Chapter 12
Twelve
Covent Garden, I thought, as Brodie and Mr. Conner departed.
There had been a somewhat sheepish look from Mr. Conner as he suggested that a visit to the woman who worked for Mr. Brown could be useful. For Brodie’s part, there had been obvious amusement.
Not that I wasn’t fully aware that he was a man of some experience...there was that woman in a chartreuse gown I had encountered when I first inquired about his investigative services.
Or rather, I should say that she was more ‘out’ of that chartreuse gown than in it, spilling over in several places.
I was no prude. Still...
“Ye have that look,” he had commented as Mr. Conner waited at the sidewalk below and Mr. Cavendish secured a driver for their ‘visit’ to Covent Garden.
“What look is that?” I inquired.
“The look that says if ye still had the revolver ye might be tempted to use it. A good thing Alex returned just the one revolver.”
“I have no idea what you are referring to. Any information you might be able to acquire regarding Steiner would be helpful, other than his ‘preferences’ about certain things.”
Brodie was amused by it all.
“There could be something to be learned,” he said with mock seriousness. “And then shared.”
“And pigs fly,” I replied.
He laughed and paid dearly for it as he winced at the pain it caused in his ribs.
“It serves you right,” I told him.
He completely ignored that and his ribs as he pulled me against him.
“Someone I know insists that pigs do fly.”
He kissed me then in a way that it was undoubtedly best Mr. Conner waited on the sidewalk below.
And when it ended, far too quickly, he looked at me for several moments in that way that made my toes curl.
“Bloody damn, Scot,” I whispered.
That smile...wicked might be the word for it.
I made good use of the time after they left, adding what we’d learned from Alex to my notebook, searching for something more in the information that might provide another clue that could be useful.
Based upon Alex’s information, we now knew that inquiries had been made about ‘Torch’ from a contact in Brussels.
The message had been extremely vague and provided no other information, except that it had been sent by someone who assumed the information was secure.
That raised questions in itself. What could possibly be so important?
A natural assumption was that it was something the man known as Torch was working on, obviously important enough to remain secret with the use of that alias.
Another assumption was that it might possibly be someone of high importance. If his true identity was known, it could possibly have serious ramifications.
And then there was the entry in Adele’s journal about B-10, which we now knew was the newest generation of the Royal Navy—a submarine.
By Alex’s own admission, once it put to sea, it would enable the crew to maneuver undetected under the surface of the ocean. The possibilities that would offer seemed endless.
Who were the men at St. John’s Wood who spoke of it? What had Burke intended when Adele went to him? Had he intended to write about it? Or was there another reason he asked me to meet him at the Old Bell that night?
‘What will you do now, Mikaela Forsythe?’
The ringing of the bell on the landing jarred me from my thoughts. And then there was someone at the door barely visible through the glass covered with the usual grime from coal fires and spring rain. Accompanied by Rupert who barked incessantly.
It was not the sort of bark when a stranger approached. The hound obviously knew the person, who wore a bright purple jacket with a purple hat over hair tucked under that had once been dark auburn but was now streaked with white.
That striking blue gaze looked back at me through the glass in the door somewhat myopically, through thick-rimmed goggles that gave my great aunt the appearance of a large bug. An elegantly dressed one, but a bug nonetheless.
“Good afternoon, dear,” she greeted me, stretching up on the toes of her boots to kiss my cheek.
“The lift is quite marvelous, no need to climb all those stairs. Mr. Cavendish was good enough to accompany me, so there was no mishap. And Rupert as well.”
She sailed past and proceeded to unwind the netting that draped her hat and protected that magnificent silver-and-red hair.
“Lady Spencer has spoken of a salon that grooms dogs! I can acquire the name for you. Dear Rupert could use a bath.”
Dear Rupert had entered the office with her and now sat at her feet, tail thumping on the floor. He was quite fond of her and had spent considerable time in the past at Sussex Square, particularly during the recent recovery from an injury.
He looked up at her with soulful dark eyes, and she indulged him with a petit four cake. In addition to my housekeeper’s sponge cake and biscuits I indulged him with, it was a wonder he was not as big as a horse.
Aunt Antonia had also removed her goggles and placed them beside her hat on Brodie’s desk. She had obviously driven her motor carriage from Sussex Square. There were mud splatters on her right cheek. I provided a handkerchief.
“Thank you, dear. I did leave without one.”
Which, of course, begged the question, what was she doing here?
“A last-minute alteration. The gown simply would not do, and Madame had worked on it for weeks.”
Two questions, I realized, that required some information.
“Yes, of course,” she replied. “I ordered the gown months ago with the final fitting just the week past, but it needed to be taken in once I tried it on, you see. I picked it up from Madame, just this morning.”
Not exactly.
I adored my great aunt. She had taken my sister and me in after the deaths of both our parents.
She had provided us with an education, travel that first whetted my appetite for adventures, and had sponsored Linnie when she came out a few years before—a dreadful mistake on my sister’s part, as her husband turned out to be not only unfaithful, but might have gotten her killed as well.
Antonia Montgomery, now eighty-seven years old, had never wed or had a family of her own. We became her family.
There were those who thought her quite eccentric, driving about in her motor carriage, experimenting now with her folding camera, or indulging herself with Old Lodge Whisky, a very successful and lucrative enterprise when she should have been sipping port.
And of course, there were her plans for her final send-off, whenever that might occur, by way of a Viking longboat she’d had built specifically for the purpose—off in a blaze of glory.
