Chapter 8
Eight
“Wot is the meaning of the names?” Brodie asked from across the desk in the office.
I sat in one of the wing-back chairs in front of the desk, while Adele sat in the other one beside it. Mr. Conner reclined on the settee, long legs stretched before him, arms folded across his chest, his head back amid loud snoring.
He and Brodie had returned a handful of hours earlier, both exhausted. Covered with stains of mud and other things from the streets on their trousers, and what looked very like coal smudged across Mr. Conner’s face and beard.
To hide the glare of his white beard, he had explained with that familiar grin. Giddy as a schoolboy on an adventure. Brodie needed no coal with the dark bruise on his cheek and that dark beard.
There was no sleep, except for Mr. Conner, who had declared that he’d learned to sleep anywhere over the years. Brodie as well, the nature of having lived on the street. However, there was none since he now stared down at the contents of that brown envelope Adele DeMille had given me.
I had opened it earlier. It was her journal! Kept over the past year with entries, oftentimes no more than two or three words, but an account of what she had overheard at the house in St John’s Wood.
It was in French, and it had been necessary for me to translate for Brodie as he leafed through the pages.
He stared down at it now with a frown as he sorted through what the journal revealed.
“The names you have here...what are their real names?”
Adele had been hesitant at first, speaking to me in French. Yet she knew who Brodie was from Burke, and I assured her that she could trust him.
She sat now in that wing-back chair, pale but resolute. Yes, that was the word for it—resolute, with the certainty that there was no going back after what she had already shared with me.
“Only one name I overheard, and it was by accident that infuriated him—Montfort. The one known as Torch. After that, I was not allowed to remain on the main floor whenever they met.”
If she was correct in what she had overheard one of the other men mention, it might be Sir Richard Montfort, who was a member of Parliament, highly respected although considered quite a firebrand, a word that had been used to describe him. Ironically, in an article written by Burke.
He had also been appointed two years earlier by HRH Edward Albert, the Prince of Wales, to a committee that oversaw bills and expenditures for the military, according to another of Burke’s scathing articles, as well as an advisory committee for the Royal Navy.
I did wonder about the name he’d taken for those he met with at St. John’s Wood—Torch. A nickname to disguise his identity? But with a special meaning that connected back to that article Burke had written?
“What do you know about Gosport?” Brodie then asked, about that unusual location that she had overheard early in those meetings.
“I know only the name. Yet, it seemed important. They were very serious when they discussed it over several months.”
“Ye have written ‘B-10’ in yer notes. Wot might that mean?”
“I found it written on a piece of paper that was thrown into the fire in the hearth. I don’t know its meaning, only that it seemed important that no one else might find it.”
I had set a pot of fresh coffee on the top of the stove. We had emptied the pot when he and Mr. Conner first arrived. This was the third pot over the past hours. No one had complained!
“And the last note ye made—18 April?” he then asked. “Wot might that mean?”
This month, I realized, and only three days away! What did it mean? What was the importance of 18 April?
“I only learned it in passing. I overheard them saying there would be no need for the house in St. John’s Wood after that date.”
“That is when ye decided to leave?”
She nodded as she stared down at her hands wrapped around the cup of coffee.
“The one who calls himself ‘Torch’ sent a man to my room, the one called Steiner.
She had told me about that harrowing experience and still wore the mark of it.
“He said that he knew I had been writing about things and demanded to see what it was. I hid it behind a loose panel in the wardrobe. My maid was the only one who knew. She must have told them.
“I lied and said that it was merely a letter to my brother in Paris. He did not believe me and tore the room apart searching for what you have in front of you.”
Brodie had seen and experienced difficult things in his time as a constable, then inspector with the MET. Yet, even with that experience of things he refused to discuss with me, I knew he was affected by what she told him by the set of his mouth.
“I cannot go back there, Monsieur Brodie. They will kill me.”
“No,” he replied. “Ye cannot and will not.” He looked over at me briefly. “We will see that ye are safe.”
“But how?” she said with tear-filled eyes. Yet her expression was defiant. “You do not know them. You cannot understand what they will do if they find me!” As if to make certain he understood, she pushed aside the collar of the gown she wore over that dreadful mark.
“This is what they do—their butcher, the German. And worse. The one you call Steiner. He burned me.”
I shook my head as Brodie looked over at me. Then I took Adele by the arm and spoke to her in French.
“Ca suffit pour l’instant.”
That was enough for now. Then I persuaded her to follow me into the adjacent bedchamber.
She was exhausted, as we all were. Yet I knew that her exhaustion was different. It came from being horribly used, terrified, and then learning that Burke was dead. It seemed that she was already asleep before I pulled the blanket up over her.
Mr. Conner had wakened in the outer office as I returned from the adjacent bedchamber, and closed the door behind me so that Adele might get a few hours’ sleep.
He was alert in the way that I had seen in Brodie, and I wondered if he had actually slept at all.
“What is to be done now?” I asked the obvious question as I returned to the chair that sat before Brodie’s desk.
