He does not pull back. Does not dismiss me. Just grunts, and then the carriage stops, and he ushers me out. A few words to Simon, and the coach leaves us on the roadside.
I look around. It’s a busy street, with the castle rising over the craggy hill in the background. To my left I see a sign that makes me do a double take, seeing my own surname. It’s for a James Atkinson, joiner, advertising his services in both cabinetmaking and undertaking. The rough stone building seems half collapsed, with a newer roof patched on. Advertising flyers cover one wall.
I’m still gazing at my surroundings when I realize I’ve lost my boss. He’s moving fast along the narrow road, and I scamper to catch up. I’ve just reached him when he speaks as if never noticing I’d disappeared.
“Describe the feather.”
“The…?”
“The peacock feather,” he says impatiently.
“Right. It looked like—” I stop myself before saying it looked like a peacock feather. “It was cut short. To fit inside his jacket, I presume. Less than a foot of quill. It was mostly the eye, and it was kind of ragged. But the colors were really bright.”
“Describe.”
“The colors?” I pull up an image from my mind. “Green and blue with an orange eye. It looked unnaturally colorful. Garish.”
“Peacock feathers usually are.”
“Yes, but this was unusually so. It may have been dyed.”
“And what happened to it?”
Gray turns a corner before I can answer, and I kick up my pace to reach him.
“The feather fell out as we fought,” I say. “Afterward, he stayed in the shadows. The men never even realized he was wearing a mask. Their attention was on me. He reached down, and I thought he was picking up my knife, so I shouted a warning. But one of my so-called rescuers had my knife, and when my attacker left, the feather was gone.”
He grunts.
I take a deep breath. “There was also a piece of paper with my name on it.”
He wheels so fast I fall back before steadying myself.
“I decided not to mention it because you obviously did not believe me about the feather.”
I tell him how I was lured in and how I found my name on that paper, presumably to startle me while he attacked.
“I believe,” I say, “that I was made a target because I am your housemaid, possibly even your temporary assistant. If the killer is following the investigation, he may have known I assisted Detective McCreadie at the rooming house. It seems a departure from the first murder, though, and I am not certain what to make of it.” I pause. “Unless he planned to torture me for information on the investigation. Strangle me to unconsciousness, take me somewhere, and torture me.”
Gray only nods abruptly. Then he continues walking.
We turn another corner. It’s a quieter area, residential, with buildings that would have been upper-middle-class town houses at one time converted to overflowing tenements when the wealthier residents fled across the old medieval wall to the New Town.
Voices sound ahead. A whistle blows. Someone shouts, and a male voice barks a command. Before I can ask where we’re going—again—we round yet another corner of these maze-like streets, and I see the crowd ahead. The narrow road has been blocked off, a constable with a whistle warning carts to turn back. It’s a wasted effort. The crowd is so thick that no cart could pass, and the constable is left arguing with cart drivers who have no intention of turning back; they want to see what’s going on, only adding to the tumult.
Gray strides forward. He reaches back to take my elbow and seems surprised that I’m right beside him, shouldering men out of my way. Hestill grasps my elbow, so we don’t become separated by the crowd. It’s at least twenty men deep. Oh, there are a few women, but most of them have been relegated to the edges, the men forgetting their chivalry when they want to see what’s going on themselves.
I’m soon glad of Gray’s guiding grip. He’s tall enough that his head clears the crowd, and he has no compunction about using his size to barrel through. He carries himself like a man of his class, expecting to be obeyed. It works far better than my pokes and squeezes and elbows, and soon we are through, leaving a trail of muttered epithets in our way. When we reach the edge, a constable tries to stop us.
“He’s with me,” a voice calls.
I recognize it as McCreadie, though I still can’t see him. Even this inner circle is a mob of police officers and witnesses and others who seem to have just broken through to the middle. The class or status of the trespassers means the constables don’t dare expel them.
Dear God, don’t tell me this is a crime scene.
My left eyelid starts twitching as I watch people tramping about. It takes all my strength not to order them aside myself.
Has no one heard of crime-scene containment? No, Mallory, they have not, because they’ve barely begun using police to solve crimes. Proper protocol is decades away, after they discover the importance of fingerprints and other evidence.