I was fortunate to have had Dory for a friend when there was no one.
I added the latest letter that I had read over twice, to the stack of those I had read earlier and opened the next, one that I had received just weeks before I returned.
It was brief, like the others, that scrawl almost impossible to read. There appeared to be nothing in this one as well as I read it again.
It mentioned that she had been unable to learn anything about a person named Jacobson, from before we met on the street. She mentioned Meggy Adams, who had now also been murdered
“The nebby old hag.”
I should have felt some small shred of sadness for the old woman, but did not.
I had no way of knowing yet how—or evenif—she was involved in Dory’s death. Still there was that suspicion.
I stared down at that last letter, my eyes tired from reading them over and over again. I rubbed them, wincing slightly at the bruise on my cheek. I had been at the task for hours after Munro left, and found nothing that might be helpful...
The words seemed to swim about on the notepaper. The ink seemed to almost fade completely, then grew bolder. I rubbed my eyes again as other words slowly appeared.
My imagination? Weariness from too many hours struggling to read all the letters again?
I continued to stare at the letter as a number and other words slowly emerged—a place and a name, No. 4 Morriston Place and the name, Jacobson.
I pushed the letter away as I came out of the chair.
Impossible! It must be my imagination. Words didn’t suddenly disappear and others appear in their place.
Only moments before, there was the simple message that I had read twice that explained Dory had been unable to find any information about the name that I remembered. Yet, it was there now, as if that address and name had just been written.
I paced across the floor of the library, trying to understand things that had happened since I returned.
The movement of a vase that I had not touched. Thoughts that were not my own. That sense of things, as if I knew them before they occurred. The encounter at the Grassmarket with the man who was seen outside Dory’s flat in the Close the night she was murdered. And now words that appeared in her last letter to me.
A gift, Elizabeth Cheney called it. Or a curse? The sort of things people were locked away over.
“Are ye a witch then?”I remembered Munro asking me. I had replied that if I was, I would turn him into a toad. I was confused and angry at the time. And now?
I returned to the table and stared down at those words on that notepaper—No. 4 Morriston Place.
The address meant nothing to me. What was important about it? Had I merely imagined it?
As I stared down at that last letter from my friend, the words slowly began to fade on the page until the original message returned.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was very near four o’clock in the afternoon. It would be dark soon, and Munro had not yet returned.
I quickly gathered the letters, tied them together once more, then returned them to my bag. I put on the coat Elizabeth had provided, then returned to the front office.
“Miss Montgomery?” Simon looked up with some surprise, then even greater surprise at my coat and bag.
“Do you know Morriston Place?”
I had no way of knowing the reason that name had appeared. It might have been an illusion—that was still there only moments before. I needed to know what it meant, if anything.
“Morriston Place?” Simon stammered, obviously confused. “Yes, it’s part of the Old Town restoration with some older residences still to be removed.”
I thanked him and turned to go, in spite of the promise I had made not to leave alone. A driver would obviously know how to find it. Not far, Simon had said. Considering his past visits with Campbell, I could easily be back before Munro returned.
“Wait! Miss Montgomery! Mr. Munro did say that ye were not to leave alone while he was gone.”
Yes, well...
