Hudson’s on Regent Street was the tobacco shop where Brodie hoped to find Morrissey. The streets were empty for the most part as we arrived nearby, except for lamplighters, who extinguished the streetlamps as we passed.
Munro guided the horse around the end of the street and into a narrow alley that ran behind the shops that lined Regents Street, where we hoped to speak with Mr. Morrissey. Brodie had telephoned the shop earlier and set the meeting.
A wagon, with barrels still to be unloaded, sat in the alleyway behind the shop, and the back entrance was open. There was obviously someone inside the shop.
Munro stepped down as well. “Ye’ll not go alone.”
“Ye dinna trust the man,” Brodie commented.
I wondered what was behind that comment. Munro simply nodded.
“Stay with the wagon,” Brodie told me. There was a look as if he thought I might argue the matter. I didn’t.
He knew Morrissey, and considering their history together and the event of that night ten years earlier, the man might have information he’d learned afterward that could be useful now.
I would only be in the way, not that I particularly cared to be relegated to the wagon. And Munro was with him. The two of them could be quite formidable. Still, there was Brodie’s question and what wasn’t said. Munro didn’t trust Morrissey.
I had an uneasy feeling as I waited, questions racing through my thoughts.
It wasn’t instinct or even a warning from the‘other world,’as Templeton called it. It was the way the ears of the horses at the wagon suddenly perked up—a sound they picked up, a movement through the shadows at the other end of the alley, and a brief glimpse of a dark blue uniform. And then another.
I stepped down from the wagon and quickly entered the back of the shop. I found them there, with the man I assumed was Morrissey.
Munro was nearest as Brodie spoke with Morrissey. I caught only a few words, but an unmistakable undertone.
“I don’t know anything,” the man insisted. “After ten years? Did it occur to you that the woman killed the man? A lovers’ quarrel, and her from the streets?”
“You walked away...” he added. “I have a family to protect.”
Havea family to protect? Nothad?
Did that mean that he had contacted the police after Brodie arranged to meet him?
“The police are here!” I warned as shadows moved along the front of the shop.
“Ye’ve betrayed me,” Brodie accused Morrissey as he grabbed him by the neck of his shirt.
“I had no choice,” Morrissey fired back. “Abberline threatened my family.”
The glass in the door at the entrance to the tobacco shop shattered.
“We have to go,” Munro shouted at Brodie.
“What do ye know!” Brodie demanded. “Who else was there that night?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Morrissey shouted. “The woman is dead and he’ll have his pound of flesh.”
I was certain he meant Abberline.
“Brodie...” I pleaded with him. He didn’t seem to hear.
“What did ye learn afterward?” he demanded. “Why did someone want her dead?”
Morrissey simply shook his head and repeated what he had already said.
The door at the front of the shop shattered and was then kicked open as the police forced their way inside.
Brodie looked back at Munro. I had never before seen the expression I now saw on his face.
