Heavy boots sounded on the floorboards in the gambling room. Sterling and I were facing the door when the men arrived. Angus and Ray came first, with Lancaster and his inspector close on their heels. The watchman followed.
“Oh, for the love of God,” Ray said. “Jack Ireland, of all people.”
“You know this man, Mr. Walker?” the inspector asked.
“Jack Ireland, it is. He came in here for the first time only yesterday, maybe the day before. Spreading money around like he’d printed it himself.” Ray shook his head. “Fee, my dear, are you all right?”
The inspector’s attention shifted. He nodded to me, the greased edges of an enormous handlebar moustache curling heavenward. I hate a moustache that requires artificial embellishment. “Perhaps the lady would be more comfortable sitting outside?”
I peeked out from under my lashes. “I am feeling faint, sir.”
“Constable!” he barked. “Escort Mrs. MacGillivray and her son home.”
“If you don’t mind, Inspector,” I said, patting my chest to gather breath. “Perhaps Sergeant Lancaster would do me the courtesy. He has been so terribly gracious.” I smiled at them all.
Ray raised his eyes to the roof.
Lancaster tried not to look thrilled at being singled out and failed utterly.
Richard Sterling and Angus MacGillivray looked at the body, both of them avoiding my face.
“Very well.” The inspector was new in town, and I didn’t know his name—a substantial oversight on my part.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I do not believe we’ve met?” I offered a slightly strained smile, which contained a hint of distress beneath a lady’s natural desire to be polite.
“Inspector McKnight,” he said, with a smile almost as condescending as mine. And I knew that I’d best not play this man for a fool. “At your service, madam.” He was a scrawny fellow, about my height, with a pair of glasses so thick, he must be half-blind. But his eyes, enormous behind the lenses, were sharp and intelligent. “Who’s the fellow who found the body?”
The watchman stepped forward, wearing nothing above the waist but his dirty undershirt. “This were how I found him, sir. I didn’t touch nothin’. Then I went and fetched Mrs. MacGillivray right away, Mr. Walker not bein’ available like.”
“Mrs. MacGillivray?” Lancaster said, “shall we go?”
“Angus?”
“Please, can I stay, Ma? Mother, I mean. Ray might need me.” Angus looked around the room, seeking support. It came from an unexpected quarter.
“Let the boy stay, Mrs. MacGillivray,” Richard Sterling said. “If Walker wants to get a message to you, Angus’ll be needed.”
Angus beamed, looking more like an angel than the hard-hearted criminal investigator he probably thought himself to be.
I sighed heavily. “If you insist. Gentlemen, good night.” I picked up the skirts of my plain, but nonetheless flattering, green skirt and swept out of the room. Sergeant Lancaster tripped over his right boot, leapt into the air in an attempt to recover, blushed to the roots of his nonexistent hair, and stumbled after me. I stood by the door, patiently waiting for my escort, and favoured him with a grateful smile.
“Sergeant,” McKnight called after us, “fetch the doctor once you’ve seen Mrs. MacGillivray home.”
It wasn’t that I was uninterested in the remains of Jack Ireland, late of the San Francisco Standard. On the contrary, the demise of the unlamented Mr. Ireland might turn out to be of considerable importance to my business as well as my life. But it was necessary to leave the men to their work. I could count on Ray and Angus to report exactly what transpired. Ray would tell me the facts, and Angus would reveal every nuance that lay under the surface.
Sergeant Lancaster said not a word on the walk back to Mrs. Mann’s boarding house. The streets were deserted. A few rats scuttled about, seeking refuge in the gaping boards that were the feet of the hastily constructed dance halls, shops and homes. A wolf howled in the hills, sounding very close indeed. Dawson might try to pretend it was a cosmopolitan city, but I’d never heard the call of a wolf on the streets of London. Not even in Toronto.
“Here we are. This is my home. Thank you, Sergeant.” I smiled at my escort. My feet ached, my head throbbed, my ribs hurt from the pressure of my corset. I had no desire to linger in discomfort making polite conversation.
Lancaster touched his hat and shifted his feet. I hoped Mrs. Mann had the stove stoked and the kettle full.
“You’re a fine lady, Mrs. MacGillivray. You’ve raised a fine boy.” The words burst out of Lancaster like I hoped steam would shortly rise from Mrs. Mann’s kettle. “Good night.” He touched his hat and stumbled into the dusk.
How odd.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Can’t say as I’m sorry to see the end of that bastard,” Ray Walker said, once the men had all finished watching Fiona depart.
“Why is that, Mr. Walker?” Inspector McKnight asked.
“’Cause he was a filthy woman-beating piece of human garbage.”
“Did you kill him?”
Ray snorted. “No. And don’t you go trying to pin this on me. If I’d killed him, I wouldn’t ha’ left the body anywhere near the Savoy.”
“Ray didn’t kill anyone,” Angus shouted.
“Thank you, laddie.”
McKnight turned to Sterling. “What do we have here, Constable?”
Sterling looked up from where he knelt by the body. “A slash to the belly, sir. Looks bad, but not life-threatening, at a guess. Probably distracted him enough for the killer to move in and deliver the cut to the throat.”
McKnight knelt on Ireland’s other side.
Angus didn’t know how close he dared get. He was amazed he hadn’t been asked to leave. He edged forward until he stood at the bottom of the steps. Sterling and the inspector talked in serious voices, paying him no mind. Ray pulled up two benches, one to sit on and one to prop his feet on and looked like he was about to settle in for a welldeserved nap. He scratched at his scalp, causing a big clump of thin, greasy hair to stick out at the back of his head. Angus adored the tough little Scot, although not as much as he admired Richard Sterling. But now he was unsure if Ray Walker was worthy of his respect.
He’d arrived at Ray’s room, in a building called a boarding house, although it wasn’t anywhere near as nice as the boarding house in which he and his mother lived with the Manns, where they had home-cooked, plentiful meals, a nice warm kitchen, clean sheets and towels, and a proper outhouse. Ray rented one room in a house full of men. The place was dirty, and it smelled bad.
Angus had knocked at the door, loudly.
“Who the hell is it?” Ray had bellowed.
“Angus MacGillivray, sir. You have to come quick.”
The door opened a crack. Ray’s head popped out. His hair was tossed as if he’d been sleeping. But it was only early evening.
“Angus? What on earth? Your mother?”
“Ma’s fine, sir. But she sent me to get you. She said you have to come quick.”
“The Savoy? Not a fire?”
“No, sir. The Savoy’s fine too.”
“What then? Speak up, lad. I’m not running out into the night to accommodate some flight of fancy of your mother’s.” vRay Walker, of all people, should know that Angus’s mother had never had a moment