Chapter 12 #2
“Ye must know, Miss Montgomery, that I have never had such a fine research assistant before.
My last associate, who worked for Sir McQuarrie, was a somewhat difficult older woman, sour-faced and knew more than anyone else about the law if you asked her—Miss Agnes Mortescue.
She must have been close to sixty and reeked of mothballs.
“She has worked at Parliament Square for decades and assists as needed. Sir McQuarrie was most grateful when I became part of the office, that I did not smell of naphtha.”
Most likely a most congenial change as well, I thought, as we set to work.
It was well into the evening when we heard a sound at the front entrance to the office.
Simon went to see who might be calling on Sir McQuarrie that late in the day and returned with Munro, along with a scrawny companion who was hardly more than skin and bones, with clothes that hung on him like cast-offs from the rag-picker.
Kip looked up at me with a hesitant, grubby expression. I had to admit that our last encounter was somewhat unusual.
“Miss?” He was tentative.
“The lad has information that could be helpful,” Munro explained.
“You know the boy?” Simon inquired of me, somewhat surprised by the expression on his face.
I nodded. “We have met before.”
“Ye did say ye would pay me,” Kip spoke up then, an obvious reminder for Munro.
“I ain’t had nothing to eat since day before and I could use the coin at the tavern next street over.”
Bemused by the conversation, Simon commented there might be something left from Sir McQuarrie’s earlier supper. It was not unusual, as he often worked well into the evening.
“Sit,” Munro told the boy. “Tell Miss Montgomery wot ye told me.”
Kip glanced at me a little uncertainly, not unwarranted, I supposed, considering our last encounter.
“If ye promise not to strike me as ye did the man at the market.”
I caught Munro’s surprised expression. I had not shared everything of that encounter with him.
“Aye.”
That seemed to satisfy the lad, although he continued to watch me with a cautious expression.
It seemed that Mr. Campbell had been less than welcoming when Munro arrived to speak with him earlier regarding any information he might have learned about the man who had attacked me at the Grassmarket.
Campbell insisted that he was unable to learn anything about the man, in spite of the fact that the marketplace was part of his territory. I realized it was verra likely that one of his men had been there that day. Yet he had no information about the man who attacked me.
Munro hadn’t believed him, but it was clear he would learn nothing from Campbell. It was as he was leaving that he had encountered Kip, who often slept at the warehouse when the weather turned.
“Me an’ the rats,” he explained with a mouthful of food Simon had found and brought to the library.
“The name the man is known by,” Munro reminded Kip.
“He goes by the name of Mr. Elias,” Kip replied. “I heard Mr. Campbell say he was the one wot killed the whore at Fleshmarket Close,” he added around another mouthful of food.
And the same person who had attacked me at the Grassmarket.
“Mr. Campbell knows him. He said the man was the sort others paid to take care of problems.”
From what Kip told us, the man worked for someone else.
What problem could that possibly be? The inquiries that I had asked Dory to make? Or was it some other reason?
It was not uncommon for those who earned a living any way they could to end badly. I had heard stories among the women at The Church. It was not unusual for a prostitute to be found dead on the street or in one of the tenement flats across the city.
But how to find this Elias person?
“There’s a whore he spends time with,” Kip announced, as easily as if discussing the weather, as he finished the food on his plate. He yawned.
“She goes by the name of Big Kate and works in a pub Campbell owns near the Grassmarket.”
“I’ll make inquiries,” Munro commented. “She shouldn’t be difficult to find, and perhaps the man with her.”
It was a sad and familiar situation, a child who knew those places, and slept in a warehouse when the weather turned.
“Ye seem to have learned a good amount more than we did this evening,” Simon commented.
Munro looked at me sharply. “Ye left? After I told ye it was best to stay here?”
“She was not alone, Mr. Munro. I accompanied her, though we discovered something sad about the Jacobson woman. The tenement where she lived burnt to the ground. And accordin’ to the man we encountered, the woman died in the fire.”
I had previously shared that name with him in a somewhat heated conversation. One of many where he was determined that I was to return to London, and I was equally determined to remain.
