The Best British Mysteries III

Faro and the Bogus Inspector by Alanna Knight

One of the most baffling crimes Detective Inspector Jeremy Faro ever faced had nothing to do with murder, but quite a lot to do with buying presents for his mother and two small daughters. Birthdays were difficult enough for a widower, but Christmas presents were worse, especially when Rose, aged eight, took one look at the familiar oblong cardboard box and cried out reproachfully: “Oh, Papa, not another doll.”

Had his normal powers of deduction been functioning, Inspector Faro might have found the vital clue in her younger sister Emily’s letter, that she “liked the dolly’s frocks, but not very much.”

Birthdays were inevitable but by the 1870s the fashion set by Her Majesty and the late Prince Consort had been eagerly followed and the Christmas craze had spread to Edinburgh. Now a middle class, once content with the annual Hogmanay debauch, demanded turkey, plum pudding, a tree in the window, and the unsteady march of Christmas cards across the mantelpiece. In mainly candlelit rooms this also had the city’s fire engines on constant alert.

Nor were fires the only hazard in the homes of the well-to-do. A rash of yuletide parties and conviviality, with a regrettable slackening of the tough moral fibre of Calvinism, was regarded as a positive enticement to sneak thieves. As a consequence, this quite unnecessary season of peace and goodwill was greeted with less than enthusiasm by the Edinburgh City Police.

Advertisements like that of Jenners in Princes Street, offering customers a chance to inspect valuable seasonal items, had been viewed by the criminal element as an open invitation to more splendid opportunities of breaking and entering in a spate of daring robberies.

As Faro’s young stepson Dr. Vincent Laurie studied his sister’s letter, he said:

“Now what do you think of that? I imagined that all little girls liked dolls.”

“They do indeed, Stepfather, but not every Christmas and birthday. Ever since our mama died-” he added sadly. “Don’t you see-”

Faro tried but failed. “You wouldn’t-I suppose-” he said wistfully.

“No, I certainly wouldn’t,” was the stern reply. “The very idea! I find it hard enough getting suitable presents for my own list.”

Vince could be notoriously unsympathetic sometimes, but seeing his stepfather’s anguished expression, he said: “What about a piece of jewellery, then? Small girls like lockets and bangles.” And warming to the idea, “And a brooch for Stepgrandma-”

“You really think so…?”

“I do indeed. And what’s more, there’s a splendid new jeweller’s shop opened in South Clerk Street, just a step away. Foreign chap. Did an excellent repair on my pocket watch-a wizard with clocks, I understand-highly recommended-”

“In the circumstances-would you-?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Vince crossly. “The experience will do you good.”

Rose and Emily had lived with their grandmama in Orkney for the past two years, and as the last date for posting parcels grew nearer, so too did Inspector Faro’s frowns grow deeper and darker with the preoccupation of choosing suitable presents. Finally, with all the anticipatory joy of a man presenting himself for the extraction of a particularly sensitive tooth, he stared glumly into the jeweller’s window, feeling utterly helpless faced with such a bewildering and dazzling selection.

If only he enjoyed shopping. He had relied on his dear Lizzie to keep his wardrobe up to the mark. His indifference to sartorial elegance was well known at the Central Office of the Edinburgh City Police. As long as garments were comfortable and covered him in modest decency, he did not care a fig for fashion. The reflection of his greatcoat in the window glass jolted him a little, but closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and entered the shop, where a loud bell noisily proclaimed his presence.

Taking stock of his surroundings as he waited for the jeweller to appear, he saw that the shop was small, dark, and depressing, a complete contrast to the brilliant sunshine of a winter afternoon settling into a rosy sunset sharp with frost.

A closer look at the owner, who entered through the curtain and bowed gravely, told a delighted Faro that he might have modelled Mr. Dickens’s Fagin but for those gentle eyes and dignified bearing.

Indicating a tray of brooches, he found Mr. Jacob most helpful. Was the recipient a young lady?

Faro shook his head. “No, it is for my mother.” He was both delighted and relieved when Mr. Jacob after careful deliberation pointed to the very one he had in mind. “Yes, indeed. That is perfect,” said Faro. “I will take it.”

“Is there anything else I might interest you in, sir?”

When Faro asked to see lockets, the jeweller beamed.

“For your lady wife, sir?”

“Actually for my two small daughters. I am a widower.”

Mr. Jacob sighed. “I also. I have a daughter to look after me.”

