Here, in spite of the weather, vendors had set up stalls and tables covered with canvas. Just as I remembered, they offered day-old bread and produce, along with poultry for those who lived in the tenements as well as owners of nearby pubs and taverns.
“Do ye want me to wait, miss?” the driver inquired.
I assured him that it wasn’t necessary as I had no way of knowing how long I would be there.
He tipped his hat, then departed. I turned toward the square where Meggy Adams’s body had been found behind the poulterer’s stall.
A random attack as the police report indicated? An argument over something the old woman tried to steal as she was known to do? Or was it something else?
I entered the open marketplace and inquired about the location of Calvin Meeks’s vendor stall.
“That would be down the way just beyond the bake shop,” a woman, one of the vendors, looked at me with more than a little curiosity.
She sold rags and old clothes and wore the expression of weariness that was familiar in someone who had lost hope of anything better.
“Do ye have a need for somethin’ today?” she inquired, with more than a little doubt as she took in my appearance, the well-made gown I wore, and the leather bag I carried.
“A neck scarf, if you have one?”
She went to the back of her stall, searched through a crate filled with garments, then returned.
“This one looks to be from some fine gentleman. Not lace, like the ladies prefer, but on a day like this one, it’s good against the cold.”
I inquired about the cost. She was thoughtful,l and I fully expected an amount far more than what the scarf was worth. Instead, there was a smile that revealed two missing teeth.
“I’ll let ye have it for a shilling.”
It was obviously made of wool in a deep burgundy colour, and had been well worth more than a shilling. I gave her two.
“I ain’t never had no one do that. Pay more fer something?” she exclaimed. “Anyone else would try to talk it down.” She continued to look at me with more than a little surprise. “I make certain everythin’ I take in is picked clean and washed,” she assured me.
No doubt to avoid the curse of fleas in places like London and Edinburgh, where poor people were crowded into tenements and flats with trash that collected in the gutters along the streets.
I thanked her, wrapped the scarf around my neck, then continued my search for the baker’s stall and the poulterer just beyond, as I followed a trail of white feathers and the sound of chickens in the crates.
“Wot might I do fer ye, miss?” the poulterer inquired. “Some meat fer yer table? I can have a nice plump hen plucked and quartered fer yer husband’s supper.”
I explained that I’d heard about the woman whose body was found behind his stall. His manner immediately changed when he realized the sale of a fine, plump hen was not likely.
“Gossip. It’s bad for business.”
“Did you know her?”
“Most round here knew old Meggy. She was a regular, more often beggaring food, complainin’ that it was old and not worth the price,” he explained.
“More than one of us ran her off when she was caught stealing. Not that she couldn’t afford to pay like the others. She always had coin in her purse.”
Robbery. It was all too common.
He slammed a meat cleaver down onto the carcass of a chicken. I almost felt sorry for it even though the creature was already dead.
“It was Saturday,” he added. “The marketplace was full of all sorts of folk making purchases. It could have been anyone wot did the old girl in. Ye might let that be a warnin’ and keep an eye out fer yerself.”
He looked past me and greeted a customer who approached his stall.
“Late in the day fer ye, Mrs. Mac.” He greeted the woman. “Wot can I do fer ye?”
There was the usual sort of conversation that followed in such places. While Mr. Meeks and his customer discussed the weather, her husband laid off at the warehouse, and her brother had just moved in with them, I slipped around behind his stall where empty crates were stacked.
