And where was my place, if not with him?
“And the people here…” he continued.
“Such as Mr. MacGregor?” I suggested. “And the man at the door? We might have been more welcome if I had worn a gown.”
“Not a welcome ye would care for. The women here…” He hesitated again.
“Like Mabel?” I suggested. “She did seem to be most welcoming when you arrived.”
He shook his head. “She is a good soul, but not one that I fancy. Do ye ken?”
“What sort might that be?”
He tugged at that handful of hair. “One that argues and doesna listen to what I tell her; with her notes and crazy notions; one who takes risks enough to drive a man insane…” He tugged again, pulling me closer.
“Someone who is not shy about tellin’ me when I’m wrong about something or bein’ foolish; one who is honest, and true, and good-hearted most particularly when it comes to others...” His fingers brushed my cheek.
“A lass with red hair...”
Fourteen
I didwish that I had my chalkboard as I tapped the pen on the notebook, trying to see what wasn’t there as I went back over what we did know.
“Ellie Sutton saw something that night when Stephen Matthews was murdered. She shared an intimate relationship with him, and we have to assume that she saw something that night, very likely the killer. She came to you, and you arranged for her to leave London to protect her.
“There were others at the club that night,” I continued. “Guests, Iverson, as well as other employees, and Mr. Matthews.
“Ellie went into hiding for her own safety and that of her child. The murderer was never caught. Ellie returned to London almost ten years later, where she found work to support herself and her child. She lived in that flat at Charing Cross with her son and worked at the Brown Hotel.
“It was there that she encountered someone she believed was following her. She was afraid and contacted you; she was followed to her flat and murdered.
“The question is…why? Was it random? A potential lover who was spurned and followed her? By all accounts she did notknow the man, but was afraid of him. Who was he? And why was he following her?
“She lived quietly in that flat at Charing Cross. According to the young woman she worked with at the Brown Hotel, she kept to herself and was never seen with a man, and seemed genuinely afraid of the man she saw at the hotel—a man who wore a bowler hat. She contacted you and then rushed home out of fear for her son.
“There was no robbery, she had little of value, living from week to week on what she made at the hotel. The only other reason…” I approached the possibility hesitantly.
“I realize that you might not know, but there have been other instances of women being...” I thought of that series of murders in Whitechapel, still unsolved. Butchered was the word for those murders. Not that this one was the same. Still…
That dark gaze came up and met mine.
“It was not like that. There was only the knife wound, and her neck broken,” Brodie replied. “All of it was very quick.”
“Then she was murdered for some other reason, and by someone who left that imprint in blood and drank brandy after the deed was done.” I saw the surprise on his face at something I had not mentioned earlier.
“There was a residue in the glass I took from her flat. I had Mr. Brimley examine it. There was no bottle that she might have had, and it seemed as if the murderer might have been the one to drink afterward, almost as if…”
“I get your meaning,” Brodie replied. “As if it might have been a toast...”
Gruesome as that was, I had to admit that I’d had the same thought.
“Afterward,” I continued. “Someone wearing a bowler hat is seen outside the town house, quite possibly the same man that followed Ellie Sutton.
“Motive, means, and opportunity.” I repeated what he had reminded me of countless times. Look first at the means and opportunity, then look for the motive.
“The question is, of course, what was the motive?”
“Ye believe that her murder is connected to the murder that she witnessed ten years ago.” He said aloud what I had been thinking.
