Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
We meet up with Gray to walk home. Isla isn’t back yet, so we talk for a bit before heading off to bed.
Then the next morning, Gray and I are up and off before Isla rises.
It’s not that we leave early—it’s past eight—but evidently, she had a late night, and I will refrain from any grade-school snickering when I see her.
We have an appointment to speak to Davina at nine.
She wants daily updates, delivered before her day gets busy.
She also, apparently, wants breakfast. Gray offers to find a place for us, and she squawks at that, as if he’s going to shortchange her.
Then he takes us up to High Street, to a section that’s already the tourist trap it will be in my day.
There, he guides us to a tearoom I’ve visited with Isla.
“Fancy, fancy,” Davina mutters under her breath, acting very unimpressed even as she exchanges dirty gloves for a cleaner pair from her pocket.
“Would you like to go elsewhere?” Gray asks mildly.
“This will do.” She lifts her chin and nods at the hostess.
The hostess looks Davina over in the exact way the bouncer at the pub had looked us over yesterday. Her mouth opens, ready to say she’s sorry, but they have no tables available. Then Gray clears his throat.
The hostess’s gaze shoots to us, and I can see the moment of confusion—are we with Davina or trying to get past her. I lean in and speak to Davina, smiling and touching her arm, making it clear that we’re together.
“A table, if you please,” Gray says. “I believe there are several private ones.” He passes the hostess a coin. “If one of those is available, that would be lovely. Our guest prefers her privacy.”
Another look as the penny drops. Clearly, Gray and I are do-gooders, treating a destitute woman to a fancy breakfast, probably so we can lecture her on the evils of drink.
The irony of that isn’t lost on me. It’s easy to blame the blight of the poor on alcohol, when the root problem is the same as it will be in my day.
If you don’t have money, you don’t have what it takes to get money—an education, childcare, decent clothing, a permanent address.
If this hostess would refuse Davina admittance based on her appearance, she sure as hell wouldn’t give her a job.
“I am sure we can find you a private table,” the hostess says, with a touch of relief. Thank goodness she can hide Davina from their other patrons.
The teahouse is bustling for tourist season. It has a few small rooms for meetings, one of which I dined in with Isla when she told me I no longer had a job with her, spurring me to break down and confessed my time-travel truth. Probably good that we had a private room for that.
The hostess shows Gray to a tiny, curtained room that seems more designed for courting couples. She brings an extra chair, and we squeeze in at the small table.
After we’ve ordered—tea and scones for Gray and me, a full breakfast for Davina—I update her on the case.
“You’ve learned nothing,” she says when I’m finished.
“We have established the time of Bobby’s disappearance,” I say. “We have made contact with both watchmen, who are inclined to speak to us and answer any further questions. We have a lead on someone who may have taken Bobby.”
“According to children,” she says. “Children who didn’t report anything wrong before the dog disappeared.
Then all of a sudden, they remember some mysterious fellow lurking about.
” She leans back in her chair. “I will bet that they remember no such thing. It’s that bloody fool, Annie.
” She taps her temple. “Soft in the head, that one. Used to work in the factories. Had a husband and children and a good home. But she fell into the bottle and never cared to climb back up. Husband threw her out. Children won’t see her.
Weak, that’s what she is. Weak and addled. ”
I clamp my jaw tight and say nothing. From what I understand, Davina never drank.
I suspect that means there’s heavy drinking in her family, and she saw things that made her abstain.
That’s great for her, but it doesn’t make her better than Annie.
Who knows why Annie started to drink? Abusive husband.
Physically punishing factory work. Or just general boredom and disappointment with life.
I very highly doubt, though, that Annie “never cared” to crawl back out of the bottle. I cannot imagine willingly giving up your children and your home to drink on the streets. From what I saw in Vancouver, that’s not a choice—it’s addiction.
“Maybe so,” I say. “However, it’s the children who say they saw—”
“The children said no such thing. It’s Annie, making up stories.
Then she will warn the children that you will ask, and so they will make up their own story, and you will give them a few ha’pence for it.
Soft-hearted Annie helping the wee bairns.
Wee bairns who’d rob her blind if they had the chance.
” She sniffs. “Those raggedy children know not to come near me, I tell you.”
“You said you bet that is the case? That Annie made it up to earn the children some money?”
“Yes.”
I fish in my pockets and pull out a half crown. “You’re on.”
“What? No. I never said—”
“You said you’d bet on it.”
She waves away my coin as breakfast arrives.
Then she digs in as Gray and I sip our tea.
He’s quiet, as he often is when I interview women.
We aren’t in a time where men can’t address unmarried and unrelated women—and that has never applied to working- and lower-class women—but like many men of his time, he is less comfortable speaking to women.
Add in a general reticence to speaking at all, and I can carry the conversation without worrying that I’ve left him out.
If he has something to say, he’ll say it.
“We will speak to the children,” I say. “And we will assess their story. As for your complaint that we have found nothing, we have only been on the case a half day. A dog has vanished without a trace. All we can do is speak to people until someone reports having seen something.”
She grumbles and cuts into a slice of baked ham. “While I am losing money every moment that dog is missing.”
“Which you would have been regardless of whether you hired us. We are not costing you anything.”
More grumbling as she chews the ham.
