“Did he say why?”
“I’m jes the messenger.”
“Tell him I’ll be there.”
“D’ye wan’ me t’take ye there?”
“I can find my own way.”
“Never know when ye might need a mate.”
“Thanks all the same, but I’ll be fine.”
His answer put a damper on the boy’s mood, but that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. A few of the other officers looked at him askance as he slurped tea and gobbled down biscuits, finishing nearly half the tin. Luckily, DCI Crawford wasn’t around—Ian knew he had little regard for the ragamuffin, and didn’t want the chief questioning him about what the boy was doing there. The pursuit of his parents’ death was not an official inquiry, and he risked censure—or worse—if Crawford were to learn how he was spending his time.
After devouring the biscuits and tea, Derek grabbed his torn umbrella and pulled on his hat.
“See ye later, Guv.”
“Hang on,” said Ian, holding out his own umbrella. “Take this one.”
The boy hesitated, then took it with a little tip of his hat. “Ta very much. See y’around,” he said, ambling from the station with the same cocky swagger. Watching him go, Ian had to admire the steely determination it took to be a boy living by his wits in the streets of a cold and indifferent city.
No sooner had the boy left than the door swung open to admit a tiny, dark-haired woman carrying a large handbag. She wore a light-brown travel suit and a dark-green plaid shawl. Ian recognized her as Bronwyn Davies, the woman from the séance group.
“Miss Davies, thank you for coming in,” he said, rising to greet her. “Please, have a seat. Would you care for some tea?”
“Thank you, no. Esodora said you were looking for me,” she said in her soft Welsh accent, settling her petite body into the chair and pulling her plaid shawl around her thin shoulders. When she sat all the way back in it, her feet barely touched the ground.
“That’s your landlady, is it?” he said.
“Actually, my downstairs neighbor. She’s quite the busybody, and overheard you talking with my landlady.” She cocked her head to one side, regarding him with big, dark eyes, which appeared even larger in such a small face. Her age was impossible to guess—she could have been thirty or fifty. “I believe she’s Egyptian or something—and very nosy.”
“And you, Miss Davies—you are Welsh, I believe?”
“I am indeed. I grew up in Cardiff.”
“And how long have you lived in Edinburgh?”
“Since my poor sister took ill,” she said dolefully. “I came up from Wales to nurse her, and never left. When she died I just stayed on in her flat.”
“I believe you told me that you attended Madame Veselka’s séances in an attempt to communicate with her?”
Her face brightened. “I am happy to say I have had many conversations with her since she crossed over. It has been a great comfort to me.”
“Do you intend to continue attending the meetings?”
“Why on earth would I not?”
“Two of your members—”
“Surely you don’t believe their deaths are connected!” she exclaimed, as though the idea was truly scandalous.
“Does it not strike you as odd?”
“Not particularly.”
“You are aware they were both murdered?”
“I know that is what the police believe.”
“And what do you believe, Miss Davies?”
She leaned in toward him, and he could smell peppermint on her breath. “I believe they were taken by spirits.”
He sat back in his chair, quite unprepared for such an outlandish response. He was aware Miss Davies was eccentric, but clearly she possessed very bizarre ideas.
“Think about it,” she said. “The major was a military man—no telling how many of his enemies were waiting to avenge their deaths from the beyond.”
“And Miss Staley?”
“I don’t know enough about her, but I imagine she had a secret buried somewhere in her past—someone she wronged in life, who crossed over just long enough to do her in.”
“And you, Miss Davies? Have you no such enemies in your past?”
“I have led a very quiet life, Detective. Some people would say a dull life, and perhaps they are right. But I cannot remember ever harming anyone—at least not consciously.”
“Good for you, Miss Davies,” he replied, eyeing her enormous bag, still clutched tightly in her arms, as if it was a baby. “That is quite an impressive satchel,” he remarked.
“It’s my knitting. Goes everywhere with me, in case I have a spare moment. Helps calm my nerves, you know.”
“How very commendable,” he said, wondering what was wrong with her nerves that they needed calming.
The rest of the interview yielded little of interest. She claimed not to know the major or Elizabeth Staley very well, and could think of no one—living, at least—who might wish to harm them. After another offer of tea, which she again politely refused, he escorted her out of the station.
He turned to see Constable Turnbull staring at him. When he caught Ian’s eye, the corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer. He turned to Sergeant Dickerson, who was tidying up the tea station, and whispered something to him. Dickerson let out a guffaw that turned into a cough when he saw Ian looking at him. Clearing his throat, he stumbled over to his desk and sat, pretending to busy himself with paperwork, avoiding looking at Ian.
Ian felt a wave of loathing wash over him. How could Dickerson not see what Turnbull was, how he was playing him? Was the sergeant’s judgment so compromised that he was drawn to the constable’s insincere flattery and attention? He looked at Dickerson, his ruddy face flushed, burying himself in paperwork.
Ian stood up and threw on his cape. Dickerson looked up with the expression of a puppy who has just soiled an expensive rug.
“I’m going out,” Ian said.
“Where to, sir?”
“A funeral,” he replied, and before the sergeant could respond, he turned and strode to the front entrance. His anger was mounting to the point that leaving was the only reasonable option. He feared saying anything further to Dickerson would unleash a torrent of recrimination. Apart from embarrassing the sergeant in front of his colleagues, it would give Turnbull the upper hand, if he didn’t have it already. But for now, Ian needed to track down Jeremy Fitzpatrick, and he could think of no better place to find him than his father’s funeral.
Major Fitzpatrick’s funeral was at the Kirk of the Canongate, near the bottom of the Old Town, not far from Holyrood Palace. As Ian approached the church, with its rounded, Dutch-style gable, a line from Robert Fergusson’s poem “Leith Races” popped into his head.
An wha are ye my winsome dear,
That takes the gate sae early?
He thought about the young poet, buried within its walls, dead at the age of twenty-four. He gazed up at the tall, thin windows with their many panes, flanking the central round window, peering down at him like a giant eye. The sole festive holiday touch was a large holly wreath on the kirk’s front door. The sound of a hundred voices singing “Abide with Me” floated from the building. He tiptoed into the seventeenth-century kirk, laid out in cruciform design, and took a seat at the back of the long central aisle just as the last chords of the hymn lingered in the thin air, echoing through the silent white columns.