“The name ye remembered from before?”
“She lived at an address that Dory had discovered.”
I didn’t reveal how I learned it, I still didn’t understand that myself. All I knew was that a woman with the name that I remembered from my childhood was now dead, making it impossible for me to speak with her.
That left only the gold medallion I had somehow acquired and kept all the years since, that might provide a clue about my childhood and the family I had lost.
“What is to be done now with the grubby little street rat?” Simon inquired with a glance at Kip. “Sir McQuarrie will not take well to havin’ him here,” he continued. “Though he does give a considerable amount every year to the charities. We cannot simply turn him back out onto the street.”
The grubby little street rat—an appropriate description—was very nearly asleep and about to fall face-first into his plate.
Simon ‘saved’ him, then straightened him once more in the chair. Not a muscle stirred as Kip began to lightly snore.
No charity house would be available to take him this time of the night, as I knew only too well, and from my experience with the lad, I doubted he would remain.
He would simply run away as I had years before. And still, I thought, remembering too well cold nights I had spent huddled in some dark corner with only the crows that picked at the garbage and trash all about me.
“He will come with me.” I refused to see him turned out onto the street. Yet there was no denying an uneasy feeling as we left Sir McQuarrie’s office.
I felt something, a faint movement of air through the fog and glanced up at the roof-tops at the Square. It was impossible to see anything as mist wrapped around the lamp posts. Yet, there was something...
I had no way of knowing wot Elizabeth’s reaction might be to a another ‘guest’ on her doorstep, even if it was just for the night.
“Saints preserve us!” she exclaimed as Munro escorted me back to Albany Street and carried Kip into her flat.
“Wot a grubby baggage, ye have there. Is there a child under all the grime and filth?”
“There was no other place to bring him this time of the night,” I replied, prepared to leave if she insisted on banning Kip from the house.
“It’s only for the night, but I should warn that he is an accomplished thief. I understand if ye choose not to have him stay over.”
She looked at me with that same curiosity as before, and then the boy, who now stood before her, somewhat groggy from sleep and possibly the first decent meal in a very long time.
“A cast-off,” she replied. “So many, as my husband experienced in his time with the police.” She smiled. “And not the first brought home for a meal and a place that was safe to lay the head. He is welcome. And Mr. Munro as well,” she added.
“I have plenty of blankets.”
He declined her invitation. His gaze met mine.
“I thank ye kindly, but there is someone I hope to find tonight.”
I knew his meaning after the information Kip had provided. He intended to find a woman named Big Kate and possibly the man Elias.
“Wait!”
I followed him to the door as Elizabeth went to make a bed on the settee in the parlour for Kip.
The man who had killed Dory and very likely Meggy Adams, then attacked me, was dangerous.
“You will be careful? This man, Mr. Elias...” The rest of it went unspoken simply because I had no idea wot to say.
Munro had lived on the streets and knew them well, not unlike the man he was determined to find. Yet...
“Are ye worrit?”
“The man is dangerous,” I replied when he obviously found something amusing.
“He’s murdered two people, and might have killed Kip at the Grassmarket, if...”
“If ye hadna stopped him and been injured for it?”
The man could be so frustrating.
“He doesna care who his next victim will be. Ye heard yerself wot Kip told us.”
He reached out and touched my bruised cheek.
“Then ye might speak to yer friends, to see wot might be done about the man? Perhaps run over by a carter or a tram?” he suggested, the amusement still there.
Friends? Wot was he talking about?
“The crows that seem to follow ye about. ’Tis said they bring messages to those who understand them. Ye might persuade them to help me find the man.”
“Munro...!” This was a new side to him, to make light of something dangerous, reckless some would say.
“If I have not returned by morning,” he added, “then the thieves will be picking at me bones.”
This side of him, how easily he made light of his own death, left a strange hollow feeling deep inside. And then he was gone.
I crossed the parlour and watched from the window as he disappeared into the night as easily as the ‘thieves’ he had spoken of.
I preferred when he glared and shouted at me.