'Put down your gun.' A bespectacled uniformed maid in large white cap and apron stood in the doorway leading from the kitchen, holding Faro's gun. The voice with its unmistakable note of authority was Amelie's.
Unperturbed, Leslie laughed. 'Ah, I'm slipping. A terrified maid busy at the kitchen sink, wrestling with steaming pans. Who ever would have suspected that Her Highness would stoop so low -'
'I said, put down your gun.'
Leslie shook his head. Shielded by Vince's body, he knew he had won. Too late, madam. Hand it to me - or Vince will die.'
Amelie looked hard at Faro and held out the gun at an angle so that Leslie had to turn slightly towards her. The momentary diversion of his attention was enough. Leslie's feet were on the bearskin rug. Knowing what was at stake if he failed, in one swift movement, Faro slid the chair along the polished floor. Swooping down, he grabbed the rug - and tugged.
'What the devil -'
Leslie, holding Vince as shield, was thrown off balance. Vince fell hard against him and twisting round, tried to seize the gun. As they struggled, it slithered across the floor and they both cannoned into Amelie, who was also knocked off her feet, her gun spinning towards Faro.
Seizing it, his finger on the trigger he levelled it at Leslie. But he knew that whatever the cost, he could not kill his cousin like this, at close range.
And Leslie read his mind. Smiling, he bowed slightly. 'I am unarmed, as you see.' Turning, he leaped through the open door. Faro followed him shouting: 'Come on, Vince -'
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
