“Did she say in the letter what it was she had learned?”
I shook my head. She had not.
I took a tentative bite, then another, my stomach gradually settling itself.
“Yer friend’s death was no chance encounter in the usual business of such things.”
I slowly set my fork back at the plate.
“How do you know that?”
He watched me as if trying to decide what to tell me, and then arrived at some conclusion.
“One sees a great many things on the streets. The nature of the injury often tells ye a great deal.”
“What does it tell you?”
He set his own fork back on the edge of the plate, carefully, as though considering how much to tell me. And then a decision made.
“It was not necessary if it was a robbery. The attack was for another reason. It was to silence yer friend once and for all.”
I stared at him, the intensity in that gaze that watched me, the set of his mouth.
I had known Munro since I first arrived in London, eight years before. He was like a shadow at Lady Antonia’s home on Sussex Square, and overseer of her business interests.
There one moment, gone the next. Also, quiet protector in more than one incident, trusted friend to Mr. Brodie with his own dark past before he joined the Metropolitan Police.
By contrast, Munro moved about in the world of hustlers, thieves, and cutthroats who would have taken advantage of a woman of Lady Antonia’s status and age without a second thought. Except for him.
“Iwill take a man who has seen the dark side of mankind and has changed his ways,”she had once explained when I questioned his position in her household.
“I much prefer a man who knows how to use a blade than one who waves a handkerchief about when confronted by a scoundrel. One needs such a person when dealing with cutthroats and thieves.”
And murderers?
“Did she suffer?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.
His voice softened. “No, death would have come quickly. She would not have suffered.”
I nodded, hardly satisfied, but it would have to do.
I had thought everything through carefully, that long night after finding Dory’s body, the day before, and now.
“I will not be returning to London,” I announced and braced myself for his disapproval, argument, or threat.
“It is my choice to remain. I owe it to Dory.” I would not be dissuaded.
There was no argument. No criticism that I was no more than a mere chit of a girl and had no sense in the matter. Only that intense gaze.
“I know the streets,” I continued. “I know the places where people like the one who did this go. I will not be persuaded against this,” I firmly told him. “There is no need for ye to remain.”
He sat back on his chair. He did not argue or attempt to persuade me otherwise or threaten to pack me off back to London. Yet there was something else in that gaze as he continued to watch me.
“I will not be returning to London,” he slowly replied, using my own words against me. “It is my choice to remain.”
“I do not ask it of ye,” I replied.
“Yer meat pie is gettin’ cold, and we have yet to let Sir McQuarrie know the decision ye’ve made,” he replied instead of a direct answer. Aggravating man.
