Chapter Eight
EIGHT
Gray and I jointly make an executive decision here. The decision not to tell Isla where we’re going. This is tougher for me than for Gray, who has pretty much been doing it all his adult life. No, strike that, it’s tougher for me because Gray has pretty much been doing it his entire adult life.
Isla might be his older sister, but in this world, Gray has been her guardian since their father’s death.
Oh, sure, she had a husband at the time, but Lawrence never cared for anything except Isla’s money.
It was Gray who took care of Isla, even more so after he convinced her to let him finance Lawrence’s adventures while Isla returned to the family home, firmly under his protective wing.
Gray has always respected his older sisters’ intelligence and autonomy.
Frances Gray would have had it no other way.
All four of her children were equal in her eyes, regardless of their sex and regardless of their actual parentage.
So Gray was raised to treat Isla as an equal, and yet—to someone from the twenty-first century—it was more “equal but different.” While she is his intellectual match, her opinion as valid as his own, her thoughts as important as his own, she is still entitled to his protection …
whether she wants it or not. For a woman as independently minded as Isla, that chafes.
We have a dead body. If it’s Nellie, then that body is someone Isla knew. Either way, we don’t know what condition it may be in, and Isla has a weak stomach, which she fully acknowledges. To Gray, there is no question—we leave without giving her a chance to join us.
I’d like to give her that choice. Except this is where I believe I know Isla well enough to realize she wouldn’t actually want it.
She will feel compelled to go and identify Nellie.
As for her weak stomach, she sees that as a point of actual weakness and fights against it.
She won’t want to see Nellie like this. Yet she will feel as if she should.
So, as a friend, I make this choice for her, and I will speak to her about it later, hoping I made the right decision and apologizing if I did not.
We do, of course, leave a message with Loomis.
We say that we have been urgently summoned by McCreadie regarding the case.
From that, Isla might deduce what has happened, and if she really wanted to, she could come after us.
Otherwise, we pass along a message promising to let her know as soon as we have more.
“Where is the body?” I ask Gray as we hurry from the house. “Does it seem like murder?”
“It’s been spotted but has not yet been recovered,” he says. “While the body matches the maid’s description—a young woman with tan skin and auburn hair—that does not mean it is definitely Nellie. I did not wait for an identification. I immediately came to fetch you.”
“Thank you.”
Before I can ask more, he stops, scanning the road. Simon isn’t there—the Adler estate isn’t big enough for visiting coaches, so Simon had been told to return at a given hour. Gray is looking for a hansom cab, which means the body isn’t within easy walking distance.
When he spots one, he flags it down and gives the driver directions I don’t catch. I wait until we’re inside. Then I can finally ask.
“You said the body has been spotted, but not recovered?” I say. “Where is it?”
“In the Water of Leith.”
That’s the river flowing through Edinburgh.
As a child, I’d always called it “the Leith” or “the Leith river,” only to be corrected by my mother and grandmother.
“Water” is a Scots term that seems to mean a large stream.
Bigger than a stream, smaller than a river.
The Water of Leith starts at a spring, flows through Edinburgh, and ends up in Leith, where it empties into the sea.
Gray has turned to the coach window, gazing out, his face tight.
“Any chance I can get more?” I ask.
He starts and then blinks. Then he gives his head a brisk shake. “Yes, of course. My apologies. I am distracted.”
“The case? Or has something else happened?”
“No, nothing else has happened.”
“All right.” I peer at him, as if gazing into a very hazy crystal ball.
Then, as that analogy comes, so too does the answer, tailing along behind.
“Is it because of the séance? Because Madame Paix claimed to have spoken to the ghost of a dead girl, and we were expecting the girl to be very much alive.”
His lips press together, and I wonder whether I’ve misinterpreted, but then he says, “When Hugh was informed that the body of a young woman with auburn hair had been spotted in the water, I should have been devastated, realizing the poor girl has indeed perished. Instead, I was annoyed because it means I need to deal with an angle I had hoped to abandon swiftly.”
“The spiritualism. Not that Madame Paix actually communicated with Nellie’s ghost, but that this will lend credence to her claim.”
He nods abruptly, with a flash of anger that is fifty percent for the inconvenience and fifty percent for feeling inconvenienced.
