If he could just manage to tame that independent way about her, taking herself off on some matter or another, that had a way of terrifying him as if the devil was on his shoulder tormenting him.
Most likely a hopeless proposition as her great-aunt, Lady Montgomery, had pointed out in the beginning.
“She has always had that independent nature. I suppose it comes from the dreadful situation with her father. Trusting someone will not come easy for her. However, once she gives it…”
Forever, he thought now.
It was a word that had never existed for him before. His life had always been day to day, and survival, even after he joinedthe MET. Butforeverdid have meaning now—if he could just protect her and keep her alive when she went off on some clue.
That was the other part of it. She had a particular temper about his protection of her, insisting that she could take care of herself. And she was quite accomplished in that. All well and good.
He just needed to find a way to protect her without her knowing it, he thought as the driver arrived at the entrance to the Criminal Courts.
He looked up at the driver and paid the fare. He could have sworn the man said something.
“Good luck to you on that.”
Once the fare was in hand, the man touched the brim of his hat, then snapped the reins over the backs of the team and guided them back into the city.
As he had the day before, Brodie followed the signs from the entrance to the second floor, where the judges had their offices before attending court.
It was early, deliberately so, and the thin, pasty-faced clerk from yesterday had not yet arrived. He passed by the area where he had waited with no success the day before, the office for Judge Cameron just down the way, very near that additional stairway that led to the court.
Looking around, he saw the hallway was completely empty. According to the information board at the entrance, it appeared that none of the three judges who usually sat criminal cases and were expected that day had arrived yet. Nor had their staff.
However, the board had provided information that he needed. Judge Cameron was hearing a case beginning at ten o’clock in the morning in Courtroom One.
Brodie took the slender tool that he always carried along with his revolver from his inside coat pocket and opened it, much like that knife Munro had given him. Then, with one more lookaround he inserted the curved end of the pick into the lock on the door of Judge Cameron’s chambers.
As Mikaela had commented more than once, one could take the man out of the streets, but not the street out of the man.
He supposed that was true. Old habits die hard, he thought, as he carefully maneuvered the pick in the lock, then finally heard that last tumbler click open.
He smiled to himself. Instead of being shocked or outraged the first time he used that particular method of entering a flat or locked warehouse, Mikaela had surprised him.
“You must show me how it’s done!”
He pushed the door open, stepped inside, and closed it behind him.
There were times that things learned on the street were verra useful. In particular when it came to avoiding a pasty-faced clerk who was full of himself. Or anyone else for that matter.
And it was there he waited for Judge Cameron to arrive, seated in a thick upholstered chair, before that massive desk where final trial documents were signed and sealed a man’s fate. So that he might express his condolences, then ask the questions that might help find the one who had murdered the judge’s daughter.
MIKAELA
I was familiar with the Times newspaper archive from past inquiry cases. It had provided a valuable source of information.
Actual copies of newspapers, dailies, and crime sheets had been kept for decades on racks on two floors of a moldy, foul-smelling building that the Times owned very near the Strand,and now more recently contained photographic archives on film rolls.
Those rolls were catalogued by date and year, in metal tins to protect the film, and available for viewing on one of the viewing machines on the second floor of the building.
I had spent days and often weeks, searching through old issues of newspapers looking for information regarding a case, only to leave after countless hours with ink-stained gloves that the attendant insisted upon, a dreadful headache, and then starting all over again the next day in search of a crumb of important information.
However, all those past issues on film had been catalogued so that all I had to do was request the film archive from a certain date, rather than looking through countless pages of entries. Modern inventions were quite marvelous.
Brodie had departed the town house early after informing me the previous evening that he was going to return to the Criminal Courts, determined to have his meeting with Judge Cameron, while I wanted very much to search for information regarding that five-year-old murder that seemed to have some importance for the case we were pursuing.
I had managed, however, to delay Brodie’s departure for a short time, even though a determined Scot presented quite a challenge.