“Moreover,” I say, “Dr. Gray has now paid for your supper and your breakfast, and you provided next to no information to help launch our investigation. Perhaps Annie is not the one trying to scam us.”
“To what?”
Her expression tells me “scam” isn’t a word yet. “Take advantage of us.”
She straightens. “I would not.”
“You sold Catriona out to a man who tried to kill her.” Gray’s voice is so soft, one might think he didn’t intend for us to hear him. But Davina knows better and stiffens, her gaze darting his way.
“That was a mistake,” she says. “I told you that I had no way of knowing what he would do.”
“But you just said that you would not take advantage of Mallory,” Gray says.
“I was pointing out that you have, in the past, and so we must be on guard for that. I do not mind buying your supper and breakfast. I will mind if you do not give Mallory what she was promised. I would suggest you begin now.”
Davina blanches. Part of her complaint about us “finding nothing” was a preemptive strike against this.
She says I haven’t found anything useful, and then I’ll ask for information on Catriona, and she’ll point back to the aforementioned lack of progress.
I wasn’t going to press her for details yet, but I’m quietly pleased that Gray has done it for me.
“How did you meet Catriona Mitchell?” he asks.
Silence.
Gray says nothing. He just sits there, waiting, his gaze heavy on Davina until she finally says, “I caught her going through the pockets of a fellow passed out drunk. She had no idea what she was doing, and he was a heartbeat from waking up and catching her. I finished the job and took my share, and she complained. So I smacked her and told her she was lucky I did not take it all. She flew at me. Said no one was going to rob her and hit her like that. She got in a few good blows before the man woke up. Then . . .” Davina shakes her head.
“It happened in the blink of an eye. One moment, she’s a snarling wildcat, screeching at me about hitting her, and the next, she’s a sobbing little girl, telling the drunkard that she caught me trying to rob him.
One look at her, and you can imagine which of us he believed. ”
Another shake of her head as she sips her tea.
“If I weren’t such a Christian woman, I would have tracked her down and made her pay for that.
Instead, after I escaped the lout, I found her and offered to teach her how to live out here.
” She looks at Gray. “I have a heart. I took that girl in, and how did she repay me? Betrayal after betrayal.”
“What exactly did she do to you?” he asks.
Her gaze flicks my way, and her lips tighten. “This and that. The point is that she could not be trusted.”
Yeah, I’m pretty sure neither of them could be trusted. Catriona used Davina to get what she wanted, and Davina did the same to her.
Davina didn’t take Catriona under her wing out of the goodness of her heart.
She saw what Catriona could do—that quicksilver change from street fighter to sweet schoolgirl—and she saw someone useful.
Catriona accepted her tutelage and paid her price, and a toxic symbiotic relationship was born, the two of them allies and rivals at the same time, each constantly knocking the other down when they feared the balance of power was tipping.
Davina looks at Gray. “She has fooled you as thoroughly as she did that old drunkard. You sit here and talk as if Catriona is not right beside you, as if I am speaking of a stranger. She is a clever little actor. I always said she should have been on the stage. She fooled your sister into hiring her, and now she fools you into treating her like a proper lady, buying her pretty clothing and acting like you’ve found treasure in the muck. ”
“You fear Mallory is plotting to betray me,” he says.
She laughs. “I do not ‘fear’ it. I know it. People don’t lose their memories like that. Perhaps, if they are deep in their cups, they forget the last day, but not their entire lives.”
“It is called ‘amnesia,’” he says. “Caused by a blow to the head. The afflicted retain memories for how to do things, such as walk and talk, but lose their personal memories. Would you like me to bring you medical journal articles on the subject?”
She sniffs. “Articles written by fancy doctors like you, who’ve been fooled by clever little lasses like her.”
“Perhaps,” he says, casually spreading a thick layer of jam on his scone.
“I did not know Catriona well. I suppose you would say that this seems like her? Mallory’s face looks like her, and her voice sounds like her, but the rest?
How she talks? Her words? Her manner of speaking, of moving, of acting, of thinking? That is all Catriona to you, yes?”
Davina’s flush says he’s made his point.
“Whether Mallory is tricking me is not your concern, ma’am,” he says, adding more jam. “I appreciate the warning. If the only price she asks, though, is this information, then I do not see how it harms you to give it.”
“She’s doing it for your sake,” Davina grumbles. “To shore up her story.”
“Then I applaud her on the complexity of her scheme,” he says. “In the meantime, as she is a very adept assistant, I am happy to enjoy her assistance until she betrays me.”
“The only thing that’s going to betray you is your teeth,” I say, nodding at the ridiculous amount of jam on his scone.
He meets my eyes, puts the scone to his lips, and takes a huge bite, somehow managing not to smear a drop of jam. I roll my eyes.
I look back at Davina. “The Catriona you met. How old was she?”
“Fourteen.”
I try not to flinch. “I take it she had not been on her own for long.”
“A few weeks, she said. Family kicked her out.” Davina takes a bite of bread. “I cannot imagine why. Such a sweet thing.” Sarcasm rolls off the words.
“Do you know why?” I say.
She shrugs. “I know what she told me.”
“Which is . . .”
A slow Cheshire grin. “A story for another day. And if you are not going to eat that scone, kitty-cat . . .”
I pick it up and then drop it onto Gray’s plate, winning a smile from him that makes Davina’s scowl even better.