I need to confirm my suspicion. Can I get to the toy shop and back before tea? I check the clock. I’m cutting it close—very close—but the store will be closed afterward, and every wasted day is another chance for the killer to take his next Jack the Ripper–style victim.
I hurry into the library and pen a quick note for Isla. I don’t try to find her—she’d want to join me and then I really would be late for tea. I grab a few coins from Catriona’s stash, and I’m off.
THIRTY-SIX
The toy shop truly is a wonderland of a place. From the outside, it looks like a high-end store in the modern world, where the toys are really meant for adults to display as whimsical accents or to place high on nursery shelves where grubby hands can’t actually reach them. When I step inside, though, I find actual children milling about under the watchful but kindly eye of a shop clerk.
The clerk is a woman around thirty. Dark-haired and dark-eyed and full-figured. She’s smiling at a trio of girls ogling a fully articulated wooden doll.
“You may touch her if you like,” she says. “Go on. Pick her up. See how her arms and legs move.”
I walk to the counter, and she smiles my way, but it’s an absent smile, her attention on the children, enjoying the sight of their wonder. I pause to enjoy it, too, and I feel the weight of the coins in my pocket.
I take out the coins, push them forward, and whisper “Would this be enough?” as I nod toward the girls. The woman glances at the coins and her face lights, only to shutter as she eyes me warily.
“I truly would like to,” I say. “If it is enough.”
She nods and moves from behind the counter, skirts swishing as she bends beside the girls and whispers to them. They look at me, their eyes widening. She directs their attention to three smaller dolls, not quite as fancy. The girls nod and point. They will take one small doll apiece instead of the one large one to share.
The shopkeeper wraps each doll in blank newsprint as carefully as the New Town shopkeeper wrapped that hand cream in tissue. Then she presents one to each girl. She bends before them and says, “You are to tell your parents that there was a kind woman at the toy shop who bought these for you, and if they have any questions, they may speak to me.”
The girls haven’t looked at me since first glancing my way, and now all three murmur awkward thanks before running to the door, doll packages cradled in their arms. Before they leave, one blurts back at me, “You are very pretty, miss,” and another says, “I like your dress,” while the third only giggles and waves. Then they are gone, scampering off down the street.
“That was very kind,” the shopkeeper says as she returns behind the counter to count out my change.
When she hands me back coins, I pause. “Was that enough?”
She smiles. “It was. We do not make fancy toys here. Simple and sturdy toys for those who might spare a pence or two for their bairns. Which is not many, even in this neighborhood.”
Her dialect and accent are pure Scots, and so I speak carefully when I say, “Are you one of the Kaplan family?”
She tenses, and a sliver of annoyance edges into her voice as she says, “Do I not sound as you expected?”
“No, I am only making sure, because I have a message for the Kaplan family and I did not wish to misdeliver it.”
Now her body goes rigid, gaze darting to a door, which I presume leads to a workshop. Through it comes the muffled tap-tapping of a craftsman at work.
“Not that sort of message,” I say quickly. “I found this shop on a list of addresses that I fear may indicate danger. Addresses of immigrants, written by those who may mean them harm.”
She relaxes. “Ah, all right then. Well, I thank you very much for the warning, but the police have already been informed and thwarted whatever those ruffians had in mind.”
“Oh?”
She leans against the counter. “A criminal officer came by last week to warn us that there might be trouble on a certain day. He had the patrols coming past all evening, and my husband and my father slept in the shop here. It would not be the first time we have had trouble. We have been here since before I was born, and still some do not welcome us.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“We are welcome in this neighborhood, because people know us, and they bought toys from us when they were wee bairns themselves. Yet trouble still finds its way from the outside. We have learned to guard ourselves, but this time the police did their jobs. They found young men loitering about, intent on trouble, and they gave them a fright.”
“Good.”
She smiles. “Very good. We were most pleased.”
I double-check, confirming that the date the police were concerned about is the one on Evans’s note. It is.
“I do appreciate that you brought us this information.” She waves around the shop. “Please, take something with our thanks. Anything you like.”
I shake my head. “Thank you, but I am only glad the danger was averted.”
“Are there no bairns in your life who would like a toy?” she coaxes.
“No,” I say. “No children…” I’m idly looking around the shop when my gaze falls on a wooden box.
“Ah.” She smiles. “For yourself, perhaps?” She takes the box from the shelf. It’s simply constructed but the polished wood shines. When I open the lid, the box plays a tune I don’t recognize. On the inside of the lid there’s a tin plate showing a girl with a parasol walking over a footbridge.
“Not for me,” I say, “but there’s a parlormaid in the house where I work.”
“You are in service then? What a kind thing to do for a wee working girl.” She starts wrapping the box before I can protest. I still try, but she says, “I insist. It is worth less than the dolls.”
I’m not so sure about that, but I let her wrap it and hand it to me.
“May I ask one more thing?” I say. “If I were to come into information like this again, I would like to take it to the proper authorities. I hesitated to go to the police because, as you say, they do not always trouble themselves with such concerns. It seems this particular criminal officer is different. Might I have his name?”
She beams. “Certainly. It is Detective McCreadie.”
* * *
Detective McCreadie, who’d been coming to Gray’s town house that night I was attacked, and then turned away, as if he’d forgotten something. Or as if he’d spotted me, followed me into the Old Town, and attacked me.
While there are a few questions I’ll want answered by our criminal officer friend, I don’t spend more than two seconds seriously considering him for the role of killer.
No matter how much I know about Catriona, I struggle to fully inhabit her. The only reason anyone buys my act is that blow-to-the-head excuse. The imposter-killer might have tortured Evans for background on his new body’s life, but there’s a limit to how well he’ll be able to fool friends. Gray and Isla have known Hugh McCreadie since they were children together. They’ve been close friends for most of their lives. I cannot imagine the imposter would be able to pull that off.
There’s another link, though. The one that sent me to the toy store. The clue I’d seen, floating over the investigation, apparently meaningless until, with a jolt, it’d taken on meaning.
What had McCreadie said about Evans that first night, when Gray was working over his body? That Evans worked the crime beat. The only thing it meant at the time was that it explained how McCreadie knew him. But when I’d considered who Evans might be sharing those addresses with, the answer had been “the police.” That would explain why the date had passed and the shop seemed fine.
If Evans worked the crime beat, he would talk to police, and I knew he’d had contact with McCreadie.
From what I know of McCreadie, he’s a good cop. If he got hold of that list of targets, he’d do the right thing to warn them. That’s why I went to the shop. To see whether I was right that whoever got that list—McCreadie or a colleague of his—had notified the toy-shop owners, who could tell me which police officers were involved.