The Inspector's Daughter by Alanna Knight

Author:Alanna Knight [Knight, Alanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 0749082038
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 1999-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

I looked out of the window hopefully, but of Thane there was no sign at all. Nor was he in the stable where Cat, curled up in the straw, had settled down comfortably. Observing my approach was empty handed, her resentful glare and half-hearted snarl were more an old woman’s grumble at being disturbed than a threat of any kind.

I decided to go in search of the old painting I had discussed with Vince, down the worn old steps into the cellar, the debris of Sir Hedley Marsh’s long occupation of the Tower, among the spiders’ webs and dust, stacked prints, valueless pictures and broken gilt frames.

Searching through them, there at last was the picture that had intrigued me on childhood visits with Pappa: an old Highland shepherd, wrapped in his plaid. Crook in hand, he leaned against a rock, a deerhound at his feet - in the background the antlers of a slain stag, its corpse decently obscured by the heather.

Blowing off the dust, I carried the painting upstairs into the light. Thane could have sat for the deerhound and the hill behind could have been some track on Arthur’s Seat.

I sat with it on my knee. Was it possible that I had allowed a childhood memory to influence me, a kind of déjà vu of safer, happier days with Pappa?

Had it not been for Thane’s intervention when I was attacked by the tinkers and my miraculous escape from them, I could have been convinced that I had invented my deerhound, as lonely children invent imaginary playmates - playmates as real to them as mine were to me.

I decided then and there that I must get a grip on my emotions. I had suffered too many real hardships in recent times to give in to melancholy. For that way insanity lay.

Although the deerhound was the image of Thane, common sense told me it could not possibly be the same dog. This print with the artist’s illegible initials had a date: 1845 - and no dog lives for half a century.

I must be sensible. I had a new life here in Edinburgh, given the challenge of this strange Tower as my home, four ancient stone walls in which I was determined to destroy any past alienation by an investment of respect and caring. If ghosts or a sinister atmosphere existed, I was certain they could be conquered and I refused to be scared into taking some safe, dreary lodging in the city.

There was always the ancient chapel at the top of the Tower, somehow remote from the rest of the building, a kind of refuge once blessed by saintly hands, a place of sanctity and serenity.

With so much to be thankful for I must learn not to be ungrateful. But at this precise moment I had to escape from this invasion of the recent past.

Vince’s visit had sharpened bitter memories, retelling the story of a lost and deeply loved husband and the tiny baby whom I had scarcely time to hold in my arms.

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