Chapter 15
Fifteen
I was thrown back against the wall of the shop where we had been standing, suddenly joined by a snarling, familiar blur of white and brown fur.
Rupert? It had to mean that Brodie was near!
It was the moment I had hoped for, as Blackwood scrambled to regain his footing and I was momentarily free of that death grip.
His raised his hand with the revolver.
Three men were dead, and Brodie was supposed to be next.
In that moment I experienced an emotion I had felt only once before, when I believed that I had lost my sister. A coldness that trapped the air in my lungs—anger! For Blackwood and what he was determined to carry out in his insane plot for revenge!
His gaze met mine as he tried to fight off Rupert. He was too close for me to sweep his legs out from under him. His enraged gaze met mine, and I struck, driving my elbow into his face.
He howled in pain, shocked as blood spurted from his nose. He cursed and came at me.
I heard my name as Brodie pushed through the crowd of stunned passengers, then saw him raise his arm, the revolver in his hand. Then I saw the conflicted expression on his face at the risk of firing amid the crowd of screaming and running passengers.
Rupert continued to attack as I scrambled to retrieve the revolver Blackwood had dropped. I heard a dreadful sound and then a familiar whine as I reached it and turned back around.
Blackwood stood over Rupert, a bloodied knife in his hand. At his feet, Rupert whined again and fought to get to his feet, then lay still.
Blackwood cursed, eyes glazed with pain, morphine. And the certainty of his own death?
He laughed, a cruel broken sound of madness as he stumbled away. When I would have gone after him, I was stopped by a strong grip on my arm.
“Ye canna risk it,” Brodie said.
He followed, cutting through the throng of passengers, past a baggage trolley and the startled porter.
Munro appeared with two constables. He glanced briefly over at me, then followed. I ran after them.
Blackwood glanced back, the expression on his sunken features a terrifying mask as he stumbled, caught his balance, then suddenly stopped. I couldn’t hear the drug-filled words he shouted over the terrified screams of the passengers. It wasn’t necessary.
As Brodie closed in, Blackwood staggered from the effects of pain and the morphine, then launched himself toward the rail car of the train stopped at the platform.
Brodie shouted as he ran after him, whether in a last effort to stop Blackwood or warn him was uncertain. Then he suddenly halted along with Munro and the two constables.
Instead of attempting to enter the rail car, Blackwood climbed over the space between the two cars, fell, scrambled back to his feet and ran toward the adjacent tracks—directly into the path of a departing train as it gathered speed.
There was the sudden jarring sound, a rumble and clatter, and the screech of wheels on the metal rails, too late as the engineer attempted to stop the train.
Blackwood was thrown between the two rail tracks, his body bloodied and mangled.
I turned away. I had seen dead bodies before, but his was especially gruesome. Yet, somehow a just and fitting end for a man determined to carry out his scheme of revenge.
I glanced back down the platform where passengers slowly carried on. Some continued to gather as Mr. Dooley and two constables made their way across the tracks to the body. Others moved around the area where I had fought Blackwood, and where Rupert lay.
I ran back to Rupert and fell to my knees. He was still alive as I gently stroked his head, but his breathing was shallow. He gave a faint thump of his tail as I held him and spoke to him, and promised him Mrs. Ryan's sponge cake if he would stay.
“Might this help, miss?” a rail attendant asked as he stood beside us. He handed me a towel. “For the wound.”
I nodded and took the towel. I pressed it against the wound on Rupert's side.
And then Brodie was there. He crouched down beside me.
“Are ye all right, lass?” he gently asked.
I looked up. Tears streamed down my face. And I never cried!
“Oh, Brodie…” I wept.
It was ridiculous, of course. How many times had Brodie cursed Rupert—as worthless, troublesome, a beggar and thief.
Most of it was true. But worthless?
Not when he made me laugh over his penchant for Mrs. Ryan’s sponge cake or biscuits from the Public House. Almost, but not quite, with the things he scavenged from the streets and brought back with him like a trophy he’d found. Most certainly not when he attacked Blackwood.
Brodie took off his jacket and wrapped it around him.
I sat on the floor of coach and held him, wrapped in Brodie’s jacket. He made not a sound and barely stirred as we sped across London to Holborn.
When we arrived, Brodie carried him into the back of Mr. Brimley’s shop.
“I’ve not treated an animal before,” the chemist said with a look over at me in the back of his shop. He smiled gently.
“But there is always a first time. The ancient Egyptians were quite skilled in such things, you know. Animals were important to them.”
“He's in good hands, lass,” Brodie assured me. “If anyone can save him, Mr. Brimley would be the one.”
I knew he was right, yet leaving was difficult. I stroked Rupert's head.
“You have to get well. What am I to do with all the sponge cake?”
He licked my hand as he always did, as if to reassure me. Ridiculous as that seemed.
Brodie’s hand closed around mine as we left the shop, with Rupert in Mr. Brimley’s care. I would have trusted no one else.
Mr. Jarvis nodded from atop the coach where he had waited. I glanced down at my skirt, stained with blood.
“I should return to the townhouse for other clothes.” I caught the look on Brodie’s face.
“The office might be best,” he suggested, something in his voice.
“I have nothing there except my long coat. I need to go to the townhouse.”
It was undoubtedly something he didn’t understand, the need to remove those blood-stained clothes, a reminder of what had happened today.
Or was it something else, by the way that dark gaze softened?
“I’ll go with ye.”
It seemed that Blackwood had not failed entirely as we arrived in Mayfair and Mr. Jarvis turned down the coach path at Hanover Place as rain began to fall.
I caught sight of the chimney, then the blackened walls that were all that remained of the townhouse as Mr. Jarvis pulled the team to a stop and I stepped down.
“The fire brigade did what they could,” Brodie gently explained. “The gentleman across the way saw Blackwood set the fire before he left with ye.”
I thought of that message Blackwood had sent for Brodie—'I will take what you have taken from me.’—his family home, his reputation, his wife and son gone.
He had most certainly been partly successful as I walked up the blackened stone steps and stood at what had once been the entrance to the townhouse.
I glanced across the way to the residence of the gentleman who had seen it all, then to my neighbor directly next. The wall nearest to her townhouse appeared unharmed except for a bit of soot from the fire and water from the fire brigade’s efforts.
“Was anyone harmed?”
“The man with the brigade assured me no.”
I nodded. That was, of course, most important.
I peered through the still smoldering rubble of what had once been my sanctuary. Where I had planned my travel adventures and wrote my first novel, along with the ones that followed, purchased with the royalties from that first book. It had become Brodie’s home as well. Gone. All of it gone.
For a man who had nothing most of his life, it must seem preposterous to mourn the loss. Yet, I heard that quiet understanding that was always there in the softness of my name as he took me into his arms and brushed a tear from my cheek.
“It is only stone and brick,” I said, my head on his shoulder, his hand gentle as he stroked my hair—the only thing that really mattered. “The office will do nicely.”
Mr. Cavendish was there as we arrived. He glanced expectantly about, and I knew the reason. I explained what had happened.
He nodded, his mouth working with some emotion as I told him the hound had been injured. For a man who could be quite fierce in some matters, stoic in others, he was taken aback.
“I'd best look in on him then. He'll not take to bein' away from the alcove, or you, miss, for that matter.”
I watched as he set off through the misty rain, a man who was strong enough to endure the handicap that had become his life, even feared by some he encountered, yet undone by the thought that Rupert had been injured and needed him.