The tower was gloomy and forbidding in darkness, and much the same even in the daylight of a grey Edinburgh morning, which did little to raise Faro's spirits as he applied his hand to the rusted and ancient bell-pull. The clanging sound reverberated through the surrounding area but failed to bring any response.
Deciding that Sir Hedley must be deaf indeed not to have been roused by the din, he observed with some unease that the front door was very slightly ajar. It yielded instantly to his touch. Was this no more than a nocturnal convenience for the cats, he wondered, as they assailed him from all directions with yowls of protest that he had not arrived carrying saucers of milk? Only the boldest, however, were confident enough to sidle out and insinuate themselves around his ankles.
'Sir Hedley! Sir Hedley!'
There was no reply and Faro decided that he was getting unduly nervous. There was absolutely no reason why Sir Hedley should not be away from home; he might have visited friends and stayed the night. An unduly optimistic thought, Faro decided, .knowing the nature of the reclusive occupant's character.
With a growing sense of foreboding, he carefully pushed his way inside, as cats of every colour, shape and age noisily scampered after his ankles, anxious not to let the possible source of sustenance out of their sight.
'Sir Hedley? Sir Hedley?'
Silence greeted him. Opening the door, he stepped carefully into the stone-walled parlour, and averting his eyes to the squalor and his nose to its odours, he tried not to breathe too deeply as he climbed the twisting staircase to the upper floor. Dreading what he might find inside, he opened an ancient studded door. A bedroom, at first glance no better than the apartment he had just left.
His inclination was to close the door again hastily. Instead he approached the bed. Half a dozen privileged cats gave him haughty stares from the comfort of a plumed four-poster. Faro suspected that it dated back to the seventeenth century when necessity dictated that grand beds were built into upper rooms approached by a turnpike stair. Since there was no method of transporting them either up or down afterwards, many thus survived both the attentions of thieving enemies and the changing fashions of time.
Faro approached the bed cautiously. Sir Hedley wasn't lying there with his throat cut as imagination had so readily prompted, but his cats were very much at home, resting on the remains of a once well-made and handsome garment, certainly not the property of Sir Hedley. The delicate lace and embroidered bodice, stained by cats and ripped by their claws, suggested that this was yet another of the Dowager Lady Marsh's elegant cast-offs.
The sight offended Faro, deeply. By no means a frugal man, he deplored such waste. Such a gown, now a bed for cats, would have fetched an excellent price in Edinburgh's luckenbooths, and provided meals in plenty for many a starving family.
Without any further compunction about searching the house for the missing baronet, he went down a few steps and opened an old studded door, where there was another surprise in store.
He was in a stone-walled chapel-like apartment. Instead of the religious symbols its mitred roof suggested, here were the accoutrements of the Ancient Order of Templars. Doubtless Sir Hedley had belonged to the order in his youth, as did so many of the nobility. But what struck Faro as extraordinary was that the room was clean and obviously well-tended and completely out of character with the sordid condition of the rest of the house. Who then was the guardian of this shrine, for Sir Hedley seemed an improbable choice?
The sight of this serene chapel left him with a sense of disquiet, as he pondered other inconsistencies such as Sir Hedley's apparently innocent role as rescuer of Miss Fortescue.
Had he misjudged Sir Hedley, dismissed him as a harmless eccentric? Was Vince's loathing unconsciously justified and did the Mad Bart, in fact, hold a sinister role in the Grand Duchess's disappearance?
By the time Faro had put some distance between himself and Solomon's Tower, the thought of Sir Hedley's complicity became even more unlikely, and as he approached the High Street, his sense of logic reasserted itself.
The truth was undoubtedly that he had been too involved with his own distaste for the West Bow. His eagerness to get the investigation over with as soon as possible had permitted the unforgivable in a detective. He had allowed his preoccupation with bitter personal emotions regarding his long-dead father to blunt his normally acute powers of observation and deduction.
With a dawning sense of horror at a nightmare that had already begun and from which there was no probable awakening, he could no longer delay reliving the scene from that moment Constable Reid summoned him from his carriage to view a beggar-woman's corpse.
This time he would proceed as a diligent detective on the look-out for anything even slightly out of the ordinary that would never be considered except in a possible murder investigation.
He stepped into the Central Office to be hailed by Danny McQuinn, who had newly returned from Aberdeen. Faro was glad to see his young sergeant again and, after a few moments' social conversation, he decided that McQuinn had better become acquainted with the case of the missing Grand Duchess. Once the bane of his life, the passing years had smoothed the rough edges of the Irishman's personality. Trust, respect and even grudging admiration had grown between the two men.
In addition, Faro recognised with gratitude that, on more than one occasion, he owed his life to McQuinn's quick thinking. And this had extended to members of Faro's family.
McQuinn was sharp, none better, and Faro was consoled that
