Chapter 11
“Iknow it makes no sense, but he was there,” I insisted, certain of it as I paced the library floor, the memory of that encounter vivid, needing to understand the reason he had returned and had then attacked me. For what?
“He doesn’t know me, nor I him,” I tried to understand. “Why was he there?”
“Apparently he does know ye,” Munro replied. “Or someone does. A man such as the one who killed yer friend often works for another. And by the clothes he wears, he is well paid. Her murder was not for the usual reasons one sees in brothels.
“It would seem it has something to do with yerself. Wot else do ye have in yer bag that he might have been after?”
I had set my bag on the library table when we returned. I went to the table and emptied everything out—my notebook with that feather tucked inside after our visit to the taxidermist. But the person who attacked me had no way of knowing that I had found it.
There were also my gloves, the scarf I had purchased at the Grassmarket, my reticule with the little money I had left after paying Elizabeth for the room, and the letters Dory and I had exchanged.
Two years of letters, since I first asked her to make inquiries for me regarding the Foundling Hospital and a woman I vaguely remembered went by the name of Jacobson.
She was determined to find information about the Foundling Hospital for me, and had written of it in the last letter I had received from her several weeks earlier.
She once said at least she knew her father. He was mean and badly mistreated her, then threw her to the streets.
“At least I had that much. Some dinna want to know where they come from. But I think it helps to know. That way if I ever see him again on the street, I’ll throw a brick at him.”
“There could be somethin’ in the letters,” Munro suggested.
I thought the same and had gone through them after I found them in Dory’s secret hiding place. Yet I had to admit I might have missed something in one of them.
“It could help to go back through them.”
I was willing to do whatever it took to learn the reason my friend had been murdered. The thought that it had something to do with me...
“I’ll read them again.”
Munro nodded. “I want to pay a visit to Mr. Campbell and see what he might know about wot happened at the Grassmarket. It is one of the places in what he calls his territory where the merchants and vendors pay fer protection.”
He gave me a long look. There was something different in the expression on his face. A thought that he apparently chose to keep to himself.
“I will let Simon know that you will be staying. You will be safe enough here.”
There was more that he wanted to say. I sensed it.
The same that I had heard a dozen or more times in the past at Sussex Square in London.
“It’s not safe to be out and about for a young chit.”
He did not say it.
Was it possible, I thought, that he no longer considered me a chit, a troublesome baggage who needed a nanny to constantly watch over me as he had once told me rather strongly. Not that it would have worked to tame my ‘wild ways,’ as he called them.
“After what happened at the marketplace...” he added.
I understood, really I did. And it would take me considerable time go to back through the letters while he was gone and I searched for any information that I might have missed.
I nodded.
“Yer word that ye willna take yerself off alone again.”
I wrestled with that.
I was reminded that Mikaela Forsythe had been forced to change, somewhat, her independent habits in the inquiry cases she took with Mr. Brodie. At least, as far as he knew.
“It’s the nature of men,” she once explained to me when I questioned something she had done after Mr. Brodie spoke against it.
“They believe they must protect us.”
“But ye protect yerself well enough,” I pointed out.
“Of course, yet there are times when I will admit I cannot do without him. And there are other things...”
“Wot other things?”
“If you are fortunate, you will discover it someday. Trust me, the arguments and the anger will seem unimportant.”
All well and good, I thought. Still...
“You will be careful,” I said as he turned to leave. He did deserve the caution, considering the stories I had heard about him from Mr. Brodie and Mikaela. And the truth was, I knew that I could not do this by myself.
That sharp gaze narrowed. Not angry. I knew that well enough, but something different.
“I will try not to get myself killed. Ye would have a difficult time explainin’ it to her ladyship.”
With that, he left, the door to the library snapping closed after him.
I turned back to the table and the task at hand.
I had the letters Dory had sent, as well as the ones I had sent to her. When I went back through her letters to me earlier, I was looking for something she might have mentioned about a new gentleman ‘friend’ from the tavern.
Or possibly someone she had encountered and didn’t like or was afraid of. There had been nothing I found then to indicate that she was concerned about anyone.
