I sighed, but didn’t want to say out loud what I thought was happening or had happened. We’d expressed our feelings. And I still believed in jinxes.
“No more murder talk tonight?” I said.
“Sounds good tae me.”
NINETEEN
“Delaney, hey,” Lola said as she opened the door.
She’d seen me step out of Elias’s cab and approach the building. We’d waved to her through her window, but I wondered if she’d open the door. The look on her face had been more perturbed than welcoming.
“Thanks,” I said as I came through and she shut the door behind me.
“You here to see Sophie and Rena?”
“I am.” That had been my plan. I hoped they would talk to me.
“They aren’t here, but I know where you can find them. They were dressed up when they left so I asked what the special occasion was.”
“Where did they go?”
“Church. A memorial service.”
“For Mallory?”
“No, that’s not today. This one is for the medical school corpses.”
“The corpses! I forgot.”
“They invited you?”
“Yes, kind of. Where is it again?”
“Greyfriars Kirk.”
“Want to come with me?”
Her eyes slanted once quickly back toward her flat.
“Oh, did I disturb company? Sorry,” I said.
“No, I’m just working on a project. I need to quit watching the door so much.”
She looked down at the ground as I looked at her.
“You okay?” I asked.
She looked up and forced a smile. “Sure. I just let schoolwork get piled up again.”
“Okay.” I hesitated, but she didn’t jump in with anything. “Thanks for letting me in, and for the reminder. I would have forgotten about the service.”
“Sure.” She turned and went back into her flat.
I hurried out of the building, but by the time I could see her window, the curtain was closing. Was she just tired of watching the door, or was there someone else in there she didn’t want to be seen?
None of my business, but her eye slant had set off some internal alarms. Had I sensed she was scared? I hesitated, but decided I was probably working too hard to read something that wasn’t there, into everything. I hurried back out to the cab. Elias had waited, because I wasn’t sure if Rena and Sophie would welcome my visit.
“That was quick,” Elias said as I opened the cab door. “They didnae want tae talk tae ye?”
“Do you have time to take me to Greyfriars Kirk?”
“We’re going tae church?” he said doubtfully. Aggie made him go to church much more than he would have liked.
“A service for the corpses the medical school uses.”
“Aye? Will the corpses be there?”
“Oh. I hope not. No, no, that wouldn’t be feasible. It’s a service to honor them and their families.”
“Awright. Let’s go.”
I’d been to the church and the graveyard and past Greyfriars Bobby a number of times. A statue honoring a famous dog had been placed in front of the church on Candlemaker Row. Rosie passed it every day, either on the bus or if she exited the bus early and walked the rest of the way to work. She frequently mentioned that she and Hector had stopped to have “a wee bit of the blather” with Bobby, the statue.
The most popular story about the once stray Skye terrier begins with his faithful companion John, a gardener who came to Edinburgh but couldn’t find a job and had to switch careers. John became a night watchman with the police force, and he and the stray dog would patrol the cobblestoned streets together. When John died of tuberculosis he was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, the graveyard next to the church. Bobby, ever faithful, refused to leave his master’s grave. Even after the dog had been thrown out of the graveyard, he snuck back in. He would leave the gravesite only when the one o’clock bell rang at the Edinburgh Castle. Then Bobby would trot to the coffee-house he and John had frequented, where he was fed a meal. The dog was taken care of for the rest of his life—locals continued to feed him and the Lord Provost paid for his license fee when a law was passed that all unlicensed dogs were to be destroyed. The engraved tag is in the Museum of Edinburgh; I’ve seen it. Baroness Angelia Georgina Burdett-Coutts had the statue and fountain erected in 1873. I learned all this from Joshua.
There were other less popular versions of the story that cast Bobby as a stray who was well loved by everyone, but didn’t patrol the night streets with John. I, like everyone else, liked the version that included the night watchman much better, but no matter which story was true, it seemed the dog was certainly adored.
“There’s someone pulling out now.” I nodded toward the small car that had been parked not far from the church.
“What do ye call it? Parking karma?” Elias said.
I laughed. “Yes.”
“We have guid parking karma today.”
“I’ll take it wherever I can get it.”
“Aye.” Elias angled the cab perfectly into the spot. “Are we here tae pay our respects or spy on people?”
“Both, I suppose. I think it’s a lovely gesture, and anyone who donates his or her body to science is worthy of respect.”
“But ye actually want tae just spy on folks?”
“Right.”
Elias laughed. “Awright, I can handle that.”
The ghosts of Edinburgh and I had developed an interesting relationship. I wasn’t completely sure I’d had a haunted Scottish adventure, but all my friends were convinced that I’d met a few ghosts last Christmas. I wasn’t ready to accept that version as truth, but it was difficult to explain it any other way. There’d been other moments too, though less vivid than my Christmas experience.
I’d visited the graveyard a few times since moving to Edinburgh, always with the hope I’d sense something ethereal. One of the oldest buildings to survive from Old Town, Edinburgh, the church and its graveyard were undeniably spooky, and many had claimed to have seen a ghost or two there.
I wasn’t one of them.
