FLESHMARKET CLOSE, EDINBURGH
“Dory Brown?” the woman who had answered the door to the ground-floor flat at the top of what seemed those endless steps of the Close repeated as she gathered her worn shawl more tightly about her shoulders.
“That be the name she uses, but didna see her come in last night after her shift at the tavern. Not unusual, when she has business elsewhere, if ye get my meanin’.
“And yer a friend?” she continued with a suspicious glare. “Yer not wot I usually see in this part of the Old Town. Ye have a fine way of talkin’. I wouldna have guessed that Dory knew anyone so proper.”
The influence of the past several years, I realized.
“I’ve had a post from her,” I explained. “I’m to meet her here.”
I had walked from Waverly Station to save the cab fare. It was not far, yet the distance between those travellers who had arrived and those I found on the street in the Old Town was glaring. And the dress and coat I wore only made that more obvious.
“A post ye say?” the woman hooted with laughter. “Didna know she knew how to write, but she’s always been good withher numbers. Them wot earn their pay on their backsides learn their numbers quick so’s they don’t get cheated.”
I ignored the comment and inquired about the location of her flat.
There was that stare again.
“First one at the top of stairs.” She eventually jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “If she’s there, be sure to tell her that I’m expectin’ the rents.” She shook her head.
“Probably sleepin’ late before her shift at the tavern down the way. A busy night means she’ll be able to pay the rent.”
The tenement in the Close was like those I remembered from years before, with run-down flats occupied by those who worked in the Close—a cobbler, the seamstress shop, or a bake shop, with taverns tucked between the High Street and Market Square. And that oldest profession, as the old woman cackled, in order to pay the rents.
Even though it had been several years since I left, and with a great many changes, there were things that were still there just beneath the surface from when I had lived atThe Church.
The familiar sound of heavy footsteps on a wood floor, the unmistakable smell of food I had delivered on serving trays to the ladies and their ‘callers,’ and the other unmistakable sounds that came from behind closed doors.
I found Dory’s flat on the second floor and knocked at the door. When there was no answer, I tried the latch. The door was not bolted from the inside and slowly swung open, the room darkened and silent, with a stagnant odor of something...
I called out, and again there was no answer as I stepped inside. It was like stepping into the past, when I was often forced to search the coat of a customer thrown to the floor and empty the man’s pockets of any remaining coin. My early life as a pickpocket.
Then, as now, there was no electric. The only light came from the window and the faint flickering of light from a streetlamp on the High Street beyond. It spilled through the smudged panes of the window and across a small table. It appeared that Dory was not there.
If she did not have the rent money, as the old woman said, she might very well have chosen to spend the night some other place to avoid the crone.
The woman had said that Dory also worked at a nearby tavern. I might be able to find her there.
As I turned to leave, I caught a faint movement on the floor near an alcove where a curtain was pulled across the opening. Then another movement, quick as a flash and familiar from those years when I was at the Foundling Hospital and then again atThe Church.
I approached the alcove and saw it again, as well as the momentary gleam of beady eyes in the thin light. It was a rat!
And not just one. I pushed the curtain aside, then took a stunned step back at the horrible sight of a half dozen more rats fleeing into the shadows of the alcove and the wall.
I had found Dory.
She lay on the floor beside the bed where she had fallen, mouth agape, sightless eyes staring up at me, her skin darkened a purplish-red colour on her hands and face. And in the mark about her throat. Then there were the bloodied places where the rats had gathered.
A single rat had returned and poked out from under the edge of the bed, bolder than the others as it took several steps toward Dory’s body.
“Get on with ye!” I kicked it away, fully aware that it made no difference. Not now. Still...
I took several deep breaths of that stagnant air in the room.
It was not the first time I had seen a dead body. It had not been unusual at the Foundling Hospital when I was very young, as sickness spread through the common rooms, small bodies draped with cloths before they were taken away.
Nor was it unusual atThe Church, a customer who died in the middle of his evenin’, naked as the day he was born, body still twitching. Nor was it rare in the few inquiry cases I had assisted in with Mikaela and Mr. Brodie.
