“It is a private matter,” he replied. “Though he did say there was work to be had.” He watched her expression, the way her eyes narrowed.
“Always takin’ himself off on some ‘business,’” she snorted. “Ye dinna seem the sort.”
“Anyone is the ‘sort’ if there is enough money in it.” He knew that well enough.
“Aye, particularly with him. He did say he had to take care of somethin’ tonight that shoulda been finished before. Then he would get paid wot was due him. Said it was worth a lot of money.”
He felt a growing uneasiness that began when the other woman mentioned that Elias was not yet there, and now with what Big Kate had told him in so many words. That the man had to take care of something that should have been finished before.
He thought of Lily’s encounter at the Grassmarket. She called it nothing more than a robbery attempt gone wrong.
Was it something else?
Lily’s friend brutally murdered, her flat searched, a man who matched the description of Elias seen by the boy in the Close right after. Then the old woman who collected the rents in the same tenement murdered, her flat searched as well—someone looking for something.
The attack at the Grassmarket. Not for robbery? Followed by what Lily had discovered that very same day about the Jacobson woman her friend had managed to find after all these years, dead in a fire in the building.
Coincidences all? He’d lived too long on the street, seen too many things, and been part of some of them. He didn’t believe in coincidences.
And then there was something he’d noticed as they left Parliament Square that evening, something in her manner that he’d seen before.
It was just a moment, a glimpse as if something caught her attention. She had glanced about as if she had sensed something and expected to find someone there.
“Wot are ye, a witch?”he had asked her only days before when she seemed to sense something. She had cheekily replied that if she was, she would turn him into a toad.
Yet there were other instances since her return to Edinburgh that he remembered now, that included something Elizabeth Cheney said.
He didn’t believe in such things. Still, he was unable to shake off the feeling that she had sensed something earlier that evening.
No less than things learned in his own past that often returned like a warning? Instinct, his friend Brodie called it.
What if it was something more? What if she had sensed something dangerous? And now Elias had gone to take care of something that should have been finished before...
That uneasiness became an icy chill down his back as he left Big Kate and the boisterous gambling and other ‘entertainments,’ then found a driver out on the street.
“Do ye know Albany Street?”
“Aye,” the driver replied.
Albany Street
“Ye will wear a hole in the carpet,” Elizabeth commented as she set coal in the firebox, then closed the grate.
I smiled in spite of the tension in the back of my neck.
“You must add the repair to my rent as well as the rental of yer settee.” I glanced over at Kip who now occupied the settee, somewhat cleaner after Elizabeth declared that she would not tolerate bugs or filth.
There had been some complaints, outright refusal, then negotiating over the matter. Kip had lost.
“No need,” Elizabeth said now. “It’s good to have voices here again. I missed that after I lost me husband. Walls dinna have much to say.”
She had made another pot of coffee. “Come, sit, and spare me carpet, at least for a while until Mr. Munro returns.
I left the parlour window and joined her in the kitchen as she set two cups of coffee on the table.
“Perhaps a look at the cards while ye wait?” she suggested.
Tarot. I was familiar with it from Lady Antonia. She frequently had a card reader provide readings for her ladies, or as entertainment at her celebrations. It was something I had always made light of.
