Chapter 13
Munro
There were parts of Edinburgh that never slept. The brothels along Rose Street and at the Cowgate. Then there was Nicholson Street in the theatre district, with marquee lights that advertised pantomimes, animal acts, and ‘other’ entertainments.
He knew it well from when he and Angus Brodie worked the streets, legitimate work for two lads when it could be found, and otherwise when it could not.
Such were those early years both had worked hard to leave behind. And now he’d come back.
It was more than the whisky trade he handled for Lady Antonia. It was almost as if he was searching for himself at the same time he was there for Lily Montgomery.
From stories he’d heard since she arrived in London some years before, she no doubt knew some of these places as well—a young girl forced to live in a brothel. She no doubt saw and heard things, found a friend as he had, and learned to survive.
He would not have allowed her to return here. She had found her place. She was educated, strong, and stubborn. She had a future that few had when they began where she had.
Yet, she came back. To find her past. And now she stayed, for a friend, determined to find the person responsible for the woman’s murder.
He wanted to give her that reckoning without even fully understanding the reasons, and so he put the word out that he was looking for a whore who went by the name of Big Kate and the man who dressed like a performer at the theatre.
‘Ye might speak to yer friends,’ he told Lily. Those glossy black thieves who owned the skies at night and what was left in the streets when morning came.
Not that he believed it or tales about the creatures that others believed: one crow for sorrow, two for laughter, and so on... something about six crows for gold, seven for a secret...
But he saw something in the expression on her face when they parted. Did she believe it?
The search for Big Kate and Mr. Elias was methodical, a plan laid out in his head. Each place and each message left like a note he wrote down, a skill obtained in the past.
Then another and another in a well-known pattern as if laid out on a map, with a coin left here, another left there, in places where even the smallest coin had value.
And then he waited at a table in the corner of the White Hart Inn, where he refused the house whisky—it was not her ladyship’s Old Lodge whisky—and instead ordered beer.
Word came just after midnight that Big Kate was hosting a ‘private party’ of gentlemen at a residence off the Royal Mile—enterprising woman that she was.
There was no word about Elias, but he was confident she would know where to find him.
Or perhaps, he simply had not arrived yet with such a lucrative clientele present for the usual gaming and whoring.
He paid for the last beer, then left the White Hart Inn.
“Canongate,” he told the driver he found outside the inn.
It was formally called the Acheson House, just off Bakehouse Close. A dignified name for a less than dignified establishment.
To the fine gentlemen who frequented it, it was often referred to as the Cock and Trumpet, with that steel door and the name carved in stone above, and assorted pleasures within.
He arrived at the Canongate, made note of the time, then continued afoot with the assurance from the driver that he frequented the area as others did from early evening until the small hours of the morning.
The fares were plentiful for those who wished to travel about discreetly back to their private residences.
It was not far, as he remembered, and found the entrance with that stone carving over the door, then lifted the handle and stepped inside.
If he thought that he might have difficulty finding the woman known as Big Kate in a large gaming house, doubt faded as he moved among those who had arrived earlier for a celebration.
He heard her laughter first, big and boisterous, then the red gown that was boisterous as well, and the woman.
She must have weighed a good thirty stone in the red gown, with pale blonde hair swept atop her head as she towered over some of the men nearby at a gaming table.
And the make-up she wore was brilliant as the colour of the gown, with green above each eye, brows drawn in fake arches, her lips curved in a constant smile, no doubt at the money she would make that night.
If the murderer was there, it would be difficult to find him among the well-heeled gentlemen who crowded about the tables, brandished a glass for more champagne or whisky, bet at those tables, and then made their way up the stairs to private rooms.
There was an invitation from more than one elaborately gowned woman with just enough flesh revealed at a ripe breast to make certain of her charms.
He played at one of the tables, bet, then won and dropped a coin down the bodice of the woman beside him for information.
“That one,” the woman sniggered when he asked about Elias. “He keeps company with Kate most nights.” She angled a look toward the large woman who moved among the gaming tables.
