“Someone still in London, afraid that she might tell you or the police what she saw that night…”
“Has anyone ever told ye that ye have a peculiar nature, Mikaela Forsythe Brodie?”
“I have heard that a time or two.”
“Aye, curious, stubborn, and I wouldna have ye any other way.”
With the memory of my own childhood experience that had left its mark, having seen my father take his own life, there was another possibility that I was hesitant to mention.
“Might the boy have seen something that night that could be important to finding the man who killed her?”
His reaction was immediate and intense.
“No! The boy has no part in this! He cannot!”
“But if there’s a possibility that he knows something that could solve this…”
“Ye doona know what he’s been through!”
My reaction to that was just as quick and intense. “I know exactly what he’s been through! It’s not something one forgets.”
I had shared that experience of finding my father dead, when I was very near the age of Ellie Sutton’s son. As I knew only too well, there were things that stayed with you, that would always be there, until they were no longer the first thing you thought of, or the second, or...
Ellie Sutton had been a strong young woman. She had done everything in her power to protect her son. Because of it, I had tobelieve that he had some of that grit from her, that he was just as strong as I had discovered I had to be.
The expression on Brodie’s face told more than words, because he knew that it was true.
“I apologize...I shouldna have said wot I did. I know that ye understand.”
I took his hand, sprinkled with dark hairs, in mine.
“There is someone who knows something. We just have to find them.”
Not that that was going to be easy with the warrant Abberline had out for Brodie, and the man’s certainty that Brodie was responsible. Judgment clouded by revenge and ambition? I was determined to learn more. I wanted very much to speak with Adelaide Matthews. She’d had contact with Ellie Sutton. It was possible that Ellie had shared something with her in the hope of resolving the past and providing a family for her son.
As I had learned very early, family was often tenuous at best, often fragile as glass that could be broken, only as durable as those who were strong and true. And I had found that in a most unlikely man.
I stayed the night with Brodie, something I added to my list of adventures, considering the sounds that came through the walls of the rooms on that second floor—quite interesting and most entertaining.
More than once, I wakened to a voice or a sound, Brodie beside me, his expression in the meager light that slipped under the door from the hallway one of either the desire to throttle someone—or embarrassment. It was difficult to tell.
“I’ve never heard that before...” I whispered, and then, “Is that even possible?”
“Curiosity can get ye into trouble, miss.”
I thought that ‘curiosity’ might be most...interesting, as long as it was with Brodie.
“What time is it?” I asked as he left the bed he’d occupied the last few nights and listened as he pulled on his trousers.
“Ye are the only woman I know who would wake in such a place and ask the time.”
“Always good to know,” I replied and pointed out, “...when deciding what to charge for the night, of course.”
There followed a different sound as he moved quickly and I was immediately assaulted by a warm, half-dressed, demanding Scot, who smelled of cinnamon spice and...
The persistent knock at the door precluded anything more than that delicious taste.
Brodie went to the door, peered through the narrow opening, and Munro stepped inside the room.
