Enter Second Murderer by Alanna Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

orphan, brought up by her great-aunt as companion in Galloway, which one can also interpret as an unpaid maid of all work. When the aunt, who had presumably seen that Lily was educated, died, then Lily came to Edinburgh and got a situation teaching at the convent."
    "Was it coincidence that led them both to seek employment there at the same time? In view of their flighty characters, a convent does seem a remarkable choice."
    "It isn't much to go on, but I think we might begin by calling upon the Reverend Mother, using Ferris's photograph as an excuse." Faro looked out of the window. "I think I'll take a walk to Greyfriars. Are you coming?"
    Vince shook his head. "No, not this time, if you don't mind. I'm going to Cramond with Rob and Walter." He sighed and added, "I took flowers to Mama all the time you were away ..." He regarded Faro, sad-eyed. "You know, I can't believe she's there—or anywhere, any more. I wish I was small again, like Rose and Emily, and could believe that dear Mama had gone to heaven and was waiting there smiling in a white robe to greet us in due course. For me, she's just—lost."
    Faro laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, a gesture that needed no words.
     
    A grey colourless summer's day, with a high wind that turned the leaves inside out, added its melancholy to the deserted churchyard. Normally he came on Sundays, when his visit coincided with the emergence of churchgoers, but today he was glad that Vince had decided not to come. The atmosphere was oppressive, a day when it was difficult for anyone to believe that the dead were well and happy, patiently waiting in Paradise.
    This was his first visit for several weeks and his path led him past a new marble stone: "Timothy Ferris, born 1849 died 1870. Erected by his fellow students in tribute to his memory."
    That was a fine gesture for a poor lad who had no others to mourn him, Faro thought as he went on his way to that other almost new headstone which marked Lizzie's grave. Against a sombre background of urns and skulls and florid emblems of mortality, it stood out white and shining and simple.
    He knelt down, attending to the flowers. He was not used to being so alone. Sunday afternoons normally saw many similarly employed in this most modern part of the burial ground. He missed the black-clad figures whose sombre attire turned the bright green summer grass into an irreverent frivolity, the widows' weeds, the men with their crepe-draped tall-hats, the children wearing armbands.
    He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to conjure up a picture of Lizzie, not as he had last seen her in those terrible hours of agony before she died, but as she would most wish to be remembered-the smiling girl he had courted, the young and happy mother playing with Rose and Emily. Bending forward, he laid his right hand on the moulded earth in the region of her heart. He prayed, and then, as always, talked to her a little.
    "What shall I do, Lizzie love? How does a fellow keep a promise to a dead woman, and one he only knew for half an hour?" Only the twittering birds answered him. "You don't know and neither do I. Your boy thinks I should do it—as a matter of honour, he says. He's a fine clever young man. You would be proud of him. And what's more, he's your image, Lizzie love, growing more and more like you every day. And that's a great comfort to me."
    Dusting his knees, he kissed his fingers and laid them against her name so coldly upon the stone. Beset by a feeling of loneliness almost too great to be borne, he hurried back down the path, head down, jostled by the brisk wind.
    Suddenly his attention was drawn to the grave of Tim Ferris, where a woman clad in grey, her face hidden in voluminous veils, stood alone. He saw that she wept. The wind fluttered a handkerchief, seized upon the swirling folds of her cape. The next moment she clutched her bonnet with its veils as both were swept from her hair to become entangled high in the shrubbery behind.
    Gallantly,