Yet none of those had been someone I knew...a friend who had protected me from those atThe Church,when one of theladies took on an attitude as I got older, or more than one man made the mistake of thinkin’ I worked on my back, the dolt willing to pay extra coin for my ‘company.’
Dory had been there like a fierce protector, standing between them and myself.
“It’s not fer ye!”she told me fiercely, more than once.“It’s too late for the rest of us, but not fer ye. Yer intelligent and quick to remember things, and there’s something about ye... Save the coin ye get from the others. Ye need to get away from this!”
There had been more than one conversation very much the same. She reminded me from time to time to save the coin I was paid.
“When the time comes...” she often said,“ye’ll know, and I’ll help any way I can.”
That time had come, just as she said it would, and I had left. But there was always that connection, when she found a new place to work, a place to live even though it was in the Close. And then when I asked her to make inquiries with those she knew about myself when I had arrived at The Church after running away from the Foundling Hospital.
Did any of the other ladies remember anything I said? The name I was born with? Any other names?
She had made those inquiries. I had paid her, funds sent by Sir Laughton to someone he knew in Edinburgh. Sir Alastair McQuarrie.
She had refused to accept any money at first, but then something changed.
“It’s the bloody fevers, makes it difficult to get around,” she had eventually confessed.
After learning that, I made certain a monthly stipend was sent to her from money I had saved, along with the allowance Lady Montgomery insisted I have.
She had explained that every young woman needed money of her own so that she might learn how best to manage it. Quite remarkable for a woman of her time.
I smiled as I remembered her answer to a comment I made at the time.
“Not at all, dear. I am allowed to spend my fortune in any way that I choose. After all, I am wealthier than the Queen. However, I do not remind her of that. She might very well ask for a loan.”
Dory had been most appreciative of the funds I had sent to her.
“I might be able to move up to a townhouse!” she had written in one of her last letters with her usual humour.“That might provide a better grade of men! I’d be livin’ high then.”
“Oh, Dory,” I whispered as I knelt beside her body, the floor sticky with blood. I touched her cheek, my fingers curling against the cold I found there as she stared back at me with sightless eyes.
“Who did this to ye?”
A customer she’d brought back to the flat with her? Someone who had simply followed her from the pub? Or someone else? Someone she knew? A previous customer?
I felt a dull ache deep inside. She had been a true friend.
“I promise,” I told her, even though I knew well enough that she could not hear me. “I’ll find who did this!” I vowed as the tears came.
A sound at the window with the dull light from the lamp post filtering through.
A crow was there on the other side of the glass, perched on the ledge and staring back at me. It made a mawkish sound, then disappeared in a frantic flutter of wings and was gone.
I felt it then, that faint touch on my shoulder, as if someone stood just there, along with a faint warning that moved across my skin.
That inner voice Mikaela often spoke of? Intuition? A warning?
The crow’s wings beat against the glass, and then a man’s voice spoke, thick with authority.
“Well, well. Wot have we here?”
I took a deep breath, then slowly turned around.
The telephone rangon the desk across from where I sat in a holding room the past three hours. As a ‘guest’ at the Edinburgh Police station, as it was called, after discovering Dory dead in that one-room flat.
“Sir Alastair McQuarrie?” the constable at the desk had remarked with a doubtful expression over the name I provided when I first arrived, given to me by Sir Laughton, in London.
