“You were muddled,” Brewster said. “Happens.”
“Possibly.” I scanned the room, noting the fireplace with its bench built into the wall—the inglenook. My eye went to a cartoon pinned above the bench, of a popular actress of the stage, her curvy proportions exaggerated, her large cap balanced on an abundance of golden curls.
One of my dreams returned from Tuesday morning, when I lay in a stupor—of my wife in such a cap, her hair changing from dark to pale, and then her face becoming Marianne’s. I’d heard Marianne’s voice telling me I was a lazy lie-abed.
I stared at the cartoon, rising from my seat to study it. The image of the blond actress must have stuck in my brain and then transformed into my inebriated dreams.
If I could remember that, could I remember other things?
I scrutinized the taproom again, but nothing leapt at me. I slid onto the bench in the inglenook, where I could see the picture as I had then.
“I remember that.” I pointed to it as Brewster and the captain followed me. “I must have stared quite hard at it.”
“Course you did.” Brewster still held his tankard. “You’re ever one for the ladies, and she’s a fair specimen.”
Or did the picture mean something else to me? I could not think what.
“This must be the lad,” Captain Wilks said.
The publican approached us, followed by a tall young man in his twenties, his lankiness just turning to harder muscle.
“Do you know anything about the message delivered to me here this past Monday night?” I asked him without preliminary.
The young man gave me a slow nod. “I do, sir. Dad tells me you don’t remember it.”
“Did you happen to see what was in this message?” I tried to curb my impatience.
“I did. Sorry, sir, but it were only a bit of paper. Couldn’t help but see what were written on it.”
“Don’t drag it out, lad,” Brewster growled. “What did the bloody thing say?”
The young man flushed. “I don’t recall exactly. But it said for you to go outside. To meet someone.” His color deepened. “I assumed a lady.”
My throat tightened, making speech difficult. “Why did you assume that?”
“’Cause I saw you with her. You ran out, and a lady with a large cloak and hat took your arm. You disappeared with her in the dark, and that’s the last I saw of ye.”
Chapter 17
Igazed at the publican’s son in astonishment, and the drawings on the paneling in the inglenook seemed to spin. “Did you see this lady? Who the devil was she?”
The young man shrugged. “It were dark and she was all shrouded in the cloak.”
I jumped to my feet. “How tall, how broad, or how thin?”
The lad shook his head, bewildered. “Ordinary, I’d say. Not as tall as you. Not a rotund lady, but not small either. But then, I really only saw her cloak.”
His description helped not at all. I stood taller than most men I knew, and I towered above women, which potentially made the wearer of the cloak anyone in Brighton.
“Sorry, sir.”
I sat back down, letting out a long breath. “Well. Thank you, in any case. It’s more than I knew before.” I drew a half crown from my pocket. “I appreciate your candor, lad.”
The coin disappeared. “Thank you, sir.”
The publican’s son turned away as though dismissed, but I said, “Before you go, will you think about the note? Was it written neatly, in a fine hand, on good paper? Scribbled on a scrap? Anything is helpful.”
The young man rubbed his stubbled face. “Paper was heavy and new, but not a whole sheet. Only one line, in printed letters, not written. That’s how I could read it. I can’t read handwriting so well.”
