A rip through time, p.30
A Rip Through Time, page 30
Catriona had betrayed Simon, and he wanted dirt on her. As her friend, he knew that dirt exists. Evans was a journalist. He could investigate Catriona. Except the situation intensified. Simon followed Catriona and saw her doing something, further betraying him. In a rage, Simon strangled her.
Then the killer from my world took over Simon’s body and made contact with Evans. The killer saw an information treasure trove, tortured Evan’s for everything he knew about Simon, and then killed him for his first victim.
THIRTY-FOUR
I think this through as we walk. Isla obviously has experience with people being lost in thought—both her brother and herself, I expect—and she recognizes the signs and leaves me to it.
“May I ask about Simon?” I say as we cut through Parliament Square. “Since you’ve been back from holidays, has he seemed any different to you?”
“Different?”
“Is he acting oddly? I’ve spoken to him a few times. He seems to be friends with Catriona.”
“He is.”
“More than friends, I think, which is awkward.”
Her brows crease. “More than friends, how?”
“Romantically involved, maybe? Or just fooling around together now and then. Friends with benefits, Victorian-style.”
I expect her to laugh at the term, but she frowns at me. “Simon?”
“Yes. That isn’t the impression you got? They must have hidden it. I guess they would. Premarital sex is verboten here, right?”
“Supposedly, but liaisons between grooms and maids are common. They would hardly flaunt it, but I very sincerely doubt there was any entanglement. Not with Simon.”
I thought she’d been going to say Catriona had other romantic interests, which I know she did. When she says Simon instead, that pulls me up short.
“Is he gay?” I ask.
Her brow furrows more. “He is quite a cheerful lad.”
“Wrong word. Queer?”
“Odd? No, not really.”
“Third time’s the charm. Homosexual?”
That has her flushing in a way “premarital sex” didn’t. She casts a quick glance around and lowers her voice as she steers me away from others. “I presume that is more acceptable in your world, and I am glad to hear it.”
I consider. “Has Oscar Wilde gone to trial yet?”
“Oscar who?”
“That answers my question. He’s one of the most famous writers of the Victorian era and another of my faves. When he starts writing, you should read his books and check out his plays. He’ll be tried and convicted of indecency, though. For homosexuality.”
She sighs. “And that is still in our future. Lovely. As for Simon…” She glances over. “Is this important?”
“Anything you can tell me about him is important.”
She says nothing, and we’ve gone clear across to High Street before she speaks again. “I am refraining from the obvious reaction, which is to exclaim that you cannot possibly suspect Simon of these murders based on something as mildly concerning as thinking you saw him following us.”
“I did see him following us.”
“Still, I presume there’s more, and it’s connected to the things you are avoiding telling me. I hope you are not doing so out of any consideration for my sensibilities. I get quite enough of that from Hugh. A few childhood incidents, and I am forever branded faint of heart.”
She walks a few more steps before continuing, “Perhaps the last was well past childhood, but it was entirely Duncan’s fault. One does not expect to step into one’s place of family business and see one’s brother playing with a decapitated head.”
“Playing?”
She huffs. “Examining it. But he seemed to be talking to it, and I did not realize Hugh was also in the room, and so it gave me a start.”
I sputter a laugh. “Alas, poor Yorick?”
“Yes, only this skull still had a face, which made it so much worse. I fainted, which was primarily due to the heat and the tightness of my corset, as I was off to a garden party. The concussion was quite mild, and the nightmares stopped after a few weeks, but you would think I was scarred for life to hear Hugh tell the tale.”
“Hey, if you’re okay with nightmares and fainting spells, I won’t stand in your way. No, I’m not holding back out of concern for your sensibilities. Your brother and Detective McCreadie are the reason I’d rather not explain my theory. In order to tell it to them, we’d need to explain the time traveling. So to tell you would put you into an awkward position.”
“The same awkward position that you are already in.”
