Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
We’re in the garden with Bobby. Gray let Roy go. Oh, he won’t get away with what he did, but Gray isn’t going to bother making a citizen’s arrest when McCreadie knows where to find the young man.
Earlier, McCreadie had been unclear on the legality of arresting someone for “stealing” a stray dog.
Confining Bobby in poor conditions would be illegal in my world, but not here.
Grabbing a child, though? Taking her and threatening her with intent—as Dorrit says—to beat her senseless? That’s illegal in any time.
McCreadie can handle that. This is the part that concerns me—Dorrit and Bobby’s story. We find the dog where we left him, sunning himself on that stoop. On the way there, I stop at a butcher’s, where I buy meat and a meaty bone.
Gray says nothing about the purchase. I’m sure he knows what I’m planning.
The man knows me the way few people in my life ever have, and he understands that, however practical I might appear, I am a hopeless romantic at heart.
Including when it comes to girl-meets-dog stories.
I want this to work out, for both of them, and if I’m fixing the odds, so be it.
I want the happy ending.
I give Dorrit the meat and the bone. Then I tell her to feed them to Bobby while he’s tied, and then, once he’s occupied, untie him.
She does that, and he happily continues eating until the meat is gone.
Then he laps some of the clean water she’s brought, and he accepts her petting and gives her a lick and lets her snuggle him.
When she finally moves back to sit on the stoop, he picks up the bone and trots off out of the courtyard.
We follow, in hopes he might just be hiding the bone for later. He’s not. He takes it down one street and then another, until he reaches Candlemaker Row. He turns into Greyfriars, heads straight to John Gray’s grave, and happily flops down to start gnawing the bone.
Dorrit stands there, watching him, her eyes filling.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper as I bend beside her.
She only nods, her gaze on the old dog.
“There’s a thing my grandmother used to say,” I murmur. “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t . . .” I rub her shoulder. “It wasn’t meant to be.”
Her breath hitches. “I only wanted to help.”
“I know. And you did. You rescued him, and you gave him a place to hide until that man was gone. Then you fed him and gave him a bone.” I meet her eyes. “He won’t forget that. You aren’t his owner, but you are his friend.”
Her body convulses in a silent sob, and she throws herself into my arms. That catches me off guard, but only for a moment, before I hug her tight. Then I look up to see Gray watching us, his expression unreadable. He catches my gaze and startles. Then he steps back, leaving us to our moment.
After that, Gray and I track down Davina.
I want to finish this with her before she sees Bobby back in his place and tries to claim he returned on his own.
Technically, he did, and that might be the loophole she uses to avoid my payment.
With someone like Davina, information is power and leverage, and since it’s the only thing I want from her, I need to get this done.
We find her in that pub where she’d taken us. The guy at the door doesn’t even try to stop us this time. He just puts out his hand for his bribe, and in we go. When we spot Davina having a tea and pie in the corner, Gray motions for me to wait.
“Do you wish to have this conversation alone?” he asks. “I would like to stay nearby, in case of trouble, but I know this is a private matter.”
Is it? I don’t know. It’s such a strange situation.
If Davina were really telling me my past, that would be private.
But it’s not my past. It’s Catriona’s. Yes, I’m in her body, but I’ve never met her.
So why do I care? Because while most everything I’ve heard paints the picture of a terrible person—and possibly a sociopath—the longer I am in this body, the more I can’t help but feel some inkling of sympathy for the previous resident.
I know what it’s like to look like Catriona.
I know how she’s treated and dismissed, and I suspect she’d been smart enough for that to sting.
Her dyslexia and illiteracy only made her seem even more like a pretty face with nothing behind it.
That will never excuse what she did to Isla, taking advantage of her kindness.
Not what she did to Constable Findlay, romancing him to sell his police information.
Not what she did to Gray, holding onto an intimate letter for blackmail.
And nothing will excuse her bullying of Alice.
But Simon liked her, and when a seemingly terrible person is grieved by a good one, I cannot help but wonder what I’m missing.
Catriona was too many contradictions for me to ignore.
