Chapter 1
FLESHMARKET CLOSE, EDINBURGH
“Dory Brown?” the woman who had answered the door to the ground-floor flat at the top of what seemed those endless steps of the Close repeated as she gathered her worn shawl more tightly about her shoulders.
“That be the name she uses, but didna see her come in last night after her shift at the tavern. Not unusual, when she has business elsewhere, if ye get my meanin’.
“And yer a friend?” she continued with a suspicious glare. “Yer not wot I usually see in this part of the Old Town. Ye have a fine way of talkin’. I wouldna have guessed that Dory knew anyone so proper.”
The influence of the past several years, I realized.
“I’ve had a post from her,” I explained. “I’m to meet her here.”
I had walked from Waverly Station to save the cab fare. It was not far, yet the distance between those travellers who had arrived and those I found on the street in the Old Town was glaring. And the dress and coat I wore only made that more obvious.
“A post ye say?” the woman hooted with laughter. “Didna know she knew how to write, but she’s always been good with her numbers. Them wot earn their pay on their backsides learn their numbers quick so’s they don’t get cheated.”
I ignored the comment and inquired about the location of her flat.
There was that stare again.
“First one at the top of stairs.” She eventually jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “If she’s there, be sure to tell her that I’m expectin’ the rents.” She shook her head.
“Probably sleepin’ late before her shift at the tavern down the way. A busy night means she’ll be able to pay the rent.”
The tenement in the Close was like those I remembered from years before, with run-down flats occupied by those who worked in the Close—a cobbler, the seamstress shop, or a bake shop, with taverns tucked between the High Street and Market Square.
And that oldest profession, as the old woman cackled, in order to pay the rents.
Even though it had been several years since I left, and with a great many changes, there were things that were still there just beneath the surface from when I had lived at The Church.
The familiar sound of heavy footsteps on a wood floor, the unmistakable smell of food I had delivered on serving trays to the ladies and their ‘callers,’ and the other unmistakable sounds that came from behind closed doors.
I found Dory’s flat on the second floor and knocked at the door. When there was no answer, I tried the latch. The door was not bolted from the inside and slowly swung open, the room darkened and silent, with a stagnant odor of something...
I called out, and again there was no answer as I stepped inside. It was like stepping into the past, when I was often forced to search the coat of a customer thrown to the floor and empty the man’s pockets of any remaining coin. My early life as a pickpocket.
Then, as now, there was no electric. The only light came from the window and the faint flickering of light from a streetlamp on the High Street beyond. It spilled through the smudged panes of the window and across a small table. It appeared that Dory was not there.
If she did not have the rent money, as the old woman said, she might very well have chosen to spend the night some other place to avoid the crone.
The woman had said that Dory also worked at a nearby tavern. I might be able to find her there.
As I turned to leave, I caught a faint movement on the floor near an alcove where a curtain was pulled across the opening. Then another movement, quick as a flash and familiar from those years when I was at the Foundling Hospital and then again at The Church.
I approached the alcove and saw it again, as well as the momentary gleam of beady eyes in the thin light. It was a rat!
And not just one. I pushed the curtain aside, then took a stunned step back at the horrible sight of a half dozen more rats fleeing into the shadows of the alcove and the wall.
I had found Dory.
She lay on the floor beside the bed where she had fallen, mouth agape, sightless eyes staring up at me, her skin darkened a purplish-red colour on her hands and face. And in the mark about her throat. Then there were the bloodied places where the rats had gathered.
A single rat had returned and poked out from under the edge of the bed, bolder than the others as it took several steps toward Dory’s body.
“Get on with ye!” I kicked it away, fully aware that it made no difference. Not now. Still...
I took several deep breaths of that stagnant air in the room.
It was not the first time I had seen a dead body. It had not been unusual at the Foundling Hospital when I was very young, as sickness spread through the common rooms, small bodies draped with cloths before they were taken away.
Nor was it unusual at The Church, a customer who died in the middle of his evenin’, naked as the day he was born, body still twitching. Nor was it rare in the few inquiry cases I had assisted in with Mikaela and Mr. Brodie.
