“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Linnie had reacted somewhat strongly at my surprise. “The weather had set in, and James didn’t want me to catch a chill.”
Hmmm. A chill. Of course.
I added a visit to the museum to my list before leaving the townhouse.
Now, I removed my coat, and set my umbrella in the stand.
Brodie had a fire going in the firebox. Mr. Dooley sat across from him. He looked at Brodie with a thoughtful expression.
“The man came to me last night after me shift and spoke of it. I hope it helps.”
Brodie nodded. “I appreciate it, and it is helpful.”
Dooley stood then, nodded a greeting at me and tipped his cap. He wasn’t presently in uniform. Perhaps a day off, I thought.
When he had gone, I sat across from the desk and took my notebook from my bag. Brodie told me of his meeting with Constables McElroy and Browne.
It seemed that he was correct that they were hesitant to tell him anything other than the most routine information that we already knew from the reports.
They had made their last circle of the area they patrolled at half past eight of the evening. Prior to that they hadn’t noticed anything unusual. However, on this circle of the area, they encountered a young woman on the bench near the fountain…
The conversation continued from there, almost word-for-word from the report. They had obviously been ordered to say nothing more than the barest of details which we already knew.
And then Mr. Dooley’s visit just before I arrived.
It seems that Constable Browne had contacted him away from the police station. There was more that he and Constable McElroy had seen, however the chief inspector had ordered them to say nothing of it as he had his ownpeoplemaking inquiries.
“Who are his people?” I asked Brodie.
“Ye’re to say nothing of this, it could mean trouble for a good many people who are simply trying to do their job. For his part, Constable Browne is young and hasn’t learned that not everyone— not even the man ye share the watch with, can be trusted.”
There had been rumors of course. Alex Sinclair of the Agency had mentioned that Sir Avery was determined to clean things up, and I knew well enough from our prior inquiries that there had been the suggestion of corruption within the ranks of the MP.
I nodded, and assured him I would say nothing until he was prepared to.
“There was someone else in the park that evening, encountered by McElroy and Browne just before finding Miss Mainwaring,” Brodie explained. The man had just finished shooting some photographs in another area, and was packing up his equipment to leave.”
Thesomeone elsewas Jefferson Talbot.
I recalled our meeting at the office only a few days earlier. Talbot had come by somewhat unexpectedly in response to the note I had sent round to his studio asking him to meet with us. To say the meeting was most unusual is another understatement.
He had been congenial and quite forthcoming about his craft, punctuating his remarks with the cigarette in that ivory holder.
He had answered questions about particular aspects of the photographic process and had freely explained flash powder and development processes, including the reasons that many people still preferred glass plate photographs over the new box cameras with film for capturing images.
I had shown him the photos we had of Amelia Mainwaring and Catherine Thorpe, including the one of Amelia posed on the park bench.
He had immediately recognized it as a death photo, from experience it seemed as he had taken photographs of three of the Whitechapel victims for the police that were included in the crime section of the Times according to Lucy Penworth. One of which— the third victim —had appeared on the front page of the newspaper.
I found him to be quite strange, anodd duckLucy had called him. I had to agree.
Limited as my experience was, I did have a keen sense of people. It was something I attributed to my travels, watching people I encountered, and in writing about a variety of characters in my novels.
However, odd as Talbot had been with his quirks, the cigarette holder, and those moments when I was certain he perhaps knew more than he was telling us— case in point, that he had been in the park the evening Amelia Mainwaring was murdered —I did not have that sense that he might be the murderer.
“What are ye thinkin’?” Brodie asked.
“I don’t believe that he’s the murderer.”
