The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(8)

The woman nodded at the truth of it. “Only my cousin Emily, not two blocks from here, had her pocketbook stolen right out of her hand last week. Broad daylight. Gangs running wild in the streets, they are. It was only last Sunday’s paper that said they found a poor fella with his head bashed in and his throat cut north of the docks. Second one in a month. Mark me, ’tain’t safe for man or woman to walk alone at night anymore.” She jabbed the pin in the air to make her point.

Edwina shuddered at the thought. The newspapers sensationalized every transgression in the city to drive sales, but after hearing the report from Mrs. Dower, had she and Mary been near enough to a crime in progress that morning that they’d thwarted a worse attack on that poor man? Only to then steal his memories while he lay unconscious? Her hand flew involuntarily to her mouth, as if she might be ill.

“Sister, are you all right?”

She felt Mary’s arm at her elbow as she leaned her hand on the front counter. “Yes,” she said automatically, though she felt far from it. “It’s just a shock, all this talk of people being attacked in the street.”

“That’s why I’ve come looking for this.” Mrs. Dower waved the ten-inch hatpin. “I’ll feel better walking home from the laundry house at night with a little protection in me pocket,” she said and set her money on the counter.

“Ta,” Mary said and slid the coins into the till.

Mrs. Dower left the shop still gripping her hatpin as a weapon. Mary looked left and right out the window after the woman had gone and untied her apron. “We should think of charming those pins for the women’s protection,” she said before walking to the back room to exchange her apron for her shawl and hat. Changed, she begged off, saying she was going to pop out to get them some milk for their tea.

“Oh,” Edwina said. “I thought I might go out.”

“You? Where to?” Mary asked.

There was no use in lying. “To the hospital. To check on that poor man. So we know one way or the other.”

“Right. I’ll stop by on my way back,” she said. “A quick peek, nothing more.” Mary jammed her own sharp pin through her straw hat, then left Edwina to mind the shop as she merged with the flock of city inhabitants rushing by outside the window.





Chapter Five


The ward went temporarily silent. No creaking beds, no gasps of exasperation, no curses of pain to an unforgiving god. Two patients folded their newspapers in half, pretending to read when really their eyes and ears were attuned to the policeman who’d walked to the foot of John Doe’s cot. The one who’d arrived to ask how the man with the head wound and no memory had come to be on the foreshore at that time of the morning.

“Inspector Arthur Willoughby with the City Police.” He held up a star-shaped badge with the number 227 embossed in the center that presumably was meant to fill the onlooker with the confidence he was who he said he was. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

Though he’d recoiled at the sight of the man’s badge and occupation, there was also a sense of camaraderie at his dogged demeanor in the way he asked but really demanded. He nodded, though the motion made him dizzy. He hoped the officer was there to fill the sand back in his empty sack of a life, tell him what had happened and who had struck him, but it was more of the same rubbish questions the doctor had asked. Only this time when the question of his name came up, he didn’t offer the doctor’s presumption of Elvanfoot, only that he could not remember.

“Well, then can you tell me what happened?” asked the detective. “Why you were down by the river so early this morning?”

“I canna say,” he said. “I took a pretty good crack on the head. Canna seem to remember much of anything yet.”

The inspector remained impassive, as if he’d heard a hundred deflections from the truth before. A natural-born skeptic, judging by the pursing of his lips beneath his bushy mustache.

“Can you tell me what business you’re in? Do you work in this part of the city? Generally speaking,” he said, broadening the question as to encourage an answer. Any answer. Something to jot down in his handheld notebook.

At the mention of work in the city, a surge of unmet resolve asserted itself inside him, like horses ready to break for the open road. He had been intent on completing some task that morning. Something important. His body was yet primed for the effort. But empty of more information, the urge was left impotent, bridled by ignorance of purpose. He shook his head and felt a wave of dizziness as the surge receded. “I dinna know.”

“What can you tell me about your belongings?” The inspector leaned over the opening of the bedpan, stirring them around with the end of his lead pencil. “Is there anything missing? Could you have been robbed?”

Again, he could not know, and yet something had been taken from him. He was sure of it. Certain in the same way he’d recognized the watch as absolutely his. He concentrated, trying to chase down more than a feeling. And then he saw them. In his mind’s eye. Two figures standing over him. Two shadows. Yes, they had taken something from him. He’d come to, prying his eyes open a tiny crack until it hurt even to look at the starlight. But in that moment, he’d seen two women. In shawls. Yes, he remembered.

Spotting a change of expression, the inspector’s eyes narrowed and his mustache twitched. “You’ve remembered something.”