I couldn’t imagine worse and still being alive.
“Ye want the whole of it?” he asked.
“Yes.” I wanted to know all of it, so that I would never forget the sort of man Abberline was.
“He has a gash over one eye that required the physician to sew it up, and another on his head where one of them took the truncheon to him.” He paused before going on.
“They took the boot to him when he was down. He has broken ribs, but wasn’t coughing up blood.”
That was a good thing?
“If there was blood, it would be that one of the ribs might have punctured a lung.”
“And it seems when he was down, one of ‘em stomped his right hand. The physician tried as best he could to set the bones right.”
One of them? I saw Abberline’s part in this.
“Did you speak with him?”
“Only a few words, as ye can well understand.”
I wanted very much to ask if Brodie had spoken about my earlier visit.
“Did you tell him that we are continuing with the case to find Ellie Sutton’s murderer?”
“There was no opportunity, as Abberline’s people were present.”
I nodded, then turned back to the desk in an attempt to compose myself. Tears wouldn’t do Brodie any good.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “He’s had worse, miss.”
I tried to wipe the tears away. I never cried!
Only since...Brodie.
“We’ll find the man who did this, miss, and clear him.”
I nodded as more tears slipped down my face.
It was well into the night when we finally left the Tower.
Alex made a driver available to us as Munro had sent Mr. Hastings back to Sussex Square after the trip to Scotland Yard with the physician Sir Avery had provided to see to Brodie’s wounds.
We had a plan how we would proceed the next day and Alex assured me that he would keep us informed as to any formal charges made against Brodie in the matter of Ellie Sutton’s death.
I ached down to my bones in a way I had never experienced before, not even after the death of my parents. Perhaps that was a blessing in young children, not fully understanding until later.
But even when I understood those things—my father’s infidelities, the gambling, the ruin, and our mother’s death too young—the pain of all of it was not like this.
I silently cursed Abberline for his treachery and determination to hurt someone for his own ambitions. And then cursed Brodie for the chances he took, for that damnableScottish stubbornness, as my aunt had once described him.
“He is most clever, but can be somewhat obstinate...He is after all, a Scot…Most important, he can be trusted.”
And somehow, in spite of that stubbornness, that over-protective way that was so often maddening, and his intrusion into my well-planned life…
Seventeen
I slept little,and when I did, I dreamed about Brodie in that cell in Scotland Yard.
