'My dear fellows. I'm grateful - touched even - by your kindness.' He shook his head. 'But I must decline. I am somewhat set in my ways, I've lived alone and lived rough, too long. It's no use trying to civilise me. I come and go and sleep and wake all hours of the day and night. I couldn't put you and your excellent Mrs Brook to all that inconvenience. I'm much better off with my Sergeant Batey, he's served me faithfully for umpteen years and he's used to my ways.'
'He could come too. We have plenty of room in the attics.'
Godwin chuckled. 'You haven't met him yet. I guarantee he's as eccentric as his master, which suits us both well. He'd drive Mrs Brook - and you - mad. No - no - I couldn't think of inflicting us both on you.'
'We might persuade him yet,' said Vince as they walked home. 'Incidentally, we're invited to Aberlethie for the weekend. Terence and Sara are having a few guests.'
The weekend house party was popular among Edinburgh's rich and fashionable merchant class - those with mansions grand enough and gardens magnificent enough to allow gratifying illusions of rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy. And this was the society, Faro thought cynically, that Vince, self-declared man of the people, now moved in.
Sir Terence Lethie was one of his stepson's new golfing friends, and the proximity of a course to the castle suggested to Faro that he might have to make his own amusement.
Faro had a solid lack of interest in golf; he was immune to its fever, declaring that he spent enough time on his feet without regarding the pursuit of a golf ball across a green full of holes and aggravating hazards as an agreeable way of spending his leisure hours.
When he protested that he would be out of place in such an assembly, Vince smiled.
'Some of Lethie's Masonic friends have been invited. And Terence wants you to come specially, a guest of honour.' He coughed apologetically. 'He wants you to tell them about some of your cases.'
'So I'm to sing for my supper, is that it?'
Seeing his stepfather's expression, Vince said: 'I thought you wouldn't mind. And since you are so interested in local history you'll have a chance to meet Stuart Millar. He's a near neighbour.'
The local historian came of a famous family of travellers, one of whom had accompanied Sir James Bruce of Kinnaird on his travels in Abyssinia in the last century.
He was also a Grand Master in the Freemasons. Most of Vince's new acquaintances belonged to the order and Vince was being urged to join as an 'apprentice', the first rung on the ladder.
This was an invitation Faro had resisted personally for many years, despite Superintendent McIntosh's hints that 'it could do great things' for him. Although he refrained from saying so to his superior officer, Faro was happy to have reached his own particular niche in the Edinburgh City Police by his own merits, rather than by joining what he regarded as an archaic secret society for ambitious men.
He was also content to remain Chief Detective Inspector, since the next step up that ladder would involve sitting behind a desk issuing orders and signing documents, work which he would find extremely dull after twenty years of chasing criminals and solving crimes by his own often unorthodox methods of observation and deduction.
'The Lethies are having some quite illustrious visitors,' Vince assured him. 'None other than the Grand Duchess of Luxoria, the Queen's god-daughter.'
Faro had read about Luxoria, one of the bewildering number of European principalities set adrift by the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire, its borders forever under threat of annexation by other powerful states. But the tiny independent kingdom tucked away in central Europe had managed to survive centuries of warring and predatory neighbours.
He knew little of its complex politics since European history was not one of his interests, but he had been vaguely interested to read a legend connected with the Scottish Knights Templars, who had taken refuge there from persecution, rewarding the Luxorians with some holy relic brought from Jerusalem.
Luxoria might have remained in obscurity and never achieved even a small paragraph in the local newspaper but for the Scottish connection. The Grand Duchess Amelie claimed descent not only from Mary, Queen of Scots, but was related to both Her Majesty the Queen and the late Prince Consort.
'Didn't they have a revolution - oh, fifteen years ago? I seem to remember reading about it,' said Faro.
'Full marks, Stepfather. I had it all from Terence. The Grand Duchess inherited after her father's death. She was opposed by her wicked cousin, who had been set up, not against his will, as President and puppet ruler. She was then forced to marry him in what is to all accounts still a wretchedly feudal system of government.' Vince continued: 'A political marriage which would guarantee the succession and save further bloodshed. The Luxorians love their Royal Family, it seems, in spite of it all.'
At the thought of their own Royal Family, Faro smiled wryly. There were many disillusioned citizens in Scotland who applauded Ireland's demand for Home Rule. There were many others too in Britain generally who would have considered it a 'good thing' to bring down the Throne. The Queen was far from popular, spending most of her time in Balmoral Castle guarded by the fiercely protective John Brown, with only token appearances at the seat of government in London, to the dismay of her statesmen.
The French Revolution remained heavily in the forefront of men's minds. Less than a century old, others than the Luxorian Royal Family were feeling echoes of a drama that could still make princelings shake in their shoes. The secret files of the Edinburgh City Police held information concerning a tide of aristocratic refugees seeking sanctuary at the Palace of Holyroodhouse as privileged guests of Her Majesty.
On the eve of their departure for Aberlethie, Faro was
