“Ye are shameless, Mikaela Forsythe Brodie.”
Yes, well… I did write that off to that encounter on the Isle of Crete a handful of years earlier. As my great-aunt would say, most stirring!
Brodie hoped to speak with the other constable who had arrived at the print shop the night that Charlotte Mallory was murdered. The man lived in the Commons, one of a dozen buildings for working-class tenants.
Constable Erskine was older, with a great deal more experience working the streets. A handful of years before, he had been called out to the Whitechapel murders.
“Do ye have the revolver with ye?” Brodie asked as I set off from the office.
“Surely you don’t think I will need it.”
“I’m not worrit aboutye, lass. I’m more concerned for Burke. I would hate to have to explain to her ladyship that ye have gone off and killed the bugger for his insults.”
I promised not to leave a trail of blood. Theodolphus Burke might be condescending even outright insulting, however, he simply was not worth what it would take to put him out of everyone’s misery. And there was the fact that he might know something important to our inquiry case.
I arrived at the Times offices early in the morning and before he had taken himself off on his usual rounds searching out his next story. Then, usually back to the newspaper office, I had recently discovered, to write up whatever nasty bit of rumor or salacious gossip he was able to obtain for a column that healso wrote under a pseudonym when there was a shortage of robberies or murder.
No one was spared his vitriol, certainly not myself. He had been quite amused to learn that I was the author of the Emma Fortescue novels. He had called my Emma Fortescue adventures much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
“Lady Mikaela Forsythe’s literary efforts, disguised as Emma Fortescue, are amusing, though obviously a product of her privileged imagination. What woman of her breeding and family name would risk her life dueling with swords?”
Indeed.
When I arrived at the Times building, the clerk at the ground-floor desk contacted the second floor, where Burke had a desk.
“If you would wait, please, Lady Forsythe.” He indicated a sitting area in the foyer. He was congenial enough and I thought I recognized him, then dismissed it.
I was not good at being put off. However, I was there hoping to find out what Burke might have learned in his poking about, determined to write the full story about Charlotte Mallory’s murder. I decided, as my great-aunt once said in a similar situation, to ‘play nice.’
I eventually heard the persistent jangle of the phone, very near an hour later, and the young clerk informed me that Mr. Burke would see me now.
“Lady Forsythe!” I heard him call out as I reached the second floor from the direction of the private office he had been given.
“Or, should I say Mrs. Brodie? There has been that rumor about the city. To what do I owe this dubious pleasure? Isn’t there a ladies’ tea to be attended somewhere?”
“Oh, it almost slipped my mind, perhaps a new inquiry case, someone’s lost Pomeranian?” I inquired.
Odious man. I pushed back the urge to reach for the revolver, and greeted Burke with a smile instead, determined toplay nice.
We exchanged the usual pleasantries. He even congratulated me on my latest novel.
“Always entertaining. And you and Mr. Brodie tracking down dangerous criminals.”
“While your gossip column seems to be a great success,” I complimented him.
The truth was that he had managed to humiliate several members of society, particularly Lady Braithwaite by exposing the affair she was having with a much younger man.
While I hardly thought it was of any great interest, my great-aunt had thought it highly amusing.
“Lady Braithwaite is at least sixty years old and the young man is rumored to be no more than twenty-five. I do hope that she is enjoying herself.”
There had been no mention of Lord Braithwaite who was very near eighty.
“I have no idea if he’s still alive,” my great-aunt added at the time. “The last time he attended one of my soirees he did have the smell of camphor about him or some other preservative, and some difficulty moving about.”
The follow-up to that bit of gossip had been the revelation that Lady Braithwaite had departed for their country estate at the time, with her much-younger ‘companion,’ who was reported by said newspaper writer to be her riding instructor.
Riding instructor. Most amusing.
