The Missing Duchess Read Online Free Page A

first rung on the ladder.
    This was an invitation Faro had resisted personally for many years, despite Superintendent McIntosh's hints that 'it could do great things' for him. Although he refrained from saying so to his superior officer, Faro was happy to have reached his own particular niche in the Edinburgh City Police by his own merits, rather than by joining what he regarded as an archaic secret society for ambitious men.
    He was also content to remain Chief Detective Inspector, since the next step up that ladder would involve sitting behind a desk issuing orders and signing documents, work which he would find extremely dull after twenty years of chasing criminals and solving crimes by his own often unorthodox methods of observation and deduction.
    'The Lethies are having some quite illustrious visitors,' Vince assured him. 'None other than the Grand Duchess of Luxoria, the Queen's god-daughter.'
    Faro had read about Luxoria, one of the bewildering number of European principalities set adrift by the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire, its borders forever under threat of annexation by other powerful states. But the tiny independent kingdom tucked away in central Europe had managed to survive centuries of warring and predatory neighbours.
    He knew little of its complex politics since European history was not one of his interests, but he had been vaguely interested to read a legend connected with the Scottish Knights Templars, who had taken refuge there from persecution, rewarding the Luxorians with some holy relic brought from Jerusalem.
    Luxoria might have remained in obscurity and never achieved even a small paragraph in the local newspaper but for the Scottish connection. The Grand Duchess Amelie claimed descent not only from Mary, Queen of Scots, but was related to both Her Majesty the Queen and the late Prince Consort.
    'Didn't they have a revolution - oh, fifteen years ago? I seem to remember reading about it,' said Faro.
    'Full marks, Stepfather. I had it all from Terence. The Grand Duchess inherited after her father's death. She was opposed by her wicked cousin, who had been set up, not against his will, as President and puppet ruler. She was then forced to marry him in what is to all accounts still a wretchedly feudal system of government.' Vince continued: 'A political marriage which would guarantee the succession and save further bloodshed. The Luxorians love their Royal Family, it seems, in spite of it all.'
    At the thought of their own Royal Family, Faro smiled wryly. There were many disillusioned citizens in Scotland who applauded Ireland's demand for Home Rule. There were many others too in Britain generally who would have considered it a 'good thing' to bring down the Throne. The Queen was far from popular, spending most of her time in Balmoral Castle guarded by the fiercely protective John Brown, with only token appearances at the seat of government in London, to the dismay of her statesmen.
    The French Revolution remained heavily in the forefront of men's minds. Less than a century old, others than the Luxorian Royal Family were feeling echoes of a drama that could still make princelings shake in their shoes. The secret files of the Edinburgh City Police held information concerning a tide of aristocratic refugees seeking sanctuary at the Palace of Holyroodhouse as privileged guests of Her Majesty.
    On the eve of their departure for Aberlethie, Faro was summoned to Edinburgh Castle to investigate an attempted burglary. As he walked up the High Street from the Central Office along the West Bow, the bright moonlight and a sky wreathed in stars seemed to emphasise the sinister menace of the darkly shuttered Wizard's House.
    Again Faro relived the child he had been, four years old, holding tightly to his weeping mother's hand as she took him on a pilgrimage past the spot where his father had died. Or had been murdered, as she maintained and as he was to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt many years later.
    At the