Chapter 10 #3
Intelligent, wise beyond her years, stubborn and brave, she had accepted my offer. In the years since, she had acquired an education, become a member of our somewhat unusual family, with a keen intelligence, a wicked sense of humor, and a penchant for speaking her mind.
She had been a challenge for Aunt Antonia, who insisted that she live at Sussex Square. Or perhaps the other way round. They were like two peas in a pod, and my great-aunt adored her.
Our conversations were usually about Lily’s latest accomplishments or adventures, such as becoming lost in the old fortress, or taking herself off in the motor carriage. But I had noticed that she was especially quiet.
“Did she say who the post was from?” I inquired.
“Not a word.”
I was aware that she received posts from time to time from a couple of the ‘ladies’ she had once worked for.
She had shared those with me, yet there had been no mention of one this morning.
“She did seem quite distracted by it,” Aunt Antonia commented.
I hadn’t spent a great amount of time with Lily and decided to look in on her before I left.
She was not in her bedchamber. I followed a familiar sound and found her in the Sword Room. The sound was her rather aggressive practice with one of our ancestors’ weapons, a very fine rapier that I had used in the past.
I waited beside the mat Aunt Antonia had acquired for my practices with the blade as Lily parried, thrust several times at the target which was a large bag of sand suspended from the ceiling to recreate an opposing duelist.
Of course, it was less of a challenge than a living opponent, as the bag of sand did not strike back but instead swayed back and forth as sand fell from a series of ‘wounds’ that she had inflicted.
She parried and thrust once more, then returned to the beginning stance, somewhat out of breath. I did wonder who her ‘opponent’ might have been with all of those cuts.
I was certain she had no idea I was there until she turned, hazel-green eyes darkened from the intense ‘battle’ she had just finished.
“You’ve much improved,” I complimented her. “It could be dangerous if I were to challenge you.”
She gradually returned from wherever it was in her mind she had gone, driving that blade, absent the cork tip, into the target over and over again.
“I have had a very good instructor.” She complimented me on the hundreds of hours we had shared in a mock duel, familiarizing her with the weight of the rapier, then the various moves that I had learned.
She had then spent hours more at the gymnasium, training with one of their instructors well-schooled in that ancient discipline, after it seemed she had far exceeded my ability to teach her more.
And now, where was it that she had gone as she quite furiously attempted to ‘kill’ the sandbag?
I went to that bag and inspected it. It was not the one we had last practiced with, but had obviously been replaced, no doubt after the demise of the previous one.
She stood apart, hands folded over the hilt of the rapier as if at the ready.
“I’ve decided I do not want to go to Paris,” she announced with a side glance in my direction. “Mr. Munro said that I am an ungrateful amadán. It means ‘fool’ to the Scots.”
I was somewhat familiar with the word.
It was obvious that she was waiting for something similar from me, but as I had in the past, I saw too much of myself in the young woman who stood before me as if prepared to do battle.
Willful, headstrong might be a better word, most certainly intelligent, and with wounds of her own from her earlier years in Edinburgh.
Then, before I could respond, as if she was afraid of what I might say, she asked, “How did you feel about what happened with your father?”
I added ‘direct’ to the list of qualities. However, that was part of who she was.
She knew somewhat about my early losses, a brief conversation we had when she first arrived from Scotland, but not about what I had felt at the time.
I did suppose this, too, was part of sharing my family with her—questions with difficult answers, much as I had asked them of my great-aunt.
She had not swept them under the rug as others would, preferring not to discuss difficult ‘family’ matters, but had been quite direct.
I had not perished from the answers but chose to believe that I was strengthened by ‘difficult truths,’ as she called them. Quite remarkable actually, and one of the many reasons that I adored my great-aunt.
I did understand that Lily being my ward, as it were, was more than a proper education, finishing school in Paris, proper dress, and proper manners.
How now to respond was the question. I would not simply sweep her decision to forego Paris under the carpet as a foolish notion.
“I was quite young at the time,” I began, going back through the pages of memory. “I encountered many new things, different ways of looking back on what had happened, new experiences.
