The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [20]
Quire watched the man disappear into the narrow maw of Toddrick’s Wynd, a straight, steep close running down towards the Cowgate. Not a place of obvious and natural interest to the household of a man like Ruthven. He followed to the head of the wynd and peered down its gloomy length. Blegg hastened between the tenements, and met a dishevelled, rangy youth waiting in a very particular doorway. The two of them conferred briefly, and Quire shrank out of sight behind the corner as they looked about them. When he ventured to peer down the wynd once more, they were gone. Which was of great interest to Quire, given what—and who—lay behind that door.
He waited, buffeted by the ill-tempered sky, feeling slugs of melting sleet slip from his hair and inside his collar. It did not take long to tire of that. He sought refuge in Mallinder’s dairy, a dingy little shop opposite the entrance to the wynd.
“You don’t look like a man after milk,” Mrs. Mallinder observed despondently as Quire took up station just inside the threshold.
“No,” Quire admitted without looking at her. “Just a bit of shelter.”
She went back to folding paper around the slabs of butter on her counter.
“Well, fine,” she muttered. “Don’t you worry. You make whatever use you like of my roof. It’s there anyway. Costs me nothing, of course, to keep a shop for the service of them as don’t like a bit of rain or wind. My wee ones eat air and wear sackcloth, so it’s nothing to me if I never see the King’s head in my hand all day. Which I’ll probably not, unless this dreich weather softens up a bit.”
Quire backed up and spilled a few tiny silvery pennies on to the counter.
“There you are. Feast your eyes on good King George all you like.”
Mrs. Mallinder grunted.
“Fine man, no doubt, but he’s no treat for the eye. Here.”
She slapped a wrapped block of butter into Quire’s palm before he could withdraw his hand. He glanced down at it.
“I’m not wanting butter,” he said a touch plaintively.
“That’s as may be, but you’ve bought it fair and square. I may not be running a charitable shelter here, but I’m not after the charity of others either. You take it; that way I’ll not have to take offence.”
Bemused, and rather disappointed with the way the exchange had turned out, Quire slipped his purchase into the pocket of his greatcoat and resumed his position at the open door.
“Could you not shut the weather out?” Mrs. Mallinder enquired.
“No,” Quire replied, and that was the end of that.
It was perhaps a quarter of an hour or so before Blegg reappeared, striding out of the close, turning into the teeth of the wind and making his determined way off up the High Street. Quire watched him go, and rubbed his bristly chin thoughtfully for a moment or two. He was curious about what the rest of Blegg’s itinerary for the day might be, since it had had such an interesting start, but he was more curious still about what his business had been in Toddrick’s Wynd, and that trail might go cold all too quickly.
He crossed the High Street smartly and ducked into the close. The door to which he went was nondescript, a little broader and more solid than most of those lining the looming tenements, but unremarkable. Inside, though, was different.
A short, cramped passageway opened out into a wide hall with a low ceiling, the beams of which had turned almost black from long exposure to smoke and other fumes. The floorboards creaked beneath Quire’s feet. They were cracked and worn and scratched. There were benches around the edges of the hall. On one of them a woman of indeterminate age was asleep, bundled up in threadbare, moth-shot blankets. On another, a creased old man was sitting, blowing out a reedy, sharp tune on a wooden whistle. His crooked fingers jerked up