Chapter Fifteen

Marianne

Edinburgh— Thursday 9th August 1877

T he rain that morning was no more than a light drizzle, and by the time we reached the waterfront at Leith, it had all but ceased. We had taken the tram, rattling down Leith Walk from Princes Street, disembarking at Commercial Street, where we walked along towards the bridge over the Water of Leith.

It was a very different river here from the one we had followed tumbling along the banks of Dean Village. Wider, more like a canal, and emptying out into the vast complex of docks that surrounded the main basin and the harbour. I had not been here before. I had had no notion that the place, so near to the city, was so enormous.

‘Stay close,' Rory said, ‘and mind what I told you, keep your head down. The docks are rife with criminal activity. The chances of me being spotted by a former customer are far higher down here, which is why I've taken the precaution of changing my appearance. We'd stick out like a sore thumb otherwise.'

I was wearing my cloak with my hood pulled up. In a change from his usual understated neatness, Rory was wearing workman's boots, a rough jacket and trousers, a collarless shirt with a muffler, a cap rather than a hat, and no gloves. It ought to have looked incongruous on him, but I thought it suited him. He had not shaved, I noticed, his chin was dark with stubble, which also suited him.

I had dreamt of him again last night, my dreams even more real than before, for now I knew the softness of his lips, the warmth of his mouth. Enough to inflame my imagination. Enough to make me wake, racked with longing. Enough, looking at him then, my face shielded by the hood of my cloak, to make me want more.

We simply can't be doing this, Rory had said yesterday, though I was sure that he wanted to kiss me, kiss me properly, as much as I had wanted to kiss him. This conviction I had, that we were meant to be together had inconvenient side-effects. Was that all it was? What mattered most, and I was sure of this, was giving Rory something I would never have, peace of mind.

I would never really understand why Francis had me locked up, but yesterday it was so clear to me that Rory suffered as I did, with endlessly posing the question, why? If we could find the answer, what a huge relief that would be for him. The black cloud that I sensed hanging over him, the anger and the frustration would be gone. Someone had tried to destroy him. If we could discover why—oh, I so desperately wanted that for him.

So wanting to kiss him, wanting more than kisses from him, feverishly dreaming of what that would be like, must be a side-effect of my fervent longing to help. That made sense to me. Now that I understood it, I could control it. The tingle I was feeling then, the excitement of being with him, the way I was so acutely conscious of the man beside me, that too was merely symptomatic of my fervent desire to help him.

If that manifested itself in desire for the man himself—then what if it did! It wasn't as if I was in any danger of acting on it. Fate—yes, I would credit fate with a role—had brought us together for one reason only, and we had two weeks to complete the task.

I turned my mind away from Rory to our surroundings. Behind us, Commercial Street was extremely busy, with drays, carts and carriages of all sorts jostling for position. People swarmed about, clerks with bundles of papers, dockers directing the carts in and out of the huge doors that were the entrance to the quayside, the occasional well-dressed man picking his way from his carriage to the steps of one imposing building or another. There were women too, with baskets and aprons, like everyone else rushing about their business.

‘That's where all the port offices, custom house, all that sort of thing are,' Rory said. ‘The commercial heart of the city. Where the money is.'

‘So this case, do you think it is "all about the money" too?' I asked, following him in the opposite direction, to cross over the river.

‘Somewhere along the line, it's bound to be, though I've no idea how. She was found on this side, but we'll get a better view if we cross over to the Shore. Are you sure you're wanting to do this?'

‘Provided you are sure you will not be in too much danger?'

‘Don't worry about me,' he said, which I knew was not an answer.

The waterside was lined with buildings, old and new, and there were a huge variety of ships, old and new, tied up alongside. Steam ships, paddle steamers, barges, and older clippers looking decidedly shabby and tired, surrounded by an army of little boats. Men were crying out to each other, we had to stick close to the buildings to avoid the endless flow of traffic, but above the noise I could smell the sea, and I could feel the salt of it on my face.

Rory's hair was wind-blown, fairer in the light down here, with streaks of gold I had not noticed before. His arms swung at his side. I hate to be held, but I wanted to take hold of his gloveless hand. I edged closer, so that my cloak fluttered against his legs.

He caught my eye, and smiled. ‘You're enjoying yourself.'

