Brodie nodded.
“It does seem odd that a man with his experience would become a victim.” ‘Sir Bart’ sat back in his chair, his gaze flickering down to the coin.
“It could have merely been a common street person,” he speculated. “It does happen. Or is it possible that he knew the person?”
A thief’s perspective. Brodie had the same thought.
Someone Martin knew? Who also knew his patrol route, and that he and his partner usually split the last walk around for the night?
Brodie retrieved the coin and pocketed it. The man hadn’t told him anythin’ he didn’t already know or suspected.
“Or it might be someone with a score to settle,” Sir Bart suggested. “There’s a man by the name of Josephson who was let out not long ago.”
The name wasn’t familiar to him. But it might have been familiar to Constable Martin.
He took out the coin back out and shoved it across the table to Sir Bart.
“If ye hear something more, there will be more coin in it. Get word to Mr. Cavendish.”
Brodie left the tavern.
In spite of the hour, he found a cabman who had dropped off a last fare of the night and paid him extra to take him to the Strand.
He’d returned to the office late, only to find that his key no longer worked, and Mr. Cavendish was not about, most likely with Miss Effie now that they were married.
The lock had been changed after a previous incident. And now?
He picked the lock and let himself in and reached for the button for the electric on the wall beside the entrance. At a glance, he took in the adjacent room, darkened and with no movement in reaction to the light that filled the office nor from the faint noise he’d made at the door.
Mikaela had no doubt returned to Mayfair for the night. He preferred that she go there when he was making inquiries on his own, yet he felt the stillness and the quiet in the office in ways he hadn’t noticed in a long time.
It was in the way she filled the office with her scratchings at the chalkboard, the sound of her pecking away at the machine on her desk as she made her notes, or in the sound of the cabinet door opening as she retrieved a bottle of Old Lodge and poured two glasses.
And in her observations about the particular inquiry case they were working. The way she had of standing before the chalkboard, studying what she’d written there. It was her curiosity, the way her mind worked, in ways he’d never known in a woman.
When had she become someone he needed, when he’d told himself that he didn’t need anyone? Her spirit, her stubbornness, the courage that terrified him, and the way she understood the things in his past that few others even knew about?
He felt the nudge on his leg and looked down at the hound, unaware until that moment that he’d left the door to the office ajar.
“Aye, it’s cold and ye smell like a garbage scow,” he told him. “I’ve a notion to send ye back to the alcove.”
He could have sworn the hound grinned at him.
He closed the door and went to the stove, as Rupert made a thorough inspection of the office, nose to the floor, then unexpectedly sat at a place beside Mikaela’s desk.
“Ye can stay just until I get the fire built,” he told the beast, as if he understood.
Brodie added pieces of coal and lit the fire. Then he went to the cabinet, retrieved the bottle of Old Lodge whisky, and poured a dram.
The hound refused to move.
Brodie was more than aware that Rupert had a special fondness for Mikaela that undoubtedly had to do with the food she provided him: sponge cake and biscuits.
He’d never had an animal of any kind as a pet or companion and considered the hound nothing more than a common street vagrant that smelled bad, especially when the weather set in and he’d been out and about on the street.
Still, there was an intelligence there, and the animal was protective of Mikaela and had been known to attack more than one who threatened her. Brodie was among those who seemed to have been accepted.
“He likes you, if you would give him a chance. He is quite intelligent and excellent at tracking a person down,” she had reminded him.