“And now, with the event at St. James's Palace very near... You do have your gown?”
I had to admit that I had neither a gown, after the fire at the townhouse had taken everything, nor an invitation. I was presently reduced to wearing clothes that were at the office at the time, with a few purchases made since. Nor was I aware of the ‘event,’ since I had not received an invitation.
“Oh, dear. Your invitation was sent with mine from the Lord Chamberlain, after word of the fire at the townhouse.
“What event?”
“The reception for the German legation at St. James's Palace, in two days. It will be quite an affair, with members of the Royal family in attendance, with their connection to the German royal family.
“Lenore and James will be attending,” Aunt Antonia continued.
“She informed me that her whole existence seems to be nappies and preventing catastrophes with Charlotte fully mobile—the child does remind me of you. And then, of course, with the next one on the way. She needs to get out and about one more time before the babe’s arrival.
“She has already complained that she feels as large as an elephant. It is a pity that most of your clothes were lost in the fire,” she continued. “You can hardly attend in the clothes you are wearing now.”
I momentarily recovered from my shock at the news that a reception was to be held the following evening at St. James's Palace. Was it possible that was what the date 18 April meant? Was something to happen during the reception?
And what was it Aunt Antonia was saying about the clothes I was wearing?
“You can hardly wear a walking skirt and shirtwaist to the reception. It is formal attire, dear. With your sister’s present condition, Madame created a very flattering, elegant gown for her.
“Most certainly Lenore would be thrilled for you to wear one of her other gowns. You are about the same size. I will contact her as soon as I return to Sussex Square. Of course, there is the question of what Brodie will wear. Don’t worry,” she went on.
“I shall mention it to James. He will undoubtedly be able to come up with something. This is so exciting!”
She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “I must be off and deliver my gown into Mrs. Ryan’s very capable hands for a final touch with the smoothing iron before tomorrow evening.”
A reception the following evening...18 April!
brODIE
“There is a woman who has worked for him in the past, according to Mr. Brown,” Mr. Conner explained. “She chose to leave his ‘employment’ after some disagreement over missing payments.
“He heard through one of his other ‘ladies’ that she was no longer working the streets but had gone exclusive with one particular customer, a German fella,” Mr. Conner added.
They had arrived in St. Giles, a poor working-class part of London. They stepped down from the hired hack. According to Mr. Conner, the woman they were looking for lived in a one-room flat in a tenement off Whitecross Street.
“Brown’s ‘employee’ saw him once when she encountered them on the street near Covent Garden. It seems there was a nasty argument, then they went off together.”
“The woman’s name?” Brodie asked, not that it would be her real name. Women often used aliases, either to hide what they did from their family, or as advertisement.
Imma Good was one name he recalled from his days with the MET—clever and sad. Miss Plenty was another. Both had ended badly, one lost to drugs, the other from the diseases that were often part of the profession.
“Kitty is her name,” Mr. Conner replied.
“This is the place.” He indicated a rundown tenement.
“Another tenant I found also recalled seeing Steiner about. First floor, one of the ‘finer’ flats according to the woman I spoke with, where Kitty moved just a few weeks ago at the insistence of her ‘gentleman’ friend.”
As Brodie knew only too well, the word ‘finer’ could mean many things in comparison.
The tenement reminded him of countless others, jammed side by side in the poorer parts of London, so that it seemed they held the next one up, and if one collapsed, all on the same street would come down as well.
He had once lived in a place very like the one they entered now, as Mr. Conner led the way to that first-floor flat.
This is the one,” he said. “The woman should be here this time of the day. Perhaps Steiner as well,” he cautioned, removing the service revolver that he’d retired with from under his coat.
Brodie retrieved his revolver as well, so generously returned by Sir Avery.
“I’ll keep the watch out here,” Conner whispered, from experience in the old days with the MET.
Brodie knocked on the door, then stood to the side of the threshold. He’d once seen a fellow constable shot through a closed door. The man had survived, but it was a hard lesson learned...one of many.
There was no answer. He then tried the latch. The door opened slightly. He exchanged a look with Mr. Conner, then pushed the door open further.
The all too familiar smell struck them first, the sort of stench that reached to the back of the throat and had nothing to do with usual squalid conditions or stale food.
Kitty’s naked body was sprawled on the floor, and by the smell and the look of her, she had been dead for several days. Left where she fell, she stared with blank eyes, blood dried on the floor from the cut on her throat.
“It would seem that Steiner has left the building for the last time,” Mr. Conner commented in that detached manner of one for whom the scene was all too familiar.
He searched the rest of the single room as Brodie crouched down beside the body. There was something clutched in the woman’s hand. It was a piece of cloth perhaps torn from Steiner’s shirt as they struggled?
The cloth was fine, the sort a man who was paid well might wear. And there was something more. Something cut into the woman’s skin?
“Nothing,” Conner announced. “The man is thorough when it comes to covering his trail.” He paused and gestured to the body.
“What is that mark on the woman’s breast?”
There was no electric in the flat. Conner took out the hand-held he carried on his nightly travels among London’s finest pubs. Some habits were hard to break.
He held the light over the upper body as Brodie gently probed the mark with the tip of the blade of his knife. It was not a cut.
“It appears to be the image of an animal,” Though the mark was slightly distorted from the discoloration and deterioration of the body, he recognized it. He had first seen it on that gold button Mikaela found at St. John’s Wood.
It was the image of a wolf’s head, and it had been burned into the woman’s skin.