Killing Cousins (3 page)

Pausing, he drew a deep breath and added in a whisper, 'I have every reason to believe she was poisoned.'

Chapter Two

'Thora Balfray showed definite symptoms of arsenic poisoning,' said Vince.

Faro whistled. 'Arsenic? Are you sure?'

'So sure, Stepfather, that I decided to do the Marsh Test.' Vince tapped the wooden box lying on the seat between them. 'Fortunately the apparatus is both portable and inconspicuous. The quickest way was to have it sent up from medical suppliers in Aberdeen.'

'Let us hope Francis Balfray doesn't find out.'

'I don't think he has the slightest idea. The doses must have been given in minute quantities over some considerable time and by someone very close to her,' Vince added grimly. 'No wonder poor Francis was baffled. He would be the last person in the world to think any member of his household was capable of such wickedness.'

Faro looked at him sharply. Surely the lad couldn't be that naive? 'It has always been my experience in poisoning cases, as you know, to look first at those closest to the deceased, those who might have the most likely motive and opportunity.'

'Not so in Francis' case, Stepfather,' said Vince firmly. 'He's such an honourable fair-minded chap himself.' Observing Faro's doubtful expression, he repeated, 'I am in a devil of a fix, I can tell you. Dammit, I signed the death certificate as natural causes.'

'With your suspicions, lad? What had come over you? You know what you've done, don't you?' Faro demanded angrily. 'You've put your whole professional reputation in jeopardy.'

'Be reasonable, Stepfather, what else could I do with the distraught husband, who also happens to be a friend and a colleague, looking over my shoulder? If I'd even hinted my suspicions, I'd have had another corpse to deal with - and by his own hand. He adored Thora.'

'If you are right then, and Thora Balfray was poisoned, you'll have to summon the Procurator Fiscal from Kirkwall.'

'That is my intention. You can imagine in these circumstances how delighted I was to see you arrive on Balfray. You have so much more experience in these matters, Stepfather. I feel I can leave it all in your reliable hands.'

'It's going to create a fine stir among the islanders, isn't it?'

'I'm afraid so. In a small community like Balfray practically everyone is related, either directly by blood or by marriage.'

'And, having pulled down a hornet's nest about our heads, we'll have to keep everyone here, make sure no one leaves until the Fiscal arrives,' said Faro grimly.

Vince smiled. 'I'm glad you said we, Stepfather. Because by the time he makes his report and issues an exhumation order, I am quite certain that we will have solved the crime.'

'I shouldn't be too sure about that,' was the reply. 'Murder investigations among people related to one another can be baffling in the extreme. Relatives can be either nervous, or, knowing too much, reluctant to give information about loved ones. Alibis, I have found in such cases, are as thick on the ground as autumn leaves.'

He paused and added, 'The best that we can hope for, Vince, is that the Marsh Test proves your suspicions were unfounded.'

'Proves that I'm the over-enthusiastic over-conscientious young medic, is that it?' demanded Vince indignantly. 'Is that what you're hinting at? That too many encounters with poisonings by arsenic in the police-surgeon's laboratory have made me unnaturally suspicious? I can assure you-’

Faro put a hand on his arm. 'There, there, lad. I take your word for it, that you had just cause for suspicions. What we need to know is who had direct access to Mrs Balfray, the family and retainers, in fact.'

'That won't take long,' said Vince. 'Balfray Castle has long been on short commons. Francis, with the help of a ghillie and some workers, ran the estate until Thora's illness, then Captain Gibb, ex-Navy, distantly related, took over the factoring in return for a house on the estate.

'There's Norma, Thora's stepsister, who is betrothed to the Balfray chaplain, Reverend John Erlandson - and that completes the family.' He gave his stepfather a stern look. 'I hardly think any of them could be included as suspects.'

'What about staff?'

