“I got in so much trouble when I stole it back for him.” She tilted her bruised cheek to better show it off in the lamppost’s light. “You’d have thought I’d stolen the crown jewels straight off the queen’s head after I nicked the knife from your pocket while you had your fit in my father’s bed. But I thought the knife best belonged to him after all the good work he’d done with it. How he fretted about the coppers coming for him, though.” She touched her cheek lightly and shifted her lower jaw from side to side.
Edwina’s face paled under the quarter moon. “Who hit you, Mary?” She cast her eyes up to the dark windows of the surrounding flats, searching for movement. “Where is he now?”
“Oh, he’s coming. He wants to meet you properly.” Mary walked up to the firepit and pinched off a chunk of fish from the spit. “I do hope you’ll get on,” she said and popped the undercooked flesh in her mouth.
“How do you know this man?” Edwina’s frustration bled through her questioning. “Where did you meet? Who is he?”
While Edwina badgered her sister for answers, Ian slipped his watch out of his pocket as discreetly as possible. A quick glance suggested a second presence was nearby. Very near. He eyed the alley behind them and found it empty, though the rattle of a glass bottle hitting the stone pavement echoed not far beyond.
“You didn’t really think we used up that much milk, did you?” Mary lifted her head and took a deep breath with her eyes closed. “We crossed paths in the street one evening, and that’s when I caught the scent of death clinging to his clothes.” She shrugged, as if her next choice were obvious. “So I followed him and watched from above as he struck down his prey. Then he watched as I took my bauble.” Mary licked her bottom lip. “I let him lift my skirts afterward in the next alley over.”
“Edwina, we need to go now,” Ian said. He put his arm around her shoulder, hoping to lead her safely out of the courtyard. If he was right and George was on his way, there would be a bloody confrontation. One he wasn’t sure he could win, and one he no longer believed worth the risk to her or any of the tenants hiding in their rooms. They needed to get out and summon the Constabulary.
Edwina stood in wretched shock at her sister’s admission.
“Edwina!” Ian turned her around so they faced the exit. They’d take a cab to the headquarters. Let Singh and her department handle it. But before they took their first step, a taunting voice echoed out of the corridor.
“Edwina and Mary, quite contrary. How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells, and bloody lads all in a row.”
The boy emerged from the narrow passageway, dragging a stick along the wall. His face was smudged with dirt, making the whites of his eyes appear almost luminescent from the contrast as he stared at them and grinned. Ian felt a sigh of relief it was only the boy until his intuition climbed up his back and clouted him over the head in warning: Damn fool.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What you want here?” the boy asked.
As many times as she’d had to pass the filthy child in the street after one of his ruthless taunts, Edwina had never acknowledged or addressed the boy directly. Until this moment she’d never truly looked him in the eye. As she did so now, she was met with cunning intuitiveness. The sort formed from watching and studying people over time with the understanding everyone around him lived in a world indifferent to his existence. She nearly withered under his icy gaze.
“I . . .” she began to stutter, still knocked off-kilter by the vile things her sister had admitted, but she lifted her chin, regaining her composure. She refused to stumble in front of this odd specter of a boy. “I came to talk my sister into seeing sense, but it appears I’m too late.”
Beside her, Ian had his watch out again. His face had gone slack after studying the reading. She had an inkling why, now that she’d paid proper attention to the boy. But curse it all, they needed answers, so she addressed him again. “You were at the pub earlier.”
“So were you,” he replied.
“And what are you doing here?” she asked the boy. “You do spend a lot of energy watching my sister and I, don’t you?” Her question seemed to sober Ian again as he looked up from his watch to hear the boy’s answer.
“It’s my home, then, innit.”
“I’ve told you before. His name is Benjamin.” Mary sat on the bench by the firepit eating the rest of the fish with her fingers, as if she were on a picnic. “Come over and sit with me, Ben. You don’t need to answer any of her questions. There’s a good lad.”