“He lived well enough, and still does, if ye get me meanin’.”
I glanced over at Munro, that blue gaze sharp as it met mine.
“He took money for favors?”
Bribes were not unusual, I had learned from Brodie. The MET had been plagued with rumors of it over the years. Money slipped from one hand to another, to simply look the other way over a contraband cargo that reached the port of London. Someone of importance who paid to keep an affair secret. An incriminating report that conveniently disappeared to avoid charges.
Had that somehow affected the investigation into Stephen Matthews’ murder? Someone paid to simply look the other way? Or was it something else?
“Was Brodie aware?”
“Aye, and he was always watching his back.”
“Did he think that Morrissey might know something that he wasn’t sharing about the murder that night?”
“As I said, Morrissey was careful.”
Brodie hoped to question a man who had secrets, perhaps secrets that might cost him more than he was ever paid?
“Ye need to be most careful, in this,” Munro cautioned then. “Desperate men will do desperate things.”
I felt that gaze watching me.
“What will ye do next?”
“I want to speak with the man at the Times who wrote the article for the dailies about that murder ten years ago, Theodolphus Burke. There might be something that I can learn there.”
He made that sound I had heard Brodie make hundreds of times, that might have been acknowledgement or disapproval. It seemed to be something Scots were prone to. I thought it might be disapproval of my aunt at the helm of the motor carriage.
“Is there danger?” I then asked as the contraption chugged toward us.
He didn’t answer, which I realized was an answer in itself, and very likely not about the motor carriage, as he went down the steps as Lily and my aunt arrived with a lurch and a belch of steam—from the invention, not my aunt.
“What do you think of my new motor carriage?” my aunt greeted me. “It is most exhilarating. Mr. Munro calls itthe beast.” She giggled.
Aside from the fact that all manner of persons and animals might be endangered from said beast?
Point of fact, Rupert, who was no stranger to all manner of conveyances on the streets of London, had appeared from theforest beyond and circled warily as the equipage spat another cloud of steam like a dragon, and then shuddered.
I was not a stranger to motor carriages, or automobiles, as the Americans called them, courtesy of my friend Templeton’s tours. She always returned with news of this or that which was popular amongthe colonials, as some still referred to them.
And there had been speculation that before too many more years, such things would replace coaches and carriages altogether, not to mention horse-drawn trams.
It did seem as if Herr Benz might have a successful invention, as my aunt stepped down from the motor carriage with assistance from Munro.
“Ain’t it grand!” Lily exclaimed excitedly as she bounded around from the other side. “I drove it earlier.”
Both of them wore goggles, leather caps, and gloves that extended the length of their arms. While my aunt was dressed in the latest riding costume in a shade of deep purple that she was quite fond of, Lily was dressed in a split skirt and jacket.
My aunt smiled at me from behind the goggles which were a bit too large as Munro assisted her out of the beast. They made her look like a bug.
“I had Madame make the driving costume for me,” she announced. “She has suggested that I might need a coat worn over when taking the thing out about London. There is so much debris and mud.”
The ‘beast’ seemed to be an appropriate description as the motor carriage shuddered again like a dying creature, and then went completely silent.
“Some lessons are in order, perhaps?” I suggested to my aunt as delicately as possible out of concern over what I had just witnessed.
She waved off the suggestion. “It’s not at all complicated. You flip a lever here, another one there, and a battery ignites anelectric charge that starts the motor, according to Herr Benz’s instructions. And then you’re off! You simply aim it where you want to go.”
