Page 21 of Murder in Blackfriars

“All of that could well be.” I folded the ribbon and returned the medal to the box. “I don’t like to leave this here. The police obviously didn’t find it relevant, but Mrs. Duggan will just sell it to a shop.”

“Why shouldn’t she? She’s out rent now.” Hannah shook her head. “That’s why you’d never make a good tea leaf, Katie. You see stories in a thing, not just its value.”

I wasn’t certain why that was so undesirable, but I tucked the little box into my pocket. If we could find any of Mr. Banks’s real family, they might want it.

A scrape of foot and the odor of tobacco smoke alerted me, though Hannah had already swung around.

“ ’Ere,” she said loudly. “Who’re you?”

“Who’reyou, missus?” the rough-faced, beefy man who hovered in the doorway countered. “And what you doing going through Banks’s things?”

7

Hannah darted forward, as though she’d engage the man in fisticuffs, but I stepped in her way.

“You knew Mr. Banks?” I asked the man.

“I did, aye. What of it? Ye never said who ye were.” He looked us up and down. “Temperance?”

“Of course not,” I said before Hannah could decide to switch us to the role of ladies battling the evils of drink. “We came to see if we could do anything for the family of poor Mr. Banks. Did he have any?”

The man shrugged. “Naw. He didn’t have no one. I’m closest thing he had to a friend, which is why I know you was never mates with him.”

“No,” I said, deciding to take a chance. “But he knew a friend of mine, or at least went to speak to him today.”

“You mean McAdam?”

“You know Mr. McAdam?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I heard Hannah shift restlessly behind me.

“I don’tknow’im,” the man answered me. “But I know Banks went to meet ’im. Was going on about ’im, all excited like. Did McAdam do for ’im? If so, I’ll make him sorry for it. Banks weren’t a bad bloke. Did me a good turn now and then.”

“Mr. McAdam did not hurt him, I promise you,” I said. “He was anxious to learn what Mr. Banks had to tell him.” I peered at the man, not very hopeful. “You don’t happen to know what it was, do you?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I tell you, missus?”

“Because it might be very important.”

I waited expectantly. I’d learned that being forthright with people without appearing to threaten them often convinced them to go along with what I wished. It worked with recalcitrant footmen and kitchen maids, anyway.

The man looked me up and down again, and I saw him decide that Hannah and I were harmless. “He knew McAdam from the old days, or thought he did,” the man said. “Grimes put me through it when Banks wanted to talk to McAdam.Who was Banks, and what was he up to?Wanted to know all about him.”

“Ah, you know Mr. Grimes, then,” I said, nodding sagely.

“Everyone in these parts knows Grimes. Why does a prim and proper miss likeyouknow him?”

“He is something of a friend of mine,” I said truthfully.

The man’s eyes filled with a little more respect, though I might have imagined it. His face was so craggy and pockmarked it was difficult to read his expression.

“If you say so, missus. You can call me Ramsay. Everyone does.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Ramsay. I am Mrs. Holloway, if you need to ask Mr. Grimes if I’m not lying. Now, please tell me what Mr. Banks wanted to relay to Mr. McAdam.”

Ramsay settled his shoulder against the doorframe. I realized his position trapped us in the room, but I pretended this did not worry me.

“Banks knew McAdam from before he shipped out to Crimea and came back a broken man, poor sod.”

The Crimean War against Russia had begun in 1853, if I remembered aright, the year before Mr. Banks had earned the medal. Thirty years ago, Daniel would have been a very small boy.