“Yes, but it’s not my brother or my friend.”
“I would like to take that responsibility, Mallory.”
I open my mouth to protest. Then I shut it. Isla lives in a world of endless insurmountable walls and locked gates. Thy name is woman, and so thou shalt not pass. By protecting her, I’m doing the same thing she’s doing to Gray, but it feels different to her, and I need to put myself in her place and understand that.
If she chooses to take this risk, do I have the right to refuse her? Especially if not telling her could damage the investigation—rob me of a person to bounce my ideas off? I told myself that when this secret endangered the investigation, I’d share it. We’ve reached that point.
“All right,” I say finally, as we approach the gardens leading to the New Town. “May I ask that we finish discussing Simon first? Trust that I have a good reason for suspecting him, answer my questions, and then I’ll tell you.”
When she hesitates, I say, “You have my word on that, Isla. It’s not a trick. I would rather ask these questions without you being influenced by my theory.”
“All right. I trust you, and I will prove that by sharing information I would never give to anyone in our household, including my brother. When it comes to the pasts of my employees, I share them with Duncan only as they affect him.”
“Need-to-know basis.”
“Quite. He must know that Catriona is a thief or Alice a pickpocket. He does not need to know that Simon was a…” She clears his throat. “He found himself in trouble because he consorted with men. Older homosexual men.”
“He was a sex worker?” I guess.
“Actually, no. That is, I do not think so, in the strictest sense, and if he did accept money, it is no different from a shopgirl accepting rent from a wealthy admirer. Simon…” She coughs into her gloved hand. “I apologize if I stumble here, which must seem terribly quaint to you. I consider myself a woman of the world, yet I know the world extends beyond my experience with it. Simon had a friend, a young man who was not quite as handsome but was very charming and garrulous. I believe they were merely friends, but it is none of my business either way. The two of them played a sport of dressing as girls, a very pretty and charming pair of girls who frequented theaters and such establishments and flirted with men who knew exactly what they were and enjoyed participating in the performance. Liaisons were formed, to the financial benefit of Simon and his friend. It is not a world I inhabit, but I see no harm in it.”
“All parties were consenting.”
“Yes.” She turns onto Princes Street and lowers her voice more. “The problem came when Simon’s friend extricated himself from an attachment that had proven increasingly worrisome. He found a new benefactor, and his old one killed both him and his new lover.”
I should express shock, and I make a noise that approximates it, but I’ve seen this before. Simon’s friend fled a toxic relationship, and he was murdered for it. Too common a tale, whatever the time period.
Isla continues, “It threatened to be quite a scandal, especially given that the murderer was a man of high standing in the city. The police were bribed to look the other way. I fear they were only too happy to wash their hands of the matter. They did, however, need a scapegoat, and their eye fell on Simon.”
“Shit.”
“He was eighteen, the son of an Irish immigrant, and involved in what they considered ‘deviant’ behavior. He avoided the gallows only because one of his past lovers had the influence to help him and did not—thankfully—fear getting involved. This man knows Hugh, and through him knew my hiring practices, and so I took on Simon as a groom. I would not presume to say I know him well, but I am quite certain he chose that former life of his own volition, following his own propensities.”
“Meaning he likes other men, not pretty housemaids.”
“Yes. He was, as you say, friends with Catriona. I saw no hint of anything more.”
I ask more questions. Did Catriona and Simon have a recent falling-out? Argue? Not that Isla knows of, but she’d been gone for a month, and Gray rarely notices domestic drama.
Does Simon seem any different? Ilsa describes him as quiet, which is not the guy I’ve been talking to. To her, he seems like himself, but they’ve had little contact. He interacts more with Gray, who is not the most observant guy when it comes to his employees.
At that point, I need to tell Isla everything, which means we circle the block around the town house twice. The first time, I’m explaining that I think the killer is the guy who attacked me in the twenty-first century, who was thrown into the body of Catriona’s attacker … and I think that attacker—and body—is Simon. The second circle is spent in silence as she works that through.
