“I am in time for lunch,” she declares, walking in. “Hugh, how lovely to see you.”
McCreadie clambers to his feet to take her coat and pull out her chair. Then just as she’s about to slide in front of it, he slams it in again.
“No,” he says. “You cannot join us, Isla.”
“If this is a game, Hugh, I am much too hungry to play it.” She takes hold of the chair, but he grips it in place.
“We are discussing a murder,” McCreadie says.
Her gaze slides to me before darting away. “I see. Well, I am glad that Catriona is assisting you again, Duncan, but there is nothing about the murder of Archie Evans that I do not know from the papers, and it was a decidedly bloodless affair.”
“There’s been a second murder. It is different.”
“Different how?”
McCreadie pauses and then blurts, “Bloodier.”
“How bloody?” She waves off her own question. “Never mind. I am determined to join this meal and this conversation, whatever happened to the poor man.”
“Woman,” McCreadie says. “Possibly a prostitute.”
She frowns. “Was there an outrage committed against her?”
“No, nothing like that. At least…” He glances at Gray, who shakes his head. “No outrage. But a gruesome murder. It was very brutal, and you will not wish to discuss it while eating.”
“Is that not for me to determine? I am quite capable of leaving if I feel overwhelmed.”
“You may be physically able to leave, but you are too bloody stubborn.”
“Her throat was cut,” I say. “Deeply. Her abdomen stabbed, and her, uh, nether regions also stabbed.”
“Catriona!” McCreadie wheels on me.
I placidly spoon up my cream soup. “I believe Mrs. Ballantyne is a grown woman, who ought not to be treated as a child. If she wishes to endure a conversation that may cause nightmares, that is her choice, is it not? She knows the gist of it now. She can make her own decision.”
“Thank you, Catriona,” Isla says, and she pulls sharply on her chair, wrenching it from McCreadie.
The detective looks to Gray for help, but Gray only shrugs as he slices into his goose. “The girl has a point. Isla now knows what happened to the woman, and the choice is hers. I would strongly suggest”—he slants a look at his sister—“that she not view the body, but otherwise, I accept her choice.”
“Good,” Isla says as she sits. “Now tell me about this poor woman.”
The victim, as her sister confirmed for McCreadie, is one Rose Wright. Widowed and living with her sister, the one who’d come to identify the body.
“Is she a sex worker?” I ask when McCreadie finishes explaining.
McCreadie chokes on a bite of goose.
Isla clears her throat, obviously trying hard to keep from laughing. “I know your vocabulary has been disturbed, Catriona, but we do not generally use that word in company, polite or otherwise.”
“Worker?” I say, catching her eye with a look that makes her lose control of that laugh.
Gray only shakes his head, a smile playing on his lips.
“Fine,” I say. “Is she a prostitute?”
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that word. As a police officer, I’d been trained to use “sex worker” instead to avoid the stigma that is associated with “prostitute.” The exact same stigma, I realize, that is attached to “sex” in this time period. Of course, judging by what I read of Lady Inglis’s letter, Victorians are having—and enjoying—sex. They just don’t talk about it. How terribly Victorian of them.
I press on. “The fact that Rose has taken money for, er, her time doesn’t mean that’s her primary occupation. When I was on the streets, I knewwomen who’d, uh, sell their favor, if they really needed the money. They had jobs, but those jobs didn’t always pay the bills.”