Brandy, and a man’s fingerprints.
As if Ellie Sutton might have been entertaining someone?
Brodie had been insistent that she kept to herself. And she was terrified that night when she called him. Then, only a short time later, she was dead.
Or?
My next thought was ridiculous in the extreme, and quite chilling.
Was it possible that the murderer sat at the table in her flat and poured himself a drink afterward? To steady himself after such a horrific deed? Or was it something else? I shuddered at the thought.
“There is something else that I would have you look at,” I told him. I retrieved the toy locomotive and set it on the counter.
“A child’s toy,” he commented as he again picked up the magnifying glass and began to inspect the object.
Then he brushed the sides with gun powder as he had the glass tumbler, and pressed tissue paper against the long part of the locomotive. The imprint was smudged and much smaller than the ones found on the glass tumbler.
“A child’s print, to be certain,” he commented. “No surprise there.”
I was disappointed although not surprised.
“It’s not the usual sort of toy one finds in the East End,” he commented. “Most toys are cloth dolls and carved wood objects easily made from scraps. This is made of steel, and very finely detailed,” he continued as he wiped it with a cloth.
“It’s the sort of toy that might be found in the possession of a boy of some position, not one of the street urchins here and about. I suppose it might have been stolen. That is more likely.”
It might have been stolen. I knew so little about Ellie Sutton or the boy.
“How did you come by it?” Mr. Brimley asked.
“In Charing Cross in the matter of inquiries I’m making. I was hoping that it might provide some information.”
He continued to study the toy, turning it over and over in those hands that had been fingers-deep in the cavity of a man’s body. Ever the scientist, he looked at such things in a detached way, much like a student hoping to learn something.
“There is a number stamped into the metal at the bottom, usually the work of the craftsman who made it,” he added. “There are people who might be able to tell you more about it—Hamley’s toy shop for instance,” he added. “If it was purchased there, they might have a record of the person it was sold to. That way, it can be returned, if the purchaser has a mind to.”
I thanked him for the information. As before when I first arrived, he seemed preoccupied about something and looked at me as if he would have shared something more.
“What is it?”
“Would this be in the matter of the woman who was murdered over in Charing Cross?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m assisting Brodie in the case.”
There was something quite odd then in his expression and something that I sensed.
“Be careful, Miss Forsythe.”
That seemed somewhat odd for him to say, knowing nothing about the case. Or did he know something?
“Is there something more?” I asked.
It was one of those intuitive feelings that Brodie had been known to tease me about. Brimley’s comment and the expression on his face might have been nothing more than preoccupation, his wish to return to the cadaver after I had interrupted him. Obviously, there was a limited amount of time to make his observations, even with the body packed in ice.
Mr. Brimley shook his head.
“Please be careful,” he repeated.
Hamley’s on Regent Street was well known across the whole of London. And while my memories from childhood were filled with adventures rather than dolls, there were still ample toysabout Sussex Square when my sister and I were children. Particularly at the Christmas holiday.
