“Not ’til the mornin’, miss. He stays over in Holborn with a young woman, then picks up a wagonload full of dirty laundry early next day at the hotels.”
“Do your records show when he made that delivery?”
“Two days ago, according to the delivery log. It woulda been before he made his first mornin’ run. Is there something wrong with the order, miss?”
I thanked her for the information and returned to where Mr. Jarvis waited with the coach.
An address in Southwark. What did that mean?
It hardly seemed likely that Burke kept a flat there, when it appeared that he might very well live out of his office at the Times.
Was it merely a coincidence that the order included woman’s garments?
Anyone else might assume the garments were for a lady friend. However, knowing Burke, I thought that highly unlikely.
He was the most aggravating, insulting, disgusting sort of man I had ever met. I could not imagine any woman who would put up with him. At one point, I had even questioned whether he had a mother.
As for a ‘lady friend,’ as the woman at the laundry suggested...
My imagination simply could not conjure that up.
Or did it have something to do with Burke’s murder and what we had already discovered at St. John’s Wood?
I inquired if Mr. Jarvis was familiar with Borough High Street in Southwark.
“I can find it, but it’s a good distance across the river, and not a place for a lady to be out late in the day, if you get my meanin’,” he replied. “And Mr. Brodie would not want you goin’ there alone.”
“You did say that you wanted to go to Sussex Square as well?” he reminded me. “There’s enough time yet for that.”
The day was rapidly fading as lights gleamed from the windows of the laundry, and there were long shadows on the street as daylight faded.
I was tempted to tell him to continue on. However, those shadows reminded me that I had told my great aunt earlier in a telephone conversation that I had questions in a new inquiry.
Those questions had to do with that gold button I had found at the residence in St. John’s Wood.
“Very well,” I replied and climbed into the coach.
It was early evening when I finally arrived at Sussex Square after stopping briefly at the office on the Strand.
According to Mr. Cavendish, Brodie had returned earlier, then left for the Old Bell, dressed in the clothes he wore when he intended to ‘disappear,’ as he called it.
There was no note in the office, nor had I expected one. I updated the chalkboard with what I had learned and then had Mr. Jarvis bring me to Sussex Square.
Mr. Symons, my great aunt’s head butler, greeted me at the entrance.
“Her ladyship informed me that you would be arriving. Very good to see you again, Miss Mikaela.”
“The formal parlor?” I inquired, her usual location late in the afternoon for what she called ‘refreshment.’ Refreshment, most usually meant a dram before supper was announced.
“She will join you there.”
That could mean almost anything.
“Has she set off on one of her expeditions into the old fortress?”
Of late, she was determined to retrieve important artifacts from the part of her ancestors’ fortress that adjoined the manor. She insisted that she was simply trying to put things in order among the artifacts.
“It is important to preserve old things. How else are you and Lenore, and Lily of course, and now Lenore's children, to know your ancestors and their importance in the scheme of things?” she had declared several months earlier.
