Chapter 4 #2
A child, no more than five or six years, stood alone on a cobbled street, snow falling amid the tears that stung her cheeks, along with anger and defiance, as she fled the dark building that loomed up behind her in a grey, storm-filled sky...
“Miss Montgomery! Lily...!”
The sound of my name, then a strong grip on my arm pulled me back from the horror of that memory.
Munro cursed. “Are ye all right?”
His strong hand closed around my cold one. And then a somewhat less brilliant comment.
“Ye should have worn a coat.”
I heard the disapproval in his voice and would have told him to leave off, if not for the tightness at my throat. The cold inside me had nothing to do with the weather.
“We are finished here,” he announced and waved down a coachman.
He gave the driver instructions, then climbed inside. As we departed, I could have sworn that I glimpsed the shadow of a crow as it suddenly winged over the top of the coach.
“Ye’ve no more sense than a wayward chit!” I was certain he would say as much, as I had heard it before. Still, the coach was oddly silent except for the sounds from the street as the driver set off.
Munro reached across the aisle and took hold of my hand. “Ye’ve bloodied yerself.”
I frowned as I opened my clenched fist and discovered that I had cut my hand, no doubt from holding the charm so tight.
“Do ye have a cloth? A handkerchief?”
I slowly shook my head. Something else I did not have. He would undoubtedly lecture me over that as well.
We had been at odds for some time. He had a habit of being overbearing, as if I was no more than a carefree child.
Was I ever, I thought now?
I braced myself for the criticism, perhaps even a lecture. Surprisingly, there was none, although the frown of disapproval was there as he simply replied, “Aye.”
He untied his black neck scarf, folded it, then wrapped it about my hand. When he had finished binding it, I pulled my hand from his.
“We must go back,” I informed him. “Arrangements must be made.”
Although, I had no idea what that might include. A casket, headstone, burial...obviously. Could that be taken care of through the police? Or possibly a private mortuary?
I refused to leave Dory lying there, wrapped in a sheet, and then...
I’d heard stories about what happened to unclaimed bodies years before from the ladies at The Church. They made a joke of it with comments about being found naked sitting at a bench at the park, or propped up dead as a gutter rat at the gates of Greyfriar’s kirkyard.
“Please tell the driver to return,” I insisted.
“It’s been taken care of,” Munro replied as the coach slowed, then stopped, and the driver called down and announced that we had arrived at the destination he’d given him.
“I don’t understand...”
“It has been taken care of,” Munro repeated. “Ye can attend to the specific details later as best suits ye.”
He opened the door of the coach and stepped down, then held out a hand to me. I reluctantly accepted it.
That dark blue gaze briefly met mine.
“There was no need for argument over the matter that would surely have occurred in front of the surgeon and Inspector Landry.”
He paid the driver, then escorted me across the cobbled street into the warmth of Tollbooth Tavern. Then to a table and motioned to the woman who delivered drinks to customers, even though it was barely past morning.
“Mr. Munro,” she greeted him with a friendly smile. “Wot brings ye back so soon? Business, is it? I’ll let Mr. Eaves know that yer here,” she added with a jerk of her chin toward the man behind the bar.
“No business today, Sorcha.” He looked over at me.
“A bit of the drink then? We have some of that fine whisky as ye well know.”
For myself, I would have liked very much to have had a dram of whisky—it would not be the first time, as her ladyship had not treated me as a child for some time now.
I was still angry, confused, and trying to move past the sight of Dory on that steel table and the cut across her throat like a gruesome smile the murderer had left.
“Coffee, if ye please Sorcha, for the both of us,” Munro told her.
“Aye, and we’ve got hot meat pie for the day,” she added.
“That will do as well, and a clean cloth if ye will,” Munro replied. “The young lady has cut her hand.”
It did not seem to matter that he had not inquired if I wanted anything to eat, even as my stomach rumbled loudly, a reminder that I had only a biscuit that Elizabeth Cheney had provided.
Sorcha returned and set two cups of steaming black coffee on the table, and a cloth from the bar. I was aware of the curious look she gave me.
“I’ll bring the meat pies when they come out of the oven,” she informed us, then moved on with the tankards of ale on her tray.
I took a sip of coffee. It warmed my stomach even as I wished it was a dram of Lady Antonia’s Old Lodge whisky—a full cup of it.