Choosing two identical gold lockets, Faro asked, “Forgive my curiosity. I realise you are a newcomer to Edinburgh. May I ask what brought you here?”

“I have been here since May. As to what brought me here, sir, I will be frank with you. Persecution-yes, persecution. We have been dogged by utmost misfortunes and we are still wanderers. But Edinburgh gave us hope for a home and a future. Here it seemed that our race was tolerated and even encouraged to settle, to live and die in peace.”

Faro suspected that Mr. Jacob had been lured by the fact that sixty years ago, in the early years of the century, Edinburgh had seen the establishment of the first Jewish cemetery in Scotland, a stone’s throw from his shop.

A sign of tolerance, generous but sadly misleading. Faro was well aware that to the ordinary Edinburgh citizen, a minority racial group was something to be jeered at, despised, and that any success in business by honest dealings and honest sweat was treated with the darkest suspicion.

Mr. Jacob was fitting the gifts into velvet boxes. When Faro said they were to be posted, a sturdy brown envelope was produced.

“Perhaps you would write on the address, sir. I have a card to enclose with your message.”

“That is most thoughtful of you, Mr. Jacob.”

The jeweller studied the name and address. “Faro-you are the inspector-Inspector Faro?”

“I am,” said Faro, surprised and flattered to find himself famous.

“You must forgive me, sir, I did not recognise you again.”

“Again?” queried Faro.

“Yes, sir. I have the ring ready for you-”

“The ring-what ring?”

It was the jeweller’s turn to look astonished. “Why, sir, the valuable brooch you left.” And unlocking a drawer behind the counter, Mr. Jacob produced an emerald and diamond ring.

Faro was taken aback. Although no connoisseur of gems, he would have hazarded a rough guess that it was worth at least ten times his annual salary with Edinburgh City Police.

He also knew that he had never set eyes on it before.

Mr. Jacob, watching him intently, mistook his expression as one of disapproval and said anxiously: “I hope it is correct, sir. I tried to follow your instructions exactly.”

“My instructions?”

The jeweller nodded vigorously. “Indeed, sir. I was to change the order of the diamonds and make the original brooch into a ring setting suitable for a lady,” he said slowly, then, frowning: “There is some mistake?”

With a shake of his head, Faro replied: “There is indeed. This piece of jewellery is not mine.”

“But you are Inspector Faro? Is that not so?” and Mr. Jacob consulted his ledger. “Here is the entry. This brooch was handed in two days ago by Inspector Faro. See for yourself.”

Now examining the ring thoughtfully, Faro said slowly: “I didn’t by any chance tell you how I had come by it, did I?”

Mr. Jacob’s bafflement equalled Faro’s own. “Come by it? What is that? I do not understand.”

“Did your customer tell you that he had inherited the brooch, by any chance?”

“It was my daughter you-Inspector Faro-spoke to.”

Ah, and that explains the case of mistaken identity, thought Faro, as Mr. Jacob darted behind the screen to reappear with a gazelle-eyed beauty.

Nadia was very young, so nervous as to be almost inarticulate in her forest-creature manner, but in a few years, Faro guessed, there would be few in Edinburgh to rival her exotic looks.

And Faro smiled to himself remembering a Bible picture from his childhood. If her father could have modelled a benign Fagin, then Nadia might well have been the lass setting the baby Moses adrift among the reeds.

Her father’s admonishing tones in their own language made her wild-eyed and tearful. Trembling, she would have disappeared behind the curtain screen but for his restraining hand.

Urging her towards the inspector, Mr. Jacob’s voice was stern indeed. At last, with downcast head, she began an unintelligible explanation.

“In English, daughter,” thundered her father.

Slowly she raised her eyes to Faro. “He came in and asked for my father. I told him my father was not here. He did not want to leave the brooch but he was in a great hurry.”

“How did you know that?” asked Faro gently.

“He went often to the door and looked up and down the street as if expecting my father to come.”

Your father-or the people who were chasing him, thought Faro grimly, having now deduced the reason for the bogus inspector’s anxiety and the urgent necessity of having the brooch transformed into a ring.

“He saw someone in the street,” said Nadia. “He seemed anxious and thrust the brooch into my hand. My father was to have it ready for him today without fail.”

“Today-you are sure of that?” said Faro.

Nadia looked at her father. “That is what he said.”

“He? He! Be polite, daughter, that is no way to address the inspector.” And bowing, “Her English-I apologise.”

“Allow her to explain in her own time,” said Faro with a smile.

