“She was upset, as you can well imagine. But she did say that it didn’t seem that anything was taken.”
Apparently not robbery, Brodie thought. Although the attacker might have been caught and then fled.
“Did the body have anything of value on it?” Brodie asked. “He always carried a pocket watch.”
“I’ll make the inquiry regarding that with the morgue where the body was taken,” Mr. Dooley responded.
Brodie went to the hearth. There were obvious signs of a struggle in scuff marks in the ash on the wood floor in front of the hearth where the chief inspector had fought with his attacker, along with a good amount of dried blood.
A mark caught his attention, and he took out his hand-held lamp and turned it on, then knelt to inspect it closer as he aimed the beam at the floor. It appeared to be a boot mark.
“Ye saw the body?” he asked Mr. Dooley.
“I arrived shortly after the wagon was sent for by the constable who was first to see it after the housekeeper found him.”
“Wot was the chief inspector wearing?”
“Trousers, shirt with vest and jacket over, as he had just arrived after being out earlier.”
“I need to see the body and the clothes he was wearin’,” Brodie replied.
What he had found might mean nothing at all, or it could be important.
“With the New Scotland Yard to be in charge of the situation, that could be difficult,” Dooley pointed out.
Brodie nodded. “There is someone who may be able to assist.”
Someone he had previously made the acquaintance of in the course of an inquiry case. He might be willing to assist, as it was in the matter of the murder of a chief inspector of police.
For this he needed to send a formal request to meet with the man, something that Mikaela most usually would have taken care of in the past.
But she had her own inquiry case, and truth was that he didn’t want her involved in this.
MIKAELA
Brodie hadn’t returned to Mayfair the night before, not that it was unexpected, particularly when he was off making inquiries among people he knew from his past work with the Metropolitan Police.
I was very aware of that other part of his life and accepted that it was necessary from time to time. It was, after all, the nature of the inquiry business.
While I might have argued the matter, and had in the past, insisting that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself in most situations, I respected his professional experience in such matters. Still…
“These are not the sort of places that would be safe for a woman,” he had told me more than once, and then with that familiar half-smile at one corner of his mouth.
“They are places I’m familiar with, and the people I know. And I wouldn’t put it past someone to do ye harm out of spite. After all, ye are an attractive woman and a person of means. It is best I make my inquiries while ye complete pursuit of the case to Lady Ambersley. And dinna fash.”
Don’t worry. Yes, well, that was easier said than done, and I had patched up more than one of his wounds in the past.
Bloody, stubborn Scot!
It was one of those things that I struggled with, when I had told myself for most of my life that I didn’t need anyone. Other than my sister and my great-aunt.
‘The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.’
So said another Scot.
‘So, here you are,’ that irritating little voice inside me whispered.‘What are you to do?’
Get on with it! I thought.
