The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [91]
She led him away from the docks, into the back streets. While the alleyways of Edinburgh’s Old Town had order of a sort to them, most cutting straight away from the High Street, those of Leith had tangled themselves up in an impenetrable intestinal knot over the years. For all that it was a small place, it was a crowded maze of a place too. The narrow streets and closes coiled and crossed and folded upon one another in a density bewildering to one unfamiliar with their pattern. Quire was one such, and followed after Agnes like the novice he was, trying and failing to memorise their course.
The whole warren smelled of fish and ale and waste. Washing hung from the tenement windows. Every open door seemed to have a fishwife or a child or a sullen seaman loitering in it. There were dogs, too, little mangy things on the whole, sniffing through piles of rubbish industriously. The raucous seagulls mingled their cries with those of the equally raucous inhabitants. The sun sent the birds’ shadows racing across the upper reaches of the tenements.
“The Widow said you might be able to help me,” Quire said as they walked. “Mary Coulter.”
“I ken who the Widow is, son. Have done for half her life or more. And her husband too, miserable bloody bastard of a man that he was.”
“Can’t have been that bad, since she’s mourning him still,” Quire observed, stepping carefully over a pile of oily rags in the midst of the alley.
“Shows how much you ken,” Agnes said with a gleam of amusement in her eye. “Not so keen on him when he was breathing, Mary wasn’t. Not so keen at all. Better a widow than a beaten wife, eh?”
She broke off to nod a greeting to a much older, tiny woman who sat on a stool in the doorway of a tobacco shop. Somewhere inside, a child was bawling. The sound of it put a little frown of consternation on the face of Agnes’ granddaughter.
“That’s saying enough of that, though, I reckon,” Agnes said briskly as they moved on. “Widow’d not like us trading gossip about her name.”
“If she’s not in mourning, though, why…”
“Hush, man. Are you daft or something? Did I not just say that was enough of that? You’ll make me wish I’d left you there at the dock if you’re not careful.”
She turned aside without warning and led him up a stair into the body of a tenement. It was dark, and smelled dank. Agnes had her home on the first floor, and it was a good deal less grim than its approaches would suggest. A thin blanket hung across the window to shield a broken pane of glass, that was true, but as for its contents, Quire had seen far less salubrious quarters countless times in Edinburgh’s Old Town, Cath’s rooms amongst them. The low bed had neat sheets and a thick woollen rug laid across it. Three candles in pewter holders stood on a shelf. The hearth at the back of the room held a low heap of glowing embers. It had plentiful kindling and coal in a bucket beside it, a good iron poker hanging from a hook and clean copper cooking pots piled up, nested one into the next.
There was a long, narrow basket sitting on a table, and Agnes settled the baby into that with a few murmurs of comfort.
“Will you have a drink?” she asked as she tidied the girl’s swaddling clothes. “I’ve nothing strong, mind. Just tea, or I think I’ve a bottle or two of ale somewhere. Won’t have liquor in the house. It’s the Devil’s nectar, that stuff. In a manner of speaking, of course.”
She said that last with a quick, knowing smile. Quire was not entirely sure how amusing he should find it.
“I don’t need anything to drink,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Sit yourself down, then. On the bed, if you like.”
Agnes pulled a stool out from under the table while Quire settled himself.
“I trust Mary’s sense in most things,” Agnes said. “Not always in the judging of men, mind, but I’ll give you a hearing. Though what a sergeant of the city police has got to say to me, I’ve no idea.”
“I’m not sure I’m still a sergeant of police. And it’s not strictly their business I’m here on, either. Not to hear them tell it.”
“Oh.” Agnes, oddly, looked