His assistant had moved closer and peered over his shoulder. I was about to ask if he recognized it, when he turned and mumbled something about woolen cloth that needed to be attended to.
He quickly moved toward the back of the shop, which seemed somewhat unusual. He made a quick glance back over his shoulder that seemed suspicious. Brodie had seen it as well.
I rounded the counter to Mr. Soames’s protest and ran through the shop after his assistant, as Brodie turned and left through the main entrance.
The door at the back of the shop slowly closed as I ran past startled workers at cutting tables.
I followed out that door and into the alleyway and glanced in both directions. He seemed to have disappeared.
Had he recognized the insignia on the button? Was it possible that he had made the button without the owner’s knowledge? If so, why had he fled, and where had he gone?
Brodie had said more than once that in order to know a person’s thoughts, you had to think as they would. If I were attempting to flee a situation, where would I go?
The alleyway passed along behind other shops on Savile Row, while the opposite end opened onto a street that adjoined Regent Street just beyond.
He might have stepped into any one of those shops, odd as it would have seemed to those inside. Or he might very well have fled toward the street and escaped into the traffic of coaches and trams.
I ran to the back door of the next shop over. The door was locked. No help there. I then ran to the next one, greeted by startled workers who looked up. No one had entered the shop before me. Nor at the two shops beyond. The little man with those thick spectacles had disappeared.
“Bloody hell.”
I returned to the shop where we had encountered him. According to the shop owner his name was Louis Jardine. He had been employed by the shop a little more than a year. He was highly skilled, a valued member of their staff, and there had never been any issue with his service.
He was quite clear that he didn’t recognize the image on the front of the button as having been made in his shop.
“What would the image of a wolf represent?” I then asked.
“In some cultures, it has been known to represent power.”
Louis Jardine had come to the owner of the shop with excellent recommendations. He lived in a flat at Portman Square, which had surprised Mr. Soames. While there were areas surrounding where working families lived, the Square was noted for flats and entire apartments held by professional people. The rents would be far more than a clerk in a men’s shop could afford.
Mr. Jardine had explained that he had money from another source. The shop owner assumed that it was an inheritance.
I thanked him and went in search of Brodie. I found him at the end of Savile Row, at the corner of that cross street.
I suspect that pursuing someone afoot was not usually recommended for someone with broken ribs. He leaned against the side of a building, one arm wrapped about himself, obviously in great pain.
“I believe a visit from Mr. Brimley is in order.”
“There is no need!” he insisted with a grimace of pain.
Yes, well...
“I learned something that could be important,” I explained as a diversion, as we slowly returned to where Mr. Jarvis waited with the coach.
“The clerk’s name and a possible meaning of that image on the button.”
As we returned to the coach, I could only imagine that we must look quite odd, Brodie slowly taking each step, as if he’d had far too much to drink.
Theodolphus Burke, scandalmonger that he was, would have been delighted to write about it in the next issue of the Times:
“Lady Mikaela Forsythe, who calls herself an author and well-travelled adventuress, was seen at Savile Row, assisting former Police Inspector Angus Brodie, obviously well into his drink, who could barely walk. A new murder case, perhaps?”
Six
“I’ve seen worse,”Mr. Brimley commented as he inspected the cut below Brodie’s eye much to the patient’s irritation.
He had arrived earlier, after I placed a call to his shop.
