“You’ve seen the medical reports. Will you write up your assessment of all the wounds? I have a stubborn colonel on my hands who refuses to admit the connections among victims.”
“Send the other reports back to me. I’ll take a second look and have my summary to you by Monday.”
Julia stirred her tea and took a sip, studying him over the rim. Tennant shifted in his seat, his jaw muscles clenching as he uncrossed his legs. The strain she’d observed since his return from France hadn’t gone away. She’d often noticed the weather-triggered stiffness in his gait. His walk across the clinic’s foyer had seemed unusually labored.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Tell you what?”
“What’s wrong.”
“Trains and steamers and too little sleep.” He shrugged. “It’s caught up with me.”
She’d allowed him to deflect too often.Not today.“Something more, I think.” Julia waited.
He leaned forward, returning his cup to the saucer on her desk. “There are … times when I loathe my job. Probably a good thing. Days when …” He shook his head.
“What happened today?’
Haltingly, he told her about his morning at the prison. Julia listened, thinking how unpracticed he was at sharing his thoughts and fears.First the army, then Scotland Yard. No, it begins much earlier. Boys were schooled in stoicism and reserve. He’d learned those lessons too well.
“I know coppers who enjoy making men squirm,” he said. “A hazard of the job.”
Julia rounded her desk and sat on the edge. “You’ll never be that man, Richard. Never.”
“You’re surer than I am.” He looked at her. “What aboutyou? Are there times when you question”—he spread his hands—“this path you’ve taken?”
She slid off the desk and picked up a wooden stethoscope, spinning it between her fingers. It was an antique, used by her grandfather early in his career, a souvenir. “Aunt Caroline tried her best to dissuade me. Just before I left for medical school.”
“Why?”
Julia smiled. “You haven’t the time forallher reasons. But she was wrong about one thing. It wasn’t to fill the void of my father’s death. To fulfill Grandfather’s dream of the Doctors Lewis practicing medicine together.”
“No?”
“No. I did it for me … a strange ambition for a woman, in the minds of most people.”
“Not strange to the patients in your wards … or to me.”
“Ah, but once upon a time.” She waggled the wooden horn. “Come clean, Inspector.”
Tennant stood. He took the instrument from her and returned it to its desk stand. “Strange, now, that there wasevera time when …” He held her hand for a long moment before releasing it, smiling into her eyes. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Sir Lionel arrived at the Yard ten minutes after Tennant’s return, bearing two reports.
“This one is from the authorities in Ireland.” Dermot handed the document to Tennant. “They nabbed all the gunrunners except one. A surly mountain of a man folded under questioning and gave up the name. Patrick McGrath. Sound familiar, Inspector?”
“The man the French warned us about.”
“He fled to Liverpool on his way to London.”
O’Malley smoothed his mustache, considering. “Is he coming for a purpose or to lose himself in a crowd? Why am I thinking he’s here for a reason?”
Sir Lionel Dermott nodded. “I fear your supposition is correct, Sergeant.”
“’Tis a case where I’d rather be wrong.”
Sir Lionel held up a second document and passed it to Tennant. “The Home Office report on Patrick McGrath.” He ticked off his fingers. “Born in Naas, Kildare, joined the British Army, served in the Crimea, won a battlefield promotion to sergeant, and lived for a time in Liverpool. Oh, and he served in the same Irish Guards’ regiment as Peter FitzGerald.”
