“And you’ve been doing that since your husband passed? Or have you always done it?”
She shakes her head at me. “You do want all the sordid details. All right then. Let us get this out of the way. I married young. I married foolishly. A handsome classmate of Duncan’s who swept me off my feet, mostly by insisting that my family scandal did not matter to him.”
“Seems like a low bar.”
“A low bar,” she murmurs. “Yes, it should be the lowest possible bar for a suitor to vault, but he was the first to do it.”
I frown. “I’m sure your father wasn’t the only guy in this world with an illegitimate child. Is it because he brought your brother into the household?”
She glances at me and then at the door. “It is not…” She clears her throat. “It is not the fact of Duncan’s existence as much as the fact that we accepted him as an equal, given his…” Another throat clearing. “Unique heritage.”
“Ah, because he’s a person of color.”
“Is that what you call it? I might have hoped you’d have needed no special term, but yes. Our mother embraced him, and we followed her lead. Or I did and our eldest brother did. Our sister did, too, until she found that society accepted her far better if she distanced himself from her half brother and our unfathomable attachment to him.”
“Damn. Okay. So maybe it wasn’t such a low bar to hurdle after all. I didn’t realize it would be such a big deal for you.”
“It is a bigger deal to Duncan, and whenever I face scrutiny for my acceptance of him, I remind myself how much worse it is for him. So yes, accepting me in spite of that put Lawrence in very good stead. It did not hurt that he was handsome and witty and clever, and if Duncan warned me against him, well, that was my little brother being overly protective and so terribly sweet of him. It became far less sweet when Duncan tried to interfere with the courtship and brought our mother to his side, forcing me to elope.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch, indeed. I look back on that girl and cringe. Duncan saw through Lawrence’s facade, as did my mother, and I found myself wedded to a medical-school dropout who hoped my wealthy family would underwrite his true calling as an explorer in the wilds of Africa.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Shockingly, they did not, and it was all my fault for not arguing his case eloquently enough. After all, I owed him for having married me, despite the family scandal.”
“Asshole.”
“I presume that’s an insult, and I can think of far worse. The sum of the matter is that when my father died and our older brother traipsed off to Europe, Duncan gave Lawrence the money he needed to travel to Africa, on the condition he would not expect me to accompany him, which suited us both. I moved back into the family home and began my chemist’s work, which made enough to allow Lawrence to remain in Africa.”
“Seems like an excellent use of income.”
“The best use. That continued until I received word of Lawrence’s death. He did, however, kindly leave me all his debts, which I am almost done repaying two years later.”
That’s why Gray is so quick to hand over money for Isla’s expenses. It’s also why she’ll joke but won’t turn it down. An unspoken agreement between them that, as uncomfortable as their financial arrangement might be, her priority should be ridding herself of this last trace of her asshole husband.
“May we begin our investigating now?” Isla asks, waving at the papers. “Or do you have more questions?”
“I have so many questions, but yes, there’s a killer in need of catching. Let’s see what we can find.”
TWENTY-FIVE
We find no indication that the witness who described “a man in a black cape and mask” also spoke to a reporter. Isla says that at the height of broadside popularity, a witness could expect to make a small fortune selling their story. But that time has passed and writers have learned that it hardly matters whether they quote a legitimate source or not. Making shit up works as well, if not better.
Over the last few days, multiple writers have reported people seeing the killer. All are anonymous sources who saw things like “a man with bird wings” or “a man covered in feathers,” as if a killer would walk down the street wearing a costume.
While I discuss the case with Isla, half of my brain is busy analyzing data from the perspective she doesn’t have—my suspicion that the “raven killer” is the guy who attacked me in twenty-first-century Edinburgh.
There is one section of those questions Isla might be able to help with. If he did cross into the body of Catriona’s attacker, how would he find out who he was?
“What kind of ID do you carry?” I ask.
Isla startles from her reading. “ID?”
“Identification. You won’t have a driver’s license, predating cars here. Probably not a passport either. You don’t hop on planes or zip from country to country. Health card? I think we predate free health care, too.”
“You do love doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Teasing me with words and concepts I do not know. You realize that I am going to ask you to explain each, and then you’ll demand some personal information in return. It is a very clever game.”
“It would be, if I had any intention of explaining myself. Can’t, though. Butterfly effect.”
She fixes me with a hard look.
“Butterfly effect,” I say. “Taken from an old story—old to me, not written yet—that involves time travel and the theory that if one could travel in time, one’s actions could have catastrophic effects. Simply killing a butterfly could destroy the world.”
“That is preposterous.”
I shrug. “I agree, which is why I’m not too worried about accidentally stepping on insects. But I do need to be careful what I bring into the past.”
“You are saying that you will not tell me about advances lest I invent something fifty years before its time and become wealthy beyond measure?”
“Or get burned for witchcraft.”
“We have not burned a witch in over a hundred years. We simply drown them, and only in small English villages, which are usually in England.”
“I thought the witch trials were mostly in Scotland. Pretty sure it was the Scots who—”
“Fie.” She waves a hand at me and mock-scowls. “You are distracting me from my purpose.”
“And you’re distracting me from mine. Identification. What do you carry on you when you’re out and about?”
“Why should we carry identification? We have records of birth, but we hardly go about with them in our pockets.”
“What happens when the police need to see your ID?”
“Why ever should they do that?” She folds the paper with a snap. “Are you telling me that in your world, police go about demanding people prove who they are? That sounds positively tyrannical.”
“Er, possibly, yes. But I was just thinking that it’s a good thing someone recognized Catriona after her attack. That made me wonder about identification. What do people carry on their person when they go out here?”
“An umbrella.”
I laugh. “Good call.”
“I take a handbag with a bit of money, but mostly paper, pencil, handkerchief…”
An idea hits. “What about keys?”
“For what?”
“The front door.”
“Why should I need keys? It is never locked except at night, and if I were out past dark, Mrs. Wallace would leave it open for me.”
I’m about to ask whether that’s safe when I answer my own question. This is a prosperous street in the New Town. Being in the city, residents will still lock their doors at night, but they’re not worried about anyone breaking in midday.
So if my attacker jumped into Catriona’s attacker’s body, how would he find out who that guy is in this world? Or would he just not bother—pick up and carry on, stealing what he needed?
My fingers itch to grab my phone and start tapping in notes.