“You need only follow the clouds of steam,” she informed me.
Steam? And that sound.
Oh dear. As I was saying, one might expect anything.
The gardens of Sussex Square were considered on a par with those at St. James’s Park and Kensington. They wrapped around the manor within those stone walls and rolled out to the private forest that held many adventures for my sister and me as children. And they contained flowers, shrubs, and trees of every variety imaginable, brought by other Montgomery ancestors from the far corners of the empire.
The sound that had wakened me grew louder as I reached the back entrance and then stepped out onto the flagstone veranda. And there were clouds of steam puffing into the cold morning air at the far side of the gardens nearest the forest.
As the clouds of steam momentarily cleared, I caught sight of my aunt seated atop a motor carriage as she circumnavigated the pony cart path.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed.
There was a single comment from the man beside me. “Aye.”
“When did this happen?”
“Yesterday, and the place has been in chaos ever since,” Munro replied. “Ye might want to stand to the side where it’s safe. She missed a turn earlier.”
Oh dear.
“How did she come by the thing?” I then asked as I watched her weaving somewhat unsteadily along the cart path in the distance.
“She made an investment with a German fellow she met at the embassy. A man by the name of Benz. He’s been working on the contraptions for a good many years, and had the bloody thing shipped over so that she might see what her money was invested in.”
I watched as the‘contraption’putted along quite efficiently around the track, except for a handful of minor corrections on the part of the operator, and discovered there were two persons in the motor carriage. Lily was seated beside my aunt.
“I’m prepared to rescue them if there’s a stramash,” he continued.
That was an interesting choice of words, I thought, as my aunt had rounded the back of the track and gradually made their way back toward the manor. A Scottish word that I had learned might mean anything from a street fight to some other sort of chaos.
“Ye were out and about last night,” he said. “Ye have seen him then.”
I nodded. “We came upon some information that might be helpful in finding who killed Ellie Sutton. And he’s going tospeak with the man he worked with before the murder at the gentlemen’s club.”
“Morrissey.”
“You know him?”
He nodded. “Know of.”
I waited for more and was forced to ask the obvious question. Munro was much like Brodie in that he shared only as much as necessary. Never let it be said that either man would talk you to death.
“You didn’t like him?” I presumed.
Munro stared off as my aunt gradually approached the manor.
“He was...careful,” he eventually replied.
I thought his reply was somewhatcareful.Perhaps more than he wanted to say? I wanted to know more.
“In what way?”
“He looked to himself first. Others afterward. Particularly when there was compensation in it.”
Compensation?
“Do you mean that he took bribes from people?”