‘It's exciting,' I agreed, and it was, in a way I was not accustomed to. I was excited to be with him. I was excited to be out and about in a part of Edinburgh that was completely strange and new to me. I was excited by the thrill of the chase, even though we weren't chasing anyone yet, merely going back to the start of the trail, as Rory had put it.

I was excited by the prospect of helping him. I was exhilarated by his company, not being alone, not being lonely, engaged on something so very different from my usual line of work—much as I loved that. I was thrilled by the challenge of it all. My spirits lifted, and I smiled broadly at him.

He stumbled on the cobblestones. ‘Have you any idea how much I want to...?'

Kiss you. Neither of us said the words, but we were both thinking them. Remembering yesterday. The kiss that was not nearly enough. We had come to a halt. Our eyes met again. I felt it again, that breathless tension, dangerous and exciting, pulling me towards him. I stood rooted to the spot.

He blinked, shook his head, started to walk again. ‘Did I tell you that you've the makings of a good detective.'

I suppressed the completely irrelevant elation I felt at having my own tumultuous feelings returned, and followed his lead. ‘You did. Yesterday.'

‘So I did. You're good at reading people, that's what I said. You're a good judge of character. It's something I pride myself on, it's something I have to be good at in my line of work, but I like to have my judgement backed up with facts. With you it's more—more instinctive. You've a sense of whether or not people are telling the truth. Honestly, sometimes I feel like you can see right inside my head.'

‘I cannot!' I exclaimed, immediately on the defensive. ‘I told you yesterday that I find you almost impossible to read.'

‘Most of the time, is what you said.'

‘It's true. You keep your feelings closely guarded, most of the time.'

‘And some of the time, with you I mean, when I should be keeping them to myself, I can't,' he said wryly. ‘Though I should. I'm determined that I will.'

He was looking out at the docks, not at me, but I knew exactly what he was thinking, because I was thinking of it too. I spoke simply to break the spell. ‘I have always been good at reading faces, even when I was a child. I remember one occasion when I was helping to serve tea to my foster mother's friends. I was handing round a chocolate cake, but when one of the women reached for a piece I said, no, you can't have that, you'll be sick again.

‘At the time, I had no idea why everyone was embarrassed or why I was sent to my room. I presume she was expecting a child, though it may not have been that, but it's stuck in my head because I was punished so unfairly, simply for saying what was obvious to me. My foster mother accused me of listening at doors. She was never unkind to me, but she didn't like me. To use your phrase, it was all about the money for her.'

‘She told you that?' Rory said, looking appalled.

I shook my head. ‘ I told her that. Although she hid it well, I knew that it mattered more to her than me. She was furious.'

How could you possibly know that?

I winced, for her voice was loud and clear in my head, the first time I'd thought of that scene in years. I had said far more than I'd meant to or had ever said before. Not even to Francis had I confided this pathetic little tale. He had never shown any interest in my childhood. ‘Anyway. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew and it was a very long time ago, and I don't know why I'm telling you.'

‘Some people such as yourself, they're just better at piecing together what's in front of everyone's noses. I do the same, in a different way. I take all the facts I know, I add a bit of glue based on experience, and I get a picture. It's not a dark art, I don't know more than anyone else, but I'm better at working it out and making sense of it. I reckon you do the same, only it's not facts you use it's more what you feel from people. Would I be right?'

He was so perfectly right, I was temporarily lost for words. ‘Do you find—have you ever had—has it ever got you into trouble?'

‘Mostly, it's got other people into trouble. Criminals, I mean. What about you?'

I teetered on the brink of telling him. I came very close, because no one had ever understood that aspect of my character in that way, and it was such a relief, a pleasure, being understood. My intuition gave me the pieces. On occasion my sleeping mind was the glue that put them all together into a picture. It sounded so benign, yet it was those pictures that I had used to try to help people. Those pictures that I had described to Francis. And he had used those pictures, labelled them visions, and had me committed.

Horrified, I saw how close I had come to giving Rory the same ammunition. ‘Why would you ask that?'

‘It got you into trouble with your foster mother. I meant were there other times...?'

‘We're here to try to find out why you were hauled over the coals for trying to piece together a picture of a murder, not to poke into all the incidents in the past where I have been hauled over the coals for—' I broke off, putting my hand over my mouth. What was wrong with me! I never lose my temper. I never speak without thinking! I took a calming breath. ‘Your being hauled over the coals resulted in your exile from this city. The blackening of your name. A crime left unsolved. It's why we are here.'

