I was certain I had turned off the electric before I came upstairs. I listened for other sounds—the familiar clink of Old Lodge as Brodie poured a glass when he returned late at night, or the sound as he sat wearily in one of the chairs before the hearth.
I heard neither, as Rupert pulled against my hold on him.
It wasn’t Brodie.
“Milady?”
Rupert whined softly as Mrs. Ryan called out from the entrance to the dining room next to the front hallway.
She was suddenly dragged into the light in the hallway, clad in her nightgown, the braid of her hair over one shoulder, a knife pressed against her throat by the man whose other arm was wrapped across her shoulders.
I raised the revolver as Rupert exploded with snarls and furious barking and would have charged down the stairs.
“Call off your hell hound and put the revolver down, or the old woman dies!”
For those few seconds, I glimpsed that strong Irish spirit on Mrs. Ryan’s face, fierce pride and grim determination as she shook her head. In spite of the man holding her with a knife at her throat, his eyes gleaming from pain and the morphine that pulsed through his veins.
I had no doubt that I had just met Sir Edward Blackwood.
Gone was the confusion when first coming out of sleep. I was now frightened and angry. Afraid for Mrs. Ryan, and furious at the despicable, drug-riddled man who held her.
I slowly descended the stairs with a death grip on Rupert. He struggled to break free, but I held on, certain that if he escaped it would mean Mrs. Ryan’s death.
“Now, put down the weapon!” Blackwood rasped. “I will not hesitate to kill her.”
I believed him and laid the revolver on the floor at the landing. No mean feat, as Rupert continued to whine and thrash.
“Step away,” he ordered.
I stepped away from where I had laid it.
“Now put that beast in the dining room.”
His voice was cold as ice, even as beads of sweat streamed down the side of his face, his features gaunt, eyes sunken with the disease that ravaged him and the narcotic that burned through him.
I dragged Rupert through the doorway of the dining room.
“Close the doors,” Blackwood ordered, backing farther away.
I closed the sliding doors, Rupert barking furiously. I took a slow deep breath and forced myself to remain calm as I slowly turned around.
“What do you want?”
“What I have wanted the past twelve years…I want Inspector Angus Brodie,” he whispered, his voice thin now, his face tightening as he sucked in a sudden breath, the pain there in his expression.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My thoughts raced as he continued to move toward the parlor with Mrs. Ryan his prisoner.
“I saw you.” His voice was a ragged whisper as he stood with her in a pool of light that spilled from the entry hall into the parlor.
And then a forced smile, gruesome with the pain that twisted his features.
“You told the driver,” he replied. “Number Ten Hanover Square.”
He was there tonight! And not the first time, I thought, remembering that impression I’d had earlier, that I had seen someone watching the office.
It had been brief, and I thought I had imagined it…the office door unlocked though nothing taken.
He had been watching and waiting, even as he carried out those gruesome murders. Even with the effects of the morphine, it was obvious that he was intelligent. The drug only sharpened his anger, even as the words slurred and he struggled with them.
