Aunt Antonia had looked at me with disapproval when I spoke of it at the time.
“Opera? It is so very boring and everything is in Italian. It will be over the dear girl’s head. She will never wish to attend another production.”
“It’s not opera,”I explained.“It’s a cabaret that will be performing at the Opera House.”
“Oh, excellent. I’ve not been to one.”
I had invited my sister as well; however, she was far into wedding planning and jitters as they call them, and there was no amount of coercion I could have used on Brodie.
“It is one of those things that women appreciate far more,”he had made the excuse.
I suspected that he would rather have had someone poke him in the eye than accompany us. It did seem there would befour of us attending, which then included Munro, as he never let my great-aunt venture out alone and unprotected in the city. Although as I had pointed out more than once, pity the person who attempted to accost her in any way.
The cane she always carried was hardly to assist in walking. And I had overheard recently a comment Munro had made to Brodie, that she has specifically requested a revolver that she might keep in her handbag, much like the one I carried when out and about in different parts of the city.
He had asked what the devil a cabaret was. I explained what I remembered from my school forays in Paris.
“A burly que?”he then asked. It was close enough that I understood.
Not precisely, I thought. Supposedly there would be no removal of clothes.
“Ye may as well know that her ladyship has requested a firearm for when she’s out and about,”Munro confided in me at the time, and I was always willing to be supportive where my great-aunt was concerned.
“Robbers, and all sort of bad characters, I suppose,” I replied at the time.
He shook his head at the time. “I pity anyone of that sort she may encounter. They have no understanding what the woman is capable of.”
I did agree in that regard. I had witnessed her taking down a street thief who had the misguided ambition to relieve her of her handbag when she was leaving after dining with old friends. When the confrontation was over the young man needed several stitches at hospital before being take to the Yard.
A revolver in the hands of a determined eighty-six-year-old woman?
From that moment on, whenever my great-aunt was out and about, she was accompanied by a tall, fierce-looking Scot withthat sharp blue gaze that was much like staring into a glacial abyss.
“Entirely unnecessary,” she had declared.“However, he does have the ladies in quite a stir when he is about. Fascinating to see.”
It was therefore arranged that Munro would accompany Lily, my great-aunt, and me to the cabaret the following evening.
Sixteen
Constable Nolan agreedto meet us at St. Katherine’s Dock early the next morning before he began his shift for the day.
He had been with the MET for over fifteen years and had worked different areas of London including the London Docks.
I was familiar with St. Katherine’s Dock from that first inquiry case in the matter of my sister’s disappearance and the murder of her companion, Mary Ryan, the daughter of my housekeeper.
After all this time, my sister safely found and now planning her wedding to James Warren, the memory of that time swept back over me—the fear, anger, and then the hopelessness in not knowing who was behind it and if I would find her alive.
I had a habit, from my younger years and early experiences, of withdrawing into myself over such things, trying to make some sense of it all, then pushing back the unpleasant memories that were still there and very likely would be forever. That bit of wisdom from my great-aunt who had experienced some of her own difficulties.
As she had said in the past, it was justlife.
“Get over it, my dear, and get on with it.”
Nowtherewas someone who knew that same sort of fear, anger, and those other emotions that had a way of raising their ugly heads. The one person I had ever known, other than my great-aunt, who knew exactly what those were about and didn’t attempt to coddle me or convince me that ‘it would soon pass’ or it was just my imagination.
Someone who let me muddle about, stomp, and curse when I felt it necessary—yes, I have been known to curse from time to time, until I had worked my way through all of it once more.
And then he was there. That dark gaze filled with an understanding of past things that we each carried along with us, and then a hand reaching out for mine.
