Free Quest for a Killer by Alanna Knight Page B

it happened. I wish you had known her.’
    I didn’t have an answer to that and he took my hand and said, ‘God bless you for coming to see me. You’re a good lass.’
    On an impulse, suddenly aware of the bitter loneliness of this old man who had lost everything, I scribbled my address on a piece of paper torn from mynotebook. ‘Perhaps I could look in again and see you; I often pass this way.’
    He murmured gratitude, gave me a bewildered look and opened his mouth as if to say something else, then shaking his head, as if changing his mind, said, ‘No, nothing important,’ and closed the door abruptly.
    I felt I had failed Jack badly. I had not one clue to prove that the two girls who had died within hours of each other had been murdered.
    They were close friends, and had they both been suffering from tragic circumstances, they might possibly have had a suicide pact. But their faith and certainly Belle’s daily calls and caring for her grandfather were against that. Were there any suicide notes that the police had failed to find? The other quite minor detail, something I didn’t really want to consider, was that Amy and Belle had once been employed in the Rice household.
    Much as I hated anything that might upset my new-found friend, blackmail was a silent possibility that could not be ignored. Did these two girls know something from their days at Rice Villa, regarding their past employer, which had necessitated their disposal?

CHAPTER TEN
    Thankfully sighting home and breathing in the refreshing air of Arthur’s Seat, almost guiltily aware of the vast empty rooms in Solomon’s Tower – that great hall, and others upstairs that I seldom set foot in – I was aware of a carriage rushing up the hill.
    It reached me at the gate and the Rice coachman leapt down. ‘Mrs McQuinn, a message from madam.’ He thrust a note into my hand:
    ‘Dearest Rose, Come at once. Something terrible has happened.’
    This had to be serious; I knew that by the anguished expression on the coachman’s usually stolid countenance as he silently opened the carriage door for me.
    ‘What has happened?’ I asked. He merely shook his head and set the horses off at a cracking pace back in the direction of Rice Villa.
    With not the slightest idea what Elma’s summons involved, the prospect of this urgent visit to her home for the first time gave little time for admiration of the handsome surroundings.
    A tear-stained maid opened the door and Elma, attired in black, rushed down the stairs to greet me.
    She took my hands, wringing them painfully, almost speechless as she gasped out the terrible story.
    While we were having tea with Alice and shopping together in Edinburgh, Felix had taken a heart attack and collapsed in his study, to be found by his valet bringing in his afternoon tea.
    The circumstances were dreadful.
    She led me into the parlour, weeping. ‘Oh Rose, dear, I am so glad you are here, you are the only one I could turn to.’ Still clutching my hand, she sobbed out the story. ‘To think all this was happening back here while we were so happy, enjoying ourselves in Jenners. Oh, dear heaven,’ she moaned, ‘my stupid pride, that’s to blame. If only I had been with him, Rose. I might have saved him.’
    I thought that highly unlikely, it wasn’t the way heart attacks happened: the grim truth was one moment alive, the next quite dead. That was the rule.
    Then I learnt that this was not the case. Felix had struck his head on the stone hearth when he fell. He had lost a lot of blood but was still alive, his life hanging by a thread.
    ‘Hodge found him. It was dreadful, dreadful.’ She shuddered. ‘When I arrived I almost died – the sight that met my eyes, you can’t imagine, Rose. There was Hodge covered in blood, everywhere – the poor man had been trying to lift the master, trying to help him, and God knows, if he hadn’t called a doctor neighbour from across the way, a few moreminutes and poor Felix would have bled