“Though he ain’t above tryin’ one of the others, like he thinks that will make a man of him. Not meself, mind ye. I dinna hold with them that asks for credit and then acts like he’s already paid up when ye remind him.
“He usually comes round before now, but he ain’t been in tonight. That’s when he goes about boasting afterward that he had work to do.”
A man with a solid gold reputation, Munro thought as he slipped her another coin.
“I like a man who knows the value of a person’s time... Would you like to go upstairs now?”
He declined the offer as he made his way across the entertainment floor where a small person, undoubtedly a woman, in a clown costume juggled balls in the air.
Big Kate was an appropriate name. She easily was the size of two other women who had paired off with their guests nearby.
She turned, her eyes narrowing as she looked him over from head to toe then back, no doubt speculating over the amount of coin in his pockets.
“Not seen ye around before,” she greeted him. “Wot might we do fer ye tonight?”
“I’m to meet Mr. Elias here.” He went for a lie, the common language of the street. “I’m told that ye know him.”
“I might,” she replied, both cautious and curious. “Wot might it be about with a handsome devil such as yerself? He’s not one to favour men.”
Munro smiled, another lie. “It is business, not wot yer thinkin’.”
“Wot sort of business?” she replied, more curious now.
He knew well enough that a man like Elias would never share his business with another, particularly a woman like Big Kate, who earned her living in information when she wasn’t on her back.
“It is a private matter,” he replied. “Though he did say there was work to be had.” He watched her expression, the way her eyes narrowed.
“Always takin’ himself off on some ‘business,’” she snorted. “Ye dinna seem the sort.”
“Anyone is the ‘sort’ if there is enough money in it.” He knew that well enough.
“Aye, particularly with him. He did say he had to take care of somethin’ tonight that shoulda been finished before. Then he would get paid wot was due him. Said it was worth a lot of money.”
He felt a growing uneasiness that began when the other woman mentioned that Elias was not yet there, and now with what Big Kate had told him in so many words. That the man had to take care of something that should have been finished before.
He thought of Lily’s encounter at the Grassmarket. She called it nothing more than a robbery attempt gone wrong.
Was it something else?
Lily’s friend brutally murdered, her flat searched, a man who matched the description of Elias seen by the boy in the Close right after. Then the old woman who collected the rents in the same tenement murdered, her flat searched as well—someone looking for something.
The attack at the Grassmarket. Not for robbery? Followed by what Lily had discovered that very same day about the Jacobson woman her friend had managed to find after all these years, dead in a fire in the building.
Coincidences all? He’d lived too long on the street, seen too many things, and been part of some of them. He didn’t believe in coincidences.
And then there was something he’d noticed as they left Parliament Square that evening, something in her manner that he’d seen before.
It was just a moment, a glimpse as if something caught her attention. She had glanced about as if she had sensed something and expected to find someone there.
“Wot are ye, a witch?” he had asked her only days before when she seemed to sense something. She had cheekily replied that if she was, she would turn him into a toad.
Yet there were other instances since her return to Edinburgh that he remembered now, that included something Elizabeth Cheney said.
He didn’t believe in such things. Still, he was unable to shake off the feeling that she had sensed something earlier that evening.
No less than things learned in his own past that often returned like a warning? Instinct, his friend Brodie called it.
What if it was something more? What if she had sensed something dangerous? And now Elias had gone to take care of something that should have been finished before...
That uneasiness became an icy chill down his back as he left Big Kate and the boisterous gambling and other ‘entertainments,’ then found a driver out on the street.
“Do ye know Albany Street?”
“Aye,” the driver replied.
Albany Street
“Ye will wear a hole in the carpet,” Elizabeth commented as she set coal in the firebox, then closed the grate.
I smiled in spite of the tension in the back of my neck.
“You must add the repair to my rent as well as the rental of yer settee.” I glanced over at Kip who now occupied the settee, somewhat cleaner after Elizabeth declared that she would not tolerate bugs or filth.
There had been some complaints, outright refusal, then negotiating over the matter. Kip had lost.
“No need,” Elizabeth said now. “It’s good to have voices here again. I missed that after I lost me husband. Walls dinna have much to say.”