“It makes sense,” she says slowly, as we steer to add an extra block onto our walk. “The inciting event is the attack happening in two periods. Two women attacked by two men in a similar manner on the same spot. If you jumped into Catriona, it is logical that your attacker could have jumped into hers.”
I don’t answer. She’s working it through, and we’re to the next corner before she says, “Do you know anything of the man who attacked you in your time?”
“I saw his face, but that doesn’t help. He was a serial killer who’d murdered two people. Strangled them with a rope, like he’d used on me. I’d seen him earlier that day in a coffee shop. I spilled coffee on him.”
Her brows shoot up.
“It was my fault. I was distracted, trying to do too many things at once, and I bumped into him. I apologized—I felt terrible—but he brushed me off and then stalked me and tried to murder me.”
“That seems excessive.”
“In my world, people have been drawn and quartered for less.” I glance over at her. “Kidding, obviously. It wasn’t an overreaction to the coffee spill as much as an excuse. Some serial killers murder indiscriminately, because it’s about the act, not the victim. For others, it’s about the victims—picking people who remind them of Mommy or the girl who turned them down or whatever. With this guy, it was a game. He let his victims self-select, so to speak. If someone pisses him off, in a very ordinary way, can he track and kill them?”
“Cerebral,” she murmurs. “That’s what you and Duncan called the murder of Archie Evans. Methodical and cerebral, lacking passion or bloodlust.”
“If I were to speculate, based on the murders in my time and here, I’d say that we’re dealing with a guy who thinks he’s clever. His driving force is ego. He wants to get away with it, and because he’s not compelled to kill in a specific way, he can avoid patterns and connections that would get him caught. Then he arrives here, before the golden age of serial killers.”
“The golden…?” She shakes her head. “I don’t even want to know what that means. Presumably, they become more common.”
“To many people in our time, the first serial killer doesn’t strike for another twenty years. He wasn’t the first, but he’s still the most famous. This guy comes here and thinks he can steal his thunder. Be clever and memorable. Except no one cares. So he goes another route. Replicate those murders. Out-ripper the Ripper.”
“The…?” Another head shake. “I definitely don’t want to ask about that.”
“You do not. The point is that he replicated a future famous murder and will undoubtedly continue on with the rest of the killing spree, meaning we need to stop him before he does.”
“Agreed.”
“We recognized each other in that attack,” I say. “I believe he knows who I am, and I know who he was. It’s the ‘was’ part that’s a problem. He has the advantage.”
“And you think he’s now Simon?”
“I’m theorizing that he could be Simon. What I need from you is either proof that the guy in Simon’s body is Simon or additional support for the idea that it might not be.”
“I honestly can’t say either way, Mallory. I haven’t had enough contact with him in these last few days.”
“Then the next step for me is finding proof. I’m not going to approach him directly—that’s dangerous if he’s the killer, because the killer realizes I’m not Catriona either. Would Mrs. Wallace know Simon better than you?”
“Yes, but she is not … fond of Catriona.”
“Oh, I know it. I can work around that. I’ll talk to her, and maybe talk to Dr. Gray if I can, and then, when I have a better idea either way, I’m going to ask you to send Simon on an errand so I can search his room. Can you do that?”
“Easily.”
“Good.”
THIRTY-FIVE
I’ve been in the house for an hour and haven’t spoken to Mrs. Wallace yet. First, I told myself I needed to come up with subtle questions. Then, I decided I should do some housework, so she won’t grumble about me shirking my duties. The truth is that I want time to think, because I don’t like this solution to the puzzle.
It fits. I know my twenty-first-century killer inhabits the body of Catriona’s nineteenth-century one. I know he tortured Archie Evans for something, and I could be wrong about what, but I am not wrong that Evans was investigating Catriona on behalf of someone who might have been angry enough to kill her.
