Chapter 3 #2
It was a reminder that I hadn’t eaten all day, along with other things, as I rehearsed my request to visit the morgue. Surely there would be no objection, I thought as the clerk returned with that engaging smile.
“He has asked that you join them, Miss Montgomery.” He waited to escort me as before.
Them?
I slowly nodded and then followed him, hesitant at whom he might be meeting with.
Inspector Landry? It was a possibility. I thought of that hired coach that I had seen.
Perhaps there was some news about the investigation into Dory’s murder.
I quickened my steps.
The clerk knocked lightly at the door, then opened it and stepped aside for me to enter.
“Sir McQuarrie,” I greeted him somewhat brusquely without waiting for his acknowledgement.
“Has there been some word about Dory Brown’s murder?” I inquired.
He rose from behind his desk. “Sadly, not as yet,” he replied. As he rounded the desk through the long shadows in the office, another figure I had not seen rose from a side chair and stepped into the narrow beam of light that fell across the carpet from the desk lamp.
“I believe ye are acquainted,” Sir McQuarrie said by way of introduction as I stared at the tall, dark-haired man in a black coat over black trousers, his blue gaze like ice above a familiar frown of disapproval.
“Miss Montgomery,” he finally acknowledged.
It took a moment to recover from the shock of seeing him there.
“What are you doin’ here!”
“I’ve come to take ye back to London,” Mr. Munro replied, his manner as cold as that blue gaze, as if I was nothing more than a package that had gone astray and now needed to be delivered.
Suddenly thrown into a situation I had not anticipated, I bluntly replied, “The devil ye will!”
The expression at Sir McQuarrie’s face was carefully guarded, then a sound as he cleared his throat.
“I will leave ye to discuss the matter,” he said then left.
As far as I was concerned there was nothing to discuss. I turned to leave as well.
“Sir McQuarrie has spoken of the situation ye found upon arriving,” Munro explained.
A situation?
Dory’s murder was now nothing more than a situation? I refused to turn back around.
“It is none of yer concern!” I informed him.
I wasna a child beholden to someone to take care of me or make decisions for me. I had made careful plans to return to Edinburgh. While the reason had now changed, I was not about to go back until the person responsible for the murder of my friend was found and made to account for it.
I yanked the door open and caught the clerk’s startled expression. He had obviously been positioned nearby to let Sir McQuarrie know when our conversation ended. As far as I was concerned that was now.
“It is a concern to Lady Montgomery,” Munro replied. “She has a care for ye, and rightly so. And I know that ye respect her.”
That stopped me.
I deeply cared for Lady Antonia. I owed her and Mikaela a great deal...everything, truth be told, or I might well have shared the same fate as Dory.
“I am not going back to London until I find who killed my friend,” I finally managed to reply. “You would do the same if it was Mr. Brodie.”
I was angry as I walked past the startled clerk and returned to the front entrance.
I hesitated as I reached the sidewalk, then abruptly made another decision and approached the coachman who appeared to have been told to wait and the person who had asked him to wait.
“Do you know Albany Street?” I inquired.
“Aye, miss...” he replied, hesitant.
I gave him the address for Elizabeth Cheney’s flat, then climbed aboard the coach.
“I will pay what the man owes you plus the additional fare.” And the devil take Munro. He could well find another driver.
It was late when I returned to the flat. I let myself in with the key Mrs. Cheney had provided.
Bloody hell! I thought, and leaned back against the door as if Mr. Munro might have followed to break the thing down and drag me off to Waverly Station.
The flat was darkened, with a single electric light at the table in the kitchen. Elizabeth had set out a supper plate for me, but I had no appetite.
I set the plate in the cold box, turned out the electric, and crossed the flat to my room.
I was not a child to be watched over or dragged back to London, I thought, as I undressed, then slipped into bed. That child ceased to exist a long time ago...
Munro
“The young lady seems to be particularly strong-minded in the matter,” Sir McQuarrie commented as he sat across from the man he’d met several years before. A man of similar strong-mindedness who stood at the window of the office.