'Precious few. One wing of the castle is closed off since it was seldom used and the twenty servants of the last laird, Sir Joseph Balfray, were reduced to three indoors, a housekeeper and two maids, and a stable boy who doubles as handyman. Your mother will no doubt be in possession of full family histories of all of them by now.'

At Faro's wry smile, he continued, 'As for those with constant access to her food...'

Faro held up his hand. 'No. I don't want to know. Not at this stage, if you please. Let us wait until you've proved the test positive.'

'But all these people are unknown to you.'

Faro nodded. 'I agree. Let us just say that I have

known too many cases in the past of policemen tailoring the crime to fit a favourite suspect. I don't want to be guilty of that. If Mrs Balfray has been poisoned without any shadow of doubt, then, and then only, will be the time to consider suspects with motive and opportunity. And to reach my own conclusions.'

'We can know for certain in half an hour, Stepfather. Just as long as it takes to set up this apparatus behind the locked door of my bedroom,' said Vince grimly, picking up the wooden box and holding it like some precious gift, on his knees.

Despite his own misgivings and his hopes that Vince would be proved wrong in his suspicions, Faro was well aware of the infallibility of the Marsh Test. In constant use by police laboratories for the past forty years, it was capable of converting arsenic in body fluids and tissues into arsine gas by a simple apparatus so sensitive it could detect three-thousandths of a grain of arsenic.

'What will you use - from the deceased, I mean?'

'I kept a urine sample, that was the easiest to obtain. And some hair roots, for a double check.' Vince stood up. 'Well, shall we go?'

Leaving the sheltered arbour they almost cannoned into a man who appeared, book in hand, with surprising alacrity from behind the hedge. Of indeterminate age, his heavy beard and hair, luxuriant and dark, were at youthful variance with a somewhat ravished and deeply lined countenance, with the suspiciously florid complexion of the heavy drinker. He bowed gravely to Vince.

'Captain Gibb. This is my stepfather, Mr Faro.'

The Captain murmured a greeting and hovered indecisively.

'Are you returning to the castle with us?' asked Vince politely but, as Gibb declined the invitation and with a non-committal grunt resumed his walk down the path, Faro detected relief in Vince's response.

'I trust you have no objections to being introduced informally, Stepfather.'

'Not at all. Mr Faro sounds impressively off-duty,' was the reply, although Faro suspected that his mother must have already told everyone in Balfray the entire life story of her detective inspector son.

'As I told you, Captain Gibb is related, a remote cousin on the distaff side, or so he tells me with rather constant repetition. According to Francis, he arrived a few months ago, recently retired from active service, anxious to meet the family and write a history of the Balfrays.'

'He didn't strike me as being eager for our society.'

Vince shook his head. 'Oh, he is quite anti-social. Devotes scant time and attention to the living members of the family. They would have to be dead for at least two hundred years to engage his interest and enthusiasm. I've hardly seen him at all, but I gather that isn't unusual. When he isn't closeted in the library poring over old documents, he's to be found in Kirkwall or Stromness consulting dusty old records.'

'Has he found anything of interest?'

'Francis tells me he has made some remarkable finds, hardly world-shaking to the visitor but of breathless fascination to the Balfrays.'

Faro suppressed a smile. Vince's resistance to history was well known. He could well imagine his stepson's ill-concealed boredom regarding the Captain's activities.

'And you don't care for him, do you?'

Vince shook his head. 'Not a lot, Stepfather. He's something of a charlatan, I suspect. The archetypal sponger, preying on affluent relatives. But Francis is far too much of a gentleman to voice his opinions. As long as the Captain can feed him titbits of family history, he is sure of a berth at Balfray.'

'What has he discovered so far?'

The Balfrays boast a connection with the wicked Stuart Earls of Orkney and a dubious bastard ancestorship ...'

'As do most of the isles, including our own family,' said Faro cynically. 'Hardly surprising considering that Earl Robert and his seven sons helped to populate the island with their many bastards.'

'Does it not amaze you how bastardy gains immediate respectability when the blood Royal is involved?' said Vince bitterly.

