' the constable whispered excitedly.

Faro stooped down and saw a dead face, plastered with dark hair staring up at him. Thin white hands.

The corpse was that of a drowned woman.

'We've just pulled the poor creature ashore; she came away in the grappling irons, floated towards us,' said the dredgerman. 'Must have got dislodged from the reeds when we were poking about with the rods for the lad.'

'Where was she?'

'Same place as him. Far side of the loch.'

Vince came over. 'What have we here? I'm a doctor.'

The man looked at him. 'Too late for that, sir.'

As Vince knelt down, the man continued, 'We thought we saw hair, long human hair. Grabbed it, and there she was, sir.'

Vince looked up at them questioningly.

'Doubt you'll be much good to her now, sir,' said the dredgerman. 'Dare say she made sure of that when she jumped in.'

'A suicide, you mean?'

The man shook his head sagely. 'That's right. Mark my words, sir. There were two heavy stones, roped together round her ankles. She was making sure she wouldn't be rescued, this poor lass. Probably slipped across on the ice and where it was thinnest, she just plunged in.'

'Where are the stones?' Faro demanded.

'Back in the water, sir. They came off as we were trying to disentangle her from the reeds.'

'Seems daft, doesn't it?' said his companion. 'She didn't reckon the ice-cold water was enough to kill her in seconds, poor silly woman.'

'Aye,' said the first man, 'and she might have lain there till kingdom come, till the body rotted away, right over there close to the railway line.' Again he pointed. 'No more than a few yards from where the lad fell in. She chose a fine quiet grave; not much comes and goes there in normal times, nothing but the reeds for the swans and the geese to roost in.'

'That's right,' nodded his partner. 'Could have lain there and never been found.'

'Till she rotted,' repeated the first man.

Vince was examining the woman's face and neck. Her skin was a ghastly grey.

Who was she? Faro envisaged another search through the list of missing persons, another sad family to inform. He had scant experience in such matters, but she looked as if she had been in the water for several days.

Among the morbid bystanders diverted from the departure of the drowned boy and his mourners heads rose, turning curiously in their direction. There was swift movement and excited voices alerted to the possibilities of this new tableau.

'Been another accident, has there?' someone called.

Vince hastily covered the woman with the sacking the dredgerman had produced. 'The police mortuary, I think, as soon as possible.'

The first dredgerman, a big burly chap, effortlessly threw the now shrouded body over his shoulder and bounded smartly up the bank towards the road, followed closely by Vince and Faro.

'If only we had those two stones.'

'What on earth good would they do?' asked Vince.

'Evidence,' was the reply.

'Seems a fairly obvious suicide, I'd say,' panted Vince as they hurried after the dredgerman and his burden, ignoring the questions from the crowd who ran eagerly alongside.

'Another goner?' one persistent onlooker demanded.

By a stroke of fortune, the police carriage was still there. Summoned for the drowned boy, it had not been used since the bereaved parent had made his own arrangements and was to travel back to Glasgow with his son's body.

With the woman's corpse hoisted on to one of the stretchers, Faro and Vince took their seats alongside.

'A suicide?' asked the constable.

'We don't know that for sure,' said Faro, aware of Vince's disbelieving shake of the head.

As they drove past Solomon's Tower, Conan was walking back down the hill after taking the dog Nero for his daily exercise.

He seemed surprised to see them.

Faro leaned out. 'They've recovered another body from the loch.'

'Not another accident. God, how awful.'

'This time it's suicide,' said Vince.

'As far as we know, at the moment,' murmured Faro, who already had some new and alarming suspicions about the possible identity of the woman.

'We're taking her to the mortuary.'

'I'll come with you,' said Conan.

Thrusting Nero indoors, he called to Kate who ran out and, seeing the police carriage with Faro and Vince inside, asked, 'What's wrong?'

'Another drowning. I'm needed,' Conan shouted back to her.

As he climbed in Faro leaned over and removed the blanket covering the woman's face.

Conan gave a horrified exclamation. 'Oh dear God. No!'

'I take it you know her,' said Faro grimly.

'Know her, of course I know her. It's Celia.' He took the dead hands as if to chafe life into them again.

'Oh dear God, what a terrible thing to happen. What on earth was she doing on the ice?'

'Not on. Under,' said Faro.

'It wasn't an accident, Conan,' said Vince. 'It was suicide.'

'Suicide!' breathed Conan. Bewildered, he shook his head and repeated, 'Suicide!'

Faro shrugged. 'Well, that's what it looks like. We'll know for sure once the police surgeon's had a chance to look her over.'

But Conan wasn't listening. Furiously he banged his fists together. 'If only she'd come to me, I could have helped her.'

'She was past help, Conan,' said Vince, moved by his friend's grief. 'She obviously didn't want to live any longer. Tied two mighty great stones around her ankles to make sure she went to the bottom of the loch-'

'Where?' demanded Conan.

'Away at the far side near the railway line, where she was unlikely to be found - or rescued.'

Conan nodded miserably. 'I should have saved her from all this. I failed,' he added sorrowfully. 'She believed in me, trusted me, and when I was most needed, I failed her.'

'Perhaps she thought it was better than the hangman's rope,' said Vince. 'You can console yourself with that.'

'What a consolation,' was the bitter reply, and turning to Faro who looked grave and was unusually silent Conan added, 'At least the loch has given up your murderer, sir. And you've solved your crime.'

'Yes, we can all sleep easy in our beds now, Stepfather,' added Vince. 'Wait until the newspapers get this. Relief all round. Everyone can relax and enjoy a merry Christmas without a madwoman with a knife on the rampage.' He smiled across at Faro. 'What a blessed relief. Another case closed, Stepfather.'