Jack agrees to the shadowing with only a modicum of grumbling. Then we get ready and head out.
As Jack and I walk to the kirkyard, she grumbles some more about Gray shadowing us, and I can see her point. It might be past ten, but being summer in Edinburgh, it’s still light, and the streets are jammed with people enjoying the warm evening, both in the New Town and the Old.
Jack’s contact is homeless, which is very common in the Old Town, where it only means that someone doesn’t have a regular roof over their head. If they’re flush, they might stay in a rooming house for a week or two. If the weather’s bad and the wallet’s near empty, there are the ultra-cheap doss houses where they sleep wherever they can find a spot. But on warm summer nights like this, Jack’s contact will save her shillings and sleep rough, which apparently means finding a quiet spot in the kirkyard. The night watchman knows her and knows she’s harmless, so he lets her stay, especially since she provides him with a second set of eyes, alert for trouble.
The woman—Annie—is what I’d call a salvager. In the parlance of the day, she’s a ragpicker. She finds useful bits of trash and sells them to merchants who repurpose them. The name comes from the fact that rags are one of their primary commodities. This is an era when everything is recycled until it really and truly cannot be used anymore, and ragpickers eke out a very meager living collecting things others have lost or deemed at the end of their useful life.
We find Annie chatting with the night watchman, which is damn near perfect since I wanted to talk to him anyway. As we approach, Annie spots Jack and smiles. The night watchman spots me and straightens, pulling in his stomach and raking a hand through his sandy hair, making Jack snicker beside me.
“Miss,” he says to me. Then he eyes Jack with suspicion.
Jack is in her male-presenting attire, and the man’s look clearly suggests she might be a young ruffian up to no good with a sweet young lass.
I’m dressed down more than I was earlier. My regular clothing might not be fancy, but my dresses are fine hand-me-downs, which means I’m either a naive maid from the New Town . . . or an expensive sex worker. I’ve put aside a drab brown dress, clean but oft-mended, for my nighttime forays into the Old Town.
“Jack,” Annie says warmly, gripping Jack’s hand with her dingy gloves. “Is it good to see you, lad.”
“And good to see you, my lady,” Jack says with a sweeping bow that makes the elderly woman flush and giggle. “May I present my colleague, Miss Mitchell.”
Annie casts a curious glance my way.
Jack continues, “Miss Mitchell is a detective.”
“Ignore him, please,” I say, making a move as if to good-naturedly swat Jack. “I work with a detective. Dr. Duncan Gray.”
The name obviously means nothing to them, and while Jack meant well by calling me a detective, I prefer to avoid the skepticism. I know I’m a professional detective—and Gray and McCreadie and Isla know it—so that’s enough. Women won’t be police officers for another fifty or so years, and the only fictional female sleuths right now are characters who solve a single mystery.
“Miss Mitchell is investigating the disappearance of Greyfriars Bobby,” Jack says.
Both sets of eyes swing my way.
“Oh!” Annie says. “Oh, that’s wonderful, lass. I have told the police he is missing, and they seem not the least concerned.”
“Well, Annie, it is a dog,” the night watchman says. “A famous one, to be sure, but I don’t think they understand how important old Bobby is to all of us.”
“He is the best dog,” Annie says. “The sweetest little old man.”
The night watchman nods in what seems like honest agreement. “The little fellow has been gone for two days now. I keep expecting to see him come trotting through the gate, but there’s been no sign of him.”
“When did you last see him?” I say, taking out my notebook, which has the night watchman straightening with importance.
“He was here three nights ago,” Annie says.
“That’s right,” the watchman says. “Annie brought him a bone, and he was a happy little lad, gnawing away on it. I saw him right there, where he always is, on every one of my rounds that night except the last. I didn’t think anything of that. An old man needs to stretch his legs and empty his bladder. When I came the next night, Annie here said she hadn’t seen him all day. The day watchman never mentioned a thing.”
“He wouldn’t,” Annie says. “Hates the little fellow, he does. Calls him a nuisance.” She snorts. “Nuisance? He’s the nuisance.”
The night watchman continues, “When the day watchman came for his shift, I asked about Bobby, and he said he hadn’t seen him at all. So the last person to see him, I think, was me, on my second-to-last round the night before.”
Annie nods. “I was catching a little sleep, and when that day watchman woke me up, telling me to move on, Bobby wasn’t in his place. I didn’t think much of it either, until I came back in the afternoon, and the children said he’d been gone all day.”
“The children?”
“The wee ones,” the night watchman says, face lighting in a smile. “Poor little bairns. They love Bobby. There’s three of them. Come every day with scraps, when they need all those scraps themselves.”
“They run errands for folks, earn a few ha’pence.” She turns to the night watchman. “They’re the ones who told me about that fellow.”
“Fellow?” The watchman’s eyes widen. “Yes. Of course.” He turns to me. “The children told Annie some fellow had been hanging around Bobby. Someone they’d never seen before. They didn’t say anything until Bobby was gone, so I do not know if it signifies. They might just not have liked the looks of him. You know how children are. He could have been innocent enough.”
