The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [86]
Where on earth was Eilish Fyffe going alone, and on foot, at eleven o’clock at night?
He waited until she was well past him, across the grass of the circle to the far side of Ainslie Place, where she was about to disappear either east into St. Combe Street or south into Glenfinlas Street. Then he ran quickly and soundlessly after her, arriving at the corner just in time to see her pass under the lamp at the beginning of Charlotte Square.
Had she an assignation? It seemed not only the obvious conclusion but the only one. Why else would she be out alone, and obviously wishing not to be seen?
She was moving rapidly past the square. It was only two very short blocks before it ended in a big junction with Princes Street and Lothian Road, Shandwick Place and Queensferry Street. Where on earth was she going? He had never cared much for her, but now his opinion took a rapid and decisive turn for the worse.
She crossed the junction without a glance either way, still less behind her, and continued at a fast walk along Lothian Road. To their left were the Princes Street Gardens, and looming over them, brooding and medieval, the huge mass of the mound with the castle clinging to its top.
Monk kept an even hundred yards behind her, and was almost taken by surprise when she turned left and disappeared into Kings Stables Road. He was familiar with the way. It was his own route home, were he to walk. Not long and it would lead into the Grassmarket, and then Cowgate. Surely she could not be going that way? What would these dark, crowded buildings and narrow alleys possibly hold for a lady like Eilish?
His mind was still turning over the contradictions and impossibilities of it when suddenly he was engulfed in sharp, numbing pain and a black hole opened up in front of him.
He regained his senses, still on the pavement, propped up against the wall, his head aching abominably, his body cold and his temper volcanic. Eilish was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
The following day he returned to Ainslie Place in a vicious and desperate frame of mind, and set up vigil as soon as it was dark.
However it was not Eilish he saw, but a scruffy-looking man in soiled and very worn clothes approaching number seventeen nervously, looking from right to left as if he feared observation.
Monk moved farther back into the shadows, then remained absolutely motionless.
The man passed under a streetlamp and for a moment his face was visible. It was the same man Monk had seen several days before, not with Eilish, but with Deirdra. The man fished out a watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and put it back.
Curious. He did not look like a man who would be able to read a watch, far less own one.
Several minutes passed by. The man fidgeted in acute discomfort. Monk stood without moving even the angle of his head. Along the footpath the lamps made little pools of light. Between was a no-man’s-land of gathering mist and shadows. It was growing colder. Monk was beginning to feel it in his motionless state. It ate into his bones and crept up through the soles of his feet.
Then suddenly she was there. She must have come around through the areaway gate, into the street from the side—not Eilish, but the small, urgent figure of Deirdra. She did not even glance down the street or to the grass center of the Place, but went straight to the man. They stood close together for several minutes, heads bent, talking in voices so low that from where he stood Monk could not even hear a murmur.
Then suddenly Deirdra shook her head vigorously, the man touched her arm in a gentle reassuring gesture, and she turned and went back inside the house. He departed the way he had come.
Monk waited until long after midnight, growing colder and colder, but no one else came or went in the Farraline house. He could have kicked himself for not having followed the man.
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