An enigma I need to solve. A beautiful girl hell-bent on surviving by doing anything except the obvious solution of the sex trade.
A girl who betrayed everyone except her dearest friend, even when his homosexuality had made her uneasy.
A girl who seems middle class but ended up in the slums, as vicious as any rat.
What happened to you, Catriona? What set you on this path?
The answer is probably in her brain. Sociopathy.
Narcissism. Some faulty wiring that had her family turning her out into the streets.
But even that would be an answer, and a small tragedy.
From police work, I know how hard mental illness can be on the family, but it is, in its way, like turning someone out because a bad leg means they can’t work.
Of course, in this time period, that happens, too.
And I suppose, it happens in my world, some people unable to cope with a special-needs child.
So I want to understand. Whatever the answer is.
Is that answer something private? It shouldn’t be, but . . .
“Would you?” I say finally to Gray. “I’ll tell you later. I just . . . This feels . . .”
He squeezes my elbow. “I understand. I will be right here, in case she refuses to speak to you.”
“Okay, but don’t offer her money. Please. Once you start, she’ll see an automatic bank teller she can access at any time.”
“Automatic bank teller . . .”
“Incredibly convenient. Or they used to be, when people still paid for things in cash instead of just tapping their bank card.”
He shakes his hand. “I do not even want to know how that works. But I understand your meaning. I will not offer money. You speak to her, then, and I will be over here, enjoying a pint of ale.”
“Warm ale. In my world, it’s ice-cold at this time of year. That I would drink.”
Another headshake, and I leave him to order his warm beer.
When I tell Davina about the resolution of the case, I tweak it a little.
Oh, I totally throw Roy under the bus. Davina may be preying on tourists entranced by a famous little dog, but at least she didn’t steal the dog to do it.
And intending to beat Dorrit for what she did?
Unconscionable. He had an opportunity to steal Bobby back and instead chose to kidnap and “punish” the little girl who took him.
It’s the Dorrit part that I finesse. Dorrit rescued Bobby and put him in a courtyard for safekeeping until she could speak to us, because she certainly wasn’t going to return him for Roy to dognap him again.
“Too easy,” Davina mutters. “The children told you who took the dog, and that was the person who took the dog.”
I could point out that Roy no longer had Bobby, and that we’d needed to track down Roy ourselves, but I only say, “You don’t pay a detective based on the difficulty of the case.
If it turns out to be complicated, they may ask for more money to cover their time, but you cannot deduct from their pay if they solve it with ease.
” I wave at the barmaid. “That would be like docking her pay because she is skilled and efficient.”
“Still doesn’t seem right,” Davina grumbles.
“But it is. So you owe me Catriona’s story.”
A canny glint sparks in her eyes. “Who says she told me her story?”
“You did, and you offered it, and if you refuse to pay up, Dr. Gray will tell the watchmen what you are up to. After all, John Gray was his relative, and if you are picking the pockets of people at his grave, that is his concern. Also, as an undertaker, he has contacts in kirkyards that go far higher than the watchmen.”
“I wasn’t picking any pockets. I was offering tours.”
“Tell me what I need to know, and we can both stop this posturing. Be aware, too, that I will check out whatever story you give, seeing as how I work with a police detective. If you lie, the same threat applies.”
“Me? What if Catriona lied?”
“She didn’t, because you would have investigated yourself to see if there was any leverage to be gained there. Now, who is Catriona Mitchell?”
She pulls back, chewing over her response, and I brace for her to say I’m Catriona Mitchell and keep delaying that way. Instead, she says, “I can only tell you what she told me. I checked a few things, yes, but it is her story.”
“That’s all I want. Her story.”
She takes a sip of tea before starting. “Her mother was a silly twit of a girl who let some dandy put a babe in her belly, back when she was a parlormaid.”
I try not to blanch. Parlormaids like Alice are the youngest of the female household staff. “How old?”
Davina shrugs. “Thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Bloody hell.”
A snort. “Don’t waste your tears on girls like that. That is the price they pay for lifting their skirts to the first man who asks.”