I took the cloth and wrapped it around my hand.
“You knew about the opium.” I saw it in his expression at the time, and his acknowledgement to the surgeon’s comment. “How did you know?”
“There is a particular scent about someone who has used it, spicy with a smell of flowers, if ye will. There were no other bodies in the holding room, it was obvious the smell of it came from yer friend.”
“You’ve had experience with that sort of thing.”
“It is a sad part of life on the street,” he replied, not unkindly.
A life that I might have shared, if not for my encounter with Mikaela Forsythe.
“Dory did not use drugs. She said that she couldn’t afford for it to jeopardize...”
“Payment from a customer?” he suggested. “It’s been a while since ye last saw her, aye? Things change…people change.”
There had been nothing in the letters she had sent to indicate that she had changed. Still...
I thought of myself, once a maid in a brothel, now educated. Even my way of speaking was different. But the things that were important had not changed. I caught his glance at my bandaged hand.
“Wot do ye know about the trinket the surgeon found among her clothes?”
I had put it in my pocket as we left the morgue. I retrieved it now and stared at it.
“It belongs to me.”
Our food had arrived. Sorcha set out plates of steaming meat pie along with forks and spoons.”
“Will ye be wanting bread as well?” she inquired.
I felt that blue gaze watching me. There were questions there, but he did not ask them. He shook his head and she left to attend to another customer.
I felt the weight of that gaze. I didn’t owe an explanation, still...
“It was all I had as a small child. I don’t know how I came by it. This and the name Jacobson. I asked her to make inquiries about when I first arrived at The Church. I sent it to her with the hope that she might be able to learn something about it.
“We exchanged letters. A woman she knew helped her write them. I received her last letter two weeks ago. She was excited about something she had learned, and I made my plans to travel here.”
It all seemed so simple at the time.
“Did she say in the letter what it was she had learned?”
I shook my head. She had not.
I took a tentative bite, then another, my stomach gradually settling itself.
“Yer friend’s death was no chance encounter in the usual business of such things.”
I slowly set my fork back at the plate.
“How do you know that?”
He watched me as if trying to decide what to tell me, and then arrived at some conclusion.
“One sees a great many things on the streets. The nature of the injury often tells ye a great deal.”
“What does it tell you?”
He set his own fork back on the edge of the plate, carefully, as though considering how much to tell me. And then a decision made.
“It was not necessary if it was a robbery. The attack was for another reason. It was to silence yer friend once and for all.”
I stared at him, the intensity in that gaze that watched me, the set of his mouth.
I had known Munro since I first arrived in London, eight years before. He was like a shadow at Lady Antonia’s home on Sussex Square, and overseer of her business interests.
There one moment, gone the next. Also, quiet protector in more than one incident, trusted friend to Mr. Brodie with his own dark past before he joined the Metropolitan Police.
By contrast, Munro moved about in the world of hustlers, thieves, and cutthroats who would have taken advantage of a woman of Lady Antonia’s status and age without a second thought. Except for him.
“I will take a man who has seen the dark side of mankind and has changed his ways,” she had once explained when I questioned his position in her household.
“I much prefer a man who knows how to use a blade than one who waves a handkerchief about when confronted by a scoundrel. One needs such a person when dealing with cutthroats and thieves.”
And murderers?
“Did she suffer?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.
His voice softened. “No, death would have come quickly. She would not have suffered.”
I nodded, hardly satisfied, but it would have to do.
I had thought everything through carefully, that long night after finding Dory’s body, the day before, and now.
“I will not be returning to London,” I announced and braced myself for his disapproval, argument, or threat.
“It is my choice to remain. I owe it to Dory.” I would not be dissuaded.
There was no argument. No criticism that I was no more than a mere chit of a girl and had no sense in the matter. Only that intense gaze.
“I know the streets,” I continued. “I know the places where people like the one who did this go. I will not be persuaded against this,” I firmly told him. “There is no need for ye to remain.”
He sat back on his chair. He did not argue or attempt to persuade me otherwise or threaten to pack me off back to London. Yet there was something else in that gaze as he continued to watch me.
“I will not be returning to London,” he slowly replied, using my own words against me. “It is my choice to remain.”
“I do not ask it of ye,” I replied.