He grabbed me as if he wanted to shake me, anger there along with the pain, then crushed me against him with a strength that drove the air from my lungs.
There were no words. There was no need for them as I wrapped my arms around him and took the anger and the pain because I understood all of it.
“Mikaela…!”
The sound of my name, as if it came from some place deep inside him.
“I’m here,”I whispered.
Two
THE NEXT MORNING
Brodie had left earlierfor the office on the Strand, while I chose to remain at Mayfair, staring at the blank page in my typewriter. Several more pieces of paper wadded up in my attempts at the first chapter in that new book lay scattered about the carpet under my desk.
I looked up to find Mrs. Ryan glancing about the sea of crumpled paper, a bemused expression on her face, and a tray with yet another pot of coffee—the third that morning—held before her. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen it all before.
“Going well, is it?” she asked.
She had been my housekeeper for several years, and in my great-aunt’s employ before that. She was Irish through and through, most usually with a twinkle in her eyes, dimmed two years before at the tragic murder of her daughter.
Brodie and I had eventually solved that first case together after the failures of the police. And as I had told him the night before, family wasn’t always defined by blood relations.
From my own experience I believed that it was defined by the people in one’s life who mattered. One of the persons who mattered now stood looking at me with a curious expression.
“It does seem as if we will have enough paper to start the afternoon fire,” she commented as she set the tray on the desk.
And that other Irish quality, the comment with just a bit of humor as well as a tart opinion. I was quite use to it. She did, after all, have red hair, although a bit lighter with the hint of gray.
“And the morning paper as well,” she added as she removed it from the tray and handed it to me. “Along with the morning post.”
She poured more coffee for me as I opened the paper.
“I will be going to the grocers today,” she announced as she began picking up wadded pieces of paper.
“Is there anything special that Mr. Brodie might like for supper tonight?”
I didn’t hear the last part as I set my cup back down rather sharply. It clattered on the saucer.
“Is here something wrong?”
I stared at the glaring headline at the front page, then scanned the accompanying article by Theodolphus Burke of the Times.
I was somewhat acquainted with Mr. Burke. In spite of the fact that he had a habit of sensationalizing a story for his own glorification, he had been with the Times for several years and enjoyed a certain notoriety as well as a considerable readership. I ignored his disdain over my novels.
He had written extensively about the murder of Rory’s mother, in that previous inquiry case. He had also written extensively about the Whitechapel murders in the East End of London a handful of years earlier, the killer never found.
Now, I stared at his article with the glaring headline:
HAS THE WHITECHAPEL KILLER RETURNED?
A young woman had been found stabbed to death. Accompanying that horrific headline was the victim’s name that seemed to leap off the page at me.
The body of Miss Charlotte Mallory of Knightsbridge was found outside an establishment near Oxford Street...
“Is something wrong, miss?” Mrs. Ryan inquired.
I collected myself and quickly folded the paper, not wanting to cause her any distress. We had eventually found the one responsible for her daughter’s murder, but I was mindful that the pain of such things never went away.
