The apartment is … I hesitate to use the word “squalid.” That suggests they’re living in their own filth, which they absolutely are not. They’ve made the best of what they have, but no amount of scrubbing will scour away the wood and coal soot stained into every surface, and no amount of polishing the lone window will lift the gloom.
I keep thinking of that jail cell, and how I’d spent the night in the corner, huddled in horror, waiting to escape. These people can’t escape. I’ve seen rough living in Vancouver, and I’d known that behind the tenement doors in the Old Town, I’d find conditions to make our worst look like luxury living. Yet I’m still not prepared for this, and to my shame, I can’t wait to get out onto the street again.
“I am glad they took the bread,” Isla murmurs after we leave. “I noticed one of the babies has croup.”
She continues to talk about what remedies she might send and whether they’d accept a basket of other goods as well. I’m still in too much shock to process her words. Too much shock to also process what I see next.
We’re walking down the street, and at a shout behind me, I turn. It’s just a man yelling at a kid running past, jostling a woman. But as I turn, someone steps out from a side road and then retreats fast, backpedaling. That alone wouldn’t have caught my eye. The street is congested with people scurrying about. I’m not sure why I notice this one, and that is a testament to my preoccupation, because when recognition hits, I can’t believe it took even a split second.
“Wait here,” I say to Isla as I stride back to the corner.
I peer down it, looking for a retreating figure with dark hair, of average size. While the street is busy, I should still be able to see him. But I don’t.
I stride back to Isla as she heads my way. “Did you call Simon to—?” I stop midsentence with a shake of my head. This isn’t the twenty-first century, where she can text Simon to come fetch us.
“Is there any reason Simon would be here?” I ask.
“Simon?”
“Did you ask him to pick us up in the area?” I say.
“Certainly not. If we wish a ride home, we will flag down a hansom cab. Are you saying you saw our Simon?”
We return to the intersection. There’s still no sign of him.
“Perhaps it was someone who looked like him?” she says. “He’s a well-favored young man, but not unusual in his appearance.”
“It was Simon. When he saw me looking, he retreated fast.”
Her brows furrow. “That is most odd.”
“Does he have any connection to this area? A reason he’d be here?”
“No, and there is a funeral this afternoon. He should be at the stables, polishing the carriages.”
I motion for us to walk. Isla doesn’t push me to talk, just lets me fall into thoughtful silence as she directs us back to the New Town.
Earlier, Evans’s hash pipe had caught my attention. Just last night, Simon had offered me opium. I’d made the connection, but hadn’t pursued it, no more than if I’d found they both liked to play golf. Yet a shared hobby means the possibility of intersecting lives.
Two young men, around the same age, who both use opium. Not exactly a rock-solid link. But then there’s Catriona. Whoever wrote the note in my bag knew tidbits of her past, the sort you might share with friends.
Catriona and Simon are friends. Probably also romantically involved, however casually, and the person most likely to murder a woman is her partner. Yet I struggle to imagine that from the young man I had tea with last night.
Except, if the killer jumped into Simon’s body, then that wasn’t Simon. I would have never met the real Simon.
If the killer knew Catriona and Simon had been friends—occasionally with benefits—he could play that role. And he would know it, if that was one of the tidbits he’d gotten from Archie Evans.
Simon claimed he didn’t know where Catriona sold her stolen goods, didn’t know anything about her past or her confederates. His excuse—that he kept out of that part of her life—made sense, but it could also be the modern killer covering for his gaps in Simon-knowledge.
Catriona had a knack for betraying her friends. Selling them out, as she had with Constable Findlay and, from what Davina said, many others.
Isla hires staff that have been in trouble with the law. Does that include Simon? I got that impression, and while I also got the impression he was trying to steer Catriona away from that life, I must remember that if Simon is the killer, then the Simon I know is not the one Catriona knew, and I can rely on nothing he said.
Could the killer become Simon? He’d need to know Edinburgh well enough to play coachman, but he’s presumably from here in the modern world and could figure it out. If he had any experience with horses, he could pull off caring for them and cleaning the stables as much as I could pull off being a maid. He lives over the stables and rarely comes in the house. Or this Simon rarely comes in … possibly because he’s minimizing interaction with people who know the real Simon.
If Simon is the killer, he’d definitely know I’d been helping with the case. He could easily have targeted me. Hell, he watched me leave the night I was attacked. I’d come out the back door and bumped into him dressed in dark colors.
I’d bumped into him last night, too, when he’d hidden in the library and jumped out at me. Jumped out to spook me? So he claimed, but what if I hadn’t fought him off? Had there been a length of rope in his pocket? Had he come into the house to kill me in my sleep? He does have a key.
What if Simon knew Evans, possibly through a mutual habit? Could Evans have been selling his information to Simon? Probably not. That’s the proverbial red herring. Evans was selling information to someone, for some purpose, and while hanging out with Simon, Simon had jotted down information on Catriona, using the paper Evans was carrying.
Catriona had betrayed Simon, and he wanted dirt on her. As her friend, he knew that dirt exists. Evans was a journalist. He could investigate Catriona. Except the situation intensified. Simon followed Catriona and saw her doing something, further betraying him. In a rage, Simon strangled her.
Then the killer from my world took over Simon’s body and made contact with Evans. The killer saw an information treasure trove, tortured Evan’s for everything he knew about Simon, and then killed him for his first victim.
THIRTY-FOUR
I think this through as we walk. Isla obviously has experience with people being lost in thought—both her brother and herself, I expect—and she recognizes the signs and leaves me to it.
“May I ask about Simon?” I say as we cut through Parliament Square. “Since you’ve been back from holidays, has he seemed any different to you?”
“Different?”
“Is he acting oddly? I’ve spoken to him a few times. He seems to be friends with Catriona.”
“He is.”
“More than friends, I think, which is awkward.”
Her brows crease. “More than friends, how?”
“Romantically involved, maybe? Or just fooling around together now and then. Friends with benefits, Victorian-style.”
I expect her to laugh at the term, but she frowns at me. “Simon?”
“Yes. That isn’t the impression you got? They must have hidden it. I guess they would. Premarital sex is verboten here, right?”
“Supposedly, but liaisons between grooms and maids are common. They would hardly flaunt it, but I very sincerely doubt there was any entanglement. Not with Simon.”
I thought she’d been going to say Catriona had other romantic interests, which I know she did. When she says Simon instead, that pulls me up short.
“Is he gay?” I ask.
Her brow furrows more. “He is quite a cheerful lad.”
“Wrong word. Queer?”
“Odd? No, not really.”
“Third time’s the charm. Homosexual?”
That has her flushing in a way “premarital sex” didn’t. She casts a quick glance around and lowers her voice as she steers me away from others. “I presume that is more acceptable in your world, and I am glad to hear it.”
I consider. “Has Oscar Wilde gone to trial yet?”
“Oscar who?”