The Missing Duchess Read Online Free PDF Page A

every misfortune at the door of superstition.
    Tomorrow morning, however, was still several hours away.
    In Sheridan Place, Vince was impatiently awaiting his return with a story of his own unpleasant encounter.

 
     
    Chapter 4
     
    Faro had failed to locate another carriage after the accident. Hardly surprising since it was past eleven o'clock, a time at which all respectable Edinburgh citizens were presumed to be in bed and asleep, especially by coachmen in foul weather. And the storm that had been threatening all evening now turned the full force of its attention upon the sleeping town.
    Wind and rain fairly hurled Faro down the High Street and through the Pleasance to Newington, where he unlocked his front door, very wet and in no very good mood, to find Vince far from sympathetic. Mrs Brook's excellent steak pie and treacle sponge pudding, Vince's particular favourites, had been ruined by his late arrival, to that good lady's distress and his own annoyance.
    Following Faro to the kitchen, Vince watched as he peeled off his outer garments and spread them out to dry, Mrs Brook having retired some time earlier.
    'You'll never credit this, Stepfather. I was called into Solomon's Tower to attend a visitor. Yes, you do well to look surprised, our Mad Bart had company.' And pausing dramatically, he pursed his lips. 'A lady.'
    Sir Hedley Marsh, or the Mad Bart as he was better known in the locality, lived in a crumbling sixteenth-century tower at the base of Arthur's Seat. A recluse, a woman-hater, this novel occurrence was of sufficient interest to take Faro's mind off his discomfort.
    'Youngish and quite comely. Walking along where Samson's Ribs joins the road to Duddingston. And there was a landslide.'
    'Not again, surely.' The exposed rockface known as Samson's Ribs could be dangerous, especially in bad weather when rocks and loose earth were dislodged with nothing to stop them falling on the road far below.
    'We had complaints of a landslide quite recently. I thought they'd done something about it,' he added.
    'You know what these authorities are like, Stepfather. No doubt they're waiting for a fatality, and then the Improvement Commission will take action.'
    'Tell me about this young lady. Was she badly hurt?'
    'Nothing serious. Knocked off her feet, a few bruises. Not nearly as bad as it could have been, but she was very shocked, quite inarticulate. Kept weeping all the time.'
    Vince shook his head. 'You know how the Mad Bart mumbles, but I got the gist of it. He had opened his front door and found her there sobbing and crying. Thought it was one of his cats in trouble. He didn't know what to do but wrap her in a blanket and go for help. And then, of course, just as he was leaving: "There you were, young fellow, golf clubs and all,"’ Vince mimicked with a grimace of distaste. 'Really, Stepfather, that dreadful old man -'
    Faro, having dealt with wet clothes, now packed newspapers into his soaked boots to speed- up the drying process. He only half-listened, with amused tolerance, to Vince's tirade. His stepson hated few people, but Sir Hedley Marsh was one of them.
    From their earliest days at Sheridan Place it seemed that Vince had found particular favour in the Mad Bart's eyes and Solomon's Tower was hard to avoid if they walked to Newington by the short cut through the Pleasance and Gibbet Lane.
    As the Tower was adjacent to the more cheerful surroundings of the modern golf course, it had now become increasingly difficult for Vince to evade encounters with the aristocratic recluse.
    'I would swear he sits by that window all day, though how he manages to see anything through the grime is a mystery. I now have to sidle past like a criminal, for if he sees me he rushes out, invites me in for a dram. A dram, in that squalor, surrounded by his infernal cats everywhere -'
    Faro tried not to smile, for Vince, who could sit for hours reading quite contentedly with Mrs Brook's ginger cat Rusty purring like a kettle on his