Chapter 21
“No!” The word sounded as if it had been torn from Ambrose. Not Tilly. She couldn’t be missing. He’d seen her only a few hours ago.
“I-it’s true,” Violet whispered against his chest. “Her parents arrived at my house, looking for her. I’m scared, Rosie.”
He cupped her head briefly in a gesture he’d comforted her with many times over the years when she was in pain or upset. Gazing over her head, he looked at the other people in the room.
Leo was pacing, and Ellen was standing with her youngest brother, Theo. Charles had his eyes closed, which suggested to Ambrose that he was listening to his inner voices.
“Good evening, Lord Talbot.” Tilly’s father stepped forward as Violet eased out of his arms.
Dragging his eyes from Ellen, who looked pale, Ambrose focused on the man.
“My daughter did not return home today after her trip to a bookshop, my lord,” he said. “I told her to take her maid. It appears that did not happen as Verity was unwell.”
Ambrose had seen him at society functions, but tonight he looked like he had aged ten years. His wife fared no better. She sat with Iris Nightingale, Bram’s wife, her eyes red and a handkerchief clasped in her hand.
“I saw her in Lolly’s Bookshop,” Ambrose said. Hours ago. What had happened to her in that time? Was she hurt? Was she lost—no, he discounted that, Tilly was resourceful. She would never get lost.
“I was there with her, and then Howard arrived,” Ambrose forced out of his tight throat.
The idea of Tilly out there alone was lodged inside his head.
Tilly in pain. “We-we talked, then he left. She was next, refusing my offer of a ride. By the time I’d left the bookshop, she’d disappeared,” Ambrose recounted.
“I was only minutes later, and I looked for her to ensure she got into a cab, but I could not find her anywhere.”
He should have looked harder. You should never have let her leave alone. Guilt, thick and heavy, slithered its tendrils through him. Ambrose should have searched every shop, every lane. Now Tilly was missing, and he could have prevented that.
“We need to go there and retrace her steps,” Leo asserted. “Alex is on his way. Between all of us, we may find clues.”
“God’s blood, what has happened now?” Mungo demanded, entering with his wife, Eliza, and taking up all the remaining space in the room.
“Tilly is missing,” Bram said.
The scowl on the Scotsman’s face darkened.
“What is to be done?” Eliza asked.
“We are working that out,” Bram said.
“Has anyone gone to The Iris Club to check she is not there?” Ambrose asked suddenly.
“She would not go there without telling us,” Mr. Wilson said.
“Still, I think that should be the first place we look,” Ambrose said, giving Charles a look, which he hoped conveyed that he was sure Tilly did many things her parents were unaware of.
“Right, yes, good idea. We shall leave now,” he said.
“I will come with you,” Mr. Wilson said.
“I think you and Mrs. Wilson should go home in case your daughter returns,” Charles advised. “You can then send word here if she has.”
He didn’t want to, but as his wife was clearly distraught, Mr. Wilson reluctantly agreed. Mungo escorted them out of the house to their carriage.
“I need to find that bloody thimble again,” Leo said. “I’ve already had to find it once.”
“Thimble?” Violet asked.
“Tilly had it attached to a chain in her reticule,” Leo added.
“I’ve had a vision of Tilly.”
Everyone seemed to still at those words because they came from Theo, the youngest of the male Nightingale siblings. A young man now, with the look of his brothers, Theo was pale as he braced a hand on the chair before him.
“You have visions?” Violet asked. “I hadn’t realized you were a clairvoyant also.”
“They are getting stronger,” Ellen said, reaching for her youngest brother’s hand. “What did you see, Theo?”
“I’m here!” Alex burst into the room before Theo could speak, his coat half buttoned and his dark hair disheveled as though he’d run the distance to Crabbett Close.
His eyes swept the assembled faces and landed on Bram.
“I felt something wasn’t right, but didn’t think it was family, and then your note arrived, saying you needed me because Tilly was missing. ”
Bram filled him in on the details, with others adding what they thought needed to be said.
“Theo has had a vision,” Ellen said, and something passed between the Nightingale siblings, a silent language Ambrose had learned to recognize over the time he’d spent in their company.
Alex crossed the room in three strides and gripped his youngest brother’s shoulder. “It’s all right now, Theo. Tell us what you saw.”
“A child,” Theo said again. His voice was steadier now, though the pallor had not left his face.
“She was a scruffily dressed girl with long dark hair. And Tilly was—there was something over her. Like a sack, or a coat.” He pressed his fingers briefly to his temple.
“It was dark. Not night, but dark. Like she was indoors, or below ground. I think she is scared.”
Below. The word settled in Ambrose’s head. “The Iris Club,” he said and looked at Charles.
“Yes, I think you’re right. We need to go there,” he said. “If Tilly is there, I may be able to hear her.”
“This woman I tried to talk to Tilly about has been yelling things in my head all day, and the scent of lavender has been lining my nostrils,” Alex said. “She’s getting more and more agitated.”
“Who do you think she is?” Ambrose asked.
Alex hesitated, and it was Bram who said, “You must tell us what you know, Alex. There can be nothing hidden now Tilly is missing.”
“When I spoke with her in The Iris, she said there is much that people do not know about her, but that she could not explain more,” he said. “I have no idea what that meant, but this woman’s feelings toward Tilly are maternal and from her past.”
“A nanny, perhaps?” Ellen asked.
“Maybe, but she is worried, and that worry is for Tilly,” Alex said.
