Read Online The Missing Duchess by Alanna Knight - Free Book Online

to complete the dreadful thought.
    That, even as they spoke, Dr Cranley's medical students might be deeply absorbed in dissecting what remained of Amelie, Duchess of Luxoria, the well-beloved god-daughter of Her Majesty the Queen.

 
    Chapter 7
     
    Faro slept little that night.
    His thoughts like rats trapped in a cage, he searched in vain for the vital clues that he was certain he had overlooked or whose significance he had failed to recognise when it had been presented to him. Such shortcomings, damnable in his profession, were by no means a novel experience, but left always the dry sensation of defeat in his mouth, the dreaded whisper: was he losing his skill?
    He took a deep breath. There was only one solution: before visiting Aberlethie again, and talking to Miss Fortescue, he must return to the discovery of the woman's body in the West Bow and prove to himself - somehow - that his suspicions regarding her identity were false.
    After a hasty breakfast without Vince, who had been summoned to attend a sick patient, Faro set off for the Central Office by the short cut through Gibbet Lane, bordering Solomon's Tower.
    On an impulse he decided to call upon Sir Hedley. Eight o'clock was striking on the city clocks as he approached the door, but he had no doubt that the old man would be up and about. It was Sir Hedley's proud boast that he rose with the larks and retired with the setting sun.
    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