Read The Evil That Men Do.(Inspector Faro Mystery No.11) for Free Online Page A

feel by his future wife’s family that he had let them down badly.
    ‘They’ve done so much for me, and now the way they look at me, the coldness in their attitudes, makes me feel as if I’ve betrayed them. The hint is that I have brought their good name into disrepute and have also heartlessly besmirched the reputation of a dying man.’
    ‘Surely Grace believes in your good intentions,’ said Faro.
    ‘Of course. The dear girl is loyal to me, but she is naturally torn by the deep-rooted image of her devoted family. Then of course, there is her poor mother’s anguish. It’s worse for her than any of them. Damn it, if only I had signed the wretched certificate and let it go at that. If only Adrian had told me that Cedric was dying anyway, I could have accepted that he had taken his own life.’
    Faro looked at his stepson in shocked surprise. ‘Vince, lad, you couldn’t do that. It’s against everything you’ve ever believed in. Sign a declaration that might be false—’
    ‘I know, I know. But now there is so much at stake. My own personal happiness and Grace’s. We love each other, but now I see this scandal of her father’s death will always be between us. A dark shadow.’
    ‘A shadow that time will erase, when two people love each other,’ said Faro soothingly, aware that his voice carried little personal conviction.
    Twenty-four hours later his suspicions were proved right. Vince returned to Sheridan Place and threw down the report of the postmortem on the table in front of him. ‘Well, Stepfather, it seems I was right to trust my instincts and observations, scant good that they will do me. There was no trace of a brain disease or any other evidence of ill-health. His heart and lungs were sound. In fact, whatever the Langweils’ claim, Cedric was a healthy man in the prime of life who might reasonably have expected to live for another thirty years.’ Vince sighed. ‘I had actually been hoping that he had some incurable illness and had taken his own life. But not now. Someone is lying,’ he added heavily.
    The same thought had been running through Faro’s mind.
    Now, putting his hand on the report, Vince regarded him solemnly. ‘According to this, the stomach contents revealed that Cedric Langweil died of arsenic poisoning. He had in fact six times the normal fatal dose.’
    So their worst fears were realised.
    ‘I dread to think how this will affect me. And Grace. As for you, Stepfather, it looks as if you might well have a murder investigation on your hands.’
    This was a situation Faro knew only too well. After the postmortem, the verdict of cause of death; and then all the heavy machinery of criminal investigation by the Edinburgh City Police would go into immediate action, as personified by Detective Inspector Faro.
    Someone had poisoned Cedric Langweil. Faro had no doubt that whoever spread the rumour that Cedric was dying was also his murderer. In the present case, clues to the identity of the killer were painfully easy to follow. And sooner rather than later the guilty person must be run to earth, charged, brought to trial. And hanged by the neck.
    No other way, no way of escaping or forestalling the law’s mechanism existed. And it was no consolation to Faro to recognise that in the particular province of murder detection lay his greatest skills. Skills which he must exercise to the full extent of his powers, regardless of the fact that he and his stepson were both intimately concerned not only with the guilty but also with the innocent members of the murdered man’s family.
    He had not the least doubt, nor he guessed had Vince, that Cedric Langweil’s killer would be unmasked with a minimum of effort, found where poisoners were almost always found, in the bosom of that apparently devoted family circle.
    There was no pride in knowing that there was only one prime suspect to follow. When he was brought to trial the sufferings of the other Langweils would be intense as their emotions