In reply, Nadia touched her father’s sleeve, whispered, and then turning to Faro, Mr. Jacob said, “She thinks you are not the same man.”

“Ah,” said Faro. “Now we are getting somewhere. Your exact words, Mr. Jacob, if I recall them correctly, were that you did not recognise me again. Your daughter’s information confirms that I have never set foot in your shop before this afternoon-”

“But-but, sir,” Mr. Jacob interrupted, “it was the day you arrested the holy man, the one who was trying to steal from my shop-”

“A moment, if you please. A holy man stealing from you-and I was arresting him. Sir, you must be dreaming.”

“If it was a dream,” said the jeweller ruefully, “then it was a costly one. I lost much money.”

“I presume you have reported this theft to the police.”

Father and daughter exchanged anxious looks and shook their heads.

“No? Then I think you had better tell me exactly what happened.”

“You-the er, other inspector-was in a policeman’s uniform that first time.” Mr. Jacob shrugged. “It makes a man look different.”

“Describe this uniform, if you please.”

What Mr. Jacob described was worn by police constables. Detective inspectors, however, were allowed the privilege of plain clothes, if they wished. The experience of twenty years had led Faro to appreciate the advantages of anonymity in his line of enquiries, where an approach by an officer of the law was a hindrance rather than a help. Innocent as well as guilty were apt to become somewhat reticent when faced with an intimidating uniform.

“May we go right back to the beginning, if you please?” asked Faro.

At his stern expression, Mr. Jacob sighed. “Very well… Nadia will look after the shop while we talk inside.”

In the screened-off living quarters, domesticity was provided by a curtained bed in the wall for the father and a tiny room no larger than a cupboard for his daughter. From every corner, stuffed animals glared at them yellow-eyed and fierce. A tray of dismembered clocks and watches ticked furiously as if in a constant state of anxiety at the close proximity of soldering iron and Bunsen burner.

Inviting Faro to a seat by the fire, the jeweller began his strange story.

“A few days ago, a customer, a holy man-of your faith-wished to buy a diamond ring for his wife-”

“Ah, you must mean a minister,” interrupted Faro, and when Mr. Jacob looked even more confused, he added, “We call them ‘reverends.’”

Mr. Jacob nodded. “I understand. This reverend selected a ring priced at forty pounds and offered to pay with a hundred-pound banknote.”

Fraud. Such was Faro’s immediate reaction considering the few hundred-pound banknotes printed and in circulation. Only a foreigner would be taken in by such audacity.

“I see that you too are doubtful, sir, as I was. And so was this reverend. He said, ‘As I am a complete stranger you must be wondering if this note is real. I noticed a bank just across the road there. Would you care to ask the cashier to verify that this is a genuine banknote?’”

“Ah,” said Faro. “How very convenient. You go across the road and leave him in the shop. And when you return-” He shrugged, said sadly: “My dear fellow, this is a very old trick.”

“I am not stupid, Inspector. When I suggested that my daughter go to the bank instead, the reverend was not in the least dismayed. I was watching him intently and he was most complimentary about her. He talked-much as you have done, sir, curious about my reasons for coming to Scotland.

“Nadia came back and told us that both the bank cashier and the manager himself had assured her that the banknote was indeed genuine. I put the diamond ring into a box and from the safe, in the wall over there-” he pointed-”I gave the reverend his sixty pounds change.”

Mr. Jacob sighed and shook his head. “He seemed such a kindly man, but just as he was leaving the shop, you-I mean, the policeman-entered, seized him, and said to me: ‘I am a police inspector and I have to tell you that this man is a thief, well known to us. He has already been in prison three times.’”

Faro was puzzled. A trickster like the minister, who had been jailed three times, yet he had never heard of him.

Mr. Jacob continued: “I am an honest man, sir, and I had to protest that this time no fraud was involved, for the bank had examined the hundred-pound note and declared it genuine. You-er, this inspector-then asked me to show it to him. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘as I suspected; like many other shopkeepers and bank cashiers, you have been tricked by a brilliant forgery. This is a master craftsman and I am arresting him. I shall have to take the fake bank-note, which will be required as evidence later.’

“When he brought out the handcuffs, the reverend said to him: ‘They will not be necessary, Inspector. You have my word as a gentleman that I will come with you quietly.’

“But the inspector just laughed at him and I felt sorry for the reverend. He did seem like a real gentleman who had fallen on hard times. Who knows what sorrows and misfortunes had driven him to a life of crime.”

