Murder on the Flying Scotsman by Carola Dunn Read Free Book Online

face twisted. ‘That was when I decided I wasn’t going to
leave much, and what I did leave was not going to my beloved family.’
    ‘Mr. McGowan was just going to tell me about the Indian who’s going to get it all,’ said Belinda.
    ‘I was, was I?’ The old man sounded amused. ‘I don’t remember agreeing.’
    ‘ Please , Sir.’
    ‘Oh, as you please. It all started a long, long time ago. I fell in love with an Indian girl, which wasn’t as easy as you might think, for they keep their women shut up out of sight.
But she was the daughter of a man who had adopted many English ways and among his friends she went unveiled.’
    ‘Was she very beautiful?’ Belinda asked, all agog.
    ‘Very beautiful, and charming, and intelligent, too. Just as my little friend Miss fletcher will be when she grows up.’
    ‘Did you marry her?’
    Daisy frowned at this impertinence, but McGowan was unoffended. He sighed.
    ‘No, my dear, I did not. For a start, I was more than twice her age. Still more important, life is very difficult for Asian women married to white men. Belonging to neither side they are
despised by both, and I could not allow her to suffer so, though she and her father were willing. So she was married to one of her own, a good enough fellow. They had one child, a boy. I was
invited to be his godfather, or as near as their religion comes to that office. Though they prayed for more children, perhaps it is as well their prayers were not answered. He was five when his
parents and many of his relatives died in a typhoid epidemic.’
    ‘Poor little boy,’ Belinda cried, wide eyes filling with tears. She held on tight to Daisy’s hand, and Daisy knew she was thinking of her own mother.
    ‘Not so poor,’ said Albert McGowan dryly. ‘I took him into my house, and when he was seven I sent him to school in Scotland. He did well, went on to university, and he has just
finished his medical training. He’s a houseman now at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. He is my heir.’
    ‘Naturally,’ Daisy approved.
    ‘I set aside funds enough to see him through his education and to purchase a partnership in a medical practice when he’s ready. I see no reason to change my Last Will and Testament
merely because my penny-pinching brother Alistair seems to be about to pop off before me after all! Chandra Jagai is . . . Where is the boy?’ he interrupted himself fretfully. ‘I told
Weekes I want to see him.’
    Daisy was afraid Belinda’s visit, however welcome, had tired him. He was very old, eighty at least she thought, since Peter Gillespie, his younger sister’s son, was in his fifties.
She was about to take leave of him when the door slid open a few inches and a round, dark, serious face appeared.
    ‘Sir? Weekes told me . . . Oh, I beg your pardon, you have company.’
    Chandra Jagai spoke English with a slight Lowland Scots accent. Only the faintest hint of a foreign lilt suggested it was not his native tongue. A stocky man in his mid-twenties, he was neatly
dressed in a dark suit, buff waistcoat, dazzlingly white shirt, and maroon tie. Catching Belinda’s disappointed look, Daisy smiled. She recalled her own disillusionment when Alec took her to
the Cathay for dinner and the Chinese proprietor wore tails and spoke with a Cockney accent.
    ‘Come in, my boy, come in and shut the door.’ McGowan raised his bushy eyebrows at Daisy and she nodded. ‘Miss Dalrymple, Miss fletcher, allow me to introduce Dr.
Jagai.’
    After an exchange of courtesies, Daisy said, ‘We’ll leave you to your business, gentlemen. Come, Belinda?’
    ‘Thank you very much for the stories, sir,’ said Belinda, ‘and the game, and everything.’
    ‘Not at all, young lady. Come back and have tea with me this afternoon at half past four and we’ll see if I can come up with some more stories. Make sure you’re on time, now, I
have to eat at regular intervals. And take this, my dear.’ He folded the chequer-board with the men