Still, it was possible that I had missed something, and now, after the attack on myself, I was looking for something different in those letters.
I spread them across the table in the library and began to read back over them again, one-by-one.
It was tedious and time consuming, particularly since the scrawl in her letters was often difficult and almost impossible to read. Still, I continued as the hours of the afternoon crept by and Munro had still not returned.
What might he learn from the man, Campbell, about what had happened at the marketplace? A man who apparently knew everyone and everything that happened in the parts of the city that he and his people protected.
How did Munro know of him? Obviously from past encounters, perhaps in business situations for her ladyship. Or from before?
I looked up. Simon approached from the hallway that adjoined Sir McQuarrie’s office and the front office beyond.
“Mr. Munro said that ye had work ye needed to do. I thought ye might want some coffee,” he said with a smile.
I accepted the invitation and stood to join him.
Simon was friendly and kind. I liked him very much.
He poured both of us a cup of the fresh-brewed coffee.
“There is cream and sugar, as well as honey on the side table. Sir McQuarrie is particularly fond of honey.”
I sat across from him at the desk as we shared our coffee.
“I am sorry about the encounter ye had at the Grassmarket,” he tentatively said. “Mr. Munro spoke of it, and that ye were injured.”
Injured, an interesting choice of words, I thought. I did not consider being struck on the cheek the same as...other things I had experienced.
“He said that ye have a quick mind fer things and a good memory. I know well enough that helps with the enormous amount of reading I do for Sir McQuarrie’s court cases. Ye saw the shelves of books at the library.”
I had.
“He’s written two of them,” he added.
“Some of the others are in Latin,” I observed.
“Ye know Latin?” His eyes widened with more than a little surprise. “I would not have thought...” He didn’t say the rest.
“For a woman?” I finished the thought.
“I didna mean any disrespect, Miss Montgomery. It’s just that it’s not a common thing, particularly since women are not allowed to read the law.”
“They read the law,” I replied. “And study at the universities. It’s just that they are not allowed to it in the courtroom. That will change.”
He grinned. “Ye would make a fine lawyer. Mr. Munro has said that ye would argue the sky is blue when it’s pouring rain over the city. And everyone would believe ye.”
And that particular person, a Scot, never argued just to argue?
“If you should ever wish to assist my search for past legal cases, I would greatly appreciate it. I studied Latin as well at University, however...” He shook his head.
“I was not the head of my class when it came to my Latin studies. It was more an exercise, like wrestling an elephant in a room.”
I burst out laughing at the image that brought.
“Is it something I said, miss?”
When I was finally able to draw a deep breath again, I shook my head.
“I have seen elephants in the wild. You could not have won that contest.”
He laughed, then became quite serious.
“I am sorry about yer friend.”
“You didn’t know her,” I replied, somewhat surprised. Most people had little regard for a whore.
“No, I did not. However, if she was a friend of yers...it speaks well of her and yer friendship.” He blushed slightly. “Well, I must continue or Sir McQuarrie will be put off if I have not completed my work.”
I had considerable work yet to do as well. I thanked him for the coffee, and the compliment. Then returned to the library to continue reading those letters.
It was sad, and yet there were brief comments, and even a curse, that made me smile as I read those letters from Dory once more.
“The people who come into our lives, with exceptions, of course, are the gifts we’re given,” Lady Antonia had once told me.
“As difficult as it has been at times, I cannot imagine my life without Mikaela and Lenore, and now yourself. I shall be able to sail off in my longboat when the time comes, knowing that I was the most fortunate person. What an adventure it has been.”
I was fortunate to have had Dory for a friend when there was no one.
I added the latest letter that I had read over twice, to the stack of those I had read earlier and opened the next, one that I had received just weeks before I returned.
It was brief, like the others, that scrawl almost impossible to read. There appeared to be nothing in this one as well as I read it again.
It mentioned that she had been unable to learn anything about a person named Jacobson, from before we met on the street. She mentioned Meggy Adams, who had now also been murdered
“The nebby old hag.”
I should have felt some small shred of sadness for the old woman, but did not.
I had no way of knowing yet how—or even if—she was involved in Dory’s death. Still there was that suspicion.