The question was, what was her situation? Had Adele DeMille merely been using it until a better opportunity came her way?
What was her relationship with Burke? And why had it gotten him killed?
It was very near eight o’clock in the morning when Brodie suggested that we find a driver, as morning traffic had already begun to fill the Strand.
He was no worse, but no better for the pain. Yet, the bruise on his cheek had become quite colorful, with an added shade of green among the blue and purple.
Mr. Cavendish was able to wave down Mr. Jarvis, and we became his first fare of the day.
“Borough High Street, Southwark,” Brodie told him as I stepped up into the coach.
Mr. Jarvis nodded as Brodie climbed in after me.
The bridge nearest the Strand was once called the Strand Bridge, according to Aunt Antonia and the stories she heard as a young girl.
It had been re-named Waterloo Bridge after the Battle at Waterloo and the military victory over Napoleon, although not without some controversy.
“Such foolishness,” I remember her saying.“Persons in a fit and falling in the middle of it because the new name commemorated a military battle. An important one, I might add, instead of naming it for a local landmark, as is the usual custom.
“There are some who have nothing better to do than complain about a name for a bridge, when there are far greater problems in the world.”
Wisdom from someone who had lived through a great many things over the past eighty-six years, and now drove a motor carriage and took photographs with a camera. She was quite remarkable.
Brodie was familiar with Southwark from his early days with the MET, and we had been taken there as well in one of our inquiry cases.
As the city of London grew and had expanded, Southwark was a part of south London that was filled with docks along the waterfront, warehouses, taverns, and pubs. With tenements that gradually gave way to residences of a growing middle class, with the constant need for more housing.
Mr. Jarvis turned the coach onto Borough Road past a cross street that led to an old hospital, then past warehouses, a boatwright and storage, stables and a stable yard, then turned onto Borough High Street.
“This be the place, guv’ner?” Mr. Jarvis called down as he pulled the coach to a stop.
It was a familiar three-story galleried building with rooms for travelers at the second and third floors over the rooms of the tavern, when it had been a coaching inn with those railed walkways that looked out onto the gallery.
A wooden sign hung from the second story over the narrow, cobbled sidewalk below and was painted with the old image of St. George—the George Inn!
I looked over at Brodie and my earlier thoughts returned.
Had Burke brought Adele DeMille here? Again, for what reason? Was she here now?
We left the coach with instructions from Brodie for Mr. Jarvis to remain, then walked the short distance to the entrance of the timber-framed inn under that sign.
It was exactly as I remembered, the smell of centuries of ale, with cigarette smoke and coffee, and quiet, as the usual customers had not yet arrived.
A handful of guests at the inn sat on bench seats in alcoves before a roaring fire on the hearth in the coffee room. Just beyond was the parlor, set with a table and chairs for suppers, that looked out into the gallery, just as Mr. Dickens had described it in one of his novels.
The barkeeper, a wiry man with shirt sleeves rolled back, and an apron, looked up from the scarred wooden bar where he had set out glasses and mugs.
“What can I do ye?”
In past cases, it was often necessary to create a story about the reason for our inquiries. Brodie could be quite resourceful in that.
We had discussed the possibility on the ride from the office, with the thought that we might encounter a tenement manager or building matron, as we had at Portman Square.
I gave the barman a smile.
“My husband and I are to meet my sister here,” I explained and smiled again. We were informed that the manager at the desk just beyond the coffee room could assist us.
The manager had obviously left on some matter elsewhere in the inn. I rounded the desk and quickly found the guest book in the top drawer.
