“Terrible shame, that is.”
That had us both turning around.
A slender man in a wool coat with a cap, white beard, and old but sharp brown eyes nodded as he leaned on a walking stick.
“Do ye live nearby?” Simon inquired.
“Hmmph,” he replied in that way, not exactly a word, more a sound. “Some thirty odd years after I turned the livery over tome son. I live just across the way in one of the other tenements that has presently been spared destruction.
“Then I’ll be on the street just as the poor folk in this one. It is said that the fire began at the back of the building in a rubbish pile with embers tossed out. But I have me own thoughts on it.”
He was more than happy to share those on his late afternoon walk.
“What might that be?” I asked.
“The tenants were good people, kept everything neat and clean in spite of the demolition that was to happen. One of the men was constantly sweeping the sidewalk, though I canna argue the need to get out and about even in the bloody fog and rain.
“And the women were always after the young ones to pick up any trash there about. It makes no sense that it started in a rubbish bin as it was picked up the day before.” He shook his head. “Now, they’ve gone scattered about.”
He seemed to know a lot about the people who had lived there.
“I’m told a woman by the name of Jacobson lived here.”
“Aye, miss. That be Mary Jacobson, a verra religious woman. She worked most of her life as a lady’s maid.
“She lived in a flat on the top floor in the last years, poor woman. Seemed to be unhappy. She once spoke to me wife about something she needed to repent for.”
Repent. Forgiveness for something?
I was hoping he might know where she had gone after the fire.
He shook his head. “She didna make it out of the building. The stairwell collapsed and she was trapped on the top floor.” He made that sound again.
“She was a God-fearin’ woman, attended church sometimes twice a week. There was no family that anyone knew of. She was buried in the kirkyard near St. Mary’s Catholic Church.”
I had hoped to meet the woman with that name I remembered from many years before.
What might she have been able to tell me? Something? Anything?
Nothing, as I thanked the man. Simon and I returned to the coach for the ride back to Parliament Square.
Mary Jacobson lived alone, and as far as anyone knew, she had no family. It was said that she had once been a lady’s maid to a well-placed family. Yet, she had lived here in a tenement that was to be torn down, and someone had seen to it that she was properly buried.
The church that she had apparently attended faithfully? One of the charities that often provided such services for the poor?
“Such a sad ending,” Simon said as we crossed Princes Street very near the Square.
But it wasn’t ended. I still did not know who Mary Jacobson was and how I knew that name since childhood.
12
OLD TOWN
Munro
He knew that he was being followed. He was not surprised as he first took a coach from Parliament Square, then continued afoot near the warehouse district.
It was what he would have done if he wanted to find out if someone had been poking around, asking questions, looking for someone.