I started to walk again, heartily regretting my outburst. Had I overreacted? This constant comparing of Rory with Francis in my head, I found it vile. Rory didn't deserve to be compared with that man, and I would happily never, ever think of Francis again. It was the institution that haunted my dreams, and my suffering there. Only since Rory had appeared had Francis also come back to haunt me.

Rory wasn't like Francis. Not even in the way he wanted me. It was a longing that I felt from Rory, raw desire, but—but reined in, somehow, and—and sweeter? No, not that. I hadn't the words, but it was different. Or perhaps what I was actually trying to describe were my own feelings, not his. I couldn't read him when his guard was up. But when he touched me, or looked at me, when our lips had met—no, I wasn't mistaken, whatever I was feeling, so was he.

And just now, when I let my guard down, he hadn't derided me or mocked me. And yesterday, when I'd said that I was meant to help him, he'd accepted that. He wanted my company, he was glad of my offer of help, but would he wish either if he knew that for four years I had been incarcerated in an asylum? He was an unusual man, but I doubted there was any man unusual enough to consort with a woman who had been branded a lunatic. I had to be more careful.

‘Marianne, slow down. Wait a minute.' Rory stopped at a gap between two ships on the quay. ‘The spot we're looking for is over there,' he said, pointing at the opposite side. ‘Do you see that inlet with the swing footbridge, just before where the main docks broaden out? It's known as the Rennie's Isle bridge. Her body was found lodged in there. Someone chose the wrong place to put her in the water.'

I shuddered. The screech of a steam train thundering past towards a much larger railway bridge further down made me jump.

‘That line wasn't there in my day,' Rory said, shading his eyes to look at the engine. ‘The docks it serves were only just being built. Do you see what I mean about the money that's pouring into this city?'

‘It's the same in the New Town. In the three years I've been here, it has expanded at an incredible rate. It seems that every other day, a new circus or place is opened up, a new park or garden railed off. What now? Should we go over and take a closer look?'

‘I don't see that we'd gain anything from it, I just wanted to remind us both what this is all about. She wasn't drowned, you know. She was already dead when they threw her in.'

‘Poor woman.'

‘Aye, no one deserves that fate.' He sighed, gazing over at the inlet and the little bridge. ‘I wish you would trust me. You can, you know.'

‘I do.'

‘Then why is it you keep clamming up on me?'

I opened my mouth to contradict him, but could not.

‘You can't deny it, because you can't tell a lie. It's been as clear as day to me from the start. You can dance around the truth, or you can keep something back, but you can't tell a lie. Your foster mother should have believed you when you said you didn't listen at doors, and she should have asked herself how a wee lassie in her care came to know that she wasn't actually cared for.'

‘I was always treated...'

‘Well enough,' he concluded for me, his lip curling. ‘You deserved to be treated a lot better than that. Every wean deserves a bit of affection.'

His words brought a lump to my throat. ‘You can't miss what you don't know, Rory.'

He frowned, looking deeply troubled. ‘Do you ever wonder...?'

‘What?'

‘Nothing.' He reached towards me, then changed his mind. ‘Like you said, we're not here to dig into your past, but mine. Or rather the poor woman that was found over there.'

Do you ever wonder...?

What? Better not to know. I followed the direction of his gaze, looking at the little bridge and the inlet it protected.

‘She was caught up in the bridge itself, when it was swung open,' Rory said. ‘I reckon whoever murdered her dumped her body in the docks over there, the big ones that were under construction at the time, and the tide moved her. She wasn't meant to be found but she was.'

‘Are you sure she was murdered, Rory? It wasn't an accident, or—might she have jumped?'

‘I know she was murdered. I'll explain later.'

‘And she hadn't been missed? That's what you told me.'

‘That's what got me at the time. No one cared. No one had even reported her missing.'

No one had reported me missing either. No one had wondered where I was, why I had disappeared. No one had cared enough. No, that was unfair. Those who might have cared were the women I had helped, but even had they been aware of my fate, they would have been helpless. ‘You cared,' I said to Rory.

‘Aye, and look what happened to me. Have you seen enough here? We're making ourselves a mite conspicuous. We'd best get a move on.'

‘Must we take the tram back? The sun is out, why don't we walk back to the city and talk about our next steps?'

‘Because I haven't worked out what they are, yet. But if you fancy a walk, we could head along the coast to Newhaven, it's not far. It's a wee fishing village. We'll be safe enough there.'