'Ah!' said Faro.
Vince looked at him quickly. 'You're thinking perhaps it was the Luck o' Lethie. You might be right at that, since the serpent's head goes back to the very origins of the Templars movement. I've often wondered -'
'And what have you wondered?'
'Well, about Solomon's Tower. As you know, it was built on the ruins of a twelfth-century religious house. And that could well have been a Templar chapel. A rich and powerful international brotherhood of religious warriors, Stepfather. Don't let us underestimate them.'
'A secret society so strong that popes aware of their power had tried to suppress it,' said Faro. 'A society important enough to be taken under the King of Scotland's protection. Gives one food for thought, doesn't it?'
Vince nodded. 'Especially when you now tell me there's a shrine-like upper room in the Mad Bart's cat-ridden establishment. What blasphemy.'
All Faro's training, combined with an extra sense that had served him well in the past, now compelled him to believe that the disappearance of the Grand Duchess was no coincidence, but the outcome of some international intrigue.
As Vince's first patient of the day was announced by Mrs Brook, Faro considered what he hadn't told his stepson.
Was Sir Hedley involved, his pose as an eccentric recluse a screen for less innocent activities?
But aware of Vince's loathing for Sir Hedley, he decided to keep such speculations, as yet wholly without sufficient evidence to support them, to himself.
'I won't be at home tonight, Stepfather. I'm staying at Owen's place. And I must get in a few rounds of golf,' Vince added, with a speculative sight at a rather threatening sky, 'if I'm to reduce my handicap in time for this Perth tournament.'
Faro smiled. Both he and his stepson seemed doomed to disastrous affairs of the heart. But he felt encouraged that these overnight visits to Cramond, which were becoming more frequent, signalled that Vince might be considering the advocate's pretty sister Olivia as a suitable wife.
At the door, Vince turned. 'Met your cousin Leslie last night. He was at the Spec with some friends and we had a most convivial evening.'
Edinburgh's Speculative Club was famous as a meeting place for graduates where serious matters for discussion were leavened by youthful joviality and high spirits.
'Now that you mention it, you do look as if you might be suffering from a more urgent handicap than the state of your golf,' said Faro.
Vince smiled weakly. 'You miss nothing as usual, Stepfather.'
Faro laughed. 'I also observe that you declined a second helping of Mrs Brook's excellent sausages. Now that is cause for comment. What about Leslie?'
'Tell you about it later. He was Colonel Wrightson's guest.' Vince chuckled enthusiastically. 'What tales he has to tell. Knows everybody who is anybody. Been a guest in practically every noble house the length and breadth of Scotland,' he added in tones of awe. 'Didn't get home till two. Tried to persuade me to go riding with him in the Queen's Park. Rises at six - dear God, what a thought.'
'And what energy,' said Faro.
And as Vince dragged himself off, still yawning, to his surgery, Faro hoped, for their own sakes, that all his patients were reasonably healthy that day.
Shortly afterwards, as Faro was closing his front door, the familiar police carriage rattled round the corner.
A young policeman leapt out and saluted smartly.
'Constable Burns, sir. Glad I caught you, sir. Man out walking his dogs found a man's body in the shrubbery by St Anthony's Chapel. Dr Cranley's there. Wants a word with you before moving the body.'
Faro jumped into the carriage with an ominous feeling of disaster. In reply to his question the constable shook his head.
'No, there wasn't any identification.'
'Any signs of violence?'
'Nothing that a quick look would reveal.' The constable gave a grimace of distaste. 'Been there some time, I'd say.'
Another mysterious corpse. Was this the missing coachman?
'Indeed. Have you seen anything unusual - any reports of disturbance in the area?'
'Nothing, sir. My beat is in that area of the park with Constable Reid. We don't usually patrol Arthur's Seat or Salisbury Crags yard by yard, unless we have special instructions to do so,' he added anxiously, 'I expect the dead man was taken with a heart attack.'
Like the Grand Duchess, Faro thought grimly as they left the carriage and set off on foot up the steep bank which overlooked Holyroodhouse. The Palace's extensive gardens were now grey and empty, the trees stripped bare. A melancholy wind came from the sea beyond Salisbury Crags, hurling before it heavy clouds, towards a skyline dominated by Edinburgh Castle and the High Street's tall houses.
Ahead of them lay the ruins of St Anthony's Chapel. There, according to tradition, a hermit had once tended the chapel altar and kept a light burning in the tower, to guide mariners safely up the River Forth. Built in the fifteenth century, i hospice for those afflicted with 'St Anthony's Fire' - epilepsy -the chapel guarded the Holy Well whose pagan origins predate J the Abbey of Holy Rood, site of King David I's encounter with a magical stag bearing a cross between its antlers.
Faro paused to look back at the loch gleaming far below. A peaceful scene of swans gliding in majestic serenity untroubled by the follies of men, he thought, staring at the group of tiny figures who bustled back and forth high above.
The corpse was half-hidden by shrubbery. Dr Cranley, Sergeant McQuinn and Constable Reid hovered nearby. And at a sale distance, looking rather green, was the man who had made the discovery.
Introduced as Mr Innes, Faro recognised him as a Newington shopkeeper. Middle-aged, well-to-do, Innes was clearly unused to such dramas threatening the sanctity of his early-mornirg constitutional. He wore a look of outraged respectability that he should have found himself in the undignified predicament of discovering a body and having to associate with the police.
'It was Daisy
