Page 60 of A Murder in Trinity Lane
St. Agnes loomed out of the gloom like a ghost. After asking the cabbie to wait, I bounded up the steps two at a time and rapped sharply on the door.
Sister Margaret herself answered, her eyes widening at the sight of me. “Your Grace?—”
“Was Lady Rosalynd here?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, stepping back to let me in. “Around noon. She asked about Elsie’s belongings. I showed her a small wooden box she’d left behind. But she didn’t take it with her. She asked me to keep it safe before she left.”
“Where did she go?”
Sister Margaret hesitated. “A man came—said he was Elsie’s brother, come to collect her things. I refused to give them to him. Something about him unsettled me. Lady Rosalynd heard the conversation. After he left, she followed him. By foot, but then she hailed a cab.”
A chill slid down my spine. “Do you know where the cabbie took her?”
“He returned with a message from her. The man she was following entered a building off Saffron Hill, behind the old tannery—just across from a public house called The Boar and Fiddle.”
I was already reaching for the door.
“There’s more,” she added. “Lady Rosalynd is watching from the alley next to the public house—behind an empty costermonger’s stall with a blue-striped awning.”
I paused, only a beat. “Thank you. I’ll find her.”
Her voice trembled. “I pray that you do. Saffron Hill's where the city hides its darkest souls—thieves, murderers, men with no conscience at all.”
Rushing out into the fog again, I climbed into the waiting cab, my heart pounding hard against the clock.
The mist thickened the closer we got to Saffron Hill, curling low around the gutters and swallowing the sound of hoofbeats. I knew this stretch of Clerkenwell too well. I’d come here before—chasing shadows, chasing Phillip. Nothing good ever came out of these streets.
The cab jolted to a halt just shy of the Boar and Fiddle.
I stepped out, scanning the sagging rooftops, the crumbling brickwork, the alley mouths gaping like open traps. The stench of rotting food, coal smoke, and something sharper—metallic, maybe blood—hung thick in the air. Every shadow could be a threat. I watched for movement: figures lingering too long near broken carts, men with their faces half-hidden beneath low-brimmed caps, eyes flicking sideways. Predators waiting.
Then I saw it—the blue-striped awning drooping over a battered costermonger’s stall. Just behind it, half-obscured by crates, stood a figure in gray. A hooded cape concealed her hair, but copper glinted in the lamplight.
Rosalynd.
She didn’t hear me. Didn’t see me. Her attention was all on the sagging building next to the tannery.
I crossed the street, boots nearly silent on the damp stones, every nerve taut. At the mouth of the alley, I stopped.
She was utterly still. So focused, she hadn’t noticed I was behind her. What if I had been someone with evil intent?
I gritted my teeth. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She spun around, eyes wide. “You—what are you doing here?”
“What am I—?” My voice was low, sharp. “I’m not the one skulking in a back alley in a dangerous part of London, with no one knowing where you’ve gone.”
“I wasn’t skulking,” she shot back. “And I did tell someone. I sent the cab back to St. Agnes. Sister Margaret knew where I was.”
“A nun?” I growled. “What could she have done?”
“She would’ve told someone if I didn’t return. She must have told you, since you’re here.”
I stepped closer, the words rising hot in my throat. “I might have found your bloodied cloak behind this filthy pub. Is that what you wanted?”
Her eyes flared. She shoved past me. But I caught her wrist and pulled her back.
“I didn’t ask you to come,” she said, breathless.