I reach over to touch his arm, which is propped on the window as he gazes out.
“The fact that you’re annoyed doesn’t mean you don’t feel anything for the death, Duncan.
But devastated?” I shrug. “We didn’t know Nellie.
I’m saddened, and if it turns out to be murder, I’ll be furious. But I’m not devastated.”
“I chose my words poorly. You understand my meaning, though.” His gaze flicks to the window.
“Like Isla, you naturally think of others. I sometimes feel as if I lack that ability.” He clears his throat, gaze still fixed outside.
“I have been told that I can be cold. I feel that more keenly…” His gaze darts to me and away again. “Lately.”
I tilt my head. “Do I make you feel that way?”
“Not…” Another throat clearing. “That is, you do not do or say anything to make me feel coldhearted. However, I do worry that…” His fingers drum his thigh as he sneaks another look at me. “I worry how my demeanor might be perceived.”
“By me?” I sit back. “If anyone thinks you cold, Duncan, it’s because they don’t know you. I understand you will feel something for this girl’s death, something more than annoyance. But it’s okay to also be annoyed. That’s human nature, isn’t it? It’s like…”
I wave at the window. “Carriage accidents. In my time, with cars, accidents slow traffic to a stop. When that happens, the first thing I think of is myself. How long will the delay last? How much will I be inconvenienced? Then I hope it wasn’t a bad accident, that no one was killed, but that comes second.
And if I see it was a bad accident, I’ll feel guilty for first thinking of myself. ”
I look at him. “Does that make sense?”
He nods and offers me the faintest smile.
“It does, thank you. I appreciate…” He hesitates, and then pushes on.
“I appreciate being able to talk to you about these things. Sometimes it is a relief to speak to someone who is not from here, does not share our expectations of how people should be. Other times…” An abrupt shrug as he turns back to the window.
“Other times…” I prompt.
Silence, and I think I’ve lost him, but then he blurts, “I wonder how you see me. How different I must be from men in your time. How alien. In my thoughts. My behavior. Not only me, of course, everyone here, but specifically, as it relates to me.”
He looks over. “I must seem very different. That is all I mean.” His lips quirk, though no trace of humor touches his eyes. “Like when I meet a very elderly person, one whose thoughts and attitudes have not kept pace with the times.”
I resist the urge to joke that he’s not elderly. I also resist any temptation to placate him with overly quick reassurances. He’ll see through that.
“It has taken adjusting,” I say. “But the bigger adjustment has been in me. In the beginning, it felt like walking into a period drama. It was hard to relate to people. Between the clothing and the language and the mannerisms, everyone seemed very different, but once I moved past that, I saw my mistake. People here aren’t all that different.
There’s always a wide range of attitudes, and you learn to deal with that in any time period.
To me, you seem…” I consider and then offer a wry smile.
“Mostly you seem like a guy from my time dressed for a costume party. And even that fades, the longer I’m here, the more ‘normal’ the clothing and the mannerisms become. When I went home, that was jarring.”
He nods, slowly, and then color creeps up his face. “And that was not where this conversation was supposed to lead. I apologize.”
“You’ve obviously wondered about it, and the segue came up.
In short, I don’t see you as ‘alien,’ Duncan, and I haven’t since those very first weeks.
Nor would I think you were ‘cold’ if you admitted that Nellie’s death would be more than a tragedy.
You’re uncomfortable with the spiritualism angle, and we thought we could put that aside.
Find Nellie, prove no one talked to her ghost, move on. ”
He nods. “Thank you for understanding. I am not sure I could have confessed that to anyone else.”
“Isla or Hugh would never judge you,” I say. “But you might not have been comfortable confessing to them.”
“Yes, that is it exactly.” He glances out the window, this time seeming lost in thought for a moment, before saying, “It is odd, is it not? In one breath, I confess to being very comfortable with you, because I do not fear you will think poorly of me. In the next, I am worried what you do think of me.”
“You’re complicated. I wouldn’t like you nearly as much if you weren’t.”
His color definitely rises at that, and I replay my words, but see nothing in them I need to walk back.
After a moment, he says, “If this body is indeed Nellie, I do fear what this means for the investigation. Beyond the tragedy of a young woman’s death.”