Faro was curious about the man’s identity. “Can you describe him for me?”

“Garbed all in black, he was. Tall, pale-skinned, light-eyed…”

Mr. Jacob ended with an embarrassed shrug, for the description also fitted the man who was now questioning him.

Faro suppressed a smile. Did all gentiles look alike to the jeweller?

“The reverend then began to plead. ‘There are hiring carriages outside. I will pay for one, Inspector. Please allow me this last indulgence.’ It was a wild day,” Mr. Jacob continued, “a blizzard blowing, so the inspector gave in.”

“And you were sent for a carriage and you watched the inspector hand his prisoner in and drive away,” said Faro. “Is that so?”

Mr. Jacob looked puzzled and then he sighed. “You smile, sir? I expect you know what happened next,” he added glumly.

“When you came back into the shop you realised that your sixty pounds change had not been returned to you and that your fake minister had also carried off the diamond ring.”

The jeweller nodded sadly. “I realised there had been a mistake. When I closed the shop I went at once to the police station. But do you know, Inspector, no one would believe a word of my story. They pretended that no inspector of theirs had brought in a holy man. When I protested that I was telling the truth, they became very suspicious and asked a lot of questions while another policeman wrote it all down. Where are your papers? they kept shouting. What about this shop of yours? How did you pay for it?”

He spread his hands wide. “I was so ashamed and upset, Inspector, and very afraid. This was the kind of life I had escaped from when I fled to Scotland. Was I to go through it all over again? Fortunately, for me, that is, there was a disturbance. A bad woman-from the streets-was brought in drunk and fighting. So I took my chance and ran away as quickly as I could.”

Faro shook his head, aware that would make the Central Office even more suspicious. He knew his men. Edinburgh was full of people who came in with wild stories and tried to obtain compensation for imagined frauds. They would jump to the obvious conclusion that they were dealing with another criminal-or a madman. And they got plenty of both kinds in a day’s work.

“After that I was afraid to go back again,” Mr. Jacob continued. “I know I should not have rushed out like that, but you see, no one, not even a policeman, wishes to believe that a foreigner is telling the truth. I could see it in their eyes as they listened to me. An expression I have reason to know very well. Suspicion and something worse-hatred.”

Again the jeweller spread his hands in that despairing gesture. “Like eager hungry dogs waiting for the chance to leap on their quarry,” he added in a horrified whisper.

Faro protested with some soothing platitudes regarding the law and justice, which he knew were untrue. His words rang hollow, for Mr. Jacob was correct in his assumptions and Faro was well aware that many of his men had strong anti-Semitic feelings.

Even those with skins the same colour and speaking the same language, Irish and English, and their own countrymen from the Highlands were abused. To the struggling teeming mass of Edinburgh poor, signs of affluence in any “foreigner,” however hard won, were a subject of the most bitter hostility.

And now Faro was faced with the hardest part of all, to tell the jeweller what was patently obvious.

“The police inspector who made the arrest, Mr. Jacob-well, I am afraid he was not a real policeman.”

“Not real? But how could one doubt it? He was wearing a uniform.”

“Alas, that is no criterion of honesty. He had probably stolen it.”

Mr. Jacob looked at him wide-eyed. “What are you trying to tell me, sir?”

“That your police inspector and the minister were both criminals, in league together, planning to steal a diamond ring and sixty pounds from you.”

“But the hundred-pound note-”

“Oh yes, that banknote was genuine enough. And a very necessary part of their trick to defraud shopkeepers who would be-as you were-immediately suspicious of such a large denomination, rarely exhibited in public and even more rarely handed across shop counters.”

As he spoke, Faro realised that the jeweller must have seemed the perfect foil for the crooks. The success of this trick depended on the ignorance of new shopkeepers. Particularly foreigners who might have their own reasons, nothing to do with fraud, but a lot to do with past unhappy experiences of political persecution, which made them wary about any involvement with the law.

Mr. Jacob continued to look astonished and Faro repeated, “Please believe me, there was no inspector, no minister. You must understand that both men were thieves who had set out to rob you.”

“Ah, Inspector, in that you are mistaken,” said Mr. Jacob stubbornly. “There was no crime, since the very day after I went to the police station the inspector came back-to return the diamond ring with many apologies. It had been found on the reverend’s person when he was searched. He also returned my sixty pounds,” he added triumphantly. “Now that is not the action of a thief.”

And leaning towards Faro, he said, “What I still fail to understand is why he gave your name.”

