Killing Cousins Read Online Free Page A

attention to the living members of the family. They would have to be dead for at least two hundred years to engage his interest and enthusiasm. I've hardly seen him at all, but I gather that isn't unusual. When he isn't closeted in the library poring over old documents, he's to be found in Kirkwall or Stromness consulting dusty old records.'
    'Has he found anything of interest?'
    'Francis tells me he has made some remarkable finds, hardly world-shaking to the visitor but of breathless fascination to the Balfrays.'
    Faro suppressed a smile. Vince's resistance to history was well known. He could well imagine his stepson's ill-concealed boredom regarding the Captain's activities.
    'And you don't care for him, do you?'
    Vince shook his head. 'Not a lot, Stepfather. He's something of a charlatan, I suspect. The archetypal sponger, preying on affluent relatives. But Francis is far too much of a gentleman to voice his opinions. As long as the Captain can feed him titbits of family history, he is sure of a berth at Balfray.'
    'What has he discovered so far?'
    The Balfrays boast a connection with the wicked Stuart Earls of Orkney and a dubious bastard ancestorship ...'
    'As do most of the isles, including our own family,' said Faro cynically. 'Hardly surprising considering that Earl Robert and his seven sons helped to populate the island with their many bastards.'
    'Does it not amaze you how bastardy gains immediate respectability when the blood Royal is involved?' said Vince bitterly.
    Faro gave him a sympathetic glance, wondering if a day would ever come when the lad's own illegitimacy ceased to plague him. His mother, Faro's dead wife, had borne him when she was a servant girl of fifteen, the result of rape in a stately home.
    'This discreditable story, however, concerns the Earl of Bothwell who, despite his marriage and apparent devotion to the Queen of Scots, and being on the run after the disaster of Carberry Hill, managed to beget a bastard son during his brief and fateful visit to the island where he took refuge out of range of the guns of Kirkwall Castle.
    'He slipped out and with his treasure ship headed for sanctuary in Norway, which was again denied him. According to the Balfray legend, the treasure ship and her captain gave their pursuers the slip and returned to Balfray. He brought up Bothwell's child and used the gold that had been intended to set the Queen of Scots free to establish the Balfray dynasty.'
    'Remarkable!'
    Vince gave him a quick look. 'And you don't believe a word of it?'
    Faro smiled. 'It's an attractive story, but I suspect highly coloured. Eminently suitable material for one of Sir Walter Scott's romances.'
    'Not according to Captain Gibb. He gets very animated on the subject, insisting that he can prove it. That it's all there in the sixteenth-century documents discovered behind the wainscoting when the old castle was demolished by Francis' grandfather, who built the present building.'
    Looking back in the direction which the Captain had taken, Vince added anxiously, 'Was he really walking and reading? He appeared with alarming promptitude, don't you think?'
    'I was wondering the same thing myself. He could have been listening to our conversation.'
    'That will give him a perfect chance to get his alibi together.'
    'If he's guilty.' Faro paused and looked at Vince. 'Tell me frankly, do you have any reason to suspect that he might have poisoned Mrs Balfray?'
    'Nothing direct,' said Vince regretfully.
    Faro smiled. 'But you could find something, if you put your mind to it, I presume,' he added with a chiding shake of the head.
    Their emergence from the shelter of the tree plunged them straight into the full face of an approaching storm.
    'Is this the quick way to the castle?' Faro gasped, dragging up his coat collar and exclaiming in alarm as their path wound perilously close to the edge of the cliff.
    'Watch your step, Stepfather. As you'll see, the kirkyard wall has already crumbled and fallen into the