Murder in Paradise by Alanna Knight Read Free Book Online

of justice. As he listened to the evidence, he was certain that she was guilty of poisoning her lover Emile L’Angelier by putting arsenic in his cocoa and that only her youth – she was twenty-one years old – her beauty and her place in the echelons of Glasgow society had saved her from the gallows.
    A young girl from a prosperous background, daughter of an eminent and respected architect, about to marry William Minnoch, a bachelor in his early thirties and a senior member of a firm of merchant importers, a man approved of by her parents, Madeleine Smith had apparently been seduced by a heartless womaniser.
    Such were the implications of the evidence in her favour.
    Who would credit that she could ever have been willingly the lover of a lowborn Frenchman? Everyone knew what Frenchmen were like, especially women. The men too had bad memories of the Napoleonic wars. No doubt about it, France was still regarded by most people as Britain’s natural enemy.
    L’Angelier, however, was only French by descent. His anti-monarchist family had fled from persecution in 1813 and settled in Jersey where ten years later Emile was born, son of a respectable shopkeeper. Popular rumour, however, was ready to claim that he had taken advantage of her innocence with his Gallic charm, had used those indiscreet letters she had written believing him to be in love with her, vile seducer that he was, and when she was to marry William Minnoch, was using them to threaten to tell her father.
    But Faro was not convinced and never would be.
    He had a moment of sheer panic. But this girl turning to greet him, Lena/Madeleine, clinging to Erland’s arm, did not know him. There was no flicker of recognition in that smile.
    Faro shocked beyond speech or thought could think of nothing to say; it was his turn to stammer, following them indoors with the nightmare about to unfold, the peace of Red House to be bitterly ended.
    What was he to do? Did Erland know her real identity? That was impossible. He suspected that the inhabitants of Red House, if they were aware of it, would disregard such a scandal, perhaps even relish having such a stunner as a suspected murderess in their midst.
    As for himself, Lena could not be expected to remember the uniformed and helmeted constable who had been allotted to assist her exit via the back door of the Edinburgh High Court. A young woman from the courtroom’s audience who had attended most of the trial was persuaded by Madeleine’s defence lawyer to exchange clothes with her and, thus veiled, was hustled out to the waiting carriage to lure the crowds away.
    Not that those crowds were hostile. By no means. Far from it. Most were cheering. Madeleine had smiled shyly at them, and their hearts went out to her, so serene and composed in court, so brave. How could this gently brought up, lovely young girl have poisoned her seducer, that Frenchman chap, a common, flash, shallow womaniser.
    But Emile L’Angelier was more than a lover. He and Madeleine referred to themselves in their letters as husband and wife. And that in Scots common law, according to Faro, was regarded as ‘marriage by habit and repute’.
    He remembered as he had emerged with Madeleine Smith from the court’s back entrance, she had raised her eyes to him gratefully, eyes the dark blue of innocent summer flowers and Faro knew in that one glance that, even aware that she was guilty, he had sympathy for the jury. With already enough of the detective inborn to recognise, to sift through evidence and come to his own conclusions, whatever his heart might declare as a man, the evidence – remembering her declaration and the letters read in court – said she was guilty.
    But as a man he understood the emotions of that male jury, many of them middle-class Edinburgh citizens, some with young unmarried daughters just like her. He had sympathy for them. How would they live with their consciences afterwards – would they lie sleepless at night wondering if they