Yet none of those had been someone I knew...a friend who had protected me from those at The Church, when one of the ladies took on an attitude as I got older, or more than one man made the mistake of thinkin’ I worked on my back, the dolt willing to pay extra coin for my ‘company.’
Dory had been there like a fierce protector, standing between them and myself.
“It’s not fer ye!” she told me fiercely, more than once. “It’s too late for the rest of us, but not fer ye. Yer intelligent and quick to remember things, and there’s something about ye... Save the coin ye get from the others. Ye need to get away from this!”
There had been more than one conversation very much the same. She reminded me from time to time to save the coin I was paid.
“When the time comes...” she often said, “ye’ll know, and I’ll help any way I can.”
That time had come, just as she said it would, and I had left.
But there was always that connection, when she found a new place to work, a place to live even though it was in the Close.
And then when I asked her to make inquiries with those she knew about myself when I had arrived at The Church after running away from the Foundling Hospital.
Did any of the other ladies remember anything I said? The name I was born with? Any other names?
She had made those inquiries. I had paid her, funds sent by Sir Laughton to someone he knew in Edinburgh. Sir Alastair McQuarrie.
She had refused to accept any money at first, but then something changed.
“It’s the bloody fevers, makes it difficult to get around,” she had eventually confessed.
After learning that, I made certain a monthly stipend was sent to her from money I had saved, along with the allowance Lady Montgomery insisted I have.
She had explained that every young woman needed money of her own so that she might learn how best to manage it. Quite remarkable for a woman of her time.
I smiled as I remembered her answer to a comment I made at the time.
“Not at all, dear. I am allowed to spend my fortune in any way that I choose. After all, I am wealthier than the Queen. However, I do not remind her of that. She might very well ask for a loan.”
Dory had been most appreciative of the funds I had sent to her.
“I might be able to move up to a townhouse!” she had written in one of her last letters with her usual humour. “That might provide a better grade of men! I’d be livin’ high then.”
“Oh, Dory,” I whispered as I knelt beside her body, the floor sticky with blood. I touched her cheek, my fingers curling against the cold I found there as she stared back at me with sightless eyes.
“Who did this to ye?”
A customer she’d brought back to the flat with her? Someone who had simply followed her from the pub? Or someone else? Someone she knew? A previous customer?
I felt a dull ache deep inside. She had been a true friend.
“I promise,” I told her, even though I knew well enough that she could not hear me. “I’ll find who did this!” I vowed as the tears came.
A sound at the window with the dull light from the lamp post filtering through.
A crow was there on the other side of the glass, perched on the ledge and staring back at me. It made a mawkish sound, then disappeared in a frantic flutter of wings and was gone.
I felt it then, that faint touch on my shoulder, as if someone stood just there, along with a faint warning that moved across my skin.
That inner voice Mikaela often spoke of? Intuition? A warning?
The crow’s wings beat against the glass, and then a man’s voice spoke, thick with authority.
“Well, well. Wot have we here?”
I took a deep breath, then slowly turned around.
The telephone rang on the desk across from where I sat in a holding room the past three hours. As a ‘guest’ at the Edinburgh Police station, as it was called, after discovering Dory dead in that one-room flat.
“Sir Alastair McQuarrie?” the constable at the desk had remarked with a doubtful expression over the name I provided when I first arrived, given to me by Sir Laughton, in London.
“If you should need assistance in any way,” he had said at the time, mentioning the man he had attended university with, and who had represented mutual clients in the years since.
“It’s always good to know someone who might be helpful.”
He had also provided a letter of introduction that explained my presence in Edinburgh. It did appear that could be useful now.
I had been in Edinburgh only a few hours, discovered my friend dead, and was now being held as a ‘person of interest’ to answer questions as it was explained regarding Dory’s murder.
The door of the room with a desk and two chairs, one that I presently occupied, now opened.
A man in a plain suit of clothes entered with a folder in hand, then closed the door behind him.
“Miss Lily Montgomery,” he said as he laid the folder on the desk, then took the chair across from me.
“I apologize to have kept you waiting. I only just returned.”