“Who do you think she is?” Ambrose asked.
Alex hesitated, and it was Bram who said, “You must tell us what you know, Alex. There can be nothing hidden now Tilly is missing.”
“When I spoke with her in The Iris, she said there is much that people do not know about her, but that she could not explain more,” he said. “I have no idea what that meant, but this woman’s feelings toward Tilly are maternal and fromher past.”
“A nanny, perhaps?” Ellen asked.
“Maybe, but she is worried, and that worry is for Tilly,” Alex said.
“Well, when we find her, you can insist she tell you everything,” Bram said. “Now collect your things. We must leave.”
Ambrose followed the Nightingale siblings, Charles, and Bram out into the street. Mungo would drive them.
Violet and Charles would wait for Gray and take Theo with them, and Ram as well, whom they’d collect on the way. They would then go to Lolly’s Bookshop and look around the area for any clue as to where Tilly had gone.
“Good evening!”
“Christ, Plummy, you just about stopped my heart,” Alex said. “Must you sneak about the place?”
Constable Plummy appeared behind them dressed in his usual uniform of blue tailcoat with armlets, white gloves, and top hat. His moustache was waxed at the ends.
Ambrose had learned when he first became acquainted with the household at 11 Crabbett Close that the man was in love with Bud, the housekeeper.
“It is a skill that is important in my occupation as a constable, Mr. Nightingale,” the fool said. “Now is there anything I can do for you, seeing as you are all outside on this chilly night and clearly going somewhere?”
“No, we need nothing thank you, Plummy,” Bram said as Mungo growled. “We are waiting for Benjamin to bring the carriage. But Bud has made seed cake, and Detective Fletcher will be arriving soon. I’m sure he would like to talk to you about something.”
He needed nothing further to prompt him to hurry towards number 11 and around to the kitchen entrance at the rear of the property.
The rest of them climbed into the carriage when itarrived, all wedging into the small space with a single goal: to find Tilly.
The night had turned cold, a damp edge to the air that suggested rain before morning, but Ambrose saw or felt none of it. He’d been scared before in his life, but never had this kind of fear that climbed inside you and grew.
The thought of Tilly frightened and alone in the dark somewhere he could not reach her had his fists clenching. This was his fault. He should not have let her leave the bookshop alone.
“She is independent, Ambrose,” Bram said into the quiet of the carriage’s interior.
“I should have stayed until I found her and then taken her home.”
“If she’d wanted you to do that, she would have said so,” Leo added.
“As the uncle, husband, and friend of many headstrong women, I know that Tilly would have done exactly as she wished, and nothing you could have said would have changed that, Ambrose. So guilt serves no purpose here. Our single goal is to get her back, and that must have all our focus,” Bram said.
Ambrose nodded, but he knew the guilt would go nowhere until he found her.
The others worked through and discarded ideas and thoughts, while Ambrose stared out the window thinking about Tilly, who argued with him and refused his carriage and looked at him with those sharp, certain eyes as though she could see straight through to the part of him he preferred to keep private.
When the carriage stopped, they climbed out, and Mungo handed the reins to Benjamin, the Nightingales’ footman.
The Iris Club was ahead. All the windows were dark,which suggested the two women who lived there were sleeping.
“You care for her,” Alex said from beside him.
“She is a friend of my sister’s,” Ambrose replied.
“I think there is a little more to what you are feeling than that, but we shall leave that discussion for another time,” Alex said.
He didn’t reply because he knew the man’s words for the truth.