But Faro had already worked out that ingenious part of the fraud. The first episode with the minister and the diamond ring, his dramatic arrest by the bogus inspector, and the subsequent return of both ring and sixty pounds were elaborate overtures to secure the jeweller’s confidence.

As for the bogus inspector, Faro guessed that he was a seasoned criminal and that perhaps their paths had already crossed. There was a certain grim humour in claiming to be Inspector Faro in the very neighbourhood where he lived and was a familiar sight.

Faro saw something else, too. That this was merely the beginning, carefully planned with intended results far beyond the remodelling of an emerald brooch into a ring.

Of one thing he was absolutely certain. The emerald brooch had been stolen. No doubt when he returned to the Central Office it would be listed as one of the missing jewels from the recent robbery at Jenners.

Mr. Jacob had to be unwittingly drawn into the thieves’ kitchen. The most invaluable and hardest accessory to find was a skilled craftsman who would be adept at totally altering the appearance of stolen gems, and melting down gold.

Once the jeweller was committed to them, then there was no escape for him. The gang would make sure of that, and their threats would be most effective, especially since the police would be ready to suspect an alien. Mr. Jacob’s visit to the Central Office, with his disastrous and wild-seeming accusations written down and filed as possible evidence, had landed him further into the net.

Faro knew that if the jeweller was to be saved and danger averted, there was only one way. The bogus inspector must be seized when he came to reclaim the brooch. But when might that be?

He stared out of the window. At three o’clock on a December afternoon, there was little light outside, the street already almost deserted.

He could hardly stand guard for an indefinite period, although most of his success in a long career owed much to that element of patient waiting. However, he had given up hope by the time the street lamps were lit and the smoking chimneys of Edinburgh that Robert Burns called “Auld Reekie” added their acrid stench to the freezing fog.

A thin stream of customers had long since gone. Not one resembled the bogus inspector and Mr. Jacob exchanged a despairing glance with Faro.

The plan had failed. Faro shook his head. Criminals, he knew, also have their intuitive moments. Perhaps the thief had already approached the vicinity of the shop in the dim light and, suspicions aroused, had decided that in his business, discretion was always the better part of valour.

Mr. Jacob went around the counter and was rolling down the door blind when a rap on the outside announced a last customer.

Concealed by the kitchen curtain, Faro observed a young woman. He groaned. His last hope had expired-

But wait-what was she asking?

“I have come from Inspector Faro-to collect my emerald ring. I am the inspector’s sister and here is the note he asked me to give you.”

As Mr. Jacob put on his spectacles and read the note slowly and carefully, Faro pushed aside the kitchen curtain. “Hello, my dear. I thought you were never coming. I’ve been expecting you for some time. What kept you?”

The young woman was clearly taken aback and would have bolted had he not stood firmly between her and the door.

Looking round desperately she stammered: “But-but-”

Taking the woman’s arm firmly, Faro said: “I have already collected the ring for you and outside I think you’ll see a carriage awaits. Thank you, Mr. Jacob, you have been most kind”

And Faro marched her out of the shop to the police carriage he had summoned earlier, which had been lurking discreetly out of sight round the corner. It approached rapidly and at the same time, another carriage bowled down the road.

A man stared out and seeing that the woman had been taken and that several constables were erupting from all directions, he leaped down, took to his heels, and bolted down one of the closes.

“Bastard!” shrieked the woman after him. “Bastard!” Her screams and bad language as two uniformed constables restrained her caused a few passersby to blanch. One elderly woman was so overcome by this display of unseemly emotions that she swooned on the spot.

As for Faro, he was already in hot pursuit of the bogus inspector, who had discovered too late that his headlong flight carried him down a cul-de-sac.

The struggle was short and swift, since Faro’s early training had included lessons in self-defence from a retired pugilist. The constables who had followed, truncheons at the ready, were not needed.

Handcuffing the man, who was tall and fair like himself but considerably younger, Faro said: “You had better start talking, or it’ll be the worse for you. I dare say your doxy is already telling them all she knows.”

And one look at the woman’s scared face, the way she cursed and spat as her confederate was hustled into the police carriage, obviously convinced him that he need expect neither discretion nor mercy from that quarter.

“All right, Inspector Bloody Faro, you’ve won this time…”

As Faro suspected, the bogus inspector and the minister were mere links in an organised gang of jewel thieves.

Most of the missing gems from the haul at Jenners were recovered.

But that is another story.