“What will ye do now?” the lawyer inquired.
Munro let the heavy drape at the floor-to-ceiling window fall back into place. His first meeting with Lily had not gone as hoped for, though admittedly not surprising.
“I will find a tavern with an ample selection of ale and spirits, and decent fare for supper.”
“Old Lodge whisky perhaps?” McQuarrie suggested. “And wot will ye tell her ladyship?”
“I will send a telegram that I have found her and she is safe.”
McQuarrie nodded. “Then ye will not be returning to London as yet.”
“Not as yet.”
“I hold a room at the Caledonian for clients who travel for business purposes. It is not being used presently. Ye are welcome to it.”
The Caledonian, one of the finer hotels in Edinburgh. He knew it well from the past, and certain ‘activities’ as a youth on the streets. Guests were an easy mark with sympathy for a lad who appeared to have been run-down by a coachman on the street.
A young man had then appeared with ‘perfect timing,’ assisted, and assured the well-heeled guest there was no harm, at the same time the poor injured ‘lad’ lifted coin and paper money from the man’s pocket.
With the assurance there was no injury, the guest then went on about his way none the wiser, although with lighter pockets, and the lad in question jumped up and fled with his partner in crime.
That was a long time ago, not that such enterprises had changed. But the lad’s circumstance had changed. Still, the old places were familiar, and he visited them from time to time with business dealings for Lady Montgomery.
He owed her ladyship a debt of gratitude that could never be fully repaid. She had taken a chance when she took him into her employ as manager of her business affairs.
She had stated at the time that she wanted a Scot for her enterprise, as she called it, in the north of Scotland at Old Lodge. A verra lucrative enterprise that had earned him compensation that he’d never known before.
Old Lodge was a whisky distillery, and a fine one at that. Other responsibilities had followed, including overseeing properties that she owned.
“I can afford to be generous,” she once told him. “I am wealthier than the Queen, thanks to a line of enterprising ancestors, and I will not live forever.”
Privately, he had laughed at that last comment. He was convinced she would live forever.
She was not like others of title that he had encountered. She was intelligent, clever, inventive when it came to getting what she wanted, and not above telling someone to pour sand down a rat’s hole when she’d had enough of them. And he respected her.
That was hard-won, as he was a man who respected and trusted only a handful. The others could...go pour sand.
When her ladyship learned that Lily had taken herself off to Edinburgh, there was that ‘look’ in the expression on her face that he knew well.
“She is a fine young woman. I do hope that she will be safe.”
Nothing more was needed.
“Aye,” he had replied and left on the next train north.
Munro shook his head, pushing back old memories. There was no need for Sir McQuarrie to provide a room at the Caledonian.
“’Tis not necessary. There are people I know.” He then added, “She will want to see the body.”
“The request, or I should say the demand, has already been put before Inspector Landry, as ye might assume,” McQuarrie replied with a slightly bemused expression. “I will see that arrangements are made. I believe ye know Inspector Landry.”
Munro nodded. From other times and other dealings.
“Wot of Miss Montgomery? Do ye perhaps know where she is staying over while here?” he inquired. Surely not the room where her friend was found murdered.
“Inspector Landry has seen to it that she has a place to stay and is safe enough with his widowed sister on Albany Street.
“I will make a telephone call to the station house first thing in the morning and make certain everything is in order for her visit to the morgue,” the lawyer assured him. “I assume ye will be there as well.”
“Aye.”
With that, Munro took his leave.
He discovered the coach and driver that he’d held over was gone when he left the lawyer’s office. He smiled to himself. He would have been surprised if it was still there.
As her ladyship had reminded him, Lily Montgomery was not some foolish chit. She was intelligent as well as headstrong and resourceful. She had once lived in a situation not unlike his own, where she learned to take care of herself.
She was a survivor. She had a deep mistrust of most everyone because of it. Not unlike himself. Yet that trust included someone from her old life. Now that person was dead.
For himself, he knew exactly what he would do if it was his friend. She had called him on that one.
Yet he would not leave her on her own to see the matter done. He had made a promise to her ladyship.