Chapter 7 #2
I looked about at the other passengers as the tram lurched around a corner behind the team of horses—several men in wool suits, along with two women, one with a child beside her.
“I’m afraid!” she cried into her mother’s hand, even as her mother assured her that they would soon be at their destination and the tram would not fall over.
My own fingers tightened as a memory slipped out of the past. Two young children fleeing down the hallway of the Foundling Hospital. One pulled back on the other as I was pulled back into that memory.
“I’ll only slow ye down!” A hand pulled on mine. “Ye must go! Before they find out we’ve gone!” Abby’s hand slipped from mine. A friend in a place where there were no friends, only faces.
“I told ye. I’ll not leave without ye.”
She shook her head. “I’ll only slow ye doon.”
“Together!” I insisted. “We said we would leave together.” Plans made by those hardly old enough to understand. But we understood the pain of the lash.
“If they find ye, Lily, it will be worse than before. I’m afraid for ye.”
“No matter...” I reassured her.
There was a sudden change in her expression.
“Someone is comin’! Ye must go now!”
She had already turned back, determined to hide herself in the shadows from that sound.
“I canna do this without ye,” I whispered.
“Ye have a gift. I dinna understand, but ye do. It’s in yer touch and the way ye know things. If yer caught, ye will be punished worse than before. Maybe even disappear like the others...”
I had protested even as I knew it was true. A gift, some strange ability to know things before they happened.
The one time I had asked the Reverend Mother about it, she locked me away in a small room with no food for days—to purge the sin from my body, she told me.
Purge. I didn’t understand the word at the time. But there were painful lessons about it afterward.
I understood then, in that way of children when punished, who made certain it didn’t happen again. Except for Abby.
I became her protector. I warned when one of the nuns approached and she had finished only a portion of her chores, then quickly finished them for her, so that she was not punished.
Not that I understood the warning that had whispered more than once. It was simply there.
She had looked back down that darkened hallway with a frightened expression, then back at me.
“If ever ye are me friend, ye must go.”
She left me then, limping as she returned the way we had come, practiced for weeks, and then disappeared down the adjacent hallway that led to the chapel.
It was then that inner voice warned, followed by the sound of footsteps.
I ran down to the pantry, deserted this time of the night, out through that door into the inner courtyard of the Foundling Hospital. Then past the markers at those small graves as I clutched my blanket. That strange whisper there.
‘Do not look back!’
I opened my eyes as I felt the tram lurch around another corner, then stop, passengers pushing down the aisle to those steps as the driver called out the destination.
I smiled at the little girl as she and her mother moved past.
“Ye are a brave one,” I thought and saw her eyes widen. Then a smile appeared as if she understood.
She looked back at me over her shoulder, the smile still there as she left the tram with her mother.
The central station of the police was only a short walk away. I reached it quickly, still struggling with that encounter. The desk constable greeted me a second time, pulling me back from my thoughts.
“Are ye all right, miss?”
I was now, and asked to see Inspector Landry.
“I am aware of the landlady’s death,” he commented when I asked about the woman in the Close, saying how I’d found her flat in disarray.
“The report was handed in this morning. A sad coincidence.”
Was it a coincidence?
“It is not uncommon in the Old Town, but I’ll have a man make sure to search her flat, although it is often difficult to find out anything useful. Still, I appreciate the information.”
They would learn nothing, I was certain of it. Whoever had killed Dory and searched her room, very possibly had searched the old woman’s flat as well.
Looking for what...?
There had been nothing of value in Dory’s room. Was there in the old woman’s flat perhaps?
It was doubtful, the way she dressed, and the glimpse I had of her flat that first day.
I sensed there was more in what he intended to say. There was that smile that also favoured his sister.
“Is it possible the constable who found her body made some note that could be important about the cause of death, or maybe some connection to what happened to my friend?” I inquired.
“Miss Montgomery...”
I heard it in his manner even before he spoke again.
“There are many crimes that take place across the city...” he kindly explained, yet I already knew what he was going to say.
“I’m told ye have some acquaintance with a former inspector with the Metropolitan Police in London. There are only so many of us who work the cases. But I will have a man follow up on what we know. Still, it will take time.”
A constable arrived and reminded him of a meeting with the Chief Inspector.
“If ye will forgive me, Miss Montgomery, a meeting I canna avoid. Although there are times I would prefer to.”
He left the office, his head angled toward the constable in some matter of conversation. I stood to follow, then glanced back at his desk.
The file lay where he left it, Meggy Adam’s name written on the file tab. I opened the folder and quickly scanned the report.
She was found late the day before at the old marketplace not far from the Close. A vendor by the name of Calvin Meeks, who sold farm produce and poultry to residents in the tenements and tavern owners of the Grassmarket, found her among a stack of empty crates.
He had not noticed her before, as the body had been hidden in a large crate behind the vendor stall. She had been stabbed to death.
Two nearby vendors were questioned as well. It did seem from the report that, while Meggy was a frequent visitor at market, she was not well-regarded among the vendors.
She was known to only ask for days-old produce and then refuse to pay for it because it was spoilt.
One of the vendors, a woman by the name of Trudy McNamara, told the constable that Meggy was a known thief and had been caught pinching food several times, then stuffing it into the pocket of the large apron she wore.
In consideration of my encounter with the woman, I was not surprised.
At a sound that someone approached, I returned the folder to Inspector Landry’s desk, then quickly left.