She called it ‘that voice’ that had cautioned her more than once. Call it whatever she liked—intuition or experience, it was there now taking him toward that locked storage room that had survived the fire years before.
With the warehouse reduced to burnt-out timbers and ash, what was the reason to lock the storage room after the fire?
Tools perhaps? Or possibly items that Carney used for that downriver enterprise Mr. Brown had spoken of?
Only now, as he approached, the padlock was open and the latch pushed aside. He slipped his hand into his coat and retrieved the revolver as he slowly pushed the door open to the storeroom.
Daylight slanted in through the opening and revealed no one was inside. He returned the revolver to the waist of his trousers and took out the hand-held light he had brought with him.
He quickly swept the light across the storeroom, the walls where the usual tools a dock worker might use hung—spars and grappling hooks. A cot for sleeping stood to one side, along with a handful of a man’s clothes, the room apparently where Carney slept of a night. Not what Brodie would have expected with those large sums of money withdrawn according to that bank ledger.
There were bottles on a shelf. Two empty, one half full.
It seemed the man was inclined to the drink with a preference for gin, along with a wet spot where he had no doubt spilled the drink before leaving.
Intuition or experience, Brodie brushed his fingers across that wet spot. More gin? It was a wonder the man was in any condition to leave on that ‘urgent matter,’ he thought as he went to smell the residue fully expecting a bit of those familiar fumes. He suddenly stopped.
Not gin, nor any other soothing spirits that might be found in the local tavern but something else—something he knew well enough from past experience—chloroform.
It was faint, but the sharpness of it was still there. Now the question was, what need did a man like Carney have for chloroform?
He left the storeroom as he found it, then quickly made his way to the high street behind the docks, found a driver, and gave him the address of the office on the Strand.
Bloody rain, Mikaela thought, as she arrived back at the office and stepped down in the flood of water that washed over the curb onto the sidewalk.
With the rain, the flooded streets, and the usual London traffic, it had taken very nearly an hour to return. It was now close to midday, and Mr. Cavendish was there, squinting up at her from under the bill of his hat through the pouring rain.
“It’s good to see you, miss.” There was an urgency in the greeting. “Mr. Brodie returned earlier. He’s up there now with a visitor.”
A visitor? And that unmistakable urgency? Had Brodie discovered something after he left to find Carney?
I quickened my steps, mindful of the wet stairs, as Mr. Cavendish saw the need for some reason to announce my arrival and rang the service bell on the end of that rope at the top landing.
The door opened before I reached it. That same urgency was there in Brodie’s expression, and on Munro’s face as well.
I could tell that something had happened.
“What is it?” I asked.
Brodie was there as I entered the office, his hand on mine. I glanced about the office, past Munro to the desk, and saw it. A single red rose lay on the desk.
Twenty-One
I looked at Brodie.There was something in that dark gaze, something he needed to tell me. I then looked at Munro. He shook his head.
“Something’s happened.”
“I took the girl to the dressmaker’s this morning,” Munro explained. “For the dress she’s to wear to the wedding. I then had Hastings take me to see to other errands for her ladyship. When I returned...” He shook his head again.
“She was taken from the shop when the woman went to make changes.”
Taken?
“By whom?” I demanded and barely recognized my own voice…the confusion, then the fear that followed.
Impossible, I wanted to tell them both. It could not have happened that way. Lily was strong and resourceful. She would never have been taken. She would scream, curse, and fight, and very likely the other person would be the worse for it. After all, she had that knife that Munro had given her.
“There must be some mistake,” I insisted. “Perhaps she left on her own.”
