Page 84 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

He nodded. "She’s been in York the last three weeks, nursing a sick sister, which is why we are only hearing it now.” His jaw hardened. “She gave a statement to a constable the very afternoon it happened. And the constable did nothing with it whatsoever."

"What did she see?"

"Lydia Gray did not stumble, and she was not careless. A man came up to her in Gower Street, put both hands to her shoulders, and pushed her into the path of the carriage. Then he walked away."

The words struck with less force than they should have. Not because they were unexpected. Because I had known. Somewhere beneath the doubts and hopes and desperate attempts to explain it away, I had known from the beginning.

"So, it was murder," I whispered. "Just as we thought."

"It was."

I sank back into the chair I had abandoned without realizing it. "Did she describe the man who pushed Lydia?"

"Very clearly. Ginger hair. A scar down one cheek to the jaw. A nose broken more than once. The witness had seen him about Gower Street this twelvemonth—lingering, running errands, keeping rough company. She did not have his name. But she was certain others would."

"A hired thug,” I said.

"Almost certainly. The sort who lets out his fists by the job."

The exhaustion that had weighed upon me all day was suddenly forgotten. "Then we find him."

"That is my intention."

At that moment everything became crystal clear. "Men of that kind do not murder women for their own amusement. They do it for money."

"Exactly so. And once we find that man⁠—"

"We find the person who wanted Lydia Gray silenced. Someone tied to the asylum."

His voice grew grim. "The same machinery. The same men. The murder, and Grimshaw and Kent and Linnet. Every separate thread drawing into one knot. I would wager a great deal on it."

"How long to find him?"

"A day or two. I mean to employ my manservant, Dawson, at the task. A Londoner who knows more of what passes in London than the whole of Scotland Yard. And, unlike Scotland Yard, he can go where I cannot and be remembered by no one."

"That," I said, "makes me very glad he is on our side."

"It is also entirely true. And if it comes to it, I will sit in every public house in Bloomsbury until a ginger-haired man with a broken nose walks past the window."

"You."

"I."

"Personally."

"Personally."

I glanced down at his leg, which I knew pained him.

He caught the look and answered my unspoken question. "My leg may lodge a formal complaint with the appropriate authority. I shall hear it sympathetically and proceed regardless."

A smile tugged unexpectedly at my mouth. Trust Thorne to turn pain into a joke. Yet beneath the dry humor lay the simple truth that he was prepared to do exactly as he said. He would endure whatever discomfort awaited him without complaint if it brought Linnet home.

He had met her only once.

Certainly, there was his brother’s shadow hanging over all of this. There was the injustice of Elmwood House and the certainty that other women had suffered there before Linnet. And others would suffer after her if no one stopped it. Yet none of that fully explained the determination I saw in him.

How very honorable he was being.