No, if Findlay is the killer and he catches me, I will fight, and then I will flee, and I’ll tell Gray the truth. Let Gray and McCreadie take it from there.
All contingencies worked out, my next step is getting into the apartment, which is laughably easy. When my parents bought me all those “junior detective” kits, I’d soon discovered that my lock-picking skills didn’t work on anything but the simplest locks, like the bathroom or the old locks at Nan’s house. No children’s toy is going to teach you how to open a modern dead bolt. But it had opened those doors at Nan’s.
What does that mean? That ten-year-old Mallory Atkinson, honing her lock-picking skills on her grandmother’s doors, had inadvertently been preparing to become a nineteenth-century detective. I open this basement door with no problem.
Once inside, I peer around for the glow of lights. The interior is cold and dark. The next thing is to listen for signs of life. Just the ticking of a clock. Then I bend to check what the floors are made of. I’m wearing my soft-soled indoor boots, but they still make some noise on hard floors. While I could remove them, I’d rather not have to flee in stocking feet. “Time-traveling cop flees killer only to be done in by slippery Victorian stockings” is not the epitaph I care to leave in this world.
From what I can see, the floors are like the basement at the town house—painted wood with lots of throw rugs. I test my tread on the wood. If I’m careless, it’ll make a swishing sound, but I don’t plan to be careless.
I shut the door without closing it completely, in case I need to make a run for it. Then I take out a box of wooden matches I swiped from the kitchen. It’s pitch-black in the hall, and I need that match light. I hold it up to see a corridor with multiple closed doors. Again, not ideal, but if he’s sleeping, I’d rather his door is shut.
I make my way down the hall. At each door, I pause, listen, and then crack it open. Room one is a tiny kitchen. Room two is a sitting area. Room three has a sign reading LANDLORD STORAGE. I open it anyway to confirm that, yes, it’s storage. The next room is the same. Okay, so this is a really tiny apartment, half the space used by the owners.
There’s only one more room, at the front of the house. No water closet, apparently. That’s Victorian basement living for you. I take extra time with this last door, which must be the bedroom. When I finally have it open enough to see inside, I send up a whispered “Thank you” into the cosmos. The room is empty. Findlay isn’t home.
Back to the external door, which is the only exit. If there’d once been an interior staircase, access has been removed. I close the external door and set up my alert system.
Now that I’m definitely alone, I can light the candle I brought. I even absconded with a tiny candleholder, the sort one might see in an old gothic, the timid maiden making her way through the dark house, candlelight wavering.
My first stop is the kitchen. That’s where the window is, so I need to get through this quickly, in case Findlay returns and sees the soft light. This being the kitchen, that’s easy. There’s nothing here. Almost literally nothing. Findlay might not go out drinking with his mates, but he isn’t cooking at home either. There are some basic foodstuffs and nothing more.
I shut the kitchen door as I leave, to be sure no light can be seen through the window. I hesitate at the storage rooms. If I wanted to hide something, would that be a good or lousy place to do it? Depends on how often my landlords took stuff out. If Findlay is the imposter, he won’t know that, so I’m going to deduce he wouldn’t take a chance.
What exactly do I hope to find? I’ve been wondering that since I first considered searching Simon’s apartment over the stables. What could I find to prove the resident is actually a twenty-first-century time traveler? That should be easy. Just turn the spotlight on myself. How would someone searching Catriona’s rooms realize she was from the future? Short answer: they wouldn’t. I brought nothing with me. Neither did he. And neither of us is going to be comfortable enough in this world to keep a diary.
Based on my room, there is no way anyone could tell that I’m from the future. So flip the question. How would someone know I wasn’t Catriona? Again, the short answer is that they wouldn’t, because I need to be Catriona. I’m not at the stage of storing away her belongings or buying ones better suited to my tastes. There is only one thing in my room to suggest I’m not Catriona: the French book on poisons. Even that is hardly proof. Hell, Catriona might read that, if she was looking to kill someone.
Wait. No. There is something else that would betray me, and I only realize it now. My case notes. I’ve been hiding them under that floorboard. Yes, Alice knows where it is, but if she found the notes, she’d think nothing of them—after all, I have been helping Gray and McCreadie with the case. But if the killer came into my room, wanting to prove to himself that I was not Catriona, those notes would do it.
Here I’m looking for a similar telltale sign. What I find is something altogether different.
I’ve done enough searches as a cop to scan a room and know where to look first. In the living room, it’s the settee—an old and ratty thing, the Victorian equivalent of a Goodwill find.
I check the back, looking for holes. I check the cushions. Then I flip it over to find a tear that’s been enlarged. Reach in. Root around. Pull out a small notebook.
I open to the first pages and see handwriting that looks like that on the back of Evans’s note—the information about Catriona. I take the note from my pocket to check. Yep, same script.
The book is Findlay’s case notes. The keen young constable eager to improve his craft, laboriously detailing every aspect of a case, particularly when McCreadie made a connection or uncovered a clue. A personal how-to manual for becoming a detective, and looking at it, I see myself reflected in these pages. I’d been this kind of constable. After helping on a case, I’d write up these notes on my computer and research anything I didn’t understand. Teaching myself how to be a detective.
I flip through the pages. Three-quarters of the way through, the handwriting changes. Oh, it’s not a marked change. It could pass for the other writing, if the author was in a hurry or writing on an awkward surface. Yet I don’t see that. I see someone trying to emulate the original handwriting, with all the stops and starts of practice before the script smooths out.
In these pages, the writer is no longer detailing his job; he’s detailing his life. My grandfather—on my dad’s side—had Alzheimer’s, and he kept a journal just like this. Reminders to himself that became increasingly heartbreaking as the disease sank its claws into him. At first, it was just regular notes like I might jot in my planner. Dentist appointment—ask about left top molar. Recycling is now the first and third weeks of the month. New parking spot is 18A. But then it became more. The names of people my grandfather knew. Reminders to do daily tasks, like showering. And finally, reminders of himself, of who he was.
That is what I see here. Those later stages. Copious notes on who Findlay was, everything about him and his job and who he might encounter on a daily basis. There are blank spaces where the imposter can come back and fill things in. There’s an entire page on McCreadie, starting with his name and appearance and a few personal details, some of which I know, most I don’t—lives alone, never married, engaged once, workaholic, ambitious, estranged from wealthy family. More has been added later, everything from McCreadie’s home address to how he takes his tea to his relationships with others.