Prologue
APRIL 1891
The call came latein the evening as Angus Brodie was preparing to leave the office on the Strand.
The shrill ring of the telephone stopped him at the door. It had been a long day, in a dozen or more of them lately in his work for the Agency. Now a new inquiry case over counterfeit currency that had been found circulating among merchants in London.
He had sent round a message to Sir Avery at the Special Services Agency several hours earlier with an update delivered by Mr. Conner, a retired officer of the MET whom he’d worked with in the past, regarding the counterfeit currency case.
He had a particular distrust for telephones, knowing how the system worked. A call initiated by one person was put through to an operator at one location, then transferred to another operator in another part of the city, and eventually to the person the call was intended for.
In the interest of the Agency and the work they did, it was best to send round messages by trusted persons, rather than rely on a system where several others might be able to listen to the conversation.
The irritating clanging sounded again, and he thought it might be his wife, Mikaela. He had sent her home to Mayfair earlier, after she made her notes in the case on the blackboard. That was hours ago.
She understood the nature of the work from past inquiry cases, and it was not like her to ring up the office and remind him that he was late for supper or some social engagement, particularly social engagements which he had a particular dislike for.
Still, the persistent sound seemed almost urgent in itself. He returned to the desk and lifted the earpiece. The call was scratchy, a crackling sound as it was put through by the operator, then he heard a frantic voice.
“I saw him again as I was getting ready to leave!”
Brodie recognized the voice, the tension, and more.
“Did ye see his face?” he asked.
“No, but it was the same man! He was there like before, at the carriage park across from the service entrance as I was about to leave. When I looked again, he was gone!”
The fear reached through the telephone connection from the hotel.
“Stay where ye are!” he told her. “I will meet ye there!”
It was the third time in as many weeks, always the same and included that first note he had received from her—someone was there watching, waiting, then disappearing.
He had urged her not to return, that it might still be dangerous, but she hoped the past was in the past.
“What if he knows where I live?”
“All the more reason for ye to stay at the hotel where there are others about until I get there!”
“I can’t take the chance!”
“Stay where ye are!” he told her again, and then as the connection crackled, “Ellie?”
Brodie cursed. The call had gone dead at the other end.
He grabbed the revolver and the hand-held lamp from the desk drawer, then his coat.
It was late, even for the nearby theater district, most of the coach and cab drivers already gone with a last fare of the night.
He eventually found a driver on his way to the yard where the drivers put up their rigs for the night. He thrust a five-pound note into the man’s hand. Instead of the hotel he told him to take him to Charing Cross.
How long had it been since that call, he thought, as the driver let him off at the square where those five streets met, including Charing Cross?
An hour or more, he realized, as he set off toward Craven Street and the row of tenements where Ellie lived.
Would she have already arrived? Very likely, he thought. There were always cabs at the hotel, no matter the time of day or night, for guests arriving or departing.
He quickened his pace, past Northumberland House, darkened for the night, then past the Lane. Craven Street was just beyond.
