Chapter 17
Seventeen
PARLIAMENT SQUARE
It was quite late in the day when we arrived at Parliament Square, the sky overcast with clouds rolling in from the river in the distance.
It was an enormous building that filled the length of the street, with official offices and meeting rooms on the second floor that included the Home Office, Foreign Office, and India Office.
With events on the Continent the past several months increasingly serious, it was now necessary to sign in at a desk with two guards standing nearby.
I did wonder how two guards would be able to confront a disturbance or an attack such as the one that had taken place in Munich at the government house only weeks before.
The clerk read what I had entered into his guest book.
“Lady Forsythe?”
“I must speak with the Home Secretary. It is a matter of some urgency.”
“The Home Secretary is not available, although you may leave word if you wish to return. And,” he added with a glance down at Rupert, “no animals are allowed.”
I did not want an appointment for a later time. I needed to know the reason for the urgency in that telegram and what it had to do with the Ellsworth case. Sir Ridley was the one person who might know what this was about.
“It is regarding an extremely important matter.”
“There are a great number of important matters that the Home Secretary must address every day, as I am certain you can appreciate.”
I had been dismissed.
There were times when drastic situations required drastic measures. I looked down at the ‘animal’ in question.
It was quite easily done, as I gave him the command to ‘seek,’ a word I had used in the past and which he understood. Although it usually meant a run through the streets or across an open field at Sussex Square after some hapless creature.
He charged off across the entry hall, nose to the floor, startling those who stood about in small groups.
There were gasps and more than one shout of alarm as he worked his way across the massive hall, circling, then charged off in a new direction, and created chaos.
Good boy, I thought, as the clerk came out of his chair and sent the guards after the hound.
“You will wait here, Lady Forsythe.”
And pigs fly, I thought, as he left the desk and called out for more guards. I grabbed the telegram and ran toward the staircase to the second-floor offices.
I glanced down at the hall below as I reached the second-floor landing and caught a glimpse of Rupert dodging among startled guests, others who waited to see someone, and the guards who chased after. A hopeless pursuit.
I ran down the adjacent hallway, past startled clerks and men in suits along the way as the sounds from below reached them, and others who seemed completely oblivious as they quickly moved down the corridor.
The Home Secretary’s office was at the end of the hallway. One of those double doors opened, a man emerged, and the door abruptly closed behind him. I continued toward that door, determined to have answers, when it suddenly opened again.
“Lady Forsythe!” Alex Sinclair exclaimed, quite startled by the expression on his face.
Yet perhaps no more surprised than myself.
“Where’s Brodie?” I demanded.
He stepped from the doorway and closed the door behind him.
“What are you doing here?” he inquired somewhat urgently. Shifting a folder under one arm, he took my arm in hand and escorted me aside from that doorway as another man appeared from the hallway and quickly entered.
Urgently—I was beginning to detest that word.
“I would ask you the same,” I replied, reclaiming my arm, and again, “Where is Brodie? You’re working together?”
He shifted somewhat uncomfortably. “In a manner of speaking.”
A manner of speaking. I was becoming increasingly uneasy with this banter of words. Yet, two could play this game. I handed him the telegram that I’d received just that evening.
He stared down at it. “It would seem...” he began, obviously searching for words that he could share with me.
I was having none of it.
“The Hotel Carillon is in Brussels.” If he wanted to play word games, then we would play.
He did need to work on that expression if he was to continue with the CID.
“A package that is to be delivered sometime tonight.”
He swore under his breath.
“How do you know about this?”
I grabbed the telegram back. The next part was a guess on my part, but I was fairly confident that I was correct.
“Brodie was in Paris when he sent this telegram. And the reason he was there apparently involved my inquiries into Thomas Ellsworth’s murder.”
And a connection?
“It would seem that a package that is somehow part of this is to be delivered to the hotel in Brussels. If that package is here in London, then the person who has it would need to cross the channel, then travel by rail to Brussels within the next few hours.”
Another curse.
“Please come with me,” Alex replied with a glance back at that door.
And when I hesitated, “I cannot discuss this with you out here.”
I followed him as he proceeded to an adjacent office that was empty for the moment. He closed the door behind us.
“He did warn me that you...” he shook his head. “He’ll no doubt carve me up in small pieces for this.”
If he thought that was a dreadful fate...
“Mr. Brodie is here. He arrived from Dover within the past hour.”
But he obviously was not there.
“Where?”
Still, he hesitated to tell me.
“A cross-channel trip would require a boat to make the crossing.”
“He’s hoping to intercept the package at St. Katherine’s dock.”
“The name of the boat?”
“This will be the end of my career with the CID.”
I waited.
“The Celeste Marie.”
I was already out the door as I heard him mutter. “If this is to be the end, I may as well see it through.”
Alex caught up with me at the landing that led to the main floor.
“He would never forgive me if I let you go alone.”
I whistled sharply for Rupert as we reached the main entrance.
My driver had departed.
“We need a driver.”
Alex nodded, then waved across the roadway to a carriage park.
“They won’t know that I’m already a dead man as far as Mr. Brodie is concerned.”
A driver promptly guided his coach to the steps in front of the entrance. I climbed aboard. Alex was forced to step aside as Rupert appeared, brushed past him, then jumped into the coach. Alex climbed in after.
