With Brodie, that was not necessarily reassuring.
After he left, I went up to the office. I had more notes to add to my notebook and on the chalkboard.
I organized everything we had learned on the board, with cross references to a second list that showed how the clues were related. And those clues we still had no information about.
It was well after six o’clock in the evening when Mr. Cavendish rang the service bell and reminded me that he was going to the Public House for supper. I asked him to bring a takeaway box when he returned.
The hound bounded up the stairs as Mr. Cavendish set off. Not that I was fooled. Food had been mentioned, and I was convinced he understood every word when it came to that.
“Very well, come in,” I told him as I returned from the landing. He looked up at me with a self-satisfied expression. He was quite the con-artist, as Brodie called him.
He did have the uncanny ability to know exactly what was going on all the time. I was convinced that he understood everything that was said. We got along quite well.
Mr. Cavendish returned with supper, which I shared with the hound.
Brodie had not yet returned. It did seem as though it might be just Rupert and myself. Not that it was the first time.
“I’ll be about if you need anything, miss,” Mr. Cavendish assured me.
I had urged him to return to the Public House. He lived there in a small flat with his new bride, Miss Effie. They were recently married.
He shook his head. “Orders from Mr. Brodie before he left,” he informed me with a grin and the assurance that I was quite safe.
That was not the first time either. I knew well enough that he had a rather nasty knife tucked into the waist of his trousers. Atrinket,he called it, acquired when he crewed on the merchantman ships that put in at foreign ports.
Trinket indeed. It had a curved blade several inches long with a handle of carved ivory. I had seen him cleaning it on more than one occasion. It was impressive.
“I’ve responsibilities now for the missus,” he had said recently. “I’ll not have her goin’ about alone. One never knows what sort we might come upon.”
I was reminded of that as I went out onto the landing, Rupert at my heel.
“A message was just sent round for you,” Mr. Cavendish called up to me.
The courier services often worked late. However, I had no idea who would send a message at this time of night.
Was it something urgent?
I took the stairs, with a thought to Brodie and his opinion of the lift. There were times it was far more expedient to take them. Not that I would admit that, since the installation of the lift had been my idea. And it most certainly made it easier for Mr. Cavendish.
However, now...
He handed me the envelope. I quickly opened it and pulled out the note:
Please meet me—important.
Tonight. Drury Lane.
A.D.
I stared at those initials that seemed to shiver in the light from the streetlamp, along with that cryptic message.
Adele DeMille? Was it possible?
If so, who told her that I could be trusted?
There was only one person I could think of after what had recently taken place at the Old Bell—Burke and the bloodied note he had given me.
‘What will you do now, Mikaela Forsythe?’