Faro gave him a sympathetic glance, wondering if a day would ever come when the lad's own illegitimacy ceased to plague him. His mother, Faro's dead wife, had borne him when she was a servant girl of fifteen, the result of rape in a stately home.

'This discreditable story, however, concerns the Earl of Bothwell who, despite his marriage and apparent devotion to the Queen of Scots, and being on the run after the disaster of Carberry Hill, managed to beget a bastard son during his brief and fateful visit to the island where he took refuge out of range of the guns of Kirkwall Castle.

'He slipped out and with his treasure ship headed for sanctuary in Norway, which was again denied him. According to the Balfray legend, the treasure ship and her captain gave their pursuers the slip and returned to Balfray. He brought up Bothwell's child and used the gold that had been intended to set the Queen of Scots free to establish the Balfray dynasty.'

'Remarkable!'

Vince gave him a quick look. 'And you don't believe a word of it?'

Faro smiled. 'It's an attractive story, but I suspect highly coloured. Eminently suitable material for one of Sir Walter Scott's romances.'

'Not according to Captain Gibb. He gets very animated on the subject, insisting that he can prove it. That it's all there in the sixteenth-century documents discovered behind the wainscoting when the old castle was demolished by Francis' grandfather, who built the present building.'

Looking back in the direction which the Captain had taken, Vince added anxiously, 'Was he really walking and reading? He appeared with alarming promptitude, don't you think?'

'I was wondering the same thing myself. He could have been listening to our conversation.'

'That will give him a perfect chance to get his alibi together.'

'If he's guilty.' Faro paused and looked at Vince. 'Tell me frankly, do you have any reason to suspect that he might have poisoned Mrs Balfray?'

'Nothing direct,' said Vince regretfully.

Faro smiled. 'But you could find something, if you put your mind to it, I presume,' he added with a chiding shake of the head.

Their emergence from the shelter of the tree plunged them straight into the full face of an approaching storm.

'Is this the quick way to the castle?' Faro gasped, dragging up his coat collar and exclaiming in alarm as their path wound perilously close to the edge of the cliff.

'Watch your step, Stepfather. As you'll see, the kirkyard wall has already crumbled and fallen into the sea.' He pointed to a rubble of stones. 'Over there. That's the Dwarfie Ha'. A prehistoric settlement - Stone Age - or so I'm told.'

'Dwarfie Ha' - strange name,' said Faro, pausing for a closer look.

Vince laughed. 'No one knows what it was called originally. It's always been the Dwarfie Ha' because of the size of the rooms and their height Where there was any roof left, a stone slab, less than four feet high, confirmed old legends that the first creatures who inhabited these islands before man were supernatural beings, trolls or hogben. And, since even to utter their names could bring disaster, they were referred to as the dwarfie folk.'

Faro walked to the edge of the neatly regulated stone maze of tiny rooms.

'Isn't it marvellous? Each with its stone cupboard, bed annexe and fireplace.'

'Amazing. How were they discovered?'

'Oh, a great storm during the last century washed the topsoil away. The subsequent excavations unearthed cooking pots, jewellery and even strings of broken beads, just as their occupants left them thousands of years ago, as if the people had fled in a great panic.'

Faro shaded his eyes, looking toward the horizon once almost continuously occupied by dragon-headed Viking ships in search of plunder and women to breed more warriors. 'An invader from the sea, do you think?'

Vince smiled impishly. 'Possibly some of your own ancestors chased them away, if looks have anything to do with it. And all you need for the part is a horned helmet, Stepfather.'

Faro's smiling glance changed into a long-suffering sigh. Vince was riding his favourite hobby-horse again.

'Have a good look at the Dwarfie Ha' before you leave,' Vince continued. 'Probably your last chance. The cliff erosion is chewing away a few feet every year now, so unless its progress can be halted it's doomed to tumble over the cliff into oblivion any day now, I'm afraid.'