Miss Wheeler also hastily assured them that it wasn’t. “The reason I ask is because the building in which you were found is owned by a vicar.”
Mary gasped again, but Juliette seemed unsurprised. “I should have known he was a religious crank. He had a self-righteous air about him. He called us unnatural abominations.”
“He told me I had the devil in me,” Mary added. “He said confessing to being a witch would expel the devil and allow me to serve God better.” The girl’s chin began to wobble again.
Juliette’s thumb caressed Mary’s. The simple act bolstered the maid and she managed to hold back her tears.
“We can’t be certain if the vicar who owns the building is involved,” I cautioned them.
Miss Wheeler agreed. “I thought he might be the vicar at the church where you attend Sunday service, but it seems there’s no connection if you’ve never attended here, Miss Buchanan, and Mary doesn’t go at all.”
She exchanged glances with Oscar and me. She may be right about the vicar not being involved, but we couldn’t discount the religious motive for the crime. Indeed, we knew of another person who was very religious.
Juliette’s aunt, Mrs. Gordon.
Was the reason the female kidnapper hadn’t uttered a word in the captives’ presence because one, or both, would recognize her voice?
It was hard to stomach. Surely not Juliette’s own aunt. She possessed a cool, brisk manner, but she’d seemed genuinely worried about her niece. Most families had their problems, and I suspected the death of her brother—Juliette’s father—had triggered a distancing between sisters-in-law that went beyond the physical, but it would be cruel indeed to orchestrate her niece’s abduction.
Unless she didn’t see it as cruelty, but righteous. Was Mrs. Gordon so devout that she put the demands of her faith above the well-being of Juliette?
Juliette turned to Miss Wheeler. “You should look into Jack, the footman at number eight. He’s involved.” She said it with more vehemence than anything she’d said so far.
“Aye,” Mary said, equally vehement. “He dinnae do the kidnapping, mind. Neither man was tall like Jack. But he’s involved, the cur. He must be.”
“Because he wrote the letters to you both, luring you outside so that you could be taken?” Oscar asked.
“Not just then,” Juliette said. “He wrote to me in Aberdeen. He lured me to Edinburgh on a promise of…” She shook her head. “Never mind what. I thought he loved me. He didn’t. I’m such a fool for believing him.”
“Me too,” Mary said. “He fooled us both, the cur.”
“Are you certain it’s Jack the footman from number eight?” Oscar asked. “Did he identify himself in the letters?”
“He signed ’em as Jack,” Mary hedged. “The butcher’s boy is also Jack, but the one in my letters says we’ve never spoken, so it wasnae him.”
For the first time since her rescue, Juliette seemed uncertain, too. She frowned. “His first letter to me said he’d noticed me on my last visit to my aunt and uncle in Edinburgh. He knew it was seven years ago. He said he’d watched me from afar then, and that he knew I’d admired him, but he couldn’t act on it. He’d been thinking about me ever since. Who else named Jack would have known I was here back then?”
“Did you admire him at the time?” Miss Wheeler asked gently.
“Of course. He is terribly handsome.”
“Aye.” Mary nodded, sagely. “He’s a braw lad, all right.”
Juliette tossed her mop of tangled hair. “Anyway, I wanted to visit Edinburgh again. Aberdeen is a little quiet.” She grunted, but didn’t continue. I suspect she was thinking about the irony of wanting to leave the quiet life only to have too much adventure here in Edinburgh.
We turned onto Moray Place just as it began to rain. Miss Wheeler put up her umbrella and held it over Juliette’s head. Mary sidled closer to be protected, too. Juliette released the maid’s hand and took her arm instead. The women huddled close.
Juliette’s gaze slid to the garden square opposite the houses. Her nostrils flared and her lips pinched. I wasn’t sure if she was upset or furious to be near the location of her abduction again. Either way, she was trying hard to contain her emotions. “I don’t know if it matters,” she said, “but the man who did the actual kidnapping was the man who never spoke.”
“The same with the one who took me,” Mary added. “The one who did all the talking waited in the carriage.”
We walked past Mr. Kinloch’s house. Apart from a constable stationed at the base of the stairs, all was quiet, the curtains drawn. The fellow who’d been lounging against the garden fence earlier was no longer there. The constable accompanying us went up to his colleague and spoke quietly. The other’s brows shot up as he stared at Juliette and Mary as if they were sideshow freaks.
Juliette lifted her chin even higher, but Mary didn’t seem to notice.
She stopped walking. “Ye ain’t going tae find them, are ye?” She appealed to Miss Wheeler, then to Oscar and me. “There’s nae clues, is there?” Her breathing quickened and her eyes filled with tears. “What if they do it again?”
It was something that had worried me, too, ever since freeing the girls. Even if Juliette and Mary were vigilant and made sure they were never on their own, there were other magicians. If cleansing the city of so-called witches was the motive, many men and women in Edinburgh could be the next victim.