“The first thing is to make certain she is safe,” Brodie replied and looked over at Mr. Conner.
“I could have her stay over at my flat,” he suggested.
Brodie shook his head. “Ye’ve been seen about London, tonight particularly, and perhaps by the man, Steiner. It needs to be a place where even Steiner and the others would not only not think to find her, but would not dare to go.”
“Mr. Dooley might be able to have her protected until we can learn more wot this is about,” Mr. Conner replied.
“With wot the coachman told ye about where he delivered Steiner, best to stay low for a while. The fewer know about this the better, my friend,” Brodie told him.
“In other words, I’m out of a job.”
Brodie smiled. “Wot ye dinna know canna hurt ye, aye?” The smile disappeared then.
“I am grateful for wot ye learned about Steiner, but I will not put ye at risk. The woman’s notes prove out wot ye learned. But we dinna know how this one who calls himself ‘Torch’ is involved.”
“I could tell ye that it is my choice to make,” Mr. Conner replied.
“Aye, ye could. But yer thirty-odd years older.”
That grin again. “Aye, but I’ve the experience of those thirty-odd years, and...I dinna fight fair.”
There was a look that passed between them.
“All right, but I will help find the woman a safe place. Wot do ye have in mind?”
“There is a man we both know...”
In that language of men where little is said, but much is understood, Mr. Conner seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.
“Aye, yer right in that. There’s no one would risk going up against the man and his fellow cutthroats.”
I was certain who they spoke of—a man who was known to control criminal activities across London and who had never been caught. Mr. Brown.
Brodie was thoughtful. “She will need other clothes.” He looked over at me.
I had clothes—trousers, shirt, and jacket borrowed from Brodie that I had worn in the past.
Mr. Conner glanced toward the door to the bedroom. “When do ye want me to take her?”
“As soon as possible,” Brodie added.
“Ye’ll need to let the man know,” Mr. Conner commented.
Brodie nodded. “Mr. Cavendish will know how to get word to him.”
It was mid-morning when I wakened Adele and explained what had been decided.
“Who is this man?” she had asked of Brown.
That did require an explanation before she was comfortable.
“I have heard stories about such a man in Marseilles, where I am from. It is said that those who threaten him are not seen again.”
That did seem to describe Mr. Brown, whom I first met through Munro. He and Brodie had an odd friendship that came from ‘past business,’ as Brodie called it.
Mr. Brown conducted business in rooms over a tavern he appeared to own in the East End, with an assortment of foot-soldiers, as he referred to his men, and ‘business’ interests that included shipping and various other enterprises.
Among them were rumors of bootleg liquor brought in from France, along with other illegal cargos.
When I had asked Brodie about some of those enterprises, he had simply replied, “Tis best ye dinna know.”
I was aware that he had done ‘business’ with Mr. Brown in the past in a somewhat odd partnership—favors passed back and forth, with that reminder from Brodie—“Dinna ask.”
Brodie had sent Mr. Cavendish out with the message for Mr. Brown. He returned just after midday.
“The docks at St. Katherine’s. His man Spivey will meet Mr. Conner there.”
“And he understands that she is not to be bothered in any way?”
“As ye told me, and he’s agreed. Along with the reminder that you now owe him a favor.”
I was concerned what that might require, but I did not ask as I provided Adele with the clothes for her ‘disguise’—Brodie’s cast-off clothes that I had altered so that they would fit and not fall about my ankles. Adele and I were about the same size.
“You are married to him?” she had asked. “A lady and a former police inspector?”
“Yes,” I replied. And I had been on that adventure ever since.
I had explained that first inquiry case that involved my sister without most of the details, only that he was the only person who helped me find her. I did leave out that other part that was quite personal.
“I should like to find that sort of man,” she had replied.
I had assured her that she would be safe with Mr. Brown and that we would see each other again when this was over.
As for her journal—those hasty notes, including the names of those who were responsible for Burke’s murder—it was presently locked in our safe at the office.
Adele wore no makeup, as she had when I first met her.
Gone as well was the gown from one of London’s most exclusive shops.
I had given her a pair of my boots, and with the jacket, acquired from a seconds shop, the somewhat battered cap with her hair tucked under, she might have been any ‘lad’ on the street, selling newspapers for the Times, or pinching food from a vendor. I added a smudge of coal dust.
“A new role for me to play,” she said as she glanced in the mirror on the dressing table.
I thought of the characters in Mr. Dickens’s books, taken from his travels about London. She could have played the part of any one of those poor street urchins he had written about.
“I assure you no one will recognize you, and you will be safe enough with Mr. Conner.”
It was late in the afternoon, darkness lowering over the building across the Strand and along the street when Mr. Conner finally returned.
“The package was safely delivered,” he informed us.
I let out a sigh of relief. He had been gone for some time, and I had begun to worry that they might have encountered some difficulty with Steiner still out there somewhere.
“No difficulty,” he assured us with a familiar grin. “Brown does have some of the finest ale to be found.”
Of course.