Situation, Brodie thought, not unfamiliar with the way some people put things in little boxes. The man’s fiancé had been murdered, and it was asituation.
He had encountered that sort of response before, that way of putting a label on something, then tucking it away. Again, he found himself thinking of Mikaela, not at all of the same cut of cloth, as one on the street would say. How had she escaped it? But he knew.
Those early things that had a way of shaping a person. The good along with the bad that became like a shadow that followed one everywhere, and made them who they were.
In that they were verra much similar as they were different, and he could well imagine how she would approach Mr. Eddington—direct, her questions sharp, insistent upon answers, not above using her station.
He was of a different mind in the matter and the reason he chose to make his appointment.
“Aye, a most difficult situation.” He was deliberate in his choice of words. Eddington had anticipated that they would meet and, as they say, his guard was up.
“Ye have my condolences, sir. I know this must be a verra difficult time. And of course, ye would want to assist in whatever way ye can to find the one who has done this dreadful thing to ye.”
He caught the immediate change in Eddington’s demeanor, the way his mask as Mikaela called it, slipped and a different expression from that of the aloof legal counsel appeared.
“I can imagine how difficult this is,” Brodie said with great sympathy, quite simply because he could imagine it.
“Can you?” Eddington’s voice caught. “To have been planning our wedding and now… Are you married, Mr. Brodie?
“Aye.”
“And if this happened to your wife? Can you imagine how it must be, Mr. Brodie?” Eddington demanded, his hold on self-control seeming to crumble.
He could, of course, particularly with the work they shared. Of all the things he’d experienced and come through, and the things he’d done, that was the one thing Angus Brodie knew he could not bear.
He would be like a madman and he would hunt down the person who had hurt her, no matter the cost. It was that simple.
Aye, he could imagine it.
“It is the reason I am here. To find the one who has done this. If there is some way that ye might be able to help us, something that Miss Mallory might have spoken of, some encounter that perhaps frightened her.”
Daniel Eddington seemed to gather himself once more. “You must forgive me, Mr. Brodie. Of course, I will help in whatever way that I can.”
Over the next hour, he asked those questions and watched Daniel Eddington with the experience of having spoken with countless people over the course of his time with the Met. He noted the way Eddington held himself, each gesture, the emotion that came and was then forced back, and listened to the perfect control in the answers he gave.
What he was seeing was either genuine grief with an effort to maintain control. Or something else?
“How long have ye been with Sir Mallory’s firm?” he then asked. He caught that faint hesitation again.
“Very near twelve years,” Eddington replied. “I represented my first client shortly after being asked to join the office.”
A knock at the office door ended their meeting as the clerk returned and announced that Mr. Eddington’s next appointment had arrived.
“If that will be all?”
It was not a question, but polite dismissal.
MIKAELA
I had told Lily as much as I could about our inquiry into Charlotte Mallory’s murder before leaving Sussex Square. She was quite stoic as she listened. There was no need for me to explain to her that our information, so far, was quite thin. We had very little to go on.
“Ye will be able to find the one who did this, won’t ye?” she had asked afterward. “Ye always find them.”
I appreciated her confidence in us, but knew that there were some cases that went unsolved. I didn’t want to mislead her. Still, it was early in our inquiries, and I was hopeful that Brodie might learn something from Daniel Eddington that could be helpful.
“It is early in the case,” I explained. “We have additional people to speak with. There is always the possibility that one will be able to provide important information.”
She had accepted that, yet I saw something behind that striking blue gaze that I had glimpsed once before, when we first met. Determination.
