“Yes, yes,” he replied, his eyes wandering the room restlessly. “Have you—”
“Yes, dear?” she said, giving the soup a stir.
“Have you gone through his room yet?”
“The police were here a few nights ago. They poked around a bit.”
“Oh? Did they take anything?”
“No, but they were very keen to find a letter,” she said, wiping her hands on her best towel, creamy linen with blue stripes. “Something about blackmail.”
“Did they find it?”
“No.”
“Do you mind if I have a look around?”
Her face softened. “Do you want a keepsake, then, something to remember him by?”
“Yes, that would be nice.” He paused, suddenly alert. “What’s that sound?”
She listened, and could hear whimpering and the sound of soft scratching coming from the back of the house. “Oh, that’s Stephen’s dog. He’s sleeping in the laundry room, but he must have heard you come in. Would you like to take him, by any chance?”
His face registered displeasure. “No, thank you.”
She sighed. “That young sergeant said he would take the dog, but he hasn’t been back since then. Anyway, just go on up—you know which is Stephen’s room.”
She busied herself in the kitchen, humming as she tidied the counters and turned down the flame under the soup. After a few minutes, her visitor returned, looking disappointed.
“Did you find something, then?” she said.
“No,” he replied, his eyes scanning the room and coming to rest on a scrap of paper protruding from her cookbook. “What’s that?”
“Oh, this? Just something I found in poor Stephen’s room,” she said, plucking the card from between the pages. “I don’t suppose it’s anything, but I thought I’d give it to the investigating detective all the same.”
“What an unusual design.”
“It had fallen behind his dresser and was lodged in a crack in the wall. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been doing a thorough cleaning.”
“Do you know where it came from?”
“Not a clue. He didn’t even play cards, as far as I know.”
“So you have no idea where he got it?”
“I don’t—but perhaps the police will be able to find out. Would you care for some cabbage soup? I just made a fresh pot.”
“That would be lovely.”
“Have a seat there,” she said, leading him into the kitchen.
“It smells wonderful,” he said, following her, the same enigmatic smile on his face.
Twenty minutes later, he emerged from the building, fists shoved in his pockets, the card clutched in his right hand. After a quick glance up and down the street, he strode briskly toward the center of the Old Town. He was angry with himself—the card had been missing for some days now, and after turning his hotel room upside down, he had finally gone to the only place he could think of where it might be.
He remembered the night he must have left it there. He and Stephen had gone on a bender, ending up at Leith Walk—and like a fool, he hadn’t been able to resist showing off for Stephen. He didn’t even know the card was missing until just last night, when he’d happened to thumb through the deck.
He stepped around a sleeping vagrant in front of Waverley Station, resisting the urge to give him a kick as a train thundered out of the station, belching black smoke into the night air. He took the ramp to North Bridge, still cursing himself for being so careless.
It was shortly after that evening he decided Stephen must die. He felt a little bad about the landlady, but glad he had come prepared. It would seem like a death from natural causes. Poor old thing—she reminded him a little of his mother. He bore no ill will toward kindly landladies; she was simply in the way. And he was not a man to let anything—or anyone—stand in his way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Dawn slunk timidly through the streets of the city the next morning, as if afraid of what it might find. The pale sun filtering in through the gingham curtains in the kitchen of 22 Leith Walk fell on a pathetic sight. The woman seated in the kitchen nook stared out at the thin light with unseeing eyes, her head resting upon the table as if she had fallen asleep. A bowl of cabbage soup sat next to her, long gone cold, as had the pot on the stove. A large black-and-white cat rubbed against her shins, complaining vocally that she had not yet stirred to feed it.
The cat would go unfed for most of the day. The poor woman was finally discovered by her lone boarder, a university student who stumbled sleepily downstairs after a night of studying. Expecting a hot meal, he was startled and shaken to find his landlady’s lifeless body. After collecting himself, the boarder turned his footsteps in the direction of the police station, arriving disheveled and wild-eyed, to the bemusement of the constables on duty. Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton was summoned to the town house, accompanied by the stalwart Sergeant Dickerson.
“Sir?” the sergeant whispered, hovering next to DI Hamilton, who stood, staring at the dead woman in front of him, arms crossed, lips compressed in a frown. Sergeant Dickerson sighed. It had been nearly a quarter of an hour since they arrived at the boardinghouse, and the detective had spoken scarcely half a dozen words to him. Hamilton seemed to be burning with inner rage, clenching and unclenching his fists and muttering as he examined the scene. Dickerson tiptoed from the room into the hallway, where a pair of uniformed officers stood guard.
“What’s this all about, sir?” asked one of them, a chunky young fellow with close-cropped blond hair. “Why are we treating this like a crime scene? Looks to me like the poor lady had a heart attack.”
The sergeant removed his cap and ran a hand through his own head of increasingly shaggy red hair. His next haircut was long overdue. “It’s like this, lads,” he said. “This is where that dead fella lived—young Wycherly.”
The blond constable’s eyes widened. “The one what was strangled?”
Dickerson nodded with the satisfaction of possessing knowledge the others didn’t. “The same.”
“So did his killer do her as well?” asked his companion, a young lad with such smooth cheeks, he didn’t look old enough to grow a beard, let alone wear a uniform.
“That’s what DI Hamilton is trying to determine,” Dickerson replied, feeling rather important. “Best leave him alone when he’s workin’.”
“I hear he’s like a bloody bulldog,” said the pudgy blond constable. “Once he gets ahold of a case, he don’ bloody let go.”
“Ye heard right,” said Dickerson. “And one thing t’remember ’bout bulldogs—stay away from their teeth.”
The constable’s snicker was interrupted by Hamilton’s voice from the next room. “Sergeant! Would you come in here now?”
Startled, Dickerson dashed off to the kitchen, leaving the constables murmuring to each other in low voices so that DI Hamilton’s wrath would not descend upon them.