We returned to the office on the Strand. I added the information we had learned that morning at the bank, then stood back and stared at the board.
“What are ye thinking now?” Brodie asked.
“We need a new list.”
“Yer almost out of room. We may need to acquire another board.”
I ignored his sarcasm as I began a new list of the names of those we had spoken to and each one’s connection to either Charlotte Mallory or Elizabeth Cameron.
It was late afternoon when I finally stood back from the board. I had a headache that was beginning to throb quite seriously, my back hurt from bending over as I made the last part of that long list, and I hadn’t eaten since a pastry early that morning as we left for our meeting with Sir Laughton.
I had made the list in the order we had met with each person we’d spoken with, including Sir Mallory and his wife, Judge Cameron, and Daniel Eddington.
What did that list tell us? Something? Anything?
“Come along,” Brodie said as he rose from the desk. “Ye have that look on yer face.”
I turned from the chalkboard “What look is that?”
“That look as though ye might take the next man’s head off. I’ve seen yer temper, and dinna want to be that man.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I replied, more than a little put off that he thought he knew me that well.
“It’s that look,” he pointed out. “The one ye get when ye’ve gone too long without food. Ye have the look of the hound.”
I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. I had a soft spot for the hound, to be certain. He was very intelligent, but he was also an independent sort who might take himself off at any moment. Admittedly, he did have an enormous appetite, mostly sponge cakes and biscuits with an animal carcass thrown in for good measure.
“You are mistaken,” I told him and summoned my most indignant expression. “I am nothing like Rupert. I am far cleaner in my personal habits and not given to biting one’s leg off just for sport.”
“Both which I am grateful for.”
We locked the office, then set off across the Strand toward the Public House. Mr. Cavendish was not about, and I fully expected to see him there with the hound.
The smell of food reached us as Brodie held the door for me, not wanting to make me wait further for food as he explained it.
The fare of the night was stew with an assortment of vegetables, and fresh baked bread.
“It’s good you are here early,” Miss Effie commented as we took a table very near the bow windows that looked out onto the Strand.
“With the dockers’ strike and their meetings, we were out of food last night by half past six in the evening. I heard they’re back at it tonight as well. If they don’t settle their grievances, we won’t have any food to serve.
“If you need Mr. Cavendish,” she continued, “I convinced him and the hound to take the room at the back with the weather out.”
“Not at all,” Brodie assured her.
The stew was hot, just the sort of food that warmed one through on a cold evening. However, Brodie barely touched his.
It was often like that when a case was most perplexing. I recognized it now in the expression on his face, the way thosedark brows sharply angled together and his frown showed, surrounded by that dark beard.
“What is it?” I asked as Miss Effie returned and refilled our coffee cups.
“There’s more to this, something we are missing,” he replied.
I set down my cup. I felt the frustration as well, along with a growing uneasiness. I had made certain that I included everything we had learned since taking the case.
Yet, I had learned from Brodie’s experience from his time with the MET that some cases went unsolved, like the Whitechapel murders.
He had warned me about it from that very first case we undertook to find my sister. I had refused to accept it then, and refused now. I was not of a mind to tell Lily that we had failed to find Charlotte Mallory’s murderer.