“Well, when we find her, you can insist she tell you everything,” Bram said. “Now collect your things. We must leave.”
Ambrose followed the Nightingale siblings, Charles, and Bram out into the street. Mungo would drive them.
Violet and Charles would wait for Gray and take Theo with them, and Ram as well, whom they’d collect on the way. They would then go to Lolly’s Bookshop and look around the area for any clue as to where Tilly had gone.
“Good evening!”
“Christ, Plummy, you just about stopped my heart,” Alex said. “Must you sneak about the place?”
Constable Plummy appeared behind them dressed in his usual uniform of blue tailcoat with armlets, white gloves, and top hat. His moustache was waxed at the ends.
Ambrose had learned when he first became acquainted with the household at 11 Crabbett Close that the man was in love with Bud, the housekeeper.
“It is a skill that is important in my occupation as a constable, Mr. Nightingale,” the fool said. “Now is there anything I can do for you, seeing as you are all outside on this chilly night and clearly going somewhere?”
“No, we need nothing thank you, Plummy,” Bram said as Mungo growled. “We are waiting for Benjamin to bring the carriage. But Bud has made seed cake, and Detective Fletcher will be arriving soon. I’m sure he would like to talk to you about something.”
He needed nothing further to prompt him to hurry towards number 11 and around to the kitchen entrance at the rear of the property.
The rest of them climbed into the carriage when it arrived, all wedging into the small space with a single goal: to find Tilly.
The night had turned cold, a damp edge to the air that suggested rain before morning, but Ambrose saw or felt none of it. He’d been scared before in his life, but never had this kind of fear that climbed inside you and grew.
The thought of Tilly frightened and alone in the dark somewhere he could not reach her had his fists clenching. This was his fault. He should not have let her leave the bookshop alone.
“She is independent, Ambrose,” Bram said into the quiet of the carriage’s interior.
“I should have stayed until I found her and then taken her home.”
“If she’d wanted you to do that, she would have said so,” Leo added.
“As the uncle, husband, and friend of many headstrong women, I know that Tilly would have done exactly as she wished, and nothing you could have said would have changed that, Ambrose. So guilt serves no purpose here. Our single goal is to get her back, and that must have all our focus,” Bram said.
Ambrose nodded, but he knew the guilt would go nowhere until he found her.
The others worked through and discarded ideas and thoughts, while Ambrose stared out the window thinking about Tilly, who argued with him and refused his carriage and looked at him with those sharp, certain eyes as though she could see straight through to the part of him he preferred to keep private.
When the carriage stopped, they climbed out, and Mungo handed the reins to Benjamin, the Nightingales’ footman.
The Iris Club was ahead. All the windows were dark, which suggested the two women who lived there were sleeping.
“You care for her,” Alex said from beside him.
“She is a friend of my sister’s,” Ambrose replied.
“I think there is a little more to what you are feeling than that, but we shall leave that discussion for another time,” Alex said.
He didn’t reply because he knew the man’s words for the truth.
Bram reached the front door and hammered hard on the wood. It was several minutes later that they heard loud barking before it opened slightly.
“Margaret, please let us in. I fear Miss Wilson has gone missing, and we have grave concerns for her safety,” Ellen said, stepping forward as the woman stared at them through the few inches of space between the door and its frame.
Lamplight showed Ambrose a black nose poking through lower down.
Growling softly, Barnaby was ready to attack.
“Settle down, Barnaby,” Ambrose said, holding his hand to the small gap for the dog to sniff. His growling stopped, clearly remembering him as someone who helped rescue him and his mistress from the hell they were living.
“Move back now, boy,” Margaret said, stepping back herself to allow them inside.
Ecstatic now that the people entering his new home were not dangerous, Barnaby was doing his best to greet everyone.
“Miss Wilson has gone missing, Margaret,” Ellen said. “We had hoped you may have seen her?”
“She has not been here today, but we were expecting her,” Margaret said, now looking worried. “What do you suppose has happened to her?”
“That, we don’t know,” Alex said. He was scratching the top of the dog’s head now.
“I need to borrow your lamp, Margaret, as I must go to the kitchens and look around,” Ambrose said.
She handed it to him without protest.
Ambrose ran to the stairs and down to the kitchens. He found the room with the secret door and started pulling books down. He released the shelf lever, and then the door.
“We are behind you,” a deep Scottish voice said over his shoulder. “Lead the way, my lord.”
Ambrose stepped inside. He hurried along the narrow hall until he reached the stairs and then went down.
“She’s not here,” Alex said suddenly.
“I agree. The thimble is not in this direction,” Leo added.
Ambrose ignored the words and kept moving, hoping they were wrong but knowing deep in his gut they were not. Desperation had him running past the cloaks hanging on hooks and entering the room where the altar sat. It was dark and empty.
“Tilly,” he whispered as if she was merely hiding and would suddenly appear.
“We will find her,” Alex said, gripping Ambrose’s shoulder.
“I’ve had another vision,” Ellen said from the doorway.
Ambrose looked at her, almost not wanting to hear what she saw. Her eyes were huge in her face now.
“Tell us,” Mungo ordered.
“I keep seeing a small girl talking to Tilly, and Theo mentioned her too,” Ellen said. “She’s in a small space.”
“Tilly?” Ambrose asked, his heart thudding hard inside his chest.
“Yes. Barely big enough to stand, and she’s angry but also scared,” Ellen said, her words hoarse. “We have to find her, as danger is closing in around her.”