“St. Katherine’s docks!” he called up to the driver.
“Our people...” he corrected himself. “Sir Ridley and his people have already dispatched others to the docks to intercept that package.”
Along with Brodie.
There were now more questions.
Who would Sir Ridley’s people find there?
What was in the package that was to be delivered to the Hotel Carillon in Brussels this same night?
Who was behind this? And what did it have to do with Thomas Ellsworth’s murder?
The gates of the dock stood open as we arrived, with several coaches that were empty just inside.
“I must insist that you remain here, Lady Forsythe, and the hound as well. For safety.” Alex made one last attempt to dissuade me from accompanying him as Rupert charged through the open gate.
I followed the hound.
“Right,” I heard Alex mutter as he followed.
Brodie and I had pursued cases in the past that had been dangerous, moving down alleyways and slipping into buildings as quietly as possible when tracking a criminal.
I was hardly prepared for the chaos at the dock as Sir Ridley’s men shouted back and forth, then swarmed the warehouse across from the slip where a steamboat rolled with the outgoing tide. Steam rose from the stack behind the deck cabin, as it was obviously preparing to get underway.
“Stay here!” Alex ordered in a way I had not heard before, then ran toward the chaos with a revolver in his hand.
Not bloody likely, I thought, as I heard the distinct sound of shots being fired.
I reached into my travel bag and retrieved the revolver I always carried.
Smoke billowed from the warehouse, flames curling along the roofline as the alarm went out. Others came running as a loud horn bellowed across the water.
Dock watchmen had arrived and ran past to other boats secured beside the Celeste Marie, along with those from a nearby land fire station. Out on the water, through the murky darkness, the beam from an oil lamp appeared in the distance from the river fire brigade.
The St. Katherine’s dock glowed as if the entire dock was afire.
Where was Brodie? Was he inside the warehouse? Or somewhere on the dock?
I held Rupert back as I searched among those ghostly figures that ran all around us. Then, I saw two men at the far end of the wharf, very near where the Celeste Marie was moored.
I would have known one of them anywhere. Tall, on the run, leaning into the wind that rolled in from the water. And a man he chased down.
He was in a long overcoat that whipped frantically about him as he fled, a case clutched under one arm as he ran toward the Celeste Marie, even as a line was cast off and the steamer began to pull away from the slip.
The man Brodie was chasing reached the edge of the slip, then leaped aboard. Brodie went after him. I ran toward that end of the dock and pushed my way past several who had joined the fight against the fire in the warehouse, Rupert barking furiously beside me.
Brodie caught the man on the deck of the steamer. I saw the man fight him off in the orange glow of fire that had broken out. As the fire spread, Brodie went after him.
I stared, helpless to do anything as the Celeste Marie continued to back out of the slip afire, then turned to leave the basin toward the main part of the river.
The fire had spread on the Celeste Marie.
I caught a glimpse of a man who dove over the side of the ship, but there was no sign of Brodie or the man he had followed onto the boat. It gradually slowed, the deck and captain’s cabin completely engulfed, then slowly drifted on the current.
“Lady Forsythe!”
Alex had found me as the wharf swarmed with Sir Ridley’s people, men from the Metropolitan Police, and the fire brigade from the nearby land station.
I shouted to make myself heard over the chaos and the fire at the warehouse and told him that Brodie was on that boat with the man they were looking for.
We both stared out at Celeste Marie as men from the floating fire brigade appeared in fire boats.
Too late. The explosion roared across the water, an enormous fireball engulfing the steamer.
I ran to the edge of the wharf as smoke, embers, and other debris filled the air above what remained of the Celeste Marie. And screamed.
“No!”
Someone was there, pulling me back.
Alex Sinclair held on as I fought to free myself. I felt as if I was coming apart inside, shattering into pieces even as I refused to accept it.
“No!” I screamed again as I stared out at that glowing ruin of the steamer. “He’s not dead! Do you hear me? He is not dead!”
Alex refused to let go of me as I slowly sank to my knees.
“He’s not dead.”
I refused to leave and continued to watch as the fire boats doused the Celeste Marie with water from their fire hoses, dark shapes that moved, shouted orders, and guided the boats that surrounded what was left of the steamer as it continued to burn.
And the bodies found in the water. They were grabbed with grappling hooks and pulled aboard the fire boats.
One, then another, and another.
“Lady Forsythe.”
A voice...Sir Ridley.
“You must come away,” he said, with a hand on my elbow. And a warning sound. Rupert who sat beside me.
Sir Ridley’s hand slowly loosened, then dropped away.
“I will arrange for a coach to take you home.”
Home?
No questions for now? What was I doing there? What did I know about what had happened?
“No.”
“Lady Forsythe...” he started to protest.
I turned on him, angry, still refusing to believe what I had been watching.
“No!”
I turned back as those fire boats gradually ceased their efforts and one by one returned to nearby slips, leaving what was left of the Celeste Marie to smolder, the bodies they’d found moved to the dock one-by-one. Except for one.
He stepped off the deck of one of the fireboats and onto the wharf. His long coat was gone, his shirt stained and torn, dark hair wild about his head, exhaustion in every step that seemed to take more strength than he had. And that dark gaze that somehow found me.
He seemed to collapse into me.
It took me a moment, a long moment, as I held on...