“I learned that I was strong, stronger than what had happened. I also learned that I could make my own way, be my own person, make my own decisions. I suppose that I have Aunt Antonia to blame for that.”
There was a faint smile.
“She has said the same,” she replied.
“You are a great deal like her,” I said then, as I caught the pensive expression on her face. “With your own strengths and qualities.”
“And you, as well?”
“I suppose she has been a strong influence,” I admitted.
“Then you are not angry about my decision?”
“The first of many, I suspect. I must admit that it might be far easier if you were a meek creature who simply said ‘yes, ma’am.’ However, you are not, nor could you ever be. I knew that when we were escaping the Vaults beneath Edinburgh.”
She was still quite serious. “I didn’t want to disappoint you, after everything you’ve done for me.”
“Now you are being a foolish chit.”
The first of more conversations, I hoped, as I braved the rapier and gave her a strong embrace.
“What do you think of Madame Sybille?”
That certainly took the conversation in a different direction. Madame Sybille was the spiritualist and medium my great-aunt had brought to Sussex Square for her ladies’ group.
“She seems to be quite entertaining,” I replied. “Aunt Antonia is fond of her. She insists that she’s very talented. As I recall, Madame Sybille helped one of her acquaintances find a ring her late husband had given her after it was lost. A good guess, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” Lily replied.
I sensed there might be more, however did not press the matter. From my own experience and knowing Lily as I did, I was certain there would be more conversations. She was most curious about things.
“I would like to practice a bit longer,” she said then.
Of course, I thought as I left her to the demise of the sandbag.
“You have spoken with her?” Aunt Antonia inquired as I returned to the hall and collected my coat and umbrella. I nodded.
“It is remarkable how very much like myself she is, when I was that age.”
“No adventure to the Greek Isles?”
“Nor to Paris it seems,” I replied. “She has decided that she will not go.”
My great-aunt smiled. “Interesting, though I am not surprised. She does have a mind of her own.”
After leaving Sussex Square, I returned to the office at the Strand. Brodie had not yet returned from wherever he had gone with Mr. Dooley.
I straightened the bedroom as we had both left somewhat hastily, then the outer office as well.
There were notes I had made on the board regarding the Ambersley case, but only a handful regarding Brodie’s inquiries after learning of Constable Martin’s death.
The morning paper from the day before, with that article on the crime sheet about the death of retired Chief Inspector Dawes, lay on my desk. I read what Burke had written again. It was brief.
It noted that retired former C.I. Dawes had succumbed to injuries of a suspicious nature and was found by his housekeeper at his residence in Hammersmith. The Metropolitan Police were subsequently contacted, and a constable was posted to the residence.
I tucked the newspaper into my bag, put on my long coat against the rain, and seized my umbrella from the stand beside the door.
brODIE
He crouched down beside the body and made a cursory inspection of the wound there, with his pen lifting the collar of the judge’s shirt.
A single wound there, barely more than a nick of a blade. But it was enough to open the vein causing the gradual death that followed, the judge’s eyes staring blindly after the horror that had been visited upon him.
That wasn’t all of it, though.
“The right hand,” Mr. Dooley informed. “Almost as if…”
Brodie knew what he was about to say as he lifted the right arm, already stiffening and heavy with the rigor mortis that had begun to set in.
The fingers on the left hand had been severed, then placed on the desk on a court document by a folder that lay open, as the judge had apparently worked early before the courts opened.
“Aye,” Brodie replied.
Revenge. The word was there, the murder most definitely meant to send a message.
The judges’ chambers, including the entire courts, might have been closed off to anyone except members of the MET and CID.
Mr. Dooley had informed the constables posted at the entrance that Brodie was to be allowed access, authorized by the Home Secretary.
A bit of a stretch of the truth, yet perhaps not.
Another murder. The judge very clearly left to slowly bleed to death as the killer went about his grim task with that display on the desk.
A message? Or merely the final step in his task.
Three murders within a matter of days. And all the victims were known to Brodie from his time with the MET.