A Rip Through Time(27)

He seems genuinely perplexed, failing to presume the natural reason a man might take a pretty maid around a shadowy corner. McCreadie is right, then. Gray does not see Catriona in that light. Which is a relief.

Gray hands me a pie and then explains my torture theory about the fingernails and the missing tooth. As promised, he doesn’t credit me, but neither does he take credit himself, crafting his words in a way that allows McCreadie to presume it was Gray’s idea but with an opening to correct that later. I can’t imagine Catriona will care who takes credit, but Gray is going out of his way to be fair-minded, and I appreciate that.

When McCreadie is called back into the station, Gray turns to me. “Now you may begin your truncated half day off, Catriona, which I will repay doubly.”

“Thank you, sir. Before I go, might I ask you an odd question?”

One brow rises with interest. “Of course.”

“Where was I found after my attack?”

“Where were you found…?”

“I wish to go there and see whether it jostles my memory. I have no recollection of the evening, and I would like to know what happened to me.” I glance toward the police precinct. “I presume there is an active investigation?”

He hesitates, and as he does, dark color creeps into his cheeks. He glances toward the station and then plucks at his necktie, as if it’s suddenly too tight. “Er, yes. I mean, no, there is not an investigation. Had you perished in the attack, there certainly would have been, but you did not and…”

“I am only a housemaid.”

I expect him to deny it, but he says, “Partly that and partly because, in the area of town where you were found, such attacks happen thrice a night. Perhaps not as serious as yours, but assaults are common enough that the police do not involve themselves unless it results in murder.”

“Which I’m sure is a great deterrent to the area’s thieves, ruffians, and rapists.”

He colors more. “Er, yes, as to that, you were not…” Another tug at his collar. “As the attending physician, I felt obligated to check for signs of tampering with…”

“My virtue?”

“Yes. Had that occurred, I would have insisted on an investigation, but that did not seem to be your assailant’s goal. Also, I assure you that I did only the most circumspect of inspections.”

“It was a medical exam,” I say. “It’s fine. Now, regardless of whether there’s an investigation, I would like to jar my memory if possible. I fear I was assaulted by someone familiar to me, someone I might trust.”

He frowns. “There was no evidence it was anything but a random assault.”

Was it? The detective in me can’t help analyzing what I heard that night. The first cry had sounded like a playful squeal, as if Catriona had been surprised by someone she knew. Someone she knew well? Or a mere acquaintance?

Again, not my monkey. Not my circus. With any luck, Catriona will return today and be able to name the attacker herself.

“Will you tell me where it happened?” I ask.

“I will take you there.”

I shake my head. “You have better things to do, sir.”

“I do not at the moment. Also, as I said, it is not the neighborhood for a young woman. I insist on escorting you.”





TEN


Gray was not exaggerating. When he shows me where Catriona was assaulted, I can only gape and wonder what the hell a nineteen-year-old housemaid was doing here. As I theorized, it’s the same spot where I was attacked in the modern day. Ironically, in that period, this is a picture-perfect tourist street designed to make you feel as if you’ve stepped into lovely Victorian Edinburgh, when the reality is that it’d been a street no Victorian tourist would set foot on. The narrow, cobbled road—quaint and cozy in the twenty-first century—is so dark and shadowed that it might as well be labeled Battery Boulevard.

As we walk through the neighborhood, I resist the urge to pull in my skirts like a proper little miss, my pretty nose upturned, curls flouncing. While I’d patrolled in modern tenement neighborhoods, this is worse than anything I’d seen in Vancouver. This is true squalor, with the stench to match, the kind of place that reminds me how, only hours ago, I’d acknowledged that some people would happily take Catriona’s job. Now I see those people, for whom a daughter in service would be “the one who got out”—the pride of the family, sending home whatever shillings she could spare.

Catriona wasn’t from this neighborhood. So what was she doing here? The answer, apparently, can be found just a few steps from where her body was discovered.

As we stand in that alley, Gray points to a hand-lettered sign in a nearby grimy window. “You were in there, having a drink.”

“It’s a pub?”

He clears his throat. “It passes for such, but Hugh—Detective McCreadie—says it is a known den of…”

“Iniquity?”

He looks startled. “No, not at all. There’s nothing of a salacious nature about it. I was going to say den of thieves, and then realized my phrasing might be offensive.”

“Not if I used to be a thief.”

“Yes, but you are no longer one. So I presume you were meeting a former compatriot for a drink. A social engagement.”