It was a sad and familiar situation, a child who knew those places, and slept in a warehouse when the weather turned.
“Ye seem to have learned a good amount more than we did this evening,” Simon commented.
Munro looked at me sharply. “Ye left? After I told ye it was best to stay here?”
“She was not alone, Mr. Munro. I accompanied her, though we discovered something sad about the Jacobson woman. The tenement where she lived burnt to the ground. And accordin’ to the man we encountered, the woman died in the fire.”
I had previously shared that name with him in a somewhat heated conversation. One of many where he was determined that I was to return to London, and I was equally determined to remain.
“The name ye remembered from before?”
“She lived at an address that Dory had discovered.”
I didn’t reveal how I learned it, I still didn’t understand that myself. All I knew was that a woman with the name that I remembered from my childhood was now dead, making it impossible for me to speak with her.
That left only the gold medallion I had somehow acquired and kept all the years since, that might provide a clue about my childhood and the family I had lost.
“What is to be done now with the grubby little street rat?” Simon inquired with a glance at Kip. “Sir McQuarrie will not take well to havin’ him here,” he continued. “Though he does give a considerable amount every year to the charities. We cannot simply turn him back out onto the street.”
The grubby little street rat—an appropriate description—was very nearly asleep and about to fall face-first into his plate.
Simon ‘saved’ him, then straightened him once more in the chair. Not a muscle stirred as Kip began to lightly snore.
No charity house would be available to take him this time of the night, as I knew only too well, and from my experience with the lad, I doubted he would remain.
He would simply run away as I had years before. And still, I thought, remembering too well cold nights I had spent huddled in some dark corner with only the crows that picked at the garbage and trash all about me.
“He will come with me.” I refused to see him turned out onto the street. Yet there was no denying an uneasy feeling as we left Sir McQuarrie’s office.
I felt something, a faint movement of air through the fog and glanced up at the roof-tops at the Square. It was impossible to see anything as mist wrapped around the lamp posts. Yet, there was something...
I hadno way of knowing wot Elizabeth’s reaction might be to a another ‘guest’ on her doorstep, even if it was just for the night.
“Saints preserve us!” she exclaimed as Munro escorted me back to Albany Street and carried Kip into her flat.
“Wot a grubby baggage, ye have there. Is there a child under all the grime and filth?”
“There was no other place to bring him this time of the night,” I replied, prepared to leave if she insisted on banning Kip from the house.
“It’s only for the night, but I should warn that he is an accomplished thief. I understand if ye choose not to have him stay over.”
She looked at me with that same curiosity as before, and then the boy, who now stood before her, somewhat groggy from sleep and possibly the first decent meal in a very long time.
“A cast-off,” she replied. “So many, as my husband experienced in his time with the police.” She smiled. “And not the first brought home for a meal and a place that was safe to lay the head. He is welcome. And Mr. Munro as well,” she added.
“I have plenty of blankets.”
He declined her invitation. His gaze met mine.
“I thank ye kindly, but there is someone I hope to find tonight.”
I knew his meaning after the information Kip had provided. He intended to find a woman named Big Kate and possibly the man Elias.
“Wait!”
I followed him to the door as Elizabeth went to make a bed on the settee in the parlour for Kip.
The man who had killed Dory and very likely Meggy Adams, then attacked me, was dangerous.