Is it possible that the note in Evans’s pocket isn’t from the killer? Catriona certainly had multiple enemies. But that would mean the killer randomly grabbed and tortured the friend of someone else Catriona had wronged. Yeah, that’d be one hell of a coincidence and, like Isla, I don’t like them.
Simon fits. He’s friends with Catriona. She’s still up to her criminal ways. She gets him involved in something, and it goes sideways—or Catriona yanks it sideways—and he tries to kill her.
The problem with that scenario? Simon wasn’t a thief, wasn’t a pickpocket, wasn’t any sort of criminal. He was a gay kid who dressed up as a girl to flirt with men and find himself a sugar daddy.
That fits with what I know of Simon, better than I first thought. I’d interpreted flirting, but I can’t say it was more than me jumping to stereotypical conclusions about a close relationship between a handsome young man and a pretty young woman. Simon had no problem with her relationship with Constable Findlay. He even gave her shit for playing Findlay wrong. He also gave her shit for not giving up her thieving ways. As for me seeing a different side of him than Isla did, does that mean he’s a different guy … or just different with a friend versus an employer?
The opium link still bothers me. Seeing him today in the tenements definitely bothers me. I know I saw him. I know he retreated when he spotted me.
I’m almost done dusting the library when a possible explanation thuds into my brain. Dusting rag in hand, I march downstairs to the funeral parlor. I walk in to find Gray deep in paperwork. He looks up as I close the door behind me.
“Didn’t you have a funeral this afternoon?” I say.
He blinks, and I realize I’ve been hanging out with Isla too long today. I need to code-switch before I talk to anyone else in this world.
I half curtsy. “Apologies, sir. I came to clean, expecting to find the offices empty, as Mrs. Ballantyne said there was a funeral today.”
“Tomorrow. She has confused her days.”
“Then, if I may be so bold, sir, may I ask whether you gave Simon a half day off? Or perhaps dispatched him on an errand into the Old Town?”
He hesitates.
“I saw Simon in the Old Town, sir, and he seemed to be following Mrs. Ballantyne, which is concerning … unless you sent him to do so.”
He slowly sets down his pen, exhales through his teeth, and then runs a hand through his hair, streaking ink up his forehead.
“May I be blunt, Catriona?”
I plunk into the chair in front of him—as much as one can “plunk” wearing multiple layers of skirts.
He speaks slowly, as if picking through his word choices. “I understand my sister has forgiven you for her locket, and I know you were attacked by this killer we seek. I do not wish to seem mistrusting.”
“But Mrs. Ballantyne is your sister, and I have not yet proven myself, and so you were concerned for her safety. You overheard us going out, and you asked Simon to follow us to be certain she was in no danger from me.”
“Yes.” He straightens. “I am sorry if you are offended—”
“Not offended.” I pause. “Also apologizing for cutting you off, sir. You have reason for your mistrust. I spotted Simon and was concerned when he seemed to be following Mrs. Ballantyne.”
“You were concerned about Simon?”
I shrug. “I am a suspicious person, and it was suspicious behavior. I am glad that we cleared that up.” I rise. “Will I see you at tea?”
“Yes, and thank you for understanding my caution, Catriona.”
* * *
I’m barely in the hall when the back door flies open and Isla zips in, shutting it behind her. She doesn’t see me until she turns to find me standing there with my arms crossed.
The one thing about gas lighting? It doesn’t exactly illuminate things well, things such as the glower on my face, and she hurries over and whispers, “It is not Simon. I mean, the person who appears to be Simon is actually Simon.”
“You searched his room?” My voice rises.
“Of course not. I am hardly a detective. I spoke to him.”
“You—?”
Gray leans out the parlor door. “Is everything all right?”
I turn and half curtsy. “Apologies, sir, I was telling Mrs. Ballantyne that she was mistaken about the funeral today and that you invited her to tea with Detective McCreadie. We will retreat upstairs, so as not to disturb your work.”
