The address leads to a town house sandwiched into a row of them. Several have ROOM TO LET signs. This one has a sign in the window politely declaring it MRS. TROWBRIDGE’S ROOMING HOUSE FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN.
When McCreadie said Archie Evans lived in a house with other young men, I pictured the modern arrangement, where a bunch of guys rent a place together. Which is silly in Victorian times. If there isn’t a woman in residence, they’ll starve to death, dying in a bed that hasn’t had its sheets changed in a year. Okay, yes, I’m sure there are self-sufficient Victorian bachelors, but I suspect far too many would be like Gray, setting the kitchen aflame when he tries to make coffee. Someone has always done that for them. The solution, naturally, is a boardinghouse, where the proprietress may bridge that inconvenient gap between leaving Mommy and snagging a wife.
I climb the steps and, before I knock, I open the box in my arms to reveal the meat pies within. Then I rap smartly and wait. When no one answers, I rap again.
There’s a male shout, a period-appropriate version of “Someone answer the damned door!” Boots clomp, and the door flies open to reveal a young man a year or two younger than Catriona. He’s dressed in rumpled clothing with no necktie, which in this world is like answering the door shirtless. He looks from me to the pies and back again. Then he smirks.
“Did someone order a tart?” he shouts into the house.
“Excuse me?” I say.
He blinks.
“Did you just call me a tart?” I say.
His mouth works, and his gaze flies to the pies. “I meant the pastries.”
“Of course you did.”
Another young man appears behind the first and slaps him on the shoulder. “Ignore this lout. He’s already nipping the brandy. I’m Henry, by the way.”
This young man wears a tie and looks moderately less rumpled. There’s still a glitter in his eyes that I know well. He’s seen an opening, positioning himself as my savior, and I’m supposed to swoon in appreciation.
“I heard the news about Archie,” I say. “I wanted to say how sorry I am. May I step in? Presuming Mrs. Trowbridge is at home and would find it appropriate.”
“She’s here somewhere.” Henry winks. “She tends to hide when we’re home from classes.”
He ushers me through a dreary hallway and waves toward an open doorway. Through it, half a dozen young men lounge about. Two are arm-wrestling while another two egg them on and share a bottle. A fifth is stretched out on the floor with a textbook, and the guy who answered the door has gone back to reading something that is definitely not a textbook, given the cover art of a very buxom lady in her underthings.
It’s a Victorian frat house.
When I walk in, all six turn to look at me. All six mentally undress me, and the one reading the porn doesn’t even bother to hide the cover. In fact, he lifts it to make sure I see it. Yep, definitely a frat house.
“Well, well, what have we here,” says one of the drinkers, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Did Thomas say something about tarts? Please tell me your wares are for sale, miss. Cheap, I hope. I am a poor student after all.”
Henry raises a hand. “None of that. The young woman is here to pay her respects. She has brought us pies.”
I half curtsy. “I am so sorry to hear of Archie’s passing. I know you are all in mourning, but I did wish to bring these pies.”
I step farther into the room, arranging my features in the appropriate look of sorrow. “I cannot believe he is gone. And in such a grisly fashion.”
One of the lounging boys snorts. “He was strangled.”
“You do not think it terribly macabre? Staged to look like a bird?”
“Macabre?” A loud laugh from Thomas—the guy who’d answered the door. “Look at the big words coming from that pretty mouth. Where did you learn that one? On the back of a penny dreadful?”
“It is macabre,” says the one who is actually studying. “She chooses her words well. I fear we are dealing with a madman. I hear one escaped from the asylum.”
I presume he’s mocking me, but his face is somber, and two of his roommates nod.
“Perhaps,” I say. “And yet…” I bite my lip. “I ought not to say this, but I am devilishly curious.”
Thomas waggles his brows. “Devilishly curious? Are you now?”
I focus on the young man with the textbook. His ogle had been perfunctory, like an obligation he had to fulfill and thus got out of the way as quickly as possible.
“I have heard…” I begin.
They all lean in to listen.
My target shuts his textbook. “Heard what, miss?”
“The rumor is that poor Archie was tortured. It was not a random murder. His killer wanted something from him.” I pause for effect. “Information.”
There’s an audible shift in the room, and a palpable one in the air. Thomas rises from his seat and steps toward me.
“Is that what you heard?” he says.
From his tone, I’m supposed to step back, to drop my gaze, to stammer that perhaps I am mistaken. Instead, I laser-focus on him, that shift in the air telling me I’ve stumbled into more than a Victorian frat house. McCreadie did call them radicals, even if I’ve seen no sign of that.
“That is the rumor,” I say. “Though I can’t imagine what anyone would want from poor Archie. I do know he wrote about local crime for The Edinburgh Evening Courant. I can only guess some ruffian thought he knew too much and killed him for it.”
The young men exchange a look.
“That must be it,” Henry says smoothly. “We always told Archie he needed to be more careful in such a dangerous line of work. He had quite the habit of talking when he ought to hold his tongue.”
I bet he did.
I gaze around the room, as if I have not only lost track of what he was saying but lost interest, too. Ideas, they are so difficult for my female brain.
As I search the room, I spot something near the settee. A crate filled with folded papers, like the crime pamphlets Simon brought for Gray. There’s a hideously ugly embroidered pillow right next to the box, and that’s what I pretend to focus on.
I wander over to the pillow and touch it, murmuring that it’s such a pretty design. Meanwhile, I sneak a look at the pamphlets in that box. Then I blink, trying to hide my surprise. McCreadie called these boys radicals. He also said they hate the police, and so I presumed that meant left-leaning student activists. But what I see in this box is something all too familiar.
A month before I left for Edinburgh, I’d been working a hate-crime case, and I’d helped conduct a search on one of the suspect’s apartments. On his hard drive, I found a massive trove of memes for redistribution. Indescribably ugly hate, the sort that if I showed it to some of my friends, they’d swear it wasn’t real, that it belonged in another century because no one thought like that these days. What I see in that box is the Victorian equivalent. Pamphlets screaming about the “foreign menace invading proud Scottish lands.”
I jerk my head up before anyone notices where my attention had gone, and I turn toward the young men. My expression is blank. That’s a skill I learned on my first case dealing with white supremacists. Don’t let them see how disgusted you are, not unless it’ll serve your purpose. It won’t here.
I adjust my grip on the pie box. “Yes, I fear poor Archie did always talk too much, and it has doubtless been the death of him. I wonder, though—”
A string of curses has me turning to see Thomas peering out the front window. “There’s a police constable out there.”
“What?” Henry strides over to look. He adds to the curses. “Does he think we will not recognize him without his uniform? It’s a wonder we didn’t smell the stench from here.”
I stroll over until I can see Findlay across the street. Yes, he’s not in uniform, but his bearing gives him away, spine ramrod straight, gaze scanning the street as if he’s on patrol.
“That lad is a police constable?” I say. “He looks terribly young.”
Thomas wheels, advancing on me so fast that I do step back this time. “You brought him here.”
“Wh-what?”