Chapter 8 #2
“He must have stumbled and then thought better of it with people still here.”
One of those still there, the woman who had sold me the scarf, was nearby now.
“Are ye all right, miss? First, ole Meggy, though most didna care for her stealin’ from us. But just the same... And now yerself attacked. It’s gotten so’s a body can’t even do business without someone causin’ a stir and then the police comin’ round.”
I assured her that I was all right, even though my cheek throbbed where the man had struck me.
“And the boy,” she added. “He didna take anything from ye, did he?”
The boy in question had disappeared. Not unusual.
“The market will be closing for the day, miss. Ye might want to make yer way home.” She handed me a towel.
“Ye best get the mud cleaned from yer skirt before it stains.” She smiled as she patted my hand. “No charge fer the towel.”
I brushed the mud from the skirt of my gown. Then turned toward Princes Street with the knife that Munro had given me. The metal was cool against my fingers in the pocket of my gown.
At end of day, several drivers were out and about in the older part of the city. I found a driver and gave him the address at Albany Street.
I was chilled to the bone, my clothes soaked from the rain, and suddenly exhausted. I began to shake, my teeth chattering as I wrapped my arms about myself in an attempt to warm myself.
It had been simple enough to tell Kip that I had done what anyone would have when I fought back.
But truth was, I had no idea what had happened then.
There was only that next moment when the man let go of me and then fled, a stunned expression on his face.
There were all those the crows just before...
I raised my hand to my cheek. It was painfully tender as a memory stirred of a child’s nursery rhyme as I closed my eyes.
One crow is a warning. Two crows...
I had no way of knowing where it came from. My only memory of my early childhood was of the Foundling Hospital. There were no sweet nursery rhymes or memories there.
The coach lurched around a corner then rolled to a stop. The memory slipped back into the past.
The driver called down we had arrived at Albany Street.
I stepped down and paid him. As he eased the team down the street, I looked up at the roof of the building, half expecting to see those glossy winged birds there.
It was dark and impossible to see with only the light from the windows of the flats in the building. If they were there, they made no sound.
I entered the foyer, then made my way to Elizabeth’s flat. I fumbled with the key she had provided.
The door opened. She reached out, her hand closing over mine.
“Dear girl!” she exclaimed. “Yer hands are like ice!”
“You failed.” The words were cold, sharp as a blade.
“I told ye, I had the bag in my hand. That is when she struck—I dunno what happened. I didn’t expect her to fight back. I only know that it burned like all the fires of hell.”
Hadn’t expected it. The fires of hell.
The stocky, powerfully built man stood in that well-appointed room as he had many times before, given instructions to carry out. Yet this was different. There was something deeply personal as he faced the man in that high-backed chair who sat before that ornately carved desk.
Who was the young woman to the old man?
Not the first time he had wondered about that, but did not ask. One never asked when one was well-paid.
He simply carried out the orders he was given. That was his purpose, and he knew it well—to do as he was told and ask no questions.
He understood people, and this was personal, and curiously something he’d never seen before.
The old man was always so carefully controlled, quiet, even dangerous. But the way he forced his fist open, the fingers that trembled, told him something different.
“Tell me about her.”
What could he tell the man when there were only those few brief seconds?
He had followed, then watched her.
“She has dark hair...” He thought about what he remembered. “And blue eyes. She’s pretty enough and well-spoken, not what one expects in a place like the market.” He thought back to the encounter and struggled to remember more.
“She’s strong. She didn’t scream like others might. And when she fought back...”
There had been that moment...no less than that he remembered, thinking back on it.
“What?” the old man demanded. “What was it?”
The stocky man before him twisted his cap in his hands.
“It might have been my imagination.” But even now he could feel the burn on his skin beneath his clothes.
There was no explanation for it. He was not drunk at the time. The mark was there...as if he had been burned in those few seconds after he struck her, usually hard enough to subdue any man, much less a woman small as she was and with nothing in her hand!
The old man stared at him as he listened, his hand slowly clenching into a fist once more.
“I swear,” the man before the desk told him. “I never saw nothing. It was as if...”
As if what, he thought? That bleak gaze, once a shade of blue, now faded with age, met his across the desk.
“Did she say anything?”
He shook his head. “Not a word, but there was a sound...”
“What do you mean?”
He tried to describe it as best he could.
“I thought it was the wind, comin’ up the way it does end of day, but this was different. It was over the marketplace, and the damned birds were everywhere.”
“Birds?” the old man replied, looking up. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“Crows. Musta been a dozen of ’em. They swarmed the place right before.”
He had been surprised. He didn’t like them. The old man frowned.
“What else?”
“She was at the poulterer’s stall for some time, then disappeared behind it when the man was with a customer.”
The old man’s eyes sharpened. “Continue, Mr. Elias.”
“She was there for some time and then left. That’s when I tried to get the bag from her.”
The man behind the desk nodded. “And failed.”
There was a long silence. “Where can she be found?”
“At Albany Street, a flat occupied by the sister of Police Inspector Landry, when she is not at the lawyer’s office.”
That watery pale gaze narrowed. He shook his head.
“This is not to involve the police, or the law.” It was not a request.
“Yessir.” He shifted uncomfortably. “There is a man...”
“What man?”
“He arrived from London afterward. He’s known in the whisky trade and is said not to be crossed.” There was more. “He’s contacted those he knows on the streets for word about the whore’s murder.”
The old man slowly nodded.
“I need to know more. You’re to tell me where she goes and whom she speaks with.”
The whore’s death had been unexpected but necessary. And the old woman’s as well. And now this young woman.
Who was she? What was she to the whore?
Secrets. He had been careful. But things had a way of not remaining secret.
“One more chance,” he told the man who stood across the desk from him, as he looked him in the eye. “I need to know what was in the letters the old woman spoke about before she died.”
“I understand,” he replied, with the determination of a man who knew what wasn’t said. “I will not fail.”
“Make certain that you do not.”