'Of course not.'
Godwin nodded. 'This is not just morbid curiosity, I assure you. First lesson for any newsman worth his salt is never to miss any opportunity. A corpse and a wizard's house, well, there's sure to be a story in it somewhere, at least a couple of paragraphs,' he added cheerfully.
As they regarded the body, which Faro realised had probably been dead for several hours, he could see that the lad Sandy was becoming restive. Hopes of the reward his chums had urged might be in the offing if he informed the dreaded 'polis' were fast fading. The appearance of Inspector Faro and the other gentry on the scene in their evening finery, replaced such heady prospects with less pleasant possibilities. They might ask him questions, lock him up in a cell.
Shifting from one foot to the other, he announced with determined regularity that he wanted home. 'I only found her, your worships. I never done nothing.'
Constable Reid drew Faro aside. 'Shall we let him go?'
'I think that would be in order. Get his name and address, though.'
Gratefully, Sandy stammered out the information and bolted from the scene, his hand tightly grasping the shilling that the gentlemen had given him plus an extra penny and instructions to summon a carriage. His tornado-like exit almost swept Dr Cranley, portly and majestic as a ship in full-sail, off balance.
The Police Surgeon's examination was brief: 'Natural causes. Massive heart attack, I'd say. Vagrant, taking shelter, no doubt; although she looks uncommon well-fed,' he added.
As he straightened up, regarding the fetid dark room of death with disgust, the stark contract of men in evening dress surrounding the corpse struck Faro anew.
'What makes you think she was a vagrant?'
Cranley regarded him irritably. He knew Inspector Faro's reputation but he was already late for a supper engagement and intended to be out of this vile hole as speedily as possible. Death he was used to, but he feared for his elegant clothes where every movement produced an acrid cloud of dust.
'Look at her rags. Filthy. Nothing underneath either,' he added primly, hastily adjusting the ragged skirt he had lifted to reveal a bare thigh. 'Fallen on bad times, I expect, usual story. We'll do a complete post-mortem when we get her to the mortuary. Ah, here they are, at last. You've taken your time,' he added impatiently as two constables bearing a stretcher stumbled along the narrow passage.
Reproached for their tardiness, they explained that they had been delayed at Leith by an 'incident'.
Followed in solemn procession by the living, the dead woman was carried out to the police carriage. Under the flickering lamplight Faro tucked one of her limp hands beneath the rough blanket.
His quick glance confirmed Cranley's diagnosis that she had indeed fallen on bad times. And very recently too. The last resort of starving women who possessed such splendid hair was to sell it to the wig-makers. But like her hair, her fingernails were not only clean but well-grown and neatly manicured,, her palms uncalloused.
These were hands that had not seen anything resembling hard work in a very long time. If ever.
Undoubtedly a lady's hands.
Chapter 2
At 9 Sheridan Place - the home Faro shared with his stepson -Dr Vincent Laurie, newly elected treasurer of the local golf club, was wrestling with his predecessor's accounts. He was therefore only mildly interested in his stepfather's encounter with a long-lost cousin, especially since he knew nothing of Godwin's family connection and had nothing but contempt for their neglect of widowed Mary Faro and her young son.
Vince prided himself on being a man of the people and the Godwins belonged to the social system that had branded him illegitimate after his mother, a fifteen-year-old servant, had been seduced and abandoned by a noble guest in the big house where she worked. Even though she had eventually regained respectability through marriage to Jeremy Faro, such scars were burned indelibly into Vince's soul.
'The family's behaviour wasn't Leslie's fault, Vince. He was just a child at the time.'
Then why has it taken him so long to track you down, Stepfather? Answer me that.'
'He's been abroad for years,' said Faro defensively, with an added reason for wishing Vince to think well of his cousin.
'I'm not convinced.'
'You will be when you know him better. I'm sure of that. If you'd been with us last night -'
As he went on to describe the scene in the Wizard's House, Vince paid careful attention. Eyeing his stepfather shrewdly, he said: 'I take it you disagree with Dr Cranley's verdict that death was from natural causes.'
Faro shrugged. 'I'm not sure. But let's just say, this was no beggar-woman.'
'No doubt your "missing persons" will provide a satisfactory explanation.'
On the list Faro consulted in the Central Office the following morning, there was no one who fitted the description of the dead woman in the mortuary.
Dr Cranley stared at him resentfully over the top of his spectacles. Detective Inspector Faro's appearance signalled that the routine the police surgeon endeavoured to keep as smooth and untroubled as was humanly possible could be in imminent danger of severe disruption.
Faro regarded the sheeted figure. 'Any marks of violence?'
'Only a bruised and swollen wrist. She had fallen quite heavily. My findings have confirmed that she died of a massive heart attack.'
'Surely that's unusual in a woman so young,' said Faro. In death, there remained an indefinable look of refinement about that waxen face.
Cranley shrugged. 'Heart failure can happen at any age, Faro. And I would speculate, it is not all that unusual in the case of a protected and pampered middle-class woman who is suddenly subjected to direst poverty.'
Faro sighed, his attention again drawn to clean hair, to delicate hands with long tapering fingers and neatly manicured nails. They worried him.
'What makes you so sure she was middle class?'
Cranley sighed, drew back the sheet. 'Observe the narrowness of her
