“I will find her…”
Epilogue
BAKEHOUSE CLOSE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
“Dora Brown, ye say?”the old woman who had answered the door of the ground-floor flat inquired.
“That be the name she uses, but didna see her come in last night after her shift at the tavern, or the past few days, come to mind. Not unusual, if she had business elsewhere, if ye get my meanin',” she continued as she looked Lily up and down.
“A friend ye say? Yer not wot I usually see in this part of the Old Town.”
Lily Montgomery nodded. “I've had a post from her.”
“A post?” the woman hooted with laughter. “Didna know she knew how to write, but she is always good with her numbers. Them who ply the trade on their backsides learn their numbers quick.
“She mighta come in without me knowin' though, since the rents are due. She does that sometimes.”
Lily inquired about Dora's flat number.
“Ye sure have a fine way of talkin'. I wouldna have guessed that Dora knew anyone so fancy. Hers is the first flat at the top of stairs. If she's there, ye tell her that I'm expectin' the rents.”
“When pigs fly,” Lily whispered to herself as she climbed the stairs.
The driver from Waverly Station had been reluctant to leave her at the address written in the note.
The tenement at the Close was like many she remembered from years before, along with the 'Church,' where both had worked. Although she had been merely a child when she was taken there to live and became a maid to the ladies who worked there.
Prostitution—the oldest profession in the world according to Lady Antonia Montgomery with whom she'd lived at Sussex Square in London the past several years.
It had surprised her that she knew so much about it. But perhaps it shouldn't have. Lady Montgomery had lived a very colourful life.
She was enormously fond of her and would be forever grateful to her. But most particularly, she owed everything to Mikaela Forsythe.
She admired her, considered her to be the family she had never known, along with Mr. Brodie. A chance encounter with Mikaela and Mr. Brodie, followed by the fire that had taken the 'Church,’ and her life was changed.
Mikaela was intelligent, she had travelled widely, had learned a great many things from those travels, and lived her life on her own terms. Such as taking on the work of an inquiry agent with Mr. Brodie.
She would understand, Lily thought, as she found the door to that flat on the second floor.
She wasn't surprised by the poor conditions in that part of Edinburgh. All those years before she had lived with Dora and the other 'ladies' at the 'Church', a well-known brothel that was in Old Town as well.
Whatever the reason Dora had sent that brief note, she hoped that she might be able to help her now.
She knocked at the door. When there was no answer, she tried the latch. It was not bolted from the inside and the door slowly swung open. She called out, but there was no answer. She stepped inside the one room flat.
The building was old and there was no electricity. The only light came from the lamp at the end of the Close and spilled through the smudged panes of the window in the far wall. She called out once more.
Again, there was no answer. If Dora hadn't the rent money, she might indeed have spent the night some other place.
As she turned to leave, she caught a faint movement on the floor near the alcove where a curtain was drawn across. Then another movement, familiar from those years before when she had lived in such a place.
As she approached the alcove she saw it again, followed by the gleam of beady eyes. It was a rat. And not just one.
She pushed the curtain back and jumped back as several fled the body that lay on the floor beside the bed. She had found Dora.
Her hand covered her mouth as she stared down at her friend, her face swollen and bloodied.
She had seen bodies before, but this was her friend, and she kicked away a rat that attempted to return.
