Simon went to see who might be calling on Sir McQuarrie that late in the day and returned with Munro, along with a scrawny companion who was hardly more than skin and bones, with clothes that hung on him like cast-offs from the rag-picker.
Kip looked up at me with a hesitant, grubby expression. I had to admit that our last encounter was somewhat unusual.
“Miss?” He was tentative.
“The lad has information that could be helpful,” Munro explained.
“You know the boy?” Simon inquired of me, somewhat surprised by the expression on his face.
I nodded. “We have met before.”
“Ye did say ye would pay me,” Kip spoke up then, an obvious reminder for Munro.
“I ain’t had nothing to eat since day before and I could use the coin at the tavern next street over.”
Bemused by the conversation, Simon commented there might be something left from Sir McQuarrie’s earlier supper. It was not unusual, as he often worked well into the evening.
“Sit,” Munro told the boy. “Tell Miss Montgomery wot ye told me.”
Kip glanced at me a little uncertainly, not unwarranted, I supposed, considering our last encounter.
“If ye promise not to strike me as ye did the man at the market.”
I caught Munro’s surprised expression. I had not shared everything of that encounter with him.
“Aye.”
That seemed to satisfy the lad, although he continued to watch me with a cautious expression.
It seemed that Mr. Campbell had been less than welcoming when Munro arrived to speak with him earlier regarding any information he might have learned about the man who had attacked me at the Grassmarket.
Campbell insisted that he was unable to learn anything about the man, in spite of the fact that the marketplace was part of his territory. I realized it was verra likely that one of his men had been there that day. Yet he had no information about the man who attacked me.
Munro hadn’t believed him, but it was clear he would learn nothing from Campbell. It was as he was leaving that he had encountered Kip, who often slept at the warehouse when the weather turned.
“Me an’ the rats,” he explained with a mouthful of food Simon had found and brought to the library.
“The name the man is known by,” Munro reminded Kip.
“He goes by the name of Mr. Elias,” Kip replied. “I heard Mr. Campbell say he was the one wot killed the whore at Fleshmarket Close,” he added around another mouthful of food.
And the same person who had attacked me at the Grassmarket.
“Mr. Campbell knows him. He said the man was the sort others paid to take care of problems.”
From what Kip told us, the man worked for someone else.
What problem could that possibly be? The inquiries that I had asked Dory to make? Or was it some other reason?
It was not uncommon for those who earned a living any way they could to end badly. I had heard stories among the women atThe Church. It was not unusual for a prostitute to be found dead on the street or in one of the tenement flats across the city.
But how to find this Elias person?
“There’s a whore he spends time with,” Kip announced, as easily as if discussing the weather, as he finished the food on his plate. He yawned.
“She goes by the name of Big Kate and works in a pub Campbell owns near the Grassmarket.”
“I’ll make inquiries,” Munro commented. “She shouldn’t be difficult to find, and perhaps the man with her.”
